“It was not like that here,” said Tariq, shaking his head wearily. “Exactly the opposite. The British got orders to pull out and leave us to die. There was talk of a big operation back home.”
That triggered a memory: a dead man, tied to a chair screaming.
“Operation Motherland?”
“Yes, that was it. Your father never told me what it was, but the army just packed up and left. The Mahdi army tried to take control for a while. There were some massacres, lots of fighting. It was horrible. But then Sadr died of the plague and eventually there weren’t enough of them left and it just sort of dribbled away.
“For us, the plague ended the fighting. The big armies were gone and there was more than enough room for all the religious and racial groups to stay out of each other’s way. The Kurds have their own homeland now, in the north. The Shi’ites and the Sunnis have their own towns and holy places and they leave each other alone. And although there are only a few hundred of them left, it’s the first time in living memory that no-one’s been trying to wipe out the Marsh Arabs up in Maysan.
“The Cull was the best thing that ever happened to Iraq. It achieved what no army ever could: it brought peace.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. The irony that so much death could end the killing.
“So what went wrong?” I asked.
“After the British had gone, the Americans came to Basra.”
“What was so bad about that?”
Tariq looked at me in amazement, as if I’d just asked the stupidest question of all time.
“Did you not see the pictures from Abu Ghraib? Hear about the murders in Haditha?”
“Of course, but you’re not going to tell me that all American soldiers are like that. I mean, those were isolated incidents. Bad apples.”
Tariq inclined his head, as if to say “maybe”.
“You may be right. We have Brett with us, and there were others who deserted rather than follow the orders they were given. Brett is American and he has saved my life more than once.”
“Well then.”
“But what they did here, Lee. It was awful.”
“Then tell me.”
He thought for a second and then shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I will show you.”
“START AT THE beginning,” said Dad. “And tell me everything.”
So I did. From the moment I arrived at the school gates, to the explosion that levelled the place. I left nothing out. All the decisions I’d made, the consequences of those choices, the lives I’d ended or destroyed. The blood and the guilt. When I finished he just sat there and stared at me, tears rolling down his face. It took him a long time to find his voice.
“I don’t...” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged. “Not your fault.”
We sat there in silence for a few moments, neither of us knowing what to say.
“Remember all those arguments you and Mum used to have about Grandad?” I asked, forcing a grin, changing the subject.
He smiled and nodded, wiping his eyes.
“He thought the army was the only place for a young man,” he said.
“‘Just look at your father,’” I said, imitating Grandad’s round, fruity, upper class vowels. “‘It made a man out of him.’”
“And the way he said that, so you knew that he meant ‘and he was just a bloody guttersnipe’.”
“Never liked you much, did he?”
“Oh, he was all right I s’pose. He could have been a lot worse, believe me. It’s just, well, he was a bloody General and he thought his little girl married beneath her. She should have married an officer, but he ended up with a Black Country grunt for a son-in-law and he didn’t really know how to talk to me. He had this idea that if you joined up you’d go straight to Sandhurst and the Officer’s Club, and at least the next generation would sort of get things back on track. He could pull some strings, make sure you’d never end up a squaddie. Not like me.”
“You used to get so angry when he started banging on about me joining the army, especially when Mum didn’t tell him to stop.”
“I never wanted you to become a soldier,” said Dad, seriously.
“Well, look at me. That’s what I am now, Dad. Sorry. At least Grandad would be proud of me.”
He started, looked surprised, made to say something, but I cut him off.
“He died early,” I said. “Him and Gran. First wave.”
“I know, your Mum told me on the phone.”
There was an awkward silence, then he said: “About your mother.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“But it must have been...”
“It was what it was.”
I avoided his eyes as he searched my face for clues. Eventually he nodded, accepting my refusal to talk about her death. I was grateful for that.
“So the school was destroyed and you just, what, stole a plane and flew here on your own?”
I nodded. He whistled through his teeth.
“Nowhere else for me to go,” I said.
“You could have stayed there. Gone with them to the new place. They’re your friends, surely you’d have been welcome?”
I didn’t feel like explaining myself any more, so I just shrugged.
He gestured to the cell walls. “And how...?”
“I surrendered. Thought they’d know where you were. Which, as it turns out, they did.”
“Oh Lee, you shouldn’t have come here. You really shouldn’t.”
“Why are you a prisoner?” I asked.
But I knew damn well why.
THERE WERE SKELETONS everywhere, picked clean by predators and bleached by the sun. Charred, tattered clothing still hung off most of them.
The low stands of the rickety football stadium were mostly free of bodies. A few people who’d tried to escape were sprawled across the wooden benches, but the majority of the dead lay in piles on the pitch itself. They were grouped in tens and twenties, as if neighbours and families had huddled together when the shooting started.
