Jericho's War Read online

  About the author

  Gerald Seymour exploded onto the literary scene in 1975 with the massive bestseller Harry’s Game. The first major thriller to tackle the modern troubles in Northern Ireland, it was described by Frederick Forsyth as like ‘nothing else I have ever read’ and it changed the landscape of the British thriller forever.

  Gerald Seymour was a reporter at ITN for fifteen years. He covered events in Vietnam, Borneo, Aden, the Munich Olympics, Israel and Northern Ireland.

  Jericho's War

  Gerald Seymour

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Gerald Seymour 2017

  The right of Gerald Seymour to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 473 61777 3

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  I am hugely grateful for help and encouragement

  over the last 40 something years to . . .

  Michael and Jonathan,

  and

  Sir Billy, Ian, Mark and Jamie,

  and

  Richard, Christopher, Bill and Nick,

  and

  Steven, Patsy and Kerry.

  Their many kindnesses are very, very much appreciated

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Also by Gerald Seymour

  Prologue

  It was the softest of clicks, metal on metal. The paper clip he used was just strong enough to unfasten the mechanism of the padlock. His hands were still and his wrists strong and his arms steady and he did not want to shift the chain until certain that he had not been heard. The Italian whimpered in his sleep and might, again, have been calling for his mother; the Austrian snored, did not break the rhythm of it, while the Canadian caught his breath, held it for a moment then let out a faint whistle as his lungs emptied.

  He was sitting with his right shoulder against the breeze blocks of the garage wall. His wrists were handcuffed and a chain led from them and over the mattress – straw squashed into three stinking grain sacks – and was fastened to a ring set in the wall by the padlock. The chain came away and he cursed because there was another slight sound as links shifted their weight. There was almost total darkness inside the garage, their cell room, but a sliver of light protruded under a side door that led into the villa. He tried to focus in turn on the Italian and the Austrian; he could not make out either of their faces, but the whimpering and the snoring persisted. He realised that the Canadian was watching him: a trace of reflection from the light was in the man’s wide open eyes. The Canadian was a decent guy, had been a businessman in Winnipeg until bitten by the conscience factor that Syria was capable of arousing. They had all been captured together.

  Each of them was chained to separate rings.

  He gathered his own chain carefully through his fingers and slid most of it into the pocket of his jeans – his captors did not expect him to need those trousers much longer. The four from the aid-worker team were a commodity and paid for handsomely. They had been seized and then sold on, and in the next day or two days they would be bought again. Reasonable to assume that their next purchasers would strip off their clothes and replace them with the orange suits that were supposed to mimic the garb of the prisoners in the Gitmo camp – Guantanamo.

  A radio played somewhere in the building. He had his girl in his mind. Her face and features and her wide smile were there; he needed something to cling to, take strength from.

  No chance of pushing himself up from the wall and going on tiptoe to the side door and escaping in a crouched run down the corridor. No chance, because Cornelius Rankin – Corrie – had suffered a broken bone. He didn’t know the name of the bone, only that it was in his left leg, and closer to the ankle than his knee. He had injured it when he had, for a brief moment, forgotten the disciplines of his training, lost track of the lessons taught by the instructors down at the Fort on the south coast, peered back into the face of a guard and been lashed with the shoulder rest of an assault rifle. That had been a month ago. Once a week they gave him – their notion of generosity – a couple of Ibuprofen tablets that had long passed their use by date. He would go on his own, would not free the Canadian and would not wake the Austrian, nor the Italian. The instructors would have approved.

  A weathered face looking into his, ‘What I’m saying, my old cocker, is that you’re better doing a runner than hanging about and waiting to be told to kneel down and have some big bastard hover over you with a kitchen knife and start sawing away at your windpipe. If you do a runner, and lose out, make sure they have to shoot you then and there. Go for it, take the first chance, and don’t take passengers with you. Me first, me second, me last, that’s how it should be. Might be a chance of breaking out when it’s gangsters holding you, but the chance is gone when you’re in the hands of the real bad boys, when you’re in the orange suit. Grab it, that first chance, and don’t bloody look back. And the chance won’t fall in your lap, you manufacture it.’ It had seemed a bright idea to infiltrate an officer into a charitable organisation, shipping aid into a nasty war zone – a very bright idea. He’d had a week’s preparation down at the Fort, listening to veteran professionals lecturing on ‘survival’. The Canadian and the Italian and the Austrian had never been to a week-long course at the Fort. They were cannon-fodder, and not Corrie’s problem, that’s how he reckoned it.

