I’d gone and helped, but you never, ever lose control of the initiation device until you’re ready to leave the area. I wanted to know that every second we were by the tanks, the eraser was still covering that panel pin. The faint sound of Al Jazeera floated through the air. I could feel the wetness of my clothes cold against my skin now that I’d stopped moving.
It was time to connect the flash det and the timer to the device. I held up my hand and showed the boys the wooden box. They knew what was about to happen, and got up and left for the cut in the fence line. I knelt down by the fuse instantaneous to fit the flash det, checking the eraser was still in place before feeding the fuse into the small aluminum tube. I made sure the fuse end couldn’t get any farther inside, so it would initiate, then taped the whole bunch in place. There was a crimping tool that would have done the job much better, but it had to look low- tech.
I then unwound the wire from the elastic as I climbed back over the bung. This was very bad drill. I had connected the initiation device to the charges and was climbing about: if I dropped it, I’d turn the whole job into a gang fuck as the charges took out the tanks as well as me. But hell, this was the only way to do it tonight as far as I was concerned.
I lay as flat as I could in the sand, even forcing my heels down, with the extended wires running over the bung, before removing the top of the box.
To arm the device, I turned the Parkway dial to 30. Then I gave it another one or two minutes for luck, all very high-tech stuff.
I let go of the dial and could hear the ticking as the spring began to unwind. I had tested this unit over and over again and, give or take five seconds, it was always on time over the half-hour. The panel pin that was attached flat to the dial had maybe an inch and a half to travel before connecting with its vertical twin.
All that remained was for me to take off the rubber wedge and replace the wooden lid on the timer unit so no dirt could find its way between the two pins. I joined the others. All being well, fragments of the timer unit would confirm that tonight’s devastation was the work of an old and bold ex-muj who’d been up to no good. It would just underline what the security guy told them.
As we went past the hut the door was open and an Al Jazeera newscaster was taking us through more fuzzy black-and-white pictures of the night’s events in Afghanistan. We made our way to the cut in the fence line and Lotfi pointed to his shemag as a signal for me to cover up. I tucked the cotton around my mouth and saw the security guy, still bound up with tape, now lying in the sand below the lip. He had shit his baggy pants big-time, but he’d live through the night.
Hubba-Hubba knelt down and gave him a few highlights in rapid Arabic from the GIA party political broadcast, then at Lotfi’s nod we all left him praying noisily to himself through the duct tape and ran directly toward the house.
Lotfi pulled out the alloy caving ladder from his bergen and unrolled it in the sand. Hubba-Hubba moved around to the other side of the wall facing the road to check the garage door. Why climb the wall if there was an easier way through?
I gave the heavy wrought-iron door handle a twist. It turned, but the door wouldn’t budge. Hubba-Hubba came back shaking his head. We were going to need the caving ladder after all. Made from two lengths of steel cable with alloy tube rungs in between, the whole thing was about nine inches wide and fifteen feet long, designed for cavers to get up and down potholes, or whatever they do down there.
Lotfi brought out the two poles we’d picked up at the hardware store, the telescopic jobs you can stick a squeegee on if you want to clean high windows. Like all the other gear except for the timing unit, this should be coming back with us; but if anything got left behind, it couldn’t have a Home Depot label on it.
He taped them together to make one long pole, just slightly shorter than the wall itself. Lotfi used it to lift the large steel hook that was attached to one end of the wire ladder, and eased it over the top of the wall.
I checked chamber on my Makharov yet again, and the others copied. Then, after a shemag check, we were ready to go. I stepped closer. “Remember, if we have a situation — no head shots.” I’d been boring these two senseless for days about this, but it was imperative we didn’t mess up Zeralda’s head. I didn’t know why, but I was starting to make an educated — well, sort of — guess.
I checked traser: with luck, just over twenty-two minutes left before the tanks became infernos. I tapped Hubba-Hubba on the shoulder. “Okay, mate?”
He started to climb, with me steadying the waving ladder under him. Caving ladders aren’t climbed conventionally; you twist them through ninety degrees so that they run between your legs and you use your heels on the rungs, not your toes. Back at the mining camp, watching these two trying to get up and down had been like a scene in a slapstick comedy. Now, with so much practice, they glided up and down like — chimpanzees.
Hubba-Hubba disappeared over the top of the wall and I heard a faint grunt as he landed on the other side. Then came the slow metallic creak of bolts being gently pried open, while Lotfi retrieved and rolled up the ladder before stashing it back in his bergen along with the poles.
The door opened and I moved through into a small courtyard, hearing at once the gentle trickle of one of the ornamental fountains. I couldn’t see it, but knew from the sat (satellite) photos that it was in front of me somewhere.
Lotfi followed close behind me. It was very dark in here, with no lights on at all on this side of the house. The building’s irregular shape meant that light from another part of the building could easily be hidden. If we hadn’t seen the car turn up, we wouldn’t have known there was anyone at home.
I felt leaves against my shemag as I stood by the compound wall, looking and listening as my face became wet with condensation once more. Hubba-Hubba closed the door behind us, bolting it shut so that if we screwed up the job and Zeralda was able to make a run for it, it would take a while for him to escape.
Once they had gotten their bergens back on, I was going to lead. I wanted to be in control of my own destiny inside this cage. Pulling out my Makharov, I followed the building around to the right. I still couldn’t see anything, but I knew from the sat pictures that the floor of the courtyard was paved with large tiles in bold blue North African patterns.
We left the soothing sound of the fountain behind and rounded a corner, past a set of French windows behind closed wooden shutters. Maybe four yards in front of me, light spilled from a second set of doors onto a wrought- iron garden set, with a mosaic pattern on the circular table. I stopped to try to control my breathing, and heard faint, intermittent laughter ahead.
I eased off my bergen and left it on the ground, then got down on my knees and put out my hand to make sure the others were going to hold it right there.
I crawled to within a couple of feet of the French windows, and could suddenly hear guitars and cymbals. I smiled when I recognized Pink Floyd.
I lay down and craned my neck until I could see what was happening beyond the glass. As soon as I’d done it, I wished I hadn’t. The whole room was a haze of cigarette smoke. Zeralda was naked and covered in either oil or sweat, I couldn’t make out which, and his fat, gray-haired body and almost woman-sized breasts were wobbling about as he wrestled on a big circular bed. In the blue corner was a very frightened boy who couldn’t have been any more than about fourteen, with a crew cut and ripped T-shirt.
In all there were three boys in the room, all in different states of undress, and another adult, younger than Zeralda, in his thirties maybe, with greased-back hair, still clothed in jeans and white shirt but with bare feet. He seemed to be a spectator for now, sitting in a chair, smiling and smoking as he watched the one-sided bout. The other boys looked as scared as their friend, starting to realize what they’d let themselves in for.
I moved my head away to have a think about what I’d just seen. It had never crossed our minds that Zeralda’s fun and games involved boys; we’d been told it was women.
When I was far enough from the window I stood and walked back to the others. Our heads closed in and I quickly checked traser: elevenish minutes to go before the device went off. Before that happened we needed to be in on target and for Zeralda to be dead. That way, we’d have contained the situation before there was any sort of follow-up by the fire brigade or, even worse, the two hundred policemen.
The nylon of their bergens rustled gently as they moved in for me to whisper. “He’s in there with another man and three young boys.”
Hubba-Hubba raised his shovel-like hands in disbelief. “Boys? No women? Just boys? Young boys?”
“Yep.”
There was a collective Arabic mutter of disapproval. Hubba-Hubba could only just about control his breathing.
