by Andy McNab
‘Her mother and father were my friends, my only friends. Her little sister was my goddaughter. Kelly was only nine when they were killed, in their house, just outside DC. I was too late to save them. Just by minutes. Kelly was the only one left. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was all I had left too.’
The rain started to ease a little while I fumbled my way through the day I’d discovered the bodies, and the weeks Kelly and I were on the run together afterwards, and how she’d ended up with Josh and his family in Maryland. ‘He’s a minister now in some happy-clappy church . . .’
I told him about me being shit at the job of looking after her, totally inconsistent, and how I felt a bit of me died when I signed her over permanently to Josh’s care, convincing myself it was the best thing for her.
Shivering and shaking, Jerry seemed to understand. ‘How do you ever recover from something like that?’
‘She never really—’
I felt a hand touch my shoulder. It must have taken a lot to move it from the warmth of his armpit. ‘I mean you, man. How the fuck do you hold it all together?’
Good question. Fucked if I knew the answer.
We lay there in the rain for maybe another twenty minutes. I checked Baby-G: 16:28. The rain had eased just enough for me to make out the headlights moving down the valley back towards Sarajevo. ‘Not long till last light, mate. Maybe we’ll get a fire going in the barn, even boil up some water. Then it’ll be smiles all round.’
87
My clothes stuck to my freezing wet skin. My hands were so cold, it took for ever to get the key into the old brass padlock and give it a turn. Jerry shivered behind me, waiting until the lock came off and the double corrugated-iron doors creaked open.
It was a little warmer inside than out, but not much. I couldn’t even console myself that we were out of the wet. It had stopped raining just as we got to the bottom of the hill.
‘Go find the wagon,’ I said. I wanted to keep Jerry moving.
I fumbled about for a light switch as he ventured further in, but didn’t find one.
‘Got it! Over here!’
Keys in hand, I stumbled towards the tapping noise he made against the bodywork. I eventually bounced off a high-sided wagon. I felt my way round the left-hand side and got the door open. The interior light came on to reveal a VW van and my vaporizing breath.
The van was one of the newer, squarer models but it was just as rusty and battered as any old surfer’s Combi. The back was full of empty hessian and nylon sacks, lengths of baling twine and handfuls of straw. The cab floor was littered with newspapers, sheets of paper, pens, drinks cans, all the usual shit.
I jumped in and unlocked the passenger door for Jerry, then turned the ignition. The diesel engine fired after a few protesting shudders. I flicked on the headlights. The inside of the barn was high, with a corrugated-iron roof, and the floor would have been big enough to fit a dozen vehicles, if they didn’t mind parking on piles of sacks and bits of old farm gear.
I pressed down on the cigarette lighter, then threw the gear shift into reverse, backing up so the lights covered as much of the place as possible. The fuel gauge showed half full. The cigarette lighter clicked back up. ‘Check it, mate. See if we can get a fire going.’
I left it in neutral, engine running, the exhaust chugging against the concrete block wall. I was beginning to feel more energized as I jumped down on to the hard compacted earth. Fuck carbon monoxide – I just wanted to get the cab warm and be able to see my way around.
Concealed behind piles of cardboard and wooden crates, Salkic had promised, were six cans of diesel. I pulled away the crap until I found them, and lifted each one to check it was full.
Jerry gathered empty polythene sacks and lumps of wood, straw, cardboard, anything that would burn. He made a pile big enough to give us some heat but not so high we torched the place, then ran back to the van. He got some newspaper going in the cab, and brought it over. We were soon warming our hands and faces and inhaling the stink of burning plastic.
I used a rusty old knife to rip arm- and neck-holes in a couple of the sacks and handed him a set. ‘We need to get our clothes a bit drier, mate.’
I’d always hated peeling off wet things and exposing my skin to the cold, but the fibres had to be wrung out so they could do their job and trap a little air.
