Ultimate Weapon (28 page)

‘Stop,’ hissed Matt.

He pointed up ahead to a roadblock. A cordon of soldiers was surrounding the plant, and temporary wooden fencing had been put up around its perimeter. There was a soldier standing about every ten yards or so, and from their purple insignia, they looked like crack troops. Special Republican Guard. Not the raw conscripts who were patrolling the rest of Baghdad. The Iraqis knew this place had been attacked by special forces two nights ago, and they knew they hadn’t captured the men responsible.
If we come back, they’re planning to be ready for us this time.

Both Jed and Matt turned round, and walked purposefully but not too quickly in the other direction. The Toyota was parked half a mile away, but they didn’t want to go back there. ‘Where can we fix our kit?’ said Jed.

‘The higher up we get, the better chance we have.’

‘Then we keep walking. Until we find something.’

Jed checked his watch. It was almost two o’clock. The number of people on the streets was thinning out, making him feel vulnerable. In a crowd, they could blend in. By themselves, they were more likely to stand out. He was starting to get a sense of the layout of the area. The streets curved away from the plant, and most of the buildings were four or five storeys high: apartment blocks, with shops and cafés at the ground level, and some workshops in the basement. They needed to get up high to set up their kit. The LTD beam was invisible to the naked eye, and the Firm was pretty confident that the Iraqis didn’t have any of the sophisticated kit needed to detect it electronically. So long as they could find a position, then they would just need to shoot the laser beam down into the plant at the designated moment, and the bombs would land right at the tip of the beam.

The Firm is confident of a lot of things about this country, thought Jed.
The only trouble is, most of them turn out to be wrong.

They walked for at least half an hour, studying the layout and assessing different potential OPs. They needed a clear view of the site, but they also needed to be far enough away so as not to be injured in the blast when the cruises started to come in. At one point, Matt was convinced an old guy was following them, and wanted to slot him. Jed persuaded him to drop it: they didn’t need to take the risk of starting a fight in the street. Eventually they lost him, but Matt remained convinced they’d been compromised. He was edgier than a knife,
thought Jed: they’d been behind the lines for three days now, lost two of their mates and his nerves were shot to pieces.
If they didn’t get picked up soon, the guy was going to lose it.

‘Here,’ said Matt.

He was pointing towards an open staircase on a block of flats. The building was made of concrete, and was six storeys, slightly higher than the rest of the blocks in the area. There was a smell of boiled rice drifting down the staircase, and Jed could hear a dog barking from one of the flats. The staircase was open to the street, with layers of pale green paint peeling off the wall. Looks good enough, thought Jed. There must be at least thirty people in the block. Enough, he hoped, for one or two strangers not to attract any attention.

At the top of the stairs, a trapdoor led on to a flat roof. Jed used his knife to squeeze open the bolt, then stepped outside. It measured about two hundred feet lengthwise and a hundred feet across, with a covering of black tar, and a gentle slope leading down to the gutter channels that drained off the water. Kneeling, Jed started to crawl across its surface, approaching the edge. There was a clear view of the plant. The orb was still intact: the explosion two nights ago might have damaged its base, but the main structure had been left mostly unscathed. He peered down at the admin block. The front door had been blown away, and most of the windows had been broken, but at least half of them had been patched up already, and he could see a couple of workmen hammering away at the rest. People were
coming and going. At a rough guess, he’d say there were thirty soldiers guarding the perimeter, and another twenty inside the compound:there could well be another fifty men hidden from view.

Matt crawled up to him. ‘Reckon we can get a clear shot at the bugger with the LTD?’ he said.

Jed examined the layout of territory again. There was a clear line of sight that led down from the rooftop on to the orb. If they put the LTD on to it, it would guide the missiles straight into the plant. They didn’t have much cover. If the Iraqis had any intelligence suggesting a strike was scheduled for tonight, they’d be patrolling the place with choppers. If they were spotted, they were an easy target. But the surface of the roof was black, and they were wearing black trousers and T-shirts. Black up their faces, and they should blend into its surface. Perhaps there was a decent chance of completing the mission.
Hell, they might even escape with their lives afterwards.

