For a soldier in the field, the sound a chopper makes is like the sound of Christmas bells. Nine times out of ten it means casevac or exfiltration. One time out of ten it means something more sinister. This was one of those times.
Luke knew from the rough, mechanical sound of the rotary blades it was a Russian MI-8, even before he saw it. ‘Not one of ours,’ he told Finn as they stood quietly by the mouth of the cave, their assault rifles strapped to their bodies. They weren’t expecting an exfil, but if it had been a rescue helicopter it would be travelling low, fast and in a straight line towards them. This one sounded like it was circling above. Searching.
They stayed in the shadows as they looked out and up into the cloudy sky. Two minutes later the MI-8 appeared and circled above the desert just half a klick from their position, low enough for them to be able to see it.
‘Reckon they’re looking for us?’ Finn’s voice was dry.
‘If Fozzie and the others are compromised, maybe it’s just increased security?’ Luke frowned. ‘Put it this way: I don’t think it’s a jolly.’ He checked his watch. Midday. Ample time for word of the firefight back in the village to have reached military headquarters in Baghdad and for them to have dispatched a heli. Did the authorities know that Abu Famir had been hiding out there and was now on the move? Maybe, maybe not. But Luke had to plan for the worst. He had to assume that the Iraqis were coming for them.
He looked over his shoulder into the gloom of the cave. Abu Famir was half kneeling, half lying by the Toyota, deep in prayer. The guy was a pain in the arse — weaselly, whingeing, never stopped talking. No wonder the British and Americans wanted him to be prime minister of the new Iraq: he had all the right qualities.
He turned back to Finn. ‘We better hope that cloud cover stays put,’ he said.
‘Roger that,’ Finn replied. ‘We get a bright moon tonight and it’ll be the shortest E and E in the history of the fucking Regiment.’ He looked back over at Abu Famir. ‘I’d like to put one in the back of that wanker’s head and all,’ he said.
At that moment the noise of the chopper altered. From their hidden vantage point, they saw it change direction and head straight towards the cave. The two men stepped back quickly, taking cover further inside, and Luke felt himself holding his breath as the helicopter hovered almost exactly above them. It stayed like that for a full minute, no more than thirty metres high and now so loud that it was impossible to talk. Then it curled away as quickly as it had arrived.
The two men exchanged a glance. It was clear they were both thinking the same thing: have they spotted us?
Another noise, but from inside this time: Amit crying out in pain. Finn made no attempt to hide his irritation, but before he could speak, Luke told him, ‘Keep stag,’ then stepped back into the cave.
They had driven the Toyota as deep inside as possible, opened all the side doors and turned the back seat into a makeshift hospital bed. Finn had suspended a drip bag from the roof and mainlined it into the back of Amit’s hand, but things weren’t looking good for their companion. He’d lost a lot of blood and they had only one morphine shot left. His bouts of delirium were now more frequent than his bouts of lucidity. All in all, the guy was fucked up.
Luke crouched down by his head. ‘Amit, buddy,’ he said quietly. ‘How you doing?’ His voice was accompanied by the gentle drone of Abu Famir’s muttered praying.
Amit’s eyes shot open. ‘ Maya? ’ he whispered. ‘ Efoh at… Maya… ’
Whatever language he was speaking, it wasn’t Arabic. Which meant Abu Famir was lying to them: their companion wasn’t Iraqi. No fucking surprise there. But he wasn’t Jordanian either.
‘Hey, buddy. Nobody called Maya here.’ He looked over at Abu Famir, who was still praying, then back at Amit. ‘You want to tell me who you’re working for?’
Amit took a few shallow breaths before he spoke again. ‘Abu Famir,’ he said. ‘I need to… I need to get him out… It doesn’t matter about me…’
Luke was about to reply when there was a noise from the mouth of the cave. A hiss. Finn was beckoning him over.
‘I’ll be back in a minute, buddy. You hold on, OK?’
He hurried silently over to where Finn was stationed, and he didn’t need to speak to know what the problem was. There was a voice on the wind. A lone voice, singing.
Someone was nearby. Luke held his breath.
Through the mouth of the cave he could see, just coming into view from the right and about fifty metres away, a herd of perhaps fifteen goats. A single person was driving them — a Bedouin, from the look of him, wearing a white dishdash and red headdress. He was looking up at the chopper still circling in the sky about 200 metres away, but there was no doubt that the goats were wandering towards the cave.
‘Shit,’ Luke muttered.
He hurried back inside to find Abu Famir still praying. He nudged the Iraqi with his foot. ‘Shut up,’ he said.
