She had slipped out, gone to the outer office, where his driver seemed to be asleep, but might have left an eye open.
He had to clear through Customs the gear the team would bring with them. He hadn’t had any alcohol, just gained sustenance from strong coffee. He had to get co-operation sufficient to fly a commercial helicopter – piloted by the freelancer, Jean-Luc, likely to be a Super Lynx, which could cope easily with the payload – across the Oman frontier and deep into Yemeni territory, and do it with skilled contour flying to avoid detection – and so the fucking Yanks did not see it – then put down three men and withdraw. He heard the keyboard clatter.
He had to find radio-communication gear that would work, in an emergency, in that godforsaken strip of territory. The printer ground into action: a new one was needed but he was mindful of the need to keep costs and overheads to the minimum. All that was necessary for survival – there were too many in London who disliked his free-rolling life- and work-style. Head below the parapet, that kind of thing. He had to win the loyal agreement of an airforce officer, British or Omani, that military exfiltration remained a possibility if the bloody balloon went up.
His stomach-enhancing pillow was tossed on a chair, the cricket blazer was on a hanger, and his trousers were held up by braces and gaped at the waist. He was pondering how far the woman could be pushed, and thinking about the role of the turncoat, Belcher.
Penelope brought in the photocopied, colour image he’d requested, and he nodded acceptance and waved at the wall: wherever she thought suitable. He had to wonder how it would be when he saw Corrie Rankin again – he reached for his phone. She stood back and admired the image she’d tracked down and copied. As he had wanted it.
She’d have found it on the internet, a concourse at Heathrow or Charles de Gaulle, or wherever. It would have been holiday season, and the building was crammed solid with airline passengers. He did not need to have trough or basin or fracture daubed on it. It was good enough as it was, hundreds of targets going about their lives trying to get cases and tickets to check-in desks. He lifted the phone, set it on ‘scramble’ and dialled. Big stakes appealed to Jericho, and he would not be deflected by a girl with a pretty nose who dug in the sand, or by a ‘clean skin’ from the northeast of England who had changed sides and was owed no trust. The call was answered by Lizzie: he had always liked her because she had no emotion, was hard as a carpet tack – if Woman Friday ever packed this in and went to grow roses in mid-Devon, then he’d damn well try and snaffle her. He made his request; there was a brusque answer and the phone was passed over.
Corrie Rankin identified himself.
They had history. Jericho had sent him into Syria. It had been his concept; he had mourned him in absentia, had deflected blame from London when his man was posted as ‘missing’, had collected him from a hospital bed and had had little to say to him beyond platitudes. He had talked some shop after he’d heard about the turned clean skin jihadist, Belcher, then put him on the RAF plane for Cyprus and home, had not quite known what to say. Now he was not himself, rambling, and quietly cursed his weakness.
‘Good to speak, Corrie. So pleased to hear you’re on board . . . It’s a tricky place but there’s no one better than you to exploit a heaven-sent opportunity – of course it’s you I wanted. Talk you through it tomorrow. Get some sleep, I mean it. It’s going to move fast. This is an opportunity and one we have to grasp, and it won’t hang around waiting for us to get into position . . . Sorry, that’s shit, but you know what I mean. See you tomorrow – you’re in good shape? Yes, goes without saying. Silly question. You’ll need to be in good shape, and your protection too, and hit the ground running. Don’t know why I sound so asinine. I’ll be there to meet you.’
The poster that Woman Friday had stuck on the wall held his attention: so many faces and so many lives and so much dependence on him, and on the man who would fly that night and leave his comfort zone far behind him.
