‘How much of a target would you be, generally?’
‘Any Westerner’s a target,’ said Jordan, ‘but there are different sorts. The insurgents generally strike at the coalition forces. They throw mortars at the Green Zone, car bombs at checkpoints and they fire RPGs at convoys. They’re making a point, you know, which is lost when they blow up a commercial vehicle. The criminal gangs target any Westerner, but they tend to go for the weakest links. You never hear of them kidnapping a four-star general, do you? They take engineers, journalists and charity workers, the ones who aren’t defended. Guys like us fall into the grey area between. We’re not important enough to get the insurgents fired up, and we’re too well armed to be kidnapped. Geordie was the first of our guys to run into a problem.’
‘I saw on CNN that there are twelve hundred killings a month. They’re not all coalition troops, are they?’
‘Mainly locals,’ said Muller. ‘The insurgents keep killing police and army recruits, most of whom are Sunnis. But the Sunnis give as good as they get. There’s a lot of tit-for-tat going on.’
‘Do you have problems recruiting locals?’ asked Shepherd.
‘The problem is dealing with all the applicants,’ said Muller. ‘For every vacancy around three hundred men want the job. They want to feed their families. Most Iraqis are good, honest, hard-working people. I’d stack the guys working for us here against any of our employees in the States.’
‘It’s the insurgents that are the problem?’
‘Damn right,’ said Muller. ‘And most are from outside Iraq. They can’t afford to have democracy work here because of the domino effect around the region.’
‘What John isn’t telling you, though, is that every day more ordinary Iraqis are lining up with the insurgents,’ said Jordan. ‘They’ve had enough of their country being occupied and they want the coalition forces out.’
‘Like I said back in London, it’s a minefield,’ said Muller. ‘Anyway, the politics don’t worry me. We’re here to do a job as professionally as possible.’
They turned off the main road and drove through a pretty suburb, the pavements dotted with spreading palm trees. Most of the houses were in gated compounds.
‘This is one of the more upmarket residential suburbs,’ said Muller. ‘In Saddam’s day it was where his favoured civil servants lived. Now most of it is rented to expats.’
Several houses had armed guards in front of them, walls topped with broken glass, hi-tech barbed wire and CCTV cameras. It was a stark contrast to the peaceful suburbs Shepherd had driven through in Dubai.
Ahead there was a line of parked cars, the drivers leaning against the vehicles. ‘What’s going on there?’ asked Shepherd.
‘That’s the line for the local filling station,’ said Muller. ‘The locals can wait up to five hours for fuel.’ There were no women in the queue, and most of the men glared at the Mercedes and Land Cruisers as they went by. The filling station was surrounded by anti-blast barriers topped with razor wire, and half a dozen Iraqis with AK-47s guarded the entrance and exit.
‘You’d think that with all the oil they’ve got petrol would be easier to buy,’ said Shepherd.
‘It’s not that there’s a shortage, it’s the security,’ said Muller. ‘Gas stations are prime targets for insurgents.’
The convoy took a left turn, then a right, and ahead a large metal gate rattled open. Two big Iraqi men stood at attention in dark blue uniforms, pistols holstered on their waists. One was talking on a transceiver, the other saluted briskly as they drove into the compound.
‘Home sweet home,’ said Muller.
The three vehicles pulled up in a large concrete courtyard bordered by three two-storey houses with flat roofs. Three flags flew on angled poles that protruded over the main door of the middle building – the Stars and Stripes, the South African and Iraqi flags. The buildings were shaded by tall palm trees and terracotta pots, filled with glossy-leaved bushes, dotted the courtyard.
They climbed out of the Land Cruisers and the Mercedes as the metal gate rattled shut. Muller pointed at the central building. ‘Those are offices, the communications centre and equipment store,’ he said. He gestured at the house on the right, ‘Most of our guys are billeted there when they’re in town,’ then at the third: ‘We’ve got guest quarters over there, and the ground floor is for eating and recreation. A local cooks for us but the guys are big fans of barbecues.’
‘Sounds good,’ said the Major.
‘We thought we’d eat first,’ said Jordan. ‘We’ve had nothing since breakfast.’
