On the Rock Read online

  I turned towards the door. ‘I’m about to find out. See you tomorrow.’

  I left Naz to his prayers and walked against the flow of people heading for the mosque. As the man turned towards me, I reached the gates and held out my hand. He took it but didn’t say a word. It was up to me to say the greeting first. Some Muslims believe they shouldn’t be the first to say, ‘Peace be upon you,’ to a non-Muslim. He looked the formal type – or maybe he was just testing me.

  He shook my hand when he heard the greeting and gave me a sparkling smile. ‘And peace be upon you also,’ he replied.

  ‘You must be James Bowden,’ I said.

  He kept up the smile. ‘Yes, that’s me.’ The smile stayed as he pretended to tighten his tie. ‘Not quite what you expected?’

  I looked him up and down as if I was checking out a used car. He was well dressed, with bright blue eyes to match his tie. He should have been hosting an American game show, apart from his very posh British accent. ‘No, not at all,’ I lied. James was exactly what I’d expected. He had replaced Alexander.

  James finished with his tie. ‘Well, that’s the problem with emails. No personal contact. By the way my Islamic name is Haddi. It means “I am a guide”.’

  I nodded. ‘Nice to meet you in person, Haddi. The name suits you. It explains what you do for the Pathway to Allah.’

  We started to walk.

  ‘Once I had converted, I really wanted to help others do the same,’ he said. ‘That’s why I chose the name … So, why do you want to become a Muslim?’

  I shrugged as we crossed the road at the traffic lights. ‘A couple of years ago, I was reading about Islam. I didn’t trust what I was seeing in the media and just wanted to learn what it was really about.’

  Haddi nodded as I told him the story he must have heard a thousand times before. ‘So, the more you read, the more you understood?’

  Now it was my turn for the big smile but I wasn’t giving away what I was thinking, and neither was Haddi. ‘Exactly,’ I agreed.

  ‘People really don’t understand people like us who have taken a different path. They feel confused and that makes them scared. But that’s all right. You have no control over what they think, only over what you believe.’

  I nodded, looking like I was thinking hard about what Haddi had said. In fact I was waiting for him to fill the gap.

  He did so. ‘How does that make you feel? You know, people not understanding why you want to convert.’

  I had him where I wanted him. ‘I feel angry that I am already thought of as low-life, second class, maybe even a terrorist.’

  Haddi nodded in silent agreement as we passed the café. The news was still on, showing clips from Gibraltar before cutting back to the studio. There, two middle-aged women sat at either side of the male presenter. The banners below them told us they were both eye witnesses to the shootings.

  Haddi stopped and looked into the window. ‘What do you think about those three bombers? After all, they were converts.’

  I stood next to him and watched the TV. The two women were obviously arguing about whose version of events was correct. ‘I think what they were trying to do was wrong.’ I turned to face Haddi so that he could read my eyes as well as hear my words. ‘But you know what? I understand why they wanted to do it. I understand their anger.’

  The women were angry with one another now. We watched them for a few more seconds before we walked on.

  Haddi wasn’t smiling now but in deep thinking mode. ‘Yes, I agree with you. I too understand their anger.’

  He stopped outside a branch of Greggs and pulled an expensive leather wallet from inside his jacket. ‘Here.’ He handed me his business card. ‘Why not come to one of our meetings tomorrow night? The Pathway to Allah will be very happy to guide you along your journey to Islam.’

  I took the card, and Haddi carried on with his sales pitch. ‘In your emails, you said you had a friend in the mosque. Don’t forget that some people there will still be suspicious of you.’

  I put the card into my back pocket.

  Haddi had got into his stride now. ‘The Pathway to Allah is all about people like us converting to Islam. We understand the problems and we understand your fears because we have all been there ourselves.’ He placed his hands on my shoulders. ‘Will you come?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Haddi was very happy. ‘Excellent! I know the perfect Islamic name for you. You shall become Abdul Azeem, “Servant of the Almighty”. Sounds good, doesn’t it?’ He turned back the way we had come.