There was a section deep in the bowels of VBX where kit could be drawn. A pleasant woman was there, in the recycled air and artificial light, and she had a big bust and big hips and the biggest smile, and probably knew more of where people were deployed than the director general did. She’d been told where he was going and had punched up on the screen the weather for that area and then had dived off to her racks. She’d known his name, shouldn’t have. She’d remembered him from the last time, all the thermal clothing and sun-screen and personal medical kit and high-street stuff that had gone to Syria with him. She wouldn’t have expected much to be returned. They had worked through her checklist, and he left with the gear piled up, neatly folded in his arms, the camouflage rucksack on the bottom. She’d have noticed that he still limped, and seen the old scars on his face from the hours he had lain prone, exhausted, trying to gather his strength to push forward. And she’d said at the end, when he’d signed for it all, that she might not be there much longer because her retirement was coming closer: she was too loyal to suggest that the current Service did not warrant her stockpile, because today’s personnel were not on the road enough to justify it. He thanked her, did it briskly, his way, and left without looking back. He’d put his head round George’s door and absorb the warm, encouraging smile, then go home and pack. The car would be there soon enough to run him to the airport, and the protection would be there to join him. He took a lift up to the Third Floor.
He walked fast. Hadn’t much of a view over the pile he carried. His mind was on the checklist, what other stuff he’d need, like socks and underwear, whether a book and some music. He nearly tripped as he saw her, and half the stuff cascaded to the floor. He had barely seen her in two years. He knelt to pick it up and so did she. Corrie could not push Maggie, the girl he had loved, out of the way. He had seen her when the bump had been big, and again on the terrace when she’d have retrieved the baby from the VBX crèche, and four months before when she’d been hurrying into the main security checks. She was flushed and her breath was a bit uneven as she helped him gather together his clothing.
She said, ‘I heard you were going . . . Sorry, that’s poor form, but I’m attached as a temporary to Arabian Peninsula. Heard where you were headed. You’ll take care.’
Corrie’s lip curled as he tried to snatch up what he’d dropped.
She said, ‘I wasn’t to know. Everyone thought you were dead. They never heard a word of where you were. You couldn’t be rescued because they didn’t know where to look. Billy came round to my place, as a friend . . . As far as anyone knew, you were dead, Corrie . . . I suppose I should have found you to explain once you were back. It was just hard to know what to say.’
He prised what she’d picked up from her fingers, turned to walk away.
She said, ‘Still, life goes on, doesn’t it? We make our beds and we have to lie on them. I don’t suppose I was that important to you and, well, it wouldn’t have been for ever, would it? We’re all right, Billy and I, and Tommo is the glue that binds us. He’s a lovely boy. Anyway, like I said, stay safe.’
How ‘important’ had she been? Important enough to have stayed in his mind, a fixture, during the beatings and through the torture sessions, and in the long nights when they listened for the movements that meant dawn and could have heralded the morning of an execution.
She reached out, putting her hand on his shoulder, and pushed herself up, using him as a prop. How ‘important’? Her face had been locked in his head when he had left three guys behind and when he had gone down the corridor and out into the darkness of the yard, and in all the hours he had dragged himself across the stones and dirt. Now she stood over him, her lips moving but the sound and her words were stifled. How important? With her face and her smile and her image in mind, he had found a goatherd who had blocked his route out, and she had been the justification for him taking up the stone and smashing the little beggar’s skull. Important enough?
She took his hand. If he had dragged it away he would have dropped his pile of gear again. The
briefest brush. Maggie kissed Corrie’s knuckles, and was gone. He was the hero; what the ‘hero’ needed was to be loved, but he was uncertain where to look for it.
Corrie went to George’s office, was there ten minutes, not more. Lizzie had his itinerary and his ticket and brief biographies of the ‘boys’ he was travelling with. Farouk shook his hand firmly.
George beamed, and said, ‘We’ll reap a good harvest from this one, Corrie. A very worthwhile mission. Keep your head down, stay safe, what you’re good at.’
It seemed unimportant that he had heard it all before.
Chapter 4
Nervous? Not really. Hesitant? Didn’t show it. Corrie Rankin walked briskly into the terminal.
