Ultimate Weapon (15 page)

The pilot was lowering the Black Hawk on to the ground. This was the most dangerous moment of the mission. Drop-down. Flying up from Kuwait, they hadn’t been troubled by any Iraqi aircraft: the few planes that had survived the last Gulf War had all been grounded, and most of them were so old they were probably more threatening to their pilots than to the enemy. It was radar they had to worry about, not the Iraqi Air Force. They still had the capability to check incoming flights, and if they’d spotted the Black Hawk coming in, despite it flying low, there could well be a battalion waiting to meet them. It wasn’t hard to put an RPG into a descending chopper. Just point and press the trigger, thought Jed.
Then sit back and enjoy the fireworks.

With a twisting motion that was making Jed’s stomach heave, the Black Hawk dropped clean downwards. They were heading for a strip of scrubland, just alongside Highway 5, five miles outside the city. The pilot had no lights on, to make sure the helicopter didn’t draw attention to itself. The drill was to bring the Black Hawk down hard if the ground looked clear. You kept the throttle open all the time, so the chopper could be pulled
up again rapidly if it faced any incoming fire. It made for a nasty bump when you landed. But it was better than getting hit by a missile.

‘Clear,’ snapped the pilot over the intercom. ‘Get ready.’

Jed held on to the metal frame of the chopper. The blood rushed to his head as the Black Hawk descended the last few feet. Just before landing it suddenly jerked upwards, like a yo-yo being snapped back. This was the most dangerous moment of all. Only last week, an American special forces team going in by chopper had been blown apart by a single sniper lying on the ground waiting for them. All it took was one bullet into the fuel tank. All five guys on that mission had died in an instant.

With a thud, the chopper came to rest on the muddy surface of the ground. The pilot had counted down the time until landing, and on one, Jed pulled the headset away, casting it to the floor. Jed rushed forward to the open door, hurling himself to the ground. Around him, he could here Matt, Steve and Rob do the same, while behind him he heard the Black Hawk’s huge steel propeller roar into overdrive as it revved up the power to lift the machine into the sky. It had only been on the ground for five seconds. As it rose back up towards the sky, its propellers sucked up a storm of sand, rising in vertical columns into the air, then exploding against the night sky as if fireworks had been set alight. All right for you, mate, thought Jed, as the Black Hawk disappeared behind the clouds. You’ll be sleeping in a nice
warm bed tonight, watching the hotties on MTV. Not camping out in this hellhole.

‘Clear the area,’ he hissed.

The Iraqis could be on the way to meet them right now. Lying flat on the ground, Jed glanced at his watch. For the next ten minutes, he would just lie there, completely silent, waiting to see if their position had been spotted. Slowly he started to recover his senses from the noise and the heat of the chopper. The stretch of scrubland covered about four hundred square metres. Straight ahead of them was a ridge of mud, and behind that some rusting cars and decaying industrial machinery. As the time elapsed, Jed picked himself up and ran towards it, keeping his head down. He scrambled up over the ridge, then waited, recovering his breath. Steve, Matt and Rob were at his side. ‘Everyone OK?’ he asked.

The three men nodded in turn. A silence had descended upon the wasteland. Jed took a deep breath. This was the second time he had had Iraqi air in his lungs, and it was starting to taste familiar: even in winter there was a heat and tension to the oxygen that was nothing like anything Jed had ever tasted before. You could feel the violence in it. He looked around him, peering into the darkness. ‘British, British,’ hissed a voice. Jed looked straight ahead. He could see nothing, but he could hear the voice clearly. Then a pair of eyes crept out from behind an abandoned truck, as vivid and bright as a cat’s. Jed whistled once, then twice. The man stepped out of the shadows and into enough light for Jed to get a clear look at him. He was medium build, maybe five
nine, with a thin, muscular body, and the expression of a born huckster. In some more normal country, he’d be selling apartments for an estate agency or trading currencies at a brokerage, thought Jed. In this nuthouse, he was selling out his country to the new rulers. And who could blame the bastard? Everyone knew who was going to win the war. It was just a matter of making sure you got on the right side at the right time. The Iraqis have been around for thousands of years, Jed reminded himself.
They know all about survival
.

‘British, British,’ the man repeated.

