Killing for the Company

Finn was looking in the side mirror at the vehicle behind them. ‘Republican Guard,’ he said, his voice tense. Luke felt his blood pounding in his veins. This was the last thing they needed. The Republican Guard with their red berets were the elite of the Iraqi Army. Better trained and better equipped than the shitkicking squaddies who were probably manning the checkpoint as part of their national service. Ordinary citizens referred to the Republican Guard as zanabeer — wasps — on account of the way they swarmed around the country. If things went noisy now, the SAS men would have a truckload of the fuckers — maybe twenty of them — swarming around the Toyota, and that was a scrap Luke didn’t fancy. He checked his own mirror. Sure enough, he could see the driver of the truck leaning out of his window, his red beret fully on display. Luke sensed Finn gripping his pistol. ‘Looks like we might be calling Fozzie in earlier than we thought,’ Finn said, his lips hardly moving.

Luke couldn’t answer. A second young soldier had approached the driver’s side, so he wound down the window. There was no greeting. The soldier shone a torch into the car while his colleague walked round to the back.

‘ Salam,’ Luke muttered as the light fell on his face.

The soldier gave him a sharp look. Had he noticed a chink in Luke’s accent? The cold night air bit his skin, but Luke still felt sweat soaking his back as he glanced in the rear-view mirror. The figure of the first guard was silhouetted against the lights of the Republican Guard truck.

He was right by the boot of the Toyota.

If he opened it, they’d have no choice: Luke moved his arm down to his side, inches from his gun.

There was a shout, and both soldiers looked round. The Republican Guard driver from behind was yelling something at them. Luke couldn’t tell what he was saying, but he understood the tone of voice as this higher-ranking soldier bellowed orders at the two Iraqi squaddies like they were a piece of shit on his shoe. Fear crossed their faces as they hurried back to the barrier and started to raise it, all thoughts of Luke and his dodgy accent apparently gone.

Luke didn’t fuck about. He sped through the barrier the moment it was high enough to pass. As he reached the other side he saw that the military truck was flashing its lights at him. Moments later it overtook and stormed down the road ahead.

Finn let out an explosive breath. ‘Thought I was going to have to waste a round on that fucker,’ he said, his voice muffled behind the burka, as they continued to drive into the darkness.

‘Would have been a shame to get your glad rags all bloody.’ Luke checked his mirror. Nobody from the checkpoint was following. And up ahead, the truck was out of sight.

The road was poor — potholed and broken down by the countless heavy military vehicles that had passed along it over the previous two decades. At 01.00 they passed some buildings by the side of the road — a filling station and a mosque next to each other, where several cars had stopped. Luke and Finn had no need of prayer or fuel — there were canisters of petrol in the boot, along with their more specialised gear — so they just pressed on.

At 02.12 they came to a fork in the road. Luke bore left, then doubled back, heading north-west up towards the Syrian border. Guided by Finn’s GPS, he soon took a right-hand turn off the main road and into the desert. He drove on for some ten kilometres before Finn quietly spoke.

‘Let’s go static,’ he said. ‘The village is about two klicks up ahead.’

Luke came to a halt and killed the lights. 02.58. Three hours till sunrise. They’d be entering the village at dawn. Lift Abu Famir and then swastika it back to Jordan.

But until then they’d just have to wait.

SEVEN

Chet had lost count of the number of pints of cold Stella he’d chucked down his neck that afternoon. He’d headed straight for a basement pub just off Leicester Square where the barmaid looked like a bulldog licking piss off a thistle. He celebrated his birthday surrounded first by the office workers in for a liquid lunch, then by tourists taking the weight off their feet after a day’s sightseeing, and finally by the office workers again, boisterous and increasingly arseholed now work was over.

But Chet had barely noticed any of them. As he sank the beers, he couldn’t stop thinking about the events of that morning. There had been rumblings over the past few days about an anti-war march through London. If it went ahead, Suze McArthur was exactly the kind of leftie who’d be up at the front waving some wanky banner for the TV crews. Chet was the kind of person who’d be at home. The last people asked their opinion about a war, he knew, were those who’d been in one. And if the girl was surprised that the decision to move into Iraq had already been taken, she was more naive than most. ‘This war is good to go,’ the American had said. Well, of course it was. When the hell did people think decisions like that were taken — the day before troops moved in?