Xavier did not speak, not any more. Bart said nothing but sometimes hissed quietly through his teeth. It seemed mad to have put a man somewhere a machine could do a job. The drone teams fed off the HumInt stuff that came from people on the ground, in boots or in sandals, who fitted bugs on vehicles or lit a target with a laser, and knew what road and when a vehicle carrying a High Value Target would travel. ElInt did some of it, but HumInt did it better. The bond was between Casper in the cubicle, his buttocks on the ergo-dynamic seat, and the guy with his boots in the sand, whose rifle had given up on him. There was no sound, utter quiet, around the cubicle.
It was surprising that something as big as NJB-3 flew so sweetly. The crosswinds shook her and the screen showed the battering the airframe took, but she responded well as her fuel was low and her weapons fired so she was lighter, and more sensitive to a pilot’s commands. He brought her low and the pulse lights had started up on the console board, and they flashed where altitude was registered, and he took the picture as his bible and not the warnings that beat in his eyes. He put the wheels down, and the response came after a long beat that he had learned to live alongside: there was one under the nose and a pair that were out of the fuselage and level with the wide wings. He felt the further loss of stability and there was a growl from Xavier that meant fear of failure, and of losing the bird.
The warning bleep was frantic and was ignored.
He saw that the boot guy was now on his feet, using the failed weapon as a goddam stick and trying to back out, and the big one with a torch and a weapon and one hand had started a crazily confused charge. The picture on the screen was as wide-angled as the lens could manage. It was almost like a landing run except that power was on full and the engine racing, and Casper had to hold her on course. There was a moment when the two figures, brilliant white except for the small burnout of the torchbeam, were gone from the picture, like when the capsules of the space shots were lost on re-entry, then the edge of the screen showed the boots guy and the middle of the screen showed their target man, and there was the impact, a juddering blow, and the image shook and danced. He had a hit. Casper thought he might never again fly as well as that, as long as he lived.
Maybe there was then a fiercer gust. Maybe it was the destabilisation caused by the blow on the wheel when it cannoned into a two-hundred-pound man. The wing dipped and the image on the screen lost clarity, and there was the briefest sight of the boot man, upright and leaning on his rifle and turning. The wing hit sand. Casper could not see it, but realised what had happened from the last picture on the screen, and the raft of angry pulses and buzzers and lights yelling at him. The screen cut out. Everything was quiet.
Casper said nothing, nor did Xavier. Bart began to shuffle his papers together and to shut down his laptop.
There was not much that Casper could do because the destruct mechanism was supposed to work on impact. And how to explain it? They’d think about that, and they’d concoct a story together. Bart – of course – would have been out of the cubicle and in the bathroom when the bird lost power and went down. Casper threw switches and shut down the system around him.
Xavier said, ‘I think we gave our man a chance.’
Casper agreed. ‘A chance, yes, if he’s able to use it.’
He went on.
Corrie could hear the roar as the machine came in; it had gone over him, and he had felt the draught of the wing, and a protruding pod had been just above his head, and it had swept past him, still dropping, and the motion had thrown up sand and he had hardly seen the starboard side undercarriage wheel strike his pursuer, the big man with one arm. If the wheel had not caught him then the tail would, and it had risen again, like a swan that had landed clumsily and was now soaring again. There had been slight seconds when it might have regained height, then a heavy bluster of wind had near tipped Corrie forward, and the wing had dipped, then had gouged a line through the sand. He thought it a thing of rare beauty, too fragile for the task it had been given. It rocked a moment in the air and the wing had fractured and the engine had choked. The nose went down and it turned over, exposing the undercarriage and the lens. Corrie realised what had been done for him. He hurried away, took all the strength he had. He didn’t know where he was headed, but he had to get away from the mangled shape of the body left behind him.
He was clear of the debris when it exploded; for a few seconds there was bright light and he could see ahead a crest of sand, and beyond it was another, and another beyond that, then the darkness came again.
Dawn spread. First light was over the Ramlat Dahm sands; and the earliest smears of grey, breaking the blackness, were on the top lines of the dune formations, balanced delicately there.
The wind died and clouds of particles, sand and dirt, dropped to the desert floor. Flies appeared, no longer hostage to the weather, to feast on open wounds and scarcely dried blood on exposed flesh. Spiders crawled from their dens in the sand, and a family of hyrax visited the carcase of the aircraft and found molten rubber to chew on, as if it were grass or soft wood. Fires guttered and the sand was stained with oil and scorch marks.
The sun made a hesitant appearance, became bolder and soared, as it had done on the previous day, and on countless other days. Soon the carcase of the aircraft would have cooled and the next bout of wind would pile sand around its shape, and its spars would become bones, as happened to all creatures lost in the desert and felled there.
A caravan passed, moving quickly, because the owner had spent a bad night listening to explosions, and had seen great lights burn on the horizon, and wanted to be gone from this place of fighting, where strangers killed for territory; he hastened instead towards a market where he believed he would be richly rewarded. And Sheba had been here, and the great scholars of a lost civilisation, and scientists and architects had built wonders that had once been admired and now were buried by the shift of the winds and the changing shapes of the dunes.
