Far into the night, the Ghost hovered at his work table.
He used a textbook on basic surgery, old and dog-eared. Also on the bench was a student’s guide to chemical engineering, the level he had reached when the mabahith had seized him and taken him to Riyadh, and to the holding cells and the interrogators. He did not believe it necessary to delve into deeply sophisticated areas of science, but instead focused on simple innovation, and the unexpected. He knew the child was still in the corridor, heard her move and shift her weight.
The diabetic would have the necessary paperwork and justification for carrying the insulin syringes – a white-skinned Westerner with needle holes in his body from regular injections, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. He would catch a feeder flight from a minor airport, Vienna or Prague, to the North American hub at Amsterdam or Frankfurt. A scar from recently stitched tissue would not show on X-ray, nor would a plastic packet sealed around the 200 grams of granulated PETN. This would be close to the skin’s surface so that the needle could reach it.
Once the child in the corridor coughed, then stifled it, and the only sound was his own breathing and her father’s snoring at the end of the corridor. At other safe-houses that he flitted between, the Ghost could rely on regular power from a generator. The presence of such a machine endangered him, because it would be known in that village that only someone important to the movement could justify access to a continuous supply of electricity. When he worked at a circuit board, or with detonators, then he had to have full light and full control of soldering and be able to test the quality of the wiring he deployed. Not here. Here he only had use of a paraffin lamp and a single lit candle. It was in a small pottery-made holder, said to have been picked up by a goatherd, and to have been centuries old. The goatherd had made that gift to the family, perhaps believing it would help in his pursuit of the daughter of the household, the same age as him. He was unlikely to succeed because this was an important family in the community that had aspirations, while the boy was a goatherd, no more and no less. The family would not have allowed their daughter to sit in the corridor outside his room if they had not considered the Ghost to be a worthwhile catch. Around the candle-holder, on the plate, were scraps of burned paper, the messages destroyed.
He had seen her when the courier had come. She wore a nightshirt, white, and it was hitched up to her knees. She had strong legs, well muscled, and had bold eyes that seemed locked on him each time the door was opened.
He burned the messages when he had read them. His memory was keen. They gave information on the time needed between the insertion operation and the sahid’s ability to travel without attracting attention. A surgeon’s assessment. He would walk naturally towards the seat down the aisle near the toilet and there would stab the packet with the needle. He was now informed that the Emir himself had chosen the young man who would be the martyr, who would walk towards heroic death. He did not know this young man but was assured that his dedication was proven, but he was as yet ignorant of this decision. The last message brought to him, now flaky ashes, said that he would travel to the final meeting, where core personalities would gather in the company of the Emir, but timing depended on weather conditions. There would be more paper burned as the night drifted on, sheets from the notepad on which he scribbled thoughts that then would go into the archive of his memory.
Would she call him, the girl child, or would he call her? His hand shook, his writing was worse than before. She might come for him. He ached for the experience, did not know how it would be, but then did not know ‘how it would be’ to sit strapped tight in an airliner that plunged down in darkness as alarms screamed. He knew little of himself and of what he hoped to achieve. She coughed again, rough and hacking.
‘You haven’t seen him?’
Rat answered, faintly, ‘He left with you; he has not come back this way.’
He had got clear of the wire, on his stomach and propelled by his elbows, then had lain up for perhaps an hour, then had given up on Jamil and had struggled to find – in thick darkness and with little help from the moon’s light – a good enough track. He had dislodged small stones and would have left scars on the slopes, breaking his nails when slipping and not finding a grip.
He had found them in the forward scrape, under the scrim, almost by accident. With the image intensifier, Rat and Slime would have been able to follow him as he came up, but they had not offered help. Might have been possible to whistle softly, a bird-call of some sort. They had waited till he had almost collapsed over them. Had treated him like an idiot for whom pay-back time loomed.
‘He helped me to get in under the wire.’
‘Did he?’ Rat’s response, noncommittal, unhelpful.
‘Was supposed to wait for me.’
‘Was he?’
‘And didn’t show.’
‘Perhaps he found something better to do.’
They were not a team. Corrie supposed that, in the military, the team was paramount. Not where he worked. It couldn’t be because they were divided into cells, operated need to know, didn’t talk to spouses, partners, parents; bottled it up. They were not a team because this fucking man would not accept that Corrie Rankin was his boss, had rank on him. He’d seen before, on exercises with military units, sergeants with curled lips, verging on insubordination when they dealt with instructions. This fucking man would learn and he’d crack the whip. Corrie turned away and went back towards the rear scrape. He’d thought there was an outside chance he’d find the guide there, if the guide hadn’t gone to betray him or looking for a shag. Betrayal was a possibility, and his anger grew. He had a speech in his head, awkward and confused, and not been delivered. Should have been: Just something I want to say, Henry. I think you are fantastic. Really want to let you know that. Not my best thing, words. I have great admiration for you. Want to spend time alongside you. This is a shit place to even think about it, about afterwards. There will be one, an afterwards. I’d want to walk with you and be alone with you, be far from this job that I do and that you’ve been lassoed into. I think we could make something, somewhere, it’s what I hope. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, but I’ve never been more certain. All the time that he had lain beyond the wire and had waited for the little bastard to show up and murmur some excuse, he had thought about what he might have said to Henry, should have said. He might have had the same speech, with a change of names and not much else, in his mind when the face had been Maggie’s. Perhaps that was all he was capable of: composing speeches in his head that were never spoken out loud. Corrie bit at his lip, cut the chaff in his head. Told himself: Henry was the girl he would pitch for. He always had what he wanted. He would pitch hard for her.
