They had an hour in Dubai.
Rat could have recited to his CEO the circumstances and detail of each one of the men he had sniped. He was a ‘twenty-fiver’. Could not have said why they had been identified, usually by him and occasionally by Slime, as being right for being dropped. But he had total recall on the weather conditions on those days, and the humidity in the air around Basra or in Helmand, and the wind speeds, and what the clicks on the sight had been and whether there had been a frost that night on the Afghan plateau and he’d needed to cuddle the bullets inside his T-shirt and get his body warmth on to them and then they flew straighter further. In the army, which he’d loved till he was booted out, the Cobras were the snipers that no one, friend or enemy, liked. He sat in his seat until the stewardess shooed them out and they were last off the aircraft; there would be a smaller feeder link to get them on to their final leg.
He was forty-seven years old, and Slime was thirty-three. He hadn’t been running the last three months, only out dog walking, and the day at Bisley had been something rare, and he reckoned Slime was more interested in his new home, and in Gwen, than anything. But, of course, when VBX came calling, then his top man was not going to say, ‘Sorry and all that, chaps, but my people who might have ticked your boxes are, in fact, clapped out and pretty past it . . . I can give you the phone numbers of some of our close competitors.’ Instead the CEO had sung their praises.
They did the same routine off the plane. Slime in front and himself behind the principal. He always reckoned he knew early on whether a man he worked with was going to be, or was not going to be, a pain between the cheeks, but the money was top-drawer.
He was inside a great air-conditioned palace of a building; its extravagance and luxury drew his contempt. The crowds flowing past him seemed busy with trivia. All Rat looked forward to was settling in the sand, in a scrape, Slime alongside with the spotter scope, and having the quiet massage them, and to be judging distances and estimating wind speed, and to own a sort of freedom. And the man in front of him, whom he reckoned a desk hugger, who walked with a slight limp, would be like a stray dog that had attached itself to them.
Yes, it would be good when he was there.
A museum curator visited Henry Wilson.
He’d brought a fresh jar of coffee for her, and sweet cakes, and in return he would travel back that afternoon to Sana’a with the wrapped and boxed bronze figure: with him had come messages of congratulation from the director of Antiquities and a government minister. The find was of huge personal significance to Henry. She was a star. The commitment of a military detachment to guard her and her camp, the loan of two staff as helpers, and the funding, discreet but vital, that went to the coffers of the militants, were all justified by her success.
As a female foreigner in Yemen, she was treated as an ‘honorary’ man. She fulfilled the requirements of modesty, kept her wrists and ankles and throat covered, and made certain that her hair did not flop over her face, but she was given respect by the curator. The man was absurdly small, stunted, with no weight on his stomach or hips, but he had enormous knowledge of the civilisation that had developed the old town of Marib, and the dam that was, in many eyes, a wonder of the world. In spite of his size, or lack of it, he had a fine speaking voice with a rich tone. He had done a degree in London and he liked to laugh with her. She thought it would have been impossible for this good man to appreciate that she was throwing a bucket-load of deceit back in his face. They talked of where the next trench might be dug. She should have been bubbling with enthusiasm that matched his.
The curator might have thought she was sickening with a cold, or was simply exhausted from her work. They talked about the next trench, of the period when Sheba had travelled, and when the caravans had come through with frankincense, myrrh, and where in the old dam site there should be fresh excavations. He’d have thought Henry needed cheering up, and thought himself capable of it – the dam, again.
It was always what made her laugh, the cats and the survival of the dam. Water from winter rains was trapped behind a huge wall, and some twenty thousand acres of cultivation was made possible through irrigation from the waters of the artificial lake. The wall holding it back was made of clay and straw, which rats found a top-dollar meal. To keep the beasts back, cats were tethered on the wall. It’s an old saying but as true then as now: any defence is only as strong as its weakest point. One monster rat, a giant creature with huge fangs, ate one of the guard cats, and then had the freedom to chew in that little zone, and chewed and chewed – and so the hole flooded. It might have caused the flood that was the basis of the story of Noah and his ark. The curator used to act out the story, and normally Henry would be hooting with laughter as he mimicked the gnawing rat or the other cats when the dam started to disintegrate and they looked to break free. She loved the story – every time except that day.
She listened to him and she nodded, but her mind was far away – with a man who had come with a story of toothache, and with the old fool, as sharp as a razor’s blade, Jericho, and a saga of entrapment. She had asked herself often enough, tugged at the conundrum, when could she have backed out? He had recruited her with a casualness and a dose of eccentric charm, and had seemed to indicate that probably nothing would ever happen, as if Belcher was a figment of his imagination; but he had come in the night, a survivor, not playing a kid’s game but for high stakes. She could not have thrown him out and told him his business wasn’t hers. Nor could she have walked away from Jericho, in spite of her feeble attempt, a child’s tantrum, at the airport meeting. No freedom beckoned. She did not know where the road led.
