The spring air was clear and cool. It looked beautiful. Too beautiful for the slaughterhouse someone had made of this place. It was worse than anything Stone had seen before from Afghanistan. He’d served there himself in the early days, not long after Nine-Eleven. And in his work of collecting data and facts about different conflicts around the world, Stone had seen so many photos of Iraqi villages hit by airstrikes, old men and women murdered by the Taliban, Afghan families mistakenly taken out by helicopters. Stone knew that photos of slaughtered Afghans were a depressingly cheap commodity — certainly not newsworthy. But this was different, eerie. This wasn’t the work of the Taliban. Yet here it was — clinical, scientific killing in the middle of Helmand. Like some kind of experiment.
To Stone’s trained eye, the pictures of those bodies were worth more than the last three years of videos of deadly firefights, misdirected airstrikes or friendly fire incidents. This was something different, and it gave Stone perverse satisfaction to see them. Hooper had caught them red-handed — whoever they were — and had somehow smuggled the pictures through to Stone’s whistle-blowing web site.
Stone knew Hooper. He had recognised Hooper’s voice as soon as the video began. Stone and Hooper had enlisted in the Paras at the same time, and served together for three years until Stone moved on to Special Forces, and served a further four years there. Stone had left the army at that point — four years ago, after seven years. He’d had a bellyful of it by then, but yes, he knew Hooper.
On his screen, a silent atmosphere of death pervaded the village — no birds, or dogs or goats. No children. ‘Bastards,’ muttered Hooper behind the helmet cam. Stone had heard that tone in Hooper’s voice before, after some of the Taliban’s efforts back in 2004. Hooper’s mind would be swimming with images of dead children in each doorway. Stone knew Hooper. He would want to kill someone for this. Never a healthy emotion, but that was Hooper.
Stone had always liked Hooper. He had what Stone would call decent human feelings. Where some Special Forces jocks, Stone included, had stayed sharp-eyed and emotionless in contact, Hooper worked on stress and adrenaline, always looking out for his comrades. Hooper had the heart of a lion, and soldiers loved him for it. He’d risked his neck to save Stone a couple of times when probably he shouldn’t have. The real killers fought with their minds. It was when Stone realised he was one of the cold, clinical ones that he decided to get out.
Which was the reason why Stone was watching on a screen, while Hooper was still in that village. Hooper should have cleared out, coolly gathered intelligence and called in a larger team. Like Stone would have done.
Stone was sitting in his university office, five thousand miles away and a few weeks later — yet he could feel Hooper’s tension every time the helmet camera flicked with Hooper’s eyes into a doorway, every time he heard Hooper’s hoarse orders barked to his men. After all those bodies, the calm was unnerving. The sun and a warm breeze soughing through the narrow streets of this charnel house. The noise of Hooper’s ragged breathing, the hoarse orders to his men. Just like the old days. Tense as hell.
A couple of shouts, suddenly, from behind Hooper. ‘Man down, man down!’
The head-cam swivelled and jerked like an animal in a snare. A couple of shouts, suddenly, from behind him. ‘Man down, man down!’
‘Where?’ Hooper’s voice loud in the foreground. Two soldiers hauling a comrade into an alleyway. Loud cracks on the sound track. Rifle fire. The buzzing, hissing, venomous noise of rifle rounds passing close. You could feel them as much as hear them.
Then nothing, except for, ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Hooper’s tense, emotional voice. ‘Get him in here. Move it! Did you see ’em? I didn’t even see them.’
The helmet-cam rested on a bad chest wound and a boy’s face turning rapidly grey, then continued to buck and weave as the group retreated through a low door into one of the compounds.
Stone could see that the enemy were good — whoever they were. They were controlling their fire, pushing and probing, forcing Hooper’s men back. And Hooper still had no idea where they were. Stone winced as Hooper went back and crouched in the doorway for a few seconds, the head-cam flicking this way and that. He had no clue who he was even fighting. Stone felt he wanted to get in there, take control.
