Ultimate Weapon (46 page)

Jed glanced across at Nick. As their eyes met, both men were thinking the same thing.
We’re getting closer
.

‘By himself ?’ said Nick. ‘Or with a girl.’

‘With the Iraqis,’ said Rezo. ‘About twelve of them. Special Republican Guard, I think.’ He spat on the ground. ‘We hate them.’

‘What was he doing here?’

Again Rezo shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Salek is a Kurd but he had Iraqi soldiers with him. They gassed our people, they tortured us, they slaughtered our wives and children.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Up in the mountains, I believe,’ said Rezo. ‘Where the caves are.’

‘The caves?’ said Nick.

‘A network of passages cut into the mountains,’ said Rezo. ‘Some of them are natural, some of the them are man-made. Anyone can disappear up there.’

‘We need to get in,’ said Nick. ‘We need to find him.’

Rezo chuckled, scratching his beard as he did so. As he looked at the man, Jed felt sure he could see lice moving around inside the thick layer of matted hair on his cheeks. ‘Then I wish you luck, British man,’ he said.

Nick shook his head. ‘We need help,’ he said. ‘There’s twelve trained soldiers up there and only three of us.’ He looked straight at Rezo. ‘We’d like you to help us.’

Rezo laughed again, louder this time. He turned around to the other men, barked a few words in Kurdish, then all of them laughed at the same time.

‘We’ll pay you,’ said Nick.

Jed remained silent, waiting for the response. Better to let Nick do the talking, he told himself. This Rezo guy seems to prefer talking to an older man.

‘How much is my life worth, you think?’ said Rezo.

Nick remained impassive. ‘We have gold and dollars,’ he said. ‘We’ll pay you what we can.’

‘How much?’ Rezo repeated.

Nick was already running the calculations in his head. Both he and Jed had another couple of hundred dollars in bills in their kitbags, and ten ounces of gold. They would need something to get out of here. ‘Two hundred dollars, and five ounces of gold,’ said Nick.

Rezo stepped closer. He was standing just a few inches from Nick, looking straight into the man’s eyes. ‘You just give me everything you have,’ he said.

‘We need some money to get out of here,’ said Nick firmly.

‘Everything,’ Rezo repeated. ‘Or else we can’t help you.’

Nick glanced at Jed, but neither man needed to speak. They had come this far: there was no way they could turn back now, not without Sarah.

He looked back to Rezo and nodded. ‘Four hundred dollars, and ten ounces of gold, that’s all we have,’ he said.

‘I have ten ounces, and a thousand dollars,’ said Laura.

Already Rezo was barking some instructions to his men. There was a few minutes’ conversation, before he turned back to Nick. ‘Five men will come with us,’ he said. ‘I will lead them.’

‘Then let’s go,’ said Nick.

‘No,’ said Rezo firmly. ‘The mountains are impassable at night. We march at dawn.’

Jed peered into the darkness. The moon was starting to fade into the clouds, and on the horizon the first glimmers of the dawn were starting to break through the mountains, but the valley was still shrouded in a thick, menacing darkness. He could smell the dew rolling off the hillsides, and the scent of the wild juniper bushes that filled the area.

Some men could sleep before a battle. He’d known guys in the Regiment who could grab some kip knowing that they might never wake up again. Yet he was finding it harder all the time. He could shut his eyes, but as tired as he was, he couldn’t quite reach out and catch hold of sleep. It kept dancing away from him, like a leaf caught on the breeze.

‘It gets harder as you get older,’ said Nick.

Jed was surprised to find the old guy standing right next to him. From somewhere, he’d managed to find some sweet tea, and had brewed up a couple of cups. He handed one to Jed. ‘I read once that even infantry soldiers at the Somme thought they were going to be OK. Somehow they figured they’d get through, that
there wasn’t a bullet with their number on it. Even though the poor bastards didn’t have a chance.’

Jed took a sip of the tea. It tasted hot and sticky, nothing like the way he’d usually make a brew, but it was better than nothing.

