The Operative

with the motorbike. Stratton reached inside his pocket, pulled out several US currency notes and handed a five- dollar bill to him, enough to feed the boy and his family for a week if they were careful.

‘Shakran,’ the boy said. Then, as an afterthought, he reached into his pocket and removed an object which he held out in front of Stratton. It was a small, crude wooden carving of a camel that was wearing a probably unintentional wry smile. ‘Ishteri,’ the boy said, asking him to buy it.

Stratton took the carving and inspected it. Then he looked at the boy who could not have been much older than Josh. He had large brown eyes and, judging by his matted hair, had not had a wash in a long time.

‘Khemsa dollar,’ the boy said, looking hopeful, aware that he was asking a hundred times its value though a good price to begin negotiations.

‘Ante sewete?’ Stratton asked, suspecting that the boy had indeed made it himself since he had a small rustic knife sticking from his pocket and had been whittling a piece of wood with it when they’d first met.

‘Nam.’ The boy nodded. ‘Ha thihe. Lel haz,’ he said, describing it as a good-luck charm.

Stratton inspected the camel once again, decided that it did have a kind of charm about it and handed the kid another five-dollar bill. He placed the camel in his pocket, put the bike in gear and revved the engine.

‘Thank you,’ the boy said in heavily accented English, a broad smile on his face.

Stratton looked back at him, unable to stop his own smile forming. ‘Some master of disguise I am,’ he said as he revved the engine once again. Then he released the clutch and roared away as the boy watched him go.

3

Stratton manoeuvred the heavy bike along a dusty track for a short distance to the main road that headed south from Mosul towards Tikrit. Over his left shoulder he caught a glimpse of the train between the eucalyptus trees and dilapidated buildings that lined the road as it chugged out of the station. Stratton opened the throttle fully, made his way up through the gears and roared down the two-lane highway, which was moderately busy.

After several miles, he reached into an inside pocket, pulled out a GPS and switched it on. Seconds later a detailed coloured map of Iraq appeared on the screen showing his position on the road as heading for Baiji, the next major town before Tikrit. It also showed the railway line paralleling east of the road. The Tigris river crossed his path halfway to Tikrit to parallel the road’s west side.

Stratton weaved around a battered orange and white taxi that was hogging the outside lane and overtook a line of oil tankers. Then, seeing the road clear ahead for half a mile, he toggled the GPS control panel until he found a specific waypoint – a preprogrammed location – which was a deserted spot west of Baiji, far out in the desert, the rail track clearly indicated less than a kilometre from it. He hit the ‘go to’ button and the information panel instantly indicated that it was a hundred and twenty kilometres away as the crow flew – more like a hundred and forty by road. The GPS also calculated that at his present speed he would arrive at the waypoint in an hour and thirty-nine minutes and he added another fifteen to allow for the road curvature which was ample time to get into position before the train arrived. That did not, of course, allow for any hold-ups.

Eighty kilometres further on, near where the railway line crossed the road, the traffic had slowed considerably and become denser. As Stratton made his way down the outside of the traffic he saw that the lead vehicles half a mile ahead had halted. That meant either a checkpoint, an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), exploded or not, or a traffic accident of which there were many in this country due to the terrible condition of the majority of vehicles combined with the atrocious standard of Iraqi driving. They had scant regard for highway codes, driving regulations and sensible speeds.

As Stratton closed on the tail end of the halted traffic he could see that it was an American military checkpoint. He slowed to cut in between the vehicles to get to the outside where he could head for the front of the line. To avoid the countless potholes and piles of trash on the verges he sometimes had to leave the road completely.

Two M111 armoured vehicles provided the main protection for the checkpoint, their 25mm heavy machine guns covering north and south of the road. There were half a dozen armoured Humvees, some a fair distance into the desert, their roof-turret M60 and .50 machine guns pointed at the line of traffic, and a couple of dozen soldiers on foot manning the vehicle funnel and supporting positions in various nearby locations.

As Stratton slowly made his way to the front of the line two soldiers reacted to his queue-jumping arrival by raising their M4 assault rifles and aiming directly at him.

‘Hey, asshole,’ one of them shouted as he moved forward. ‘Stop where you are.’

Stratton stopped immediately, took the bike’s engine out of gear and raised his hands. American soldiers were not famous for their politeness, tolerance or diplomacy. As far as persons or vehicles approaching their space were concerned, even the remotest suggestion of the presence of a weapon or a suicide bomber meant that an immediate response of the bullet kind could be expected.

‘Where you goin’ in such a hurry, ass-wipe?’ the soldier shouted as he closed in, keeping his rifle aimed at Stratton’s head. Stratton noted his shoulder flashes designating him a member of the 4th Infantry Division, based in Tikrit, that controlled this area.

The Arab occupants of the vehicles close by watched the proceedings with some interest, not that it was anything new to them. But it was of some concern to Stratton as he had a few miles to go after the checkpoint and did not want to take the chance of any local suspecting that he was a westerner. If they were to pass through the checkpoint soon after him they might be a threat and he was vulnerable on a motorbike. He decided to keep his mouth shut until the soldier got closer – although that too had its dangers.

‘I’m talkin’ to you, asshole,’ the soldier yelled as he approached, his buddy staying back to cover him. It was not unheard of for Coalition forces to be attacked by a lone fanatic carrying a concealed weapon or explosive charge and, having lost a great number of fellow countrymen during the past couple of years, the soldier’s aggressive reaction was understandable. However, things were not made any easier when soldiers assumed that every Arab could understand English.

‘Salam alycom,’ Stratton said as the soldier stopped a couple of metres in front of him, the rifle still aimed at his face.

‘Yeah, fuck you too,’ the soldier said. ‘Shut the engine and get off the bike.’ He gestured with the barrel of his gun, his finger curled warily around the trigger. ‘Off !’

Stratton slowly lowered one hand to kill the engine, then the other to grip the handlebars so that he could climb off the bike. He dropped the stand with his foot and as soon as the bike was balanced upright he raised his hands again.

‘What you got in the bag?’ the soldier asked.

Stratton wasn’t concerned so much about the explosives he was carrying. They were most uncommon and would only be recognisable to a special-forces operative. Even an army explosives engineer would have to study them carefully before becoming suspicious. Stratton remained quiet.

‘Search the motherfucker,’ the soldier shouted to his buddy who walked briskly over, slung his weapon over his shoulder and reached out to pat Stratton down.

‘I’m a British soldier,’ Stratton said, quietly but firmly.

‘What?’ the soldier said, continuing with his task, his hands patting Stratton’s shoulders and down the front of his chest.

‘I’m a Brit,’ Stratton repeated quietly. ‘A British soldier.’

The soldier’s hand touched something solid under Stratton’s left arm and stopped dead.

‘What he say?’ asked the soldier doing the covering.

‘Says he’s a Brit,’ the searcher said, his hand still on the metal object that he was certain was a pistol.

‘That is a gun you can feel,’ Stratton said, looking the searcher in the eye in case the man was unsure.

The soldier was going through his own possible scenarios that included Stratton being a fanatic who could speak English and waiting for his chance to strike. He had just a couple more weeks left out of a year-long tour of duty and wasn’t about to end up in a body-bag after all that time. If that meant blowing away even a remote