by Chris Ryan
Blood was still trickling down the side of his mouth, and Stonehill paused to spit it away from his lips. ‘So we followed you. It was about the only lead we could think of. If she re-emerged, or got in contact with anyone, then it would be you. When that happened, we wanted to know about it.’
Nick relaxed his grip on Stonehill’s chest. He’d seen men lie under torture before, and he’d seen them tell the truth as well, and he reckoned he’d learnt to tell the difference: you could sense when the fear had got to them, when they knew there was no point in hiding anything, and you could hear an edge of pleading in their voice. Stonehill was telling the truth, he felt sure of it. If he was lying, he’d come up with a better story than that.
‘So I’m looking for you because you might tell me where she is, and you’re watching me because you think I might know where she is,’ said Nick. He grinned, but there was no warmth in the smile. ‘We’re going round in bloody circles. We could have saved you a cleaning bill if we’d figured that out at the start.’
He unpinned Stonehill’s hands and stood up. His jaw and ribs were aching, and there was a smattering of blood down the front of his blue denim shirt. Stonehill got uneasily to his feet.
‘Maybe we should work together.’
Nick stared at him. ‘I’m not working with you tossers. You’ve no business following my daughter, and you’ve no business tapping my phone and sending a couple of clowns to watch my house. So stay the fuck out of my way.’
‘We’ve a lot of resources at our disposal,’ said Stonehill. He was wiping some blood from his cheek, and clutching on to his jaw as if he had lost a tooth. ‘We might be more effective together.’
‘I work alone,’ snapped Nick, heading for the door. ‘It’s the only way I know.’
ELEVEN
The noise of the chopper, flying in at no more than thirty feet from the ground, was brutal. Jed sat close to the doorway, letting the cold night air rush over his face. He’d been keeping his eyes peeled to the ground during the one hour they had been flying upcountry from Kuwait, but now they were approaching Baghdad there was a sprinkling of lights. Once the war kicked off, they’d impose a blackout, but right now it was lit up like Oxford Street.
Five minutes, he thought. Then we get a chance to kick off this war single-handed.
At his side were Matt, Steve and Rob. From Brize they’d flown straight to Kuwait where the Regiment had established a makeshift base about a hundred miles back from the border: choppers were ferrying the troops up from Kuwait airport to the base. It had supplies in place, some QMs handing out kit, an armoury, a barracks, ammo pallets and a cookhouse. As Jed set eyes on the place, he remembered how he’d seen Tony Blair on TV as they left talking about the ‘last chance for peace’. As you looked at the Regiment’s base, it was clear that chance had long since passed, and he must have known it.
When they checked into the base, they had a few hours to eat, prepare their kit and pick up on the local intelligence: Iraq was in turmoil, according to the steady stream of defectors making their way across the border, with the army concentrating on how to minimise its casualties in the upcoming war, and the people already braced for the plotting that would start after Saddam’s inevitable defeat.
For the mission ahead, none of them were taking any more than essential supplies. They were wearing plain clothes to stop them from drawing attention to themselves: black cheap slacks and boots, made in Syria, and loose nylon sweaters underneath which they had fitted lightweight Kevlar bulletproof jackets. Inside their packs were the MOPP suits to put on before they went inside the compound. They were carrying black-market AK-47s with two hundred rounds of ammunition each, plus six hand grenades, the same number of stun grenades, five pounds of Semtex and two detonators. For handguns they had brought Browning BDA 380s with silencers: they were small reliable pistols, with wooden handles, and a semi-automatic firing mechanism that could store twelve 9mm or thirteen 7.65mm rounds. They were carrying popular mass-produced weapons that were available anywhere, so that if they were captured, they could try to pass themselves off as freelance mercenaries. Their orders were to deny they were working for the British government no matter what happened.
For food, they had a supply of camping meals, and, most importantly of all, they had five hundred dollars in ten-dollar bills to bribe any locals, plus sixteen ounces of gold in unmarked coins. Dollars and gold were the universal currency inside Iraq. With that kind of money, you could buy yourself out of most forms of trouble.
