Ultimate Weapon (17 page)

Then a scream. Jed looked up. Rob had taken a shot. The machine-gun fire had raked past him. The Kevlar jacket underneath his shirt had protected his chest, but
one bullet had taken a chunk of flesh clean out of his shoulder, and another had hit him in the neck. Blood was pouring down his front. In his eyes there was the stunned, disbelieving look of a soldier who knows he had just been hit. Badly.

Jed tried to get past Steve. The machine-gunner had raked his bullets past the boat, and was now firing aimlessly into the water. Its surface was breaking up under the fire. Then it changed direction. It was drawing closer to the boat again. ‘Into the fucking water,’ shouted Steve. ‘We’re fucking corpses in this bloody thing.’

With a single swift movement, Jed threw his kitbag onto his back and tossed himself into the water. He didn’t need to think twice. Under fire, your best bet was to get as deep down into the water as you could. The gunmen couldn’t see you. And the water between you and the surface offered some measure of protection: it could deflect the path of a bullet enough to save your life. Taking a lungful of air, he sunk below the surface. In the next three seconds, he sunk six feet, before kicking his legs to stabilise himself. The water felt cold and slimy, clinging on to his skin, and he could feel the strength of the current knocking into him. Jed opened his eyes, trying to adjust to the water, but it was almost impossible to see anything. The water was too thick with dirt, and there was too little light on its surface. He could just about see Steve, then Matt holding on to Rob. They were still fifteen yards from the shore. Blood was streaming from Rob’s neck, mixing with the water. One or two bullets were still spitting onto the surface, ripping
through the water towards the bottom of the river. Jed swam forward, grabbing hold of Rob’s arm, and together with Matt they started pulling him. The current was taking them downstream, and they were both kicking furiously with their legs to propel themselves towards the riverbank. He could see that Rob’s mouth was open. The man’s lungs were filling with water. Jed kicked harder. Another ten yards. If there was to be any chance of saving him, they had to move fast. Right now, it was a question of whether he bled to death or drowned first.

Ahead, Jed could see the ground sloping upwards. The bank was drawing closer. His lungs were already bursting for air: he could feel the oxygen draining out of him as he used his one free arm to propel himself forwards. Suddenly, he could feel ground beneath his feet. He stood up, and started to wade towards the shore, Matt at his side, helping him to push Rob up. His head broke through the water, and he looked up at the bridge. The searchlight was still revolving in a round arc, skipping across the water, but so far as he could tell they couldn’t be seen. Glancing back he could see that the boat was shot to pieces, its frame splintered and shattered by the bullets.

He pulled Rob up from the surface of the water and dragged him towards the shore. He had lost consciousness, and the blood was still draining out of the wounds he had taken to his neck and shoulder. Some of the slime and foam from the river was sticking to the raw flesh torn open by the bullets.

Jed pulled hard, getting him clear of the water. The
tide was half out, and there was a stretch of thick mud that ran up to a walled embankment. Above, there was a road running alongside the river, but at this time of night there didn’t seem to be any cars on it. The searchlight was still scanning the river, but the gunfire had stopped. Jed could hear voices carried down from the bridge on the wind. Perhaps they thought they’d shot whoever was in the boat, sending them down to the riverbed to meet the hundreds of corpses that must be tossed into the Tigris every year. But Jed couldn’t be certain of that. They might be sending a search party along the banks of the river right now. They were only five hundred yards down from the bridge.
They had to move fast
.

Jed knelt down. Rob still had a pulse on him but he was fading fast. His mouth was choking with the blood running through from his neck. At his side, Matt had pulled out a stretch of cloth from the medical bag in his rucksack, and was busy tying it round the neck wound. The bleeding was starting to slow, but it was impossible to say how much blood he’d lost under the water. Two, maybe three pints. The skin around the two wounds was covered with mud: any diseases in the water – and it looked like there were plenty – and they would have infected him by now. The guy needs a hospital, thought Jed. And probably for a few weeks at least.