He reached the scrape. Empty. Another oath was barely suppressed. He crawled under the scrim. He thought it right to maintain his own professionalism, even if it was in short supply around him. He lay on his stomach and cupped the small torch in his palm and took out the paper Henry had dropped for him and his fingers shook in anger as he unfolded it. The principal vehicle is a black Nissan pick-up, with no apparent armament and a damaged and rusted fender bar. Time and destination not known yet. My role unclear, Belcher.
He had heard the guy’s voice, Belcher’s. Had not particularly wanted to talk to him face to face. His personality over that of a scumbag kid from the northeast, who’d served a custodial sentence for kicking a guy half to death, and was now wasting his life in some garbage-corner of a foreign field with other wannabe killers. Not really a contest. He had given the impression of sincerity, had bled it, had talked about the boy’s family and background and familiar streets and warm beer, might have been a bloody politician, but had kept his own stuff vague. The big problem had been getting the guy to keep his voice down while the others slept. He had dangled the lure and it had been snatched – something about righting a wrong, and the guy had started feeling grateful for the chance to help. It was said even back then that many of the people who had left leafy Brita
in were under strain in Syria and wanting out, not knowing how to earn a passage home. He had given Belcher assurances that ‘big men’ in London would sing his praises; they would want to meet the guy with the courage to do the right thing. And the right thing was? To find a paper clip, and do it fast. He hadn’t known how long it would be before he and the others were sold on. He hadn’t needed to see him that evening; he had been given the paper clip and there were guarantees about which doors would be open and the way across the yard and where the far entrance, exit, was, and then the best way to go. Corrie hadn’t thanked him then and wouldn’t thank him now. He had given him the code name and the number. He didn’t often hear Jericho burst out in uncontrolled laughter, but he had done: ‘What, you even recruited him? You did that? Corrie, my boy, you are a fucking monster, and a genius. Recruited . . . God, I’ve heard everything now.’
Corrie went back towards the lip of the plateau and the forward scrape. They had to be told. By telling them he could exercise authority, showing he had control of information. It seemed a long night, and he wondered if the speech was better left unsaid, and whether the tooth had come out easily, and where the guide, Jamil, was. On his stomach again, he’d found that his leg hurt. He might have twisted it when he was caught below the wire; he would have strained the repaired tissue when he had made his way awkwardly up the slope. Corrie Rankin was fourteen years younger than Rat and was not about to let slip his physical superiority over the older guy, would not give ground to a veteran. He came to the bottom end of the scrape. He should have been praised for what he had done with the snake, but it seemed to be taken as a stunt.
He told them about the Toyota, and the bent bunper. He said that he didn’t yet know when a meeting might be held, or where it would take place. Once he knew, he would give their information to Jericho and he could pass it on to where he thought fit, the Agency or Defence Intelligence for the tasking of a drone to fire Hellfires. He said it all in a flat, monotoned voice, and in the black of the night could not read their reactions. He reckoned he’d regained his calm, but his parting shot was to remind Rat and Slime that they must remain vigilant because Jamil had disappeared. He turned away. Had no more to say. That speech, never made, played in his mind.
Rat’s voice, behind him: ‘It’ll be the village away to the west, the one on the higher ground. That’s where they’ll go. It’s a fortress place. Jamil’s gone to look it over. We talked about it, him and me and Slime. Surprised he didn’t count you in. Did you piss him off or something?’
Corrie was shaken, in shock as he left them. Not even in the bad days in the garage outside Aleppo – or in the week after he’d been told that Maggie had dumped him – had he felt so cringingly alone. He crawled away.
Slime whispered, ‘Heavy stuff, Rat.’
‘And meant to be.’
‘Up your nose, is he? That was a proper kick in the goolies.’
‘I’m not apologising.’
‘Rat, I’m asking you: is this going well or turning bad? Where we are, what we’re doing, why and how, is it set fair or are we in too deep? Never asked you that, not before.’
‘Not a good time to start, Slime.’
‘Don’t mind me asking, but what’s the end game? I thought by now I’d have been told. How should it end?’ Slime passed the water bottle.
Rat drank sparingly because water was precious and said, ‘I’ll tell you once and not again. I came to get a job done, and I’ll do that. That’s why I was picked – don’t know about him and where he came from. I know about myself, and about you, Slime, and the job will get done. I’m not here to fuck about – certainly not to give it to a geek stuck on the far side of the world flying a toy plane. We were tasked, we’ll do it – it’s where we are.’
Casper took the Predator, NJB-3 up.
