‘Go and lose yourself.’
‘Is he coming.’
‘One vehicle, a long way off – on his way.’
‘Why are we still here?’
‘You start something and you finish it.’
‘Can we not get the fuck out – and get her?’
Corrie shook his head. He wondered for a moment why Belcher was including Henry Wilson, and he sensed that Belcher was now close to the end of his courage. He would have been able to stand pressure, while no exit door flapped in front of him, but now it did, and Belcher was ready to bolt. Would have been the clever thing to do: leave it to Rat. He talked a good shot; reckoned he could hit. But it would need checking, and provenance – not maybe and not might have, but he needed to see with his own eyes if Crannog was to succeed. He would go when it was finished, not before. Two pricks of light and nothing ahead of them and nothing behind. One vehicle, alone on the road, and approaching slowly. He remembered what George had said, a lifetime back, and in a world that was no longer familiar. He’d smiled: It’s going to be a very good one, Corrie, an excellent one. I’m feeling very confident.
He pushed Belcher clear, saw him slope off into the night and then others were close to him and the place seemed full of men, light gleaming on their weapons. He could not quit, not until he knew. He’d hear the shots where he was, a double-tap; he would have a grandstand seat. His ribcage hurt, and every place where the boots had landed. They would have to run when they left, and Corrie did not know how he would manage, but he would not go early.
Chapter 15
Corrie had a vantage point over the lower end of the village where there was open ground. He had found a niche between two walls, was buried in shadow and clear of the wind. The gathering was below him, the alleys were crowded. Women had appeared, discreetly, on balconies. It was the warm-up performance before the main act.
A man was being held. He had screamed earlier, no longer did. The accusation against him was shouted by an old man who jabbed a finger, identified him, denounced him. The watching crowd had begun to bay. It had happened fast. No one saw Corrie.
The old man seemed to relish his moment. He had been coming back from the fields behind the village, and had livestock there and fenced in, and had seen the light flash from high above. A signal, what else, and the Emir was expected. It would have been for the drone to see, for the killer in the sky to be alerted. Spit frothed in the old man’s mouth, and his voice rose to a shriek, a crescendo as he came to the moment of triumph. The old man had hurried back, had gone immediately to where he thought he had seen the short bursts of light. He had not wished to alert security until he was sure and now he was – he had seen this man, and this man carried a hand torch. He had followed him, had waited until they were close to ‘responsible people’. Corrie had heard the first scream. The accuser was making good theatre of it, and trying to thrust his angular body against the man who was held. He was restrained, but was able to spit phlegm into the man’s face. Corrie saw the man’s terror; he did not think that many on the Third Floor of VBX would have been witness at any time in their lives to such naked fear. All dignity gone, mercy absent, evidence never weighed. They took his coat off and one of the guys, in black overalls, held up a hand torch and brandished it. Corrie knew about such fear. It was the terror that made a man wet the front of his trousers. Colleagues, starting out on the night shift, might – in the line of duty, of course – have to watch a YouTube video of a beheading in Mosul or a hanging in Raqqa. What stuck in his mind was that nothing the man – middle-aged, bald, his turban tipped off his head – could have said that would have saved him. Nothing, and Corrie Rankin had killed him. He might be dead within an hour. More likely a few minutes, because the crowd wanted blood. The man, cringing in terror, would likely be from that village, would have a home there. His wife might be in their house, ignorant of what faced him. His children might be gathered near to their mother, improving their reading, learning from the Book. His friends, his relatives, would probably be in the crowd around him – would have known him, bartered or laughed with him, chewed qat with him – but none would speak up. He would have no defender. Corrie had put him there.
He watched, it was a good place for him to be.
In front of him, the alley was straight and dropped and widened as it approached the open space. It was an excellent view. He saw no reason to wring his hands. There was no intervention that he could make, or would make. It wasn’t pretty, but that was the way life was. He swivelled. Beyond the shadow was a low wall. Beyond the wall was the fall of the rock down on to the plain. On the plain was the ribbon of road. The lights, just two of them, were better defined now.
Coming closer, the speed not varying.
Two tiny lights – what Corrie Rankin had come for, why he was there, and more important than a wretch who would not live till dawn. And he could not control how it would play out, and hated that, and saw the girl in his mind – sweat-smeared and with dirt on her arms, a brave smile, a shard held up that was caked in the dried mud of centuries, and he lost her to a man about to die, and to the thought that he could not dictate the next hour; would be only, at best, a witness.
The goats were on the road.
Jamil had knotted string to the leader’s horn, which was strong enough to allow him to tug it in the direction he wanted. The miracle? The animals were so docile. He had taken them from the village, had slipped them away from the goatherd, who had slept on, and his dog. Other dogs, from other homes, had barked, but without enthusiasm. There had been no pursuit. He had hurried them along, not waiting for them to scavenge any grass shooting up between stones. He had climbed the bank on to the raised road, dragging the leader with him, and the flock had followed.
He passed what had been the tent camp and saw a single light there. They thought the woman important, but he did not – he would have left her.
