Энди МакНаб. День независимости(engl)

     Liberation Day by Andy McNab

     Also by Andy McNab Non-fiction
     BRAVO TWO ZERO IMMEDIATE ACTION
     Fiction
     REMOTE CONTROL
     CRISIS FOUR
     FIREWALL
     LAST LIGHT
     LIBERATION DAY
     ANDY McNAB

     LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND
     TRANS WORLD PUBLISHERS
     61-63 Uxbridge Road, London w5 5SA
     a division of The Random House Group Ltd
     RANDOM HOUSE AUSTRALIA PTY LTD 20 Alfred  Street,  Milsons Point, New
South Wales 2061, Australia
     RANDOM  HOUSE  NEW ZEALAND 18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10,  New
Zealand
     RANDOM HOUSE SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD Endulini, 5a Jubilee Road, Parktown
2193, South Africa
     Published 2002 by Bantam Press a division of Transworld Publishers
     Copyright Andy McNab 2002
     The right of Andy McNab to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs
and Patents Act 1988
     All  of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
     A catalogue record for this book is available  from the British Library
ISBNs 0593 046188 (cased)
     All  rights reserved. No part  of  this publication may  be reproduced,
stored  in a retrieval system, or transmitted  in any form or  by any means,
electronic,  mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without  the
prior permission of the publishers.
     Typeset in ll/13#pt Palatino by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd Printed  in
Great Britain by Mackays plc, Chatham, Kent
     Dedicated to all victims of terrorism
     LIBERATION DAY
     One.
     TUESDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2001, 23:16 hrs
     The submarine had broken surface ten minutes earlier, and  its deck was
still  slippery beneath my feet. Dull red  torchlight glistened on the black
steel  a few  metres  ahead of me as  five  of the  boat's  crew  feverishly
prepared  the Zodiac inflatable. As  soon  as  they'd finished  it  would be
carrying me and  my two team members across five kilometres of Mediterranean
and on to the North African coast.
     One of the  crew  broke  away and  said something to Lotfi, who'd  been
standing next to me by the  hatch. I didn't understand that much Arabic, but
Lotfi translated. They are finished, Nick we are ready to float off."
     The three of us moved forward, swapped places with the submariners, and
stepped over the  sides of the Zodiac on to the anti-slip decking. Lotfi was
the cox and took position to the right of the Yamaha 75 outboard. We bunched
up near him,  each side of the engine. We wore black bobble hats and gloves,
and a 'dry bag'  -  a  GoreTex suit over  our clothes with rubber wrists and
neck to protect  us from  the  cold water. Our kit had been stowed in  large
zip-lock  waterproof  bags  and  lashed  to  the  deck  along with  the fuel
bladders.
     I looked behind  me. The crew had already disappeared and the hatch was
closed. We'd been warned by the captain that he wasn't going to hang around,
not when we were inside the territorial waters of  one  of the most ruthless
regimes  on earth.  And he  was willing  to  take even  fewer  risks on  the
pick-up, especially if things had gone to  rat shit while we were ashore. No
way did he want the Algerians capturing his boat and crew. The Egyptian navy
couldn't  afford  to lose so much  as a  rowing-boat  from their desperately
dilapidated fleet,  and  he didn't want  his  crew  to  lose their  eyes  or
bollocks, or any of the other bits the Algerians liked to remove from people
who had pissed them off.
     "Brace for float-off." Lotfi had done this before.
     I could  already feel  the  submarine moving beneath us.  We were  soon
surrounded  by bubbles as it  blew its tanks. Lotfi slotted the Yamaha  into
place and fired  it up to get us under way. But the  sea was heaving tonight
with  a big swell,  and no  sooner had our hull made contact  with the water
than a wave lifted the bow and exposed it to the wind. The Zodiac started to
rear up. The two of  us threw our weight forward  and  the bow  slapped down
again, but with such  momentum that I lost my balance and fell on to my arse
on the side of the boat, which bounced me backwards.  Before I knew what was
happening, I'd been thrown over the side.
     The only part of me  uncovered was my face, but the cold took my breath
away  as I  downed  a  good  throatful  of salt  water.  This  might  be the
Mediterranean, but it felt like the North Atlantic.