We ended up looking like Cabbage Patch dolls, but at least the sacking gave us an extra layer against the cold. By the time we’d put our clothes back on top, all the dirt inside had turned to mud, but at least it was warmish mud. The fire was helping.
There were enough combustibles lying around for us to have stayed all night drying kit, but I wanted to get on the road just as soon as we could.
‘Have a look round for something to boil up some water. Be good to get something hot down us before we go. I’ll fill up the tank.’
Jerry moved off into the shadows as I picked up my AK and both our bumbags.
I kept the engine on now. If I closed it down it might not start again, so why take the risk? I dumped the bumbags on the passenger seat, folded some cardboard into a cone and shoved it into the tank. After doing the smell and taste test to make sure it was diesel, I emptied in the first can.
It couldn’t take all of the second, so I slung it in the back along with the three full ones. I was already fantasizing about heading up the road, the heater going full blast and a stomach full of hot water. What more could anyone want?
I went to the cab and leaned inside to check if the footwell heaters were doing their stuff. Nothing yet. The bumbags were just inches from my face, and through the nylon of Jerry’s I could see what was left of his camera. Jerry had been lucky. The Nikon had probably saved his life. I unzipped the bag and pulled out the camera. Part of the lens fell on to the seat.
The round had ploughed through the casing. The body looked as if it was about to break in half. As I held it in my hands, that was exactly what happened. And, digital or not, I knew enough about cameras to see at once there was something inside this one that shouldn’t have been.
I managed to slide a finger between the battery and its casing. The blue plastic disc was about the size of a 50p piece; it was cracked and chipped, but I could see clearly what it was, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with taking pictures.
My hands began to shake as I pulled out the Thuraya and powered it up. I pulled out the download cable and checked if anything else was in there that shouldn’t be, then hit the menus.
This time, Jerry had fucked up with his opsec. Registered on the call list were Salkic’s sister’s number and the hotel’s, and one other, at least twenty digits long. It wasn’t any source’s land-line number in DC, Virginia or Maryland, or any normal cell number. They, too, have area codes.
Who the fuck had he been calling? I’d seen him in the al-Hamra with the cable attached. Had he been downloading pictures? Of who? Of what? To ID us for the attack?
Fuck the blue device for now. I could deal with that later.
There was a shout from the shadows. ‘Hey, I got a can without a hole! It’s gonna need one mean clean, though.’
88
I jumped out of the van, AK in hand. I pushed the safety all the way down and got the butt into the shoulder. Taking deep breaths to calm myself, I leaned into the weapon and aimed at the noise coming towards me from the darkness.
He moved into the van’s lights, using them to inspect the tin can in his hands. His shadow danced along the far wall.
I stayed behind the headlights, waiting for him to get closer.
‘Stand still. Hands up, both up.’
‘Hey, it’s me.’ He held up the can, squinting into the beams. ‘I got us a kettle.’
‘The pistol. Where’s the weapon?’
‘My jacket. Nick, what’s—?’
‘Shut the fuck up. Drop the can. Kneel down and put the pistol on the floor.’
He did as he was told and I moved forward, weapon up, still in the shoulder, releasing fir
st pressure.
‘What’s happening, man, what I do wrong?’
I came at him out of the beams, my boot connecting with his head before he had a chance to get up again. He hit the floor and I kicked the pistol away from him, then carried on kicking him wherever I could reach: head, arms, legs, back, anywhere he left exposed.
When he raised his hands to protect himself, I got him in the guts and he puked up bloodstained bile.
‘You haven’t been calling a DC source, have you?’ I didn’t give him time to answer, just kicked him towards the fire. ‘You download from the al-Hamra to that fancy number?’
He tried to get to his knees again.
‘That why the phone and camera were rigged up, was it?’
I kicked into the mass below me. He collapsed by the fire, falling into the embers and spreading them across the mud. He rolled back towards me, desperate to get away from it, and tried to curl into a ball. I could smell burnt hair.
‘You got Rob killed, didn’t you?’