  He wouldn’t even see Belcher. Belcher would be wrapped up in a blanket and might be asleep and might have hold of his privates and would be keen enough to show that he was dreaming of Allah or seventy virgins or the joys of the orchards where the martyrs found shade under the fruit trees. Belcher would be needing to establish a copper-bottomed alibi, because the throw-back would be gargantuan.

  Corrie started to slither forward. Could he trust Belcher? Time to find out. He had no weapon other than the chain. He did not look at the Canadian. He knew the man had a wife and three children, two at college and an eldest working in an accountancy firm; he knew about the man’s home and about where he took vacations, and the name of the dog that trailed along when the family went hiking. He knew that if he was successful, a similar chance would not come again, and the Canadian would die. A good guy, honourable, but not high enough on the priority list.

  Corr
ie crossed the concrete floor, dragging the damaged leg and using his elbows to propel himself. Two images competed for space: images of his girl, of Maggie, and of the creature, Belcher, a turncoat and ‘clean skin’. He had no doubts that his trust in Maggie was justified, was certain of it, but could not know, yet, whether Belcher had been honest with him or had betrayed him. The Canadian could have demanded that he be helped, or could have cursed him and roused the guards, but he stayed quiet, even though he would know the consequences for those left behind after a break-out, failed or successful. Maggie seemed to smile. He heard the tinkle of her laughter, and felt her against him; she was his talisman.

  He reached the door and listened hard.

  The door was unlocked. Low voices were close to drowned by the music from an Arabic-language station. He opened it, and crawled through. The chain ground into his stomach and the pain in the trailed leg soared. He felt he might faint. Once through he had to turn and twist to close the door, reaching to the handle and easing it shut, leaving the three men behind him who might have thought him their friend. They had been brought blindfolded to the garage that was integrated into the building.

  He’d had to take Belcher on trust. Difficult for him. Corrie Rankin hated the concept of trust. He did not live by it in his professional world, all shadows and opaque mirrors and deceit. The only trust he acknowledged was to the girl in the Eastern Europe section, Maggie, and he had nurtured the image of her for six months and two weeks and one day.

  The corridor flooring was thin and dirty vinyl. He thought the noise he was making would wake the dead, but the voices stayed constant and the music blared and there was the smell of tobacco and of sweat and the dirt of unwashed bodies, not least his own. Belcher had said that the door was on the left side of the corridor. He despised Belcher, but needed the man, so had groomed him. The process was as fraught as any used by a paedophile with an underage girl. He had started with the eyes, had exchanged glances when food was brought, had looked to dominate, and the wretch had come back in the night, many times, when the villa was quiet bar the radio. The Canadian would have known because he seldom slept deeply, but nothing had ever been said. Once he had held Belcher’s wrist behind his back and had dared him to cry out and draw attention to the fact that he was with the ‘enemy’, and Corrie had felt the wet of the man’s tears, felt he had succeeded in dominating him. Now he would find out if Belcher was to be trusted.

  The first door had opened. A drape of beads hung across a doorway on the right. From his position, Corrie could see the butt and mechanism and twin magazines on a Kalashnikov, and could see filth-encrusted boots. The flicker on the walls told him that the music was from a TV station. A carton of cigarettes was thrown towards the boots and not caught; the carton bounced towards the corridor. A man cursed, fist groping for the box. The carton was in the doorway, had not quite reached the corridor, but it was a close thing.

  When the young man had become putty in his hands, Corrie had given him the code name: he was Belcher. With the name went a telephone number that might at some stage in the future be used, and might not. Something of a bonus if it were used, but that was for the future, not for the moment. The cool of the night came under the poorly fitted door on the left; from down the corridor came cooking smells and a young man’s voice, humming discordantly to the music. Pain throbbed in his leg. He had been told they were now twenty-eight miles from the border.

  He had drawn Belcher into conversations where his old lifestyle was resurrected and he was again English and recalling his education, and the shit that had been pumped into him had been flushed clear. Now Corrie, not the Caliphate, owned Belcher. When they had been taken, him and the genuine aid workers, the border had only been three miles away, but that had been six months and two weeks ago. The cooking smells posed a new threat. The cook might call from the kitchen to the men listening to music and smoking, or the cook might bring them food. He had to get out. Belcher had told him what direction he should take. And yet he hesitated. If Corrie made it out through the door on his left and was able to drag himself across the rough ground of the compound then they were all condemned. His hand reached up and eased the door handle. The cold came in. Behind him, the beads rattled.

  The instructor in survival, doubling with Escape and Evasion, had said at the Fort, ‘Pray God it’ll never happen to you and what I’m saying won’t be tested – I hope that. But all the lessons of history tell us that after capture it takes great courage to attempt flight. The easiest thing is to stay put, down tools, and hope. So you have to dig right into your character and go for the one time an opportunity rears up. Go hard – that way you might just live to have another meal. But it takes big balls and you stop for nothing and leave no one standing who is in your way. It’s either that or you sit around and wait for them to find the videocamera, get the focus right, and go grab the knife.’ He went through the door on his stomach, moved with the dignity of a bloated snake.

