Masters of War

Book 1: Danny Black

by Chris Ryan

Genres: War & Military; Thrillers; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

In Paris, an elderly man is assassinated as he takes his morning walk. In the war-torn cities of Syria, government forces wage a bloody war against their own people. The Russians are propping up the government, the French are backing one rebel fraction and the British are backing another. And in north Africa, young SAS trooper Jamie Truman is coming to the end of a gruelling tour of duty, or so he thinks. Jamie has a new mission. An MI6 agent needs to make contact with Syrian rebel forces, and also with the private military contractors who are - unofficially - training this rebel faction as it struggles to bring down their government and establish a new regime that will be favourable to British business interests. As they travel deep into rebel heartland, Jamie will learn who the masters of war, the men who call the shots, really are. As Jamie finds himself sucked into the murky orbit of the private military, he discovers a world where death is dispensed by the highest bidder and individuals will betray anybody if the price is right.And where a secret lurks that will change the course of Jamie's own life, however long that might last...

Release date: August 29, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

Author’s note

On Thursday, 31 January 1991, a week after the ill-fated Bravo Two Zero patrol had been compromised, I crossed the Iraqi border into Syria. I was the only member of the unit to escape capture alive, but I was in a bad way. I’d been on the run for seven days and nights. I hadn’t eaten for six days, or drunk any water for three. My toenails had fallen off and my blistered feet had become infected and were oozing pus. I’d been exposed to nuclear waste and I was hallucinating. But at least, here in Syria, I was safe.

Or so I thought.

The first Syrian people I encountered were villagers living so simply that they were cooking breakfast on a fire outside their little house of whitewashed stone. They gave me cool water. Without their kindness I doubt I could have survived much longer.

We did not speak each other’s language, but I managed to make them understand that I needed to get to the nearest town. A young man helped me get there, but in the hours that followed I saw a very different side to life in Syria. I had to escape an angry mob who seemed determined to kill me. I found myself in the custody of three low-ranking Syrian police officers who performed a mock execution on me. Having covered about two hundred miles on foot in Iraq, I crossed most of Syria by car before reaching the capital, Damascus. There I ended up in the headquarters of the feared Mukhabarat secret police. The very name was enough to terrify the ordinary citizens of Syria, as the Mukhabarat’s tortures were notoriously cruel and they had a nasty habit of ‘disappearing’ anyone who displeased them.

Syria was a complex, dangerous place for me back in 1991. But now, more than twenty years on, one thing strikes me: it was not nearly so dangerous then as it is now. I got out alive. Tens of thousands of victims of the present Syrian civil war haven’t been so lucky.

The story that follows is drawn from experience, and from first-hand knowledge of a country which, as I write these words, has become one of the most dangerous and war-torn places on earth. Some of it might make uncomfortable reading. I make no apology for that. Conflict is not a glamorous business. It’s ugly and violent, and those who suffer the worst are not the politicians, for whom death tolls are little more than statistics. They are the ordinary people, stuck in the middle, and the soldiers sent to do the bidding of the masters of war.

 

Chris Ryan

London, 2013

EIGHT

Homs, Syria.

It was the children who made it so difficult, Clara Macleod decided. Children she would remember as long as she lived.

She was a qualified doctor. A few months of working with Médecins Sans Frontières had knocked any squeamishness out of her that still remained after five years of medical school. She had witnessed field amputations without anaesthetic. She’d held the hand of an elderly grandmother while she bled copiously to death. When she had come across a man with a split stomach, she had gently reinserted his bulging, sponge-like intestines and come away thinking he might even live. But it didn’t matter how hardened you were to the sights and sounds of the Third World, or the grotesque horrors of a war zone, you never got used to the suffering of children.

Like the child in front of her now.

Clara didn’t know the little girl’s name. She couldn’t speak. Death was so close. Clara could do nothing but make sure that the end of the child’s life was as comfortable as possible.

She brushed her blonde hair off her forehead and looked around her. Nobody would ever guess that this was once a hospital. A makeshift, cobbled-together field hospital, but a hospital all the same. Now it was a bomb site. The exterior walls had crumpled into rubble. Supporting columns just about held up the ceiling, but these too were badly damaged. The breeze-blocks from which they were constructed were cracked and bare and, like everything else that remained of this building, they were streaked with soot. Inside, the open shelves that once carried scant medical supplies – now plundered – were hanging from the cracked walls at an angle. Every so often there was an ominous groan from above and the ceiling was distinctly bowed. The cautious part of Clara told her she should get out before the columns themselves collapsed. But this little girl couldn’t be moved, and she didn’t have the heart to leave her.

