Hot Blood (41 page)

‘I meant that it’s an easy city to get lost in if you don’t know the language.’

‘I won’t get lost. I’ve been looking at street maps and satellite images of the city and my memory is almost photographic,’ said Shepherd. He stood up and walked up and down. The transmitter fitted perfectly into the slot in the sole of his boot and he couldn’t feel it. The only way someone would find it was by taking off his boot and removing the insole. He doubted anyone would bother to do that.

‘Did your American friend get clearance for the curfew?’ asked Muller.

‘He’s passed on descriptions of all your vehicles and registration numbers and says no one will bother us,’ said the Major.

‘He can do that?’ asked Muller.

‘He carries a lot of weight,’ said the Major.

‘He better had because they tend to shoot first and ask questions later after dark out here.’

‘Relax, John,’ said Shepherd.

Muller rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I just keep thinking of what Geordie’s facing. And if we screw up, you’ll be in the same position.’

‘No one’s going to screw up,’ said Shepherd, coolly. He took the Glock from its holster and checked the action. Then he ejected the magazine. It was fully loaded but if everything went to plan he wouldn’t even pull the gun from its holster.

‘He’s right, John,’ said the Major. ‘We’ll be on him every step of the way. Let’s get the vehicle ready.’

As they walked outside, the Major’s mobile rang. He listened for a few seconds, then put it away. ‘Yokely says the tracker’s working fine,’ he said, ‘and he wants you to wave.’

Shepherd frowned. ‘He wants what?’

‘He wants us all to wave,’ said the Major. He craned his neck and gazed up into the near-cloudless sky. In the far distance an airliner left a white trail as it headed west but nothing else was in the air. The Major waved, as did Shepherd.

‘You’re both mad,’ said Muller.

‘Just wave,’ said Shepherd, ‘and say “cheese”. We want to keep our guardian angel happy.’

Shepherd drove the Toyota Land Cruiser slowly down the road. He reached for the bottle of water on the passenger seat and drank from it. He was wearing body armour, and even with the air-conditioning on full blast he was sweating. He was entering Dora, the suburb in the south of Baghdad that, according to Muller, was controlled by Sunni insurgents and was a virtual no-go area for the coalition forces. Muller had said that IED attacks took place there virtually every day and the Americans drove through at speed, rarely venturing there on foot. The population of the suburb was almost half a million, a mixture of Sunnis, Shias and Christians, with the Sunnis in the majority. The suburb opened into countryside to the south, giving the insurgents an easy escape route. There were huge farms and luxurious villas, many of which had been owned by Saddam Hussein’s family and officials. Shepherd wasn’t out in the farmland, though. Geordie had been taken in the built-up area of the suburb, so that was where he was driving.

Shepherd passed a group of young men wearing
dishdasha
s who all glared at him. He picked up the transceiver and pushed the transmit button. ‘Okay, I’m getting ready to start the show. Are you in place?’

The transceiver crackled. ‘We’re here,’ said the Major. ‘I’ve just spoken to Yokely and he has you on the GPS and the eye in the sky. Whenever you’re ready, Spider.’

Shepherd put the transceiver back on the dashboard. His hands were wet with sweat and he wiped them one at a time on the legs of his jeans. He glanced into his rear-view mirror. There were no vehicles behind him. The Major and the rest of the team were keeping their distance. Their plan would only work if it looked as though Shepherd was on his own. He took a right turn into a narrow street that was filled with pedestrians, all Iraqi. There were women wearing full burkhas, covered from head to foot in black, there were men in grimy
dishdasha
s, a far cry from the gleaming robes he’d seen in Dubai, and plenty more in Western clothes.

He drove past a canal, a stagnant waterway overgrown with weeds, into which bare-chested children were jumping. Two little girls yelled and waved at him as he went by.

The buildings on either side of the street were run-down, with broken windows and peeling paintwork. The cars parked at the roadside were all old and rusting; several had been broken into and stripped. Shepherd figured the road was too busy to stop but he pumped the accelerator, making the Land Cruiser lurch. Heads turned to stare. He slowed the vehicle to a crawl, then pumped the accelerator again. He looked into his rear-view mirror. There was a taxi some fifty yards behind him, white with bright orange quarter panels. Three men sat inside it, two in the front.