     As I came to the surface and bobbed in the swell, I discovered  that my
dry bag had a leak in the neck seal. Sea-water seeped into my cheap pullover
and cotton trousers.
     "You OK, Nick?" The shout came from Lotfi.
     "Couldn't be better," I grunted, breathing hard as the other two hauled
me back aboard.
     "Got a leak in the bag."
     There was  a mumble of Arabic between the two of them,  and a schoolboy
snigger or two. Fair one: I would have found it funny too.
     I shivered as I  wrung out my bobble  hat and gloves, but even wet wool
keeps its heat-retaining qualities and  I knew I was going  to need all  the
help I could get on this part of the trip.
     Lotfi  fought to  keep the boat upright  as his mate and I leant on the
front  or bow,  as  Lotfi was constantly  reminding me -to keep  it down. He
finally got the craft under control  and we were soon ploughing  through the
crests, my eyes  stinging as the salt spray hit  my  face with the  force of
pebble dash. As waves  lifted us and the outboard screamed in protest as the
propeller left  the water,  I  could see lights on the coast  and could just
make out  the  glow of  Oran, Algeria's  second  largest city.  But we  were
steering clear of its busy port, where the  Spanish ferries to'd  and fro'd;
we were heading  about ten Ks east, to make landfall at a  point between the
city and a place called Cap Ferrat. One look at the  map during the briefing
in  Alexandria  had  made it clear the French  had left their mark  here big
time. The coastline was peppered with Cap this, Plage that, Port the other.
     Cap Ferrat itself was easy to recognize.  Its lighthouse  flashed every
few seconds in  the darkness to the  left of  the  glow from  Oran.  We were
heading  for  a  small spit  of land that housed some  of  the  intermittent
clusters  of light we were  starting to  make out quite well now  as we  got
closer to the coastline.
     As the bow crashed through the water I moved to the rear of the boat to
minimize the  effects  of the spray and wind, pissed off that I  was wet and
cold  before I'd even  started  this job.  Lotfi  was the  other side of the
outboard. I looked across as he checked his GPS and adjusted the throttle to
keep us on the right bearing.
     The brine burned my  eyes, but this was a whole lot better than the sub
we'd just left. It  had been built in  the 1960s and  the air con was losing
its grip. After  being cooped up in diesel fumes for three days, waiting for
the  right moment to make this hit, I'd been gagging to  be out in the fresh
air, even air this fresh.  I comforted myself with the thought that the next
time I  inhaled diesel  I'd  be  chugging  along  ninety  metres  below  the
Mediterranean, back to Alexandria, drinking steaming cups of sweet black tea
and celebrating the end of my very last job.
     The lights got closer and the coastline took on a bit more shape. Lotfi
didn't need the GPS any  more  and it went into  the rubber bow bag. We were
maybe four hundred metres off the shore and I  could start to  make out  the
target area. The higher,  rocky  ground was flooded with  light,  and in the
blackness below  it,  I could just about make  out the  cliff, and the beach
Lotfi had assured us was good enough to land on.
     We moved forward more  slowly now, the engine just ticking over to keep
the  noise down. When  we were about a hundred metres from the  beach, Lotfi
cut the fuel and tilted the outboard  until it  locked horizontal once more.
The boat lost  momentum and  began  to wallow  in the  swell.  He'd  already
started to connect one of the  full  fuel bladders in  preparation  for  our
exfiltration. We couldn't afford to mince about if  the shit hit the fan and
we had to do a runner.
     His teeth flashed white as he gave us a huge grin.
     "Now we paddle."
     It was obvious from the way they constantly  took the piss  out of each
other  that  Lotfi  and  the one  whose  name  I  still  couldn't  pronounce
Hubba-Hubba, something like that had worked together before.
     Hubba-Hubba  was  still at the  bow and dug his wooden  paddle into the
swell.  We  closed  in  on  the beach.  The  sky  was  perfectly  clear  and
star-filled, and suddenly  there wasn't  a breath  of wind. All I could hear
was the gentle slap of the paddles pushing through the water, joined now and
again  by the scrape of  boots on the wooden flooring as one or  other of us
shifted position. At least the paddling had got me warm.
