‘I was a teacher,’ said Nouri. ‘My school was bombed during the war so now I do some translating for charities. It does not pay well but it is the only job I can get these days. Things will improve in time, Inshallah.’ He gave the hand-drawn map to Shepherd.
Two men in flannel shirts and long, baggy pants were edging closer to the Land Cruiser. One reached into a pocket, pulled out a mobile phone and made a call. He stared at Shepherd as he spoke into the phone.
Nouri saw what Shepherd was looking at and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Do not worry,’ he said, and walked over to the two men, stood in front of them and spoke to them in a hushed voice. Shepherd looked around. More than fifty people were now openly staring at him. Most were men and the few women were all dressed from head to foot in black burkhas. Clearly they were poor, with grubby clothing and shabby footwear. Shepherd could feel hostility pouring off them. He reached for the door handle. Nouri turned and smiled reassuringly, then made a small patting motion with his hand as if he was quietening a spooked horse. ‘Everything is okay,’ he said.
‘I’ll give the car another try,’ said Shepherd. ‘The transmission might have cooled down.’
Nouri walked over and stood so close to Shepherd that he could smell the garlic on the man’s breath. ‘They are trouble, those men,’ he said.
‘I think you’re right, Nouri,’ said Shepherd.
‘If the car does not start, I will walk with you down the street. If you are with me, everything will be okay.’
Shepherd climbed into the Land Cruiser, started the engine and edged the vehicle forward. He gave Nouri a smile and a wave, then drove away. He was drenched in sweat and wiped a hand on his trousers before he picked up the transceiver. He clicked ‘transmit’. ‘I’m driving again,’ he said. ‘Continuing north.’
‘What happened?’ asked the Major.
‘I didn’t seem to be flavour of the month,’ said Shepherd, ‘but no one was in a rush to kidnap me.’
‘That was interesting,’ said Simon Nichols, leaning back in his seat to study the bank of screens in front of him. ‘What do you think just happened?’
Richard Yokely sipped his coffee. ‘I reckon Spider found one of the few men in Dora who likes Westerners,’ he said. ‘What are the odds?’
‘Slim,’ said Will Slater who, like Nichols, was studying the screens. ‘Slim to non-existent. That’s Hajji country down there.’ That was the Arabic word for a Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but it had become the standard term used by the military to refer to Iraqi insurgents.
Nichols and Slater were sensor operators, responsible for studying the output from the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle that was circling Baghdad at twenty thousand feet. The drone was transmitting high-resolution real- time images of the city below from cameras so powerful they could easily pick out individual numberplates. A variable-aperture television camera gave them a live feed of what was happening on the ground and an infrared camera supplied real-time images at night or in low-light conditions. A synthetic aperture radar system capable of penetrating cloud and smoke was constantly producing still images that were transmitted to the ground-control station. As well as its hi-tech surveillance equipment, the Predator was equipped with two Hellfire missiles and a multi-spectral targeting system that combined a laser illuminator, laser designator infrared and optical sensors. It could fire its own missiles or pinpoint a target far below for tanks or manned aircraft to attack.
Phillip Howell, a CIA pilot who was one of the best Predator operators in the business, was piloting the twenty-seven-foot long drone. Yokely had asked for him because he had worked with him before and he knew that the surveillance operation would be as challenging as they came. Howell seemed relaxed as he piloted the drone: he had his feet up on a table as his right hand played idly with the joystick. He scanned the screen that showed the readings, but the one he relied on most featured the output from the colour camera in the Predator’s nose cone.
‘How are we doing for fuel, Phil?’ asked Yokely.
Howell looked at the gauge and did a calculation in his head. ‘Seventeen hours, give or take,’ he said. The Predator’s fuel tank held a hundred gallons, enough to keep it in the air for twenty-hours if it was circling or give it a range of 450 miles at its top speed of eighty miles an hour.
