by Baker, Adam
They lined the prisoners along the kerb and pulled off their hoods. Terrified men blinked at sudden sunlight.
A merc walked the line and checked faces. Short and slight. A woman. Her comrades deferred to her, like she was boss.
Her voice muffled by a gas mask:
‘Him.’
They unshackled Jabril and dragged him to the Suburban. They drove away.
Ali sat by the side of the road, dumb with shock. The street was still fogged with purple vapour. He could hear sirens get closer.
Najjar climbed through the shattered windshield. He fell into the street.
‘Hey,’ shouted Ali. ‘Over here.’
Najjar got up. His head was bleeding. He walked to the kerb, opened a penknife and cut Ali free.
He fetched a discarded AK from the back of the van. He checked it was loaded. He handed it to one of the boys.
‘Finish it, before we have company.’
The kid looked down at the assault rifle in his hand, and the prisoners sat at the kerb. The convicts sobbed and begged for mercy.
‘They are trash,’ advised Najjar. ‘Worse than dogs. You know what has to be done.’
The kid shouldered the rifle, closed his eyes and opened fire.
The Suburban sped down the expressway. They left Baghdad. Lucy and her crew peeled off gas masks. They opened the windows and cranked up Cypress Hill.
Voss drove the 4x4. Lucy sat on the back seat with Jabril, released his shackles with a universal key. She told him to hold his head back while she flushed his eyes with mineral water.
‘Thank you,’ said Jabril. ‘You saved my life.’
Lucy tapped his forehead with the muzzle of her pistol.
‘You’re not free yet, Jabril. Consider this parole.’
Into The Desert
Two choppers flew out of a golden dawn.
Raphael flew Talon. The webbed bench seats had been removed. The cargo compartment was stacked with equipment. The payload was draped with tarp, lashed with rope.
Gaunt flew Bad Moon. Lucy and her team were strapped in the rear.
They watched sunrise over Baghdad. Traders heading to market, skirting acres of airstrike rubble. Horse carts, wheeled fruit stalls, painted trucks. The morning haze would soon burn off and be replaced by a brilliant blue sky.
‘Got to make the journey before the noonday heat,’ said Gaunt. ‘Hotter the air, the lower our lift. We’ll burn a heck of a lot more fuel.’
The metal-planked floor of the Huey was lagged with sandbags. Coalition choppers regularly took AK hits as they flew downtown. Crew listened for the tick of bullets striking the airframe. Sometimes RPGs streaked from rooftops, militia hoping to knock out a tail rotor. Most Blackhawks were reinforced with Kevlar. Pilots knew to fly high, fly fast, vary their route. Gaunt had to improvise.
They passed the city limits. Cinder-block dwellings and tin-roof shanties replaced by scrubland.
Lucy breathed slow and steady, tried to get her heart rate under control. Adrenalin rush. ‘Don’t worry,’ Jabril had assured her. ‘It will be a short trip. You won’t see another living soul.’
She checked the 40mm grenade launcher bolted to the barrel-rail of her assault rifle, made sure it was locked tight.
Gaunt broadcast a final clearance request to the Regional Air Movement Control Centre in Qatar.
‘Roger that, Q-TAC. Confirm your last: we are clear all sectors north. You have our heading November, echo, echo, six three . . .’
They had filed a flight plan north to Mosul. They told Air Command they were shipping medical supplies.
Gaunt checked the laminated map-pocket on the leg of his flight suit. He nudged the cyclic. The helos banked west in tight formation.
They dropped off radar and skimmed the desert parallel to the Fallujah Expressway, a ragged ribbon of blacktop bisecting a boundless vista of dust. They flew fifty metres above the deck, skimmed the dunes at a hundred knots. They left Baghdad city limits and passed into the unmanaged airspace of Al Anbar Governate.
Lucy passed round a packet of salt tablets. They knocked them back with a swig of mineral water.
She took a tube of high-factor sun cream from her pack and smoothed lotion on her face and neck. She threw the tube to Toon. He squeezed a white worm of cream down each arm and massaged it into tattooed skin.
Toon had tattoos down both arms, Yakuza-style. Lucy asked him about it one night as they sat drinking in the Riviera Bar.
