Killing for the Company

Local intelligence reports suggested that Abu Famir was hiding out in the village of a Bedouin tribe about 100 miles from the border. The Bedouin were nomadic, herding cattle, sheep and goats, as they had done for hundreds of years. It was accepted even by the Iraqi government that they could wander across the borders into Jordan and Syria. In another time that would have been a good way to smuggle Abu Famir out of the country, but not now. The Iraqi government knew war was around the corner. They’d upped their border controls and even the Bedouin were no longer allowed to cross.

So if they wanted to get Abu Famir back into Jordan, someone had to go and get him. That was where the Regiment came in. Luke and Finn were to infiltrate the border and snatch Abu Famir; Fozzie and the boys in the pick-up were to stay on the Jordanian side, ready to be called in if anything went wrong. And the chances of that happening were higher than normal. They weren’t the only people who wanted Abu Famir. It was impossible to say who they might run into.

‘I’ve got something.’

Luke spoke quietly. Through his kite sight he’d located exactly what they’d been looking for. Two vehicles, headlamps switched off to avoid detection, cutting across country, eastwards towards the border. He zoomed in and focused on them. Two klicks away. Here was their passport into Iraq.

He turned to Finn. ‘Let’s move.’

The light of the moon was bright enough for Luke and Fozzie to operate without headlamps. If the vehicles they’d seen were smugglers, they’d get spooked if they clocked a tail. So Luke kept his distance, while Finn maintained eye contact with the vehicles through the kite sight.

‘They’re slowing down,’ he said after they’d been trundling along for half an hour. ‘Reckon they’re crossing?’

‘Could be, buddy,’ Luke said. ‘Could be.’

They went static again and watched. The vehicles were still, but there was movement around them. ‘That’s the border,’ Luke said. ‘Got to be.’ Finn climbed out of the car with a Silva compass, already set to adjust for the magnetic variation of the area. He stepped a few paces away so the metal of the vehicle wouldn’t affect the needle and quickly took a bearing so that they would be able to locate the crossing point — the smugglers, after all, were unlikely to hang around once they’d penetrated the border.

‘Bearing 272 mils,’ he mumbled to Luke when he was back at the car, before pulling out his GPS unit and taking a precise fix of their location. Once he knew their lat and long, he opened up his map on the bonnet of the Toyota. The border was clearly marked in red and it was only a moment’s work to locate their current position and draw the bearing from it. Where the bearing hit the border, that was their crossing point. He punched the coordinates into his GPS as a separate waypoint before folding the map, giving a quick thumbs up to the guys in the pick-up and getting back into the Toyota.

‘Got it?’ Luke asked.

‘Got it.’

Two minutes later they watched as the vehicles in the distance headed north.

Luke took the Toyota offroad and, following Finn’s direction, struggled over the stony desert. Fifteen minutes later they approached the border.

The berm that marked the boundary between Jordan and Iraq was about two metres high, but here there was a small indentation, just wide enough for a vehicle to pass through. On the other side of the berm, however, was a ditch about a metre deep, and beyond that a barbed-wire fence. While it was possible to drive through the berm, it wasn’t immediately obvious how the smugglers had crossed the ditch or got through the barbed wire.

As Luke got out to investigate with three of the guys from the pick-up, the cold desert wind blew sand into their eyes. It took them no time to locate two long planks of wood abandoned in the trench. These they used to bridge the gap, then examined the barbed-wire fence. Someone had cut and unfurled it, before closing it back up again so it didn’t attract attention. Luke curled the cut wire back and returned to the car. Fozzie had left the pick-up, and now all six Regiment men were standing round the Toyota.

‘You’ll radio check with base, let them know we’ve crossed over?’ Luke asked.

Fozzie nodded. ‘Take care, fellas,’ he said. He grinned. ‘Hope it’s not a one-way ticket.’

‘Next time there’s an opportunity for one of us to get his bollocks shot off by a raghead,’ Luke retorted, ‘the job’s yours.’

‘Deal,’ said Fozzie. ‘We’ll RV in twenty-four hours.’

Luke and Finn got back into the car, and a moment later they were trundling over the planks and through the breach in the fence. In the mirror Luke saw the guys returning everything to normal. He looked at the clock on the Toyota. 22.18. They’d gone from safety to danger in a matter of seconds.

‘Welcome to Disneyland,’ he muttered, and started driving.