It had taken off from Balad airbase, a fifteen-square-mile mini-city just forty miles north-west of Baghdad; since the coalition forces had moved into Iraq it had become the second busiest airport in the world, beaten only by London’s Heathrow. It had two parallel eleven-thousand-foot runways and was surrounded by dusty, parched desert dotted with stumpy eucalyptus trees. The nearby town was a hotbed of Iraqi insurgency and every night mortars rained from the sky – the soldiers stationed there had christened the base ‘Mortaritaville’. Yokely and his three companions were in one of the Predator ground-control stations, a container-sized steel capsule. After they had been launched the Predators weren’t flown by Iraq-based operators but by people seven thousand miles away at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. The data transmitted by the drones could also be beamed to US commanders in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or even in the Pentagon. Yokely, however, had insisted on local control. He wanted to be at Howell’s shoulder as the craft prowled over the city, keeping a watchful eye on Spider Shepherd. And the data was for their eyes only. Yokely had no intention that anyone in Washington DC should know what they were doing.
Two air-conditioning units the size of washing-machines hummed at the far end of the capsule. On the opposite wall a line of clocks displayed east-coast time, west-coast time, Iraq, Tokyo and Zulu time.
‘Whose brilliant idea was this?’ asked Slater.
Yokely gestured at the screen. The Land Cruiser was driving slowly down the main road, manoeuvring around two burned-out cars. ‘He came up with it himself.’
Next to the screen showing the real-time video feed a smaller screen presented a computer map of the area with a blinking cursor that positioned the transmitter in Shepherd’s boot. The Predator’s onboard receiver was picking up a burst of GPS data every ten minutes from the transmitter, which was then downloaded to the computer in the ground-control station.
‘He’s mad, you know that?’ said Slater.
‘I expressed my reservations, but he wouldn’t be dissuaded. And let’s not forget it gives us a fighting chance of locating Wafeeq bin Said al-Hadi. He’s high on our most-wanted list.’
‘Spider’s a Judas Goat,’ said Nichols. ‘It’s how you catch a man-eating tiger – tether a goat and wait for the tiger to come a-calling. But the snag is…’
‘The goat usually dies,’ Slater finished.
‘Let’s lose the gloom and doom, guys,’ said Yokely. ‘That’s why we’re here, to stop that happening.’
‘Are we looking to capture or kill Wafeeq?’ asked Howell, using the joystick to put the Predator into a gentle roll to the right so that he kept Shepherd’s Land Cruiser in the centre of the camera’s vision.
‘We’ll take it as it comes,’ said Yokely. ‘I’m easy either way.’
‘And your man there? Does he stand more than a snowball’s chance in hell of getting close to this Wafeeq?’
‘If anyone can pull it off, Spider can,’ Yokely told him.
Shepherd braked to allow four young children to cross in front of him, all boys in tattered shirts and threadbare shorts. Only one was wearing sandals. They waved at him and he waved back. One ran to the passenger window. ‘Chewing-gum?’ he shouted. Shepherd shook his head. The three other boys joined him and chorused, ‘Chewing-gum, chewing-gum.’ The oldest couldn’t have been more than twelve.
Shepherd was sorry he didn’t have anything to give them. He thought of Liam, with his PlayStation, his football, his music lessons, the expensive trainers and his iPod. He wanted a laptop computer for Christmas and he’d probably get one. ‘Sorry, guys,’ said Shepherd, holding up his hands. ‘I haven’t got anything.’ They carried on chanting for chewing-gum. Shepherd leaned forward and popped the button to open the glovebox. He fumbled inside and found a roll of mints, wound down the window and gave them to the biggest. They ran off, laughing and shouting. Shepherd couldn’t imagine Liam getting so worked up about a packet of sweets.
He wound up the window and put the vehicle in gear, checking the rear-view mirror as he pulled away. There was a taxi about fifty feet behind him, with three men inside.
He picked up the transceiver. ‘There’s a taxi behind me, I’m pretty sure it was hanging around earlier,’ he said.
‘Roger that,’ said the Major.
Shepherd drove slowly down the road. Few other cars were around. A rusting Vespa scooter loaded with three large Calor-gas bottles overtook him – an elderly man in a faded blue dishdasha was bent over the handlebars, twisting the accelerator as if he was trying to squeeze more power out of the ancient machine.