‘They were just teenagers, you see, and they thought nothing could ever happen to them. Then, as you get older, and you see more men around you dying, you realise there isn’t rhyme or reason to a battle. Some guys get a bullet, and some don’t, and none of it makes any sense. That’s when you figure out it might be you next time around. And that’s when it gets harder to sleep.’

‘You think I’m losing my nerve.’

Nick shook his head. ‘Just wising up,’ he said. ‘Realising that there is nothing special about you, and no reason why you should live to see another dawn.’

‘Is that what happened to you?’ asked Jed, sitting down. ‘After you came back from Iraq last time.’

Nick sat down next to Jed. They had spent a few hours trying to sleep on a pile of straw in one of the abandoned houses in the village. It might once have been the home of a whole family, and maybe a couple of goats as well, but you could still see the craters all around it where the shells had hit the village, and it was more than a decade since anyone had lived here. The place smelt of damp, and crumbling cement. Right now, they were sitting on what would have once been the front step, but was now just a slab of stone. ‘Is that why you started drinking?’ Jed persisted.

Nick thought for a moment, sipping on his tea. ‘I
was shaken up pretty bad when I came back,’ he said. ‘They’d kept me in the cells for months, they’d tortured me, squeezed the life out of me until I thought there was nothing left. They sent me to the Regiment shrinks when I got back, but it was worse than bloody useless. Confront your demons, and all that therapy bollocks. It’s no good when you can’t sleep for months on end. There was only one place I could look my demons in the eye, and that was at the bottom of a whisky bottle.’

He scratched the thick, greying stubble that was growing on his chin. ‘I went on some missions, but the spirit was all beaten out of me. The Regiment could tell, they felt sorry for me, and they shuffled me off into some cushy jobs, but I wasn’t interested. It was time for me to get out and do something different.’

‘Did you let your mates down?’ said Jed.

Nick hesitated. ‘That’s what they think,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Marlow and some of the other Ruperts. They think I cracked under torture.’

‘Did you?’

Nick shrugged. ‘After I was captured, two of our patrol were intercepted by the Iraqis,’ he said. ‘There were four men on each, and they were all killed. The Ruperts reckon I gave the Iraqis enough information for them to track our boys down.’

Jed hesitated. A couple of cocks were starting to crow in the distance as the light crept down further into the valley. ‘And did you?’

Nick shook his head. ‘I would have broken if I could,’
he said. ‘No man can hold up under torture, it doesn’t matter what they tell you. That’s why armies operate on a need-to-know basis. I didn’t know anything worth telling them. Those patrols copped it because the Ruperts fucked it up the way they always do. Dropped them down in the wrong place, with the wrong kit. They just don’t like admitting it, so they put the word around that I’d talked after I’d been captured. The story went out that I’d told the Iraqis Steve Hatstone’s location. It was bollocks, but a lot of people still believed it. It gave them a nice handy excuse for their own incompetence.’

‘So you didn’t let anyone down?’

Nick shook his head. ‘I didn’t say that,’ he replied. ‘I let Mary down. And I let Sarah down as well.’

‘What
really
happened to her mother?’

Nick sighed, as if the memory was still painful for him. ‘I’ve never told anyone.’

‘Well, you might well be dead by lunchtime,’ said Jed. ‘So if you don’t tell someone now, you might never get another chance.’

‘We’d set up this ski school out in the French Alps, and we’d been there for about a year,’ said Nick. ‘It wasn’t going very well. I was still drinking, I just couldn’t shake it. I was meant to be doing the teaching while Mary looked after the books, but nobody wants a ski instructor who can’t even stand up straight. We got a few clients, but they didn’t last long, and there certainly wasn’t any word of mouth. We had a bit of cash saved up but it was slowly draining away, and there was nothing coming in. We were rowing all the time. Mary was pissed
off with me for not pulling myself together, and I couldn’t blame her.’ He paused, looking up into the sunlight that was starting to fill up the valley. ‘One afternoon I was meant to be meeting some Austrian tour company that was interested in booking a series of military ski courses. It could have been a big contract for us. I completely forgot about the meeting. When they called to see where the hell I was, I was already in one of the bars having a couple of pints. When Mary found me, she went crazy, started shouting at me, I shouted back, then she drove off in her car.’ Nick stopped again, taking another sip of his tea, as if he needed something to fortify himself for the next sentence. ‘That’s when she had her car crash. The next time I saw her she was lying in a morgue. If it hadn’t been for that row, she wouldn’t have died. It was my fault.’

