Ultimate Weapon (35 page)

* * *

The uniform was a poor fit, but that didn’t matter to Jed. He pulled the camouflaged green trousers up around his waist, and tightened a notch on the cheap plastic belt to hold them in position. The tunic was just as baggy, made for a man with a much larger build, and the fabric was a cheap polyester that felt clammy and scratchy against the skin: at night, it wouldn’t keep you warm, and in the heat of a battle you’d be sweating like a pig. Same with any army, thought Jed. You can always save a few quid or dinar by scrimping on the kit for the guys who do the actual fighting.

‘You look like crap,’ said Nick, a grin flashing up on his face.

They were hiding down a side street, in the storeroom of an abandoned engineering workshop. They had walked back to within half a mile of the presidential compound and hunted around three of the back alleys before they found this workshop. The door had been blown out by a missile that had landed about five hundred yards away, and the owner must have abandoned the place in the fires and chaos that followed. As they stepped inside, you could still smell the axle oil and the cigarette smoke from the mechanics who worked here, but there was no sign of any of them this evening. Like everyone else, they had either fled to relatives in another part of the country, or hunkered down in their homes.
What was the point in coming into work when you didn’t even know if the country would still be around in a few days’ time?

‘I mean you
really
look like crap,’ Nick continued.
‘You’ve a filthy beard on you, and your hair looks like Cherie bloody Blair’s on a bad day. Even by the standards of the Iraqi Army, you’re a mess.’ He reached into his kitbag, and tossed over a disposable razor, a bar of soap and a pair of scissors. ‘Smarten yourself up, mate.’

The beard on Jed’s face had a week of growth on it, and had turned into an ugly mess of hair. Nick attacked it with the razor, giving Jed a small cut on the side of his cheek: he claimed it was a slip of the hand, but it felt deliberate to Jed. A moustache was left behind. ‘You look just like Saddam, mate,’ said Nick when he’d finished.

‘Leave it out,’ said Jed.

There was a mirror in the workshop’s loo, and he used that to sort his hair out, clipping it back into shape with the scissors. By the time he was done, he looked and felt a lot better. ‘Aftershave,’ said Nick, handing across a bottle containing a pale-looking yellow liquid. The top was still on it, but just holding it in his hand, Jed caught a whiff of a pungently scented mixture of dried fruit and disinfectant. ‘I bought this for us at the market.’

Jed looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why do you give a fuck what I smell like?’ he said. ‘We’re going on a mission, not a date.’

‘Iraqi bath,’ said Nick, nodding towards the aftershave. ‘Everyone knows the ragheads only wash in leap years. They put this stuff on to cover up the pong. You might look like an Iraqi soldier, but
smell
is the most sensitive of all the senses. You never heard that expression “smell a rat?” Well, you walk into that compound and you
don’t smell like an Iraqi bugger, they’re going to nick you right away.’

Experience, thought Jed. He might be a difficult old sod, but he’s been here before.
There aren’t many tricks to this trade that he hasn’t learnt by now.

He took the top off the bottle, poured a liberal dose of the aftershave on to his hands, and rubbed it into his face and neck. The stink was horrible. If we do find Sarah tonight, thought Jed, she’ll probably tell me to bugger off home.
Who’d want to go out with a bloke who smelt of this stuff ?

‘You scrub up lovely,’ said Nick. ‘Now, let’s go.’

It was night by the time they stepped out into the alley. The curfew was tightly controlled, and the streets were empty. They probably don’t need to tell people any more, thought Jed. Nobody’s going to go out when the city is coming under sustained missile strikes.

It was a half-mile walk to their target. Of the three checkpoints where troops were going in and out of the presidential compound, they had chosen the one to the east as their point of entry. It was taking the most traffic: at least a couple of trucks a minute, several jeeps and dozens of men on foot patrols. It was the point where the guards were likely to be too busy to make many checks.

