They dragged the body higher up the alley, the buttocks flopping on the cobbles. They reached the fodder store. One quick movement. They tipped him over. The Ghost’s body caught on stones and then on bushes, but finally broke free and rolled, taking down rocks and causing a small landslide, landed with clumsy thud. The silence returned. He didn’t think the child would shout; she would hide and cry a bit, probably, and do what was necessary here, where expertise was taught from the cradle, to survive.
The Sixer said, ‘That was good, useful.’
Said only that. And two lights grew in size and were clear on the road, approaching.
The drone was flown back towards the base, in darkness.
Grim weather and difficult conditions, and Casper would not permit it to go on to autopilot, but did the piloting himself. He seemed to feel, through his hands on the joystick in front of his chair in the cubicle, the buffeting that the bird took.
Bart said, puzzled, ‘They don’t normally give me this kind of stuff at Hurlbert. They are not reporting that we had assets down there, no boots on that piece of ground, and so we have gone round the allies. A line of negatives until we get to the British, and their Sana’a people say “not us, man”, but the London end is vague and all we’re getting is “we’re checking this out, friend, back to you soonest”. And Hurlbert’s heard nothing. Strange. Is it possible that a goddam ally could be fucking about in an area where we have primacy, and won’t spill? Is it a game? Are they involved in a popgun, pea-shooter operation and don’t want us in the loop? Proving they are not clapped out. Can I believe that?’
Xavier said, ‘We’ve to get the bird back to the Khalid strip, have her checked over, refuelled, all done fast, and if there’s a window in the weather then put her back here, on station.’
Casper said, ‘And the job’s not going to another crew – we have familiarisation. And I’m not caring about Bart’s politicisation of spooks’ intentions. There’re men on the ground and I expect to fly top cover over them. It’s what we do, not for discussion.’
And no one at Defence or any of the intelligence agencies, or at Hurlbert Field, would bother them, in Casper’s opinion, because they were in a faraway side show, and the main effort was north and on the roads around Mosul and the villages circling Raqqa. He’d hold her and fly her on a steady course and Xavier would call the fuel situation, and Bart might sleep. They’d have her back, loaded, and – unless the weather deteriorated – up again and on that set of grid boxes. All of them had seen the boots and had seen the men advancing across open ground under cover of darkness, and it was Bart’s call, what he reckoned he’d identified, that one carried a rifle with a big sight latched on it, what a sniper had . . . He’d not break for a sandwich and the coffee from his flask until they’d put NJB-3 down, and she was being refuelled, then he’d close his eyes and eat and drink and doze. The best he could do was get back and on station.
The Emir heard a swelling babble of noise from the front.
He moved, stretched himself taller, yawned, gazed between the heads in front of him and out through the windscreen. He saw goats.
They swarmed across the road. A man led them; he had a length of string looped around his right fist that went, taut, to the horns of the big goat. The brakes were hit and the vehicle slowed, and the driver switched on his headlights. They were shouting now from the front, and both the driver and the one sitting by the passenger window had arms out gesturing furiously at the man with the flock, and shouting. ‘Get the fuck out of the way’ and ‘Do you want a fucking bullet?’ and ‘Get those fucking things off the road’. The man holding the string would have been blinded by the headlights on full beam; he could not see them and might have frozen. The Emir was used to that. Men were often brought before him, and shaking with fear because they did not know why they had been summoned, if they had done wrong, what offence was alleged. It was sometimes necessary for him to calm men in his presence. They could not go off the road. At this point it was built-up and the drop on either side was almost a metre, and there were rocks scattered at the side, left over when the Chinese engineers had laid the foundations. His wife was rigid beside him. The Emir did not stop them yelling the obscenities because his safety was in their hands and he did not want to question the actions of those to whom he had passed responsibility, but the frown started on his forehead.
Then shots fired.
Not at the goats but over them, above the head of the man who held the string.
