I looked down at my naked body. I was covered in her blood; my hands were slippery with it. I’d also picked up a fair amount of glass from her – I could see slivers of it glittering in my palms. I looked over to the left. The TV had been knocked off the sideboard and was lying sideways on the floor. The picture was almost perfect now, but the sound had gone.
I tilted my head to watch as they broadcast pictures of the outside of the hotel. One RPG had hit a balcony, and all the fancy
They cut back to the reporter in body armour and early-morning, post-party, sticky-up hair. The tank had been hit. The scene behind him was a blur of soldiers, smoke, ambulances and medics.
There were voices in the corridor: American, male, macho. ‘Anybody injured? Anybody there?’
Jerry ran to the door. ‘In here! In here!’
A uniformed medical team hurried in, trauma packs on their backs. Jerry started to say something about her husband being downstairs to look for them, but they weren’t listening. They were already on the floor, running their checks.
One looked at me. ‘You OK, man?’
‘Yeah, fine.’ I held up my hands. ‘It’s hers.’
I got up and moved over to the bed to get out of their way. CNN’s cameras were now focused on the tank. It had taken a mobility hit: one track had been blasted off and lay flat behind the vehicle on the tarmac. The militants had had a good morning’s work.
The bride’s moans turned to sobs as the pain caught up with her. I went over to the balcony. The sun was nearly over the rooftops. I wiped my face free of her blood and started to pick the glass out of my hands.
Tracked vehicles surged up and down the streets. Fuck knows what they were hoping to achieve. The horse had well and truly bolted.
The sound of sirens filled the air and more ambulances screeched up outside. Down in the garden, groups of reporters and cameramen were doing interviews as if they were the only ones on the scene.
I looked across at the RPG’s firing point. It was about three hundred and fifty metres away; they were good for up to five hundred at a stationary target. The tower-block windows were missing and it had been burned out long ago. Maybe it had been a Ba’ath Party HQ. Now it had a big fresh fuck-off tank shell hole, and was peppered with .50 cal strike marks around the sixth or seventh floor. RPGs are great weapons, but they have a massive signature: a big flash, then a plume of grey-blue smoke. Once you’ve pulled the trigger, you’ve got to be quick on your feet.
It was all over and done with. They’d had a cabby at us, we’d had a cabby at them. I just felt sorry for the bride. She was going to have to go through the rest of her life with a face like a patchwork quilt. Then again, at least she was alive, and that made me feel quite good, I supposed.
There was a bit of a commotion down on the ground. The balcony that had taken the hit directly overlooked the pool. The huge slab of concrete had gone straight down, and a small group of people were now gathering round the remains of the madman who’d been getting some in beneath it.
I didn’t feel that good any more.
43
The medics were still working to stabilize the bride. I gathered up my clothes and daysack as her blood started to dry on me, and climbed over the bed to follow Jerry to his room. The corridor was flooded. Water seeped from under a nearby door.
Jerry tried a bath tap and it produced a small trickle.
‘After you, mate.’
He jumped in and soaped himself. I went straight to the balcony.
Danny Connor was being lifted on to a tabletop by six or seven Iraqis who were all shouting at each other, trying to keep the thing level so he didn’t slip off and back into the pool. His body flopped about like a large rag doll. There wasn’t much blood on him; his sweat-covered training kit was covered with concrete dust.
I really didn’t know what to think. He got paid to be here, he knew the risks. At least he’d died doing what he liked best, I supposed. But it felt like a waste.
I thought about Danny’s kid. Last time I’d seen him he was a pug-nosed, freckly minger of nine or ten. He always seemed to have a tooth missing after a mishap on his bike or skateboard. Now it was his dad that was missing, and the gap was going to be permanent. That wasn’t going to fuck up his university studies much, was it? Maybe Rob was right: there had to be another way.
I came back inside and sat on one of the beds. Jerry’s version of CNN was even snowier than mine had been before the attack, and the sound was just as bad. Larry King seemed to be on with a couple of talking heads, but I didn’t have a clue who they were or what it was all about. Then a girl breezed on and started to sing.
Jerry came out with a towel round his waist just as the attack, the bride, Danny, Rob and his history lesson started to rumble around in the washing-machine inside my head.
‘What now?’ He was quite subdued, as you often are when the odd RPG has been kicked off in your direction.
I got up and ripped the sheet off the bed. ‘First let’s try and get another room. Then I’ll see if I can track down any more guys on the circuit. What about you?’
‘I’ll give Renee a call – she’ll see this shit on the morning news. After that I’ll check in with my guy in DC, and do a trawl through the local papers.’
Rather him than me. I went into the bathroom while Jerry got dressed.
He’d left the water in for me; it looked like weak Ribena. I turned the tap but it seemed we’d had our ration. I took what was left of the little sliver of soap and tried to work up a lather. My hands stung. ‘Listen,’ I called, while picking a couple of glass fragments out of my palms, ‘I got a fixer to get me a couple of weapons. You want one?’
‘Count me out. I wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.’ He started to chuckle. ‘I’ve never worked in advertising.’ He disappeared back into the bedroom, buttoning his shirt, a red Baghdad special.
After a while he said, ‘Nick, we did well, didn’t we?’
I tried to work the soap into my hair but there wasn’t enough to dislodge the blood from the roots. ‘Yeah.’
Danny Connor was dead and the bride wouldn’t want to spend too much time in front of a mirror now, but things could have been a fuck of a lot worse. And doing this sort of shit somehow made a fuck of a lot more sense to me than mincing round the States on a road trip.
The soap still wouldn’t lather, so I gave up. A good day’s sweat would sort it.
I got out of the bath and dried myself with the sheet.
Jerry was out on the balcony with a camera, snapping away at the block of flats the tank had taken a chunk out of.
Once I’d got my clothes on, Jerry took his Thuraya off the charger, then gathered up his camera and bumbag. The corridor was shoe deep in water now. My door was open. The carpet was dark with blood and the beds had been stripped bare. The sheets must have been used to wrap the not-so-happy bride. I closed the door and locked it, even though there was nothing there to nick.
When the lift finally came we found ourselves crammed in with a whole lot of people who’d suddenly decided that maybe the Palestine wasn’t the safest place to stay after all. Everybody had their bags. I wondered where they thought would be safer.
