Deep Black (43 page)

The wall facing me was the one running along the right-hand side of the compound as viewed from the track. The door into the family courtyard was about forty metres down it. Beyond the wall I could catch just the odd glimpse of terracotta rooftop. The three- or four-metre strip of rough grass between the wall and the treeline was white with frost. No vehicles or bodies had been along it tonight.

Somebody near the checkpoint had a bout of coughing. Maybe it was the exhaust fumes. The engine was still on, but the vehicle was stationary.

I moved back to grab Jerry, and together we followed the edge of the trees away from the checkpoint, towards the family entrance. We came level, and I inched forward.

I looked left. No movement from the checkpoint. Vehicle still stationary.

I moved over the grass, leaving sign in the frost. There was no gap between the doors, but maybe an inch and a half beneath them. I got down on my knees, then lay flat on the ground. The grass was icy against my cheek. I couldn’t see any light or movement at ground level. There wasn’t the perspective to see any higher up.

I got back on my feet and gave the doors a gentle push where they joined, just in case they were unlocked. As if.

I moved back to Jerry and knelt down next to him. We stayed like that, just inches apart, as I got out the Thuraya and powered it up, one hand cupped over the display.

100

I crawled forward a couple of metres, got a signal, and pressed Send on the new number. There was only one ring before the monotone answered.

I talked normally, but kept my voice low. ‘It’s Nick. Get a fix: what’s the time to target?’

Monotone came back, ‘Eleven minutes, twenty-two seconds to target.’

Slowly and, I hoped, clearly, I began to explain the set-up of the house to him as if he was walking through the guest doors – the guest courtyard with its one-storey building dead ahead, and two-storey guest accommodation to the left, with the passageway into the family compound where the buildings met.

I checked after each detail with ‘Roger so far?’ I got back, ‘Affirmative,’ each time.

‘The target’s last location was the far right corner of the long building in the family courtyard. Roger so far?’

‘Affirmative. We have a fix on you. I repeat, we have a fix.’

‘Roger that. Wait out for the fire-control order: I do not have a target yet. This is not a weapons-free zone. You understand?’

There was a second or two’s pause. Then, ‘Affirmative.’

‘Roger that. Wait out.’

I kept the Thuraya switched on. I wanted to be able to pull it out, get a satellite, and start talking the moment we had the target. Until then, I didn’t want some colonel, or whoever was watching the screens in the operations room and making decisions, to go and hit whatever he saw on the other side of the wall because he was flapping about fucking up.

We needed to be well away from here when the Hellfires came calling. The target had to die. There was no margin for error.

The operators in the AWACS would be watching their screens, running checks on the Predators’ surveillance packages as Bosnia passed beneath them. The forward-looking infrared would be giving the operators a green negative of the landscape. Thermal imagers aboard the UAVs would be homing in on heat: the hotter the source, the whiter the image. Bodies would be picked out easily, even through the canopy. Just as important would be the LTD in the nose, and the feedback saying that the Hellfires were online and ready to go.

I crawled back to Jerry. ‘Listen, they’re here in about ten. The doors are locked. I need you to get over the wall and open them. I’ve got to stay this side. If that wagon comes to pick him up at the other doors, I’ll need to get down there with the G3.’

He started getting to his feet. I grabbed him. ‘When you get to the other side, you might not be able to open it, you realize that? It might be padlocked and then you’re in the shit unless you can get back over. You understand what I’m telling you?’

There was no point bullshitting him. We’d come too far now and he needed to know.

He put a hand firmly on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. ‘I’m already in the shit.’

He let go and started rummaging in his parka. ‘I think I’d better split these up.’ He handed me one of the cameras. ‘Just in case. It’ll make a little money for Renee. She’s with Chloë, at her mother’s in Detroit.’

I shoved it into my pocket.

‘She’s staying there until I get back from Brazil. You’ll find her. Give it to her. She’ll know what to do with it.’

We both started across the grass. I laid the G3 on the ground and got my back against the wall, eyes straining down to the right, towards the checkpoint. The wagon’s engine still turned over in the darkness.

I bent my legs and cupped my hands between my thighs. Jerry stepped back a little, positioned his right foot in them as a launch pad, and jumped up. I kept contact with his foot, twisting myself round towards the wall and pushing myself up until it was past my face. Then I held it against the wall so he had something to push against. He hooked his arms over the top, and seemed to stay like that for ages. I didn’t know if he was flapping, didn’t have the strength to get the rest of his body over, or had spotted something.

A few seconds later, he started to scramble over the wall and his foot left my hands.

I picked up the G3 and put my ear against the door just as he landed with a bump the other side. Almost immediately, there was the gentle groan of metal being drawn across metal.

The door opened very, very slowly. I let Jerry do it: he was in control.

As I slipped through and into the courtyard, Jerry closed it again behind me. He didn’t bolt it.

To my right, ten or eleven metres away, was the room where we’d last seen the target. The lamps were still burning.

Somewhere in the darkness, cooking pans clanged. To my left was the one-storey building separating the two courtyards. There were no windows this side of it. The first floor of the guest block, where we had showered, was completely dark.

I got the butt into the shoulder, flicked the safety on to single-shot, and positioned my trigger finger along the guard. Keeping Jerry behind me, I started to move towards the illuminated window. There was going to be nothing covert about this: there wasn’t enough time. I had no option but to open doors and look through windows.

I knelt beneath the window, to the right of the grime-covered frame. As I slowly raised my head, I could see the door to the left. I came up some more. The oil lamps were still burning where Jerry had left them. But the room was empty.

