Who Dares Wins (2 page)

‘You’ll get your money,’ Jacob replied. ‘You’d better just make sure we get what
we
want, otherwise it could end up being an expensive day for you.’ He rapped the end of the gun against the Iraqi’s sweaty forehead.

‘Please,’ Sadiq whimpered, jolting as though he had just received an electric shock. ‘
Please
. I do as you ask . . .’ His knees buckled.

Jacob nodded slowly, then lowered his gun. As he turned, the light from the air vent caught his face. He winked quickly at Sam, who did his best to stop himself from smiling. If everything went according to plan, this had the makings of a very good day.

‘Let’s get ready,’ Jacob announced. ‘We’ll get on to the Farm, request air support. Strike at midday when our friend is sheltering from the heat.’

Sam looked at his watch. 10.00 hrs. Two hours to go.

‘Where’s the house?’ Mac demanded of Sadiq.

The tout sniffed, apparently relieved to be talking to someone other than Jacob.

‘Al-Mansour district,’ he said.

Sam consulted his mental map of Baghdad. ‘It’s the other side of town,’ he noted. ‘We’d better get moving.’

*

‘Slow down!’

Sadiq drove them in his beaten-up old Toyota and he was driving them too quickly. Jacob sat up front with Sam and Mac in the back. He poked his handgun into the tout’s ribs. ‘I said, slow down.’

The tout hit the brakes.

‘Just take it easy,’ Jacob instructed. ‘We don’t want to be pulled over.’ Sadiq didn’t reply. He just kept looking in his mirrors, both at the other cars in the broad, tree-lined road and at the grim-faced SAS men sitting in the back.

It was already very hot – air conditioning was a luxury Sadiq evidently couldn’t afford. The heat made Sam’s six-week old beard itch and he noticed the others were scratching at their faces too. The SAS men were all dressed as Arabs in dishdash, traditional robes that were grubby and sweat-stained. Underneath the robes, however, was a different story. The three soldiers were packing ops waistcoats filled with all the tools of their trade: covert radios, Sig 226 9 mm pistols, fragmentation grenades, flashbangs and ammo. At Sam’s feet was a rolled up piece of carpet. Walk down the street with it and nobody would raise an eyebrow, but that was because they didn’t know he had a Diemaco C8 secreted inside, complete with a C79 optical sight, a Heckler & Koch 40 mm grenade launcher and a Surefire torch. He had applied green and black camouflage paint to the weapon and wrapped black plumber’s tape around the pistol grip to stop it slipping in the hot, sweaty conditions he knew he could expect. A bungee cord was fastened to the butt, ready to be slung round each shoulder, forming an X shape across his back.

The other two were similarly tooled up, Mac carrying his main weapon in a bag on his lap, Jacob having strapped his to the side of his body. A barely visible comms earpiece was fitted snugly inside his ear, but for now the unit’s comms were switched off.

The Al-Mansour district bore the scars of the invasion: shop fronts had been reduced to rubble, cars were burned out. The US Air Force boys had done a right number on this place. The air was still shit hot and when Sam breathed in his lungs felt like they were on fire. Everywhere stank of cordite. Amid the rubble of an obliterated two-level house, a grey-haired man was on his knees. His white shirt was torn and smudged with black streaks, and on his lap lay a lifeless body of a girl no older than eight or nine, her face pebble-dashed with shrapnel. Despite the chaos, it was clearly an affluent part of the city. The houses were grander, the shops classier. Their target was the Commander of Saddam’s Special Republican Guard. The Yanks were baying for his blood – he was high up on the Personality Identification Playing Cards, the deck issued to the American army to help them identify the leading members of the Ba’ath Party. It was difficult for these people to leave Baghdad and it made a certain kind of sense that he’d be holed up somewhere with a few luxuries. After years of power, these guys wouldn’t want to hide out in some hole where they couldn’t even piss in comfort. More likely that he’d have surrounded himself with a miniature army in a large house. Sadiq claimed this was what he’d done.

There was a manic air about the district, even now. Despite the heat many of the streets were teeming with people – Iraqi citizens and Coalition troops – which made it difficult to find a place to stop where they wouldn’t be interrupted or overlooked. They eventually stopped in a side street that smelt of rotting vegetables and urine. Sam checked his watch. 11.30. There was a moment of silence as the engine died. Jacob placed his canvas bag on his lap and unzipped it. From inside he carefully removed a battered fizzy drinks can, artfully dented in places. Not Coca-Cola, but some red and white Iraqi equivalent. Sadiq looked at him as if he was mad.

