The Templar Succession

by Mario Reading

  ‘Okay,’ he said, as loudly as he dared. ‘We’d better roll. It’s getting dark. Jean-Claude? Grégoire? Rider? Are you with us?’

  The three men nodded. No one wanted to be left alone behind IS lines. There was security in numbers.

  ‘Amira?’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘If we get stopped, lose yourself behind us. Walk away if you can. We’ll make a lot of racket up front to occupy their minds. Wave our press passes. Gesticulate. Feign outrage.’

  ‘Fuck off. I’m not going anywhere without you. Who do you think I am? Barbara fucking Cartland?’

  The Frenchmen laughed. Rider sniggered. Hart stifled a nervous yawn.

  ‘Does anyone know how to hotwire a car?’ she said.

  Rider held up his hand. ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, you’re good for something at least,’ said Amira. ‘Miserable bloody bastard that you are.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Hart looked down at the pit. IS were so confident of their position here at Tal Afar that they hadn’t even bothered to fill it in. The freshly killed bodies were piled up on top of each other, leaching flies.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t use a flash.’

  Hart ignored Rider’s comment. He set up his portable tripod, screwed on his camera and got on with it. Even the tiniest bit of camera shake would wreck the shots in this light.

  ‘Come on, man. Let’s get out of here.’

  The two Frenchmen were nodding too. The place reeked of blood and death and excrement. Only Amira was striding round taking everything in. Filtering it through that journalist’s brain of hers. Stamping it onto her memory. Later, she’d look at Hart’s shots. He knew that. But even without them her piece would be just as good. She had a mind like a combine harvester.

  At first they stuck to single file and walked along the edge of fields. One blessing was that there were unlikely to be mines yet. No one had ever thought, three days ago, that IS were going to attack. Nor that the Iraqi military would up sticks and run, abandoning their matériel for the enemy to use as they saw fit.

  People in the villages tended to go to bed early too. So if they skirted settlements, and kept their eyes skinned for patrols, they had a fair chance of slipping through. Each of them carried a navigation aid, so at least they knew where they were. And where they were was too far behind enemy lines. They would have to lie up for another day at least if they didn’t find a car soon, vastly increasing their chances of being found.

  ‘What’s that?’ Grégoire, who had the best eyes of all of them, was pointing into the distance.

  Hart focused his telephoto lens on the object. ‘Looks like a 4x4. Non-military.’

  ‘Why not let’s take that?’

  ‘Do you think IS will have all the roads sewn up?’

  ‘Only one way to find out. Anyway, we can avoid the roads and run with our lights switched off. It’s bright enough. With a car we’d have a fair chance of breaking through to Dohuk tonight.’

  ‘If the Kurds don’t shoot us up.’

  ‘I’ll call ahead. Rider tells me he has some battery left on his phone. He’s got one of those sunshine charger gizmos. Our people can warn the border guards that we are coming through.’

  ‘When we know which actual crossing we shall be using.’

  ‘Yes. There is always that. But I’m going to do it anyway. The Kurds are well organized. Not like the Iraqi army.’

  They made their way to the 4x4. It was parked near a house. The house was made of concrete. It was grander, by far, than the houses around it. It even had its very own courtyard, sealed off from the outside world. And a sheet-metal roof that glistened in the moonlight like liquid mercury.

  ‘We’re going to have to push the car. We can’t afford to start it here. We’d wake everybody up.’

  ‘Rider. Get in and do your bit.’

  Rider looked worried. ‘You’d better pray there isn’t an electronic handbrake. Or a faulty alarm.’

  ‘Rider, just do it.’

  Rider tested the doors. They opened. Rider slid into the front seat. After a moment he waved his hand. The two Frenchmen, Amira and Hart began pushing. Rider steered the car. When it was three hundred metres away from the house, they stopped.

  ‘That’s bloody clever how you managed to bypass the steering lock,’ said Hart.