As the sun rose, so the clouds had thinned. The storm had passed. Soon, as the air warmed, rejoicing that the gales had moved on, and looking for feasts after lean days, birds would arrive – specks high in the clear skies. Vultures and kites and eagles, anything that fed on carrion, would appear; even the rare condor from the mountains in the west might travel on the thermals to join the activity. Later the heat would climb, the bodies would bloat, and the sun would be merciless.
The winds were altering the landscape of the desert, hiding tracks and covering debris. It was a raw and untamed place, suspicious of outsiders, and no welcome was offered them.
Jericho felt better after changing his underclothing and socks and drinking some bottled water; he was able to face the day, an important one. He did not want breakfast; instead he puffed on another cigar.
The engines growled into life, ticking over then growing louder. Fumes spurted from an exhaust vent, and the gunners put away the toolbox and shrugged. There was a decent fatalism abroad that Jericho appreciated. It would have been better if there had been secure communications with his Intrepids, but Jericho believed staunchly in making the best of what was available. No communications, but rotors that turned and made the right sort of noise, and dials that were alive in front of him as he sat in the co-pilot’s billet.
The Serbs, multiskilled, cleared the weapons on either side of the cabin behind him, then armed them, then cocked them. They had all outstayed their welcome at the airfield and, as the light had grown, Jericho had twice had to dig deeper than he would have cared to into his pockets, the blessed American dollar bringing some respite. Were the Serbs better machine-gunners than they were helicopter maintenance technicians? Time would tell. For the last hour they had been on the ground, he’d had that vulnerable feeling again. But they had found a refuge there in the teeth of the storm, and were now ready to be on their way – if the engines did the business. He did not talk, had nothing sensible to say.
A co-ordinate was punched in to guide them to the agreed location. He wondered whether the
team had been able to find it; he could not guess whether they’d have attempted to reach the rendezvous together, or been separated. He reflected that the stirred hornets’ nest would no doubt have played havoc with best-laid planning.
They went up, then swung west. They were without legitimacy, and hoping not to make waves, but the chatter had pleased him and he’d be fulsome in his praise of young Rankin when he finally had him aboard; it would be deserved. And his own future – what might remain of his career – rested on Corrie’s achievements.
A man knelt, blindfolded, in the open space in front of the village leader’s home.
In the night two graves had been dug, away from the village and close to the road that linked Marib to Sana’a, and bodies had been hurriedly lowered into them, and they had been filled and the ground was scuffed over and it would have been hard for anyone to spot them: there were no flowers or other markers on them. The body of a girl would be moved within the next hour and taken by her father back to her own village, and she would be buried there with all the grief a family could summon.
A crowd gathered around the edge of the space, but did not press close to the man, instead staying back, watchful. Security guards gazed at the men, women and children, searching for dissent. Control of the village, and those down the road, rested in fresh hands; they were slight, delicately boned and thin hands, and might have been those of a musician or a surgeon. The young Egyptian, now holding authority over many, could decide who lived and who did not. He displayed himself at the same window where the Emir had been seen the previous evening. An explanation for the change in power was easily conjured up – the Emir was being hunted, his life threatened; he was preparing a great strike against the movement’s enemies, and he had left in secrecy. Again, the best and most murderous efforts of the enemy had failed. It was a simple message, and it might have been believed . . . But of greater importance was the ring of security men with their rifles surrounding the kneeling man, and the fact that they faced outwards, towards the crowd, and not towards the victim, who had only moments to live, and knew it, and who trembled.
Later, men whose loyalty was solid would be sent to the paths that wound up the slopes of the escarpment to reach the plateau above. They would fan out and search for those who had gone in pursuit of the fugitives. There had been reports of gunfire, explosions, vivid lights and a powerful fireball. But that search would wait for the completion of more pressing business. The cementing of authority was not pretty, not compassionate, would not be debated, would be imposed.
At dawn, instructions had been given for the protection of the village further towards Marib where the Egyptian would find a safe-house: how many men, what weapons. It would be a display of force, and when another location was chosen then the same bodyguard team would travel with him. It would be of a different weight to the guard around the Emir and his wife. She remained in the village; she had not been to the graveside, but would be shipped out and sent on her way before evening, a car taking her in secrecy to where her children lived. She had no further importance.
The new protection level was a matter of debate. Security might enhance the protection of a figure of value, but it might also attract more talk, more gossip, more treachery, and might add to the possibility of a drone strike, which was dreaded by the communities living in the perpetual shadow of the Predator and the Hellfire. A security man had denounced the new tactic as more dangerous, had claimed that a display of guns attracted betrayal and also went against the teaching of the Emir that local people, their families, their villages, should not feel threatened, as they would now. The security man had said this to some of his fellows, men who had fought beside him against the military, who had been with him a decade before in Iraq, had voiced his concerns, though not loudly, but he had been heard, and word had slipped inside the new bubble of power. An example was to be made of him.