Shepherd saw an intersection ahead and turned right, made the car jump forward and pulled in at the side of the road. The taxi drove by, all three men looking in his direction. He took a swig of water.

He turned to put the bottle back on the passenger seat and flinched as he saw a bearded man in a grey
dishdasha
staring at him through the window. He smiled, revealing two gold front teeth. ‘Hello,’ he said.

‘How are you doing?’ said Shepherd. It was difficult to judge the man’s age. His skin was dark brown and leathery, but his eyes were bright and inquisitive. He could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty.

‘You have a problem?’ said the man.

Shepherd opened the door and stepped out into the street. Almost everyone within a hundred feet had stopped walking and was watching him with open hostility. Shepherd heard a roar then saw two F16 bombers flying just below the cloud line.

‘There is something wrong with your vehicle?’ said the man.

‘The transmission, I think,’ said Shepherd.

‘On the Land Cruiser it is usually very reliable,’ said the man. ‘The Japanese make excellent cars.’

‘You’re a mechanic?’

‘Cars were a hobby when I was young,’ said the man, ‘but I cannot afford one now.’ He gestured at the vehicle. ‘May I try?’

‘I don’t think you’ll be able to do anything,’ said Shepherd.

‘You never know,’ said the man, ‘but if I cannot find out what’s wrong, I have a good friend who is a mechanic and I can call him for you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Shepherd, suddenly guilty at having lied to a man who was clearly a good Samaritan.

‘Dora is not a safe place for you, you know that?’

‘Why?’

‘The people here, many do not like the Americans.’

‘I’m British,’ said Shepherd.

‘They care more about the colour of your skin than they do about your passport,’ said the man. He held out his hand. ‘My name is Nouri.’

‘Peter,’ said Shepherd, using the name in his passport. He shook the man’s hand. ‘Look, let me have another go. Maybe it was just overheating.’

‘The transmission should not overheat,’ said Nouri.

‘I’ll give it a go anyway,’ said Shepherd.

Another taxi drove down the road and slowed as it passed the Land Cruiser. It had the same white and orange paint as the first Shepherd had seen but two women in burkhas sat in the back, with a net bag of vegetables on the front passenger seat.

‘You seem nervous, my friend,’ said Nouri.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re travelling alone? That is unusual for a Westerner.’

‘I was on my way to pick up three of our employees,’ said Shepherd. ‘Then I got lost and my car started playing up.’

‘Where are you going?’

Shepherd named a street two miles away.

Nouri smiled and pointed back the way Shepherd had come. ‘You need to go back to the crossroads, straight on for two miles, then left. Don’t you have a map?’

Shepherd shook his head.

‘I shall draw you one,’ said Nouri. He pulled a scrap of paper from inside his
dishdasha
and a well-chewed ballpoint pen. He put the paper on the bonnet of the car and quickly drew a rough sketch map, with all the names in Arabic and underneath an English transliteration.

‘Why is your English so good?’ asked Shepherd.

‘I was a teacher,’ said Nouri. ‘My school was bombed during the war so now I do some translating for charities. It does not pay well but it is the only job I can get these days. Things will improve in time,
Inshallah
.’ He gave the hand-drawn map to Shepherd.

Two men in flannel shirts and long, baggy pants were edging closer to the Land Cruiser. One reached into a pocket, pulled out a mobile phone and made a call. He stared at Shepherd as he spoke into the phone.

Nouri saw what Shepherd was looking at and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Do not worry,’ he said, and walked over to the two men, stood in front of them and spoke to them in a hushed voice. Shepherd looked around. More than fifty people were now openly staring at him. Most were men and the few women were all dressed from head to foot in black burkhas. Clearly they were poor, with grubby clothing and shabby footwear. Shepherd could feel hostility pouring off them. He reached for the door handle. Nouri turned and smiled reassuringly, then made a small patting motion with his hand as if he was quietening a spooked horse. ‘Everything is okay,’ he said.

‘I’ll give the car another try,’ said Shepherd. ‘The transmission might have cooled down.’