The Emir insisted that his men should not intimidate local people. The fighters were given hospitality, were hidden from sight in village homes, they were fed – and if the goats and the goatherd were shot, then the bodies would be scattered on the road and would catch in the wheels. The man now pushed close. Because of the headlights? Because he could not see? His face was without expression. He was not cowed. Surely a man who was confronted with gunfire, with a vehicle that could propel him off the road, would back away? He came near. His face was calm, as if it wore a mask, and the goats crowded around him. It was the moment of understanding.
He had seen it first during the flight through the Tora Bora. A small party of American troops had come too near to the tail of the column, and one had volunteered to keep them back, and had hooked on a prepared vest, had mouthed a prayer, had walked towards the troops. The Emir remembered his face, so composed. He had killed himself and stopped the advance, had won a few minutes, enough to justify the martyrdom. This man did not blink or cringe. Shots had been fired a metre over his head and he was almost against the fender of the Toyota, and the goats pushed now on the bonnet and drifted around the sides.
The Emir saw his death.
And the man had gone, the biggest goat loosed. He no longer saw the man who had brought the goats along the road. He was between his wife and a guard, and the vehicle crawled along and he heard his own voice demand that the driver accelerate, but it was one voice among many, and the engine revved and the animals screamed, and he was trapped, and recognised it.
A good moment, none better.
There was little now to clog Rat’s mind. His finger came off the guard and on to the trigger, his eye hard against the Steiner sight. All the calculations were done, wind speed was allowed for, the range known, and he had a clear view of the head of a man who leaned from the open window and gesticulated with a rifle held one handed but who had no target and was panicking.
Rat had a target.
Slime’s voice was soft beside him, his mouth near Rat’s ear, and the stress had drained from it: good that Slime had control again.
‘About as good as it’ll get, Rat. Jamil’s gone. It’s now, Rat. A good sight of him, Rat, the one that’s forward.’
A woman’s head, veiled, was there for a moment, a couple of seconds, then she jerked back. The vehicle was, Rat estimated, moving at five miles an hour, almost stopped. This was the big shot in his life, the biggest. His finger was on the trigger and had started the squeeze and the target was big in the intensifier and not burned out because the headlights were showing up what was ahead and the rear cabin was in darkness. A good image, and a face there that was gaunt, aged, the cheeks were covered by loose hair, the mouth contorted.
‘Give it to him, Rat, won’t get better.’
Pressure gathered on his finger as the squeeze tightened. He never hurried. It seemed an age, but was not.
Rat fired.
Felt the light blow on his shoulder, like the playful punch a friend might have given him if he had had a friend. The round, ejected, was spat towards Slime.
Best part of a second in time, the shot on which his life would be judged a success or a failure. It left the barrel at supersonic speed and would now have gone subsonic and dropping, and the mathematics he had done in his logbook allowed for the fall and it would have gone, dead centre, through the window. He saw the jerk and the snatch and the shake of three heads and all of them moved: the guard’s, the woman’s, the target’s.
Squeezed
again.
Not a clear target in the rear but a mess of movement, and his aim was on the centre of them. The sound had been good from the first bullet, and he always recognised – with the experience of a twenty-fiver – the impact of a shot that hit a human or animal body as against a wall of stone or a wooden door. And he used good bullets, 155 grain, and they’d be warm enough from his body when they’d gone into the magazine and would not have cooled much since they had been in the rifle, in the breach. Rat had not really considered that his target, the Tango, was a ‘bad guy’. He did not hate him – felt precious little for him. And squeezed tighter, and fired.
The goats had moved and the obstruction they made had thinned. With the wind as he estimated it, Rat thought the bullet would be shifted on its trajectory at least an inch, but not more than two inches.
Another hit.
The vehicle accelerated.
He had wondered, in the very few seconds available to him, whether he should have alternated after the first shot and gone after the driver, changed the line he aimed for, but had not. The double-tap was against the target. A second cartridge case, bright in the very faint light, had flown and had spilled on the dirt near to Slime, and the hand was out, and the fist open – automatic – and it was gone into Slime’s pocket.
