The ground had seemed smooth and flat when they had been up on the top of the incline and had covered it with the binoculars or the scope. Not so. His and Rat’s boots were slipping into slight rain gullies, enough to turn an ankle. If he pulled ligaments or ripped a muscle, he’d not tell Rat, but would push on whatever the pain.
If Rat missed . . . Different kettle on the hob.
Could be at the moment of firing, halfway into the squeeze, a fly going up his nose or into his ear, or might be the target moving suddenly. It frightened Slime to think of it, Rat missing.
It was the failure bit that stuck in Slime’s throat, and the effect it would have on Rat. He wouldn’t know how to live with himself: a reputation blasted, and the bits of it scattered to the winds. It would not be a simple shot. Some were, but the times that it mattered, for a reputation to be built, it was hard.
The wind was raw on Slime’s face; it was funnelled from where the road narrowed through the defile, and it was much stronger than when they had been on the top and looking down.
They went towards the road.
Slime thought, the way the plan was set, that Rat would not have a clear view of the face of his target, but would see – with the help of the image intensifier – a whitened shape in the back of the vehicle and would have to go for a body shot. Slime knew that Rat liked to see the face and recognise an innocence of the danger that was one squeeze of a trigger away, to examine the features and learn a little about them. The target might be holding a kid on his knee, and have the cross-hairs on him, and then put the kid down because a mother called, and the kid might be halfway to the door when the head of its father or grandfather disintegrated, blood spurting like an aerosol spray, or the body just folded up and tipped off a chair. Rat would not see the face of the target, which might disappoint him.
They stopped.
They were where Rat had indicated he wanted to be. He wondered how the Boss was, whether he was now near to the village. They crouched behind a stone that was a couple of feet across and a foot high and gave cover. They were within good sight of the road. Away to the right was the village to which Jamil had given the name of ma’qil, fortress, and where the wedding column had gone, and the funeral party.
A cold wind, sharp, hit his shoulder blades. They all seemed welcome, the shag or the cold beer or just a bloody fag, and none was available to him. Rat stood tall and took some fluff from his pocket and threw it up and could see, straining, how fast it fell, how far the wind took it. Afterwards the guide, good kid, was given a small plastic bag by Rat and walked away with it, and they squinted to see him better, using the intensifier, and he fixed the bag, leaving it casually, as if the wind had dumped it on a piece of thorn.
Nothing more to say, or do. Only the hard job of killing time and watching the road and the village to the right of them.
Nothing had come up on his screen. His phone, with the scrambler, had not rung, nor had Lizzie busied into his office. George sat staring at the river.
This is not a formal investigation, George, which is why we did not invite you to have a colleague, a friend, supporting you. We are merely trying to get to understand what groundwork was laid, for this mission – Crannog, yes? Did you have any hesitation in inviting Cornelius Rankin to come aboard?
There was more traffic than usual, but it was a bugger of a day out there, and there was a good chance of him getting wet, soaked, when he went home: he wasn’t of the rank to warrant a chauffeur.
In the initial planning, did you go completely on Gerard Coe’s recommendation from Muscat as to the strength of the protection required for such an operation, deep in very hostile territory? Were others consulted?
He might stay in. Could sleep in his office or in one of the available cubicles. He had a clean shirt, fresh socks and underwear, and a razor on the premises, or he could flog home to the suburbs.
We are not of course suggesting that a company of the Parachute Regiment should have been deployed, but the protection offered was very small beer for a mission like Crannog, particularly given its location. Would you like to comment, George, please?
He had always known him as Jericho. The best and the brightest. The most original thinker, the friend of the director general and therefore with a firewall around him. His optimism, his infectious enthusiasm were wonderful but walls could be scaled and friendships forgotten. George himself had been swept along, he could admit it, and also admit that his briefings higher up the chain of command had been gilded.
Did you consider, George, that Gerard Coe might not have deployed the full range of risk-assessment procedures that are now pretty much obligatory? And duty of care to an officer severely damaged by a quite nightmarish experience barely two years earlier? Should he have been utilised again? We just need to explore what preparations were made for Crannog and we need your help, George, frankly given.
He was unable to contact Jericho. Penelope, his Woman Friday, a faithful hound – as faithful as one of those Labradors that want to sit alongside a recently filled grave and stay there as the flowers wilt – said she could not contact him, swore she did not know where he was. Obvious lies. But he was helpless. A Nelsonian eye was directed at him.
It seems to us, George, that our esteemed allies were not aware of Crannog. No attempt, in fact, was made to bring them up to speed or indeed to share with them the position of the agent you called Belcher. They were not pleased. They have threatened dire retribution. They believe that they and their mountain of resources would have made a far better job of running our asset than we seem to have managed. Sorry to be direct, George, but was that your decision or was the matter of liaison left to Gerard Coe?
