Last Light (5 page)

CHAPTER 8

12.38 p.m. GMT
UEA, Norwich

Leona was walking out of the lecture theatre and heading towards the student union bar across a courtyard busy with students criss-crossing it to use the various on-campus shops, when the phone trembled in her breast pocket.

She reached in and pulled it out, expecting it to be Daniel wondering where the hell she was. Things had overrun somewhat, which was fine with her. She didn’t want to turn up before him, or worse still, exactly on time. Leona was still firmly in the let’s-appear-to-be-cool-about-things phase.

She quickly read the display to see who was calling her. At first glance the number was unfamiliar, but she answered anyway.

‘Yuh?’

‘Leona? It’s Dad.’

‘Dad!’ she replied, the pitch of her voice shooting up with surprise.

He rarely called her. If it was a call from home, it was Mum, and Dad might pick up the other handset and say ‘hi’, ask how things were going, and if she needed anything. But that was it. Mum was the one who got all the gory details. She wondered if something bad had happened to her.

‘Is Mum okay?’

‘What? Oh yeah, she’s fine.’

The signal was awful, crackling and dropping.

‘Are you okay Dad?’ she asked.

There was a momentary delay suggesting the call was from abroad.

‘Yeah, yeah I’m fine, love.’

‘Are you still out of the country?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, I’m still over here. I’m coming back very soon though.’

‘Oh, okay. Cool. So is that why you rang?’

‘No. Listen Leona, did you watch the news this morning?’

‘No, not really.’

‘There are serious problems over here. There was a bomb in Saudi—’

‘Oh yeah, I heard about that on the radio. Riots or something.’

A pause, or maybe it was the signal dropping, it was hard to tell.

‘I’m worried about this, Leona. I think it’s going to affect everyone.’

Oh not this. Not the big oil lecture. Why now?

‘Dad, look, if it was serious there’d be an announcement on the campus of some sort. Don’t worry about us,’ she replied with a weary sigh. Then it occurred to her that
he
might be in some danger. ‘How are things over there for you?’

‘I’m okay right now. But I’m planning to get a plane out tonight if I can, honey. I think it’s going to get very nasty here. But listen, this is really important, Leona.’

She reached the student union bar and pulled the door open. Inside she could see Daniel sitting in a window seat, watching for her. He waved.

‘Dad, I’ve got to go.’

‘No! Listen. Leona . . .?’

She halted, nodded at Daniel and put a finger up to indicate she’d be with him in a minute. And then let the door swing to, shutting out the noise coming from inside.

‘What is it?’

‘Where’s Mum?’

‘She said something about going up to Manchester for something . . . to visit some friends, I think. She’s up there until the end of the week.’

Leona heard him curse under his breath.

‘Listen sweetheart, I’d like you to go home to London, right now.’

‘What?’

‘I’d like you to pick up Jake from his school, go to the supermarket and spend as much as you can on food, water and—’

‘Dad! I can’t do that!’

‘Leona . . . I’m asking you!’ he replied, his voice beginning to develop
that
tone; the one that ultimately led to a bollocking if you pushed him hard enough.

‘No, you can’t ask me to do that. I can’t bail out of uni before the end of term—’

He surprised her when his voice softened, ‘Please, Leona. I know you’re all fed up hearing about crap like this. I’m not stupid. I know I’ve bored you with all those oil things. But I think this situation is going to get bad enough that you need to be prepared for it. I have to know you’re all okay.’

‘We’re fine! Okay? We’re absolutely fine.’

‘Leona, you know I’m not go—’

The call disconnected suddenly and left her with the soft purr of a dial tone. She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked down at it as if it was some kind of alien life form.

My God, that was strange. Really strange.

She waited a moment for the phone to tremble again, and after hanging on patiently for a minute, she tucked it away into her jacket pocket, pulled the door open and entered the bar. Daniel was still sitting in his seat, same posture, but with a quizzical look on his face.

As she sat down beside him she said, ‘Don’t ask. It was my dad being really weird.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Oh God, it would take too long.’

He smiled and shrugged. ‘Fair enough. What do you want?’

‘Half a lager.’

Daniel got up and squeezed past her, placing a hand on her thigh and pinching gently - a little gesture that he was thinking about last night - and then wandered over to the bar.

But her mind was elsewhere. On the call from Dad, and also on those short soundbites she’d heard on the radio that morning, only what . . . four or five hours ago? Surely things hadn’t changed that much in such a short time.

CHAPTER 9

6.42 p.m. local time
Road leading to Al-Bayji, Iraq

‘I don’t know for sure. They look like ours.’

