Cobus had given orders that no one was to leave the house. There was a price on Sammy’s head. If a member of the family were seen in the street, someone would inform the police or the local Shia militia, which were generally the same thing; not because they believed Sammy was a traitor. They would do so for the reward.
After discussion with Cobus, Sammy had also given strict instructions that no one was to mention to either friends or family the plan to flee to Mosul until after the escape was successful. Far better that they fled first and then once in a safe place they could call and inform those close to them where they were.
It was Sammy’s nature to indulge Fara. She was used to getting her own way. Now, for the first time in her life, she felt penned in, trapped like the songbirds you see in bamboo cages on terraces and rooftops in Iraqi houses. Fara was still angry that she had been barred from the school and it irritated her that she was unable to make her weekly visit to see Aunt Zahrah, the surviving sister of her mother. She knew the next time she went might be the last time, that it would be to say goodbye.
Fara had put off the journey to Mosul in the belief that the revenge killings would stop, that life would get back to normal. The day I appeared in a shemagh, that belief withered and died. She knew that they were leaving Baghdad and would never return.
Early Wednesday morning, at the same time that Colonel McQueen was setting off for Basra, Fara slipped from her room while the rest of the family was still sleeping. She hadn’t gone to bed with a plan. Sometimes in our dreams plans make themselves, we create reality the way we would like it to be. She showered, applied her makeup and dressed in her favourite suit. It wasn’t from Paris, but the tailors in Baghdad are unusually skilled. They take the designs from the pages of Vogue and copy them exactly. In the suit, Fara was herself again.
She went downstairs to the place where they had stored the two bags each they would take on the journey to Mosul. From her sister-in-law’s bag she borrowed an abaya and hijab, the black, full-length robe and headscarf. Combined with her suit it would keep her warm this chilly morning. Although there was a risk that someone might recognize her, she believed it to be far less risky than covering her face with a veil. In a time of suicide bombers and mob paranoia Fara did not want to draw attention by appearing to be someone attempting to conceal their identity. With a string shopping bag over her arm, she set off for Aunt Zahrah’s house, a twenty-minute walk through Karada.
Zahrah was delighted to see her favourite niece and made Fara sit down and have breakfast. Her delight changed to horror when Fara shared with her the family plan to flee to the north of Iraq as part of an American convoy.
Aunt Zahrah was shrill and unreasonable in her outrage. She had never liked Sammy, and had never accepted that he was good enough for Fara. How could he expect Fara to travel to Mosul in some dirty army truck with a group of unknown foreigners? She ignored Fara’s protests that they would be travelling in very comfortable American SUVs. And what about the poor general? At his age. It’s all very well for the children and that plump brother and his wife, but Sammy really could not expect her, Fara, to be humiliated by the indignity of being moved around like cattle or those terrible al-Qaeda prisoners who all deserved to be shot.
Aunt Zahrah hammered home her case. It was the wrong time of year to leave Baghdad. It had been snowing in the north. The roads were impassable and frozen. The children would die of flu. What kind of mother was she? The filthy Kurds would rape her and steal her precious possessions. Why didn’t Sammy think about these things? He had never provided properly – Aunt Zahrah overlooked that it was Sammy who had bought the very flat she was living in with money he had earned from Spartan, a fact she brushed aside when Fara reminded her. She was in full flow and greatly enjoying herself. No ridiculous trifles such as mere facts were going to stop her rant now.
The thing is, she insisted, an army truck is going to be draughty, cramped and wholly unsuitable. She had once driven in one in 1973 and the bumps had damaged her hips so that they still hurt, even now, when she walked to the market. Had she not told Fara the story a hundred times?
Eventually Fara calmed her down, and persuaded her that Sammy had arranged for three luxurious SUVs crammed full of luxuries to transport them up to Mosul in comfort, warmth and style. If Zahrah did not believe her she could go over to cousin Gabir’s shop garage and see them herself. To prove it, Fara gave her a packet of caramel-coated popcorn, a special treat and part of the goody bag that McQueen and Tanya had pulled together for Sammy’s family.