‘You don’t know that,’ said Jed.

Nick shrugged. ‘Sure, people have car crashes all the time. I’ve tried to tell myself that a million times. I’ve never managed to convince myself, though. Not for a second.’

‘You blame yourself …’

Nick laughed. ‘If I could find some other bastard to blame, I would. I just can’t seem to find anyone. It was my fault, as surely as if I’d killed her myself. I let her down. And I let Sarah down as well. She was just a kid, and she needed her mum. After that, the ski school closed down. We came back to England, and I was still drinking heavily. I just couldn’t get any kind of handle on myself. Eventually, Sarah was taken into care. That’s
what finally got me to sober up. It gave me enough of a shock to pull myself together. I stopped drinking and found myself some work. In time, they let me take Sarah back again. She was damaged by it, though. She never quite trusted me to look after her again, not the way a girl should be able to trust her dad to take care of her.’

‘A lot of dads are useless,’ said Jed.

‘Like yours?’

‘A thief, and he wasn’t even any bloody good at it,’ said Jed. ‘My mum couldn’t cope either. That’s how I ended up in care, and that’s how I met Sarah. The rest you know.’

‘So how’d you end up in the army, then?’

Jed shrugged. ‘Buggered if I know,’ he said briskly. ‘Trying to prove something, I suppose. That I could take the punishment, not like my dad.’

‘Trying to prove it to me?’ said Nick. ‘That you were good enough for Sarah?’

Jed remained silent.
It might be true, but I’m not going to bloody well tell him
.

Nick stood up. ‘It won’t work, you know,’ he said sourly. ‘A soldier wasn’t good enough to be her dad, and no soldier is ever going to be good enough to be her husband either. We all let our women down in the end. That’s just the way things are.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Jed.

‘Right,’ said Nick. ‘I’ve seen the way you and Laura look at each other.’

Jed fell silent. Before he could reply, Nick was on his feet and heading purposefully towards the mountains.
Rezo was up, and was finishing his breakfast. Laura had slept in the next hut, and had already washed herself down. She was walking towards Jed.

‘You’ve done really well so far,’ she said. ‘There might well be an MC in this for you. Maybe even a VC.’

‘You can stuff the medals,’ Jed replied sourly. Nick’s remark was still stinging his eyes, and he was regretting ever having allowed himself to get close to Laura. ‘I just want to get Sarah back.’

‘Yes, well, I’m doing my best to help you,’ said Laura sharply.

‘Then let’s go,’ said Jed, turning to walk away.

Five of Rezo’s men were lined up, ready for the mission: they were introduced as Darwen, Mezdar, Camer, Neroz and Joro. Doesn’t make much difference what they’re called, thought Jed. None of them can speak English. We’re not about to become mates, even if we do stay alive through the next few hours.

‘You ready?’ said Rezo.

Nick nodded. He’d already hoisted his kitbag up on to his back, and readied his AK-47. ‘We’re good to go,’ he said.

They started to walk up the narrow twisting path that turned steeply into the mountains rising up from the side of the valley. It was still early in the morning, the ground was wet with dew, and there was a cold breeze blowing in from the east. Jed had been on plenty of marches before, a few of them even into the face of gunfire, but this one felt different. They had no idea what kind of enemy they might face, how strong he
might be, or what resources he might have. All they knew was that Sarah was up there somewhere, and they had to find her.
If she was still alive
.

‘Can’t we call into Hereford for some air cover?’ said Jed to Laura.

‘We lost four guys last night,’ said Laura. ‘They aren’t going to send us any more. There isn’t an unlimited supply.’