Brute Force ns-11

by Andy McNab

  Yeah, right. I knew all too well what they did to people like him in rat-holes like this in the interest of self-correction.

  Mansour ploughed on. 'Reports were written and circulated. Your name – the name of Leptis – became well known in high circles, Al-Inn. You would expect it to. I remembered you from our encounter on the party circuit. I realized who you were – but you were careful and I could not prove why you were here.

  'Afterwards, it seemed obvious. Given your connections with Libya, the time you spent here at the embassy, you must have been involved, somehow, in the Bahiti operation. You were even stopped at a roadblock near the docks on the night the ship sailed. And, naturally, you came to the attention of Lesser's mentor, because Lesser's mentor was also on the dock that night.'

  I looked at Lynn, then at Mansour.

  Mansour smiled. 'You seem surprised.'

  Lynn pulled up a chair and sat beside him. 'He was there? You're sure?'

  'He? Who said anything about a "he"?' Mansour was quite pleased with himself. 'Lesser's mentor was a woman.'

  Despite being trussed up, he still managed to do a halfway decent impression of a cat who'd got the cream. 'During the time of struggle she ran the PLO's bomb-making school here. You'd have expected her to be on the dock that night. But she was there for altogether more personal reasons, too.' The cat's smile spread across his face again. 'Indeed, you could say she taught Lesser everything he knew.'

  'How's that?' Lynn asked.

  'She didn't just teach him how to make bombs, Al-Inn.'

  94

  Her name was Layla Hamdi. She was Palestinian, and she ran the training camp in Ajdabiya.

  Lynn tilted his head in my direction. 'Eight hundred kilometres along the coast – halfway between here and Egypt.'

  Mansour had more. 'In October 1985, after the PLO was attacked by Israeli planes in Tunis, the various factions that made up the PLO had decided to accept a clandestine offer from Gaddafi to relocate many of their significant activities, including weapons instruction, to Libya.

  'Since Libya was already firmly on the West's radar screens for its support of foreign terrorist organizations like PIRA, the PLO's move here was picked up and tracked. But the Ajdabiya training camp and its leading proponents, including Layla, Lesser's teacher, weren't.'

  He was happy to talk about it now, he said, because all of this was very firmly history; one of the many aspects of Libya's past that the country's Great Leader had freely renounced in the wake of the Lockerbie settlement.

  Believe that and you'd believe anything. Mansour was waffling because he knew that the longer he talked, the more time he bought for himself. I'd have been doing the same.

  Time for us, on the other hand, was ticking on. It was coming up to 5 a.m.: first light soon. Decisions were going to have to be made.

  Layla Hamdi, he said, had trained as a chemist at UCLA, was incredibly gifted academically, and had shown no signs of radicalism until both her parents were killed by a stray IDF tank-shell that ripped through their quiet apartment in Gaza. The Israelis never apologized – Layla's parents were merely collateral damage in the Palestinian homelands; reason enough on its own, I thought, to turn Layla away from life as an academic and to the Cause.

  When she returned from the USA she signed up with Force 17, another PLO spin-off, and soon discovered she had a natural skill as a bomb-maker.

  Pulling in disparate techniques in the art of explosive-charge construction from right across the Middle East – including those taught by the British to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan – Layla rose through the ranks of the PLO to become its bomb-maker supreme. 'In the never-ending game of new countermeasures by us and then counter-countermeasures by you that characterized the bomb-maker's world, Layla was the person who kept the PLO and its fellow travellers state-of-the-art.'

  She started out as Lesser's mentor and became his lover. Not long after that, she became his wife. 'When she first met him, Layla was already in her mid-thirties. Lesser was still in his late twenties, the tall muscled Irish boy with the unkempt hair.'

  I pictured him in bomb class. He must have stuck out a mile in the company of his fellow students: Latinos from the Shining Path, Muj from Afghanistan, Arabs, and the odd Red Brigade Italian. Fuck knows what he and Layla had had in common, beyond bomb-making and sticking it to imperialist, bourgeois, capitalist regimes.

  According to Mansour, it had been love at first sight. The Palestinian and the Irishman. It sounded like a bad joke . . . When Gaddafi did his deal with the West, one of the conditions was that he gave up his support of terrorism. The bomb-making school was shut down and Layla suddenly found herself out of a job.

  Now in her mid-fifties, and not in the best of health, she had decided to stay in Libya rather than go back to the West Bank. I couldn't say I blamed her. Ajdabiya, whatever that was like, couldn't be any worse than the Gaza Strip. Well, we were about to find out.

  'How long to get there?'

  'By car? If you take the coast road, maybe eight hours. But for you, that would not be an option. It runs through the oil fields and there are many checkpoints. Without papers, you would not get through.'

  'Is there another way?'

  'There is the desert road, but it will add another four hours to the journey. There are still checkpoints, but fewer. And the guards are more likely to accept baksheesh. The road, however, is still dangerous.'

  'How so?'

