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  There was a thunderous clap and a flash of light. A tyre exploded. The mission van shook violently. Before the driver had time to react further rounds impacted the van and he slumped forward over the wheel, blood splattered the screen and the van swerved ominously sideways. Snow grabbed the wheel and tried to wrestle the van back into the centre of the lane but to no avail. There were now yells and screams from behind, as the rest of the passengers realised what was happening but before they could react fully the van hit the sandy verge and was thrown onto its side.

  Snow heard the words, “Everyone down…” spill out from his lips as the side of the van embedded itself into the sand. His whole body was hurled sideways and then forward, the seatbelt digging into his neck, squashing his Adam’s apple. Glass exploded around him and splinters tore at his skin. Something hit his head; Snow battled to remain conscious as the corners of his vision blurred and became dark grey. There were several seconds of absolute silence as the van came to a complete rest. Voices started to call out to each other.

  Khalid leapt out of the taxi and ran towards the Police cruiser, his AK had the stock locked and the safety was off. He sighted the first officer and let off a three round burst before the man saw him coming. The officer crumpled and fell back over his open door. The driver’s door opened and the second officer attempted to retrieve his side arm but Khalid was too fast and drawing level with the car shot him in the head. He leapt back into the taxi, which covered the distance to the mini-bus. Khalid’s men were out of their own vehicle, some trained their weapons on the wrecked bus whilst others manhandled the passengers out and onto the floor.

  Snow’s vision was blurred and blood ran into his eyes. He undid his belt and fell onto the corpse of the driver. The windscreen had exploded as the front of the van had caved in. He felt the back of his head. No blood just a large lump which, when he touched it, sent needles of pain jolting down his spine. There was movement all around now as the working doors were pulled open and hands grabbed. Snow kept still and closed his eyes, with any luck they would leave him for dead. He felt a hand on his shoulder and then a hushed voice. “Aidan…Aidan”.

  Snow opened his left eye and saw Kennington looking down at him; a large jagged cut crossed his entire right cheek. Kennington’s head suddenly jerked backwards, as a strong pair of hands, pulled him upwards and out of the van. Snow watched as open mouthed horror registered on the mission leader’s face. Arabic voices shouted instructions to each other, Snow shut his eyes again. Arabic voices all around now, Snow did not speak the language but understood the tone. Orders were being given. A hand grabbed his shoulder and shook him, pain coursed down his back. Then he heard it – a police siren in the distance getting progressively louder. The hand let go and Snow let his body fall back onto the corpse once more.

  Outside Khalid swung his Kalashnikov in an arc to cover the motorway. Traffic on the other side had crawled to a halt as ‘rubber-neckers’ stared at the over turned vehicle and the armed men running around it. Khalid pointed his rifle at the nearest vehicle, a high sided van and fired a short burst into the cargo area. The driver got the message and pulled away, pushing the small sedan in front with him. Behind the road was completely blocked, drivers who were too far away to see what had happened held down their horns as if this would magically clear the carriageway. The nearer motorists cowered in their cars; some had abandoned theirs and run off. Many others were on cell phones either making calls or recording videos.

  The sirens were getting louder – they had to move now. Khalid shouted guttural instructions to his men and kept his weapon moving back and forth in a steady arc until moments later his men had grabbed and dragged the bewildered infidels out of their bus. He saw it now on the opposite side of the motorway, a police cruiser racing towards the scene. They had to go before the army was called in to block the road further south. He fired a short lethal burst into the front of the cruiser shattering the windscreen and causing the car to thud into the heavy central reservation. The convoy was ready to move. The mini bus pulled away with its cargo of hostages. The Ford tried to move but the engine wouldn’t start. The driver waved Khalid away; both men knew that they had to make their escape. Khalid nodded and got back into the taxi which shot up the road to re-join the mini-bus.