The fire damage made the whole place stink. Steel reinforcing rods jutted out of the floor, rusting and dangerous. And because the walls were no longer standing, Clara could see outside. There was blood on the road. Somebody had tried to wash it away with a hose and it had pooled in the shallow craters caused by the recent bombardment. Great puddles of pale pink liquid. The few shell-shocked locals who had remained in the area stepped around them without so much as a glance. Maybe they were used to sights like this. More likely, with the death of their loved ones and the destruction of their homes, they had other things on their minds.

The little girl groaned and Clara snapped her attention back to her. She was lying on the hard floor – there was no other place to put her – with Clara’s MSF jacket as a makeshift pillow. She had a bandage round her head – not sterilised, barely even clean. It was the best Clara could find, but the wound on the child’s head required more than a thin strip of gauze. It was already saturated with blood. Sodden. Clara squeezed the girl’s hand. Whoever had been caring for her previously had inserted a cannula into the skin, but Clara hadn’t been able to find any saline bags among the rubble to attach to it. The pouch of medical supplies that she had slung over her shoulder contained a couple of morphine shots, but there was no point administering them. The child was unconscious and unable to feel pain, and Clara knew she might need those shots later. In the absence of anything else, perhaps she could offer a little comfort.

About fifteen metres away, in one corner of this demolished room, Clara’s boyfriend Bradley was hunched over four more figures. They were not moving. Bradley was a lanky Australian with a goatee beard and a ponytail. He looked more like a surfer bum than a doctor – the kind of guy Clara’s parents would never have approved of. Not that they approved of much in her life. In her more self-aware moments she admitted to herself that this was the driving force behind much that she did. She was, as her father had once called her, a stubborn little madam. Before she left for Syria he had pressed a cheap, gold-plated wedding band on her. He’d read somewhere that female Western journalists always wore one when they were reporting from the Middle East. It was a way of attracting less attention. She’d given her dad a withering look and told him that the world wasn’t really full of his stereotypes. Besides, rings harboured germs. Medics never wore them when they were working.

She and Bradley had watched the bombardment of this part of Homs from the Médecins Sans Frontières camp to the east of the city. As the aircraft dropped their ordnance indiscriminately over the area where they were now, Clara had wondered out loud if it really was a rebel stronghold, as the government forces carrying out the raid would undoubtedly claim, or just an ordinary part of an ordinary town populated by ordinary people.

‘No way to know,’ Bradley had said. ‘Anyway, we’ve got enough patients here to keep our hands full.’

Bradley was right: their resources were limited and they already had more patients than they could adequately care for. But still, he’d gone down in her estimation a little when he’d said that. At sunrise, Clara had announced that she was going to take a vehicle and some medical supplies into the city. Bradley had tried to talk her out of it. When it had become clear that Clara was in no mood to be persuaded otherwise, he had agreed to accompany her, more out of guilt than enthusiasm, she could tell. The tension between them had disappeared when they had seen the extent of the damage. Now he was checking the pulse of these tiny bodies, verifying that they were indeed beyond anyone’s help, before covering them with dirty blankets.

A yellow pick-up truck pulled over in the road ten metres from where a little girl was lying dead, its worn rubber tyres splashing in one of the rosy puddles. Two Syrian men climbed out. They couldn’t have been more than twenty, but they had the worn features of much older men. One of them lowered the tailgate of the pick-up, then followed his companion into the devastated hospital. Neither of them paid Clara any attention. Their destination was the far corner of the room, where four bodies were lined up on the floor, covered in soot-stained blankets. The corpses were sufficiently small and light for the men to carry one each in their arms. Clara turned her head from the sight of a small hand, clenched tight by rigor mortis, hanging from under one of the blankets as its impromptu undertaker carried it to the pick-up and laid it in the back. Two trips each and the men had loaded the bodies. Only now did one of them look over at Clara, his expression questioning. Clara shook her head. The man shrugged, climbed into the pick-up with his companion and drove away. Clara’s patient groaned again. Clara squeezed her hand a little tighter.