He had been alone in the back of the car and the driver had not spoken during the journey out of London so he’d had time to reflect. He wore olive-green trousers and shirt, a black fleece and his walking boots, scrubbed clean but stained. A baseball cap was pulled low over his forehead. The rucksack was slung on a shoulder. When he had gone to Syria – in the cover of a statistician with the International Development ministry, via the Turkish frontier, he had been among people who were heavy on ‘changing things’ and ‘making a difference’. Behind him, then as now, the flat had been locked up and the desk in the big building cleared. What had been different then was that there had been a loving message on his phone from her.
He was cleared through, went into the lounge to wait for the call and saw the others. He knew their names and had been shown their photographs. Knew also that they were not regulars from the armed forces, but civilians hired to do a job.
They were where they were supposed to be, and they were punctual, and he was late by a few minutes. The younger one yawned and the older one checked his watch, irritation lining his forehead. Neither passed the time with a book or a newspaper, but both had cardboard coffee beakers. Their clothing was discreet but not worn, faded, like his own. And he resented them.
That was not rational; they were probably as much ‘volunteered’ men as he was. They had probably been backed into a corner and needed a new car, or hadn’t had work offers in the last quarter. Nevertheless, he resented them. Corrie Rankin had learned over the years, and on his travels, that there was seldom love and harmony between a principal – like him – and the protection – like them. He thought they would be living in his pocket and that he would be responsible for them and that they’d bitch and he’d carry the load for them.
He walked over to them and introduced himself. ‘Good evening, I’m Corrie.’
The younger one yawned again, and the older one glanced again at his watch. It was intended to be offensive, Corrie reckoned. Never apologise and never explain: Corrie did not break the rule. He dumped the rucksack and went for his own coffee.
The road he was on had been determined by his childhood benefactor, Bobby Carter, and by his private tutor, Clive Martin – they had both been, it seemed obvious now, ‘occasionals’. Carter had business interests in Monaco and the Gulf and would have been an ‘eyes and ears’ asset worth a drink in a cocktail bar from whatever station chief was near at hand. He had seen for himself Martin’s bullet wound on the Hebridean trip. Corrie now knew it was courtesy of a marksman in an unpleasant corner of British interest, and that his tutor had run a cell there. The message had come after a year at university: he had done as he’d been told, had transferred to Arabic Studies, and the suggestion of future employment had been put to him, and he had waltzed through the assessments. He had undergone two dreary spells in London, and around those were postings to Cairo as the Arab Spring was breaking, to Libya where a state was crumbling to anarchy, and to Oman. A week before he had gone on the Syria trip, Corrie had been called in by the Human Resources gauleiter and told precisely what his colleagues thought of him. ‘What I’d like to say, Mr Rankin, is that no one has ever quibbled about the quality of your work. The problem lies in attitude and demeanour. You could “loosen up a bit” or “go with the flow a bit more”, that’s what I’m gathering from reports. Putting this as gently as I can, Mr Rankin, you are viewed as rather dour, not as a team player.’
Corrie hadn’t worked alongside civilian protection before. He looked hard at them both. The older one met his gaze, stared back, but the younger one averted his eyes.
Corrie said, ‘Just so that there are no misunderstandings. I was here seven minutes after what was an approximate arrival time. The aircraft is not yet called. So don’t – please – look at your fucking watch and don’t – please – yawn in my face as if you find it something worth commenting on. If you want to start like that, then that’s how we will go on. We go through the gates when I say so. You can call me Corrie.’
From the older one, ‘I am Rat.’
The younger one said, ‘And I’m Slime.’
There were no seats in their row, but one in the row in front, and Corrie went to it, dumped down his rucksack.
The voice behind him had a meaningful edge. ‘Just something I’d like to make clear, Corrie.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘I’m the one who will be saying when we move, and in what formation we move.’
Passengers on either side of them might have caught the hiss on the voices, but Corrie ignored that, ditched professionalism and went hard: this was a matter to be cleared up now. ‘Start as you mean to go on’, instructors had said about handling outsiders on temporary contracts.