What to do about Jericho when he could finally be located, summoned home for a Star Chamber Court – so bloody difficult to dismiss, fire from a cannon barrel, a serving officer whose expenses dockets were in meticulous order. He would have liked, as things stood – watching the flow of the river – to think of Jericho being marched up the steps and to the lofty heights of VBX, and the same fate meted out to him as was to homosexuals in downtown Raqqa, northwest Syria. Chuck him off, then hose down the pavement underneath.
Can we heap this, all of it, on the lap of Gerard Coe? Is it possible or convenient? George, this was a serious and black day for the Service. We are looking for exit routes and want to move on. The can, George, should Coe carry it, or do we look elsewhere?
There would be an inquiry. More an inquest. Careers would be at stake. It would be wise for him to anticipate the questions they would pose about Crannog, become familiar with his responses. Much was at risk somewhere out in that God-forsaken landscape that was Yemen.
We think, George, that there are matters here that may require further examination, but we are grateful for the candour with which you have responded to our queries, and the courtesies you have shown us. Whether your loyalty, while praiseworthy, to a junior colleague is justified is something we may wish to reflect on. Thank you.
The difference was, Jericho would dangle at the end of a hemp rope. George would be suspended on tightly woven silk cord. Would they win through, his band of foot soldiers? No way of knowing. He might bend his knee and offer a moment, or three, of prayer. He would ring his wife and tell her he would sleep here.
Xavier said softly to his face microphone. ‘The window’s closing, steady deterioration.’
Casper answered him, ‘We got the guys on the move.’
Bart, the intelligence analyst, murmured, ‘Sorry, but I have nothing back on who those people are, what is their mission if we know it – and I cannot justify hanging on to an image of them when the village has been a destination for a wedding party and for a funeral. My people simply will not get into collateral hassle.’
The image on the screen showed small figures, white on a lustreless grey, coming down the slope, sometimes losing a foothold, and then striding briskly over flat ground. A road was far ahead of them. The ability of the lens to work in complete darkness wa
s not at issue, but the wind was. Xavier knew the pilot’s difficulties in holding their bird steady. And there would soon be a fuel problem – more to concern Xavier.
The word ‘collateral’ was a plague. With ‘collateral’ came inquiries, and for the guys down at the bottom of the heap – flying and with a finger on the button and feeding Hurlbert Field with supposedly relevant stuff – it would be a big arse-kick if ‘collateral’ went with a strike. Xavier knew well, and everyone who did Bart’s job confirmed it, that the ‘bad guys’ used subterfuge to move themselves around: a wedding was a good opportunity to shift a commander, and a funeral was a chance to put together a leaders’ meeting, and each carried risk, big time.
Xavier had gone outside an hour before for a fast cigarette, frowned on but permitted, and had been away not more than three minutes. The ‘comfort break’ stand-in had taken his seat, and he’d needed the cigarette more than the piss, and had hardly heard himself think, breath, anything. The fast jets were going down the runway, two at a time, harrying each other’s exhausts, going up and setting off on the first leg of the journey – with frequent refuelling – to the combat zone. When the aircrew had looked back at the Control Tower, given the thumb-up sign, and gone for after-burn, the fireball spilling from the exhausts, they’d have seen the extended, single-floor complex from which Xavier and all the other drone crowd worked, and there would have been sneers of contempt before they turned back to their instrumentation and looked for take-off velocity. No respect, and no understanding of the problems of flying from the cubicles. It was called, and accurately, ‘soda-straw vision’: the pilot, and Xavier and the analyst, and all of the crowd at Hurlbert Field could only see what the lens showed them. They could not know about the clapped-out bus, loaded up and coming around the corner of the road in a defile, could not see the two women with the three donkeys twenty-five metres ahead of the target vehicle. They would go to the wall if the collateral could be lodged with them. A window was closing and the weather was going down, and the winds rising, and the two Hellfires hung from pods under the wings and had not been fired on a supposed wedding party and a funeral meet. He reckoned they’d missed out.
‘What to do?’ Xavier’s question.
‘I’ve not long – I’m drinking fuel in this wind,’ Casper said.
And from Bart, ‘Stick around if we can. Hook up on that village, last chance.’
The screen image changed. A messy picture of empty ground, the focus gone. The figures on the move were lost. Xavier felt bad about losing them.
‘That goddam wind,’ Casper said. ‘It’s giving me shit.’
Jamil split from Slime and Rat.
He’d gone, and fast, one moment beside them, at the small gully and close to the stone that would be protection for them, and he’d given Rat a cheek-kiss and squeezed Slime’s arm, and the silence floated around them, and he ducked away. Once, as he went, he heard the clean and clear scrape of metal parts being activated, and he assumed a weapon was armed. Only that one sound broke the quiet.
They had trust in him. Without him, and what he would do, they had little chance of success. Jamil liked having that, the trust. He had a good stride and covered ground fast and thought time was now against them.
Corrie had come from the rear of the village.
