by Chris Ryan
Beard ran his eyes up and down Bald, as if seeing him for the first time. But he kept the Makarov level with Bald’s head.
‘If NATO sent you, why you don’t wear uniform? You don’t have gun?’
Bald glanced up at the sky. The sun was nowhere and everywhere. Heat fireballed down over the desert, licked at his face. Sweat drenched his arms and back and his balls.
Bald said, ‘I’m ex-British Army.’
‘Why they send someone retired?’
Bald said, ‘Blame the fucking politicians. They promised no boots on the ground. Guys like me, strictly speaking, we’re not soldiers – just hired hands. So the suits get to keep their bullshit promise, and I get to teach dickwads like you how to beat Gaddafi.’
‘We were in the army,’ Beard said. ‘We know how to fight.’
‘But I can teach you how to win.’ Bald laughed scathingly. Took a step towards Beard. Then another. ‘You want to win the war, don’t you?’
Bald was standing six inches from Beard now. Could smell the foul body sweat and tobacco clinging to his skin. He noticed a scar on the guy’s neck. Similar to the one Carlos Tévez had. Beard said, ‘You have no paperwork. You are not in uniform. There is no one to back up your story.’ He gestured to his men. ‘How can I trust you?’
Bald pointed to the sky. ‘Right now there’s an unmanned spy drone 20,000 metres above us. There are cameras on board looking down on me now. There are people in London and Washington keeping tabs on those cameras. Live feeds.’
Beard paused and said, ‘Spy drone?’
Bald said, ‘Like I said, I’m here to help you.’
‘Gaddafi is a bad man.’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘A very bad man.’
Beard wavered for a moment longer. Then he made a cutting movement with his left hand, and his men lowered their rifles. Bald’s bluff had paid off. Beard started grinning. His mouth was a black hole, his teeth mostly missing. The few he had left were brown stubs, like cashew nuts.
‘My name is Younes,’ he said, offering Bald his ample hand. Bald accepted it. Firm grip, rough palm, brief. ‘We come from Benghazi. We were the first to rise against Gaddafi.’
‘John,’ said Bald. ‘This is Rachel.’
Younes gave Rachel the traditional warm Arabic greeting from man to woman, and pretended she didn’t exist.
He plucked a Turkish cigarette from a crumpled packet, which partly explained to Bald the rank smell coming off the guy, and said, ‘We are Kateeba.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Kateeba are the most experienced brigades of all the rebels. But there are not so many of us. We are overstretched. You say you are Special Forces. Then you are worth ten soldiers. A man like you could make a big difference.’
‘Our orders are to get to Tripoli.’
‘Then you are just in time. Our brothers are taking control of the city right at this moment. We will take you there.’
‘Won’t be necessary. Just tell me the way.’
‘You won’t make it alone. The Brother Leader still controls many towns and villages. Only we can take you and your friend across safely.’
Younes barked at his men in Arabic and they shot towards the Hilux in loose formation. Bald watched Rachel head back to the Land Rover, then said, ‘You still call Gaddafi the fucking Brother Leader?’
Younes smiled apologetically. ‘I mean “that piece-of-shit tyrant”. Forgive me. It is hard to lose habits after forty years. Even when they are bad ones.’
The rebels led the way. The Hilux took the lead, with the Land Cruiser a constant twenty metres behind. Bald and Rachel, in the Land Rover, tail-end-Charlied the convoy. The vehicles gunned down the highway, never dropping below 90 as they pushed through the land. At Bald’s east, over his right shoulder, was undulating desert the colour and texture of rawhide. Flat, hot, dust-laden. In the far distance he could make out a wash of mountains lengthening out into a plateau. West and north-west, across his left, was the Mediterranean. Endless blue. Imprisoning the land, rather than freeing it. The few towns they did pass through were brutal, sunbaked backwaters, with a mosque here and a Gaddafi monument there. Each town was as empty as a shopping-mall parking lot after closing time.
Bald was in a foul mood. He’d not had time to hook up with his Miami connect before departing St Petersburg, meaning he had to leave two bricks of coke with a wholesale value of more than fifty large left in the hotel room, and the money too – he couldn’t fully well secrete eighty thousand bucks on his person without alerting Rachel, who would no doubt bitch up the food chain to Daniel Cave about his side business. He left the coke and the cash with a heavy heart, and the consolation that if he completed the job, the size of the reward on the table would make the $130,000 drug stash look like pocket shrapnel.