‘But I am…’
‘ Shut the fuck up. Someone’s coming. ’
Abu Famir scrambled to his feet.
‘Get in the car,’ Luke told him. ‘Now.’
‘No violence,’ Abu Famir whispered. ‘I will not…’
‘ Get in the fucking car! ’
He returned to the front of the cave. Finn was in the shadows, one knee on the ground and his weapon in the firing position. The goatherd was driving his beasts directly into Finn’s line of fire. He was only twenty metres away now, and from this distance Luke could make out that he was singing in accented English, and gradually the words became clearer. ‘ Walk like… an Eee-jyp-shuun… walk like.. an Eee-jyp-shuun.’
Luke loosened a knife in his ops waistcoat. ‘If he sees us,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ll jump him before he can shout out. If he runs, slot him.’
Finn kept his sights on the goatherd, while Luke took up position in the shadows on the other side of the cave’s mouth, one knee on the ground and weapon engaged.
The singing had stopped and now there was silence. After about a minute, however, another sound reached Luke’s ears: a gentle clanking of the bells round the goats’ necks. An occasional bleat. Then the musty, shitty stench of the animals as they wandered within ten metres of their position.
Luke felt his blood pumping in his veins. It was only a goatherd — no trouble for two fully equipped Regiment soldiers, but that wasn’t the point. If they killed him, he might be missed — they were no more than five miles from the village, and that would mean more people searching the area; but if he saw them, they couldn’t risk letting him go and warning other people of their presence.
The first goat — a scrawny thing with great, bulging eyes — came into view. It stopped just outside the cave and pawed at the dust while several other animals surrounded it.
The goatherd joined them.
Luke could see his face. He was in his early teens, the dark skin of his cheeks coated with bumfluff. He shouted something at the goats in a reedy voice, and made a clicking sound with his throat, but it seemed to have no effect. The goatherd shrugged, then removed a leather satchel from his shoulder and sat cross-legged on the ground. He rummaged in his satchel and pulled something out. Luke examined it through the sight of his assault rifle. It was an old cassette Walkman. The kid fitted the earphones to his head, pressed a button and continue to rummage in the satchel. This time he pulled out a rolled-up flatbread and started to eat.
The Regiment men stayed perfectly still. Luke kept the youth’s head firmly in his sights. Now and then a goat strayed into his line of fire, but that was OK, because he knew Finn had the kid covered too.
A groan from inside the cave. It was Amit, and the sound made Luke’s skin prickle. One of the goats looked up, but the goatherd was lost in the music. Five minutes passed while he finished his meal, unaware of the danger he was in. He licked the fingers of his right hand, removed the Walkman and stood up again. He clicked ineffectually at his goats once more. Then he turned round to peer inside the cave.
Luke prepared to fire.
The goatherd sniffed.
He turned his back on the cave and looked out towards the desert. It was as if he was checking for something. Maybe Luke should nail him now, before he saw them and cried out…
The goatherd looked left and right. Apparently satisfied that he was alone, he crouched down on the ground and raised the hem of his dishdash.
That’s right, buddy, Luke thought to himself. Have yourself a good shit and then fuck off out of here.
Luke was thankful for the stench of the animals, as it masked the waft of the kid’s turd. Neither man moved as the goatherd wiped his arse with his left hand, then stood up and allowed the dishdash to fall back down to his ankles. He shouted at the goats again, urging them away from the cave’s entrance, and started wandering off. The goats followed, but after only thirty seconds the goatherd turned and looked back towards the cave.
Had he seen them? Or was he just checking on the two goats that were straggling?
Two minutes later the kid was out of sight, the noise and stench of his beasts had disappeared and everything was silent.
Luke lowered his weapon and moved over to Finn. ‘Remind me not to shake Abdul by the hand if we bump into him again.’
Finn ignored the comment. ‘There could be more where he came from,’ he said.
Luke nodded, then looked back into the cave. Should he tell Finn his suspicions about Amit? He decided not. His mate was bordering on insubordination as it was, and feeling mutinous. Give him a whisper of an excuse and he’d plug Amit on the spot. Luke didn’t want that to happen until he knew exactly what he was dealing with.
He checked the time. 12.28. Five hours till sunset. When darkness came, they’d need to get on to the road and hope their luck held. And in the absence of luck, they’d have to use force.
He couldn’t really decide if he was looking forward to nightfall, or dreading it.
21.32 hrs.
