Killing for the Company (39 page)

But it was not rats, or rat shit, that scared him.

The tunnels were, by rights, illegal, even though everyone knew they existed. From time to time the authorities cracked down. Not because they had any real objection to the existence of the tunnels, or their purpose; but because to arrest someone was a good way of extorting money from them. Fail to pay – and this young man did not have the means to do that – and you could be sure of ending up in a Gazan prison.

But it was not the threat of discovery that scared him either.

It was the threat of a sudden and stifling death.

The tunnel was about two metres high and one metre wide, though because it had not been dug by experts, the height was not uniform and there were places – like the spot where he was now – where the ceiling was too low to stand. It was held up by a series of wooden joists, each one spaced a couple of metres apart and supported by timber poles that sagged in the middle. He had good reason to be fearful down here. These tunnels had a limited life. It was not a question of
if
they collapsed, but
when
. It always seemed to happen when there was somebody down there. Perhaps it was the vibrations they caused as they moved gingerly along the tunnel. Perhaps it happened when they knocked against one of the timber poles. There are many ways to die, and he had contemplated most of them, but being crushed by the weight of so much earth was not the method the young man would choose for his own martyrdom. Now he whispered a fervent and continuous prayer to himself as, torch in hand, he crawled over the loose dirt and rodent shit and moved further along the tunnel.

He had started out in a small house a hundred metres from the Egypt–Gaza Strip Barrier – a buffer zone between the two states with a steel and concrete wall that was even more impenetrable than the high wire fence that segregated Israel and Gaza. The basement of this house was the starting point of one of the many tunnels that crossed from the Strip into Egypt and Israel. Gaza’s neighbours had done everything they could to destroy these tunnels. The Israelis had bombed any house suspected of secreting an entrance – regardless of how many innocent men, women or children were inside. Egypt had gone so far as to start work on an underground wall to block these subterranean access points. But they couldn’t block tunnels they were unable to see, and many remained.

How far had he come? It was so difficult to say in the darkness. A hundred metres, perhaps? That would put him almost exactly underneath the border. It would mean the Gaza Strip lay behind him and Egypt ahead. With any luck, he would soon see . . .

He stopped. Lights up ahead. He couldn’t make out the distance yet. Thirty metres, maybe more? The young man’s heart beat a little faster. He was pleased to make contact with somebody else; but he was apprehensive about the package he was to take delivery of. It was really not the sort of thing you wanted to have with you down here. Ordinarily, these tunnels were used for smuggling essential goods under the border from Egypt to Gaza. The Israeli blockade of this tiny state’s eastern and northern borders meant that food and medicine were increasingly scarce. The Israelis allowed a certain quantity of these commodities over the border, but nothing like enough for the whole population. So it was that in Gaza, thanks to these tunnels, the black market in antibiotics was almost as buoyant as the black market in Western cigarettes.

Of course, it was not just food and medicine that found their way through these secret passages. Gaza may not have been officially at war, but there were enough angry men in that tiny strip for it to feel like a state perpetually on the edge of military conflict. Militants need weapons. They need ammunition. These tunnels had transported countless Kalashnikovs and rockets, and untold boxes of rounds and explosives. And they had transported armies, too. Not large armies, like those that the bigger nations could muster. Gaza was small, and had to make do with its meagre resources. Her forces consisted of handfuls of martyrs, armed with vests packed with explosives, tiny electrical detonators and a willingness – an eagerness – to die for their cause.

The lights ahead grew closer and the young man could hear voices. He cursed under his breath. Why couldn’t they keep the noise down? Didn’t they know what could happen if they spoke too loudly? He felt the sweat dripping down his face, and continued to pray and crawl.

They met about twenty metres further on. There were two of them, Egyptians in their mid-twenties – a good five years older than him. They didn’t look nearly so scared. It was possible to stand up in this part of the tunnel and the three men stood close together, eyeing each other mistrustfully. He could smell the coffee on their breath. One of them was taller than the other – it was difficult to make out his features without shining a torch directly in his face – and he was carrying something. The young man directed his torch beam at it.