  Belcher had not lied to him. He had directions; knew what angle to take from the door. He tried to push it shut but the catch was obstinate. Light came out into the yard and the door swung in the wind and he heard the riffling of the beads. Corrie crabbed sideways, out of the misshapen rectangle that was brightly lit. He heard a curse and the scrape of a chair and a couple of obscenities and the door slam shut behind him. Darkness cloaked him. He crossed the yard with no light to guide him and his head eventually struck the surrounding wall. Belcher had told him where he would find the door. He finger-touched along the concrete and through weeds and came to the recess. It was a small door. He had to claw himself upright and then put his weight against it. As it spilled open, he toppled, and the pain was worse than at any time: more acute than when he had first been hit, and worse than when a supposed medic had manipulated the leg, tied it close with a used bandage, shrugged and left him. He could see a road and faraway lights, small washed-out pin-pricks powered by generators. He had a thin moon for company and he took his bearings and went west.

  By the time first light smeared the sky, his knees were raw and his elbows bled, but he had found an abandoned fence post, gone rotten and dumped by a herdsman. It made a stick of sorts for him. Earlier, he had fallen headlong into a ditch and had feared that – along with the broken bone in his leg – he had dislocated his shoulder. He had scrambled clear and had gone on. His estimate was that it would take him, allowing for his injuries and for the bare terrain he was likely to find ahead of him – idiotic to try and cross it in broad daylight – some ten days to reach the Turkish border. Each step was an agony, but each hobbling heave took him further from the building and nearer the frontier.

  Belcher had not betrayed him. The grooming had been successful. He would hear the response behind him soon enough. At dawn they always brought a dish of maize stirred in warm water to their prisoners. He would hear the shouting and see the big headlights of the pick-up trucks and, later, he would hear the first shots: because of what he had done he reckoned that several would be condemned – the cook, the one who had the dirty boots and who had not caught the cigarette carton and the one who had thrown it, and it would also go badly for the prisoners. He went on. He saw himself on heathland, or on a path in the Pennines, and she held his hand and they were together. He would not let go of the hand. She had helped him; he would have sunk in despair if she had not.

  It all happened as he had predicted – shouting, headlights, and then shots. With the growing light, he found himself in a dried water course. When he crouched low, absorbing the pain that ran through his body, he believed he was hidden by the straight sides. He was drifting towards the outer rim of consciousness, but his girl stayed constant with him, giving him the inspiration to continue to stumble up the ditch. He knew that if he stopped, curled down into the foetal posture, that he would stay in the ditch and never move from it until hands grabbed his hair and dragged him up: the instructor at the Fort had spoken of the condition he now faced and had categorised the options open to hi
m as ‘fight, flight, freeze or fawn’. His good leg was leaden and the stick gouged into the armpit over it; he craved rest but knew it tempted him and would doom him. Belcher was forgotten, used and now no longer available to be exploited. He needed his girl, Maggie; must have her close to him. If he rested he would be taken, sold on, stripped, clothed in a jumpsuit, pushed to his knees in the sand and would hear the man recite the sentence of death. And then he saw the boy.

  The boy could have been fourteen years of age. He wore holed jeans and a replica shirt of a Spanish football team, had dark, uncombed hair and smooth facial skin except for the shadow of a moustache over his upper lip. The boy minded goats, more than a dozen of them. When he saw Corrie, the boy’s breathing quickened, his chest puffing out. Corrie made an evaluation: he was a trained officer in his Service, had been on the courses. He calculated the nearest pick-up was close enough to hear the boy if he screamed. He watched the face and saw there no sympathy, or even curiosity. Why might there have been? It was a war zone, a corner of the world where brutal conflict was fought out – not a place of neutrals. There was a snarl forming at the boy’s mouth. Just a young teenage boy and the twist around the mouth started at the side and spread, and then the boy turned and looked around him and would have seen the pick-up truck, and the sun was fiercer and in Corrie’s eyes, and he blinked and the pain welled and the tiredness gripped him, and the girl seemed distant.

  He bent. He read the face, never took his gaze off it. His fingers gouged into dirt and he scrabbled, then found the stone. It was an unforgiving and sharp-edged flint, heavy, and it filled the palm of his hand as he lifted it. Out of the instructor’s options, he chose ‘fight’. The boy sucked in air to shout. He was pleasant looking and little more than a child. Corrie held the stone tight and propelled himself forward.