‘You do realise the presidential compound has come under the most sustained missile attack of the whole bloody city,’ said Jed, as they stepped on to the street leading down to the entrance. ‘And I don’t suppose our pals back at the Firm are organised enough to stop the missile attacks for a few hours while we’re in there.’

‘Stop bloody whingeing,’ said Nick, with a shake of the head. ‘You want a note from your mum saying you’re not up for this one, then you go and get one.’

From the corner of his eye, Jed could see a Fedayeen officer walking on the other side of the street, the black tunic that marked out the most feared of Saddam’s internal troops flapping in the early-evening breeze. The man looked at them suspiciously. Jed looked at the ground, and kept on walking. Too dangerous to say anything in English around here, he told himself.
One word and we’re dead.

Two trucks and a dozen men were standing in line at the back of the compound. Jed could feel his heart thumping inside his chest. A bead of sweat was forming on his forehead. He wiped it clean with the back of his hand. He glanced at Nick. The old guy looked calm enough, but it was only too easy to imagine how his guts were churning up inside. He’d been taken in here, and tortured to within an inch of his life.
It wasn’t a place any man would want to come back to.

The entrance was guarded by barbed wire, and two armoured vehicles. There were six guards, each one with an AK-47 slung over his neck, checking the papers. Three more guys to go, Jed noted. The man heading through the entrance had just been given a going-over by the guards, been asked a long series of questions, and looked nervous as he gave his replies. Overstayed his leave, maybe, thought Jed. The next two guys were waved through with only a cursory glance at their papers. Nick and Jed stepped forward. The guard barked at them in
Arabic. Without a moment’s hesitation, they both thrust forward the papers they’d been supplied with by the Firm. Unquestioning, sullen obedience, thought Jed.
That is the attitude drilled into soldiers the world over.

The guard looked away, barking at the next soldier. Jed stepped quickly through the carved gates and into the inner courtyard. We’re through, he thought. Nick was already walking quickly away, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the guards. On the inside, the presidential compound was a minicity. The entrance led on to a huge square dominated by a fifty-foot statue of Saddam Hussein. On one side, there was the huge green-domed palace itself, its façade dominated by a huge marble-and-stone staircase that would not have looked out of place in Versailles. It was protected by a ring of troops. Next to that were two barracks buildings that housed the regime’s most elite and feared troops, the Special Republican Guard, and the Syrian mercenaries who had streamed across the border. Then there were the two big admin blocks, the Palace of Flowers and the Palace of Peace, where the brutal henchmen, bureaucrats and torturers of Saddam’s government administered the country. Both looked badly damaged by the missile strikes of the past two nights. Windows had been shattered, craters dug up in the road, and some of the unfortunately named Palace of Peace had been blown clean away, so that the top floors now had gaping holes in their walls exposing them to the night air. Even so, on the lower floors Jed could see lights burning, and some of the desks seemed to be
occupied. People were afraid of the bombs, but they were even more afraid of the torturers who would set upon them and their families if they failed to show up for work.

As he looked around, Jed noticed a dozen different Saddams looking down at him from the gaudy murals painted on to the walls: Saddam on his horse; Saddam reviewing his troops; Saddam holding a gun; Saddam lecturing a crowd of workers. Everywhere you looked, the same thick, black moustache, and the same brooding, dark, vengeful eyes looked back down on you.

A siren.

Jed spun round.

A wah-wah sound was blasting from speakers positioned every few yards. In the same instant, Jed could feel a collective fear grip hold of the compound. There were troops swilling through the main courtyard, trucks and jeeps honking their way towards their shelters. Men were shouting wildly. If there was any plan or drill, it had been abandoned. People were taking cover wherever they could.

‘Into the palace,’ hissed Nick.

He was running already. Jed followed close on his heels. The main entrance to the palace was only thirty yards ahead of them. The sirens were still blaring, and although you couldn’t yet hear the hiss of any incoming cruise missile, it could only be a few seconds away. All around the compound, the anti-aircraft guns were in full blast, loosing off a deadly chatter of fire into the night sky. Theoretically, it was possible to explode a Tomahawk
in the air, but the chances of getting a direct hit that penetrated and exploded its payload were minimal.
The idiots were firing into thin air.