Even the meal things had been taken away.

I lowered myself, still butt in the shoulder, safety off, and began to follow the wall to the veranda and the door we’d gone through. No shoes outside; no target inside.

The kitchen noises were louder now, and joined by muttering in Serbo-Croat. The kitchen had to be behind one of the doors along the veranda.

My breath clouded around me as I stopped and listened. The muttering wasn’t from the target; it wasn’t that slow, deliberate, favouriteuncle voice. It sounded more like some old bottle-washer having a moan about the greasy plates.

I touched Jerry’s arm and pointed towards the passageway and across the courtyard.

I’d taken just a few steps when I heard an engine. A vehicle was approaching the house.

Fuck the noise. We ran for it.

101

I grabbed the door handle and we legged it down the corridor. My left hand was out, ready to make contact with the door at the other end. I got there; took a breath, listened. There were voices the other side, four or five of them. The vehicle was static, but not in the courtyard.

Trying to block out the sounds of our breathing, I put my ear to the wood, my right hand firmly on the pistol grip, safety catch still off, trigger finger still across the guard.

The voices were urgent and low. None was the target’s. Then his gentle tones sparked up, calming everyone down.

The engine noise got suddenly louder. The gates must have been opened.

‘Stand by.’

I fumbled for the handle with my left hand. My fingers closed round it and I pulled back. The headlights were blinding.

I made out a mass of bodies in the beams, shrouded in their own breath and exhaust fumes.

From just two feet away a body loomed in front of me, weapon coming up. I fired; he went down. His AK clattered across the threshold.

There were screams and shouts from near the vehicle. The driver revved the engine. Weapons came up into the aim.

I just blatted away, single shots at anything that moved, then into the vehicle.

Shit, it started moving.

Rounds came back at us, taking chunks out of the plasterwork that sandblasted my face.

I turned and legged it down the corridor. Jerry grabbed the AK from the floor, its barrel dragging behind him as he wrestled with the butt. ‘Back to the gate! Back to the gate!’

We burst through the door at the far end and headed across the family courtyard. Screams and movement under the veranda. It was a cluster of bottle-washers. They ducked when they saw us.

I was half-way across when we started taking fire from the follow-up behind us. I stopped, turned, and returned fire into the passage doorway.

Jerry was to my right. He ran past me as I fired controlled shots, trying to stop them leaving the passageway.

I squeezed off two more rounds at the door before Jerry started firing.

I turned on the spot and ran, got about four paces past him, turned again and started to fire. ‘Move, Jerry! Move! Move!’

He didn’t need to be told twice.

He stopped, turned, fired.

I turned, ran, stopped, fired.

As Jerry came past me I squeezed the trigger again. Nothing. Dead man’s click.

I dropped the weapon and kept running. Jerry was already the other side of the door, using the frame for cover as he fired. I passed him, then headed down towards the checkpoint, hugging the wall. I couldn’t see any moving lights. But there were shouts ahead of me in the darkness.

I pulled the Thuraya from my parka and held it to my face. ‘Fire mission! Fire mission!’ Fuck the signal: if I got one, it’d work. I had to get down there to see where the fucking wagon was.

Jerry was not many paces behind me when we started taking fire. The follow-up were through the gate and putting some down.

I swung left and dived into the treeline. ‘On me, on me!’

I just kept going, crashing through the trees, trying to keep parallel to the wall. They ran down the gap, firing into the darkness, their muzzle flashes rippling across the tree-trunks.

We plunged on towards the checkpoint. With luck, the chicane was the only way out.

With no more than twenty metres to go, the follow-up got level with us. I stumbled and fell. Jerry stood his ground and opened up with long bursts. The noise was deafening. His white muzzle flash lit the darkness. Ejected rounds tumbled over my back.

I was still fighting to get up when Jerry let out a high-pitched scream. He collapsed on top of me, still firing, rounds going way up into the canopy before both he and the AK fell silent.

His blood was hot and wet on my face as I pushed him off me. The follow-up were still firing into the treeline, everywhere, anywhere; I grabbed him by the legs and pulled him deeper into the forest.

It wasn’t far, but enough to buy me time. I collapsed next to him. His breathing was rapid and rasping, spraying me with blood at each exhalation.

I ran my fingers over his chest and found the entry wound in his stomach. No need to feel for the exit. My hand slid into it as I turned him over.

More screams from the follow-up.

Jerry gripped my head with both his hands, bringing me down to him with the last of his energy. ‘Fucked up . . . sorry.’

I threw my arms round him and gripped hard as he jerked his last resistance. Seconds later, his body went limp. I checked his neck. There was no pulse.

The follow-up still fired blindly into the trees. They were covering the light I now saw moving out from the guest doorway.

I laid Jerry’s body down and scrambled forward. A vehicle was just pulling out of the gates, guys running all around it, shouting at each other. It was chaos. One of the headlights was shot out.

I kept low and tumbled through the undergrowth to the left, down to where the treeline met the chicane.

The wagon was coming down towards me. I couldn’t see if the target was inside or not.

It got closer and slowly negotiated the first hedgehog. The rear window was open. The target was talking to his protection as they ran alongside, even smiling at them as he pointed towards the follow-up. Then his head went back inside, and made itself comfortable against the headrest. The window powered up.

I looked down and checked the Thuraya. Fucking canopy.

102

I started legging it, paralleling the wall about twenty metres inside the trees. I needed to get out of the way, well past the family doors, right to the corner of the compound. I needed clear space.