‘It’ll do,’ said Jed.

Matt nodded. ‘We’ll set up the LTD right here.’

‘I’ll get the kit from the Toyota,’ said Jed.

He felt a hand clasping his shoulder. Matt was looking at him intently, his eyes staring straight into him. ‘I’ll get it,’ he hissed. ‘You bloody wait here.’

Jed shrugged. If Matt wanted to take the risks that was fine with him. This mission was dangerous enough already. Walking through these streets with a piece of LTD kit could well get you stopped by the police. You didn’t need to put yourself in the line of any more fire than was completely necessary. ‘Why?’ he said.

‘Because I don’t bloody trust you to come back,’ said Matt.

Jed steadied the LTD on its tripod, then slipped behind. Together with Matt, he had mounted the device on the edge of the roof. It was lifted two metres from the ground, and facing straight at the plant.

Jed looked through the viewfinder, getting a measure of the distance to the target. It was just over a kilometre: eleven hundred and forty-five metres, according to the LTD. They were looking straight across at the orb, with nothing to disturb their view. The rangefinder on the LTD locked on to the target, and Jed flicked the button. The laser beamed out of the LTD. It was invisible to the naked eye, but to a cruise missile it was as clear as if you had a guy waving a big flag reading ‘Target This Way’. Chances were the cruises would be fired from the US Navy ships parked down off the coasts of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. They had to travel about five hundred kilometres to get here: the journey would take about fifteen minutes. They would come into the city at a low angle, with rough coordinates of the designated target already programmed into them. When they came within range, their on-board computers would lock on to the laser, and use its position to make the tiny adjustments to its trajectory necessary to bring it precisely onto the target.

‘What kind of missile are they using?’ said Matt, glancing at Jed.

He shrugged. The same question had occurred to
him. Anyone operating an LTD was putting themselves directly in the line of fire. He guessed they’d use Paveways or Hellfires, because that’s what the LTD was designed for. Both of them were big, ugly missiles, with hardened noses that could dig deep in the target before exploding. How much punch they’d pack depended on the amount of explosive they were carrying. If you wanted to you could even equip them with a nuclear warhead. But the plant was right next to a residential area. The Americans wouldn’t want to take out too many civilians, at least not on the first day. It wouldn’t look good on al-Jazeera. If they had any sense, they’d be using powerful, but limited impact explosives: enough to make sure the plant was totally destroyed but without taking out too much of the surrounding area.

If the missile strayed from its course, though, it could land anywhere within a mile or two of the plant.
Right on top of us.

‘We’ll be OK,’ said Jed. ‘We cost too much to train.’ Matt was looking at the staircase. ‘How the hell are we going to get out of here once the fireworks start going off ?’

‘I’ll hold the LTD, until the missiles have all gone home,’ said Jed. ‘You hold the staircase. That’s our only way down. If we allow that to get blocked, we’re buggered.’

Matt was already hunkering down on the surface of the roof. He’d unpacked some biscuits and a flask of water from his kitbag, and had eaten three. Jed peered out across the rooftops. Dusk had already started to fall.
It was just after eight at night. The sun was setting across the city. In the distance, he could see the turret of a mosque. Down below, five soldiers were pacing around the perimeter fence, while inside the compound the guards had started a brazier, and were brewing up some cups of sweet coffee. Next to it, they had parked a black van with blackened windows and thick steel armour around its sides.

In a few hours, Jed thought, the missiles are going to be smashing into this place. The flames will chew up everything in their path.
And we’re going to be in the middle of it.