‘Momento mori,’ explained Toon, pointing at his arm. ‘The lion. Leo Fowler. Blackhawk developed gear trouble over Kuwait City. He was the only guy to walk away. Dropped dead of an embolism three months later. The thistle. Jimmy McDougal. Immigrant from Scotland. His wife left him. Locked himself in a barrack toilet cubicle and blew his brains out. My personal memorial wall. Nobody else remembers these guys. They aren’t listed among the fallen. But they were my friends.’
Lucy had no friends, no family, beyond the team. Better that way. During her days in Special Recon, she spent tense pre-mission hours slamming her knife into a dartboard while other squad members filled out next-of-kin and wrote goodbye letters to wives and kids. Every soldier she met could tell the story of some Dear John suicide, some beloved buddy that ate a bullet or drove into an abutment. She knew one guy with ‘Linda Forever’ tattooed on his forearm. Linda ran off with his brother so one night he sat in the barracks, poured caustic soda on his arm and sweated through the pain as flesh blistered and burned.
Better to travel light.
The Riv.
A low-ceiling dive favoured by security contractors. Part of the old presidential palace. A social club for the secret police converted to a coalition drinking den as a big Fuck You to the Ba’ath Party.
Blackwater guys considered themselves elite and stayed at the Rasheed, content to drink malted Astra near-beer with CPA staffers and Agency analysts. Everyone else, mercenaries from Fiji, Indonesia, El Salvador, the rootless Ronin of the world’s war zones, found their way to the Riv.
Jukebox. Constant cigar fug. A guy with a biker beard manned the doorway metal detector.
There was usually grief.
Toon rolled down his sleeves and hid his tattoos. Amanda fed coins into the jukebox. Sheryl Crow. She and Lucy slow-danced while barstool drunks threw insults and beer caps.
A couple of Air Cav officers entered the club. They shouldered a space at the bar and ordered orange juice. The barman served them, looking doubtful, wondering if they were trouble. No reason regular troops should hang out at the Riv unless they wanted to pick a fight.
The soldiers smacked gum and stared down any privateer that looked their way.
‘Cruising for a bruising,’ muttered Voss.
They tripped a six-six contractor with Maori tattoos as he walked to the bar. He took a swing. Friends grabbed his arms and pulled him away. The Maori sat in the corner, sipping Blue Ribbon, waiting for Air Cav to step outside.
One of the officers tried to block Amanda as she headed to the bathroom.
‘Hey, babe.’
She squirmed past him.
The guy sat at the bar and ordered triple bourbon. The barman said something as he poured. The officer told him to shut the fuck up. He threw dollars, snatched the bottle and headed for an empty table.
Toon headed to the bar for a fresh round of beers. Lucy and Amanda sat in a booth with the rest of her crew. The girls sat with arms round each other’s shoulders.
Air Cav and his buddy kept looking at the girls. He kept drinking. Lucy watched him in the periphery of her vision.
Air Cav made his move at midnight. He slid off his chair. He swayed like the dance floor was the tilting deck of storm-tossed ship.
‘Fucking bitch.’
Lucy stood to meet him. He took a swing. She ducked the blow. He staggered, balance thrown, and fell across a table shattering beer bottles.
‘Motherfucker.’
He sat on the floor and pulled green bottle glass from his bleeding hand
. His buddy crouched by his side and helped bandage the wound with napkins.
They staggered out the bar and into the street.
Three big Maori waiting, cracking their knuckles.
Back in the bar, Amanda drank chardonnay and got maudlin. This was their last war. Voss was thirty-eight. Toon was forty-three. Old-timers.
Amanda took out her phone and asked the barman to take a group shot. They clustered round the portrait of Saddam that hung at the back of the bar near the jukebox. Beret, shades, big rip down his face. An inscription in English: ‘Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti, the Anointed One, the Glorious Leader, direct descendant of the Prophet, president of Iraq, chairman of the revolutionary Command Council, field marshal of its armies, doctor of its laws, and great uncle to all its peoples.’ Someone had taped a newsprint picture to the portrait to obscure the man’s sash and braids: Saddam in his underpants in an interrogation cell looking haggard and frightened.