  Snow pulled himself up and gingerly drew his head out of the door. A taxi shot passed but the Ford was still there – two men in front speaking animatedly as the engine spluttered. The front bull bars were distorted from hitting the police escort. Without thinking an idea had appeared in Snow’s mind. Now was his chance. He pulled himself out of the bus and fell onto the sand, bolts of pain shot down his spine as his shoulder hit the ground. His mouth opened in a silent scream, the wind knocked out of him. Nothing however seemed to be broken. From behind the overturned bus he could still see the Ford; the passenger now was at the front of the vehicle and banging the bonnet with the butt of his Kalashnikov. The engine started but sounded none too healthy, as the armed man got back inside the cab. The large Pick-Up moved off slowly, tyres fighting to grip the asphalt through the sand.

  Snow ran at a crouch through the dust clouds and grabbed hold of the tail gate, pulling himself up and onto the exposed truck bed. The truck accelerated, hard in pursuit of the other vehicles, Snow rolled onto his back, pressed himself flat against the floor pan and panted. As the truck bumped back onto the highway his back slammed into the steel below causing him to cry out on pain – whatever he had done to his back was going to get even worse if he took much more of this. There was no movement from up front and unless the passenger or driver looked back and directly down at the truck bed, he could not be seen.

  Snow tried to steady his breathing and make sense of what had just happened. They had been attacked on the way to the airport by an organised group. It was not an opportunistic or random act. These militants had to know when the mission was leaving and where it was headed. This meant what? Someone had told them or someone had been watching. Snow closed his eyes to force his mind to concentrate, his head was woozy and his back felt as though it was on fire, but he was alive and for the moment free.

  On the Highway now the ride was much smoother. Snow gingerly reached for his phone and thanked the gods that it was still safely buttoned inside his cargo pocket. He couldn’t risk speaking so sent a text message to Patchem. ATTACKED ON HIGHWAY INSURGENTS POSSIBLE FATALITIES HOSTAGES TAKEN AM FREE WILL PURSUE

  Snow switched the phone to silent with vibrate off. He then accessed the menu and typed in a code. The modified Nokia now acted as a GPS transponder. The phone would power up and send his GPS coordinates every few minutes to Patchem’s receiver at Vauxhall Cross. The SIS would be able to tap into the US satellite feeds and track him.

  Khalid’s taxi had taken point for the convoy and was now half a kilometre ahead, they passed three patrol cars racing on the other side of the highway but were not paid any attention too. They were just one of many taxi’s ferrying travellers from the airport. Their exit came and the taxi swung off of the highway and onto a minor road before reaching a warehouse complex. The taxi entered a large opened ended warehouse where their new transport was waiting. The delivery van was painted with the livery of a livestock producer. Khalid allowed himself a smile. It was apt. The infidels were to be lambs to the slaughter.

  The mini bus closely followed by the truck skidded into the warehouse. Men already inside the building moved towards the mini bus and pulled the westerners out, half dragging half pushing them towards the far end of the warehouse. Lermitte had tried to fight back but had been pistol whipped in the face, his mouth had taken most of the impact and his lips were swollen. Kennington held a handkerchief to his face, blood was still gushing from his cheek and for once he was quiet.

  Without any breeze, the heat inside the warehouse was unbearable; Snow painfully rolled onto his stomach and slowly raised his head. He counted the missioners, all there bar two. He could only hope that they too had escaped, but knew that the chances were slim
. In the far corner of the warehouse several large Islamic flags had been attached to the walls and a dozen or so chairs stood in regimented lines in front. A video camera on a tripod sat facing the ‘set’. To the left one of the kidnappers started to place the confiscated passports of the missioners on a table. A tall Arab, the leader of the group spoke to the hostages in perfect English.

  “We do not have much time. You will sit on the chairs and not say a word unless we ask you too.” As if to emphasise the importance of these instructions one of his men kicked Lermitte to the floor. Khalid continued. “Do what I say and all will be well, Insha’Allah.”