Sweat poured off my face as I gave him another kick in the kidneys, then I got the AK butt back into the shoulder and dug the muzzle deep into his cheek.
I took first pressure.
‘No, no, no . . .’ he pleaded with me, his eyes made even more manic by the flames. ‘I sent the shots, but there’s no way they were connected with the attack. There wasn’t time to rig anything up. No time!’
I could smell his fear and deceit: it was coming off him in waves. ‘I wanted to go with you, remember?’ He sobbed. ‘Please, Nick, please . . .’
I leaned into the weapon more; the muzzle dug deeper into his cheek. He fought for breath so hard through his split and swollen lips that he sprayed my face with blood and snot.
What the fuck was I doing? It was like an out-of-body experience. Someone else was controlling me, telling me to kill him.
‘Nick, please . . . my family . . .’
I leaned more heavily into the weapon, felt the heat of the fire starting to burn my face. My finger held first pressure.
Then I stood up.
Jerry saw the safety click back up to safe, and rolled on to his side, his knees drawn up against his chest. He held the cuff of his jacket against his face as I went over to the pistol.
I picked up an oil-soaked rag and threw it towards him. ‘Clean yourself up, for fuck’s sake.’
He stuck it to his face and rocked backwards and forwards.
‘You’ve been caught out, Jerry, accept it. You’re in the shit.’
He tried to talk through the tears, the rag and the pain. I couldn’t make out what he was saying so I knelt down beside him. ‘Take that fucking thing away from your mouth. Who’ve you been talking to?’
He lifted the rag. I got a weak, snot-filled ‘I don’t know.’
This was going to be a long night.
But Jerry wanted to help. ‘I don’t know his name, man. I don’t.’
‘Did you use a number or a code or any of that shit?’
He shook his head slowly. Blood dripped down his face and on to his jacket. ‘Just had to go see him in DC.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘An old building some place. I can’t remember the street. The office was Hot something, Hot Black, something like that.’
It didn’t have to mean anything.
For all I knew, lots of guys used the Hot Black business cover.
‘What did he look like?’
What he said was mostly lost in the rag, but I heard enough to know the universe was caving in.
‘He keeps calling me son. I’m not his fucking son. I’m no son of that asshole . . .’
‘You’re right, Jerry,’ I said. ‘He is an arsehole. Arsehole is George’s middle name.’
89
‘You know him?’
This was about me finding out what he knew, not the other way round. ‘What’s George got you doing?’
‘He said you’d take care of me, help me find him. Once we did, I had to press a button on the side of the battery pack, then carry on with the shoot. I had to make sure the session lasted at least two hours. If we had to go early, I had to leave the camera.’
I started walking back towards the VW.
Jerry shuffled along behind me, trying to keep up so I could hear him over the engine.
‘I know what he’s got me doing, man. I’m not fucking stupid. It’s some kind of tracking device, right? I press the button, they know where he is. They find him, they kill him. As soon as we got to the Palestine and then the Sunny Side Up I had to call him and press the button. That’s all I know, man, that’s all. I swear.’
He sat in the beam of the headlights, dabbing the rag at his face, as if that was going to help.
‘What did you tell George about Rob and Benzil at the al-Hamra?’
‘He wanted to be on top of things. I had to tell him everything that was happening, every day. So when I called him about the military grabbing our asses, and then about Rob and Benzil, he wanted pictures. You gotta believe me, Nick, I only got the Beemer because that’s where you guys were at. Can’t have been anything to do with the hit . . .’
He let the rag fall from his face and his swollen, bloodshot eyes searched mine for help, forgiveness, anything.
‘Why did you do it, Jerry?’
I reached into the cab and picked up the blue disc.
Blood dripped off his chin, making a small puddle in the mud. ‘He said it would be one job, and all my problems would be over . . .’ He coughed up some stuff from the back of his throat and spat it out.
‘What problems? What’s he got on you?’
