die in there.’
The two men talked to each other in Arabic, arguing. Shepherd heard footsteps as the third of his captors approached, then the voice of the man who’d interrogated him inside.
The man put his face close to Shepherd’s head. ‘What is the problem?’ he said.
‘The exhaust is leaking,’ said Shepherd. ‘The boot gets full of fumes. I kept passing out last time.’
‘You want to travel first class, is that it?’ The man said something to the others, who laughed.
Shepherd opened his mouth but before he could say anything something hard smashed against the side of his head.
Nichols winced. ‘That’s got to have hurt,’ he said. ‘Why did they do it?’
‘Because they’re tough, mean motherfuckers,’ said Yokely.
‘They’ve got him bound and hooded. Hitting him is overkill,’ said Slater.
‘No one said they were nice people,’ said Yokely.
They watched as two of the men put the unconscious Shepherd into the boot while the third got into the driving seat. They slammed the boot shut, then one slid into the passenger seat while the other held back to shut the gates behind them. There was no other traffic in the road.
Howell moved the joystick and put the drone into a lazy left-hand turn. Slater moved his control to keep the car in the centre of the screen. There wasn’t much traffic about so he had no problem following the vehicle, but it still required his full attention.
Yokely pulled up a chair. He moved his head frequently to keep an eye on both screens – the infrared camera view and the GPS monitor.
‘When are you going to move in?’ asked Howell.
‘That’ll be Spider’s call,’ said Yokely.
‘He’d better not leave it too late,’ said Howell.
‘I hear you,’ said Yokely.
When Shepherd came to he was still in the boot. His head ached and he couldn’t feel his hands. The car was driving fast and the road seemed smooth. His mouth was bone-dry and it hurt to swallow. The exhaust smell was overpowering and he rolled over again so that his mouth was close to the boot’s lock. The combination of the hood and the fumes was making him drowsy and he fought to stay awake. ‘Please, God, don’t let me die like this…’ he whispered.
Yokely watched the car on the infrared monitor. It had been driving for almost forty minutes and had now left the city, heading south towards Yusufiyah, a farming area between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. On the monitor it moved along a road that cut through fields filled with orange and date groves. Yokely looked at the GPS screen. Yusufiyah was a Sunni stronghold, and had been ever since the coalition forces had invaded Iraq. It wasn’t exactly a no-go area for the military but when they went in they went in hard and tended to stay in their vehicles.
The car made a left turn, slowed, stopped at an intersection, then made a right turn. It pulled up in front of a large L-shaped building that was surrounded by a wall. Several vans were parked outside. Two figures came out, opened a gate and the car drove in.
‘Simon, see if you can ID that building,’ said Yokely.
‘I’m on it,’ said Nichols.
‘You think that’s where they’re holding the other guy?’ asked Slater.
‘Difficult to say,’ said Yokely. ‘We watch and wait. Softly, softly, catchy monkey.’
‘See, now, I’ve never understood that expression,’ said Howell, as he put the Predator into a slow left bank. ‘Monkeys are smart and you can’t creep up on one, no matter how slow you take it. You wanna take out a monkey, you shoot it with a tranquilliser gun.’
‘You always were a stickler for detail, Phillip.’
‘Pilots have to be,’ said Howell. ‘Otherwise they forget things like putting their landing gear down.’
The men got out of the car and gathered around the boot. One opened it.
‘He’s not moving,’ said Slater.
‘I see that,’ said Yokely, quietly.
Two ghostly white figures on the screen pulled Shepherd out and carried him into the building. Another closed the gate and followed the others. Yokely divided his attention between the two screens. The GPS monitor continued to blink. They knew where Shepherd was, but not whether he was alive or dead.
The Major’s phone rang. He put it to his ear. ‘Yes, Richard?’
‘It’s good news, and bad news, I’m afraid,’ said the American. ‘We know where he is but he’s not moving.’
‘Shit,’ said the Major.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked O’Brien, from the back seat.
‘He walked out of the building and they hit him before they put him in the trunk,’ said Yokely. ‘Could be he’s just concussed.’
‘But we’ve no way of knowing,’ said the Major.
‘We watch and wait,’ said Yokely. ‘He’s in Yusufiyah, about thirty miles south of Baghdad. Problem is, it’s not as built up as Baghdad and Westerners tend to stick out.’
‘My inclination is to go in now,’ said the Major.
‘I understand that,’ said Yokely, ‘but we’ve got them under surveillance. They can’t go anywhere without us knowing so let’s give it a few more hours.’
‘Okay,’ said the Major, reluctantly, and put away the phone. He explained to Muller, O’Brien and Jordan what had happened.
O’Brien cursed. ‘If he’s dead, we go in and we go in hard, right?’
‘He’s not dead,’ said the Major. He turned to Muller. ‘What can you tell me about Yusufiyah?’
‘It’s full of al-Qaeda militants. They call it the Triangle of Death and it’s a haven for insurgents. Is that where they’ve taken Spider?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said the Major.
‘If anything goes wrong, if he doesn’t get out of this, every one of those bastards gets it,’ said Muller. ‘Every single one.’
Shepherd coughed and pain lanced his skull. He groaned. He could taste blood in his mouth. He was lying on his side on rough matting, which smelled of mould. He coughed again.
‘Do you want water?’ said a heavily accented voice behind him.
Shepherd heard footsteps, then someone pulled at his shoulder and helped him to sit up. His hands were still tied behind him. The hood was lifted and the neck of a plastic bottle was forced between his lips. Shepherd drank for several seconds, then the bottle was taken away. The hood fell back into place. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You should rest,’ said the man. He helped Shepherd lie down again.
‘My wrists hurt,’ said Shepherd. ‘Can you loosen them?’
‘No,’ said the man.
‘I can’t feel my hands,’ said Shepherd.
‘Shut up,’ said a second voice, harsher than the first. Shepherd heard a rustle of clothing then a foot slammed into his kidney. The blow took him by surprise and he screamed at the pain.
‘There’s movement,’ said Nichols. ‘A guy’s just left the house and gone to the car.’ He was studying the output from the Predator’s infrared sensor. It was eleven o’clock in the evening and the regular video output had shown nothing but darkness since eight.
Yokely got up off the camp-bed and walked over to stand behind him. Two more figures left the house and got into the car. Another went to the gate, pulled it back and the car eased into the street. ‘They’re taking a risk moving him at night,’ said Yokely. ‘It’s well into curfew and if they come across an army patrol, they’ll be shot to pieces.’
Yokely stared at the screen that showed the position of the transmitter hidden in Shepherd’s boot. The cursor was still on the building, which suggested that Shepherd was inside it. It looked as if his kidnappers were returning home, which meant they had handed him over to the next link in the chain.
The figure closed the gate and went back into the building.
‘What do we do?’ asked Howell. ‘Stick with the house or follow the car?’
‘Stay put,’ said Yokely. ‘They’ve sold him to whoever’s in there. The question is, is it Wafeeq or not?’