And then the firing started. It was the rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons. Clara didn’t know how close, but near enough for it to send a physical shock through her body. She looked round. Out in the street, the few locals had quickly scampered away. Another burst of fire. Closer. She could hear shouting. It couldn’t be more than thirty metres away.

Bradley hurried over to her. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he said. His voice had an edge of panic. ‘The shooting’s coming from the opposite direction to the car.’ He was right. They’d had to leave their vehicle some hundred metres south of here because a bomb crater in the road had blocked their way. The gunfire sounded like it came from the north.

Clara didn’t move.

‘Come on,’ Bradley said. He leaned over, grabbed her right arm and started to pull her up. She shook him away and looked back at the girl.

‘I’m not leaving her,’ she said quietly. The hand in which she held the girl’s was trembling. She squeezed a little harder to stop this outward sign of the terror that was rising in her gut.

‘For God’s sake, Clara.’ Bradley looked anxiously over his shoulder. ‘They’re running riot out there. Let’s just get in the car and go.’ He pointed down at the child. ‘You know she’s not going to make it, right? You can tell she’s only got a few minutes left?’

Something snapped inside Clara. ‘Fine,’ she hissed. ‘You go. I’ll see you back at the camp. I’m a doctor. I’m staying with her.’

‘You’re so bloody . . .’ For a moment Bradley looked as if she had shamed him into staying with her. But then there was a third burst of automatic fire. Bradley winced, then staggered backwards as his courage deserted him. Clara was only watching him through the corner of her eye. She refused to give him her full attention as he turned and fled.

His footsteps faded as he raced up the road. Then there was a sudden, terrible silence.

It didn’t last long.

Gunfire to the north and the south. In less than ten seconds, armed men appeared in front of the abandoned field hospital from either end of the street. Fifteen perhaps? Unlike the locals who had deserted the place minutes earlier, these gunmen were in uniform – standard military camouflage. Clara knew nothing about guns, but the weapons they were carrying looked ugly. So did the expressions on their faces. Two men looked over at the bombed-out hospital, leered and then started to amble unpleasantly in Clara’s direction.

A ghastly rattle came from the little girl’s chest. Her lungs were filling with fluid. She didn’t have long.

Clara fumbled inside her jacket. She pulled out the ring her dad had given her and squeezed it on to the fourth finger of her left hand. Then she reached for her MSF ID card. With a fierce expression that she hoped would hide the terror pulsing through her, she held it up to the approaching gunmen when they were just a couple of metres away. One of them – he had a beard which, despite his youth, was flecked with grey – grabbed it contemptuously and tossed it into the debris.

Now they were standing over Clara. One of them bent down to pull her to her feet. She tried to wriggle free of him, as she had done with Bradley, but this bastard wasn’t going to let her go so easily. He dragged her away from her patient. Clara could only watch, sickened, as the bearded soldier booted the little girl hard in the side of her bleeding head. The child’s body jerked alarmingly, and then it fell still.

Clara wanted to scream, but the shock of what she had just witnessed silenced her. The two government soldiers started shouting at her in Arabic. She couldn’t understand a word. The man holding her pushed her towards the street. She stumbled. He grabbed hold of her and pushed her again. Seconds later she was outside and had fallen to her knees in one of the puddles of diluted blood. She looked to her right. Farther down the street, perhaps fifty metres away, she saw a figure lying face down on the ground. Bradley’s ponytail was sticking girlishly up into the air. He was surrounded by a pool of his own blood.

Bile rose in the back of Clara’s throat. She bent forward to retch, but even as she did this, she felt a hand grab her and pull her to her feet. Most of the gunmen had dispersed. She was surrounded by three of them, the bearded man and two others. They were government forces all right, but she could tell at a glance they had no interest in law and order. In a country where the military had been given carte blanche, and where looting was encouraged by the administration, these three had the arrogant look of men who knew they could do what they wanted, to whom they wanted, with no comeback at all.

‘Please,’ Clara said. ‘I just want to help people . . .’ She silently cursed her lack of Arabic. How could she explain that she was simply a doctor? ‘Je ne veux qu’aider des malades . . .’ she said. Maybe if she showed them the medical supplies she had in her pouch. She opened it and was about to pull out a dressing, when she felt the butt of a rifle rub between her legs.