  'There are potholes – deep ones; deep enough to shatter an axle. And after a storm, the sand can bury several kilometres of tarmac, forcing you off-road. You would need a four-by-four, at the very least.'

  Mansour must have realized, the second he'd opened his mouth, that he'd walked straight into that one. He added almost immediately: 'Of course, Al-Inn, you are at liberty to take my car. In fact, it would be an honour . . .'

  I turned to Lynn. 'Grab whatever you think might help us on the road: a map, even if Mansour's Q7 has sat nav; water – lots of it; and food – as much as you can find, so we can eat on the move.'

  I packed the revolver in my day sack and pocketed the Makarov along with Mansour's mobile phone.

  Mansour told me where in his study he kept his spare mags and ammo. I went and took all I could fit into the day sack.

  It was there that I also found his money – just as Lynn had predicted: a briefcase full of dollars – roughly ten grand's worth. Ten grand would go a long way in the baksheesh stakes – all the way between here and Johannesburg, if need be.

  Lynn was still emptying the fridge of water bottles when I got back. I ripped at the clingfilm to release Mansour.

  He rubbed his wrists. 'What are you going to do with me?'

  I tapped my watch. 'You've got five minutes to get dressed. Then you're coming with us.'

  PART EIGHT

  95

  We drove out of Tripoli into the rising sun.

  I was at the wheel. Lynn was in the back, and Mansour was beside me, ready to take on any checkpoints. Nobody spoke much. Nobody needed to. All I'd had to do was reset the sat nav's voice commands from Arabic to English and load in Ajdabiya. According to Mansour, the house we wanted was located on the beach. His memory wasn't great. He'd have to point out the actual building once we got there.

  We got past the city limits. I'd given Lynn the .38 and told him to keep behind Mansour's seat. On the coast road, with the sea on our left, the desert stretching away on our right, there weren't many opportunities for the Libyan to cut and run, but there was no telling what he might try.

  I glanced across at him. 'What's with the Russian?'

  'Excuse me?'

  'You started to talk to me first in Arabic, then in Russian. Why?'

  'I didn't know who you were. I still don't know who you are – only that you are British. When you were in my room, you could have been anyone. And a man like me has many enemies.'

  Lynn leant forward. 'Why would the Russians be after you?'

  Mansour kept his eyes on the roa
d. 'I have always been a survivor, Al-Inn. But how could a man like me, with my background, survive in the new Libya? Our Great Leader had publicly renounced terrorism. He'd informed the world that Libya was ridding itself of its ballistic missiles, its weapons of mass destruction. I had emerged from prison with nothing. Nobody was interested in a disgraced former spy. What was I to do?'

  'What did you do?' Lynn asked.

  'All I had were my connections – contacts built up over many years – and my interests . . . our interest, Al-Inn. In the desert, there are treasures beyond your wildest imaginings – you know this – many of them still waiting to be discovered. From prehistory to the time of the Romans – the desert is full of these priceless remnants of my country's past. And there is only so much room in the Al-Jamaheri Museum . . .

  'Now, many people come to Libya to look for these artefacts. I know what is out there, Al-Inn. I have spent years in the desert. The desert is my home. There are places I know that nobody else does. Why should some archaeology student from an American, Italian, British or French university be allowed to make these discoveries – to take these antiquities back home with them, supposedly for study? They are Libya's heritage and they should stay here.'

  I couldn't see the problem. If some geek with a metal-detector discovered Septimus Severus's money box, he should be allowed to hang on to it. Finders, keepers.

  But Mansour was getting sparked up. 'It is we who should decide what is to be bought and sold, what is to stay or leave my country.'

  I loved how this guy twisted and spun. Now he'd recast himself as some kind of custodian of national treasures. It was fucking obvious he wasn't just squirrelling these objects away for posterity; he was trading them as well, and not on eBay.

  I kept my eyes glued to the potholes that peppered the lumpy tarmac. 'And that's where the Russians fit in?'

  'I am sorry?'

  'The Russians. You decided that some of these priceless artefacts weren't quite Libyan enough, and that entitled you to do a little trading with your old mates?'

  Mansour stared straight ahead, tuning me out.

  I didn't want to let him off the hook. 'Let me see if I've got this right. In the eighties, Libya's foreign terrorist programme was up and running, and you were the guy who put it all together. The training, the weapons, the shipments . . .'

  'If you want to put it that way, yes.'

  'The market was big – PIRA, PLO, the Red Brigade, you name them. And the Soviets fell over themselves to supply you with all the kit. So there you were, top of the heap, pulling all the strings. Until the Bahiti op went to rat shit . . . And when you finally got out of jail, it wasn't just Gaddafi's little slice of paradise that had changed, was it?'

  'No.'

  Too right it wasn't. The Cold War was over. The Soviet Union didn't exist any more. But a lot of those GRU colonels Mansour used to deal with, his regular weapons suppliers, had grown rich – or, at the very least, had some extremely rich, well-connected friends.