     Lotfi never stopped  checking ahead, to make sure we were going  to hit
the beach  exactly  where he wanted, and the Arabic for 'right'  I did know:
"II al yameen, yameen."
     The two of them were Egyptian, and that  was  about as much as I wanted
to know  not that  it had  turned out that way. Like  me, they were deniable
operators; in fact, everyone and everything about this job was deniable.  If
we  were compromised,  the US would deny  the Egyptians were  false flagging
this job for them,  and I guessed that was just the price Egypt  had  to pay
for being the second biggest recipient of US  aid apart from Israel, to  the
tune of about  two billion dollars a  year. There's no such thing  as a free
falafel.
     Egypt, in its turn, would deny these two, and as for me,  they probably
didn't even know I was there. I didn't care; I had no cover documents, so if
I was captured I was going to get stitched  up regardless. The  only bits of
paper I'd been  issued with were four  thousand US dollar bills in tens  and
fifties, with which to try to buy my way out of the  country if I got in the
shit, and keep if they weren't needed. It  was  much better than working for
the Brits.
     We  kept  paddling towards the clusters  of light. The wetness  down my
back and under my arms was now warm, but still uncomfortable. I looked up at
the other two and  we nodded mutual encouragement.  They were both good lads
and both  had the same haircut shiny,  jet black short-back-and-sides with a
left-hand parting and very neat moustaches.  I was hoping they  were winners
who just looked like losers.  No one would give them  a second  look in  the
street.  They were  both in their  mid-thirties, not tall,  not small,  both
clear-skinned  and married, with enough  kids  between them to  start  up  a
football team.
     "Four-four-two," Lotfi had smiled.
     "I will  supply the back four and goalkeeper, Hubba-Hubba the  midfield
and  two strikers." I'd  discovered he was a Man United fan,  and knew  more
than I did about the Premier League, which  wasn't difficult. The only thing
I knew about football was that, like Lotfi, more than seventy-five  per cent
of Man United's fans didn't even  live in the UK, and most of the rest lived
in Surrey.
     They hadn't been supposed to talk about anything except  the job during
the planning and  preparation phase, in  a  deserted mining  camp just a few
hours outside Alexandria, but they couldn't help themselves. We'd sit around
the fire after carrying  out yet another rehearsal of the attack, and they'd
gob off  about  their time in Europe  or when they'd gone  on holiday to the
States.
     Lotfi  had  shown  himself to  be  a  highly skilled  and  professional
operator as well as a devout Muslim, so  I was pleased that this job had got
the OK  before Ramadan and  also that it was happening in advance of  one of
the  worst storms  ever predicted  in this  part  of the  world,  which  the
meteorologists had forecast was going to hit  Algeria within the next twelve
hours. Lotfi had always  been confident we'd be able to get in-country ahead
of the weather and before he stopped work for Ramadan, for the simple reason
that God was with us. He prayed enough, giving God  sit reps several times a
day.
     We weren't going  to  leave it all to Him, though.  Hubba-Hubba  wore a
necklace that he  said was  warding off the evil eye, whatever that was when
it was  at home. It  was  a small, blue-beaded  hand  with a blue eye in the
centre of the palm,  which  hung  around his  neck  on a length  of cord.  I
guessed it used to be a badge, because it still had a small safety-pin stuck
on the back. As far as the  boys were concerned, I  had a four-man team with
me tonight. I just wished the other two were more help with the paddling.
     The   job  itself  was   quite   simple.  We  were   here  to  kill   a
forty-eight-year-old Algerian citizen, Adel Kader Zeralda,  father of  eight
and owner of a chain of Spar-type supermarkets and a domestic  fuel company,
all based in  and around Oran. We  were heading for his holiday home, where,
so the int said, he did all his  business entertaining. It  seemed he stayed
here  quite  a lot while  his wife  looked  after  the family  in  Oran;  he
obviously took his corporate hospitality very seriously indeed.