  I went down a side road towards my brand-new Ducati Monster, which was standing next to Naz’s dirty BMW GS. My new bike was red and shiny, with my shiny new helmet locked onto the seat.

  I pulled out a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile and hit speed-dial. It rang twice before Simmons answered from his desk at Vauxhall Cross. ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m in. My first meeting is tomorrow night and it shouldn’t be long before I’ll be asked to join New Islamic Jihad instead of becoming a law-abiding Muslim at Naz’s mosque for wimps.’

  I knew Simmons wanted to go home. Perhaps he had had a long day.

  ‘Your idea has worked so far,’ he said. ‘Well done.’ He cut the call.

  I threw the phone into a builder’s skip. Then I unlocked my helmet, kicked the bike into first gear and rode off down the street.

  Game on.

  About the Author

  Andy McNab became a soldier as a young man and joined the SAS in 1984. During the Gulf War he led the famous Bravo Two Zero patrol. He left the SAS in 1993, and now lectures to security and intelligence agencies in the USA and the UK. He also works in the film industry, advising Hollywood on training civilian actors to act like soldiers, and he continues to be a spokesperson and fundraiser for both military and literacy charities.

  Andy McNab has written about his life in the army and the SAS in the bestsellers, Bravo Two Zero, Immediate Action and Seven Troop. Bravo Two Zero was made into a film starring Sean Bean.

  He is the author of over twenty bestselling thrillers, several novels for children and three previous Quick Read titles, The Grey Man, Last Night, Another Soldier and Today Everything Changes. With Dr Kevin Dutton he is the co-author of The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success and Sorted! The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Bossing Your Life. He has also edited Spoken from the Front, a book of interviews with the British men and women serving in Afghanistan.

  www.andymcnab.co.uk

  www.quickreads.org.uk

  Also by Andy McNab

  Non-fiction

  Bravo Two Zero

  Immediate Action

  Seven Troop

  Spoken from the Front (edited)

  The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success (with Dr Kevin Dutton)

  Sorted! The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Bossing Your Life (with Dr Kevin Dutton)

  Fiction

  War Torn (with Kym Jordan)

  Battle Lines (with Kym Jordan)

  Quick Reads

  The Grey Man

  Last Night, Another Soldier

  Today Everything Changes

  The Nick Stone novels

  Remote Control

  Crisis Four

  Firewall

  Last Light

  Liberation Day

  Dark Winter

  Deep Black

  Aggressor

  Recoil

  Crossfire

  Brute Force

  Exit Wound

  Zero Hour

  Dead Centre

  Silencer

  For Valour

  Detonator

  The Tom Buckingham novels

  Red Notice

  Fortress

  State of Emergency

  If you’ve enjoyed this Quick Read title, why not try another Andy McNab book?

  Keep reading for an extract from

  Prologue

  Borjomi, Georgia

  25 September 1996

  05.17 hrs

  Dawn had b
egun to streak the eastern sky as the two mud-spattered trucks inched their way up the road in the faint glow from their sidelights. They jolted over rain-filled potholes and scree and came to a halt just short of the crest of the hill.

  Their movements measured and cautious, a dozen armed men climbed down from the rear of each vehicle. Their breath billowed around them in the freezing air. Checking their safety catches, they stamped their feet to restore circulation and eased the stiffness from their legs. Some placed a last cigarette in the middle of their week-old beards and lit up.

  They checked their equipment, ensuring pouches were still secure. If it had a button or a Velcro strip, it was there to be fastened. Two of the team struggled to hoist heavy weapons systems onto their shoulders.

  Their commander stood a short distance apart from his men. Laszlo had an aversion to the smell of nicotine. He wore the same stained camouflage fatigues as his troops and had a similarly Slavic cast to his features, complete with coarse, almost black beard, but carried himself with an arrogance they didn’t share. He was just short of six feet in height, but his sinuous limbs and slim frame made him look taller. His mouth was downturned and his eyes were the washed-out grey-blue of a winter sky; his skin was so pale he looked as if he’d lived his life in permanent shadow.