Lucy and her crew grinned and threw gang signs. They toasted the camera. They shouted ‘money’ as the bartender pressed the shutter release.
Pop. Flash. A frozen moment.
Lucy watched dunes blur beneath them.
Toon drained his mineral water dry. He turned in his seat, unzipped and pissed in the bottle. He tossed the bottle out the open side door.
‘All right there, Kaffir?’ said Voss.’ Trouble with your prostate?’
‘Burnt any good crosses lately, Nazi motherfucker?’
Jabril watched the men, unsure if they were joking around.
Voss took a packet of biltong from his pocket. He threw it across the compartment. Toon folded a strip into his mouth.
Lucy tugged Jabril’s sleeve. They had dressed him in combat gear. Coyote tan. Boots and field jacket from the Victory PX. She helped him with shirt buttons. He didn’t object to US uniform. ‘I’m a pragmatist. That’s how I survive.’
She pointed at the desert ahead.
‘What’s that?’
Something in the sand. A long black line, cutting through the dunes.
‘The fence.’ Jabril shouted to be heard over rotor noise. ‘Two hundred miles long.’ He pointed with the metal hook at the end of his right arm. ‘Skull and crossbones. Warns off Bedouin. It means we are entering the contamination zone.’
Amber cabin light. Twenty minutes from target. Cue to suit up.
They checked laces, checked belts and knee-pads, tightened the straps of their ballistic vests.
They checked mag pockets. Each of them carried eight clips of green-tip tungsten carbine penetrators.
They unholstered Glock 17s and press-checked for brass.
They pulled their rifles from vinyl dust sleeves. The barrel and muzzle vents of each weapon were patched with duct tape to seal them from sand. They slapped home STANAG magazines and chambered a round.
They each carried two M67 frag grenades hooked to their webbing, rings taped down.
They each wore a quart canteen on their belt and a three-litre Camelbak hydration bladder strapped to their backs.
Voss slotted shells into his shotgun.
Toon hefted a SAW from the floor and held it in his lap. Squad Automatic Weapon: a compact belt-feed machine gun. He attached a two-hundred-round box magazine. He fed the belt into the receiver and slapped it closed.
They strapped on sand goggles.
Lucy leant close to Jabril. She held out a Glock.
‘You should carry a pistol,’ she shouted. ‘Just in case.’
Jabril shook his head.
Red light. One minute.
A quick descent.
Gaunt lowered the collective and eased the cyclic forward.
Combat landing. They came in fast. Heavy touchdown. Rotor-wash kicked up a dust storm.
Smooth deployment. The team jumped clear of the helos, ran through a blustering typhoon of sand and grit.
Defensive quadrant, guns trained on empty terrain. They each scanned their designated sector of fire.
Rotors decelerated and engine noise dwindled to silence.
‘Clear.’
‘Clear and covering.’
‘All clear, boss.’
‘All right. Stand easy.’
Middle of the Western Desert. Silence. Desolation. A faint breeze blew dust from the crest of each dune like a wisp of smoke.
Lucy took compact Barska binoculars from her chest rig. Three-sixty scan of the horizon. Brilliant blue sky. Rolling sand.
‘Let’s get the choppers under cover.’
Gaunt and Raphael unlaced bundles of desert camouflage netting and threw them over each chopper. They tented the nets with poles. The fabric coat masked thermal infra-red and absorbed radar. It protected the choppers from detection by ISTAR: Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance. The satellite network monitoring the Middle East battle zone. It would pick up nothing but sand.
Gaunt climbed the fuselage of each bird. He shook dust from filters. He stretched canvas covers over intakes and exhaust fairings.
Lucy looked up. She shielded her eyes. The sun was high. Morning haze had burned away. She could feel heat radiating from the sand around her. It would soon be too hot for the choppers to fly. Low air density. They were grounded until noonday oven heat diminished and evening cool gave them sufficient lift to get airborne.
‘Hey. Jabril. Over here.’
She and Jabril climbed a high dune. They stared into the desert.
Lucy took a compass bearing. She pulled a laminate map envelope from a vest pocket.