Nick had reached the steps of the palace. He was running up the stairs. Jed followed swiftly in his wake. There were guards across the entrance, but during an air-raid alert security seemed to have been abandoned. Hundreds of men were crowding into the main hallway. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of gunfire was rattling against the walls of the palace. A man screamed, then the gun fell silent.

‘Downstairs,’ hissed Nick. ‘That’s where the dungeons are.’

All around them, men were heaving and shouting. Nick was pointing to a staircase. As they descended one flight, Jed could suddenly hear the explosion of the incoming missile. A blast of heat ripped through the air first, as if you had just stepped into a microwave. Then you could feel a rush of air. Next, the building shook, as if it was a toy castle that a child had just picked up. The walls vibrated, and the floor seemed to shift. Jed could feel himself losing his grip, and he snapped his fists around the railing that ran down the staircase to steady himself. The sound of thunder ripped through the building, one huge blast followed by a smaller series of secondary blasts. Then, for a second, the bangs ceased and the sirens fell silent. An eerie quiet gripped the compound. Nothing was moving. Even the dust seemed to have been suspended in the air. Then you could hear the screams and cries of the men who were being burnt
alive in the fireball that followed the explosion. The sirens started up again, and the sound of orders being barked by officers could be heard ricocheting through the buildings above them.

‘Keep going down,’ hissed Nick.

They descended through another flight, then another. As you dropped down into the depths of the compound, the corridors became darker, and the concrete on the walls thicker – you could feel the damp creeping through them.

‘Where the fuck are we going?’ hissed Jed as both men paused to catch their breath.

The stairway was lit by a strip of bulbs, but half of them had fused during the missile strikes of the past few days. The light was dim and unsteady. So far as Jed could see, the staircase went down another four or five flights, with a door every other flight.

‘Like I said, to the dungeons.’

‘How the hell do we know where they are?’

Nick looked at him. His brow was furrowed, and his eyes were suddenly ablaze with anger. ‘Listen, boy,’ he said. ‘When a man’s been to hell, he doesn’t forget the way.’

Jed fell silent. Nick was already barrelling down another staircase, rushing like a man possessed by demons. Too much noise, thought Jed as he followed in his trail.
We’re making too much bloody noise
. ‘Keep it quiet,’ he hissed.

‘We haven’t got any time to lose,’ snapped Nick.

‘And the fucking racket you’re making, Saddam can probably hear us himself.’

Nick carried on, his boots clattering against the concrete. The echoes were bouncing off the walls, assaulting Jed’s ears.

‘
Qif
,’ shouted a voice behind them.

Jed knew that word, and he knew he didn’t want to hear it.
Stop
.

He spun round.

At the doorway, he saw a man looking straight at them. He was a wearing an olive-green uniform, with the purple shoulder insignia of the Special Republican Guard.

In his hand, there was a Russian-made MP412 handgun, with a distinctive snub-nosed silver barrel.

And he was aiming it straight at Nick’s head.

Jed paused, holding himself perfectly still, his right hand gripping the railing. The SRG officer was standing with his legs slightly apart, and with both his hands firmly holding the gun. On his face, there was a look of resolute concentration.

Jed glanced at Nick. His body was immobile, but Jed could tell what he was thinking. Shall I rush the bugger before he has a chance to shoot? That was the Regiment drill. Make your move quickly, before your opponent has a chance to steady themselves.

Don’t do it, thought Jed. The guy is good. I can tell that just from the way he holds himself.
As soon as you move, he is going to put two bullets through your forehead.

‘
Qif
,’ the man repeated. His voice was louder this time.

Nick didn’t move.

The officer rattled out another phrase in Arabic, but it meant nothing to Jed, and he was pretty sure that Nick was as clueless as he was.