Still no sign of the enemy. More impressively, no sound either. It was looking ugly. Hooper and his men were up against real pros.
Hooper scrambled back into the compound. The kid was dying in front of them. One of the lads was pressing on his chest with both hands to stanch the bleeding, though he was clearly wasting his time. Stone guessed the lung was gone, and by the look of it the pulmonary artery too. Jesus! What a mess.
‘Shut the fuck up, you lot,’ whispered Hooper’s voice in desperation. Black blood was pumping out. Hooper had no idea what to do, Stone could tell. He was just trying to buy a few minutes, even a few seconds. The helmet cam scanned across around the bare earth of the courtyard. Those walls must be four metres high and vertical. No sight or sound from behind them.
‘Yep,’ muttered Stone, to himself. Hooper and his men were trapped. Stone could see it, watching through the helmet-cam. Hooper must have known it. It was peaceful — no sound but for the rustling of the trees. Hooper looked round to see one of his men was clamping a bloodied hand over the dying lad’s mouth to stop the groaning, though there was a kind of rattle from the hole in his chest.
Stone knew what was coming next, because in his own Special Forces days, he would have done the same. Seal the entrance to the compound, then take the zero-risk option — kill them with grenades, hurled over the walls.
The phone rang and Stone paused the video. It was Jayne, his boss’s secretary. She could wait. Stone hovered the cursor over the “play” button. It felt like watching a snuff movie, even for someone as hardened as him. But he had to go on. He clicked “play” once more. He was going to wish he hadn’t.
Chapter 3–9:35am 27 March, West Fleet, England
Professor of Peace Studies, Ethan Stone. He wasn’t a real professor — or at least that’s what he told himself. It was a label and he didn’t like to be labelled or categorised.
Stone had left the British army’s elite Special Forces after only four years. Stone had been forced to “retire” after one particular operation had gone badly wrong. But he’d had enough by then — sickened by what he’d seen, by what he’d had to do. Sickened above all by the realisation that he’d enjoyed it. Being good at it would have been fine. But Stone had enjoyed it, and that’s why he’d had to stop.
It was ironic, because Stone’s work nowadays consisted entirely of studying modern weapons and their nauseating effects on the feeble human frame.
Stone sat at his desk and clicked the play button again. Hooper and his men were trapped in the compound, and Stone was wondering how the hell Hooper had got out of this one. Hooper’s helmet-cam flicked again and again between the high walls and the grey face of his comrade. That boy was dead. Surely Hooper could see that.
There was a shout from outside the compound. This was it. Stone had seen it coming. Two hand grenades arced gently over from opposite sides and rolled full of menace into the middle of the courtyard. The head-cam filled with dust, centimetres from the ground as Hooper dived for cover. Two loud bangs on the sound track. A scream.
‘I’m hit boss, I’m hit.’ More screaming. The head-cam flicked around at the two others in Hooper’s team. One was staring in dead astonishment. Shrapnel through the head — gone. Switched off. The other was screaming from a stomach wound. Was Hooper hit? It didn’t seem like it.
The helmet cam flicked up to the walls, back to the doorway. A few defiant rounds from Hooper’s MP5 blatted away pointlessly into the compound wall above. Then nothing. After the grenades and the gunfire, an enveloping silence, followed by the noise of two pairs of boots advancing towards Hooper.
The images flashed to the ground and back upwards. Hooper had dropped his weapon. He was standing up and his hands would be behind the helmet. Still no gunfire. Just the muzzle of an M16, centimetres from Hooper’s head-cam. Then the camera looked at another man, who was offering his hand in greeting, a tall, blond man. Hooper took the hand and lingered, as if unsure what to do. The guy had smart creases in his camouflage shirt.
They were mercenaries. Uniforms with no markings save for a tiny hammer on the lapel of that pressed shirt. Stone recognized the logo of SCC — Special Circumstances Corporation. It was all becoming clear. Hooper had