  The group was herded towards the seats. At the other end of the warehouse the mini-bus pulled back out into the sunlight. In that moment’s distraction there was a movement from the group, Thacker bolted for the door. Showing shocking speed for a man of nearly sixty he reached the pick-up just as Khalid fired a single shot into his back. Thacker was thrown forward as though a giant hand had pushed him. He tried to push himself up, his arms shook. In the second or so that he looked skywards, his eyes locked onto Snow’s. He fell forward and blood trickled from his mouth, a large crimson stain spreading across his cream Saville Row shirt.

  “You, murdering, bastard” Snow growled.

  Khalid looked down at the remaining hostages. “He did not listen. Now if you will all please sit.”

  Assault Rifles were trained on the hostages to keep them still as other Arabs put on balaclava’s to hide their faces. Khalid stood at the back and read from a prepared speech. His face was hidden by a red checked Shemagh which showed only his eyes. Snow felt a cold anger inside. Thacker had been harmless, an artist. A man who captured images of the Kingdom of oil in oils. Whilst the pantomime proceeded, Snow carefully and painfully craned his neck to look around. There was no way he could overcome the kidnappers, no way to guarantee that even if he could grab a weapon that anyone would escape. It would be suicide. As he watched, the group was pushed violently inside the white flat sided van. There were no protests only whimpering and some tears. The roller door was then shut. The leader banged on the side and the van pulled off.

  Snow’s chauffeurs dismantled the set before heading back towards the Ford. Snow moved his head lower but his eyes were transfixed by the leader. As Snow watched the tall Arab put his arm around the driver of the taxi and together they took two steps before his left hand drew a blade across the man’s neck. The driver went limp in milliseconds and fell to the floor - a ball of rags. The leader held up his blade and pointed at the Ford, Snow flinched, but they hadn’t seen him. The two remaining men shouted something in Arabic and got in. Snow again felt very exposed as the truck pulled away. He held his breath and made himself as flat as possible.

  After watching the two vehicles leave the warehouse Khalid picked up a canister of petrol and poured it over the dead driver. He had been useful and had served Allah well. He would indeed go to Paradise. After covering the taxi he dropped a match into the puddle that had formed and moved away. Seconds later the car exploded. He moved towards the body of Thacker and kicked it. To his surprise it groaned. Khalid nodded and collected the video camera, tripod and a chair. He turned it on and lined Thacker up in the viewfinder, when he was happy with the composition he rolled the man over onto his back. Thacker’s eyes snapped open. Khalid put an arm under each of Thacker’s and pulled him onto a chair. Thacker felt no pain, only a growing sense of delirium, as his body desperately tried to deal with the fatal wound it had sustained.

  His head lolled, he had lost all sense of feeling and could move nothing apart from his eyes. Khalid positioned himself directly behind Thacker, Shemagh on again and spoke quietly but forcefully into the camera. He held Thacker’s head with his left hand then drew his blade across the man’s throat. The eyes flickered and then Thacker died. Khalid took several more blows to sever the head completely. The Arab turned the camera off, disassembled the tripod then got into his own car and drove off. He had neglected his two other infidels for long enough.

  NINE

  British Embassy, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

  The Al Jazeera breaking news banner caught his attention instantly. Slinger-Thompson un-muted the television and leaned towards the screen. Against a background that could have been anywhere, four armed men wearing balaclavas stood menacingly over a dozen or so dishevelled looking westerners.

  Slinger-Thompson’s eye twitched as it suddenly hit him. The trade mission. He pressed the record button on the DVD-TV combo and sat motionless. The footage ran in a loop, showing the same images again and again. The hostages with armed guards, the leader waving his fist and reading demands from a prepared list and a close up of the hostages passports arranged on a table open at the photo page. The British Ambassador appeared at the door a shocked expression on his face, but before either man could say a word the desk phone rang. It was London.

  SIS Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London, United Kingdom

  Patchem followed the coordinates that Snow’s phone had transmitted and traced the route that the insurgents had taken. From the Riyadh highway they had moved onto a much smaller and lesser road which would eventually take them towards the border with Yemen. Patchem shook his head, even with his relatively limited knowledge of the area he knew Yemen was potentially as dangerous as Iraq for any westerner to enter unarmed. It was widely acknowledged in intelligence and security circles that Yemen, in spite of recent covert operations, was becoming to the insurgents in Saudi Arabia what Pakistan was to the Taliban, a safe haven.