They were ready to go. The cave was pitch-dark, and Luke and Finn operated by means of NV. Each set had an infrared torch which lit up the cave for them but was invisible to Amit and Abu Famir, both in the back of the Toyota. The Iraqi’s frightened eyes stared blindly in the darkness and glinted in the haze of the night vision, whereas Amit’s were covered by the burka headdress that he was wearing again. A fresh saline drip was hanging from the plastic handle above the passenger door, covered with a spare hanging dishdash by way of disguise.
Amit was shaking feverishly, his wound almost as bad as any Luke had ever seen. The flesh looked like liquidised liver, and the blood had started to congeal around it, crispy in places, thick and wobbly in others. As well as shaking, Amit was talking to himself. Through the burka it was difficult to make out what he was saying, and most of it was in a language Luke didn’t understand anyway. But he caught the name ‘Maya’ more than once, and occasionally a confused reference to Abu Famir; otherwise Amit’s words just sounded like slurred ramblings.
Luke recced outside. Since the goatherd had gone on his way, three choppers had flown over their position. Now the night sky was mercifully cloudy: no starlight, no moon. The temperature was already dropping and there was a slight wind, which once more brought with it the distant howling of the wild desert animals. If there were any patrol vehicles in the vicinity, Luke couldn’t see them. He returned to the cave, where Finn was standing five metres from the car.
‘Ready?’ he asked quietly.
‘Yeah.’
Luke paused. ‘Look, mate,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t agree with my decisions, but the one thing that’s going to screw this up is if we’re not singing from the same hymn sheet.’
Silence. And then Finn asked: ‘What’s the plan?’
‘We’ve got eighty miles of main road to cover before we can turn off. I reckon we’re looking at two hours. We only passed one static checkpoint on the way through, and that was about an hour in, so we should reach it about 11.00. Fifty-fifty they’ll just wave us through, but if not we’ll have to use force then floor it to the border. Maybe swap vehicles if we can hijack another one. You still have the crossing we used marked as a waypoint on the GPS?’
‘Of course.’ Finn paused. ‘We need a Plan B. If we have to get off the road and take Abu Famir across country by foot, we can’t leave his bum chum to tell anyone what we’re up to or where we’re headed. We’ll have to do him.’
‘All right then. Agreed. Keep your weapon at the ready. Let’s move.’
They climbed into the Toyota, where their carbines were stashed by the front seats, and Luke started the engine. It echoed around the cave as he carefully manoeuvred out into the desert night and back along the dirt track to the road.
They drove slowly by the light of their NV. They saw no one. After about twenty minutes on undulating ground, the main highway came into view again, vehicles passing at the rate of about one every thirty seconds. Luke pulled into the side of the road. They removed their NV and Luke double-checked his Sig, which now had a black silencer fitted to the barrel. As he manipulated the gun, he spoke to Abu Famir. ‘If anyone stops us, I’ll do the talking. Right?’
In his rear-view mirror he saw the Iraqi’s spectacles glint in the darkness. ‘No violence,’ he said.
‘No fucking talking,’ Luke retorted.
They pulled out into the main road. Like the previous night, it wasn’t very busy. About one vehicle in twenty was military, but there were sufficient civilian cars for the Toyota to be quite unremarkable.
Luke kept a steady speed. Sixty klicks an hour. Not too fast, not too slow. As he drove, his mind turned over. He remembered the three heli flypasts while they were in the cave. Was that just a coincidence — a standard military manoeuvre in this time of heightened security? Or were they looking for someone specific? Had word of the firefight in the village sixteen hours earlier reached the authorities? They had to assume it was known that somewhere out there was a vehicle with four occupants, one of them injured. They had to assume that the checkpoint guards had been alerted.
They’d been travelling along the main road in tense silence for some fifty minutes when Finn reached out and tuned in the car radio. Arabic music filled the car.
‘Fuck’s sake, Finn,’ Luke snapped. ‘Turn that shit off.’ He reached out and switched it off himself, ignoring the look Finn gave him.
Amit groaned in the back. In the mirror Luke could see that his head had slumped and Abu Famir was looking at his burka-clad neighbour with a worried expression. ‘How far until we…?’
‘Shut it.’
There were lights up ahead. The checkpoint. Vehicles in front of them were slowing down.
A blanket of silence fell over the car, ruffled only by the short, sharp breaths coming from beneath Amit’s headdress. Luke felt for his handgun and sensed Finn doing the same. He looked ahead. On the other side of the road the barrier was down and a long line of vehicles — eight or nine in total, their headlamps dazzling in the darkness — were queuing behind it. The soldiers on duty surrounded around the frontrunner.