‘Why did we land so far from the valley?’ asked Jabril.
‘I want to approach on foot. We’ll call in the choppers once the objective site is secure.’
Jabril pointed to a ridge of arid peaks in the far distance.
‘There. That’s where we need to go.’
Lucy checked her map. She surveyed the western horizon through binoculars.
‘Those hills. What are they called?’ she asked.
‘Ancients called them The Mountains of the Dead.’
‘You got to be kidding.’
‘They are well named. Desolate peaks and canyons. No wind, no water. Just merciless heat.’
Lucy returned to the choppers.
She pulled on her prairie coat and turned up the collar. She wrapped a shemagh scarf round her head like a loose hood.
She helped strap Jabril into body armour.
‘There’s no one out here,’ protested Jabril as she tightened clips and Velcro. ‘The guns. The defensive drills. None of it is necessary. This is poisoned land. Taliban and Peshmergas stay away. They know better than to approach this area. We should fly direct to the valley.’
‘I wouldn’t last too long in my line of work if I relied on luck. It’s always the routine jobs that get you killed. Assume heavy opposition every step of the way, and hope to be pleasantly surprised. Sure you don’t want a gun?’
He held up his hook.
‘My skills as a marksman have diminished since I lost my right hand.’
Toon tied a black do-rag round his head and draped a sweat towel round his shoulders to pad the SAW sling. He carried a heavy backpack full of box ammunition on his back.
Huang strapped on a medipac and unfurled a boonie hat.
Amanda shouldered her sniper rifle case and adjusted her straw Stetson. She dipped her fingers in a tub of zinc cream and painted the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones.
Gaunt sat in the shade of the Bad Moon cargo compartment. He watched Lucy put her foot on the door-lip and tie her boot.
‘Assholes. All of them.’
‘What the fuck do you know about soldiering?’ said Lucy. ‘Most of your combat hours were logged on a fucking PlayStation.’
‘Bunch of losers. I asked around. Your girl spent her last tour amped on meth. Lucky to get detox instead of jail time. Voss did a long stretch for assault in Krugersdorp Prison. Another stretch at Zonderwater for robbery. Looks like you found your level.’
‘They
’re good people. They just need someone to believe in them.’
‘Toon. Got to be mid-forties. In the regular army he would be flying a desk. He wouldn’t be front line.’
‘Saved my arse more times than I can count. Laugh all you want, but one day soon you’ll be old and begging for a break. Happens to us all.’
Lucy approached Voss.
‘Hey, boss.’
‘Stay here with Gaunt and Raphael, all right?’ said Lucy. ‘Keep a bead on them. I trust these guys about as far as I can spit.’
‘You got it.’
‘Seriously. Keep them alive. We need a ride home. But on a short leash. If they give you any shit, fuck them up.’
‘Be a pleasure.’
Lucy stood with Amanda and surveyed the vista of sand ahead of them, the distant ridgeline rippling in mirage heat.
Lucy buttoned her prairie coat. Amanda adjusted the brim of her Stetson.
‘Like it?’
‘Love it.’
The team set off.
The Gatekeepers
They waded across dunes. They left a winding trail of footprints through the virgin sand. Their boots sunk ankle-deep.
The sun got high. The hills rose out of shimmering thermal distortion.
‘Don’t walk too fast,’ advised Lucy. ‘First rule of desert travel. Conserve sweat, not water. Guard against heat exhaustion.’
Amanda glanced back. The chopper netting merged with the landscape. They were alone in vast nothing.
Lucy strode ahead. She lifted her tinted goggles for a moment to wipe perspiration from her eyes. Blinding sun. Sand reflecting heat and light like a polished mirror. A decade spent in Middle East battlefields had left her skin tanned rich mahogany. She wished she brought moisturiser, then smiled to be worrying about her complexion while traversing one of Earth’s hell zones.
Huang tripped and stumbled. A metal tube. A tank barrel protruding from a dune. They kept walking.
Toon stubbed his toe on a section of armour plate.
Amanda found a length of caterpillar track snaking across the sand like the interlocked vertebrae of an ox that succumbed to drought.