  Rider held up a car key. Then he grinned. Hart made a pretend fist. But he was privately relieved. Maybe their luck was changing? Three days ago they’d come to Tal Afar because it was safe, and the perfect place to report on the situation in Mosul, seventy kilometres down the road. That had been the plan anyway. But things had moved too fast for the journalists. They’d found themselves boxed in before they knew it. And here was the result. Pushing a stolen vehicle down a road at two in the morning, in fear for their lives.

  ‘Is there any petrol in the thing?’ said Hart.

  ‘Full,’ said Rider. ‘The only stuff these people have left is petrol.’

  ‘Then I suggest we get in, start it up and drive full-throttle for the border.’

  ‘You can’t be serious?’

  ‘Do you have an alternative? If we drive like snails we’ll be picked up. If we drive like the devil is behind us, maybe they’ll think we’re IS soldiers on a mission. Who would expect five idiot journalists to be in the car? Sometimes one has to think laterally.’

  ‘Who’s going to drive?’ said Amira.

  Hart looked round. ‘It was my idea. I’m happy to do it.’

  ‘So says the man who infiltrated himself inside Iran last year, and came out with his hide intact. If you can’t do it, nobody can. They don’t call you the Templar for nothing.’

  Hart tried to make out if Amira was joshing him, but it was impossible to pin down the expression on her face in the half-light of the moon. It was Amira herself who had coined the ‘Templar’ epithet for him following a bloody fiasco in Germany two years before in which he had infiltrated an extreme right-wing party which was using the Holy Lance as its symbol. The whole thing had ended badly, but the ‘Templar’ nickname had stuck. All the more so because Hart’s direct ancestor, ex-Templar Johannes von Hartelius, had been made the Guardian of the Holy Lance way back in the twelfth century by one of Frederick Barbarossa’s sons. It had been the perfect ‘silly season’ fodder. And Hart had been saddled with the name ever since. Even his editors insisted he use it when signing off material. Amira, tongue firmly in cheek, called it the price of fame – Hart’s fifteen minutes in the headlights. Hart called it a bloody irritation.

  ‘Okay. Get in.’ Hart started up the car and pulled away. ‘I hope to heck whoever owns this vehicle doesn’t decide to come outside for a romantic moonlit drive.’

  ‘Keys must have been in it for a reason.’ This was Rider. ‘Maybe he was dropping off his girlfriend? Maybe he’ll be out in a minute when she finishes blowing him?’

  ‘Shut up, Rider.’ The three of them said it in tandem this time. It would have been four, but one of the Frenchmen didn’t speak English.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Hart took the Zammar road. He’d checked out the Askï Maws¸il dam three days before, for background shots, and was pretty sure he’d noticed a service road running round it. What he did know for certain was that the far side of the dam belonged to the Kurds. Why would IS have any reason to guard a dam? It was a natural barrier. And how did you guard a dam anyway?

  He kept the 4x4 at a steady 100 kilometres an hour. There was little or no traffic on the roads at night. Everyone scared to venture out, probably. But he knew from experience that one was apt to over-endow new conquerors of a province with too much organizational capacity. In reality, after a putsch of any sort, there was usually an interim period of utter chaos, in which old rivalries were sorted out, revenges taken and infrastructures secured. It was during this short window that one still had the cha
nce to move more or less freely about. If one had the balls for it. Or was foolish enough to try.

  Hart saw the checkpoint half a kilometre ahead.

  ‘Shit.’

  He pulled up at the side of the road using the engine brakes only and left the engine running. The vehicle lights were off. As long as nothing came up behind them and lit them up like a baseball diamond, they were safe.

  ‘Do we try and bullshit our way through?’ said Rider.

  ‘Christ, no,’ said Hart. ‘These people have no sense of humour. They’d shoot you as soon as look at you. And ask questions afterwards.’