Nick looked around the cell. It measured just ten feet by seven, and the walls were made of concrete, with a thin coating of standard, government-issue grey paint slapped on it. There was a steel-framed bed, a jug of water and a loo. Apart from that, nothing. He was alone.
With only his nightmares to torment him.

He’d been in jails before, but nothing like this. Tonight he was being incarcerated in his own country. And he no longer knew who, if anyone, he could trust.

Two hours had been spent in the cell now. After picking him up in Cambridge, they had slapped a pair of handcuffs on him, then bundled him into a Land Rover Discovery they had waiting outside. They weren’t regular police, he could tell that right away. From the outside, the Discovery looked like a regular vehicle, but Nick could tell its windows were made from reinforced, shatterproof glass, while there were sheets of armour lining the inside skin of the machine. You could hit it with a couple of RPG rounds, and not even burst a tyre. Whoever they were planning to transport in this thing, they were classified as bloody dangerous, Nick had thought.
A lot more dangerous than me.

He’d been strapped to the wall for the duration of a journey that he reckoned lasted just over an hour: with the handcuffs around his wrists, and the straps pinning him back it was impossible to look at his watch. After the van shuddered to a halt, the door was thrown open, and the same blonde woman, accompanied by her two thugs, led him through a courtyard. It was an ugly, rainy evening, but Nick recognised the place at once. He’d been here several times when he was still in the Regiment, and he’d regretted it every time. It was the Vauxhall headquarters of the Firm. The security services, he thought to himself, as he was led roughly into the building. That’s who picked me up. But how the hell did they know I was there?
And what do they want with me?

He took a sip of water, and paced around the cell. He must have done a thousand circuits by now, the same questions rattling though his mind. He knew Sarah was in danger, and he reckoned the Firm knew all about it. But if they knew, why hadn’t they done anything?

I’m getting old, he told himself angrily. The German guy on the hillside gave me a thrashing, the professor’s friend was too strong for me, and now I’ve let a couple of heavies from the Firm beat me. If I was a younger man, I could have punched my way out of all those situations.
And now … I don’t know.

Footsteps. He could hear them in the corridor, soft at first then louder. Then the thick steel door of the cell was pushed open. Nick steadied himself. A man walked in, about six foot, no more than twenty-five, dressed in a white shirt, black trousers, no tie. ‘This way,’ he said.

He started to follow him down the length of the corridor. There were several other cells in the block, but they were each at least ten feet apart, with thick blocks of reinforced concrete separating each one. Making sure the prisoners don’t have any way of communicating with each other, thought Nick. They were at least three storeys underground, and there were bars and grilles everywhere you looked. London had plenty of high-security police stations. But this was where they brought the really hard cases.
The men who were about to disappear off the radar screen.

At the end of the corridor, the door to the interview room was already open. The man guided Nick inside, then closed the door behind him. He could hear it thumping shut. Laura was sitting at the desk, with a big, plasma screen television behind her. At her side was a man in his early sixties. He had silvery-white hair, thinning, and combed across his forehead. His face was pinched and lined with grooves, like a piece of old stone, but his eyes were sharp and clear. Nick recognised him at once, even though it was years since he had last laid eyes on him. David Marlow. The commanding officer of the Regiment from 1990 to 1995: the man who had sent Nick into Iraq last time around.

‘Let me the hell out of here,’ said Nick, looking at both of them in turn. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

Laura looked at him coldly. She was wearing a black suit, with a string of pearls around her neck, and although it was getting close to midnight, to Nick she looked as fresh as if she had woken up five minutes ago. ‘I’ve already told you, breaking and entering,’ she said.

‘Bollocks,’ said Nick, still standing close to the doorway. ‘The professor is a mate of mine. I was just running an errand for him.’

A smile flickered across Laura’s face. ‘Funny,’ she said. ‘Somebody broke the lock into the place. Somebody has been into his house as well. We got fingerprints from both locations. Found some DNA as well. We haven’t had them processed yet, but I’ve got a feeling we don’t really need to.’