It was a box, about fifty centimetres square and thirty deep. It was made of something resembling balsa wood – the kind of thing that might be used to carry fresh fruit, but sealed at the top. On the side of the box facing the young man was a curved mark. He was not a great reader, especially of non-Arabic lettering, so to him the ornate red ‘G’ was a meaningless symbol.

The Egyptian man thrust the box towards him.

‘Be
careful
with that,’ said the young man. ‘Don’t you know what it is?’

He took it from the Egyptian, gripping it with both hands.

The shorter of the two men made a hissing sound between his teeth. ‘Fucking Gazans,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s soap for you to wash your mother’s filthy arse.’

The young man stood perfectly still. ‘My mother,’ he said, his quiet voice disguising a world of emotion, ‘is dead.’

The smaller Egyptian shone his torch directly in the face of the young man, who wanted to look away from the bright light but refused to. ‘Good,’ said the Egyptian. ‘One less for me to waste my spit on.’ And he spat a mouthful of saliva on to the young man’s left cheek.

The two Egyptians laughed; but they fell silent when they heard an ominous creaking sound. For a few seconds, all three men froze.

More creaking. Impossible to say where it came from. It sounded like the whole tunnel was groaning.

The young man held the box a bit tighter to his body. ‘If you knew what was in here,’ he said, his voice trembling slightly, ‘you wouldn’t stick around.’

He raised his torch to light up their faces.

All of a sudden they looked a little less sure of themselves. As they glanced at each other, they shot the young man a hateful look. Then they turned and hurried back down the tunnel. They were careful to be quiet now. He had the impression that they wanted to get away quickly.

Wise decision, he thought to himself.

The journey back along the tunnel was even more scary than before. In those places where he could stand, the young man held the wooden box tightly. When he had to crawl, he placed it on the floor and pushed it ahead of him. He had been told that the contents were not especially volatile, that they needed a special kind of detonator. He didn’t find that especially reassuring. It would only take a small mishap for him to be not only crushed, but burned.

Fifty metres to go. The tunnel creaked again. Again he froze, not knowing whether to keep moving so as to get out of there quickly, or to stay still and avoid disturbing the structures down here. But he knew he couldn’t remain immobile forever, so he started crawling once more, pushing the box along and muttering his constant prayers.

Minutes passed like hours. With, he estimated, twenty-five metres to go, he realised he was heading uphill. The end of the tunnel was close and he wanted to speed up, to get out as quickly as possible. But he tried to stay calm. To stay slow. Whatever was in the box would not become any less dangerous just because he was nearly on home soil.

He could hear voices now. And suddenly, perhaps fifteen metres ahead, he could see a light. He whispered a few words of profound thanks and finally allowed himself a little more speed. A minute later he was standing underneath a trapdoor in the cellar of the house, carefully passing the box up into an outstretched pair of hands. Once the box was dealt with, he allowed himself to be pulled up into the cellar.

It was tiny and cramped, with a low ceiling and barely enough room for the three others who were waiting for him.

‘How did it go?’ one of them asked.

The young man shrugged. ‘Fine. No problem.’

‘Any trouble with the Egyptians?’

‘Only when I told them their mothers were stinking whores.’

The others laughed.

‘You’ve done well. That little box . . .’ He pointed to where it was lying on the ground. ‘That little box has a big job to do.’

The young man looked at it. Down in the tunnel it had seemed huge and ungainly. Up here, it appeared much smaller. He had questions. He reached out and brushed his thumb over the ‘G’ on the box. ‘Where do we get this from?’ he asked. ‘Normally we have to make do with Mother of Satan. Who’s sending us this stuff?’

‘Ah,’ his comrade waved one hand in the air. ‘Who cares, so long as we have it. Come on. Shut the trapdoor. We have to get it out of here. There isn’t much time.’

The young man did as he was told. The trapdoor echoed slightly as it shut. He followed his friends as they left the cellar, then the house, and stashed the box of C4 plastic explosive among some blankets in the boot of a very old, very rusty car. They drove away from the separation barrier with Egypt and further north, into the young man’s tiny, war-torn homeland.