‘Get ready to land,’ shouted the pilot into the radio, his words instantly transmitted into the helmets of the four men sitting behind him.
The Black Hawk was flown by experienced US Air Force pilots, experts at special forces insertions. It came in low, to make it impossible for the Iraqi radar to lock on to them. That made for a choppy ride, as the machine soared above electricity pylons, then dropped down to hug the surface of the terrain again. Talking was banned inside the Black Hawk: there was too much risk of the Iraqis picking up the signals.
Jed braced himself. He’d been in combat before, and had learnt to recognise the mixture of excitement, fear and anticipation that overtook him every time a battle started. It was OK once you were in there. The action overwhelmed your senses, and the will to stay alive kicked in, making it impossible to think about anything else. It was the moments beforehand that made Jed uneasy: it was then that the doubts started to creep in, when you started to wonder whether you were going to live through the next few days. Forget it, Jed told himself. Just get the job done, then get home and find out what’s happened to Sarah.
The Black Hawk flew fast into Baghdad and Jed could see the lights of the city spreading out ahead of him. The slums to the east and the west of the city generated almost no lights at all: most of the people were too poor to keep the electricity running through the night, and after a decade of economic sanctions half the power stations didn’t work properly anyway. The centre of the city was brightly lit: you could make out the big blocks of the main government buildings. Over to the north, he could see the runway of Saddam Hussein airport.
The pilot was lowering the Black Hawk on to the ground. This was the most dangerous moment of the mission. Drop-down. Flying up from Kuwait, they hadn’t been troubled by any Iraqi aircraft: the few planes that had survived the last Gulf War had all been grounded, and most of them were so old they were probably more threatening to their pilots than to the enemy. It was radar they had to worry about, not the Iraqi Air Force. They still had the capability to check incoming flights, and if they’d spotted the Black Hawk coming in, despite it flying low, there could well be a battalion waiting to meet them. It wasn’t hard to put an RPG into a descending chopper. Just point and press the trigger, thought Jed. Then sit back and enjoy the fireworks.
With a twisting motion that was making Jed’s stomach heave, the Black Hawk dropped clean downwards. They were heading for a strip of scrubland, just alongside Highway 5, five miles outside the city. The pilot had no lights on, to make sure the helicopter didn’t draw attention to itself. The drill was to bring the Black Hawk down hard if the ground looked clear. You kept the throttle open all the time, so the chopper could be pulled up again rapidly if it faced any incoming fire. It made for a nasty bump when you landed. But it was better than getting hit by a missile.
‘Clear,’ snapped the pilot over the intercom. ‘Get ready.’
Jed held on to the metal frame of the chopper. The blood rushed to his head as the Black Hawk descended the last few feet. Just before landing it suddenly jerked upwards, like a yo-yo being snapped back. This was the most dangerous moment of all. Only last week, an American special forces team going in by chopper had been blown apart by a single sniper lying on the ground waiting for them. All it took was one bullet into the fuel tank. All five guys on that mission had died in an instant.
With a thud, the chopper came to rest on the muddy surface of the ground. The pilot had counted down the time until landing, and
on one, Jed pulled the headset away, casting it to the floor. Jed rushed forward to the open door, hurling himself to the ground. Around him, he could here Matt, Steve and Rob do the same, while behind him he heard the Black Hawk’s huge steel propeller roar into overdrive as it revved up the power to lift the machine into the sky. It had only been on the ground for five seconds. As it rose back up towards the sky, its propellers sucked up a storm of sand, rising in vertical columns into the air, then exploding against the night sky as if fireworks had been set alight. All right for you, mate, thought Jed, as the Black Hawk disappeared behind the clouds. You’ll be sleeping in a nice warm bed tonight, watching the hotties on MTV. Not camping out in this hellhole.
‘Clear the area,’ he hissed.
The Iraqis could be on the way to meet them right now. Lying flat on the ground, Jed glanced at his watch. For the next ten minutes, he would just lie there, completely silent, waiting to see if their position had been spotted. Slowly he started to recover his senses from the noise and the heat of the chopper. The stretch of scrubland covered about four hundred square metres. Straight ahead of them was a ridge of mud, and behind that some rusting cars and decaying industrial machinery. As the time elapsed, Jed picked himself up and ran towards it, keeping his head down. He scrambled up over the ridge, then waited, recovering his breath. Steve, Matt and Rob were at his side. ‘Everyone OK?’ he asked.