Nouri walked over and stood so close to Shepherd that he could smell the garlic on the man’s breath. ‘They are trouble, those men,’ he said.

‘I think you’re right, Nouri,’ said Shepherd.

‘If the car does not start, I will walk with you down the street. If you are with me, everything will be okay.’

Shepherd climbed into the Land Cruiser, started the engine and edged the vehicle forward. He gave Nouri a smile and a wave, then drove away. He was drenched in sweat and wiped a hand on his trousers before he picked up the transceiver. He clicked ‘transmit’. ‘I’m driving again,’ he said. ‘Continuing north.’

‘What happened?’ asked the Major.

‘I didn’t seem to be flavour of the month,’ said Shepherd, ‘but no one was in a rush to kidnap me.’

‘That was interesting,’ said Simon Nichols, leaning back in his seat to study the bank of screens in front of him. ‘What do you think just happened?’

Richard Yokely sipped his coffee. ‘I reckon Spider found one of the few men in Dora who likes Westerners,’ he said. ‘What are the odds?’

‘Slim,’ said Will Slater who, like Nichols, was studying the screens. ‘Slim to non-existent. That’s
Hajji
country down there.’ That was the Arabic word for a Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but it had become the standard term used by the military to refer to Iraqi insurgents.

Nichols and Slater were sensor operators, responsible for studying the output from the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle that was circling Baghdad at twenty thousand feet. The drone was transmitting high-resolution real-time images of the city below from cameras so powerful they could easily pick out individual numberplates. A variable-aperture television camera gave them a live feed of what was happening on the ground and an infrared camera supplied real-time images at night or in low-light conditions. A synthetic aperture radar system capable of penetrating cloud and smoke was constantly producing still images that were transmitted to the ground-control station. As well as its hi-tech surveillance equipment, the Predator was equipped with two Hellfire missiles and a multi-spectral targeting system that combined a laser illuminator, laser designator infrared and optical sensors. It could fire its own missiles or pinpoint a target far below for tanks or manned aircraft to attack.

Phillip Howell, a CIA pilot who was one of the best Predator operators in the business, was piloting the twenty-seven-foot long drone. Yokely had asked for him because he had worked with him before and he knew that the surveillance operation would be as challenging as they came. Howell seemed relaxed as he piloted the drone: he had his feet up on a table as his right hand played idly with the joystick. He scanned the screen that showed the readings, but the one he relied on most featured the output from the colour camera in the Predator’s nose cone.

‘How are we doing for fuel, Phil?’ asked Yokely.

Howell looked at the gauge and did a calculation in his head. ‘Seventeen hours, give or take,’ he said. The Predator’s fuel tank held a hundred gallons, enough to keep it in the air for twenty-hours if it was circling or give it a range of 450 miles at its top speed of eighty miles an hour.

It had taken off from Balad airbase, a fifteen-square-mile mini-city just forty miles north-west of Baghdad; since the coalition forces had moved into Iraq it had become the second busiest airport in the world, beaten only by London’s Heathrow. It had two parallel eleven-thousand-foot runways and was surrounded by dusty, parched desert dotted with stumpy eucalyptus trees. The nearby town was a hotbed of Iraqi insurgency and every night mortars rained from the sky – the soldiers stationed there had christened the base ‘Mortaritaville’. Yokely and his three companions were in one of the Predator ground-control stations, a container-sized steel capsule. After they had been launched the Predators weren’t flown by Iraq-based operators but by people seven thousand miles away at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. The data transmitted by the drones could also be beamed to US commanders in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or even in the Pentagon. Yokely, however, had insisted on local control. He wanted to be at Howell’s shoulder as the craft prowled over the city, keeping a watchful eye on Spider Shepherd. And the data was for their eyes only. Yokely had no intention that anyone in Washington DC should know what they were doing.

Two air-conditioning units the size of washing-machines hummed at the far end of the capsule. On the opposite wall a line of clocks displayed east-coast time, west-coast time, Iraq, Tokyo and Zulu time.

‘Whose brilliant idea was this?’ asked Slater.

Yokely gestured at the screen. The Land Cruiser was driving slowly down the main road, manoeuvring around two burned-out cars. ‘He came up with it himself.’