She felt a flash of anger and swiped the rifle away. Instantly, the gunman gave her reason to regret it. He swiped the barrel brutally against the side of her face, a stunning blow that disorientated her and knocked her once more to the ground. The bearded soldier gave a harsh, barking laugh. Then Clara heard a clicking sound and although she knew little about weapons, she knew what that meant.

What happened next was a reflex action. The survival instinct.

Clara reached into her medical pouch. The first thing her fingers touched was a sterilised hypodermic needle, about four inches long, sealed in a white vacuum pack. She pulled it out, holding the blunt end of the needle like a knife. With her free hand she pushed away the barrel of the rifle that was pointing directly at her, and with the other stabbed the vacuum pack into the side of the gunman’s knee. The needle slid through the packaging and pierced the gunman’s trousers, before slipping easily into the tendon behind his patella. The man screamed. At the same time he fired his weapon. The rounds discharged erratically. Several of them thundered into the ribcage of one of the other soldiers, throwing him back on to the ground. Clara pushed herself to her feet, and ran.

She didn’t expect to make it out of there alive. Especially when, out of nowhere, she heard a helicopter overhead. A quick glance over her shoulder, however, told her what was going on. One soldier was dead. A second was doubled over in agony, the needle protruding from his kneecap. The third – the bearded soldier who seconds previously had found the whole situation such a joke but who had now taken in the disaster around him – was anxiously looking up at the helicopter. Suddenly he turned and fled in the opposite direction. Evidently he wanted no association with what had just happened.

Clara continued to run, past walls covered with anti-government graffiti and metal security shutters that remained intact even though the buildings they protected had massive holes blasted into their facades. Her only chance was to get to their vehicle. It was 100 metres away. She looked only straight ahead as she ran. Her eyes were misty with tears and she didn’t realise what she was looking at until she had covered half that distance.

Something was burning. It was just beyond the enormous bomb crater that had stopped them from continuing along the road. With a sickening twist in her stomach she realised it was their vehicle. It was surrounded by figures – five, maybe more – who were hazy in the heat and through Clara’s tears. She had no doubt that they were unfriendly.

She stopped, breathless, exhaustion burning in her chest, her limbs cold with fear. She looked around. There was a street leading off to her left. A telegraph pole, damaged at the root, was swaying dangerously across the start of the street, and two of the cables it once supported were snaked messily on the ground. This street had taken the brunt of the recent bombing – the houses on either side were ruins, and it was deserted. Almost without thinking, Clara ran down it. She heard more gunfire near the hospital and, with a desperate sob, upped her pace. She was barely aware of her surroundings now, and only knew that she had to get away from the government forces who had taken Bradley’s life and nearly killed her.

She ran for ten minutes, maybe more, before the build-up of lactic acid in her limbs forced her to stop. She doubled over to catch her breath, her hands shaking and her skin moist with sweat. As the burning in her legs and lungs subsided, she straightened up and looked around. She was in a narrow street. It had not been quite so heavily bombarded as the area around the hospital, but it bore the scars of war nonetheless. She saw a first-floor window with a sniper-fire hole the size of her fist, and the pavements were crammed with overflowing bags of stinking uncollected rubbish that rustled worryingly, no doubt overrun with feasting rodents.

She counted three shopfronts. Two of them had had their display windows smashed in and their contents looted. Somebody had taken the precaution of applying gaffer tape to the splintered window of the third to stop it falling in. Fifteen metres away, another car was still smouldering. Its features were burned away, with the exception of a skew-whiff Mercedes symbol that had miraculously remained fixed to the bonnet. A reek of burned fuel mingled with the stench of rotting debris. Apart from a stray dog sitting patiently in front of one of the smashed shop windows, the street was deserted – or so Clara thought. As she regained her breath, a pair of eyes peered out from behind the car.

Dark. Frightened. They belonged to a child. A little girl with a nasty cut across one cheek.

Clara couldn’t stop a sob escaping her lips. She stepped towards the child, one hand outstretched. It was the worst thing she could have done. The terrified kid turned and fled, running away as fast as her little legs would go, not looking back. Clara would have run after her, but she had no energy. And in any case, her attention was suddenly elsewhere.