They’d been delayed because there had been a glitch in the four-cylinder engine and worries that on a long flight, at stall speed, the Rotax job would throw up a problem. A technician had found it when their girl was already on the apron being tuned.
She took off smoothly. Casper’s procedures were classed as excellent, and his landings at the same level. They went south once they achieved cruising altitude. She carried fuel to stay up twenty-four hours, but Casper, and Xavier too, was always loath to pass NJB-3 to another pilot and weapons guy. They’d hang on in there as long as they could stay awake and do a decent enough job, and then would bring her back to King Khalid. As a trade-off, they might permit a rookie to take over on the return leg, three hours flying, and actually touch her down, but not when in the operational area. They’d be headed for the territory they flew over most times, a western section of the Marib Governorate, and in particular a line of villages north of Marib and away from the oil pipeline and the refinery. They’d Bart, the same analyst from Intelligence who they liked to do business with. They were a class team and comfortable with each other.
They’d have NJB-3, with her payload pair of Hellfires, on station at around dawn, so it was deep in the night as she cleared the Saudi and Yemen border. Pretty soon she’d be over bad boys’ country; they’d not waste battery power on the cameras and sensors as they traversed the northern mountains. Dawn would be time enough for the lenses to start relaying images from the ground. They were up high, 20,000 feet, and Casper took out the sandwiches that Louella had done, noting that he’d need to go on half rations because Xavier had the hangdog look which meant he’d no food. Coffee, too, would be shared, because Xavier didn’t have that either – it was possible to get an orderly to bring coffee from the machine but it was worse than cat piss. There was too much on his mind as he flew the first minutes of the mission, and there had been the usual briefings and navigation plots before the lift, but Casper had noted that Xavier – normally a live wire when in the big chair beside him – was quiet, preoccupied. But he did his job and could not be faulted. He was subdued, and it nagged at Casper, but they didn’t do social talk when the bird was up, kept that for the canteen.
The analyst, Bart, talked softly in the dim light, ‘How it is, guys, we don’t have a specific target tonight and into tomorrow over that sector. The security situation there is dire and the only reason Alpha Quebec is kept at all in check is because of us being over them. We like them to know we’re here and they’ve had the best part of a couple of days of weather, bad for us and good for them, and heavy cloud cover. We reckon now that there is a bit of a window and in theatre we’ll be looking for target opportunities. All I have in terms of recent intelligence is that yesterday a police major was ambushed on the main Sana’a road, and he and his escort were killed. The usual High Value Targets are on the list but their locations and the vehicles they may be using are unknown. Be nice to say that I have an agent on the ground and feeding, but I don’t have that luxury – sorry, not that I’d tell you if I did. And something else. We knocked over some fighters three days ago – lose track of time, days and hours – and it was just opportunitistic, but they believed we had a HumInt source and a guy was crucified, hung up there for a day before dying. We quite like them to believe that we are there, infiltrated and embedded, all over them like a rash, which gets them edgy, but those are pin-pricks in the big picture, and it’s quiet. Always that cliché, guys, “too quiet”, more quiet than we like it. If we see something that interests us then the chances are that it’ll be easy to get clearance to blast them. That’s about it, guys.’
‘Thanks, Bart, good and clear.’
They settled and were wrapped in their own thoughts, and Casper twice heard Xavier snort, as if frustration bit him; the intelligence boy dozed. They were on automatic but weather could flare fast over the mountains as they headed south and east, and he could not relax. It would be good to get another strike lined up, and to hear the firing called, have the Kill TV, as they called the imaging on their screen of a fatal strike, show up in good definition – hold her steady as Xavier did the business, and see the Hellfire go in on the wide screen in front of him. Casper went to
war, the only one he had, and his air speed was a little short of 100 miles an hour, not fast, but he’d bring her there, and her payload.
In the cool of the darkness, a caravan left a bivouac, where there was water for the camels, moving away and north. Its route would take it on the trails over which the frankincense oil had once been brought from the coast, and then across country, and over the great desert and towards the Mediterranean. An old man, more than sixty and without any spare flesh on his body, owned the camels and took a part of his stock twice a year into the Empty Quarter, the Rub al-Khali, that straddled a frontier he did not recognise, and he would sell them to Bedouin and get a better price than if he traded in Yemen. He brought only his grandson with him. Some said the boy was simple for his thirteen years, but he thought the child had a fine way with the beasts. He soothed them, which was no small skill when they reached the great expanses of desert sand where so few knew where water was. They would travel, would sell all the animals – except their most prized male, not for sale in the market – and the load of dried fish they carried, then would turn with the one beast and walk towards Shabwa, and on to the port of Bir Ali and the village that was their home. They hoped to make good distance during the night hours. When they were further north the going would be slower and the shifting sand hard for the camels, and the heat would become fierce. The old man and his grandson were among a very few today who knew that route, where vehicles could not get traction, and where the queen of Sheba had been, whose caravans had carried great wealth. He knew no other life, no other place, that gave him more contentment than the wide dunes and shifting valleys, whose shapes changed when the wind blew hard.
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