The track off the road wound in sharp bends up from the plain and into the close buildings. They, in turn, were linked by passages and alleyways. There was no track at the back that a vehicle could have tackled, but a steep slope. It would be good enough for goats and sheep, and for dogs; he could scale it. There were thorn and small scrub bushes that he’d need for a grip. The wind caught and jostled him. It sang in the buildings above, and sometimes he dislodged rubbish that had been dumped out of sight. He used his bare hands; they were slashed by thorns and cut by broken glass, and he heaved himself up and did not know what he would find at the top.
Another woman’s face was lodged in his mind. It seemed right that she was there, as she had been when she had washed in the bowl in her tent and the small light had brought colour to her and her eyes had blazed at his intrusion. Corrie would have said the worst moment of his life – not torture, not the beatings, not the crawl with the bone splinter piercing the skin – was tongue-tied Billy trying to explain about he and Maggie. Now, a new girl, new face, and a new God-awful challenge, self-inflicted.
He thought the guards and security men would be at the front, splayed out around the track. There were voices above him, and a TV played in Arabic, and the light from the screen flashed in an upper window. Corrie could have said that he served no purpose in being there, was doing nothing vital, was surplus to the requirements of the marksman and the guide. He could have justified retreat, claiming his most pressing purpose was to get to Henry Wilson, hook her out of the tent and take her up the hill and be in place to start the stampede for the helicopter point. He could have, but did not. The wind was stronger, carried the voices clearly, and chucked up dust that coated him.
The last of the vehicles left. She had refused to go with them. Henry Wilson had embarrassed the corporal. He was under orders to pack up the camp and pull back to the garrison centre in Marib, and he should have escorted her to the one hotel. She had said, matter of factly and calmly that she would not go. The corporal’s orders came from armed men whose fire power far exceeded his own: if the troops resisted, they would be killed. For what? His dilemma: could he use force to remove her? The corporal was an inch shorter than her. His men regarded her, almost, as a deity, but within the bounds of their religion. She had treated them when they were sick, had been polite to them, had showed respect when they were little more than the sons of peasants and she was a grand and educated lady, an ‘honorary man’. The idea of touching her, holding her while she kicked and lashed out for her freedom was unthinkable. But, to leave her without protection of any sort, in the sole company of her maid, would offend deep traditions of hospitality and the safeguarding of guests. But she had been adamant. They had left her tent, theirs stacked and loaded on vehicles, and the toilet tent and shower also remained.
She had felt good while they were still there. She had been in her ditch and feigned indifference as to whether they stayed or left. But now they were gone and the vehicles had been in tight convoy, with the clatter of the weapons being armed as they had pulled clear. She could not have accepted the ride into Marib, and the hotel or a room off the officers’ quarters in the garrison. She was a conspirator and a deceiver. There might have been some of the soldiers, even the corporal, who would have thought she’d betrayed them by putting her life, safety, in the hands of ‘bandits’. Lamya had said nothing. God – and she could not go because there were men at the top of the slope who depended on her, and she was the link that might save Belcher’s life – and she could not ignore what she had been told in that haughty voice about a fracture, and an aircraft loaded with passengers. She stayed. The darkness had come down and their lights had long faded and the fire was built up and insects played above its flames. She felt small, frightened.
It would happen that night. She did not know what the end of it would be, only that it would be decided, and she might play a part. And afterwards . . .
Afterwards would be a painful divorce from the work that she had treasured. The ditches, in which there had been faced stones and discarded ornaments and broken pots, would be abandoned. It could be decades before her successors groped their way into the world with which she was so familiar. She had nothing to read or to distract her. The woman, Lamya, cooked over an open griddle. Afterwards they would be coming for her, and she would run with them, and she supposed a helicopter would be powering in for them. Afterwards would be flight, a choice.
She wiped the hair off her forehead and sensed the sweat in her armpits. She had not rinsed her mouth as the lethargy had caught her, and had not changed into fresh clothes, but in secrecy had packed what was important in her life. All of it was held in a rucksack: the laptop’s batteries we
re flat, her phones were exhausted, and pieces of stone and jasper that had seemed so valuable a week ago now were dumped under her bed. Which of the two men would she trust with her life? Which of them would she want to touch her skin? ‘Afterwards’ would dictate the choice. Nobody would understand, nobody she had ever known before. She thought she knew her mind, which of them she wanted.
The wind hacked at her tent and the quiet was broken by the flap of the sides. Sparks soared from the fire, and time passed. Henry did not know how long it would be before ‘afterwards’, and she waited as the night gathered around her.
‘It is a great honour.’
The man had removed the balaclava from his face and spoke in simple Arabic, just a few words and all of them said slowly. Belcher understood. They would have thought that he, a fighter, would respond better to a fellow fighter. He said nothing.
‘You have proved yourself, brother, as worthy of martyrdom.’
He was in a plain room, with no decoration or trivia, nothing that a family in Hartlepool would regard as essential to their way of life – no TV hogging a wall, and no pictures to hide where the paper was stained by damp. He sat on a rug that might have been a century old. A glass of water had been offered to him but he had not touched it.
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