Still suspicious, sulking that she had not been asked to help with the arrangements – had she not moved the entire family from that shithole in Habbaniyah to the upmarket Mansur district? – Aunt Zahrah allowed herself to be mollified as she munched on the sweet popcorn. But she was still annoyed.
Fara promised that as soon as they were in Mosul she would call right away and let Zahrah know that they were all safe. The two women embraced and Fara went out to pick up a few treats for a picnic on the way up to Mosul. It would be a long drive and everyone would be sure to appreciate something to eat and drink in the cars, even if they could not stop and get out.
When Fara left her aunt’s apartment, it was mid-morning with the spring sun breaking through the gloom.
The abaya and hijab she was wearing symbolized for Fara the repression and humiliation of women. A movement backward in time. In using these garments as a disguise to pass through her own neighbourhood, she felt as if she were striking a blow against the hated Shia fanatics. Hatred was in the air like a virus, spreading through Baghdad in a plague of ethnic cleansing and the obscene intimacy of mutually shed blood. So keen had Fara been on her small act of revenge, she had forgotten these dangers and neglected to think of the consequences.
It was a pleasure being out in the fresh air and she strolled through the market, filling her bag with vegetables, dates, a bundle of mint. She was feeling content for the first time in weeks, glad to be out and about, glad that she had made the effort to visit Aunt Zahrah and say goodbye. She was even becoming optimistic about their new life in Mosul. As she selected vegetables she hummed to herself.
While Fara was shopping, her Aunt Zahrah suddenly had a thought. It was all very well Sammy arranging for these fancy vehicles, but who on earth was going to drive them? His brother? Almost as useless as Sammy. The general? He was over eighty and frail. She was furious. It was typical of the man not to think of these basic fundamentals, which is why they should have called her in the first place. What they should do is hire a nice clean taxi and – typical – it was up to her, Zahrah, to make the arrangements. She would call Abeer al-Mazyad. Her driver, as she liked to say.
Aunt Zahrah got straight on the phone to Abeer and Abeer went to her apartment to discuss the confidential nature of the job she was proposing. A single woman and a married man would not normally meet alone in these intolerant times, but this was different. As the Arabs say, everyone has the same religion when it comes to money. They drank tea. Zahrah drove a hard bargain, and Abeer went home to tell his wife that, within the week, he was going away for a couple of days to drive Sammy Mashooen and his family north to Mosul.
Women in Iraq had taken to wearing veils, but the men don’t always wear the trousers. Mrs al-Mazyad went mental. What was her husband thinking? She had never heard anything so outrageous in her life. Leaving her alone while he runs off to take criminals to their luxury second home in the mountains? Didn’t he know the roads were plagued by al-Qaeda, mujahideen, foreigners, or even worse, the Amerikeyeh?
When Abeer told his wife it was safe, they were going with an American convoy, travelling in armoured American vehicles hidden at Gabir’s shophouse, she hit the roof. How could they be so selfish involving her husband in their devious schemes? If the Americans were escorting them, it was proof they were collaborators and traitors. Couldn’t he see that? It had been all very well for Abeer, a Shia, to suck up to them when the Sunni wielded the whip. The world had cha
nged. Saddam had gone. The Shia had no need to bow to anyone but Allah. And when Abeer was killed out there, ferrying around his Sunni friends, who would look after her and the children? God would damn all men who were thoughtless pigs and who never looked after their families.
Furious with her stupid husband and almost weeping with self-pity, Mrs al-Mazyad went straight to the market where, over bartering for bags of rice and raisins, she bumped into her two sisters and best friend, who provided perfect shoulders to cry on. Like her, they were outraged. They went straight home and told their husbands, this juicy droplet of gossip flowing like the Tigris in the rainy season through the streets and, like the rain, sprinkling across the neighbourhood indiscriminately.
I had been at Tanya Carillo’s bedside all this time, holding her hand, trying to focus on Tanya, and thinking about what we were going to do now that the convoy to Mosul was off the agenda.
The moment I exited the hospital, I saw that Cobus was still updating the others. The mood was grim.