The three men nodded in turn. A silence had descended upon the wasteland. Jed took a deep breath. This was the second time he had had Iraqi air in his lungs, and it was starting to taste familiar: even in winter there was a heat and tension to the oxygen that was nothing like anything Jed had ever tasted before. You could feel the violence in it. He looked around him, peering into the darkness. ‘British, British,’ hissed a voice. Jed looked straight ahead. He could see nothing, but he could hear the voice clearly. Then a pair of eyes crept out from behind an abandoned truck, as vivid and bright as a cat’s. Jed whistled once, then twice. The man stepped out of the shadows and into enough light for Jed to get a clear look at him. He was medium build, maybe five nine, with a thin, muscular body, and the expression of a born huckster. In some more normal country, he’d be selling apartments for an estate agency or trading currencies at a brokerage, thought Jed. In this nuthouse, he was selling out his country to the new rulers. And who could blame the bastard? Everyone knew who was going to win the war. It was just a matter of making sure you got on the right side at the right time. The Iraqis have been around for thousands of years, Jed reminded himself. They know all about survival.
‘British, British,’ the man repeated.
Jed had checked on his GPS to make sure that they had come in at the right location. He was holding the AK-47 to his chest, his finger on the trigger, poised to fire if necessary. There was a preset code, and it had to be followed to the letter.
‘How far to Tipperary?’ he hissed.
‘Five miles,’ the man hissed back.
OK, thought Jed. That’s our bloke. The man took a step nearer. ‘Radhi al-Shaalan,’ he said, in voice that sounded as if he’d learnt English from listening to the World Service. ‘At your service.’
Jed nodded and turned round to give the thumbs up to the other three. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he said quietly.
Al-Shaalan signalled over to the scrubland. ‘I have a car,’ he said.
Jed followed closely in his tracks, as he started picking his way through the debris and broken machinery. Matt, Steve and Rob were right behind him. When they saw it, Jed wasn’t sure you could readily tell the difference between the car and the rubbish that filled up the site. A Datsun 100 dating from sometime in the mid-1970s, he could remember seeing one on the street where he grew up, but the wheels had been taken off and it was slowly falling to bits. He’d never seen one actually start. ‘I need the gold,’ said al-Shaalan, as he opened the door.
Jed took two one-ounce coins from his kitbag. Al-Shaalan rubbed them briefly with his thumb: like most Iraqi traders, he could tell gold just by touching it. He smiled, tucking the coins into a purse on the inside of the belt. ‘Get in,’ he whispered.
It was a tight squeeze. Jed got in the front, with Matt, Steve and Rob on the back seat. ‘Fuck it,’ muttered Ron, as he slammed the door. ‘Next time we’re going to Hertz, and hiring a minivan.’
With a turn of the key, the Datsun fired into life. Al-Shaalan pressed his foot on to the accelerator, and the engine screeched like a cat with its tail stuck in the door. Slowly, it started moving up towards the road, its headlights still switched off. The weight of its load was a strain for the 1.3 litre engine, and it refused to move any faster than twenty miles an hour. At the end of the dump, there was a dirt track, and the car moved steadily across it. ‘Ever thought of going into the minicabbing business, mate?’ said Steve. ‘With this motor, you’d be a natural.’
‘How far?’ said Jed, glancing across at al-Shaalan.
‘Five miles to the outskirts of the city, and then another one mile to your target,’ replied al-Shaalan. ‘We have a safe house organised where you can stay for the night.’
Jed could hear the nerves in the man’s voice, and his eyes had the wild, beaten look of a man who knows he could be in more trouble than he could handle. ‘Don’t flap, mate,’ hissed Jed. ‘We know what we’re doing.’