  Another man exited the cab of the nearest truck. Laszlo’s cool gaze missed nothing as he approached. The newcomer’s civilian clothes were of a cut and quality that were neither cheap nor local. He wasn’t a Slav, he was from the West. Europe? The USA? It was hard to tell. They all looked the same. His brown hair was starting to grow out from its short back and sides, and he, too, had a good week’s growth on his chiselled jaw.

  The man might not have been one of Laszlo’s team, but the comfortable way he held his AK, the folding butt closed down in his hand as if it were a natural extension of his body, showed that he was no stranger to shot and shell. The weapon – all of his equipment – was also of Soviet origin. In Yeltsin’s Russia, there was no shortage of underworld gangs willing to steal and trade such things, or of corrupt officers happy to empty their armouries in return for cold, hard cash.

  The man had no fear of repercussion from what he was about to do. There would be nothing to suggest this had been anything but a purely local affair. He was sterile of ID and personal documentation. Like the rest of the team, it was as if he didn’t exist. He had a name – Marcus – but Laszlo knew it wasn’t his own. The team commander had taken steps to discover his companion’s real identity. Information was a commodity to be traded, like drugs, weapons and women, and Laszlo always liked to bargain from a position of strength.

  He stood for a couple more minutes, watching the new day creep across the landscape. To his right, a steep, boulder-strewn slope tumbled to a fast-flowing river. Water the colour of chocolate surged downstream. The force of the current had carved out the soil for a ten-metre stretch along the far bank, exposing a latticework of tree-roots that gleamed white against the mud, like the ribs of a putrefying corpse.

  On the other side of the road, a dense pine forest cloaked the lower slopes of the mountains that filled the northern horizon. It seemed to float in a sea of mist. The treetops swayed each time there was a gust of wind. As he watched, the sun’s first rays painted the snow-capped peaks with gold. In the west, just visible now in the strengthening light, a black gash as straight as a Roman road showed the course of the pipeline being driven through this remote valley. Directly in its path, just over the hill from where they now stood, a huddle of buildings lay surrounded by a patchwork of fields.

  As soon as the man reached him, Laszlo turned. The wind whipped up a shower of pine needles as the two of them moved through the edge of the forest. As they neared the crest of the hill, they flattened themselves to the earth and wormed their way to a point from which they could study the approach to Borjomi.

  On the slope below, the trees gave way to fields of yellowing grass, dusted with frost and punctuated by mounds of autumn hay secured beneath tarpaulins. Beyond them, houses were clustered around a dusty square. A rusting iron water pump and a long stone horse-trough stood at its centre, half shaded by a large, stag-headed oak tree.

  The buildings at the heart of the village were of wood and stone, with sun-faded shutters and roofs of patched tiles or corrugated iron, steeply pitched to shed the winter snows. The gables of some had once been richly carved but were now so weathered, cracked and split with age that the embellishments were barely visible.

  While those houses looked almost as ancient as the oak tree they faced, the buildings around them were drab, Soviet-era constructions, their crumbling concrete façades pockmarked by bullet holes. A huge barn, built of unmilled wood with gaps between the planks, boasted a roof of heavily patched corrugated-iron sheets.

  The whole place was mired in mud and poverty. Tangles of scrap metal and rotting timbers decorated the yards. A solitary motor vehicle, a battered Lada with rust-streaked bodywork, was parked next to a pair of horse-drawn farm carts. Apart from a handful of chickens scuttling about and a few cows mooching in the fields, the place seemed to be deserted.

  At the side of the road just outside the village, an old door had been nailed to two fence posts driven into the ground. Daubed on it, in crude hand-lettering, was an inscription in Russian, Georgian and Ossetic: ‘Protect our village.’