‘Fine by me,’ said the Major. ‘The food on the plane wasn’t great.’
‘Pat here does the barbecuing,’ said Bosch. ‘He’ll make someone a terrific wife one day.’
‘Don’t make me shoot you again, Carol,’ said Jordan.
She raised her eyebrows in mock horror. ‘You said that was an accident.’
Muller suggested that they shower and change first, so Shepherd, the Major, Armstrong, Shortt and O’Brien carried their bags into the guest house. Downstairs, there was a pool table and a big-screen television beside a wall lined with DVDs. A staircase led up to the bedrooms. Each had its own shower room.
Shepherd took off the bulky body armour, showered, changed into a grey polo shirt and black jeans, then went downstairs and out through a back door that led to a terraced area. Beyond, he could see a large swimming-pool, complete with diving-board. Jordan was presiding over a huge brick-built barbecue, his shirtsleeves rolled up. In front of him, hissing and spitting, were some of the biggest pieces of meat Shepherd had ever seen. O’Brien was standing next to him.
Muller had changed into a garish Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts and flip-flops, with Ray-Bans on top of his head. He was holding a bottle of Budweiser and pointed at a blue and white cooler filled with beer and wine. ‘Help yourself,’ he said.
‘Booze is okay here?’ asked Shepherd.
‘In the compound it’s fine,’ said Muller. ‘We can’t be seen from the outside.’
There was the rattle of gunfire in the distance – Kalashnikovs, half a dozen at least. The shooting went on for a full thirty seconds, which Shepherd knew meant that a fair amount of reloading was going on. ‘That sounds like a waste of perfectly good rounds,’ he said.
‘You hear it all the time,’ said Muller, laconically. ‘Weddings, funerals, birthdays, any chance they get they’ll let loose.’
‘They understand the basic rule of gravity? Everything that goes up has to come down?’ asked Shepherd, and helped himself to a Budweiser. A bottle opener was tied to the lid of the cooler and he used it to flip off the cap.
‘They get so caught up in it that they forget,’ said Muller. ‘There’s at least ten deaths a week from bullets falling out of the sky, and God alone knows how many injuries.’
‘The police and the army don’t do anything?’
‘Most of the time it’s the cops and soldiers doing the firing,’ said Muller.
The sun was going down and a slight breeze blew across the swimming-pool that felt good on Shepherd’s skin. Two military helicopters clattered overhead. Shepherd craned his neck and shaded his eyes. Apaches. Serious helicopters with serious firepower.
Armstrong and the Major came outside, followed by Bosch, Haschka and two of the drivers. The men were all wearing casual shirts and shorts but Bosch had changed into a green and blue rough silk dress that showed off a pair of good legs. Her hair was loose and she had put on a thin gold necklace with a jade charm. She was much more feminine without her fatigues and body armour, and had a much sexier walk now that she had swapped army boots for strappy sandals. She went to Jordan and obviously said something that riled him because he waved a spatula at her.
O’Brien walked up to them with a plate of steaks. ‘Are you guys eating?’ he asked.
‘Is there any left?’ asked Shepherd.
O’Brien grinned.
Shepherd went over to the barbecue and picked up a plate. The m
eat smelled good, and there was a lot of it. Jordan slapped a huge T-bone steak on to his plate, then a lamb chop and a chicken drumstick.
‘Vegetables?’ asked Shepherd, hopefully.
Bosch slapped him on the back. ‘In South Africa, chicken is a vegetable.’ She laughed. ‘You need fattening up, anyway. Get some meat on your bones.’ She picked up a plate and pointed at the steak she wanted, a massive T-bone that virtually covered her plate and was still dripping blood.
They walked together to a large table on the terrace, where O’Brien was already sitting. Shepherd and Bosch sat down opposite him. ‘I could get used to this,’ said O’Brien, through a mouthful of steak. Shepherd picked up his knife and fork. He didn’t feel like eating, but he knew his body needed fuel for what lay ahead. He cut a piece of steak and forced himself to chew.
Muller’s transceiver crackled. He put it to his ear and spoke into it. Then he said, ‘The cavalry’s here.’ A minute later there was a knock on the front door. He went to open it and came back with Richard Yokely. He was wearing a blue flak jacket over a cream safari suit and was holding a Kevlar helmet.