Two noises started at once. The first was the dog. Half a yap, half a howl. The second was the sound of machinery somewhere overhead. Clara assumed it was a helicopter. She didn’t quite know why, but it filled her with fear. If the chopper was about to fly over this street, she didn’t want it to spot her. That single thought was enough to urge her legs back into action. She ran to the nearest of the three looted shops and climbed over what remained of the window’s jagged glass. Shards crunched underfoot as she stepped into the shop.

Just in time.

She turned and looked back through the broken window. The helicopter thundered overhead. She knew nothing about the machinery of war, but the glimpse of a man sitting at the open side of the aircraft with some kind of machine gun was enough to make her feel sick with fear all over again.

The chopper hovered above her for a full minute, low and threatening. Clara felt the thunder of its rotors vibrating. By the time it had moved on, she could barely move through exhaustion.

And distress. All-consuming.

It wasn’t just the image of Brad’s dead body, viciously seared on her mind.

It wasn’t just the memory of her bruising escape from the government forces who had killed her tiny patient without a thought, and who, she was quite sure, would now want to do the same to her.

It was this. She was alone. And lost. Her only option was to try to make it back to the MSF base. She had no idea how to get there, no means of calling for help and no wish to leave the dubious protection of the abandoned shop. She didn’t know what to do.

Her knees buckled underneath her and she fell to the floor, her face in her hands, overcome with the kind of desperate, racking sobs that are only ever caused by fear.

EIGHTEEN

17.00 hrs.

‘What the bloody hell do you mean, you didn’t plant the device?’

Back at Taff’s base, Danny and Buckingham were alone in the bleak first-floor room that had been set aside for their use. Danny was peering through the gap in the wooden planks reinforcing the windows. In the street below, fifteen metres to his eleven o’clock, he could see a group of five young men huddled by a pile of garbage the size of a small car. He spotted a couple of rats among the waste, but they didn’t seem to worry the men. They were talking intently. Maybe they were making plans to cause, or avoid, violence. Maybe they just wanted to know where their next meal was coming from. In any case, they didn’t immediately appear to be armed. Danny looked back into the room, where Buckingham was standing with his arms folded. His face was grimy and covered in dust. He looked a lot less suave than when they’d first met.

‘I said, what the bloody hell do you mean, Black, you didn’t—?’

‘I had my hands full. Maybe you noticed?’

‘Oh, I noticed. I bloody noticed. Risking everything for some kid who was going to die anyway.’

‘I’ll remember that, next time you need my help.’

‘A fat lot of use you’ll be.’

‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’

‘Just!’ Buckingham was raging now. ‘Which is more than can be said for Jack and . . .’

‘Go ahead and say it, mucker.’

For a moment, Danny thought Buckingham was going to finish by laying at Danny’s feet the death of his mates. Perhaps he thought better of it. Perhaps Taff’s appearance in the doorway quietened him. Buckingham seemed very wary of these PMCs. Deep down, Danny didn’t blame him.

Taff’s frame filled the doorway. He didn’t need to say anything. ‘All friends?’ he asked delicately.

‘Oh yes,’ said Buckingham. ‘I’d say it was all going absolutely swimmingly, wouldn’t you, Black?’

‘Danny?’ said Taff.

‘Hunky fucking dory. When do we go and see Sorgen?’

‘First light tomorrow.’

‘That’s too late. I want to get this over and done with.’

‘No can do, kiddo,’ Taff said. ‘If we start moving around after dark, chances are we’ll be stopped by government troops. Or even worse, followed. Better to leave it till the morning.’

‘In any case,’ Buckingham put in, ‘Eid al-Fitr starts tomorrow. Sorgen will be more receptive to our offer then.’

‘So we just sit around here and wait for a MiG to dump its payload on us?’

‘Relax, kiddo, we’re in a safe part of town.’

‘That’s what Asu thought.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m smarter than Asu. Why don’t you head downstairs? De Fries’s cooking – some disgusting Dutch shit, but it fills a hole and there isn’t much else to do till dawn.’

Taff nodded at them and disappeared along the hallway.

 

03.20 hrs.