     The  satellite  photographs  we'd  been  looking  at  showed  a  rather
unattractive place, mainly because the house was right beside his fuel depot
and the  parking  lot  for his delivery trucks. The building was irregularly
shaped,  like the house  that Jack built, with bits and  pieces sticking out
all  over the place and  surrounded by a high  wall to keep prying eyes from
seeing the amount of East European whores he  got  shipped in for  a  bit of
Arabian delight.
     Why he  needed to  die, and anyone  else in the  house  had to  be kept
alive, I really didn't have a  clue. George hadn't told  me  before  I  left
Boston, and I doubted  I would  ever find out. Besides, I'd fucked up enough
in my time to know when just to get the game-plan in place, do the job,  and
not ask  too  many  questions. It was a reasonable  bet that with  over  350
Algerian al-Qaeda  extremists operating  around the globe Zeralda  was up to
his neck in it, but I wasn't going to lie awake worrying about that. Algeria
had been caught up in a virtual civil war with Islamic fundamentalist groups
for more than  a decade now, and over a hundred thousand lives had been lost
which seemed strange to me, considering Algeria was an Islamic country.
     Maybe  Zeralda  posed  some  other threat to  the  West'sinterests. Who
cared?  All I  cared  about was keeping focused  totally on the job, so with
luck  I'd get out  alive and back  to the States to  pick up my citizenship.
George had rigged  it for me; all I had to do in exchange was this one  job.
Kill  Zeralda, and  I  was finished with this line of work  for good. I'd be
back on the submarine by first light, a freshly minted  US  citizen, heading
home to Boston and a glittering future.
     It felt quite strange going into a friendly country undercover, but  at
this  very moment,  the president of Algeria was  in Washington DC, and  Mr.
Bush  didn't  want to spoil his trip. Given the  seven-hour time difference,
Bouteflika and his wife were probably  getting ready  for a night out on the
Tex Mex with  Mr. and  Mrs. B. He  was in the States because he  wanted  the
Americans to see Algeria as their North African ally in this new war against
terrorism. But I was sure that political support wasn't the only item on the
agenda.  Algeria  also   wanted  to  be  seen  as  an  important  source  of
hydrocarbons  to the West. Not just oil, but gas: they had vast reserves  of
it.
     Only fifty or so metres to  go now, and the depot  was plainly  visible
above us, bathed  in yellow light  from  the  fenceline,where  arc lights on
poles blazed into the compound. We knew from Lotfi's recce that the two huge
tanks  to the  left  of the  compound were  full  of kerosene 28, a domestic
heating fuel.
     On  the other  side of the  compound, still within the  fence line  and
about thirty metres from the tanks, was a line of maybe a dozen tankers, all
likely to be fully laden, ready for delivery in the morning. Along the spit,
to the right of  the compound  as I looked at  it, were  the outer walls  of
Zeralda's holiday house, silhouetted by the light of the depot.
     Two.
     The  view of the target area slowly disappeared as we  neared the beach
and moved into shadow.  Sand rasped  against  rubber as  we  hit bottom. The
three of us jumped out, each grabbing a  rope handle and dragging the Zodiac
up the beach. Water sloshed about inside my dry bag and trainers.
     When  Lotfi signalled that we were far enough  from  the  waterline, we
pulled and pushed  the  boat  so that it faced in the right direction for  a
quick getaway,  then started to unlash our  kit using the ambient light from
the high ground.
     A car zoomed along the road  above us, about two hundred metres away on
the  far side of the peninsula.  I  checked the  traser  on  my left  wrist;
instead  of luminous paint, it used a  gas  that was  constantly  giving off
enough  light  to  see  the  watch  face.  It  was twenty-four  minutes past
midnight; the driver could afford to put his foot down on a deserted stretch
of coast.
     I  unzipped my bergen  from the  protective rubber bag in which it  had
been cocooned and pulled it out on to the sand. The backpacks were cheap and
nasty counterfeit Berghaus jobs, made in Indonesia and flogged to Lotfi in a
Cairo bazaar, but they gave us vital extra protection: if their contents got
wet we'd be out of business.