After a few hundred yards, they hit a stretch of road. The car turned on to it, and after half a mile they hit a slip road that took them up on to Highway 5. Jed was struck by how clean and modern it looked: it could be any big motorway anywhere in Europe. It had three lanes, with a tarmac surface, a hard shoulder, and big green-and-white signs written in English and Arabic. There were plenty of old wrecks like the Datsun chugging along in the slow lane, but also a steady stream of Mercedes, Land Rovers and Lexuses racing past them. It’s a first-world country that’s about to be bombed back into the Stone Age, Jed thought. Hide those fancy motors, mates. They aren’t going to survive the next few weeks.
The Datsun creaked as al-Shaalan pulled it down into a slip road. Jed had studied a street map before his last trip to Baghdad, and had a pretty good idea of the geography of the city in his head, but this looked unfamiliar. There were two blocks of prosperous-looking suburban houses, probably with pools in the back gardens, and air-conditioning units pumping processed air into the night sky. Just like Sevenoaks, thought Jed. The smart houses faded after half a mile, replaced by rows of poorly built concrete blocks, the dust rising up from the sand behind them, and with every doorway filled with men standing around, smoking and drinking tea. ‘Quiet,’ said al-Shaalan.
Jed looked straight ahead. ‘Shit,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Stay still, guys.’
The police checkpoint was manned by just two officers. They were both dressed in the dark blue uniforms of the Iraqi police, not the baggy, black overalls of the Fedayeen, the fanatical secret police that owed its loyalty only to Saddam Hussein, and which had terrorised the local population for the last two decades. ‘Let me handle this,’ said al-Shaalan.
Jed could see the fear written into the sweat already starting to trickle down the side of his cheek. The police looked as if they were checking every fifth car. They were stationed at the side of the road, just as the residential area gave way to an industrial estate. ‘How much further to the safe house?’ hissed Jed.
‘A mile,’ said al-Shaalan.
‘We could get out here and walk it,’ said Jed.
Al-Shaalan shook his head. ‘They are watching for people trying to avoid them. They can see us from here. We’ll just try and drive through.’
The Datsun slowed down as it approached the roadblock. Jed glanced once at the two policemen, then looked away. He didn’t want them looking too closely at his eyes. In the dark, in the right clothes, you might not notice he was European; if you stared into his eyes, you’d see it right away. One car was flagged past, then another. Stop the guy in front of us, thought Jed. Then you won’t have time for us.
‘Waqf ,’ shouted the policeman as they drew level.
Jed slipped his hand into his pocket, and gripped tight on to the handle of his Browning BDA 380 pistol. He didn’t know much Arabic, but he knew the word ‘stop’. And he knew that meant they were about to get into a fight.
The policemen leant into the window, on the driver’s side of the car. He was looking at al-Shaalan, then past him towards Jed and the three men in the back. All of them were sitting perfectly still. Jed could see the truncheon on the man’s belt, and the Russian-built AK-47 assault rifle slung over his back. There was probably a pistol in there as well. It was dark in the car. There were lights beaming back from the street, but they were weak and the visibility was poor. Doesn’t matter, thought Jed, keeping a tight grip on the Browning. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know there’s something suspicious about us.
The policeman snapped something at al-Shaalan. Jed couldn’t make out the words. He was taking a flashlight from his pocket, flicking the switch. He shone it directly into Jed’s face: all he could see was the bulb of the torch, blocking out the rest of his vision. With one swift movement, he jerked the Browning upwards. No time to aim properly, and no vision either. He pointed the gun eight inches above the flashlight: on a normally built man, that should take the bullet straight into the heart. He squeezed the trigger, once, then again. As the bullet smashed into the man’s chest, the torch dropped out of his hand, and suddenly the car was dark again. Jed pushed open the door, and rolled out on to the ground. It felt dusty and dry as he hit the side of the road. The second policeman had already pulled his gun from his holster, and was pointing it straight at al-Shaalan. He was shouting at him, his voice ragged and scared. Maybe twenty-three, twenty-four, decided Jed, looking straight at the man, and raising the Browning so that the sights on the pistol were level with his eyes. Sorry about this, pal. You just happened to be at the wrong roadblock on the wrong day. That’s all.