‘Mad Dog going to make it?’ asked Seamus.
‘He’s a tough SOB.’
‘Fucking cunts,’ said Dai. ‘How’s the girl?’
‘She’s doing OK.’
‘Let’s get our arses up to the embassy and grab a coffee and work out what the fuck we’re going to do.’
It was a pretty crappy reunion. Seamus and Les had been looking forward to meeting up with Mad Dog, who with Cobus had been holding the fort and striving to maintain what we had all built up. Now it was unlikely that they would ever see McQueen again. We drove to the car park, parked up and locked our longs in the wagons. I had already told them about the increased IDF threat, so we kept on our body armour as we trooped morosely into the chow hall and grabbed a table.
We sat for a moment in silence. I thought about Tanya lying in the narrow cot, her slight body barely making a bulge below the sheets. I took a breath. Four years of hearts and minds, twenty thousand fresh troops in Sadr City, and the death toll just kept rising. They had even managed to shoot the legs out from under Mad Dog. And I’d thought he was bulletproof.
‘Fucking country,’ said Les, and I guessed the same thoughts had been going through his mind.
‘There won’t be a convoy going to Mosul,’ I said, stating the obvious. ‘It’s going to be dodgy, thin-skinned vehicles and only four of us.’ I paused again. All eyes were on me. ‘If anyone wants out . . .’
No one spoke for several seconds. Dai then expressed the opinions of them all.
He leaned across the table. ‘Fuck off, Ash.’
‘I had to ask.’
‘You’ve asked. Now get on with it,’ said Seamus.
I’d anticipated the response, but it had to be said. We were a team, not a unit. Even the army gets paid.
‘I still reckon we go for it. Stick to the original plan. Just because we’re not running with a convoy doesn’t make a difference. Sammy and his brother can both shoot.’
‘Don’t forget Mad Dog’s convoy just got the crap shot out of it and they had a hell of a lot more shooters than four white-eyes and two Iraqis,’ Dai butted in.
I thought about it for a moment. ‘But that’s the point. It was a convoy. Lots of tasty-looking lorries in a line with high-profile PSD vehicles escorting it. That’s a target begging to be hit, a civilian contractor convoy without military back-up. We will look totally different. The highway is still full of civvy traffic. As long as we stay within sight of each other and don’t all line up on each other’s tail, we will blend in with the local traffic.’
They all took that in. It was a good point. We would be indistinguishable from the rest of the vehicles. There would be no reason to ambush us.
‘Ash is right,’ said Seamus, and there was a chorus of assent.
‘But I think we need more firepower,’ said Les. ‘If the shit does hit the fan I want some machine-guns, especially if there are only four of us.’
I remember in the old days when each rifleman had an SLR and each section had a GPMG, that the GPMG represented 70 per cent of the section’s firepower. A couple of belt-fed guns would be a massive force multiplier for us, especially at ranges over 300m, which we might well encounter away from the cities.
‘Cobus, you still in contact with that guy on the black market who can sort us out with some weapons?’
‘Sure, hang on a second, let me just take this call.’ His phone was ringing. He tried answering it but reception was notoriously poor in the embassy chow hall. ‘Wait one minute, I’ll be back.’ He jogged outside to answer the call.
‘OK,’ I continued, ‘we get hold of a couple of PKMs, maybe rifles with decent sights on them, then find out when another convoy is due to head up north, there’s probably one a day, and we can just follow it up. If there are any ambushes they will try it on with the convoy in front of us. We can just hide in with the local civvy traffic.’
We immediately started on a lively discussion debating the potential tactics since there would only be four of us. Whether it would be wiser for all of us to be in one heavily armed gun truck, or split into two pairs so that we could have one PSD car front and back, bookending Sammy’s family, or even split up among the family members so that each of us could be driving a vehicle and at least rely upon each other’s driving skills.
We decided that we would use two cars, two of us in each, and maybe even take a couple of family members with us in each car. Sammy and his brother could drive two cars certainly, and we were debating who could drive the third, his fifteen-year-old son who was already driving all over Baghdad, or Fara, Sammy’s wife. Possibly if we took two family members each in the PSD wagons, we would only need two vehicles for the rest of the family anyway.