Jed had checked on his GPS to make sure that they had come in at the right location. He was holding the AK-47 to his chest, his finger on the trigger, poised to fire if necessary. There was a preset code, and it had to be followed to the letter.

‘How far to Tipperary?’ he hissed.

‘Five miles,’ the man hissed back.

OK, thought Jed. That’s our bloke. The man took a step nearer. ‘Radhi al-Shaalan,’ he said, in voice that sounded as if he’d learnt English from listening to the World Service. ‘At your service.’

Jed nodded and turned round to give the thumbs up to the other three. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he said quietly.

Al-Shaalan signalled over to the scrubland. ‘I have a car,’ he said.

Jed followed closely in his tracks, as he started picking his way through the debris and broken machinery. Matt, Steve and Rob were right behind him. When they saw
it, Jed wasn’t sure you could readily tell the difference between the car and the rubbish that filled up the site. A Datsun 100 dating from sometime in the mid-1970s, he could remember seeing one on the street where he grew up, but the wheels had been taken off and it was slowly falling to bits. He’d never seen one actually start. ‘I need the gold,’ said al-Shaalan, as he opened the door.

Jed took two one-ounce coins from his kitbag. Al-Shaalan rubbed them briefly with his thumb: like most Iraqi traders, he could tell gold just by touching it. He smiled, tucking the coins into a purse on the inside of the belt. ‘Get in,’ he whispered.

It was a tight squeeze. Jed got in the front, with Matt, Steve and Rob on the back seat. ‘Fuck it,’ muttered Ron, as he slammed the door. ‘Next time we’re going to Hertz, and hiring a minivan.’

With a turn of the key, the Datsun fired into life. Al-Shaalan pressed his foot on to the accelerator, and the engine screeched like a cat with its tail stuck in the door. Slowly, it started moving up towards the road, its headlights still switched off. The weight of its load was a strain for the 1.3 litre engine, and it refused to move any faster than twenty miles an hour. At the end of the dump, there was a dirt track, and the car moved steadily across it. ‘Ever thought of going into the minicabbing business, mate?’ said Steve. ‘With this motor, you’d be a natural.’

‘How far?’ said Jed, glancing across at al-Shaalan.

‘Five miles to the outskirts of the city, and then another one mile to your target,’ replied al-Shaalan. ‘We
have a safe house organised where you can stay for the night.’

Jed could hear the nerves in the man’s voice, and his eyes had the wild, beaten look of a man who knows he could be in more trouble than he could handle. ‘Don’t flap, mate,’ hissed Jed. ‘We know what we’re doing.’

After a few hundred yards, they hit a stretch of road. The car turned on to it, and after half a mile they hit a slip road that took them up on to Highway 5. Jed was struck by how clean and modern it looked: it could be any big motorway anywhere in Europe. It had three lanes, with a tarmac surface, a hard shoulder, and big green-and-white signs written in English and Arabic. There were plenty of old wrecks like the Datsun chugging along in the slow lane, but also a steady stream of Mercedes, Land Rovers and Lexuses racing past them. It’s a first-world country that’s about to be bombed back into the Stone Age, Jed thought. Hide those fancy motors, mates. They aren’t going to survive the next few weeks.

The Datsun creaked as al-Shaalan pulled it down into a slip road. Jed had studied a street map before his last trip to Baghdad, and had a pretty good idea of the geography of the city in his head, but this looked unfamiliar. There were two blocks of prosperous-looking suburban houses, probably with pools in the back gardens, and air-conditioning units pumping processed air into the night sky. Just like Sevenoaks, thought Jed. The smart houses faded after half a mile, replaced by rows of poorly built concrete blocks, the dust rising up from the sand behind them, and with every doorway filled with men
standing around, smoking and drinking tea. ‘Quiet,’ said al-Shaalan.

Jed looked straight ahead. ‘Shit,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Stay still, guys.’

The police checkpoint was manned by just two officers. They were both dressed in the dark blue uniforms of the Iraqi police, not the baggy, black overalls of the Fedayeen, the fanatical secret police that owed its loyalty only to Saddam Hussein, and which had terrorised the local population for the last two decades. ‘Let me handle this,’ said al-Shaalan.