Corrie said, ‘I call it, and you do as I ask – otherwise there’s a door behind you. Go through the door and you don’t work again. Simple enough?’
‘My decisions – and you won’t find me frightened of making them,’ Rat insisted.
Corrie considered. He looked at the face of a seriously obstinate man and wondered, for a moment, about the consequences of letting the issue slide. He did not think it the right moment for appeasement.
‘You work for me, you watch my back.’
‘Wrong. I am here because of a reputation. I’m jealous of it. I protect it. My reputation gets me employment; it’s one not easily acquired. If I lose you, then my reputation suffers. Can’t say, when there’s an inquest, “Well, he was a right pillock to work with and did not do as he was told, and that’s why I lost him.” Acknowledge my reputation, abide by it and by the advice I offer, and it will be a good relationship.’
The flight was called. The three men stood.
The guy, Rat, wanted the last word, a murmur. ‘They said you were a difficult bugger. Posted it for me.’
Corrie supposed a reputation was important to a ‘bullet-catcher’. Most of those he’d seen were dosed on steroids, their skin patterned with tattoos, and were dressed as Rambo-wannabes, but this man was quiet and looked to have authority. They walked. Slime went first, then Corrie, and back-marker was Rat. Where were they? Up a wadi in Marib Governorate? In the dunes at the bottom end of the Empty Quarter with sand coming silkily off their boots? Hunkered down and with an eyeball on an AQAP meeting? Waiting for the treacherous little guy, Belcher, to come out of the night: once a liar always a liar? Actually, they were walking towards a sliding door in a London airport.
Corrie spat out, annoyed, ‘You walk where you want to, I make the decisions.’
And neither seemed to hear him.
‘You feeling all right, boys?’
‘Too right, sir, feeling good,’ Casper answered the major who led their team.
‘And me, too, sir, better than good,’ Xavier said.
The major grimaced. He had a quarter of a century’s experience of dropping ordnance and watching for hostile aircraft coming out of the sun. Now he did a desk job. It was hard to motivate himself to organise the Predator pilots who flew craft half a world away, and even harder to deal with the paperwork mountains that flopped on to his desk. He was dealing with a deluge of stuff on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and there was a new appointee in an outer office, a counsellor whose role was to talk to pilots and sensor operators and analysts. It all made him feel old,
like his time was past. He could recall days when aircrew who were stressed out – as they had been after the famed ‘turkey shoot’ on fleeing Iraqi convoys trying to quit Kuwait – came together in the Mess. Comradeship, colleagues, and the unity of the wing had done the job then. The major was now required to question crews after any strike that caused deaths.
‘Good to hear it.’
‘The way I look at it, sir,’ Casper said, ‘I am comfortable that I was doing my job. No more and no less.’
‘I’m on board with that, sir,’ Xavier said, ‘We had a mission and we achieved it.’
The right answers at the right moment. It didn’t happen often, but there had been the odd occasion when men had no longer been at their usual tables in the canteen, or kids were abruptly pulled from the school on the base, or wives left social groups with minimum notice. He and Xavier had the photo on their phones; and the technicians were laughing and the sign was affixed to the sleek shape of NJB-3, and she’d be polished up now and armed and fuelled and ready to go again. The bad guys had no weapon they could use against the drone, and so it was always likely they’d hang around after a hit, and they might be seen as a flash of light and they might not, depending on how clear the skies were. They had not pulled away. The quality of the lenses and the capability of the zoom were extraordinary. His screen had been near filled with half of the vehicle and the two young men who were among the rocks and scrub close by, a flash and a burn-out of the picture, then clarity as the dust had shifted and debris came down, then the smoke from the vehicle. But the wind took it away. The targets had been reduced to ‘body parts’, separated chunks of meat. He had been quiet at the meal table that evening, and before that he had slept poorly during the daylight hours, and his wife had wanted to talk about Christmas and whether her mother might come and he’d snapped at her.
Jericho's War Page 10