Jerry had calmed a little. ‘I fucked up.’ He started dabbing again. ‘I went to one of the training camps in Afghanistan with guys I’d met from Lackawanna. I got arrested when I landed back in Detroit.’ He sounded almost angry. ‘I’m no fucking terrorist. I was just chasing a story. They fucking knew that, but they still sent me to the Bay.’
‘You were at Guantanamo?’
‘Two fucking months, man, held in solitary. Speaking to no one, nobody speaking to me. In the dark. Renee was totally out of her freaking mind – she didn’t know where I was. Then one day this guy George turns up and plays the good cop, says he can get me out of there in a heartbeat – but I have to do something for him some time. Like having a favour in the bank. Well, he finally called it in. I told him I didn’t wanna go, but I had to. He said if I didn’t go find Nuhanovic, he’d kill Chloë.’
He crumpled, his face in his hands, sobbing into the rag, his shoulders heaving.
I pulled out the blue disc and put it on the van bumper. The technology had come on apace since the Paveway days. This wasn’t just a tracking device. It was much more than that: it was a location device for time-critical targets. Once they’re marked, they’re hit. No need for man-in-the-loop technology. Now they had the Predator UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle], a remote-controlled aircraft about the size of a single-engined Cessna. They’d been around when I was here last, cruising at anything up to twenty-five thousand feet, but only used for what they were designed for, battlefield surveillance. They had real-time feed from infrared, thermal and normal cameras mounted in the nose; commanders could view the battlefield as easily as if they’d switched on the TV to watch a live traffic report on the Beltway.
Then, in around 2000, some boffin had had the bright idea of strapping an LTD to its nose alongside its surveillance package, and giving it a couple of hundred-pound Hellfire missiles to play with. So these days the operator just sat and watched a screen in the comfort of an operations room, until one of the sensors in the nose located the target – a tank, perhaps, or a carload of terrorists. All the operator had to do was splash it with the LTD then zap off the Hellfires, which would strike with an accuracy of plus or minus two metres. The only hard bit was identifying the target, especially if it was a single person. That had to be why George needed us here. It was back to the old man-in-loop technology again. Jerry would kick off the
target indicator, which would start to transmit. The Predator would pick up the signal; the operator would home in the LTD and kick off the Hellfires.
I turned to Jerry and leaned against the front of the van. ‘You’ve fucked up big-time. That’s not just a tracking device. You’re at the arsehole end of the detect, decide, destroy gang now.’ I held up the blue disc in the light. ‘This thing brings in missiles. George wants Nuhanovic dead . . . you and me are just collateral damage.
‘We’re in the shit, Jerry. He won’t care that the camera’s fucked. To him, the mission is everything. Believe me, I know the man.’
I clenched the device hard in my fist. The White House could have wanted Nuhanovic dead for any of about a dozen reasons that I could think of, from plunging Coke sales to Islam getting a bit more friendly with itself. But right now that didn’t matter. What did was the bit about collateral damage.
Jerry pulled the rag away from his mouth. ‘What we going to do, Nick? Call George? Maybe tell him what’s happening?’
Jerry still hadn’t quite got the hang of this. I paused. ‘What was Salkic talking about back there, outside the cave? He say anything about Nuhanovic?’
He looked up, his face still creased with pain. ‘No, just weird stuff, really. He wanted to thank me for killing the son of an aggressor whore. He said Nuhanovic would be happy – they were animals and not good for business, they messed up business . . . something like that . . .’
‘What the fuck did he mean by that?’
‘Dunno . . . he was pretty spaced out . . .’
I looked down at Jerry as he tried to clear enough blood from his nose to breathe. Why hadn’t Salkic just said Goatee was the son of an aggressor whore, and leave it at that? ‘You sure he said “business”?’
He didn’t bother looking up. ‘Yep, for sure.’
‘Shit.’ I took a couple of very deep breaths and threw the locator to the ground. ‘You’re not the only one round here who’s fucked up . . .’
I dragged him to his feet. ‘Come on, in the van. We’re going.’