He glanced anxiously up and down the riverbank, then up towards the bridge. The light was still hovering over the boat, but hadn’t been flicked across to the shore. Jed listened hard. He could hear the lapping of the water
a few feet away from him. And somewhere in the distance he could hear the rumbling motor of a truck.

‘We’ve got to move,’ he hissed to Steve and Matt.

‘You grab his arms, I’ll get his shoulders,’ said Matt.

Jed paused. There were just fractions of a second to finalise the decision. ‘We can’t take him,’ he said flatly.

‘Bollocks,’ hissed Matt. ‘He’s our mate. Now grab his legs.’

Jed stood up. He could see the anger in Matt’s eyes. ‘Half the sodding Republican Guard could be here in a minute,’ he said. ‘If we don’t move now, we’re fucking dead.’

Steve was looking from one man to the next. Jed could tell he was weighing the argument. He knew the drill book, Jed was aware of that. Standard operating procedure said that when a man was down, you gave him first aid, then moved on. You couldn’t jeopardise the mission to save one man. No special forces unit could work like that, it would never achieve anything. Yet the drill book didn’t always matter. When one of your mates was shot up, and needed help, it was hard to leave him behind. Most soldiers cared a lot more about the men in their unit than they did about the mission.
And those that didn’t were the psychos, thought Jed
.

‘We’re not leaving him,’ said Matt, his voice rising above a whisper for the first time. ‘The fucking ragheads will torture the sod. Now let’s get the bugger to safety.’

‘It’s no fucking use,’ said Jed. ‘He needs a hospital. What are you going to do, check him into the Baghdad
Central A&E? If we don’t leave him, we’ll be bloody captured.’

‘He’s my mate. Now lift his legs,’ said Matt.

‘You’re jeopardising the mission.’

‘Sod the mission,’ snapped Matt. ‘You’re just a fucking wannabe Rupert, Jed. We don’t need any bloody graduates slumming it with the proper soldiers. Just fuck off, and let us look after our mate.’

Jed looked at Rob. Putting his finger to his wrist, he could tell the pulse had stopped. He’d lost too much blood, and it was still draining out of him. ‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ he said quietly. ‘The poor sod is dead.’

There was silence. Without a word, Steve helped Jed lift up the body, and started to carry it towards the rushes by the side of the river. Pushing the corpse down into the weeds, they covered it as best they could. Taking out his GPS reader, Jed measured his precise position. ‘When this war is over, we’ll be back to get you,’ he said. ‘Make sure you get a proper burial.’

For a moment, Jed could see the hatred in Matt’s eyes. His pupils were like bullets, loaded up and ready to fire. Then it subsided, replaced by a look of sadness that rode across his face like a wave. ‘Let’s bloody go then,’ he muttered.

I’ve been in the army for four years, and this is the first time I’ve seen a man I know go down, thought Jed as he walked away.
Let’s hope to God it’s the last
.

Nick took the cup of tea Lana had just made him. She had always been thin, but today she looked like she’d lost weight. The redness in her eyes suggested she hadn’t been sleeping well. It’s getting to her, he thought.
Just the way it is getting to all of us
.

‘So no word at all?’ he said, taking a sip on the tea.

Lana shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she replied.

‘You’ve asked around?’

Lana nodded. ‘It’s ten days now since anybody heard from her. No text messages, no phone calls, no emails. Nothing.’

Nick nodded. The young stayed in touch in ways that hadn’t been possible when he was in his early twenties. He could remember when he was first in the army; he’d been gone a month before getting in touch with his mum or any of his mates. She must have been worried sick, he realised now, and he regretted not having done more to let her know he was OK. ‘Seen any guys hanging around the flat?’

Suddenly Lana looked worried. She was a frail girl, Nick noted, but not timid: she had a purpose and strength to her that suggested she wouldn’t back down
easily in any confrontation. Nick hadn’t told her anything about the money that had been paid into Sarah’s account. Nor had he said anything about the men following him, or the investigators hired by the oil industry. But she wasn’t stupid. She must suspect that something bad had happened to Sarah.

‘Guys? What the hell do you mean?’