Andy squinted at the line of vehicles in the weakening light of the early evening. They were motionless, none of them with their lights on. The only light was a muted, flickering torch coming from beneath the bonnet of the front vehicle. They looked like Land Rovers to him, at least the silhouettes did.

‘British,’ muttered Farid.

‘Brits?’ echoed Mike. ‘Yeah, probably. Those definitely aren’t Hummers.’

Andy watched as the torchlight flickered around, catching the movement of several men standing outside the front vehicle.

So why are they sitting around like that, lights off?

‘Bloody suspicious,’ Andy offered after a while.

‘What? Like us?’

As the light had begun to fail, they had elected to drive on with the lights of their two vehicles off. With the police escort’s sudden departure earlier in the day, they had felt dangerously exposed, and as the shadows of the late afternoon had lengthened and given way to twilight, they had decided not to advertise their presence any more than they had to.

The engine of their Land Cruiser idled with a steady rumble as Andy took a couple of steps away from the open door and studied the short column of vehicles, three - four hundred yards away.

Mike climbed out and followed him. ‘You know, if we can see them—’

‘They can see us. I know.’

And we’re sitting here with our lights off.

Andy found himself hoping they were British, and not a trigger-happy US patrol. Over the last year, it had been the American troops that had policed the worst of the growing chaos the Iraqi government still refused to call a ‘civil war’. There were a lot of battle-weary and frightened young US ground troops out there carrying some very powerful weapons and ready to fire at any vehicle that moved, especially at night, especially if its lights were off.

‘I think you’re right,’ said Mike, clearly guessing what Andy was thinking. He nodded towards them, ‘I know our boys are pretty strung out right now, and liable to loose off first, and apologise after. Maybe we should stick our lights on and hope they’re British.’

Andy nodded. ‘Yeah.’ He turned to Farid. ‘Let’s put ’em on.’

And hope for the best.

Farid nodded silently, and spoke in whispered Arabic to Amal. A moment later their headlights flicked on and cast twin fans of light along the pitted tarmac road towards the parked convoy of vehicles.

Immediately Andy could see they were army vehicles. Not American, not the fledgling Iraqi army, but were, as they suspected, British troops.

They watched as a section was issued a barked order, and began to approach them warily in two flanking groups of four - spreading out as they closed the distance, their weapons raised and aimed.

Andy cupped his hands and called out, ‘We’re civilian contractors! ’

A reply came out of the gloom from one of them. ‘Don’t bloody care! Everyone out of the vehicles where we can see you!’

Andy turned to nod at Farid, Amal and to the second car where the other two contractors had already begun to climb out. He wanted to assure their old translator that the worst of the day was over and they were now safe. But watching the eight young lads approach, caught in the glare of their headlights, meeting their eyes along the barrels of their weapons and through their weapon sights, Andy wondered how much trigger weight was already being applied to their SA80s.

‘That’s it. Outside, all of you!’ one of them shouted.

Andy kept his eyes on the nearest of the soldiers. The lad closed the last few yards alone, whilst the rest of his section held their position in a spread-out semi-circle. The young soldier - a lance corporal, Andy noticed by the chevron and scrawled name and rank on the front of his combat body armour - lowered his gun slightly, and after a moment spent silently studying them, offered a relieved grin.

‘Sorry about that gents, we’ve had one fucking shit day today.’

‘It’s gone absolutely bloody crazy out there,’ said Lieutenant Robin Carter shaking his head. ‘I woke up this morning ready for another
normal
day in this place, and . . . well, since then things have gone a bit haywire.’

Erich, the French contractor, spoke for the first time today with heavily accented English. ‘What is going on?’

Lieutenant Carter looked surprised. ‘You don’t know?’

‘We heard a little about some bombs in Saudi, and some riots,’ added Mike.

‘Oh boy, are there riots. It started with bombs in Mecca, Medina and Riyadh this morning. Someone blew up the Ka’bah, or at least detonated somewhere near it. If you wanted to start a holy war, that’s the way to do it. It’s spread right across Saudi Arabia, a full-scale civil war; Wahhabis, Sunnis and Shi’as. And it’s spreading like bloody bird flu. There are riots in Kuwait, Oman, the Emirates.’

‘All this over one bombing?’ asked Mike.

Carter shook his head. ‘The Holy Mosque in Mecca? You couldn’t pick a worse place in the world to target. It’s the centre of the Muslim universe. It seems like some radical group of Shi’as immediately announced they were behind it.’ The officer shook his head. ‘If you want to trigger a global Sunni versus Shi’a civil war . . . I guess that’s how you’d go about doing it. From what I’ve heard, Riyadh is a slaughterhouse, Saudi’s a mess, there are explosions, pitched battles, riots everywhere, and it’s spreading like wildfire right across the Middle East.’