‘I’ve got three men on the other side,’ Finn reported. ‘Could be more behind the oncoming headlights.’
Luke nodded and turned his attention to their side of the road. Here the barrier was pointing upwards, and because they weren’t dazzled by the lights of the oncoming traffic, he was able to count the troops more precisely: four guards were manning their side of the road, but they were talking and laughing.
There were five cars between them and the checkpoint, spaced about twenty metres apart and all travelling at a respectful crawl. Directly ahead was a chunky old grey Mercedes, one of its brake lights not working. ‘Put your fucking foot down,’ Luke murmured. But none of the cars increased speed. If anything, they slowed down as they approached the checkpoint. It made sense: nobody wanted to attract any more attention to themselves than they needed to, even if they didn’t have enough gear to start a small war stashed in the boot.
The Merc was just passing through the open barrier when Luke caught the eye of one of the guards. He looked a bit older than the others, and his expression was a little flintier. His AK was hanging diagonally across his body, but he had one hand firmly resting on the handle. He had set himself apart from his three colleagues and was paying more attention to the checkpoint.
Luke looked away, concentrating on the road and doing what he could to appear unassuming; but his peripheral vision was focused on the guard, who was moving towards the barrier. Luke felt his blood chill. ‘Stand by,’ he muttered to Finn.
His mate was already wielding his Sig.
‘Burn it,’ said Finn, his lips barely moving. ‘Just get through..’
Luke accelerated slightly — not fast enough to make him look suspicious. All the while, his mind was calculating. What if the barrier went down before they reached it? Could he crash through? Probably not: the impact would take out their windscreen at the very least. They’d be blinded by glass fragments…
‘Luke, if this goes noisy we’ll have these fuckers on our tail from here to…’
‘Thanks, buddy,’ replied Luke. He trod down a bit more.
The guard was just making to close the checkpoint when they crossed. In the mirror, Luke saw the barrier slam down and the car behind them come to a halt. The guards swarmed, but now Luke was able to speed up, and the checkpoint soon vanished into the darkness.
Finn exhaled hard. ‘Jesus. I thought it was all about to go Tora Bora for a minute back then.’
Luke allowed himself no such expression of relief. In the sky up ahead he could see lights. They were several klicks in the distance and they were circling.
‘We’re not out of the woods yet,’ he murmured.
22.17 hrs. Distance to the border: thirty klicks.
There was a fit of coughing from the back of the car that morphed into a strangled kind of sound. Amit slumped across the seat, falling on Abu Famir and yanking the drip down from its hanging place. Luke pulled over and opened up the bonnet as cover while Finn opened Amit’s door and pulled him up to a sitting position. He removed the burka. The wounded man’s face was deathly white; his eyes were rolling and an awful smell was coming off his body. Finn reattached the drip and slipped the headdress back on. Then he turned to Luke. ‘Trauma. Massive blood loss. The guy hasn’t got long.’
‘If he dies, he dies,’ Luke said flatly. ‘We can dump the body.’ He looked down the road. ‘It can’t be more than ten klicks till we turn off down towards the smugglers’ route. Bit of luck, we’ll be out of this shitty country by…’
He looked up, suddenly aware of a chopper approaching from a couple of klicks away. The two men exchanged a glance.
‘Let’s keep moving,’ Finn said.
‘Roger that.’
They took their seats again, and continued down the road.
22.31 hrs. Distance to the border: twenty-two klicks.
Finn had his GPS unit on his lap. ‘Two klicks till we turn…’
He stopped.
‘What the…?’ Luke groaned.
Two hundred metres ahead, he could see a line of red brake lights; thirty seconds later they too were part of the queue. Two light-armoured military vehicles were parked up on either side of the road, and Luke counted seven armed Red Berets, three of them standing in the middle of the highway forming a temporary roadblock — newly established since the previous night — while the remaining four were searching each vehicle that passed. Not a cursory glance, either: all the occupants of each car were outside; the bonnets and the boots were raised. And as the Red Berets allowed each searched vehicle through the roadblock, only to repeat the operation on the next car, it became clear that they were stopping everyone.
‘What… what are you going to…?’ Abu Famir’s voice trailed off.
Luke and Finn didn’t reply. They just glanced at each other, nodded once and subtly readied their pistols. Luke felt for his carbine.
Four cars to go before it was their turn to be searched.
Three.
From the back came a murmur. Abu Famir had closed his eyes and was muttering as if in prayer. Luke looked at the fuel gauge. Half a tank. Enough to get them across the border again? It would have to be, because once he put his foot on the accelerator, there’d be no time to stop.