The curator was speaking about the message they should put out, with photographs that he would send to her foreign sponsors. Those photographs – taken when the bronze was sufficiently cleaned – would give him leverage with ministries so she could have additional assistance.
She thought it doomed, a candle that had guttered and failed. It did not seem that there had been an opportunity to refuse. Henrietta Wilson, a West Country girl and a moderate scholar, had earned herself a precious and rare international reputation. Her occasional posts about her work were admired and envied. She could ooze pride at what she had achieved and where her reputation had taken her, and she’d heard it said that others, better qualified, would kill for the chance she’d had. Most hours of the day and night her obsession with her science absorbed her. She had achieved a place on a pinnacle, but at a price. Her parents in England were in denial about where she was staying, in the heart of a country renowned for medieval brutality, surrounded by villages from which AQAP operated without interference, and over virgin sites never before excavated by scholars. There had been an airline cockpit engineer in Muscat who would very happily have put a ring on her finger, but his contract was not going to be renewed and he’d be going back to the UK and she’d have forfeited her chance to go hunting in the footsteps of Sheba. And, there had been an English-language teacher at a college in Dubai who wanted to bed her and had said to her face, ‘You really are pretty, Ettie, and the freckles are super, and I’d call your eyes the colour of Hebridean sea water, soft green, and there’s a much better job I’ve applied for in Prague. Would you be up for that?’ So, damn near celibate, damn near as made no difference, and no one there when she was desperate, a word she used herself. The only person in her field because all the others had quit, and left sometimes – in the dead of night, when the stars and the moon lit the camp, and the soldiers smoked and spluttered coughs and laughed near her tent – lonely, crippled by it. What she had might be snatched, and what she was doing might kill her . . . and no bastard had ever given her the chance to refuse. ‘Look it up, Henry,’ he had shouted after her, ‘the Faraday Fracture’. But she hadn’t the means to.
The curator shook her hand, almost with a reverence, and left her.
There was dust on the road, and the vehicles brought people back from the cemetery and from the burial of three men, and she heard shouts
of defiance, and women in the backs of the pick-ups clenched their fists and cursed the skies. The wind had strengthened again and the cloud had thickened. And the light did not seem to lift.
Security did not stop him screaming. They might have encouraged it. It was as if no one heard the shriek, high pitched, from the agony of what they did to him. No one spoke of it, and no one remembered the Sudanese boy; he had no friends. It was a warm afternoon and the cloud built and some men prayed and some attended weapons or tactics classes, and those who wished to be suhada but did not know when they would be called to robe themselves in a vest were reading their Koran. Women cooked and washed, and the Emir and his wife moved on, and none of the fighters or the villagers who hosted them seemed to be aware of his pain. Fear stalked him. Belcher had volunteered for sentry duty, was away from the village, but he heard each cry. And he knew the future of the Sudanese, but not his own.
The aircraft broke the cloud.
Jericho watched it. The winds were strong and it had gone round once, hidden, as if the pilot was looking for a break and failed, and so headed on down, and might have said a little prayer. It was one of those landings where passengers and airport spectators would have wondered, for a few moments, whether it was going to hit the scrub and the navigation lights beyond the perimeter fence.
Jericho was on the phone. Lizzie wanted to know if he had the kit together. He did. And the hardware. Had that too, and a hell of a job that had been, a rare old dance, a calling in of old favours.
How would he find Rankin? She told him, crisp and clear, that Rankin had not really changed: at war with the world, friendless, focused in that intense way that most found intimidating or unpleasant. Jericho said that he was coming to do a job of work in Yemen, was not taking part in a beauty contest in the Lido at Tooting Bec, so popularity was down the priority list. He’d call her later. Jericho had reverted to the I Zingari blazer and cravat, and had slipped in the padded stomach to guarantee he’d be remembered as an eccentric fool, though a fool would not have put the gear together in the time available. He had been asked for a Rangemaster, a pretty little piece of kit, newly arrived and on loan for demonstrations to the Omani forces, which had been ‘liberated’ from an armoury along with forty rounds. He had also been asked for two assault rifles and three pistols and their necessary ammunition, and a sack-load of flash-bangs, gas and smoke grenades. Money paid over, cash. And there was food and water, and the onward transport had to be put in place. He’d done rather well, he reckoned.
The plane taxied. The steps went in. He had Lizzie on hold.
A door opened. Some of the passengers streamed out, as if the experience of the landing was best put behind them quickly, then others at a more leisurely pace. The three men were last off. It was his plan, and if it went ‘arse end up’ then it would be his head being called for. If it went the other way and aircraft continued to fly over the troughs and basins and fractures, then a very few might raise a glass to the old buffoon – only a very few because access was restricted.
