‘Because if you don’t, you’ll stay tied up here and someone will watch over you with a gun.’
‘For how long?’
‘For as long as it takes. We won’t be threatening you. We’ll just have to keep you out of circulation until we know it’s safe.’
‘But if I tell you we won’t go to the police, you’ll leave?’
‘Yes.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Why would you believe me? Why wouldn’t I tell you what you want to hear, then call the police as soon as you’ve gone?’
‘Because you’ve got something we haven’t,’ said Shepherd. ‘Honour.’
She looked into his eyes with a slight frown. ‘And if I give my word, you will go?’
‘Yes.’
She continued to stare at him, then nodded. ‘Then I give my word,’ she said.
The Major sat at the head of the table, tapping a pen on the gleaming wood. Muller sat to his right, Armstrong to his left. O’Brien and Shortt stood with their backs to the window. In the distance, a plaintive wail called the faithful to prayer. They had just got back to the Hyatt and they were dog-tired.
Shepherd sat at the far end of the table, opposite the Major. He was hunched forward, head down over his interlinked fingers. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ said the Major. ‘We understand how you feel.’
‘Fariq’s not the enemy,’ said Shepherd. ‘He just happens to be from the same gene pool. If we-’
The Major interrupted him. ‘Spider, it’s done. We’re all in this together. That’s the way it has to be. We all have to agree with what we’re doing, or we’re wasting our time.’
‘With due respect to everyone’s sensibilities, what the hell are we going to do about Geordie?’ asked Muller. ‘Do I have to remind you that the clock is ticking and we’ve blown the only chance we had of getting him out alive?’
‘John, please…’ said the Major.
Muller got up and paced in front of the photographs on the wall. ‘The only plan we had has been blown out of the water – everything we’ve done over the past week has been a total waste of time. If we don’t do something – and fast – they’ll hack his fucking head off. The deadline runs out in four days.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Shepherd.
‘We all go home and forget this happened?’ snapped Muller.
Shepherd lifted his head. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve got an idea that might work, but I’ll have to go back to London first.’
Drugs had got Samuel Brown into Iraq, and drugs meant that his time in the hellhole of Baghdad was at least profitable, if not exactly enjoyable. Brown had been nineteen when he’d been caught by an undercover drugs cop in Philadelphia. He had been working his way up the food chain but he was still just a small-time foot-soldier for one of the city’s minor gangs and when he’d been busted he’d been down to his last few grams of crack cocaine, which meant that they hadn’t been able to charge him with dealing. He’d already had a fistful of juvenile convictions, however, mainly for vandalism and theft, so the possession charge would probably have earned him rather more than a stern word from the judge. It had been his older brother, Luke, who suggested he enlist. He persuaded Samuel that if he signed up the judge would probably let the matter drop. What the brothers hadn’t expected, though, was for the judge to stipulate that if Samuel failed to serve a full five years in the army, he might still face the drugs charge.
Brown had hated basic training, hated the rules and regulations, hated the mindless boredom that was life in the infantry, even hated his M4 carbine. On the streets of Philadelphia, he had carried a handgun and used it whenever he had to. He’d liked the feel of a gun in his hand and the way it earned him respect. He’d shot three men, all rival drug dealers, and he’d enjoyed seeing them slump to the ground in agony. None had died, although one had been in intensive care for a week. Not that Brown had cared.
Once in the army, he’d assumed that shooting would be the one thing he’d enjoy. He was wrong. The army took all the fun out of it. It had to be done by numbers, the army way. And all he ever got to shoot was range targets. At least in Philadelphia he’d been free to shoot rats and cats. In the army every round had to be accounted for and he spent far more time cleaning and oiling the carbine than he did firing it.
When Brown had been told he’d be shipping out to Iraq, he’d assumed that at last he’d be able to fire his weapon at living, breathing targets, but once again he’d been wrong. He’d been in the country for five months, assigned to guard duty within the Green Zone for his entire tour of duty, and had yet to fire his gun in anger.