Two cars ahead of them in the queue. Ten metres between them and the nearest guard.
The Regiment men didn’t need to speak. They knew what they had to do. Luke pulled the hammer back on his suppressed Sig and checked the mirrors. Six cars were waiting behind them: all — so far as he could tell — civilian. Each man scrambled to get his M4 ready, poised down by his leg.
‘No violence,’ Abu Famir repeated, but even he sounded unconvinced, as though he knew there was only one way this was going.
One car.
The Merc’s occupants — two elderly men — stood obediently by the vehicle while the Red Berets searched it. It took about two minutes, after which the guards nodded to the driver to get back into the car. They were walking towards the Toyota even before the car in front started moving.
Luke wound down his window. Finn did the same.
Strike hard, strike fast. It was the only way. If they drove through the roadblock without taking out the guards, they’d be showered from behind by a torrent of AK rounds and they wouldn’t be out of range for 400 metres. Not an option.
Now the guards were alongside them, one on Luke’s side, one on Finn’s. They bent down at the same time to look into the car. And they never knew what hit them.
The suppressed Sigs made the dullest, deadest of sounds as Luke and Finn shot each guard once at point-blank range in the face. The rounds entered and exited in a split second, blood spattering the two gunmen as their victims’ faces instantly dissolved into a mash. The guards crumpled to the ground. It happened so silently that the remaining Red Berets didn’t even notice what was going on until Luke and Finn had stepped out of the car and raised their M4s. But by then it was too late.
The firefight was strangely quiet. Very few shouts from the enemy and none from the other drivers, who didn’t exit their vehicles. Just the hum of car engines and the chugging of the M4s and AKs. Finn fired bursts towards the opposite side of the road while Luke dealt with the two remaining guards on his side. They were standing about twelve metres from his position, readying their weapons at the sound of gunfire. It took him a couple of seconds to down them — single chest shots for each man — before he turned ninety degrees to add his fire to Finn’s. By now Finn had dropped three men, but there were two more standing behind a civilian vehicle, distance twenty-five metres, their weapons resting on the top of the car and ready to fire.
‘Go left!’ Luke shouted.
A spark from one of the enemy rifles, and a round hit the side of the Toyota, just forward of Finn’s door. Luke kept calm. He lined up his cross hairs with the head of the man who had fired and took the shot quickly. He knew as he squeezed the trigger that his aim was good, and he immediately switched his attention to the last guard. Finn had taken a shot but instead of hitting the final Red Beret, he’d shattered one of the windows of the car they were using as a shield. Another incoming round, inches above Luke’s head. But then he fired, and as he did so he heard a crack from Finn’s rifle at almost the same time. Impossible to say which of them had hit the last man, but one of them had.
Nobody left the vehicles behind them as Luke and Finn jumped back into the Toyota. Abu Famir’s eyes were wide. ‘No violence… I gave you my instructions!’ Luke didn’t answer. He floored the pedal and the car roared away.
‘You cannot just kill men like that!’ Abu Famir shouted. ‘I will have you reported…’
Finn looked over the back of his seat and pointed his Sig directly at Abu Famir. ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll do you too.’
For once the pomposity seemed knocked out of the old man.
They sped down the highway for a minute. Luke felt the sticky blood of the guards drying on the skin of his face, but he ignored it and kept one eye on the road, one on the mirror. Nothing chasing them yet. How long before the shooting back there was reported by one of the civilian onlookers? Impossible to say. Minutes, probably.
‘Turning in 500 metres,’ Finn said.
Luke nodded. Once they were off the road, they could get out the NV and drive to their covert border crossing. But when they were 100 metres from the turn-off, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be so easy.
‘Vehicles,’ said Finn. ‘They’re offroad — looks like border control.’ He was right. The desert off to the left — which had been all but empty the previous night — was now dotted with headlamps. To make matters worse, another chopper — or perhaps the same one — had turned up. It was hovering over their escape route, only this time it had a searchlight illuminating the road they needed to follow.
‘They’re looking for us,’ said Luke.
‘If we head down there, we’re fucked…’
Finn was right. That route was closed to them. No doubt about it. They sped on past it.
‘How far to the border?’ Luke asked after a moment.
‘Twenty klicks. If they don’t see us heading that way, they’re going to twig pretty soon that we’re taking a different route… We should start thinking about Plan B.’
‘Plan B?’ Abu Famir piped up, his voice nervous. ‘What is Plan B?’