Jericho watched as the men descended. Not three men to set the world alight. The first was medium height and medium build. He seemed to rock on the steps, snaking out a fast hand to steady himself. He did, of course, recognise Corrie Rankin, detecting the roll in his gait, even on the steps, and putting it down to the injury. Nothing to read in the face; perhaps there never had been. Last was the older man, who blinked hard at the light coming up from the tarmac. They went to a bus.
Jericho said, ‘All present, all correct. You know that old song, Lizzie? You know, the boy wanting to be wished luck when the girl waves him off. Something like that. Seems the right time to serenade them with it.’
She said, ‘Thank the good Lord, you silly old thing, that it’s not you that’s going. Just stay put in the bar and keep your expenses claims up to date. Bye, big boy.’
‘Bye, sweetheart.’ The end of the call. He doubted anyone in many years had addressed an endearment to Lizzie.
His driver trailed after him. He wondered how much they had been told, and whether they had been briefed so that they could prepare themselves mentally for the ordeal, or whether they were going to learn on the hoof and discover the hard way. Jericho went down the staircase and came to the concourse and waited, and watched the Arrivals gate. Much rested on them and they seemed so ordinary, even Corrie, who had endured most. Were they capable? Big question, and within a week he’d likely know the answer. It would go hard for them if they weren’t.
He waited. In experience, these operations began at snail’s pace, and at a given moment would accelerate – from boredom and the languor of the midday sun, to the chaos of reacting to movement and events, panic and confusion. Always was that way. He wondered if Corrie Rankin lived off a past accumulation of praise, or could still hack it. He chuckled quietly. It would be fun finding out whether the man was precious or dross. And integral to the plan was Belcher, who walked the tightrope, and equally integral was the girl, Henry. It would not go well for her if it were suspected she had betrayed their trust. Would any of them panic? Panic destroyed calm thought – and was the fastest route to an unpleasant death. Entertaining? Yes, exceptionally.
The crack of the shots was muffled, the sharpness taken off the sound.
‘He tried to put one over me, make out that he led.’
Jericho responded, ‘I’m sure that limited tension between you won’t be out of place.’
Corrie said, ‘I think I made it clear that I take decisions and take responsibility for them. I say where we go and when we go.’
‘As long as we don’t end up with prima-donna sulks and fuck-ups.’
‘I run my own show.’
‘Always best, Corrie, in my experience, to leave doors open.’
The range, access courtesy of a British army instructor to the Omanis, was deserted, no witnesses present. The occasion was necessary, Corrie had been informed, to zero the sights on the sniper rifle, the one Rat had demanded. The sounds of his shooting were distorted and softened because both Corrie and Jericho wore ear baffles, and their heads were close. Some said, in Vauxhall Bridge Cross, that Jericho was a throwback to the ways of half a century before, and a liability, an expensive one. A few, not many, claimed him to be one of the most innovative recruiters in the Service, and among the few planners who displayed, regularly, a hint of genius. Which? Corrie neither knew nor cared: he was where he was, and had been before. First they had fired at a target that he estimated was quarter of a mile away, shredding it, then at a second target at half a mile’s distance.
‘He’s your protection, Corrie, and he provides an additional option.’
‘I thought we’d be calling in the cavalry, giving it to the drone geeks.’
‘They are not stupid, the people you will confront. It’s not wise to talk them short.’
‘Don’t think I did.’
‘Did Third Floor explain much to you?’
‘All left to you.’
Corrie could see the little shudders on the target, at the big bull, each time Rat fired. Slime was beside him, and between the two of them they went through old routines that Corrie assumed would have been in place a century before, when UK troops had pushed up into Mesopotamia and came across Turkish fighters: the most striking was the liberal sprinkling of water from a bottle, precious stuff where they were going, down on to the sand underneath the end of the barrel. They had stopped, at Rat’s request, on the journey from the airport to the range, in a car park beside a fruit and vegetable market. Rat had moved among the vehicles with a tape measure and had taken a reading on the length of a Toyota pick-up, fender to fender, and also on the height of the passenger door from top to bottom. He’d gathered that the ammunition they used now was substandard compared to the bullets they would take with them. While Rat had been preparing to shoot, Slime had fired off the assault rifles and the three handguns, done it without fuss. Only during his time in Libya had Corrie routinely carried a pistol. So, they were an ‘add
itional option’, but the plan – whatever – was his to execute. He put them in the category of light-bulb changers, or the sort of men called out when the burglar alarm malfunctioned at Bobby Carter’s home. Jericho stood his full height. Corrie doubted he’d put on three stone since he’d hauled him off the hospital bed, assuming he wore padding to better suit the play-acting.
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