‘Guys, there is a serious problem.’ Cobus was back in from making his phone call, and the grave tone in his voice shut us up immediately.
We all looked at him surprised. His face was ashen under his tan.
‘That was Sammy on the phone,’ Cobus continued. ‘His cousin Gabir has been killed by the police. The IP raided the house and the garage. They have taken our vehicles . . .’
‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘They shot Gabir during the raid, said he was storing weapons for the insurgency.’
‘Oh fuck, the cunting vehicles. How the hell did they know?’ asked Dai.
I couldn’t believe it. Seamus and Les turned to us curiously. Having only just arrived we hadn’t yet briefed them on Gabir’s shophouse.
I turned to explain. ‘We stored three SUVs at Sammy’s cousin’s garage in Karada – all loaded up with our weapons, ammunition, medpacks, radios, spare tyres, petrol, you name it.’
‘They were packed with all of Sammy’s worldly goods, as well,’ added Dai.
‘Without those vehicles the whole operation is fucked,’ I said. I shook my head, then echoed Dai’s question. ‘How the hell did they know to raid it? Did someone spot them loading the baggage?’
‘It was Fara.’
‘What?’ I said.
This was becoming a pantomime.
‘She compromised Gabir’s location. Worse, she’s compromised the whole escape.’ Cobus looked ill.
He told us that Sammy had received two phone calls. The first was from a panicked neighbour of Gabir, saying he’d seen Gabir being executed in the street by the police and he was looking after Gabir’s wife and children. The second call was from Fara’s Aunt Zahrah, a total bitch, demanding to know what had happened to her driver, who had just been arrested because of Sammy.
After calming her down, Sammy had debriefed Zahrah and found that Fara had been to visit her that morning and told her of their plan to escape from Baghdad. The aunt had then arranged off her own back for her own driver, Abeer, to help drive the family to Mosul. Abeer told his wife and she in a rage grabbed her shopping basket and marched straight out to the Shia market. Within twenty minutes, the IP had arrested Abeer and put a bullet in the back of Gabir’s head.
Knowing how Baghdadis gossiped, Sammy
understood immediately what had happened. Abeer’s wife had managed to tell half of Baghdad about the escape plan, and as soon as the Shia realised she was talking about the ex-wing commander, they had lifted Abeer immediately to get the details out of him. The fact that Fara had told the aunt about Gabir and that the aunt had then told the taxi driver was a tragic and unnecessary embellishment to the conversation. Gabir had died because these stupid women could not keep their damned mouths shut. Sammy had been beside himself with rage on the phone with Cobus.
‘Sammy has asked us if we can meet him at Gabir’s place. He’s on his way there now.’
‘Yes, of course we can,’ I said. ‘We’ll take two cars. Cobus take Dai with you.’ I nodded to Seamus and Les. Cobus was driving a white SUV, common in Baghdad, but a white SUV packed with more than two people looked like a vehicle on a mission. The three of us in a saloon car would draw less attention.
Cobus got his vest on and we trooped down to the car park. My mind was racing. Two facts were in play. Firstly the Shia militia really were in deep with the IP; in fact, the two groups might as well have been interchangeable. Secondly, more importantly, they now definitely knew that our plan was to get Sammy to Mosul.
I had thought that, once up in Mosul, in a Sunni area where the family was well known and had deep roots, they would be safe. The problem was that I now thought we might not make it even halfway there, even if we got out of Baghdad. Searching for Sammy’s family in a city of millions was virtually impossible for the IP or the Mahdi Army, but placing ambushes on the single highway north would be a much easier task.
‘Cobus,’ I said before we got in our cars. ‘Fara never told the aunt where the safe house is right? Otherwise they would have lifted Sammy by now.’
‘Ja, that’s right.’
‘I’m thinking, Mosul is out now. It will be nearly impossible to get them up there. The militias and the IP will be looking for anyone heading north.’
Escape from Baghdad Page 18