‘Take it,’ Jacob instructed. He placed the can in Sadiq’s reluctantly outstretched hand. The tout weighed it up, clearly surprised that it was heavier than he expected.

‘It contains a tracking device,’ Jacob explained. ‘Chances are the house is being watched. If we follow you, they might clock us. All you need to do is put this can outside the gates of the house then get the fuck out of there. Walk, Sadiq. Don’t run. If they see you running someone will get suspicious. And remember – we know how to find you and your family. Pull a fucking fast one and we’ll be knocking on your door.’

Sadiq looked fearfully at the drinks can and then back at Jacob. It was clear he was having second thoughts. The expression on his face changed, however, when Jacob pulled out a stash of American dollars. The tout grabbed them quickly, stuffed them into his pocket then licked his dry lips. ‘Okay,’ he said, sounding like he was psyching himself up. ‘I will do it now.’ He looked at each of the SAS men in turn, as though waiting for a friendly goodbye. All he received, however, were stern, unresponsive looks. His face twitched and, still clutching the drinks can, he opened the car door and stepped outside.

None of them spoke until he was out of sight. Then Mac let out a burst of breath, half-amused, half-relieved. ‘Fucking hell, J.,’ he said. ‘I thought he was going to piss himself there and then.’

‘You said it yourself,’ Jacob replied, leaning over to look at them in the back with a twinkle in his grey eyes. ‘Never trust a raghead. Especially a raghead tout. Much better to put the shits up him before he starts deciding to play silly buggers.’

Sam allowed himself a smile. It was classic Jacob – the tout was now so scared of his brother that he’d do anything he was told. ‘Not much chance of that,’ he murmured as he pulled his Iridium mobile sat phone from his ops waistcoat and dialled a number. ‘HQ,’ he stated, ‘this is Yankee Delta Three. Our man’s heading towards the target. Over.’

A brief, crackly pause and then a voice. ‘Yankee Delta Three, we have the signal. Await further instruction.’

‘Roger that.’ And then to the others, ‘They’ve got him.’

Back at the base, Sam knew, Sadiq the tout would be a green blip moving its way along a map displayed on a GPS receiver. They sat in silence, waiting for confirmation that the tracking device had stopped. It seemed to be taking a long time, but maybe that was just the heat. Sam’s mouth and lips were burning dry. He pictured Sadiq, half-walking, half-running, his face still covered with that inexhaustible supply of sweat. The smell of the Iraqi’s bad breath lingered in the car.

And then, from nowhere, the sat phone crackled into life again. ‘Yankee Delta Three, we have a location.’

Sam nodded at Jacob who pulled out a battered GPS screen of his own, fiddled momentarily with it, then handed the device round. It showed a map of the area and a small dot which indicated where the fizzy-drink can had come to rest. From where the car was parked they had to head east, turn left then third right. The can would be outside the house they were to hit. They memorised the position. No one said a word. They didn’t need to. The unit was operating almost on autopilot.

Sam spoke into the sat phone again. ‘This is Yankee Delta Three. We’re going for a stroll.’

‘Enjoy the countryside, Sam,’ the voice came back. ‘Air support turning and burning, ready on your order.’ Reassuring words. It meant that back at base, an American-flown Black Hawk was already in a holding pattern, preparing to fly to their location the second they received word that hostages had been secured. A minute to get here, a minute to extract. Those choppers were every soldier’s favourite asset.

They climbed out of the car, each of them switching on their comms as they did so. ‘I’ll go first,’ Jacob announced. ‘I’ll stake out the front. Sam, take the rear. Mac, the street. RV back here in fifteen minutes.’

‘Roger that.’

They left at thirty-second intervals – Jacob first, then Mac and finally Sam, his dishdash flapping around his legs and his carpet-wrapped Diemaco C8 held nonchalantly under his arm – to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Sam followed his mental map and in less than a minute he was turning into a broad, tree-lined street. The houses here were grand, some with ornate columns on either side of the door that wouldn’t have been out of place in Mayfair. But there were other things you wouldn’t see in London: as Sam walked down the street he noticed bullet marks along one of the walls. AK rounds, he thought to himself. Maybe a scar of the invasion; or maybe they had been there before. In Baghdad, everyone had a gun. There were plenty of people in the street, but they all walked in a hushed, hurried manner, avoiding each other’s eyes.