Zawiyah was the last major town before Tripoli. The highway suddenly degraded into a black smear, like a tar pit. They were travelling through Bomb Central. Before, the landscape had been mostly flat. Here it was just flat, pounded that way by hundreds of thousands of pounds of munitions.
Bald glanced at his Aquaracer. 0845 hours. A little over three hours since they had left the refugee town of Allouet el Gounna in Tunisia and raced for the border. Gaddafi’s regime was in its death throes, but the border crossing at Ra’s Ajdir, on Libya’s northernmost tip, was still closed. So Bald had decided to risk crossing open land outside Allouet el Gounna, eight kilometres to the south. He’d figured that Gaddafi’s loyalist homeboys had more important shit on their minds than running border patrols.
They nudged past Zawiyah and were now forty kilometres from Tripoli. Rachel finally got a signal on her iPhone, a fact announced by an irritating ringtone that made Bald want to eat his own face. Rachel hit Answer. A voice warbled something or other, then Rachel handed Bald the phone and said, ‘He wants to talk to you.’
Meaning Cave.
Bald reluctantly accepted the iPhone. Steered with his right hand, spoke with his left.
‘You’re a lucky man, John Boy.’ Cave’s voice was flecked with static.
‘A bunch of rebels almost fucking killed us,’ said Bald.
‘Yet you’re still alive. And guess what? You’re going to get to Tripoli just in time for the big show.’ Cave took Bald’s silence for ignorance and went on, ‘Operation Mermaid Dawn is happening as we speak. In a few hours Tripoli will have fallen.’
There was a sudden rush of air. A Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle whooshed high in the sky, drowning out the engine growl and Cave. Bald glimpsed the fighter jet scudding overhead, impossibly small against the sky, like a dust mote.
Cave went on, ‘A short while ago we made contact with people on the ground. In Benghazi. They disguised themselves as fishermen and entered Tripoli by sea. They’ve been waiting for the signal. We had our own sleeper network right in the heart of Gaddafi’s empire.’ He sounded pleased with himself. Bald imagined Cave in his swanky office, dainty feet perched on the edge of his expensive desk, smug grin plastered over his much too cleanly shaven face.
‘Most of the city has fallen by now,’ Cave continued. ‘Fucking great, isn’t it? Gaddafi’s boys saw the writing on the wall and melted away, just like that.’
Bald heard Cave click his fingers for effect, then said, ‘But why do I care?’
‘Parts of the city are still dangerous,’ Cave answered. ‘Lots of snipers. Running battles with the hardcore mob. You must get to Laxman first. Foreigners aren’t safe in Tripoli right now. If Laxman gets kidnapped, the technology will fall into Gaddafi’s hands. He might see the dust as the only way of winning the war.’
‘So where do I find Laxman?’
‘That’s why I’m calling. He flew out of Tampa on a fake passport. It’s just been red-flagged on a hotel reservation system. The Mansour Hotel. He’s posing as a journalist. Name of Moussa Al-Nasr. You’ll enjoy the company at the hotel. All those journos are based there. BBC, CNN, Sky.’
‘Who’s he making the handover to? Rup
ert fucking Murdoch?’
‘There might be a future for you in stand-up,’ deadpanned Cave. ‘No. Of course, the journalism thing is just a front. But we believe the handover will happen tomorrow: 1420 hours on the dot.’
‘But you won’t tell me who he’s smuggling the dust to.’
‘He’s in Libya,’ Cave reminded Bald. ‘Who do you think?’
Bald came up blank.
‘We think it’s Gaddafi,’ Cave said. He paused, but not long enough for Bald to get a word in. ‘Now get to Laxman before the Colonel’s heavies do. Do it right, mate, and we’ll do all right by you too. Remember. The Firm takes care of its own, John Boy.’
Cave killed the line and Bald handed the iPhone back to Rachel, who was still pretending not to overhear. She stashed it away and settled back into her seat. She looked as tired as Bald felt. She’d crashed out the moment they had stepped off the Gulfstream in Remada, a garrison town on the south-eastern tip of Tunisia, and hit the road. She’d also slept the moment they had stepped onto the Gulfstream on a private airfield in Kathleen, east of Clearwater. Eleven hours on the flight, another two on the ground. Thirteen hours’ sleep, all told. All that ephedrine in her bloodstream, it was going to catch up with her sooner or later.