Jed could see the fear written into the sweat already starting to trickle down the side of his cheek. The police looked as if they were checking every fifth car. They were stationed at the side of the road, just as the residential area gave way to an industrial estate. ‘How much further to the safe house?’ hissed Jed.

‘A mile,’ said al-Shaalan.

‘We could get out here and walk it,’ said Jed.

Al-Shaalan shook his head. ‘They are watching for people trying to avoid them. They can see us from here. We’ll just try and drive through.’

The Datsun slowed down as it approached the roadblock. Jed glanced once at the two policemen, then looked away. He didn’t want them looking too closely at his eyes. In the dark, in the right clothes, you might not notice he was European; if you stared into his eyes, you’d see it right away. One car was flagged past, then another. Stop the guy in front of us, thought Jed. Then you won’t have time for us.

‘
Waqf
,’ shouted the policeman as they drew level.

Jed slipped his hand into his pocket, and gripped tight on to the handle of his Browning BDA 380 pistol. He didn’t know much Arabic, but he knew the word ‘stop’. And he knew that meant they were about to get into a fight.

The policemen leant into the window, on the driver’s side of the car. He was looking at al-Shaalan, then past him towards Jed and the three men in the back. All of them were sitting perfectly still. Jed could see the truncheon on the man’s belt, and the Russian-built AK-47 assault rifle slung over his back. There was probably a pistol in there as well. It was dark in the car. There were lights beaming back from the street, but they were weak and the visibility was poor. Doesn’t matter, thought Jed, keeping a tight grip on the Browning.
You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know there’s something suspicious about us
.

The policeman snapped something at al-Shaalan. Jed couldn’t make out the words. He was taking a flashlight from his pocket, flicking the switch. He shone it directly into Jed’s face: all he could see was the bulb of the torch, blocking out the rest of his vision. With one swift movement, he jerked the Browning upwards. No time to aim properly, and no vision either. He pointed the gun eight inches above the flashlight: on a normally built man, that should take the bullet straight into the heart. He squeezed the trigger, once, then again. As the bullet smashed into the man’s chest, the torch dropped out of his hand, and suddenly the car was dark again. Jed pushed
open the door, and rolled out on to the ground. It felt dusty and dry as he hit the side of the road. The second policeman had already pulled his gun from his holster, and was pointing it straight at al-Shaalan. He was shouting at him, his voice ragged and scared. Maybe twenty-three, twenty-four, decided Jed, looking straight at the man, and raising the Browning so that the sights on the pistol were level with his eyes. Sorry about this, pal. You just happened to be at the wrong roadblock on the wrong day. That’s all.

He squeezed the trigger. The bullet ripped straight through the centre of the man’s forehead, slicing into his brain. He muttered something under his breath, spat out a mouthful of blood, then started to crumple to the ground. Jed fired again, this time putting the bullet straight into his windpipe. No real need for a double tap, he told himself. The bastard was already dead. But you stick to the routine, no matter what. The rule book said that you always put two bullets into every target. One to kill him, and the second to kill him again. Better that than having the bastard crawling towards you with vengeance on his mind.

Jed looked back to the first policeman. Matt was already standing over him, a whisper of smoke curling away from the muzzle of his own Browning: Jed’s bullet had wounded him but Matt had had to finish the job. Next to him al-Shaalan was lying on the ground, badly wounded. The policeman must have shot him before Matt had a chance to put a bullet into him. He was clutching on to his chest, but the blood was seeping
from his side, and it was clear he wouldn’t hang on much longer. Looking over at Matt, he held up a piece of paper. ‘Meet my cousin in this café,’ he said. ‘He’ll be able to help you.’

In the next moment, his head fell to the side. His eyes closed.
Dead
.

Kneeling down, Matt put one of the policemen’s guns in his hand. With any luck, the local coppers would assume it was just a gangland killing when they found the bodies. They didn’t want anything to alert them to the fact that there were special forces soldiers dropping into the city. Jed glanced down the street. They were about half a mile from the last apartment building, but he could hear shouting. The gunfire must have been audible to the other cars that had already passed through the checkpoint. He couldn’t hear any sirens, but he didn’t even know if they had sirens on Baghdad police cars. Shit, he thought. We’re on our own in the most hostile, dangerous city on earth.