Brown found Baghdad just as boring as life in the army Stateside. It was too hot during the day, too cold at night, and most of the time he stood outside the headquarters of the Iraqi Governing Council, a massive marble building that had once been the home of the Military Industry Ministry. Back in Philadelphia, Brown had been a user and a dealer. He preferred crack cocaine, but it was hard to find in downtown Baghdad. Heroin, however, was plentiful, and he soon found that chasing the dragon helped him get through the long shifts of guard duty.
Brown’s supplier was an Iraqi called Jabba. The heroin came from Afghanistan and it was better than anything available on the streets of Philadelphia. It was cheaper, too, almost a third of the price it fetched in the States. Brown had met Jabba in the Green Zone when he’d stopped to use the men’s room attached to his unit’s canteen. Jabba had been cleaning the toilets, on his knees in yellow gloves, a bottle of bleach in one hand, a brush in the other.
He’d looked up and Brown had known straight away that Jabba was more than just a cleaner. He’d nodded, Jabba had wished him a good day in perfect English and Brown had stood at the urinal, pissing. He had asked casually if Jabba knew of any way that a guy might be able to get high and Jabba had said that, funnily enough, he did. He had been working on Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare programme, and he’d lost his job with thousands of others when the coalition forces took over the country. He’d managed to get work as a cleaner in the Green Zone but it didn’t pay enough for him to take care of his wife and five children so he was selling drugs on the side.
At first Brown had bought just enough for himself, then one of the guys in his platoon had complained that he’d been unable to get high and Brown had sold him a few grams. Word spread, and soon he was supplying half a dozen of the guys he was bunking with. Within two months he had almost fifty regular customers. He’d become a major supplier and without even trying, unlike in Philadelphia, he hadn’t had to shoot anyone to win his market share.
Jabba seemed to have no problems getting as much heroin as Brown wanted. He said that the heroin came from Afghanistan, and since the Americans had thrown out the Taliban, production had soared. Brown didn’t know how he got it into the Green Zone, and didn’t ask.
He lay on his bunk and wondered if he had time to smoke a little before his shift started. He was lying on his back, flicking through an old copy of Mad magazine, a can of Coke in his hand.
Brown and Jabba had talked about what would happen when Brown returned to the States. Jabba had a brother who worked for an import-export company in Singapore and he reckoned he could easily ship large quantities of heroin to the east coast. If Brown could connect with major distributors, they’d make a fortune.
A lieutenant threw open the door to Brown’s dormitory, shattering his reverie. ‘Brown, grab your gear. We’re short a man in the Bradley. Outside, two minutes.’
The lieutenant hurried away, and a few seconds later Brown heard him shouting at another soldier. He threw on his body armour and helmet, picked up his carbine and rushed outside. Three dust-covered Humvees were in the courtyard, revving their engines as the gunners standing in their turrets checked their. 50 calibre machine-guns. In front of them stood the massive tank-like Bradley Fighting Vehicle. There was room for six men and three spaces were filled. Brown fastened his helmet strap, climbed in and sat down with the carbine between his legs. The camouflaged legs of the turret gunner were between the two lines of seats. Seconds later the lieutenant and another soldier ran to the vehicle, climbed in and the door slammed.
The Bradley was the safest way of moving around in Iraq. Its hi-tech armour would stop virtually anything the insurgents could throw at it, and the driver was safe as he looked through the three forward periscopes and the one mounted to the left. The Bradley’s main weapon was a 25mm Bushmaster chain gun, which had been converted to fire at five hundred rounds a minute, while a 7.62mm machine-gun was mounted to its right. To the left of the turret there was a twin-tube Raytheon anti-tank missile system.
Once the door was closed, the soldiers couldn’t see where they were. It was claustrophobic, unbearably hot, and the noise of the massive Cummins engine was deafening. ‘Where are we going, sir?’ shouted Brown.