Two kilometres beyond Zawiyah they arrived at a rebel checkpoint. Plastic barriers blocked both lanes of traffic. The checkpoint had been set up in the shadow of a monument venerating Gaddafi. It was covered in Arabic writing and looked like a smaller, lamer version of the Arc de Triomphe. A pair of rebel soldiers stood between the barriers, AK-47s dangling at their hips.
Gunfire crackled in the distance. Celebratory or hostile, it was hard to say. Younes and his men got out of the Hilux. The three soldiers hung around the checkpoint while Younes lit another tab and gestured for Bald to join him.
‘Wait here,’ Bald said to Rachel, nudging the Land Rover to a halt four metres to the rear of the Hilux. His gaze was drawn to half a dozen wounded rebels slumped against the body of a bombed T-72 tank. Their legs and arms were in fucking rag order. One guy’s nose had been blown apart. Flaps of charred skin were peeled open down the middle, and he had a serrated black triangle where the bone used to be.
Bald approached Younes through the cloud of Turkish cigarette smoke. It was spicy and at the same time smelled like a goat’s arse, and it got him asking himself what crap the manufacturers were putting in them.
‘I have news from Tripoli,’ said Younes. ‘It is good. Our brothers have taken most of the city. Only a few pockets of resistance remain. They are planning to attack the compound at Bab al-Azizya today.’
‘I don’t care about the compound. I need to find a guy.’
Younes flashed a face at Bald. He’d allowed him passage, but his demeanour suggested that was where his friendliness both began and finished. ‘This is Tripoli. Everyone is trying to find someone.’
Bald worked his body into a combative stance. ‘This guy’ – his voice was low, gravelly and lethal – ‘he’s a NATO contact. If I don’t get to him, your bosses will hang you from the nearest lamppost.’
Younes cleared his throat. ‘What is his name?’
‘That’s none of your business. Just tell me how to get to the Mansour Hotel.’
Younes suddenly developed a painful itch on his elbow. He was scratching it as he said, ‘I will speak with my comrades. They know the situation on the ground better than me. But I can promise nothing.’
‘Tell that to the NATO chiefs, pal.’
Younes nodded and hurried over to a senior-looking guy standing to the left of the checkpoint some ten metres from where Bald was standing. The man was of a similar age as Younes, had tousled hair and was dressed in a much more obvious uniform. Higher up the food chain, Bald presumed. The man and Younes immediately began an excitable conversation, taking turns to point furiously at the sky and then towards Tripoli on the horizon.
Bald kicked dirt and chewed tarmac and waited impatiently for Younes and his mucker to finish their lovers’ tiff. Younes folded his arms and said something the other guy didn’t like. He spat on the ground, gave Younes his back and walked towards Bald.
‘What’s the score?’ Bald asked.
‘The hotel you wish to go to . . .’
‘The Mansour?’
‘It’s in the east of the city. Not far. But the route is very dangerous. Many loyalists are roaming the streets.’
‘I’ll take my chances.’
Younes had joined them. He shook his head. ‘We are supposed to take over the checkpoint here. But I insisted that we go on to Tripoli. So I will personally show you the way.’ Bald recognized the tone of voice from his time in the Regiment. A soldier taking shit from a superior, relaying the order to someone else, barely disguising his anger. Fuck these Arab ragheads, Bald thought. Soon as the guns stopped firing they and every other Abdul in the country would discover that the West was king, and if they didn’t suck up to Washington and London they’d soon find themselves at the bottom of the fucking pile.
Younes was silent for a second. Then he went on, ‘There is something else. You said you arrived with the woman, Rachel? No one else travelled with you?’
‘No,’ said Bald. ‘Why?’
‘My friend says you are not the first SAS soldier to pass through here today.’
thirty-six
Tripoli, Libya. 0954 hours.
The Second Ring Road sucked them deeper into Tripoli, like a heroin user mainlining that second, addiction-creating hit. Rachel stared silently ahead. A battered road sign indicated that they were ten kilometres due west of Green Square. Bald could see several tall fires fizzing out of the city centre and dispensing tar-black smoke into the sky. Car tyres being lit up by loyalists to blanket the skies and obscure NATO fast air. Bald could smell the burning rubber from the car.