     The other two did the same to theirs, and we knelt in  the shadows each
checking our own kit.  In my  case this meant making sure that the fuse wire
and  homemade OBIs hadn't  been  damaged, or  worse still  waterlogged.  The
oil-burning  incendiaries were  basically four  one-foot  square  Tupperware
boxes with a soft steel liner, into the bottom of which I'd drilled a number
of holes.  Each device contained a  mix of sodium chlorate,  iron powder and
asbestos, which would have been hard to find in Europe, these  days, but was
available in Egypt by the shed  load The ingredients were mixed together  in
two-pound lots and pressed into the Tupperware.
     All four OBIs were going to be linked together in a long daisy chain by
one-metre lengths of  fuse wire.  Light enough to  float on top of oil, they
would  burn fiercely until,  cumulatively,  they generated  enough  heat  to
ignite the fuel. How long that would take depended on  the fuel. With petrol
it would be almost instantaneous the  fuse wire would  do the trick. But the
combustion  point  of heavier fuels can be very high. Even  diesel's boiling
point  is higher than that of  water,  so it takes a lot  of heat to get  it
sparked up.
     But first  we had to  get to the fuel. All fuel tanks are designed with
outer perimeter bungs', walls  or dykes whose height and thickness depend on
the amount of fuel that will have to be contained in the event of a rupture.
The ones that we were going to breach were surrounded by a double-thick wall
of concrete building blocks, just over a metre in height and about four away
from the tanks.
     Lotfi and  Hubba-Hubba had been  rehearsing their  tasks  so often they
would have  been able  to do them blindfolded -which, in  fact,  we had done
some  of   the  time  during  rehearsals.  Training  blindfolded  gives  you
confidence if you have to carry out a job in the dark, such as dealing  with
a  weapon  stoppage, but it also makes  you quicker  and more effective even
when you can see.
     The attack theory was simple. Lotfi was going to start by cutting out a
section  of  the  wall,  three blocks wide and two down,  facing towards the
target  house.  Hubba-Hubba had turned  out  to  be  quite  an  expert  with
explosives.  He would place his two frame  charges, one on each tank, on the
side facing the sea and opposite where I was going to lay out and prepare my
four OBIs.
     As the frame charges cut a two-foot square hole in each tank,  the fuel
would spew out and be contained in the bung. The ignited OBIs would float on
top of the spillage, burning in sequence  along  the daisy chain, so that we
had constant heat and constant flame, which would eventually ignite the lake
of fuel beneath them. We knew that the kerosene fuel oil  rising in the bung
would spark up when the second of the four OBIs ignited, which should happen
as the fuel level reached just less than half-way up the bung  wall. But  we
wanted to do more than just ignite the fuel within the bung:  we wanted fire
everywhere.
     The burning fuel would disgorge through the cut-out section in the wall
and  out on to  the ground  like  lava  from a volcano.  The  ground sloped,
towards the target house. As soon as Lotfi had shown me the sketch maps from
his  recce, I'd seen that we could cut  the house off  from the road  with a
barrier  of flame.  I hoped  I  was right; two  hundred policemen  lived  in
barracks  just  three kilometres  along the road to  Oran, and if they  were
called to the scene we didn't want to become their new best mates.
     Just  as importantly, we could make what  happened tonight look  like a
local job  an attack from  one  of the  many fundamentalist groups that  had
waged war  on each other here for  years. That was why we'd had to make sure
the equipment was homemade, why all our weapons were of Russian manufacture,
and our  clothing of local origin. The traser  might not be regular  Islamic
fundamentalist issue,  but  if anyone got close enough  to me to  notice  my
watch, then I really was in the  shit, so what did it  matter? In  less than
two hours from now, Zeralda  would be dead, and the finger of blame would be
pointing at  Algeria's very own Islamic extremists,  who  were still  making
this  the  world's most  dangerous  holiday venue.  They didn't like  anyone
unless he was one of their own.  We hoped that our attack would be blamed on
the GIA, the Armed Islamic Group. They were probably the cruel lest and most
screwed-up  bunch  I'd ever  come across. These guys  had been  trained  and
battle-hardened in  places like Afghanistan,  where they'd  fought with  the
mujahadeen against the Russians. After that, they'd fought in Chechnya,  and
then in Bosnia and anywhere else they felt Muslims were getting fucked over.