‘I just hope that Charlotte Button doesn’t know you’ve ridden into town,’ said the Major, shaking Yokely’s hand. ‘You’re just about her least favourite person at the moment.’
Yokely grinned. ‘What’s upset the lovely Charlie now?’ he asked.
Shepherd raised a hand. ‘That would be me,’ he said.
‘She’s on your case, is she?’
‘She’s not a happy bunny,’ said Shepherd.
‘She knows you’re here?’
‘She does now, yes.’
‘And she’s given her blessing?’
Shepherd shrugged. ‘It’s more that I’m here on sufferance.’
The Major put a hand on Yokely’s shoulder. ‘For those of you who don’t already know him, this is Richard. He’s going to help us keep tabs on Spider.’
Yokely raised a hand in salute, and the Major introduced the rest of the team to him. ‘Have I missed much?’ Yokely asked.
‘We were waiting for you,’ said Shepherd. ‘Not everyone knows what’s going to happen, so I’ll run through it from the start.’
‘I’m all ears,’ said Yokely.
The Sniper liked shooting at night. For one thing, it was cooler. During the day, lying in wait for hours meant putting up with the interminable Baghdad heat, always in the high forties and often the fifties. Even if he was lucky enough to find a place in the shade, it was still unbearably hot and he had to keep drinking to replenish the water he lost through sweat. The nights were more comfortable: there were fewer patrols and fewer locals, which meant there was less chance of him being spotted. There were only two downsides of killing at night: fewer Americans were around to shoot at – mostly they stayed in their vehicles – and the flash from the barrel of his rifle could be seen.
The Americans had helicopters over the city all the time, and above them the unmanned planes they used for surveillance, with cameras so powerful they could look down through cloud and see everything. At night his body temperature was more visible to infrared sensors, so he shot from a concealed position whenever he could. He’d found an abandoned apartment on the fourth floor of a building that overlooked one of the city’s busy intersections. He had a locksmith friend who had made him a key to get into it.
Tonight’s kill was to be special. The Sniper was hunting a specific target. A month earlier an American Humvee had killed a four-year-old girl. It had been in the middle of the day and the child had been with her mother, walking on the pavement. The woman had stopped to cross the road. She’d seen the Humvee speeding towards them, followed by three troop-carriers, but the little girl had been looking the other way and had stepped into the path of the convoy. The Humvee hadn’t even slowed and she had died immediately. Bits of her body were scattered over fifty yards.
When the Humvee stopped, the driver had stayed in his cab. A lieutenant and four soldiers had piled out of a troop-carrier but there was nothing they could do. A group of angry Iraqis had gathered and youths threw stones at the soldiers. As word of the little girl’s death spread, the crowd grew and within minutes several hundred men and women were screaming at the Americans. More stones were thrown and the lieutenant had pulled his men back. The convoy had driven off, leaving the mother kneeling in the road, weeping for her dead child.
Afterwards there had been no apology from the soldier who had been driving the Humvee, no acknowledgement from the army that they had been responsible for the little girl’s death. The father had queued for hours to get into the Green Zone to talk to someone about what had happened, but had been refused entry. He had phoned but no one in authority had spoken to him. He had hired a translator to write a letter in English but it was ignored. The driver of the Humvee had never been put on trial. After a month the army announced that there had been an internal investigation and the little girl’s death had been ‘an unfortunate accident’. The case was closed. That was when her father had approached the Sniper. He had offered to pay him a thousand dollars to kill the Humvee driver, but the money had been refused. The Sniper did not kill for money. He killed because he wanted the infidels out of his country. He killed because they were the enemy, and because he was serving Allah by doing what he did best. The Sniper was happy to kill Americans, and even happier to know that every one he killed went straight to hell. He had turned down the offer of payment but told the father that, once the soldier had been killed, he was to pay for a party for the street he lived in: he should kill a dozen lambs and distribute the meat to the poor. The father had readily agreed.
