The Angry Sea. James Deegan
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stuck in my mind. He had a big chunk out of his right calf – probably a round, or a bit of shrapnel. It gave him a weird, rolling gait.’ Carr finished off his tea. ‘That’s another mistake. Should have given that job to someone less distinctive.’
‘Would you recognise him again?’ said de Padilla.
‘Aye. At night, in a jungle, blindfolded.’
‘I don’t understand, Mr Carr. Why at night, in a jungle, blindfolded?’
‘Sorry,’ said Carr. ‘Sense of humour trying to kick in. Basically, yes, I would. I’d recognise him anywhere.’
AT AROUND THAT moment, the little green RIB finally came ashore, guided by a Garmin GPS device to a rocky beach on the western end of the Al Hoceima National Park, a remote and empty swathe of northern Morocco which was forested with thuja cypresses, and criss-crossed by dirt tracks.
His dark eyes flashing, Argun Shishani and the surviving shooter – Abdullah el Haloui, in his Manchester United shirt – hustled the three women onto the shallow beach and up into the cover of the trees.
‘Lie down!’ snapped Shishani. ‘Face the ground.’
‘No, please,’ said one of them, but when el Haloui raised his shortened AK they meekly complied.
‘Now be quiet,’ snapped the Chechen.
He cocked his head on one side, listening.
Nothing but crickets, and the rustling of the trees overhead.
He nodded, satisfied. ‘Wait here,’ he said, to his comrade. He nodded toward the water. ‘I have to speak to him.’
With his strange, lopsided walk, Shishani hurried back down to the inflatable, where the boatman, his face weathered by sixty years of sun and salt spray, was in the process of refuelling the engine from a jerry can.
‘Malik, my friend,’ said Shishani. ‘I have a gift for you.’
‘It’s not necessary, saheb,’ said Malik, with an open smile. ‘I am just happy to do my duty.’
‘But it is necessary,’ said Shishani, and as he walked towards the other man he reached into the bag over his shoulder.
When he was six feet away, he pulled out a pistol – an FNP, loaded with .45 ACP subsonic rounds – and an angular Osprey suppressor.
Malik’s eyes widened as he saw the weapon. ‘What are you doing?’ he said, nervously.
‘I’m putting this suppressor on this pistol,’ said Shishani.
‘But why?’
Shishani didn’t answer for a couple of seconds, but continued screwing the suppressor onto the FNP.
Then he said, ‘Because although Al Hoceima is a desolate place I cannot discount the possibility that there may be someone nearby, and I don’t want them to hear this.’
And, with that, he raised the weapon and shot the boatman twice in the chest.
Suppressors do not ‘silence’ gunfire, but the right equipment does greatly reduce the report, and subsonic rounds have none of the crack caused by a faster bullet as it breaks the sound barrier: the noise of the shots, and the brittle, metallic sound of the moving parts in action, was lost in the humid breeze.
Malik fell backwards into the shallows with a splash and there he lay, eyes and mouth open, his breathing laboured, the water lapping over him, a red cloud forming on either side.
His pupils tracked Shishani as he stepped forward into the water.
The dying man tried to speak, but produced only guttural sounds.
‘Hush, my friend,’ whispered the Chechen, putting the pistol to Malik’s forehead. ‘I give you the gift of paradise.’
The single report from the pistol sent the old man on his way into eternity.
Shishani took a knife and stabbed the inflated rubber panels of the boat in several places. As the air hissed out, he pushed the foundering RIB out into the Mediterranean.
Then he walked back up the beach.
Abdullah el Haloui met him halfway, a sardonic smile playing on his lips.
‘Did you have to do that, zaeim?’ he said, his hands relaxing on the AK, which was slung from his neck across his chest.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said the Chechen. ‘I couldn’t risk him talking. And he is a martyr now. He should be grateful.’
‘I guess so,’ said the young Moroccan, with a chuckle. ‘But how do you know I won’t talk?’
‘I don’t,’ said Shishani, raising the FNP to other man’s chest.
The smile dropped off el Haloui’s lips in an instant.
He went for the pistol grip of his AK, but it was a futile move and the last thing he would ever consciously do.
Shishani fired two rounds, point-blank, into him.
The first clipped the top of his heart, and took his legs away. The second hit him in the throat as he dropped, smashing through his larynx and exiting the back of his neck, taking a chunk of his spinal cord with it.
The body hit the ground with a dead thud; this time, there was no need for any coup de grâce.
It was a moment or two before the Chechen could bring himself to look down at the fallen man.
Abdullah had played an invaluable role in the operation, from the moment when he had tailed the Morgan girl and her friends from the airport at Málaga to their hotel, to his glorious actions on the Spanish beach earlier this very day.
But this was no time for sentiment. If they were to succeed, then their mission had to be sealed off from the outside world.
Hermetically.
Not to mention, Abdullah was a true believer, utterly pure in spirit, and might well have caused trouble later.
‘I am sorry, brother,’ said Shishani, with genuine regret. ‘But I cannot bury you.’
He glanced up into the trees.
All three women were still lying face down, not daring to look around.
He bent down, pulled el Haloui’s weapon from his dead grasp, and walked back up the slope, looking at his watch.
Soon, soon.
‘Get up,’ he said. ‘We must walk. And if any of you does not do as I say she will die here and now.’
The three women stood up and walked into the forest along a sandy path, the heady scent of cypress filling their nostrils.
AS THE MOROCCAN night darkened, the headlights appeared.
Five minutes later, two Toyota Land Cruisers rolled and swayed along the undulating dirt road, and stopped.
A man got out – a giant, dressed in a grubby, blue gandora thobe and sandals, with a bushy, greying beard.
He beamed at Shishani, and the two men embraced and kissed each other on both cheeks.
‘Oh, it’s good to see you, Argun!’ said Khasmohmad Kadyrov, in Chechen. ‘When was it last, brother? Now Zad?’
‘Khan Neshin,’ said Argun Shishani. ‘I believe.’
‘So it was,’ said Kadyrov. ‘So it was. And today you have done a wonderful thing. Let me see her.’
‘Surely,’ said Shishani,