Sleep was impossible. Not with the sound of a midnight bombardment raging all around. Taff had been right: the air strikes were avoiding this part of town. But when ordnance is dropping from the sky, any part of town is close. Lying on the hard floor in the darkness, the recumbent form of Buckingham just a couple of metres to the right, Danny could see him jerk every time a bomb hit. And, truth to tell, Danny was on edge too. This wasn’t his idea of a secure LUP. But Taff was calling the shots and he didn’t have Regiment SOPs to adhere to. Not any more. If he said this was where they were staying, then this was where they were staying.

Buckingham sat up suddenly as a particularly loud explosion somewhere in the distance hit their ears. He cursed under his breath before lying down again. Danny got to his feet.

‘Where are you going?’ Buckingham whispered, unable to keep the nervousness from his voice.

‘I need a slash. Come if you want. Just don’t expect me to hold yours like Nanny used to.’

He didn’t need a slash, but his companion’s constant twitching was getting on his nerves and he wanted some air. Treading silently, he left the room and padded along the corridor. The generator was still grinding in the room next door, and Danny could see the outlines of Taff’s local workforce lying on the floor, and the silhouette of the gimpy by the window. He peered in for a moment, wondering if Taff was in there, asleep. Difficult to say, but he couldn’t make him out. Perhaps he was keeping stag outside. Danny decided to go and have a look.

The compound was still. There was a full moon overhead, and the fire pit that De Fries had used to grill fatty hunks of some meat Danny didn’t recognise – camel maybe? – was still glowing near the left-hand wall. The vehicles were parked in a row about five metres from the rear wall, all facing the gate in case they needed to evacuate quickly. And beyond them, right by the gate, were two figures. Danny couldn’t see their faces, but he could tell they were Skinner and Hector from their outlines. He could also see that they were tooled up. Heavily. Not only a rifle each, but Skinner held some other tool which Danny couldn’t quite make out.

It was instinct that made Danny hold back in the doorway of the house. He didn’t want these two to see him and there was something about their body language that suggested they didn’t want to be seen. Hector looked furtively over his shoulder before quietly unlocking the gate and sliding it open just wide enough for the two of them to slip outside. It closed without the slightest noise.

Something wasn’t right. Where were these two going? Why the secrecy?

Looking back into the house, Danny thought about returning to his position by Buckingham’s side. But Taff was around somewhere, and he could trust him to make sure Buckingham was OK if anything went wrong. Danny had an itch that needed scratching. What were those two up to? Something they didn’t want Taff – or anyone – to know about? There was only one way to find out. Danny felt his fingers move to his chest rig, which he hadn’t removed since arriving in Syria. The Sig was there.

He crept round the compound’s perimeter wall, keeping out of the moonlight and staying in the shadows. The gate was still unlocked. He slid it open and crept out. As soon as he had shut the gate behind him, he pressed himself back against it. He could hear a chopper approaching from the north. Twenty seconds later it was passing overhead, its searchlight beaming down on the compound and the street outside. But then it veered westward and the sound of its rotors disappeared. Danny breathed again.

The street was deserted, the outlines of the concrete buildings strangely ghostly in the moonlight. Eerie, too, to be in a city with no one on the streets. The only trace of movement was thirty-five metres to his right. Two figures, also keeping to the shadows, turning left into a side street and disappearing.

Danny made next to no noise as he ran lightly on the balls of his feet. He could move through jungle undergrowth without making a sound, so remaining the grey man, invisible and inaudible, presented no problems here in the chaotic darkness. When he reached the corner of the street, he waited and peered ahead in each direction. He saw Hector and Skinner walking along with the swagger of men who didn’t think they were being followed, or didn’t care if they were. If it hadn’t been for the signs of battle all around them – two burned-out vehicles, one behind the other fifteen metres from Danny’s position, the dark bullet holes on moonlit buildings, the total absence of civilians – they could have passed for a couple of blokes sauntering home from the pub. Except that blokes sauntering home from the pub didn’t normally have Colt Commandos strapped to them, and God only knew what other hardware these two were packing.

Danny followed the pair for fifteen minutes, staying thirty metres behind them – far enough that they wouldn’t recognise him even if they noticed they had a trail. What were they after? What diversions could this fucked-up town offer them? Hookers, maybe. It seemed unlikely. Would they really risk venturing out just to lose their load in some rancid Homs brothel, full of clapped-out prostitutes servicing the needs of government forces and rebels alike? It occurred to Danny once more that perhaps they simply wan