If he had taken the goats earlier, then the chance of an alarm, gunfire, would have been greater. If he had taken the animals any later, then he risked not reaching the road, and being unable to intervene when the vehicle came past the marksman, Rat. He might be too late and might be too early, and was pleased Rat had not chivvied him – he had trusted him. He thought that Rat understood him the best of all of them, except for Jericho. When he trotted on the empty road, the leader kept level with him, as if it were a game, and the flock cavorted to keep up and sometimes butted into his haunches, hard, but still they followed. He had good eyes. It was necessary to have good eyes, excellent sight, if he were to see the leopards. His sight was a gift from God. Rat – with the power of his spotter scope – had seen the crushed can, a fruit drink, at the side of the road, and it was in line with the rock that gave Rat cover from the wind. He went past the can, for a hundred metres, and then turned. Jamil saw the lights, small and separate, on the road, but the wind was too powerful for him to hear the engine. He turned the goats. It was good that Rat trusted him. He kept the leader tight against his hip, and waited, and watched the two lights, and it had to be – for the trust to be justified – a black Toyota pick-up with a dented fender. The goats milled around him, and he had to judge when to move forward, towards the can.
The Emir did not talk during the journey. The guards spoke quietly among themselves. The nurse, squeezed on the front bench, was ignored. His wife said nothing either. All the windows were down and the wind blustered around them. The engine was quiet; the Emir heard little beyond the ringing deep in his ears, which was a burden he carried and would for the rest of his life: he had lived through the bombing in the Tora Bora when they were in flight, and many had not. He was grateful to have been spared and believed it necessary to work intensely and justify his survival. Sometimes his wife touched his arm, and sometimes she let her fingers run along the length of the bones. Formerly he had used two young men as secretaries, gatekeepers. Fine young men. The first had died on the road to Al Bayda’, and the second near to Al Hajar, towards Zamakh. He had not seen the bodies
after the drone strikes, nor been in person to the site and witnessed the devastation to the vehicles. They would have believed, the men who directed the drones on to those two vehicles, that they had located him, a principal target. He imagined huge extended halls in the lands of his enemies, and walls covered by great screens. He imagined the Hellfire in the moment before it hit, a vehicle clear in the power of its lens, then the fast-sprouting cloud at the moment of detonation. Each time, his enemies would have risen in their seats, and slapped their hands together, and cheered. He wondered how they responded to failure, when word had reached them that he was still alive. He had not replaced the young men, but the hate for those who had killed them and who sat on the other side of the world and dealt random death had grown. The Book said, Against kafirs make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including the steeds of war to strike terror into the Enemy of Allah, and your enemy, and other besides that you may not know, but who Allah will know.
The Emir believed what was written, harboured no doubts as to his duty. He was tired that evening, would have liked to sleep, and his wife was warm against him and she snored softly, and the road was straight and the vehicle’s speed constant. A little of the speech he would make that evening played in his mind, and he rehearsed phrases, but most important was that he should be seen, show himself, should not be cowed by the threat – and he would be there, in a few minutes.
Rat lay still. Did not speak. Did not expect Slime to.
It was not ideal. The circumstances under which he fired seldom were; in darkness, crosswinds, with imponderables such as the speed at which the vehicle would be travelling, and where the target would be seated. But he relished difficulty. Dirt was also an imponderable; he thought he had kept his weapon clean, in better condition than it would have been on a stag duty in Helmand, but little specks of the stuff made a difference at the standards he set himself. The second shot would be better. The first would clear any particles out of the barrel and would scythe through condensed moisture there. The second would come from a cleaner barrel, and a warmer one, and would be at a higher velocity for the round. He’d be firing at 540 yards, give or take five, and the second shot would travel to the target and be three to six inches higher, and he’d allow for that. What he had no doubts about was that he’d have two shots only. Not a third or a fourth. Two bites.
He’d seen Jamil and the goats. They had come past him and had seemed to be heading for the village on the rock slab, where the wedding party had gone, and the funeral cortège. He had seen the guide turn the animals. They were across the road, and either side of them was a steep bank dropping away. It was a useful place, it would be hard for the driver to swerve off the road without toppling over, or he’d go through the centre of the crush of animals, or he would slow and curse, and slow some more, and nudge them away with the dented fender bar. Rat always tried to have a plan in place. And he knew it was soon. The light had warned him, flashing fast from high up.
He thought the man behind the torch was a desk hugger who had needed to do something, to be seen to have that something featured in the report, if it were ever written. Getting the hell out would be another story. Beside him, Slime seemed to shiver, and it wasn’t cold. A hard wind but not chilly. Slime had said, on their last deployment in Helmand, ‘True, isn’t it, Rat? You don’t like anyone, do you? Don’t have any mates? You admire them and respect them if they’re good at what they do, but you don’t like them. Right, Rat?’ Right on the money, correct. Slime had the stress, but not Rat.
The goats were edging down the road, and Rat stayed calm.
Belcher was on his way back up the hill to the village. He went at a fast jog.