He thought the driver, speeding, might have run through half a dozen of the goats, but he stayed on the road. The pick-up swerved and did zigzags on the road, and he speeded up rapidly and the headlights were killed. Rat nodded to himself, modestly.
Slime said, ‘I reckon you got him, Rat.’
Rat said, ‘I reckon I did.’
What else was there to say? Nothing, except that Rat would remind Slime – not necessary but a part of their drill – to run the quick mental checklist so all they had brought would be retrieved, stowed, and they’d bug out. Nothing left, no indication that this had been the lying-up point for a master of his art. A slow smile was on Rat’s face, satisfaction, and they had no need to hug, kiss, or do high-fives. They had no torch but Slime tidied up by feel, fingertip stuff. Slime said they were clear and Rat didn’t challenge him or look to do his own search. Like a well-oiled machine, Rat would have said, the both of them.
He could not see the lights down the road, but the noise from it was hideous. They’d both want to be clear. Rat did not have animals at home, but his wife would have liked a dog, except that he was away for weeks at a time and she went to work every day and pets were not permitted; his wife would have shed tears at the bleating and squealing of the animals hit by the pick-up when it had gone through them. One of his hits in Helmand had been on a Talib who had just slit a sheep’s throat and then had hung the beast up while it was still in spasm and had started to skin it, but he was a local commander and a stipulated Tango, and it was good for the animal that the Talib bled more freely. But he shut the sounds out. They touched hands – not as a celebration and not as a brotherhood – but to confirm they were ready to move.
And were gone.
Rat had no doubts. They did not run, not a sprint. It was a decent jog; Slime had taken the weight of the gear, and led. Rat followed him. If the dogs of hell had been after him, he might have run hard, but they were not, not yet. He did a good stride and kept a reserve of energy, breathing with a fair rhythm. To have gone faster would have risked a turned ankle in a gully, tripping and falling headlong, and would have betrayed fear.
They headed for the slope and the goats’ tracks that would take them up it, and the Bergens where the communications were. They’d call up and report that it was done, dusted, and the helicopter would be in. It should be – as had been explained – an hour’s flight away, and the people who pulled him up and inside and then pushed him down into a canvas seat would ask the inevitable question: ‘How did it go?’ He would not answer, would leave it to Slime, and his reply would be, ‘No argument, he did fine.’ There were the others to come – the Boss, and there was a smudge of a sneer on Rat’s face as he thought of him, and the traitor who had done the crucial stuff about the vehicle make, and the woman who was not that important but was involved and had to be shipped out, and there was the guide who should get a medal but would likely end up arguing with the ministry about his bus fare and expenses. He reckoned the Boss would have heard the shots, would now be running after them, to get to their named rendezvous point. The lights of the pick-up were long lost.
Slime called back over his shoulder, ‘He’ll have to be a good flier, the one who comes in for us; it’ll not be easy.’
Rat ignored him. Too much for him to savour now. He didn’t want to spoil his mood with worry about the weather, the winds and the low cloud. Great shooting, a legend’s.
Henry heard the shots, clear in the night, carrying to her, and the fire was close to dying and she thought the maid had slipped away, would have been ashamed to have come to beg leave. All Henry would take when they came for her was in the rucksack between her legs, and the night grew colder and the wind stronger, and she waited for them to come for her, trusted they’d come. One of them would – she had to believe it, cling to it.
His hands were slippery on the wheel; it was drenched in blood, and the driver swerved when he lost grip.
Most had come from the back. The two shots fired had been aimed at those on the rear bench seat. The guard on the back, with the heavy weapon down at his knees and the animals for company, had not intervened and had not been hit. Mayhem on the back seat, but the driver could not see for himself who the casualties were. The woman in the front, a nurse, had her head across his chest. The driver thought a bullet might have spun inside the rear cab, perhaps after striking the Emir. Could have been from the second shot; the guard in the back with them had not spoken since the attack. The driver thought he was dead and slumped on the floor. That bullet, the second fired, might have ricocheted and hit the back of the woman’s skull. Not that she was cold yet, but she had no pulse. Orders would normally have been given to him by the one who rode in the back, but he was gone, beyond issuing instructions. So the driver pressed for the village, the headlights blazing once he was clear of the ambush site, and headed, foot hard on the accelerator, for the village. The nurse’s head lolled against him. There was moaning behind him but he thought it was the old woman.