Now they were back  in Algeria and this time it was personal. They wanted an
Islamic state with the Qur'an as its constitution, and they wanted it today.
In  the eyes  of these people, even OBL  (Osama Bin Laden  ) was a  wimp. In
1994, in  a grim  precursor  of attacks  to come, GIA hijacked an Air France
plane in Algiers, intending  to crash it in the  middle of Paris.  It  would
have worked if it hadn't been for French anti-terrorist forces attacking the
plane as it refuelled, killing them all.
     Unlike me, all the  equipment in my bergen was dry. I peeled off my dry
bag,  and  immediately  felt  colder as  the  air  started to attack  my wet
clothes. Too  bad, there  was nothing I could do about it. I checked chamber
on  my  Russian  Makharov  pistol,  pulling  back the  top slide just a  few
millimetres and making sure, for maybe the fourth and last time on this job,
that the round was just exposed as  it sat in the chamber ready to be fired.
I glanced to the side  to see  the other  two doing the same. I let  the top
slide  return until  it was home tight  before  applying safe with my thumb,
then  thrust the pistol into  the internal holster that  I'd tucked into the
front of my trousers.
     Lotfi was in a good mood.
     "Your gun wet too?"
     I nodded  slowly  at his joke  and whispered  back, as I  shouldered my
bergen, "Pistol, it's a pistol or weapon. Never, ever a gun."
     He smiled back and didn't reply. He didn't have to: he'd known it would
get me ticking.
     I made my final check: my two mags  were still  correctly placed in the
double mag  holder on my left hip. They were facing up in the thick bands of
black elastic that held them onto  my belt, with the rounds facing forwards.
That way I would pull down on a mag to release it  and they would be  facing
the right way to slam into the pistol.
     Everyone was  now poised to go, but  Lotfi still checked" Ready like  a
teacher at  the  airport  on  a  school  trip,  making everyone  show  their
passports for  the tenth time.  We all nodded, and he  led the way up to the
high ground. I fell in just behind him.
     Lotfi was the  one taking us on target because he was the  only one who
had been ashore and carried out a CTR [close target recce].  Besides, he was
the one in charge: I  was here as  the  guest European, soon to be American,
terrorist.
     There  was  a  gentle rise of  about  forty  metres from the tip of the
peninsula where we'd  landed to the  target area. We zigzagged over sand and
rock. It was good to get moving so I could warm up a little.
     We stopped just before the flat ground and sat and waited for a vehicle
to make its way along the road. Lotfi checked it out. No one said it, but we
were  all worried about  the police being  stationed  so close, and whether,
because  of the terrorist  situation here, they  constantly patrolled  their
immediate area  for security. I was still happy to stop and catch my breath.
My nose was starting to run a little.
     Lotfi  dropped  down  below  the  ledge  and  whispered  in  Arabic  to
Hubba-Hubba before coming to me: "Just a car, no police yet."
     The wet T-shirt under my pullover was a bit warmer now, but it was just
as uncomfortable. So what? It wouldn't be long  before it was black  tea and
diesel fumes again, and,  for  about  the first time  in my life, I'd be pro
actively planning a future.
     I pulled back my pullover sleeve and glanced down  at my traser. 00:58.
I  thought  of  Mr. and  Mrs. B. Just like the  Bouteflikas,  they  too were
probably having  a wash and  brush-up while  they talked about what on earth
they  were going  to talk  about over the  Tex Mex. Probably something like,
"Oh, I hear you have lots of gasoline in your  country? We wouldn'tmind some
of that,  instead of you giving it to the Italians  to fill  up their Fiats.
And, oh, by  the way, there'll be one Algerian fewer for you to govern  when
you get back. But don't worry, he was a bad 'un."
     As  the sound  of the vehicle faded  in the  direction of  Oran, we all
raised our heads slowly above the lip to scan the rock and sandy ground. The
constant noise of crickets, or whatever they called them here,  rattled into
the night.
     The  fuel compound  was an  oasis  of yellow light and bright enough to
make  me squint until my eyes adjusted. It was just under two hundred metres
to my half-left. From my perspective the tanks  were  sitting side  by side,
surrounded by the bung. To the right of them was the not-so-neat row of fuel
trucks.