The road was wide as a berthed cruise ship, and Bald was able to easily navigate pockets of shrapnel and chunks of twisted metal that had once been cars. The road was lined with palm trees and lampposts of equal height, and fresh soil lay in great heaps on each side. Bald spotted several gated mansions set back from the road. No cars inside the gates. Abandoned, and probably in a rush. Giant posters of Gaddafi were stuck to the fronts of several light-brown apartment buildings. Several of them were sprayed with graffiti and bullet holes.
Past the June 11 Memorial Stadium, three kilometres deeper into Tripoli, the landscape changed. Whitewashed, flat-roofed city dwellings were arranged in neat lines. There was grass, and greenery, and trees other than palms. Dozens of three- and four-storey buildings stood half-finished, some with rough brickwork on the lower floors, others just steel bones draped in tarpaulin, all around them cranes and diggers left abandoned. Burned-out cars lined the road, its surface flecked with shrapnel and spent brass. Now Bald could make out the tak-tak-tak of distant gunfire and the crump of mortar rounds. The air was tamped with the smell of gunpowder and burning flesh. Bald felt his muscles harden.
For the first kilometre and a half they managed to steer clear of the fighting. They clung to the Second Ring Road as it contoured around the southern edge of the city, past the ribcages of apartment blocks and the jigsaw shrapnel of mortar rounds. The Hilux was ten metres ahead of the Land Cruiser and the Cruiser fifteen ahead of Bald and Rachel in the Land Rover.
The Hilux stopped forty metres shy of the turn-off from the Second Ring Road. The Land Cruiser too. The distant gunfire was now immediate, urgent. Three of the rebels vaulted off the back of the Land Cruiser. Heads down and clutching their AK-47s, they scrambled for cover by its sides, two guys to the right side, the third on the left, all looking frantically at the surrounding buildings, clueless as to where the shooter was firing from.
But Bald had seen the direction immediately the rounds had strafed the Hilux. The easy money was on the shooter coming from somewhere at his twelve o’clock. He’d looked up and spied a silvery glint beaming from a concrete overpass thirty metres down the road. And where the gunman was positioned gav
e him a clear line of sight over all three vehicles.
Stay here a second longer and the guy might plug us both full of holes, Bald figured. He grabbed Rachel’s wrist, kicked open his door and yanked her across and out of the Land Rover. They dropped onto scalding asphalt. Now Bald pushed himself up into a low run, ducking and speeding along the road to cover behind the Land Cruiser, pulling Rachel with him. He flung her behind the left rear wheel, making sure her head was fully below it. The two remaining rebels on the rear bed of the Land Cruiser were decked out in woodland-camo ponchos and baseball caps, and wore ear muffles and thick woollen gloves. They were angling the .50-cal at a row of buildings to their three o’clock. Not that they had any clue where the shots were coming from.
Rachel screamed, and Bald looked past her shoulder – at the rebel who had taken cover on the left side of the Cruiser. The guy’s body was a fucking mess. He was slumped against the front cab door, his head tucked into his chest. His guts were ripped open like an overcooked sausage that has split down the middle. His right hand was fastened around the grip of his AK-47; his left was wrapped around a spiral of intestines. He had voided his bowels, and the blood and excrement had congealed into a thick brown pool around his feet.
The .50-cal erupted. The earth shuddered. A thunderous sound assaulted Bald. Spent shells the size of screwdriver grips dinked onto the road.
‘Move, move!’ Bald shouted, dragging Rachel out from behind the Land Cruiser. They hurried, low, around the right side of the vehicle and made for the Hilux. Ten metres. The machine-gun continued to thunder at their backs. Thump, thump, thump. Six metres to the rear of the Hilux. Now five. Now four. Younes was crouched behind the right-side rear wheel of the Hilux. He saw Bald and Rachel and motioned for them to hurry over.
‘Your man’s at the overpass,’ said Bald.
Younes looked beyond the Hilux, in the direction Bald was pointing. Two figures were displacing from a spot midway along the overpass. They were clad in grey combats, black boots and grey jackets. Balaclavas over their heads.