Killing for the Company (20 page)

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 . . .