Sam had walked about thirty metres when he saw the drinks can carelessly discarded in the street. Nobody paid it any attention – it was just one of any number of bits of litter. He glanced up at the house outside which it was lying. It was a big place, more like a compound, with a large whitewashed wall surrounding it and a vaulted gate with iron spikes at the top and a heavy padlock. As he sauntered past, Sam collated all the information he could about the place. There was a large courtyard at the front. The main door looked like it was made of heavy, thick wood – difficult to force down with the limited weaponry at their command. The roof was flat, with plain little turrets at each corner. As he glanced up Sam couldn’t see anybody on it, but he had no doubt that if Sadiq was right and this place really did house the man the unit was after, they would be there. There were two low, shuttered windows on the ground floor, but none further up. His eyes flickered around looking for Jacob. He saw him fifteen metres away, leaning against a tree. They acted as if they didn’t know each other.

The house occupied a corner plot and Sam turned into the small road that went alongside it. On this side of the house there were first floor windows, three of them, but he could not see any further down because of the high external wall. At the back of the house was a smaller street, on the opposite side of which was another dwelling place. This house was much less grand; indeed it looked deserted, as if it had been the scene of fighting in recent days or weeks. Sam slipped into the house and up the stairs onto the roof. The fierce sun beat down on him as he kept his head low and approached the front wall. Here there was a lattice of holes in the brickwork, allowing him to look through and onto the roof of the other house.

It didn’t take him long to see movement. Two people keeping guard over the back of the house; no doubt there were at least two more on the other side. Below them was a garden of sorts – palm trees and even a patch of rough grass and some flowers, a strange sight in the middle of a war-torn city. The back wall had a wooden door. It was flimsier than the one at the front, easier to break down; but he wouldn’t want to do that while it was overlooked. Still, that was their most likely point of entry. All they had to do was make sure there wouldn’t be a welcoming party when they came knocking.

Sam looked at his watch. Nine minutes had passed; RV in six. He slipped back downstairs, out into the street and round the other side of the house. As he walked back to the car he could see Mac up ahead. He controlled his natural urge to catch up with his friend; keeping his head down, he wove his way through the people in the street and a minute or so later was back at the RV point. The Toyota had gone – no doubt Sadiq had picked up his car and got the hell out of there – but Jacob and Mac stood where it had been. The three of them took shelter in the doorway of a closed-down shop.

‘Front gate covered from the roof,’ Jacob stated, his voice brisk and businesslike. ‘Three of them at least, maybe four. Two snipers in the front yard.’

‘I clocked two more on the roof at the back. Good point of entry. Wooden door. Flimsy.’

The two brothers looked at Mac. ‘No obvious lookouts in the street,’ he said.

‘Good,’ Jacob replied. ‘We need that chopper to extract us the moment we’ve apprehended the target.’ His eyes flashed. ‘It’ll be Yankee scran for our man tonight.’

‘Fuck of a sight better than the filthy Iraqi stuff he’s used to,’ Mac observed. ‘We’re practically doing the bastard a favour . . .’

‘
Shut up!
’ Sam barked.

The other two looked at him in surprise. Sam was holding his palm out towards them, indicating that they should keep quiet. He had dialled HQ on the sat phone and there was a noise of confusion at the other end. Panic at the Farm. Clearly something was going wrong.

And then the instruction came. ‘
Yankee Delta Three, hold your mission! Repeat, hold your mission! Do you read?

‘Yeah,’ Sam snapped, ‘I fucking heard you. What’s the problem?’

‘Black Hawk down,’ came the curt reply. ‘Small arms fire. Fucking Iraqis. All helicrews diverted to assist. Sorry, Sam. This is going to have to wait for another day. You’re ordered back to base.’

A crackle and then silence.

‘
Shit!
’ Sam hissed, thumping his hand against the wall.

‘What is it?’

‘Chopper down. We’ve got no support. They’re scrubbing us.’

‘How many we lose?’ Jacob demanded.