Nick shrugged. ‘People watching the flat, following you, anything like that. Just anything suspicious, that’s all.’

Lana gripped her mug tighter. ‘No,’ she said anxiously. ‘I mean, I haven’t noticed, but I haven’t been looking either. What should I look for?’

‘Maybe a couple of guys just sitting in a car out in the street, the same face looking at you as you walk to your college, anything like that,’ said Nick.

‘Christ, no.’

Nick walked over to the window. The flat was on the first floor of a Victorian terraced block. He looked down into the street. He could see a row of parked cars, mostly cheap run-arounds that parents had bought for their student offspring. None of them were occupied. He looked at the houses opposite. Maybe they’ve taken a bedsit in the street so they can keep an eye on the place. He scanned the windows, but could see nothing except drawn curtains or empty rooms. They must be here, he thought.
Somewhere
.

Lana joined him at the window. Raindrops were spitting down on to the glass. ‘What’s happened to her, Nick?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you’re suspicious? You don’t just think she’s gone on a drinking bender?’

‘For ten days?’ Nick shrugged his shoulders. ‘Even for a girl who can drink like Sarah can, that doesn’t sound very likely.’

‘Then what?’

‘It might be something to do with her work,’ said Nick.

‘She’s just a student,’ said Lana.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ snapped Nick. ‘I need to know what she was doing in those labs.’

Lana paused for a moment. She was sipping on her tea. ‘Then speak to a guy called Sam Beston.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘A colleague at the lab. Sarah never speaks to me about her work because I don’t suppose I would understand it. But she talks to Sam about it. He’s the guy she’s closest to. I think he’s a little bit in love with her, but she wouldn’t go for him. He’s the thoughtful, scientific type, and she always has this whole macho thing going.’

‘Where will I find him?’

‘I don’t know where he lives, but Cambridge is a small place. If you don’t find him at the lab, try the Three Crowns. That’s where all the scientists go drinking.’

Nick nodded. ‘I’m trying the professor again,’ he said. ‘If there’s no luck there, I’ll track down Sam.’

Lana reached out to touch the side of his arm, but Nick instinctively pulled it away. He regretted it instantly,
but since Mary’s death, he hadn’t liked to have other people touch him. Only Sarah. ‘You should go to the police,’ she said.

‘And tell them what, exactly?’ said Nick. ‘That a student hasn’t called her dad for ten days? That’ll give them a bloody good laugh.’

He headed for the door, then paused, looking back towards Lana. He could tell how frightened she was. ‘I’ll find her,’ he said firmly. ‘And I’ll do it by myself.’

With his head down, Nick walked out into the street. The rain was starting to fall heavily, and the water was already flowing fast into the gutters. Nick pulled up the collar of his leather jacket, but ignored the rain lashing his hair. I wasn’t able to rescue her mother, he thought.
But I can sure as hell rescue Sarah. Or die trying
.

Nick looked at the computer screen. He was sitting in one of the Internet cafés in Cambridge, and he’d just done a Google search on the Lubbock Group. From the information he’d managed to beat out of Stonehill, he didn’t reckon they were his best lead. If they were tracking me, he thought, it follows that they didn’t know where Sarah was. But they might be part of the conspiracy all the same.

The search turned up a couple of dozen entries. They were mostly fringe websites, some of them compiled by left-wing organisations, others by survivalists and environmentalists. The sites described it as a group of the leading players in the oil industry – the big oil companies, OPEC, the British and American producers, and
more recently the Russians – who gathered together once a year at a secret location. According to a couple of the sites, they were very close to the Bush family – one described both Bush presidents as nothing more than frontmen for the Lubbock Group. They were ascribed the power to start wars, change governments, direct the global economy – to do whatever was necessary to keep the oil barons in dollars. Why would they be interested in Sarah, wondered Nick. What had she been working on?

There was one six-year-old story from
Business Week
, which discussed the rumours about the Group, but dismissed them as probably untrue. That was the only reference Nick could find in the mainstream press. Wrong, mate, thought Nick, as he finished the article. They’re real. And the Lubbock Group is looking for Sarah, just like me.