He passed the man and the girl. The man walked ahead and several times he looked back and behind him, seeming to check for a tail. The girl followed him, her head down. Belcher recognised her from the dress, cheerful and patterned. Her veil was askew, as if she’d needed to push it aside to breathe more easily on the steep climb over the cobbles.
Belcher hoped that the Sixer was watching for him. Had a sweat on his neck. He thought she was little more than a child. He had seen the man around the villages, always guarded, and there was gossip. It was common knowledge who he was, what he did, and that the name given him was shabah. He was the Ghost, who tried to stay clear of the lens cameras on the drones, and who worked at a bench on electronics, making circuits. In this secure village, he was not trailed by the usual protection. Belcher did not dare to frighten him, did not turn, and prayed for the call from the shadows. The rifle banged hard against his back, jolted there. He heard a whistle at the side. Maybe a sort of a joke – bloody poor. A siren noise.
Belcher ducked to the side and was heaved deeper into the shadow.
‘It’s a chance,’ he told the Sixer. ‘No time to explain. Coming up the hill there’s a guy. A girl with him, a child. Broken away from the crowd. What for? To shag her. Who is he? He is Ghost. You have that?’
Not an answer, but a hiss of reaction, interest stirred. Belcher reached, fumbled for the belt of his trousers, loosed it and hoisted up his shirt, exposing his stomach. He felt for the Sixer’s right hand. No resistance, he took it and placed it against his stomach. The fingers of the Sixer’s hand were on his skin. Remarkable. The Sixer did not ask him for an explanation. but he gave one. Bathed in darkness, a few narrow streets, homes pressed close on the alleyways, they had found each other.
‘They took me into a house. There was a medic there, Palestinian, I think a nurse. Poked and prodded me here, where your hand is, then drew a shape on it, a C. The size of half a small saucer. And I’m to be a fucking martyr – that’s what they want of me. He watched, the Ghost did.’
The voice was quiet in his ear, quieter than the wind. ‘We call it SIIED, which is Surgically Implanted Improvised Explosive Device. Would be a local anaesthetic, quick job. A slice with a knife on the C’s shape, then peel the skin back. Hope to find a hole big enough, would take six or seven ounces, explosives in granule form. It goes through the airport X-ray. The detonation is a problem, but maybe they’ve cracked that. It blows a hole in the fuselage, and part of you is in freefall already and other bits stuck to the cabin ceiling. And . . .?’
Belcher did not answer. Could not. He heaved, and his stomach emptied and he splattered the cobbles.
The Ghost came from behind him and stepped awkwardly aside, but he did not recognise Belcher and did not curse him. The girl made a little growl of annoyance, and jumped sure-footed over the mess. Belcher coughed, the taste in his mouth sour, and for a moment he seemed to see the little bitch, the nurse, grinning and holding a knife, looking for the faded mark that she’d drawn. Then fingers in surgical gloves would have swabbed and sliced and pulled the flesh back, and the explosive would be in a packet of clear cellophane. ‘That is Ghost?’
‘It is him. He’s looking to shag her . . .’
A quiet voice, detached. ‘You take care of her.’
Belcher would not have been able to make the decision to intervene. Was a follower. The Sixer snaked away from beside him; Belcher ran to catch up. The Sixer went past the girl and a faint light caught his raised hand, using the heel of it as the weapon. Belcher grabbed the girl.
The blow was to the back of Ghost’s neck. It was a street fighter’s attack. None of them he’d known in Shades Bar, big guys who liked to strut around Hartlepool, would have hit with that certainty. Belcher held the girl. She fought, and he tried to wedge his arm in her mouth so that she could not scream. Her hands scratched at his face. She kicked hard with the back of her foot against his legs, then had a good hold on him and bit. And he was weak because he had been sick, and could hardly hold her. He saw another blow crack into that same place, the Ghost’s neck, and the man went down, not in a dramatic fall but a slide, as if the knees collapsed first and then the rest followed. He was prone but had not cried out. There was slight blood at the edges of his mouth, but it was all hard to see in the light. Belcher caught the girl�
�s hair and jerked her head back and slapped her once, and there was a small fractured cry. Then he told her bluntly, in colloquial Arabic with an awful accent, that she was to get her arse away and keep running, and if she said what she had seen then she would go on the cross and be hung there and have stones thrown at her. Belcher loosed her, and she bolted.
They took the Ghost between them. Belcher held his legs and the Sixer took his arms, after a fast frisk through pockets when they’d retrieved a wad of lined notepaper. Death came fast, served up quick. Belcher remembered that night, after the Sixer had fled, and the investigation was under way and men had come from Aleppo, and first out into the yard were the other three guards. Not him. He was safe; he had been asleep, as witnesses had confirmed. But the others boys in the building, who had been playing cards, or watching porn, or thinking about the next gang of girls coming in from Berlin or Birmingham, they were dead. Lined up, made to kneel, one bullet each to the back of the head. The other hostages had been through a bad time. Belcher was beyond suspicion, and did not lift his voice to help anyone, and volunteered, damn right he did, for a combat unit. Wanted to be worthwhile, that sort of shit.
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