Neither of the Regiment men answered, but Luke glanced in the rear-view mirror at the slumped, burka-clad figure of Amit.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Options and alternatives tumbled around in Luke’s mind, but no other solution presented itself. They were heading straight for the Iraqi border. It would be well guarded, with God knows how many soldiers and how much military equipment. Certainly they were insufficiently equipped to break through.
They saw it from a couple of klicks. The road ran downhill to the border post, so they had the advantage of height. The checkpoint itself was illuminated in the darkness. There were two sections — the Iraqi and the Jordanian — separated, Luke estimated, by about 200 metres of open ground. Even if they could break through the Iraqi side — and given the large number of vehicles and lights and movement, that was hardly a straightforward prospect — it would be open season on them as they crossed that patch of no-man’s-land. The Iraqis would have artillery covering it, especially now. Attempting to cross that border by vehicle was out of the question. Retreating to find their covert border crossing was also off the menu because the chopper and border-control vehicles had eyes on. They had only one option: to ditch the Toyota, travel by foot and try to find a weak point in the border fence. With border control on high alert, that was a dangerous call. They’d find it tough enough with Abu Famir in tow. There was certainly no room for any more stragglers. Especially wounded ones.
A kilometre from the border, Luke pulled over. There was no cover in the vicinity, and he was forced to ditch the car among the brush just four or five metres from the road. He looked at Finn, his face grim, and nodded.
‘Get out!’ he told Abu Famir.
‘What is happening?’
‘ Get out! ’
‘I refuse to…’
Luke held his Sig up against the Iraqi’s head.
‘I’m not fucking around, old man. If you want to shoot the shit with Allah, stay where you are. Otherwise, get out of the car. Now.’
Abu Famir stared at the silenced Sig, his eyes bulging. His hand felt for the door lever and he quickly scrambled out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He went and stood about five metres away, close enough for Luke to keep an eye on, far enough away to be out of earshot.
There was a moment of silence. And then, from behind the veil of the burka, Amit spoke. ‘You’re going to… to kill me now?’ His voice was thin and shaky. It was clearly a struggle for him to say even a single word.
‘We have to go cross-country,’ Luke said. ‘You’re too weak. You won’t make it.’
Amit’s body was trembling. ‘Take this thing off my head,’ he said.
Luke pointed his weapon at Amit and nodded at Finn to do as the man had asked. Even in the darkness of the car they could tell that Amit was on the way out. His eyes were glazed, his skin corpse-white. He appeared to be staring into the middle distance, every breath an effort, and for a moment Luke thought the delirium had returned. He became horribly aware of the cars passing them, just five or six metres from their position. Each time one went past, the interior of the Toyota lit up, then faded into darkness. It would only take one of them to stop and see if they needed help, and then…
Amit spoke again.
‘Abu Famir has to get out.’
‘That’s the plan, buddy,’ said Luke.
‘You’re… you’re British special forces, right?’ Neither of them replied. It didn’t seem to bother Amit. ‘Can you do it? Can you get him across-country?’
‘We can try.’
A passing car slowed down, but then sped up again.
‘I’m going to die, aren’t I? Of my wounds, I mean.’
A pause.
‘You’re in bad shape, buddy.’ Luke glanced at Finn, then back at Amit. ‘You want me to end it now? It’ll be quick.’
Amit swallowed. His breath became a bit shorter, and he shook his head. ‘It’s my job to ensure Abu Famir is safe.’
‘Who are you working for?’ Luke demanded. ‘You might as well tell us, mate. Seems we’re both trying to do the same thing.’
Amit closed his eyes. ‘For the Institute… Mossad. For Israel.’
Luke’s mind began to click through the gears. Israel was top of Saddam’s hit list. He’d demonstrated that before Desert Storm, when he’d started chucking scuds in the general direction of Tel Aviv.
‘Saddam would bomb my people again if he could,’ said Amit. ‘It’s my duty to ensure that the West invades…’ He opened his eyes again. ‘Perhaps you do not understand…’
It didn’t matter if Luke understood or not. This was only going to end one way. ‘You’re not coming with us, buddy. I’m sorry…’
‘For fuck’s sake, Luke,’ Finn cut in. ‘We can’t hang about.’
Luke nodded. What Finn hadn’t said — what he hadn’t needed to say — was that they couldn’t leave Amit alive. It would be easy for the enemy to torture their plans out of him.
‘Do it,’ Finn said.
‘Wait…’ Amit’s plea left him breathless. ‘I can help you.’
‘You’re a bit past that, mate.’
‘Listen to me. I can drive the car to the border. Cause a distraction.’
Luke and Finn exchanged a glance. ‘Go on.’
