Free Bonfire by Mark Arundel Page A

door window.
    ‘Mick, stay with the car. Cakes, you take a look round the back, see if you can get in that way.’
    The Glock pistol was in my waistband beneath the djellaba, which now sported an eye-catching bullet hole. The blood of my dead friend completed the look. I fitted the suppressor, chambered a round and then went carefully through the open gate.
    Ahead, the front door was open. I walked up to it, looked inside and listened… silence. Carrying the Glock two-handed and raised, I entered slowly. The rooms were quiet and empty. At the back, I found a room bright with natural light. Through the open, outside door the sun’s rays fell across a chair like an honoured guest.
    Seated in one of the other chairs was Nasser Jbara, Magda’s father. A young man stood close beside him.
    Aiming the Glock, I stepped forward. My feet were soundless. Nevertheless, the young man turned his head. He was fast. Two or three rapid steps and he had reached me. His speed was fortunate or I might have shot him. Using both hands, he tried to grab my arms. With one-step, I turned away and using my free hand grasped his closest wrist and pulled hard. To the sound of Nasser’s voice saying, ‘Jamaal, no,’ I sent him tumbling to the floor. He was just as fast to get up. Nasser shouted again. The young man stopped and stared.
    ‘Jamaal, this is one of the men that brought your sister,’ Nasser said.
    Cakes appeared in the open doorway. I motioned with my hand and he lowered the LMG.
    Nasser had an injury to his face. A solid object had connected painfully with his cheek, nose and eye. His bruised and swollen features stared back at me. The gash below his eye was going to scar.
    ‘Where’s Magda?’ I said. Despite the misshapen face, Nasser’s expression was easy to read.
    ‘Two men came…’ Nasser said. I interrupted him.
    ‘…when?’
    ‘…twenty minutes ago, perhaps longer,’ he said.
    ‘Did you recognise them?’
    ‘No, they covered their faces. It happened before I could…’ He stopped unable to speak the words. Jamaal went to his father and put an arm around him.
    The emotion I felt was anger. Not only had someone set us up, but someone had set up Magda, too.
    ‘Who’s taken her? Do you know?’
    ‘Extremists, fanatics… I don’t know,’ Nasser said. His face contorted with desperation and despair. ‘Can you find her? Can you save her?’ He lifted his head and focused. ‘You are hurt,’ he said.
    ‘No, it’s not my blood,’ I said.
    Earlier, in the car, I had not thought it necessary to discover who had betrayed us. I had considered the mission over. Making the rendezvous with the Wildcat was my only concern. Now, with the desperate face of Nasser Jbara waiting for an answer to the question of whether I could save the life of his daughter, I was not so sure. Nasser and Jamaal would have to wait. Using the satellite phone, I called Jerry Lombroso.
    ‘We’ve got a problem,’ I said. ‘Two men came to the Jbara house. They’ve taken Magda.’ Jerry breathed in and then went quiet.
    ‘Oh,’ he said eventually. ‘I see.’
    To avoid Nasser and Jamaal hearing I walked past Cakes and went outside.
    ‘What intelligence do you have?’ I said. ‘I didn’t push it before because I thought the mission was over, but now if you want her back you’re going to have to come up with something good.’
    ‘…want her back,’ Jerry said repeating my words.
    ‘Yes. Nasser is not going to write a constitution and help you get a political agreement with all the tribal groups if the extremists murder his daughter and then stick it on YouTube,’ I said.
    ‘Well, he may do. Grief can sometimes produce unlikely behaviour,’ Jerry said. ‘Perhaps it could make him more determined to effect change inside in his broken country.’ Having seen the expression on Nasser Jbara’s face only seconds earlier, I thought Jerry’s hope was not very likely.
    ‘Distant hills look green,’ I said.
    ‘What?’ Jerry