He assumed he had lost his man. They trained for ambush situations. They did drills in how to respond if the ambush was set by the enemy’s Special Forces. But it had not been them, not that night.
The driver was confused. If it had been Special Forces, they would have been blown off the road, multiple hits with grenade launchers and the area raked by .50-calibre machine guns, the vehicle disabled. They’d have come to look for documents and laptops and even a mobile. But it was not a drone and not a Hellfire either. He had heard two rifle shots. The strike was of total simplicity. He could look back, could re-examine. A man leading goats in the night, holding the centre of a road where the banks dropped down steeply. A planned place. The security men would crawl over them now. An ambush had succeeded. As the blood dried on his hands he had a better hold of the wheel. But there had only been two shots. More confusion in his mind. What enemy came to the Marib Governorate, brought a practiced sniper, stood against a target of the value of the Emir, and fired only twice. What enemy? He thought about how many he had known who had been taken by the security men, and how many of them he had seen again. He had been the Emir’s most trusted driver, was close to him, nearly as close as the principal guard, and the Emir had been at his wedding to a girl from Taiz. Who would believe him if he had lost the Emir, if the Emir were not able, present, to defend him?
He swung the wheel and the tyres screamed on the gravel of the track that led to the village, spitting stones to the side, and he used the lights and the horn to alert them. He had lost his man, he knew it, and he brought him towards the village where a crowd had come to see him, to take inspiration from him. He saw ahead the lights from raised windows of the fortress village, and he heard the sounds o
f a failing life behind him, the choke and the rattle.
He had heard the shots. But Corrie was high in the village, away from the crowd lower on the hill. He thought he had done a worthwhile job leading from the front, but he was not finished. The sound came as if from a great distance, but clear; it was clean noise and not distorted by the babble of voices. Belcher had been beside him and had tugged at his sleeve, yanked hard at it.
‘Get the fuck out, come on,’ Belcher had snapped at him.
‘Not finished, not yet.’
‘It’s happened or it’s not happened, we can’t alter it.’
‘When I’m done then I’ll go.’
He had dragged, not subtly, the hand off his arm. Just the two shots, then the sounds from lower in the village dominated again, and the villagers would have heard nothing and would have been concerned whether a spy was among them, the bald middle-aged guy with the big stomach who had no champion, and then came the noise of the horn. Irritation grew in Corrie because he had thought it necessary to explain himself to the asset – which was all that Belcher was. ‘Assets’ were exploited, used, were not confided in. The horn carried well, and the people below them seemed to flinch from their prisoner and crowd forward, and security were pushing them back to allow safe passage for the hooting vehicle. Corrie saw it, off the main road now and coming down the track, headlights bright in the darkness, but the speed had been cut. It was not a metalled surface, and the track would be potholed from the rain water, and larger stones would have pushed up over the years to make it rough under the wheels. As if a casualty was being brought to the village, not a corpse. There’d be no need to ease on the pedal if their main man was a cadaver. He felt the gloom settle on him. He had already killed that evening and felt flattened at the thought that another death, and one he’d cooperated in, had not been achieved. He had already done the job once himself and still had the ache on the heel of his hand to show for it. Corrie Rankin did not regard himself as similar in any way to the gun club people from Hereford, or to Rat for whom it was ‘all in a day’s work’, and therefore not special. More than an ache in the heel of his hand, he had stinging pain in his ribs and if he moved or tried to turn then his shins hurt as well. He did not know whether he was truly damaged, or whether it was his mind played tricks. There was growing pandemonium below and Belcher seemed irresolute, not knowing what he should do, and then he saw the child.
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