  Hart checked out the fields on either side of the road. On one side the dirt was plastered flat, as if it had been recently harrowed. The other side was impassable. Corrugated and uneven. Full of ha-has and revetments.

  ‘I’m going right. Do I take it fast or slow?’ He looked round the interior of the cab for guidance.

  ‘I say fast,’ said Amira. ‘We’ve only got one shot at this. And they’re going to be suspicious of any vehicle travelling in the middle of the night anyway. With luck the checkpoint will only be manned by a couple of men.’

  ‘Yeah. With AK47s,’ said Rider.

  ‘There is that.’

  Hart slipped the vehicle into four-wheel drive. ‘Any of you want to get down on the floor? Or want out?’

  The Frenchmen shook their heads. ‘We’ll take our risks with you,’ said the one who spoke English.

  Hart looked at Rider. Rider nodded. Hart didn’t even have to check with Amira. He knew what her answer would be.

  He put his foot down and cut right.

  ‘If we’re lucky they may not hear us,’ said one of the Frenchmen.

  ‘What? You mean they may be sleeping on duty?’ Amira let out a guffaw. ‘IS would probably martyr them.’

  It was at that exact moment that the shooting started. Hart could hear the distant crackle of semi-automatic weapons. Only he had the strange impression that it was not they who were being targeted, but someone else.

  ‘You don’t think the Yanks have drones up?’ said Rider. ‘That they’ll think we’re IS charging the border and simply vaporize us?’

  ‘Rider, shut the fuck up.’

  A loose round smashed through the back window. Almost immediately one of the Frenchmen choked and fell forward. Amira threw herself across the intervening seats and forced him upright. ‘It’s his shoulder, I think. Ricochet maybe. Lot of blood.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Hart was trying to keep the 4x4 on a roughly straight course across the field. He was busy devastating somebody’s seasonal corn crop but he didn’t care. He passed a house. The lights came on. There was more shooting behind them, but none of it accurate. He reckoned privately that they were now out of range. If the checkpoint guards had instant access to vehicles, of course, they would be piling into them right about now. That would be another matter entirely.

  ‘I can see moonlight reflecting off the reservoir,’ he said.

  ‘Which way do we go?’ said Amira.

  ‘Lottery. I don’t remember the map.’

  ‘Think, man, think. Make a call.’

  ‘Right. I think Dohuk is right.’ Hart could see vehicle headlights flaring and swooping behind them. ‘I need to switch my lights on. I can’t see shit. They’ll catch us otherwise.’

  ‘No. Keep them off. It’s our only chance.’ Amira touched him on the shoulder. ‘Their lights will destroy their night vision. We still have ours. It might make a difference.’

  Hart took the ramp leading up to the service road at about sixty miles an hour. The 4x4 was protesting. Bits were falling off it. It had no acceleration to speak of. Hart recognized it as a jeep. But a bottom-of-the-range one. An old-style Patriot, or something like that. He remembered that air conditioning cut power output so he switched it off. Was he imagining it, or did the vehicle surge forwards?

  He hit the rock two miles further along the shoreline, with the lights in the rear-view mirror steadily edging up behind them. The front right tyre blew. The Patriot swerved violently back and forth across the service road in the shape of an elongated S.

  ‘The boat,’ said Rider. ‘Make for the boat.’

  ‘I don’t see any boat,’ said Hart.

  ‘There. There. Can’t you see it?’ Rider was pointing out of the side window.

  ‘We’ll be sitting bloody ducks.’

  ‘We’re already sitting bloody ducks,’ yelled Rider. ‘The fucking tyre’s gone.’

  Hart slewed the Patriot off the service road and down towards a small dock. Three boats were tied up there. Metal-bottomed. Tourist crap. The motors were shipped.

  ‘See if you can start one, Rider,’ said Hart.

  ‘They’ll shoot us to pieces.’

  ‘Rider! Fuck it! This was your idea. Try the fucking engines.’

  ‘Switch on the headlights then. Give a sucker an even break.’

