The Killing Business: A James Stone Thriller by Robert Clark

Author:Robert Clark [Clark, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Part Four

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Nineteen

The dark eyes of Khalid Hussein Fadhil looked up into the frosty blue of Sergeant Christian Pennock’s. There was no fear. Instead, Fadhil eyed the soldier as though he were some new species of rodent discovered on his land.

‘Jesus fucking Christ, it’s him,’ Pennock breathed.

He raised his rifle and brought the warlord within his sights.

‘Don’t,’ I said again, stepping in the way of Pennock’s shot.

‘Stone, I will happily blast a hole through your gut to kill this bastard,’ Pennock snarled, his words echoing around the cave. ‘Get out of the way right this second.’

‘You can’t kill him,’ I said. ‘Logistically, I mean. Think about it. This man is in the highest echelons of the Taliban. He knows everything. Everything. All their future plans and targets. He’ll know where the others are hiding, where Bin Laden is hiding. We can’t risk losing that information.’

Pennock said nothing, his weapon still aimed through me to his target.

‘What if we can stop the next 9/11?’ I said. ‘We could save hundreds, if not thousands of lives. That’s got to be worth the risk.’

‘I hate to say it, but he’s not wrong, boss,’ said Farrant. ‘We have to take him in.’

Like a bull about to charge, Pennock snorted, but he lowered his weapon.

‘Cuff him,’ he said, ‘but first-’ he snatched the mounted torch from his weapon and stepped up to the criminal. With one hand, on his forehead, and the other wrapped around his beard, Pennock forced Fadhil’s mouth open and jammed the torch in between his teeth. ‘Give me some tape,’ he ordered. Douglas stepped forward and held up something. It was a roll of bandage.

‘All we have right now, boss,’ he said.

‘It’ll do,’ said Pennock, ‘wrap it round his head.’

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Some of these vermin have cyanide capsules in their mouths,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it before. They get captured, they dislodge the tooth and chomp down. Nothing we can do but watch the bastard go off to get their hundred virgins or whatever the hell it is they want. This piece of shit isn’t getting that luxury.’

Douglas finished wrapping the bandage. Pennock pulled Fadhil to his feet.

‘Now you can cuff him,’ he said.

Getting Fadhil out of the caves was hard. While he offered no resistance of sorts, and walked of his own fruition, no one trusted him enough to grant him the freedom. So with the muzzle of his pistol pressed up against the back of Fadhil’s skull, and his free hand wrapped around the scruff of his perahan, Pennock frogmarched the prisoner through the tight rock passageways.

The hardest part was getting back up the hole. Using a length of rope sourced from one of the rooms upstairs to tether around Fadhil’s chest, the plan was to part-coerce, part-winch the prisoner above ground. But to everyone’s relief, Fadhil did not resist. With his hands bound behind his back, he had only the use of his feet to traverse the unstable rope ladder back up into the orphanage.

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