  I swerved to avoid another pothole that was deep enough to rip a wheel off. 'If there's something a wealthy Russian loves to spend his money on, apart from bling, powerboats and football clubs, I bet it's bits of old Roman bric-a-brac.'

  Mansour bristled. 'The alabaster bust in my house is of Septimus Severus. It is one of a pair. The other one is at the Capitol Museum in Rome. On the black market, it would fetch millions.'

  It explained a lot, not least the Q7, the briefcase of cash and the curious symbols I'd noticed on the sat nav's map display. Mansour had marked the location of these out-of-the-way archaeological sites. Nice work if you could get it. It almost made me wish I'd paid more attention at school.

  Mansour turned and looked directly at Lynn. 'I was only ever prepared to sell things that didn't matter – a late classical statuette here, a bust from the Hellenistic era there. These things are two-a-penny, Al-Inn. You know that. But they always want more.'

  'It's a Russian thing,' I said. 'Old habits die hard.'

  He turned and watched the road. 'Some of my former contacts are still in the military and the GRU. Some now work for the FSB and Russian arms manufacturers. Many of them have a great deal of money. They also have some powerful friends.'

  No surprises there. The Russian mafia were everywhere. 'What did you do that means you have to sleep with a weapon?'

  Mansour sighed. 'There were certain treasures, like the Severus bust, that I am not prepared to sell. They should remain in Libya. But the people you speak of are putting me under a great deal of pressure. Their clients – some of them well-known public figures – these men are extremely powerful, and they want only the very best. When they set their eye on something, they will stop at nothing to get it. I have started to become . . . nervous . . . There is no one I can turn to here. I needed the advice – the help – of someone I could trust.'

  'So you decided to call Lynn?'

  Mansour didn't answer. Something on the dead-straight stretch of road ahead had caught his eye. It had also caught mine.

  Half a mile away, shimmering in the morning sunlight, was a checkpoint.

  96

  As we slowed to join the queue of waiting traffic, I told Mansour to put on his shades.

  I tucked the Makarov under my thigh. 'Got that .38 within reach?'

  Lynn shuffled about in the back.

  'Make sure you can get to it.'

  The old familiar feeling was crawling through my stomach – that sickening lurch, when you know you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and, worst of all, with no one and nothing to back you up.

  'Get about $400 out of the case. Then keep it closed and under your feet.'

  Our passports didn't have visas or entry stamps. To a guard who was even half alert we'd stick out a mile. But a few hundred USD might help us on our way.

  I watched a sentry making his way towards us, past taxis laden to capacity, the odd private car and a couple of long-distance trucks headed for Benghazi and beyond. Immediately in front of us was a Toyota pick-up stuffed with farm produce. A goat stared vacantly at us from the tailgate, alongside a stack of bamboo cages filled with emaciated chickens.

  I left enough room to pull a hard right into the scrub and loop back on the road to Tripoli if it turned into a gang fuck. We'd have to find another route to Ajdabiya. I wanted this sorted; I didn't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.

  The checkpoint was basic: a red-and-white-striped pole tied to a couple of sand-filled oil-drums. The sentry was picking vehicles out of the line at random and waving them through. A voice at the back of my head told me we weren't going to be one of them.

  I'd normally expect guys like this, in the back of beyond, to be half asleep, bored or just pissed off. But he and his mates looked particularly switched on; they wore shades under their ball caps, crisply pressed green uniforms and carried AKs across their chest.

  Mansour gave a low groan. 'Money will not help us.'

  'Why not?'

  'They are Kata'eb Al-Amn – Security Battalions. Gaddafi's men.'

  I looked at Lynn. 'What's he talking about?'

  Lynn spat something in Arabic. Mansour grunted back.

  'What?' I hated being out of the loop.

  'It's unfortunate.' Lynn's head appeared between the front seats. 'You don't usually find the Security Battalions at VCPs. They consider themselves above this kind of thing. Checkpoints are normally manned by the army or the People's Militia. Draftees. Eminently bribable. But not this lot.'

  Unfortunate? Not quite the term I'd have used. 'Are they looking for something – us, maybe?'

  Mansour sucked his teeth. 'Perhaps they had some trouble here. There have been protests over the price of bread and rice. They could be looking for troublemakers.'

  'What are you going to tell them?'

  'Quiet; I will deal with it.'

  The guard reached the Toyota and started talking to the driver. Even the goat was starting to look uncomfortable. Mansour's time was
up and I wasn't liking this one bit.

  I turned to Lynn. 'Weapon?'

  The strain was registering on his face too. 'On my lap.'

  I checked. It was concealed by his jacket.

  I nodded towards Mansour. The sweat was starting to trickle down his face. 'A word out of place, shout and I'll put my foot down. Then shoot him through the back of the seat.'

  The guard handed back a fistful of papers to the driver of the Toyota. The goat celebrated by trying to bite the head off a chicken that chose that moment to stick its neck through the bars of its cage.