The patrol varied its route each night, but the Sniper had a dozen men around the city waiting to report on which way it would be coming that night. On the three previous nights the patrol had taken a different route and the Sniper had gone home without firing his weapon. He shifted his weight. He had padded his knees with foam rubber but, even so, it was painful kneeling on the wooden floor. The tip of the Dragunov barrel was resting on the windowsill.
As the Spotter’s mobile phone burst into life the Sniper jumped. The Spotter put the phone to his ear, listened, then grinned. He nodded at the Sniper. ‘He is coming,’ he said. ‘He will be here in five minutes, inshallah. There are three Humvees and he is driving the second.’
The Sniper got himself into position. Tonight’s would be a difficult shot, perhaps the most difficult he had ever made. The windows of the Humvee would almost certainly be up and the glass was bullet-proof. For him to make the shot, the window had to be down.
As he waited, the Sniper recited a passage from the Koran. Reciting the Koran brought him closer to his God and relaxed him. He knew that he did what he did with God’s blessing. God had given him the talent to kill Americans, so the Sniper was sure that God smiled on him with every kill he carried out. And when it came time for the Sniper to leave his life on earth, he knew that God would have a special place for him in heaven.
The mobile phone rang and the Spotter took the call. ‘Two minutes,’ he said. ‘Inshallah.’
The Sniper took a deep breath. In two minutes another American would be dead.
Jeff Keizer yawned and wished he’d finished his coffee before he’d got into the Humvee. He badly needed a caffeine kick – he could barely keep his eyes open. He gripped the steering-wheel with gloved hands and blinked as he tried to focus on the vehicle in front of him.
‘Come on, Jeff, stay awake,’ said the soldier in the front passenger seat. Lance ‘Mother’ Hubbard was twenty-three but looked younger and always had a comic tucked into his body armour.
‘I’m double shifting,’ said Keizer. ‘I should be asleep.’
‘Who are you covering for?’
‘Buddy. His stomach’s playing up again.’ The Humvee ahead turned sharply to the left and Keizer swung the wheel to follow. ‘Call him up and tell him we’re not in a race, will you?’
‘There was an IED attack along this stretch yesterda
y,’ said Hubbard. ‘Everyone’s a little jumpy.’
‘Yeah, but we’re supposed to be patrolling,’ said Keizer. ‘How are we supposed to see anything at this speed?’
‘Better this than we get blown to pieces,’ said Hubbard.
‘Yeah, well, it was driving like this that got the little girl killed,’ said Keizer. ‘And Buddy’s been a mess ever since.’
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ said Hubbard. ‘The inquiry cleared him.’
‘That was a whitewash, and you know it. What did you think they’d do? Throw him to the wolves? Have him stand trial in an Iraqi court? That was never going to happen.’
‘He wanted to talk to the parents, you know that?’
‘Yeah. He said.’
‘The brass told him not to go near them. Didn’t want him to admit liability, but all he wanted to do was to tell them he was sorry. He’s got a five-year-old sister. It’s fucked him up and the army’s doing nothing to help him.’
‘Which is why I’m doing his shift,’ said Keizer.
‘Nah, you don’t know how fucked up he is. He’s talking about killing himself.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Damn right,’ said Hubbard.
‘That’s heavy,’ mused Keizer.
‘Jeff!’ yelled Hubbard. The Humvee ahead had braked and was skidding to the right. Keizer stamped hard on his brake and cursed. He twisted the steering-wheel to the right and the vehicle started to skid. He pumped the brake and cursed again.
The Humvee skidded to a halt just feet away from the vehicle in front. A second later Keizer and Hubbard lurched forward as the third Humvee in the convoy thudded into them. Keizer looked in his rear-view mirror. The driver behind was throwing up his hands and swearing.
‘What the hell happened?’ asked Hubbard. He twisted in his seat and shouted up to his machine-gunner, Jack Needham, who was still at his post. ‘You okay, Jack?’
‘Bit bruised, but I saw it coming,’ shouted Needham.
‘What happened? Why did they stop?’ asked Keizer.
‘A pick-up truck shed its load at the intersection,’ Needham yelled back. ‘Boxes everywhere. You know how they overload those things.’
Hot Blood: The Fourth Spider Shepherd Thriller (A Dan Shepherd Mystery) Page 30