The convoy containing Stratton’s Merc, the police outriders and the Regiment’s Land Cruiser came to a halt.

Jerusalem was three hours behind them. Its urban bustle and ancient beauty felt a million miles away. So, too, did the Garden of Gethsemane. They found themselves in a flat, desolate wasteland. A sturdy wire fence, about four metres high, ran north to south for as far as Luke could see. On this side of the fence was Israel; on the other side, Gaza. The Israeli side was littered with enormous bulldozers and military vehicles – tanks, Jeeps, the works. The Gazan side was empty for several hundred metres, but in the far distance Luke could see the telltale signs of a city above the horizon. The summer sun had baked the ground on either side of the fence hard, and the winter rains had failed to soften it much. Here and there, Luke could see craters of varying width and depth. He’d been in enough theatres of war to recognise the pockmarks of artillery fire on the skin of the land.

The convoy had stopped at the front of a large cargo checkpoint. From photographs shown in briefing Luke recognised it as the Karni crossing. It was a vast jumble of steel and concrete buildings, barriers and warehouses. It had the air of a place which, when it was operational, would be very busy. But there was no civilian activity here today. No goods vehicles crossing to or from Gaza. The only presence was military. Five IDF vehicles waited for them, and Luke counted eleven Israeli soldiers positioned at various points around the crossing, armed with assault rifles and wearing Kevlar helmets and body armour. He knew there were probably more they couldn’t see. All of the soldiers were facing towards Gaza, their hands resting on their guns, clearly on high alert.

They had good reason to be. The Karni crossing had been closed by the Israelis since a network of tunnels had been discovered directly underneath it two years previously. There hadn’t been much doubt that the purpose of these tunnels was to pack them full of explosives and bring the crossing down. The Palestinians had also smuggled a number of suicide bombers through the Karni crossing, while the Israelis had used it to move tanks, personnel and artillery into Gaza. Look carefully on the ground and you could still see the markings of the tank tracks embedded in the earth.

‘Fucking lovely,’ Fozzie announced as he drew the Land Cruiser up alongside Stratton’s Merc. He filled his lungs with air. ‘Reckon I’ll come here for my holidays again next year.’

Luke peered out of his side window. Up above, he could see a chopper. It was hovering low – maybe a hundred feet - with its nose slightly dipped, but staying resolutely on the Israeli side of the fence. It looked like it had eyes on, but on what?

Luke exited the Land Cruiser and opened up the back. This was where all their additional equipment was stashed. He removed a small hand-held scope and used it to scan beyond the border fence. The buffer zone between the two states was about 500 metres wide, and there, making no attempt to stay hidden, was an open-topped technical. A Palestinian man stood on the back in desert fatigues and a black and white keffiyeh. On his shoulder he was carrying what looked to Luke like an old Blowpipe anti-aircraft rocket launcher. The Blowpipe was a pile of shit, almost impossible to fire accurately – the British Army had covertly offloaded all theirs to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan back in the 1980s when the Javelin came into service. Next to the THOR launcher that Luke had been training with on the Brecon Beacons it was prehistoric.

He lowered the scope, returned to the 4 x 4 and reported his finding.

‘Nothing like a warm welcome,’ Finn muttered as they disembarked from the vehicle, 53s slung round their necks.

‘I’d rather have a potato gun than a Blowpipe,’ said Fozzie.

Luke wasn’t so sure. The Blowpipe might be old, but because it was neither heat-seeking nor laser-guided, it wasn’t susceptible to modern countermeasures. The chances of the raghead on the other side of the fence bringing down the heli if it infringed Hamas airspace were small. But he might get lucky and no doubt there were plenty more of his type waiting to do the mopping up should the first line of Palestinian defence fail. He remembered someone telling him once that the Muj in Afghanistan had taken to using them not as anti-aircraft weapons, but anti-vehicle. It wasn’t lost on him that they’d soon be driving within its range.