stood in a group beside the truck, smoking cigarettes, their breath billowing around them in the cold night air; the remaining four were in pairs, each pair manning a barrier.
The vehicle ahead crawled almost to a halt. As it did so, one of the guards raised the barrier and waved it through with a bored expression. He was young, probably just a teenager. Luke checked his mirror. The vehicle that had been approaching them from behind was now only about ten metres away and coming to a halt. Its headlamps dazzled him, but even so he could just make out the shape of a military truck.
Not good. ‘We’ve got company.’
Finn looked over his shoulder. ‘Personnel carrier.’ His muffled voice was curt. ‘But there’s a fucking top- gunner…’
Luke accelerated slightly to follow the car ahead through the checkpoint while the barrier was still open.
No such luck. The barrier lowered and the soldier raised a palm to stop him.
Finn was looking in the side mirror at the vehicle behind them. ‘Republican Guard,’ he said, his voice tense. Luke felt his blood pounding in his veins. This was the last thing they needed. The Republican Guard with their red berets were the elite of the Iraqi Army. Better trained and better equipped than the shitkicking squaddies who were probably manning the checkpoint as part of their national service. Ordinary citizens referred to the Republican Guard as zanabeer — wasps — on account of the way they swarmed around the country. If things went noisy now, the SAS men would have a truckload of the fuckers — maybe twenty of them — swarming around the Toyota, and that was a scrap Luke didn’t fancy. He checked his own mirror. Sure enough, he could see the driver of the truck leaning out of his window, his red beret fully on display. Luke sensed Finn gripping his pistol. ‘Looks like we might be calling Fozzie in earlier than we thought,’ Finn said, his lips hardly moving.
Luke couldn’t answer. A second young soldier had approached the driver’s side, so he wound down the window. There was no greeting. The soldier shone a torch into the car while his colleague walked round to the back.
‘
The soldier gave him a sharp look. Had he noticed a chink in Luke’s accent? The cold night air bit his skin, but Luke still felt sweat soaking his back as he glanced in the rear-view mirror. The figure of the first guard was silhouetted against the lights of the Republican Guard truck.
He was right by the boot of the Toyota.
If he opened it, they’d have no choice: Luke moved his arm down to his side, inches from his gun.
There was a shout, and both soldiers looked round. The Republican Guard driver from behind was yelling something at them. Luke couldn’t tell what he was saying, but he understood the tone of voice as this higher- ranking soldier bellowed orders at the two Iraqi squaddies like they were a piece of shit on his shoe. Fear crossed their faces as they hurried back to the barrier and started to raise it, all thoughts of Luke and his dodgy accent apparently gone.
Luke didn’t fuck about. He sped through the barrier the moment it was high enough to pass. As he reached the other side he saw that the military truck was flashing its lights at him. Moments later it overtook and stormed down the road ahead.
Finn let out an explosive breath. ‘Thought I was going to have to waste a round on that fucker,’ he said, his voice muffled behind the burka, as they continued to drive into the darkness.
‘Would have been a shame to get your glad rags all bloody.’ Luke checked his mirror. Nobody from the checkpoint was following. And up ahead, the truck was out of sight.
The road was poor — potholed and broken down by the countless heavy military vehicles that had passed along it over the previous two decades. At 01.00 they passed some buildings by the side of the road — a filling station and a mosque next to each other, where several cars had stopped. Luke and Finn had no need of prayer or fuel — there were canisters of petrol in the boot, along with their more specialised gear — so they just pressed on.
At 02.12 they came to a fork in the road. Luke bore left, then doubled back, heading north-west up towards the Syrian border. Guided by Finn’s GPS, he soon took a right-hand turn off the main road and into the desert. He drove on for some ten kilometres before Finn quietly spoke.
‘Let’s go static,’ he said. ‘The village is about two klicks up ahead.’
Luke came to a halt and killed the lights. 02.58. Three hours till sunrise. They’d be entering the village at dawn. Lift Abu Famir and then swastika it back to Jordan.
But until then they’d just have to wait.
SEVEN
Chet had lost count of the number of pints of cold Stella he’d chucked down his neck that afternoon. He’d headed straight for a basement pub just off Leicester Square where the barmaid looked like a bulldog licking piss off a thistle. He celebrated his birthday surrounded first by the office workers in for a liquid lunch, then by tourists taking the weight off their feet after a day’s sightseeing, and finally by the office workers again, boisterous and increasingly arseholed now work was over.
But Chet had barely noticed any of them. As he sank the beers, he couldn’t stop thinking about the events of that morning. There had been rumblings over the past few days about an anti-war march through London. If it went ahead, Suze McArthur was exactly the kind of leftie who’d be up at the front waving some wanky banner for the TV crews. Chet was the kind of person who’d be at home. The last people asked their opinion about a war, he knew, were those who’d been in one. And if the girl was surprised that the decision to move into Iraq had already been taken, she was more naive than most. ‘This war is good to go,’ the American had said. Well, of course it was. When the hell did people think decisions like that were taken — the day before troops moved in?
No, it wasn’t Suze with her wild eyes and embroidered nose who kept coming to the front of Chet’s mind. It was Stratton. What was so important that he had to come to meet an American businessman, rather than the Yank going to him? Why was he talking to the Grosvenor Group in some anonymous office and not in Number 10? And what did the Grosvenor Group have to do with it anyway?
Fuck it, Chet thought as he signalled to the bulldog for another pint of Stella. Not his business. As long as he kept pulling the pay cheques, the suits could discuss whatever the hell they wanted. Trouble was, after today’s bollocking he didn’t know how long the pay cheques would carry on coming.
At 22.30 he’d gathered up his rucksack of gear and staggered to the tube. Time to get his head down.
As he left Seven Sisters station, the cold was sobering. He walked as briskly as he could down the main road and into his little side street of terraced houses and maisonettes. The street lamps bathed the pavement in a yellow glow, but only a handful of houses had lights on in any windows. The booze and the darkness meant that he fumbled slightly as he unlocked his own front door. Once he was in, he slammed the door behind him and made his way in the darkness along the narrow hallway and towards the kitchen.
As he stood in the doorway of the kitchen he saw a red light flashing. The answer machine on the work surface, indicating a single message was waiting for him. His rucksack still slung over his back, Chet stomped into the kitchen and, still in darkness, pressed the play button.
He half expected it to be his amputee friend Doug, berating him. It wasn’t. A voice — female, posh and brisk — filled the kitchen. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Freeman. This is Angela Glover, Grosvenor Group human resources. I’ve been instructed to inform you that your services are no longer required by the gr…’
Angela Glover, whoever the hell she was, didn’t get to finish her message, because Chet had pulled the wires from the back of the answer machine and hurled it to the floor. The cheap plastic shattered against the floor, and Chet made to stamp on it with his good heel. ‘Fucking bitch… ’
‘You should learn to calm you temper.’
Whoever had entered Chet’s kitchen behind him had done so in absolute silence. Chet felt the unmistakable sensation of cold metal against the back of his head.
He froze.
‘I’ll explain what’s going to happen.’ The intruder was female, her voice quiet and throaty, with an accent Chet couldn’t quite place — not American, exactly, but as though she’d learned English from a Yank.