Andy nodded. This was one of the things he’d written about eight years ago, in that report. A brief chapter on how easily religious sensibilities could be used as a tool to destabilise the region; a small act of leverage . . . damaging or destroying somewhere sacred, like the Holy Mosque, the Ka’bah, yielding maximum impact - civil war.

‘Jesus,’ muttered Mike.

‘Yup. And of course Iraq was one of the first countries to get into the spirit of things. It’s seriously screwed up out here,’ the lieutenant replied. ‘There have been multiple contacts going on all day in virtually every town and city. The Iraqi police and the army are joining in the bloodletting, of course. God knows how many casualties we’ve had in the battalion. Our boys have been caught out all over the place.’

Andy nodded towards the Rover at the head of the six-vehicle convoy. ‘You got a problem?’

Carter nodded. ‘Yup. It’s looking like we’ve got a sheared drive-shaft.’ The officer cast a glance out at the flat arid plain, dotted with the darker shapes of date palms, clustered in twos and threes. ‘We put out a call a few hours ago for a vehicle recovery team to pick us up. No bloody sign of it yet.’ He looked at Andy. ‘To be honest, I don’t think they’ll send out a reccemech tonight. Not into the shit that’s going on out there.’

Lieutenant Robin Carter looked to be in his mid-twenties.

Christ, he’s only half-a-dozen years older than Leona.

‘Take a look over there.’ The Lieutenant pointed to the horizon in a south-westerly direction. The sky, finally robbed of the last afterglow of the sun, was showing the faintest orange-red stain.

‘Al-Bayji. I guess there’s some buildings on fire over there. I’m sure the locals right now are tearing into each other. Our boys are all hunkered down in battalion HQ, the other side of the Tigris. The only way to us by road is via the bridge at Al-Bayji. So I’m guessing nobody’s coming out for us tonight.’

Mike looked at Andy. ‘Great.’

‘You’re staying out here tonight?’ Andy asked. He studied the officer, biting his bottom lip for a moment, weighing up God knows how many factors.

‘That Rover’s going nowhere without a lift. And frankly, I don’t fancy driving through Al-Bayji, or any other town, this evening. I think we’ll be better holding up here until first light, and then make a go of it in the early hours. Hopefully things will have died down by then, and we can sneak back home whilst they’re all fast asleep.’

‘Do you mind if we hook up with you?’ asked Mike. ‘Our goddamned IPS escort bailed on us.’

‘You’d be stupid not to.’ Lieutenant Carter offered a lopsided grin. ‘Anyway, the more pairs of eyes and hands the better.’ He cast a glance at Farid and the two young Iraqis. ‘Do I need to spend men watching them?’

Andy shook his head. He didn’t think so. After all, they had stayed on course when the police had decided to casually break off and abandon them. But the gesture was lost in the gloom. It was Mike who answered aloud.

‘You probably want to relieve them of their guns, Lieutenant. They’re carrying AKs in the drivers’ compartments.’

Carter considered that for a moment and then nodded. ‘Yes, maybe that’s a prudent measure, for now.’

Andy turned round to look at Farid, who shook his head almost imperceptibly, before turning to the two young drivers and explaining to them in Arabic that they were going to have to surrender their weapons.

Lieutenant Carter summoned over a lance corporal and instructed him to retrieve the assault rifles from the drivers of the two Land Cruisers.

Andy studied the reactions of the three Iraqis. The drivers, both much younger men, answered Farid in an animated, yet wary tone. Clearly they were unhappy at having to hand over their guns, casting frequent and anxious glances at the British soldiers gathered at the roadside beside the stationary convoy of vehicles. Farid carried an expression of caution in his manner, speaking softly, seemingly offering them some kind of reassurance.

‘All right,’ said Lieutenant Carter, clearing his throat and raising his voice for the benefit of the platoon as well as the four internationals before him, ‘let’s pull these Rovers round into a defensive circle - those two Cruisers as well. Sergeant Bolton?’

A hoarse voice - with a northern accent Andy couldn’t quite place - barked a reply out of the darkness.

‘Sir?’

‘See to that will you? Post some men to stand watch and establish a vehicle control point down the road. Everyone else can stand down and get some rest. We’ll be moving out again at 05.00. There’s another two hours’ drive ahead of us. We should get back to battalion HQ just in time to catch the first trays of scrambled egg.’

None of the men laughed, Andy noticed.

He’s new to these men
. He sensed the jury was still out amongst Carter’s platoon.