  Patchem called up a map of the Kingdom and realised that things could only get worse. In the south of the Kingdom was an area called Rub al-Khali, the Empty Quarter. One of the largest sand deserts in the world it covered an area of more than 250,000 square miles, an expanse similar in size to France or as the ‘Russian’ expert assessed it, Ukraine. Patchem traced the map with his finger, the Rub al-Khali extended beyond the international boundaries continuing on into Saudi’s neighbours taking up large parts of Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. In essence this meant that border crossings were completely unenforceable. In terms of the fight against terror he assessed it as a ‘sodding nightmare’, although he would use less colourful language when he addressed both the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister. He glanced at his wall clock. He still had ten minutes before he and Knight would leave for COBRA. Clicking an icon on his desktop computer he watched once again the footage from Al-Jazeera.

  Cabinet Office Briefing Room A (COBRA),

  Whitehall, London, United Kingdom

  Since the general election defeat of ‘New Labour’ and the formation of the ‘Tory-Lib’ government, there had been three COBRA meetings. One to evaluate the impact of the recent outbreak of BSE in Jersey, a second to discuss the raising of the threat level to "Critical" after an attempted terror attack on the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent and the last to discuss the downing of a Hercules transport plane en route to Kabul.

  Known by the acronym ‘COBRA’, Cabinet Office Briefing Room ‘A’ was the coordination centre in Whitehall used by the UK government in cases of national emergency or events abroad with major implications for HM Government. It was there that the group of government advisers and senior politicians who formed the Civil Contingencies Committee had secure communications facilities to enable them to obtain vital information about an incident and act upon it if needed.

  Flanked at the head of the table by his two most vocal appointees (the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary) the Prime Minister, David Daniels, called the room to order. The attendees in addition to the PM’s party included the Head of the Intelligence Service, the Director of UK Special Forces, the Director General of the Secret Intelligence Service and Jack Patchem. It was the first COBRA meeting Patchem had been part of under the new Prime Minister but he was not one to be intimidated, even though he was by far the most junior person in attendance. This was a COBRA ‘emergency meeting’ and as such was not a full gathering of th
e Committee.

  The Prime Minister pushed a lock of errant unnaturally dark hair back from his forehead. “Ms Knight?”

  Abigail Knight flashed her perfected ‘professional half smile’. “Thank you Prime Minister. Today at 07:20 local Saudi time we were alerted by our field officer in Riyadh that a British citizen had been murdered and that two others had potentially been taken hostage. The men worked for the Al-Kabir Group. Just over two hours later at approximately 09:20 local time we learnt that a British Trade Mission travelling to the King Khalid International Airport with the intent of leaving the Kingdom had been attacked. Twelve more hostages were taken. Two further British citizens were confirmed dead at the scene by the Saudi authorities. Less than two hours after this second event footage appeared on the Al-Jazeera network.”

  Knight nodded at Patchem who pressed play on a remote. At the far end of the room a projector glided into place and a flickering image started to play.

  “We have counted twelve British citizens on screen which leaves one unaccounted for. The missing missioner is one of our officers and a former member of the Special Air Service.”

  The attendees knew better than to ask questions until all the information had been presented. The Director of UK Special Forces however did half open his mouth. Knight gave Patchem his cue to take over the presentation.

  “We have been tracking our officer by GPS transmitter. He has informed me that he is traveling with the hostage group but that he has not been captured. I believe that he is hiding in the second vehicle you see here.”

  Patchem held up the remote again and a shot from a US surveillance satellite now appeared on the wall. The image showed, with almost unbelievable clarity, two vehicles - a white delivery van and an open bed pick-up truck. “I have every confidence in our officer and believe that he will be able to assist us in any assault on the insurgents.”