‘Do you have explosives?’
Luke nodded.
‘What do you have?’
‘C4. Frags. White phos.’
Amit nodded. His eyes flickered from one man to the other. And then, in his breathless, stilted way, he continued to speak.
Two minutes later Luke and Finn were standing five metres from the car, rifles slung round their necks and frowns on their foreheads. Four or five klicks to the east, they could see a chopper still circling, and on the highway one or two vehicles were still passing every minute.
They spoke in low whispers. ‘Do you trust him?’ Finn asked.
‘We haven’t got much choice.’ He looked towards the border. ‘There’s no way we’ll get through there. We either slot Amit now, or we…’
Or we what? The checkpoint was a kilometre to the west. If he, Finn and Abu Famir headed in a north-westerly direction, they would have to cover about a klick and a half if they wanted to intersect the border a kilometre to the north of the checkpoint. That would take about fifteen minutes, but the choppers and border-control vehicles would have a high chance of finding them. They needed a distraction. Something to focus the attention of the enemy on a position where the SAS men and their Iraqi passenger wouldn’t be. Something to give them a window of opportunity. And it was exactly that which Amit was offering.
‘He’s a good man,’ Luke murmured. ‘Don’t know if I’d have the balls…’
‘We need to make a decision now,’ Finn said.
A pause.
Luke nodded. ‘Let’s do it.’
Abu Famir was standing by the car, waiting for them. ‘What is happening? I demand to know what is happening.’
‘Get ready to walk,’ Luke told him. ‘We’re heading cross-country.’
‘What about my deputy? He is too sick to…’
‘You can drop the deputy bullshit now. He’s come clean…’
Finn was opening up the boot. He started moving all the ammunition, explosives and grenades they had into the front passenger seat, while Luke bent down to speak to Amit. ‘It’s time,’ he said.
Amit grabbed Luke’s arm and turned his ghostly face to look at him. ‘I have a sister,’ he whispered. ‘You must find her. You must tell her what I did, and that I did it for my country.’
‘Course I will, buddy,’ Luke lied.
‘You must. Otherwise she will not understand.’ Amit took a moment to catch his breath. ‘Her name… her name is Maya Bloom.’ His face became anguished. ‘You must find her.’
Luke looked over his shoulder to see Finn standing just by him. He had two white-phosphorus grenades in his hands.
‘Come on,’ Luke said to Amit. ‘Let’s get you into the front.’
It wasn’t easy. Amit’s legs were too weak to carry him, and his knees buckled the moment he tried to stand. Another car slowed down and pulled up alongside them. The driver shouted something in Arabic.
‘Tell them we’re fine,’ Luke instructed Abu Famir, who shouted out a response and the car drove away.
By the time Amit was in the driver’s seat, he was coughing badly — a dreadful hacking, wheezing sound.
‘Get Abu Famir away from the car,’ Luke told Finn, taking the grenades from him and turning his attention back to Amit. The Israeli was slumped forward, his forearms flat against the steering wheel and his body shaking violently.’
‘Quickly,’ he murmured. ‘ Quickly… ’
Luke turned the ignition key. He wound down the windows, then carefully removed the pin from one of the grenades, but kept the safety lever tightly squeezed.
‘You sure you can grip it?’ he asked. Amit nodded, and Luke curled the fingers of the dying man’s left hand around it. If Amit lost his grip, Luke would only have a couple of seconds to get the hell away. He primed the second grenade, then carefully placed it in Amit’s right hand.
‘OK, buddy,’ he said. ‘You’re good to go.’
‘You will find Maya?’
‘You got it.’
‘In London.’ His weak voice was hardly audible above the noise of the engine.
‘I’ll find her.’
‘Then leave me.’
Luke didn’t need telling twice. He stretched over Amit’s body, put the vehicle’s transmission into drive, then shut the door and sprinted away from the side of the road. He was at least thirty metres away when he turned to look back.
The Toyota had moved off. It was going very slowly, but it had joined the main carriageway and had started on the final kilometre before the border.
Abu Famir stared at the car. ‘He did this of his own free will?’ he asked.
‘Hundred and ten per cent. A lot of people want you out of the country, my friend.’ He watched the car until it disappeared.
‘Think he’ll make it?’ Finn asked flatly.
Luke sniffed. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘He’s pretty fucked up. But even if he goes bang before he hits the checkpoint, it’ll be a diversion.’ He looked due north-west. It was dark, of course, but he’d seen the satellite imagery and he knew there was open ground here. ‘I reckon we’ve got fifteen minutes. Let’s not hang around.’
