The Walking Dead

In a room high in the principal building inside the protected complex of the American Embassy in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, Cindy read aloud from the situation reports that had come through on the teleprinter. She had a fine voice, and Joe Hegner listened. In his mind he played pictures of the carnage she described from the flimsy, neatly bullet-pointed sheets.

SitRep, Task Force Olympia, Northern Command, Mosul: Triple car-bomb attack in our Area of Responsibility. Attack One: Target was a Contractors' Convoy. Attack Two: Target was the Follow-Up reaction of Coalition Forces, 300 metres from first strike. Attack Three: Target was approach to Coalition base as reaction forces returned. Casualties include 2 civilian security guards from convoy, KIA. 3 Coalition Forces from Follow-Up, KIA. 8 Iraqi civilians at Coalition base, KIA. WIA in 3 attacks not yet available but expected as 'substantial': Message Ends.

Without interruption, Joe Hegner heard her as she stood in the open doorway and read to him. He knew the men who worked as civilians and guarded the electricity-supply engineers, or who came in to fix the sewage plants, or who tried to keep the oil flowing through the pipelines that crossed the desert sands. With them, a bad bet for life insurance, were their guards. Many of the guards were from the old apartheid days of South Africa, some were prematurely retired paratroops and special forces from the UK; more were from the Midwest states of America and had left behind broken relationships and mounting debts. They could earn, for riding shotgun in armoured SUVs with the contractors, five thousand US dollars a week. They had, as a stereotype, shaven heads, muscles pumped up by weights and steroids, and skin covered with the permanence of crap-done tattoos…and now two were dead. Later that day, from the safety of an office in Johannesburg, London or Los Angeles, an email or a telegram would be winging to an abandoned family, and in a few days a bag would be packed with the censored contents of a locker, the porno magazines not included. In the evening, Budweisers and slugs of Jack Daniel's would be downed by the survivors, and toasts made…Joe Hegner liked them as free spirits, liked them well. He felt it more keenly because his experience of Mosul had scarred him.

SitRep, Central Command, Ar-Ramadi: Double vehicle-bomb attack. Liquid gas tanker driven at improvised defences at Police Barracks, followed by car used as rescue and medical help reached site of tanker strike. Killed and Wounded casualties not yet assessed, but will be categorized as 'heavy' among police personnel and civilians: Message Ends.