“The adults tried to protect the children,” said Tariq, following my gaze. “Used their bodies to shield them from the bullets. Told them to play dead. Didn’t work. The soldiers went through the bodies, finishing off survivors. Then they poured petrol over them and set them alight. One man had been missed by the sweep but he ran, screaming and burning out of the bodies and was shot. That’s him, there.” He pointed to a small heap of disarticulated bones.
In the face of such a sight all I could manage was the obvious question.
“Why?”
“Orders. Secure the town, evict the survivors, kill anyone who wouldn’t leave willingly. All these people wanted was to be left alone, to rebuild their town.”
But in spite of the evidence I still couldn’t believe that the Americans had done this. Dad used to call them cowboys, insisted their army wasn’t as well disciplined or trained as ours, but they were still the good guys. No matter how bad things got I couldn’t believe that the American army would do such a thing. A few loose cannons losing the plot at a checkpoint and killing some civilians, yes. But cold-bloodedly massacring a hundred people? Surely not.
Then I remembered something Grandad told me once: “An army is only as good as the orders it receives.”
So who was giving the orders?
“IT WAS A SAM that brought us down,” said Dad. God knows who fired it. We never found out. There were about seventy of us on board. I’ve never been so certain I was going to die. But somehow I walked away. I was sitting right at the back, just got lucky. I wasn’t the only one, mind. There were two others, Jonno and Jim. Good lads. Quite a double act, they were.”
“What happened to them?” I asked.
“They’re dead now. It took us two days to get back to HQ. We figured it was the safest place. But when we got here we found the Yanks had moved in. I tell you, I’d never been so happy to see a white star in my life. So we come r
olling up to them, waving and smiling, and they welcome us with open arms. Then they throw us in here and start interrogating us.”
“About what?”
“About home. England. The army. Something called Operation Motherland.”
“What’s that?”
He shrugged. “Search me. I know it’s what we were supposed to be doing when we got back to England. But no-one briefed us before we left. And fuck knows why the Yanks here are so bothered what we’re doing back home. Makes no sense.”
I started to ask Dad how he got free but I was just able to stop myself. I remembered what Tariq had told me; the Yanks would be listening to us and they mustn’t know I’d had contact with them. Which meant I had to mislead Dad as well, at least for now.
“So how did you... cope with being tortured then? I mean, you must have been locked up for, what, eight or nine months?”
It was lame. My hesitation was too obvious, the substituted question too stupid. Dad looked at me askance for a second but I just about carried it off. I hoped whoever was listening to us was as easily fooled.
“Nah, we broke out,” he said. “Well, we were helped. The guy in charge here, General Blythe, he started doing some strange things; running the survivors out of town, harassing the ones who wanted to stay. Quite a lot of the lads here started to get antsy about the orders he was giving. So they decided to do a bunk. And they broke us out on the way. There was a fight, Jonno didn’t make it, but Jim and I did, and eight Yank kids. And we were on our own then.”
“What did you do?”
Now it was Dad’s turn to play his cards close to his chest. He knew we were being overheard as well.
“Met some locals, formed a resistance movement, did a bit of asymmetric warfare.”
“What’s that?”
“We blew stuff up a lot.”
“Oh.”
“And then I got captured again a few days back.”
“What happened?”
“WE WERE BETRAYED.” Tariq shrugged. “Blythe wanted your father. Badly. It was only when he took charge of us that we became a proper resistance. A little army. Your dad is a good soldier, he led us well. You should be proud of him.
“There were more of them, and they had better equipment; night goggles, heat sensors, helicopters. And they hunted us. But we know this town, where to hide, how to move unseen. We fought well. Killed many of them. But we could not prevent what happened at the football ground. And after that we were more visible. There were no local people to shelter us, no market crowds for us to hide in. Things became more difficult. And there was nobody left for us to fight for. So we decided to leave, find somewhere else to go. I thought maybe I would like to grow vegetables and tend goats. Something simple, you know? I mean, there’s no-one left to read my blog even if there was an Internet to post it on!
“But then they attacked us at night, as we slept. Only six of us escaped and they captured the rest. Fifteen of them.”
It took me a minute to realise, and then I gasped.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said. “The people on stakes.”
Tariq nodded.
“Blythe wanted your father to surrender. He sent out humvees with loudspeakers, telling him to give himself up. But of course your dad was planning a rescue.
“Anyway, Blythe gathered his prisoners in that courtyard and had his men fix big wooden stakes into the ground. Then he tied them up, stood each one in front of a stake, and told your father to surrender or they would be impaled.
“We just didn’t believe he would do it. But Blythe killed Jim himself. Grabbed his shoulders and pushed him down, looking into his eyes as he did it. When he stood up his face was splashed with blood. Your dad immediately put down his gun and walked out there, hands in the air.
“The Yanks tied him up, forced him to sit on the ground and made him watch as they impaled the rest of the prisoners anyway. Just because they could. The one who betrayed us, an American called Matt – barely nineteen, always scared – he begged and screamed. But Blythe showed him no mercy. Then they left. That was two days ago.”