  Hart shone the headlights towards the boats.

  There was a crump out on the lake. Maybe a hundred metres from where they were standing.

  ‘Bloody heck,’ said Hart. ‘That was a rifle grenade. Someone’s shooting from the back of the cab approaching us.’

  Rider had found one antediluvian engine that started with a pull on the toggle. He blipped the throttle. A thick pall of smoke rose from the exhaust.

  ‘Get in, all of you,’ said Hart.

  ‘We need to sink these other boats,’ said Amira.

  ‘Too late. Let’s take them with us and then abandon them. We don’t want them following us.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Amira was pressing a pad down on the wounded Frenchman’s neck. Her arms were covered in blood up to the elbows.

  Despite their situation, Hart was impressed with the way everyone was working together. These were all professionals. Used to emergencies. There were no wasted words. No pointless arguments. No grandstanding. Everybody simply got on with whatever they were doing.

  Two minutes into the exercise they were out on the reservoir, heading east. Behind them there was another crump.

  ‘Bastard’s shot up our Patriot,’ said Rider. ‘Full tank too. Whoever we stole it from is going to be major pissed off.’

  ‘Do you reckon he’ll take that up with IS, do you, Rider? Ask for compensation?’ Hart was squinting into the darkness in front of him.

  Rider grinned one of his grins. He knew he irritated people. It was his stock-in-trade. Do enough of it, and you were apt to learn things. All journalists have their wrinkles. This one was Rider’s. ‘I would,’ he said. ‘I’d sharia the bastards so they’d know they’d been shariahed. Fuckers wouldn’t know what hit them.’

  This time they found themselves bracketed by rifle grenades. Then the small arms started. Bullets zipped off the water, pinged off the metal surrounds of the two attached boats.

  ‘Cut them loose, for pity’s sake,’ shouted Hart. ‘Give them some targets other than us to aim at.’

  The vehicle on the shore had a searchlight. It was bracketing the reservoir.

  Grégoire, the uninjured Frenchman, cut the two empty boats free. His friend groaned. Amira was still trying to staunch the blood loss from his shoulder. She was having to be rough about it.

  One of the boats drifted immediately into the searchlight beam. A heavy machine gun opened up and cut it to pieces.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Rider yelled. ‘Those were cannon shells, not bullets.’

  Then the beam cut across to the second boat.

  ‘Get down,’ shouted Hart.

  The metal-bottomed boat reared out of the water as if it had been speared.

  Hart lay almost flat on the deck of the third boat. He had the throttle twisted to full. If the searchlight found them they’d be dead. Heavy machine guns had awesome ranges. Not like the popguns that were firing at them before.

>   He watched the luminous white wake behind them over the gunwale. He waited for the shells to hit. Waited to be blown to bits.

  But there was silence. Except for the ludicrous popping of their tiny engine.

  ‘The stupid bastards have deafened themselves,’ said Rider. ‘Serves them fucking well right. They can’t hear us over the din in their ears. They think they’ve blasted us out of the water.’

  Hart looked down the length of the tourist boat. ‘For once in your life, Rider, you may finally have got something right.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘Kurdish, do you think?’ Hart was monitoring the checkpoint through his telephoto lens.

  ‘The flag gives it away, don’t you think?’ said Amira.

  ‘What flag?’ said Hart.

  ‘The Kurdish flag over there that you can’t see because your lens is too narrow.’ Amira was grinning.

  Hart shook his head. Amira loved catching him out. It was a sort of sport with her. ‘How the hell do we warn them that we’re coming through? They can’t have failed to hear the gunfire on the reservoir.’

  ‘Maybe they thought it was IS conducting a military exercise?’ said Rider.

  ‘Why don’t you go over and check that out,’ said Hart. ‘I’m sure it hasn’t made them itchy-fingered. In fact they’re probably stretched out on a carpet somewhere having breakfast.’

  Rider looked at him, but didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything to say.