  The two men worked their way back from the brow and conferred in low tones. Although his companion was now issuing orders to him, Laszlo’s stance and attitude showed that he did not regard him as his superior in any way.

  ‘Ready?’ The man’s Russian was halting but understandable. And now his accent gave him away.

  Laszlo nodded. ‘Ready, Englishman.’ He signalled to his men and led them down the hill, moving tactically, one foot always on the ground. Half the team stayed where they were to cover the advance of the rest. Using the haystacks to mask their approach, they too went static and returned the favour.

  A cock crowed inside a barn and wisps of grey smoke began to rise from a chimney as some unseen inhabitant coaxed his fire into life. Laszlo was wary. It wasn’t always like this. An attack could be initiated at any moment. He’d taken incoming from sleepy backwaters like this and lost men. That was why he favoured a rolling start-line. If his team took fire as they approached they’d just roll into the attack and fight their way forward.

  They reached the shadows of a tumbledown wall on the edge of the settlement and waited there, all eyes focused on the Englishman as he took one last look at the target to confirm that nothing had changed since he issued his last set of orders the day before.

  He’d led them into a field for a run-through in slow time, letting the whole team see what each of the component groups would be doing during the attack. They’d rehearsed the what-ifs: what if the team had a man down? What if a group got separated from the main force? What if the team took heavy fire from an RPG?

  Now that the Englishman had seen in real time what he’d told them to call the battle space, he knew there was nothing to add. His voice was calm as he spoke to Laszlo.

  The South Ossetian checked that his men were in place and ready, raised his hand, paused a moment, and let it fall.

  The team burst from cover. With the Englishman leading one group and Laszlo the other, they advanced along both sides of the main street. Dogs set up a chorus of barks and howls and a few villagers began stumbling from their houses, some clutching hunting rifles and shotguns, one or two with AKs, but the attacking force, better armed and better trained, cut them down before they fired a single round.

  Laszlo led his men from house to house. The crump of HE grenades and the crash of splintering wood were interspersed with cries and screams. Half dressed and rubbing sleep from their eyes, the remaining occupants were dragged from their homes, herded into the open, kicked and punched face down into the mud, then immobilized with plastic zip-ties.

  While the Englishman stayed with his group and controlled their captives, Laszlo
led his team further along the line of buildings. He paused for a couple of seconds, dropped into cover and looked back towards the others. A young villager, perhaps no more than a teenager, was sprinting towards the forest.

  Two of the insurgents fired at him and missed. The Englishman dropped to one knee, took careful aim and brought him down with a single shot into the centre of his body mass, then moved forward and finished him with a second to the head.

  Laszlo smiled to himself and turned his attention back to the last of the houses. Once it, too, had been searched and cleared, and the occupants secured, the looting began. Food and alcohol were gathered up with as much enthusiasm as the modest treasures the villagers possessed.

  Laszlo took a gulp of a fiery local spirit, then passed the bottle among his men. One carried off a fading sepia photograph of a couple dressed for their wedding against a gaudily painted backdrop of a castle. Wanting the ornate frame but not the image it contained, he stamped down with his boot, smashing the glass and ripping the photograph to shreds. He picked out the last shards and propped the frame carefully against the trunk of the oak tree.

  Another emerged from an outbuilding clutching a pair of live chickens in each hand. He wrung their necks with practised ease and added them to the growing pile of booty.

  On Laszlo’s order, the attackers began to separate their male captives from the women, who wailed and keened as husbands and sons were marched and kicked towards the barn at the far edge of the village. Those who resisted were shot where they stood. The rest were herded inside and watched helplessly as its double doors were shut and barred.

  Laszlo listened for a moment to the terrified shouts and cries of those trapped within, then nodded to the two men carrying the heavier weapons systems.

  They staggered forwards, smashed the windows and directed searing blasts of flame into the barn’s interior. Laszlo had selected these weapons with purpose – for the physical pain endured by the dying, and the legacy of mental terror suffered by those unfortunate enough to survive.