“THEY’VE BEEN QUESTIONING me ever since. Nothing I can’t handle.”
Dad shrugged, trying to make light of it, not going into detail so he wouldn’t terrify me. But I looked at his sunken, haunted eyes and I felt more anger than I’ve ever felt. It was amazing; I didn’t know I could want to hurt someone so much. I hadn’t even wanted to kill Mac as much as I wanted to take a knife and shove it into the hearts of the men who’d tortured my dad.
“They want me to betray my friends,” he said. “The ones who are still free. I won’t do that. They can’t make me. I’ll die first.”
I let that lie there for a moment and then I said what we were both thinking.
“But now they have me.”
The look on his face said it all.
We heard footsteps in the corridor outside, then the cell door slammed open.
“Get up, kid,” said the soldier silhouetted in the doorway. “General Blythe wants a word.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“HAVE A SEAT, son.”
The general’s voice was deep and warm, and his tone was friendly. He sat in a plush, red leather chair, the kind you expect to see in front of roaring fires in the libraries of grand houses. It looked out of place behind the huge black marble desk. But then, this whole place was absurd.
I’d been brought out of the filthy underground cells, up into the great entrance hall with its amber mosaics, gold lined ceiling dome and intricate pine balconies. It seemed like something Disney would have built. I was marched up the sweeping staircase, where the enormous windows gave stunning views of the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway as it meandered through the various mansions and gardens that made up Saddam’s old palace complex. White stone bridges arched across the slow flowing water. It looked like paradise outside, and all I wanted was to lie in the shade beside the cool water and feel the wind on my face.
Matron would have loved it here, I thought. She liked lying on the soft earth and closing her eyes. But I was glad she wasn’t with me in this cold stone building; it wasn’t a friendly place.
The general had set up camp in a cavernous, empty ballroom on the first floor. His desk sat in front of double doors that led out to a balcony. The doors stood open, and white gauze curtains billowed into the room, bringing the scents of jasmine and orange blossom from the gardens below. Beside the desk was a huge flatscreen telly on a big stand, hooked up to some sort of computer equipment with wires snaking out the back of it; they ran outside through the balcony doors, presumably to a generator.
He was about 50, at a guess. His black skin was lined and weathered, and his close cut hair almost entirely grey. Barrel-chested and broad shouldered he gave an impression of contained physical power, and his voice reflected that. He was exactly what I would have expected an American general to be; all he needed was to start chomping on a cigar and the picture would be complete.
I shuddered as I imagined that weighty frame leaning into me, pushing me down on to a sharp wooden stake.
He gestured to a metal and canvas chair on my side of the desk, and I sat down.
“Dismissed,” he said. My escort saluted crisply, turned on his heels with a squeak of rubber, and stomped away. The tall doors, made of elaborately carved dark wood, slowly swung shut behind him. We were alone.
General Blythe regarded me curiously and I could see the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching as he did so. I met his gaze and held it. Not too defiant, but trying to seem confident. I’d looked into the eyes of madmen before. There’s a feral quality they have which, once seen, is impossible to forget. I searched the general’s eyes for signs of madness.
He narrowed his eyes and smiled.
“Yes, I think I believe you, son,” he said.
“I’m not your son.”
“Well, we’ll come to that in a minute. I believe your story, though. That you flew here from the UK looking for your dad. Gutsy thing to do.”<
br />
“Didn’t have a choice.”
“We always have a choice, son. You could have left him behind, grown up on your own, become your own man.”
“Is that what you did?”
He laughed. “I’m asking the questions.” There was a flash of warning in his eyes that hinted at all sorts of unpleasantness. “Drink?”
He reached across the desk and poured me a beaker of water from a tall glass jug that was frosted with condensation. I took it and swallowed it at once.
“Thank you,” I gasped, wanting more but not willing to ask.
“You’re welcome. So what’s it like in Britain now?”
“Chaos, what else?”
He considered this and then said: “But you’ve got the arms, right? I mean to say, when our British allies pulled out of Iraq they had a plan to restore law and order. Must have started to work by now.”
“Not in my part of the country.”
“Fancy that. And what part of the country would that be?”
I don’t know why I lied, it was just instinct I suppose. But I didn’t want to tell this guy a single true thing.
“East Anglia. Ipswich.”
He nodded. I couldn’t decide which was odder: his interest in British internal affairs, or the fact that he’d heard of Ipswich.
“And that’s where you flew from?”
“Yes.”
“Hell of a thing, kid your age. But you’ve got plenty of scars, I can see that. Fresh too. You ever killed anybody, son?”
“If you were listening to my conversation with my dad, then you already know the answer to that question.”
He nodded, conceding the point.
“You knew I was listening from the start, didn’t you?” he said with a smile.
School's Out Forever (The Afterblight Chronicles: The St Mark's Books) Page 30
