‘No rush,’ said Yokely. ‘I doubt they’ll be going too far so we’ll have a location for you soon. My bet is that they’ll hold him for at least a day until they pass him on.’
The Major thanked Yokely and ended the call. He nodded at Pat Jordan who was in the driving seat, chewing gum. ‘Game on,’ said the Major.
Shepherd was aware of the vibration first, then the smell. He was being shaken from side to side and his head banged against the floor of the boot every time the taxi went over a bump. The smell of the exhaust was sickening and he felt more light-headed with every breath he took. Then he became aware of the noise, the roar of the tyres over Tarmac and the clunk-clunk-clunk of an engine with worn cylinders.
He was lying on his left arm. He rolled over to get his weight off it and tried to look at his watch, but his wrists were tied. He twisted round, trying to find fresher air, pushed his hooded face close to the boot lock and breathed through the gap. He hoped they didn’t plan to keep him there for much longer because the carbon monoxide in the exhaust would kill him as surely as a bullet to the brain. He felt a sharp pain at the back of his head where he’d been hit, and consciousness began to slip away again. He shook his head. He didn’t know if the blow to the head or the carbon monoxide was making him drowsy, but he knew that he had to stay awake. He bit down on his tongue, hard enough to taste blood, using the pain to keep himself focused.
The Major’s mobile rang. It was Yokely. ‘They’ve taken him inside a house,’ said the American.
‘Is he okay?’ asked the Major.
‘They carried him in and he wasn’t moving, but if he was dead they’d have left him in the trunk.’
‘That’s reassuring,’ said the Major, coldly.
‘I’ll text you the co-ordinates but you should keep your distance. He’s still in Dora and Westerners stick out there.’
‘We’ll hang back,’ said the Major.
‘We’re going to bring the plane in for refuelling now,’ said Yokely. ‘Everything seems quiet and I’d rather be up there with a full tank. We’ll be down for about two hours. The transmitter’s still working fine so we’ll know if they move him. I’m getting our NSA guys here to monitor the tracker through the Iraqi phone service.’
‘Any sign of him moving, let me know,’ said the Major. He ended the call, then rang Armstrong to brief him on what the American had said. Armstrong was parked half a mile away in another Land Cruiser with Shortt, Bosch and Haschka.
‘Why doesn’t he have two of those things up?’ asked O’Brien from the back seat when the Major finished his call. He had a KitKat, which he broke into two. He offered half to Gannon, who shook his head. Muller grabbed for it but O’Brien grinned and moved it out of his reach.
‘We’re lucky to have the one, Martin,’ said the Major. ‘They cost over four million dollars each, the ground station is another ten, and they need a ground crew of three working on it full time when it’s in the air. Yokely’s doing it on the quiet because the Yanks wouldn’t want to put that amount of resources into one missing Brit.’
‘He’s a generous guy,’ said O’Brien, popping the last piece of KitKat into his mouth.
‘He’ll want his pound of flesh at some point,’ said the Major, ‘but we need him. We could follow the transmitters using the regular Iraqi phone network but the Predator gives us a visual, too.’
‘I hope he’s okay,’ said Muller.
‘You and me both,’ said the Major.
Shepherd tasted blood in his mouth, turned his head and spat it out, then regretted it because the result was smeared across the inside of the hood. His head was throbbing, the pain was made worse because he was lying on his back. He rolled on to his right side and felt a searing pain in his skull. He took several deep breaths, then lay still and listened. He could hear nothing, not even street noise. He was lying on hard ground, possibly concrete. His wrists were bound behind his back and he had lost all feeling in his fingers. He brought his knees up, then tried to roll over to get up. The strength had gone from his legs and he fell back.
He lay gasping for breath, then heard a door open and footsteps walking across the floor. Hands gripped his shoulders and turned him. Someone pulled up the hood and thrust a plastic bottle towards his mouth. Shepherd drank. It was lukewarm water. The man held the bottle to Shepherd’s lips until he spluttered, then took it away and pulled down the hood. He turned Shepherd around, then pushed him back until he was against the wall. They’d taken off his body armour.
‘Sit,’ said the man.
Shepherd had the feeling he was the tall man with glasses, the one who’d pulled the gun. He slid down the wall and sat with his back to it, his knees against his chest. ‘I need to urinate,’ said Shepherd.
‘What?’ said the man.
‘I need to pee. To piss.’
‘Wet your pants,’ said the man. ‘I am not untying your hands.’
‘Who are you?’
Something hit Shepherd on the side of the head, a hand maybe. The man had slapped him, hard. ‘I will ask questions, not you,’ said the man.
‘Okay,’ said Shepherd, his ears ringing. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Peter Simpson,’ said Shepherd. It was the name in the passport and on the credit cards in his wallet.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Manchester,’ said Shepherd.
‘What are you doing in Baghdad?’
‘I work for a security company,’ said Shepherd.
Shepherd heard paper rustling and realised that the man was flicking through his passport.
‘How long have you been in Iraq?’
‘I arrived yesterday.’
The man chuckled. ‘You are in deep shit, Mr Peter Simpson,’ he said. Shepherd felt the man slap his boots. ‘Timberland?’ asked the man.
Shepherd nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘What size?’ asked the man.
‘They’re on the move,’ said Nichols, nodding at the LCD screen and its real-time view of the house where Shepherd had been kept for the previous twelve hours. Yokely got up from the camp-bed he was lying on and went to stand at the other man’s shoulder. It was night and they were looking at the infrared image from the Predator.
Three figures were moving from the house to the car. The one in the middle was stumbling, held by the other two. ‘He’s walking,’ said Nichols.
Yokely nodded. ‘They must be passing him up the food chain,’ he said. He called the Major’s mobile. ‘They’re moving him now,’ Yokely told him.
‘Is he okay?’
‘He’s walking. They’re putting him in the car.’
‘Excellent,’ said the Major.
‘I’ll let you know which direction once they head off.’ Yokely put his phone away. ‘How’s it going, Phillip?’ he asked the pilot.
‘Hunky-dory,’ said Howell, who was sipping coffee from a chipped white mug. He had been piloting the Predator for more than sixteen hours and had only been able to take his eyes off the screens for the two hours when the drone was on the airfield being refuelled and serviced.
‘Fuel?’
Howell flicked his eyes to the gauge and calculated in his head. ‘Fifteen hours or so.’
Yokely looked at the GPS display. The cursor was blinking steadily. He smiled to himself. So far, so good.
‘I can’t breathe in there,’ said Shepherd, as the two men pushed him into the boot of the car.
‘What?’ said one of the men. It wasn’t the man who’d spoken to him inside – this voice was deeper and gruffer.
‘The exhaust’s leaking,’ said Shepherd. ‘The fumes will kill me.’
‘Hold your breath,’ said the man, and laughed. He grabbed Shepherd’s shirt collar and pushed him towards the boot.
‘If you kill me, I’m not worth anything,’ said Shepherd, quickly. ‘I kept passing out before and I could easily