‘Roger that.’
The three men turned and started to walk across the desert.
Amit shook.
The pain was everything. It was no longer just the wound that hurt. Now it felt as if the pain had seeped into his blood and melted through his whole body. It was all-consuming. So intense that movement or even speech felt like obstacles he could never scale. He wanted it to be over. Finished. Gone.
But through the pain, one thing was clear to him. If he must die, let it be for a purpose. In a corner of his mind he saw a scene of devastation. It was an image that had haunted his dreams since he was a child: the aftermath of a Palestinian suicide bomb on the streets of Tel Aviv, his own parents the victims, torn — quite literally — limb from limb.
If he must die, let it be for a purpose. Not like them.
It took all his strength to clutch the safety levers of the grenades. He steered with his forearms, which had the full weight of his body behind them, but the car required little steering. The checkpoint was straight ahead. He could see it, even though his vision was blurred, but he was too confused to work out the distance. All he knew was that he had to make it, however far it was.
And he had to keep gripping the safety levers.
He couldn’t allow the final remnants of strength to drain from his body too soon…
The rear lights of the cars that passed him drew long, red-neon lines through space. Amit felt as though a mist was gathering all around him. The closer it came, the less strength he had.
A car overtook, the driver beeping his horn at Amit’s slowness. He barely noticed. His concentration was all used up.
How far to the border? Harah, how much further could he last?
Time passed. He had no conception of it.
He saw Maya in his mind. His sister. He saw her as a child, kneeling on the pavement by their mother, shrieks of indescribable grief reaching to the rooftops. And he saw her now. So ruthless. So angry. When she learned what he had done, she would be proud of him. That thought alone gave him a little extra strength. A little extra resolve.
The lights outside were brighter. More numerous. There were people. Uniforms. Men with guns. He removed his foot from the accelerator and pressed the brake a little too sharply. The Toyota juddered to a halt. Ahead of him there was a queue. Three vehicles, perhaps four.
He closed his eyes, panting, trembling. He had to wait until he was closer to the barrier, twenty metres ahead, where he could cause maximum damage. Through the open windows he heard noises. Vehicle engines. Voices shouting harshly to each other in Arabic. Bustle. People. The queue crept forwards. Slowly. So slowly…
There was only one car ahead of him now. His body was shaking even more violently. The strength was leaving his wrists. He mustered his determination and moved one arm down to rest on the ammo boxes on the passenger seat.
The lights were getting dimmer. He could barely breathe — just short, desperate gulps.
The car ahead had moved off. Amit advanced a final few metres towards the barrier.
Figures surrounded the Toyota, shadowy and indistinct. Amit had no idea how many there were. He was past counting. Past caring.
But he knew there were only seconds left.
‘ Barukh atah Adonai, Elokaynu, Melekh ha-Olam,’ he prayed with the last remnants of his breath. ‘ Barukh atah Adonai, Elokaynu, Melekh ha-Olam…’
It wasn’t a conscious decision to let his grip on the detonation levers slip. His strength had come to the bottom of the tank.
Amit didn’t hear the explosion of the grenades, or of the ammunition stash in the passenger seat. He didn’t see the burning white fluorescence that filled the car and burst out of the open windows, or the way the hot phosphorus sprayed over the faces and uniforms of any border guards within twenty metres of the Toyota.
And he was dead before the car exploded, throwing shrapnel, rounds, fire and burning chemicals high into the air, and raining down on the border post and the soldiers who guarded it.
In the darkness of the desert, Luke, Finn and Abu Famir heard the explosion — a single boom, followed a series of aftershocks. They turned in the direction of the border. It was a little less than a klick away, and they could see a distant glow — the remnants of the Toyota, of their weaponry and of Amit.
Abu Famir shook his head in disbelief, visibly moved. ‘Who was he?’
Luke wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. ‘A decent guy,’ he replied quietly.
A pause.
‘In your world,’ Abu Famir said, ‘do decent guys always cause such destruction?’
From the opposite direction, they saw the lights of a chopper burning along the highway towards the border. The Iraqis’ resources would now be concentrated on the location of Amit’s makeshift suicide bomb. For a short while, at least. That would leave the three of them free to find a place to cross into Jordan on foot. Luke estimated that the border was now 800 metres north-west of their position. If they could reach the fence in the next ten minutes while the Iraqis were looking the other way, and with a bit of luck, they should be able to find a crossing point.
Luke turned his back on the explosion. He nodded at Finn, who nudged Abu Famir with the butt of his M4.
‘Get moving, sunshine,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a border to cross.’