He still wore the black of a security guard, but the face mask had been stripped from him. The bruises at his eyes were hidden by the blindfold, but his lips were swollen from beatings and his nose was askew, broken. He had had good friends, but none now spoke for him. A pistol was cocked, raised, aimed at the back of his bowed head. He died without ceremony. When the spasms stopped, he would be dragged away. Splashed water would cleanse the place; a new regime had been established. As it had always been, seamlessly.
They searched, criss-crossed a grid area, flew low. Away to the north was the line where the ground changed from earth and stone, pebble and rock, to the expanse of desert sand.
No landmarks, nothing that grew, not a marker in sight, and then a puff of smoke, green and crawling into the air above. Jericho peered down, staring hard, and finally saw the ground move and two shapeless lumps push up, shedding the soil and grit that coated them, and shaking it off. Then two arms waved, and he saw the rifles and the packs. The pilot did a circuit and the machine-gunners were poised in their seats and scanned ground beneath them, searching for signs of a prepared ambush. As they went around, Jean-Luc told Jericho that the smoke – as green as the outfield of a cricket ground in early season – was, near as made no difference the exact co-ordinate that had been agreed, where they had been put down.
There was a little sag of disappointment in his gut. There should have been five of them, but were only two. They dropped. Jericho saw the faces of the pair; he knew them by the idiotic names they had given themselves. Rat, shorter, older, impassive, with his rifle wrapped against the elements and standing first, and then ducking and turning away as the rotors kicked up a stinging cloud. Then he saw Slime, and a face that was haunted. He swung away, crouched and wrenched up two big sacks, taking the weight of them. As the helicopter wheels jolted on the ground, they came running. The power was kept on and the helicopter shook and rocked and Jericho realised that Rat carried little while the sidekick had a mule’s load, and dirt fell off them in cascades. From inside, the gunner’s hand reached through the open hatch, grabbing wrists and heaving, and they were both sprawled on the flooring, with the sacks, and they clawed their way towards the central seats, and the harnesses were clamped shut. A gunner handed Rat headphones with a face microphone.
Jericho spoke first, ‘We had a hit, yes?’
‘I had a hit, yes, I did. The big man, I dropped him.’
‘And the rest? Where are—?’
A shrug for an answer.
The pilot cut across Jericho, slapped his arm. ‘I have three others. Am I looking for them? Are they running, or down?’
Jericho heard Rat’s voice, distant, detached and distorted, ‘Separated in the storm. Weather was horrendous. I can’t say more.’
And also saw Slime reach out and snatch the headset off the sniper’s head, clamping it on his own. He spoke. ‘We waited for them, they sent us forward. God’s truth. Rat wanted to bring us all in one group, they said to push on – that’s the woman and the turncoat. The Boss, don’t know where he is. Last night he took a thrashing in the village where the gathering was, then was shot, flesh wound. We could not have carried him, not through the storm, not with the chase. He sent us on, and they did . . . Don’t look at me like that – you weren’t fucking there, you don’t know.’
Rat had the headset back. ‘There were explosions, could have been missile strikes, a hell of a way off and on a different line, out into the bloody sand, like they were lost. We did all we could have done.’
They went up, fast, low. Jericho sensed the enormity of what had happened there that night, through the darkness hours, and that the men were scarred and should not be closely examined yet. ‘Don’t look at me like that – you weren’t fucking there, you don’t know.’ Probably fair comment. He was not aware that the expression on his face, in his eyes, implied disapproval or could be taken as a response to an obvious lie. He had nothing more to contribute, and all the usual shit about breaking open bottles and popping corks and chinking glasses always seemed so inappropriate when the moment came. He felt a great weight of sadness; it settled i
n his stomach and he bowed his head. The Iron Duke had expressed it well, Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
The search began. They started on a zigzag course and went where they had been told, the dials showing north or west, away from the sanctuary of the Omani border. Twice Jericho saw the pilot, irritable, flick his finger hard against the Perspex covering of the fuel gauge, as if that rap might produce evidence of another dozen litres in the tanks. Ahead of Jericho was desert, virgin and pure and, as he well knew, deadly.
Remarks about needles in bloody haystacks were not called for. The pilot had good eyes, and scanned the ground. Nothing moved below them except the shadow of the helicopter.
It might have been a headscarf or a shawl.
Beyond it, dumped at the start of the sand line, was a rifle, barrel buried and stock raised. Then a bright and bulky bag, Another bag, or sack, one of its straps covered over by sand but the other visible. No footmarks left, just the trail of debris. Things that were heavy, awkward, or had fallen off their backs, a man’s and a woman’s.
The trail led into the sands.
‘I will not fucking leave you, I will not.’
He was down, half on his backside, and would have subsided into the sand if she had not grabbed hold of his arm and taken the weight of him. She was braced and she tugged, spitting the accusation at him, ‘You want to give up? You want to stop?’
There was nothing left in his throat, no voice. Like it was rasped with a carpenter’s sandpaper. Raw and painful from the sand lodged there.
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