     The perimeter of  the compound was guarded by a  three-metre high chain
link  fence, sagging in places where the trucks had backed  into it over the
years.
     In the far corner of the compound, by the gate that faced the road, was
the security hut. It was no  more than a large garden shed. The security was
for fire watch just as much as for stopping the trucks and fuel disappearing
during  the night; the  depot had no automatic fire system in the event of a
leak or explosion. Lotfi told  us there was  a  solitary guy sitting inside,
and if the whole  thing sparked up it would presumably be his job to get  on
the phone.
     That was  good for  us, because it meant we didn't  have to  spend time
neutralizing any fire-fighting apparatus  or alarms.  What was  bad was  the
police  barracks. A complete fuck-up  on our side was only a  phone call and
three Ks away. If we got  caught it would  be serious  shit.  Algeria wasn't
exactly known for upholding human rights, no one would be coming to help us,
no matter  what we  said,  and terrorists were routinely whipped to death in
this neck of the woods.
     Three.
     The target house  was to the right of us, and closer than the compound.
The wall  that surrounded it was a large, square, high-sided construction of
rendered brick, painted a colour that had once been cream. It was built very
much in the  Muslim tradition of architecture  for  privacy.  The main  door
faced  the  fuel  tanks, and  we knew from the satellite that  it was rarely
used. I couldn't  even see  it from  where I was, because the lights in  the
compound  weren't  strong  enough. From the shots Lotfi had taken during the
CTR, I knew it consisted of a set of large, dark, wooden double doors rising
to an apex, studded and decorated with wrought iron.  The pictures  had also
shown a  modern shutter-type garage door  at the  side,  facing away from us
towards the road. A dirt track connected it with the main drag.
     Inside the high protection was a long, low  building. It wasn't exactly
palatial,  but  showed that the fuel and tea bag business paid Zeralda  well
enough for him to have his own little playpen.
     Double  doors from quite a lot of the rooms  opened  on to a  series of
tiled courtyards decorated with plants and fountains, but what the satellite
photographs  hadn't been able  to show  us was  which room was  which.  That
didn't really matter, though.  The house  wasn't that big and it was  all on
one floor, so it shouldn't take us  long to find where Zeralda was doing his
entertaining.
     The metal led road  flanked the far side  of these two areas and formed
the base of the triangular peninsula.
     Lotfi  moved back  down  into  the  dead ground and started to scramble
along in the darkness to  his left,  just below the lip. As we followed, two
cars raced  along the  road, blowing their horns at  each other  in rhythmic
blasts  before  eventually  disappearing  into  the  darkness. I'd read that
eighty per cent of men under the age of thirty  were jobless in this country
and inflation was in high double figures. How anybody could afford fast cars
was beyond me. I could only just about afford my motorbike.
     We got level with the tanks and moved up to the lip of the high ground.
Hubba-Hubba  took off  his bergen  and  fished out  the wire cutters  and  a
two-foot square of red velvet curtain material, while we put on and adjusted
the black and white check she mags that would hide our faces when we hit the
hut. I  wouldn't be taking part directly because  of my skin colour and blue
eyes. I  would only come  into the  equation when  the other two had located
Zeralda. It wouldn't matter that he saw me.
     When Hubba-Hubba got his bergen back on and  his shemag around his head
we checked each other again as Lotfi drew his pistol and did his school-trip
routine, with a nod to each of us as we copied.
     Breaking  the operation down into stages,  so that people knew  exactly
what to do and when to do it, made things easier for me. These were good men
but I  couldn't trust  my life with people I didn't know very well and whose
skills, beyond the specifics of this operation, I wasn't sure about.
     Following Lotfi,  with  me now  at the rear, we moved towards the fence
line It was  pointless running or trying to  avoid being in the open for the
thirty or so metres: it was just flat ground and  the  light in the compound
hadn't hit us directly yet as the arc lights were  facing into the compound,
not out. We would get into that light spill before long, and soon after that
we'd be attacking the hut, so fuck it, it didn't really matter. There was no
other way of crossing the open ground anyway.
     There came a point where, bent  over as we tried instinctively  to make
ourselves smaller, we  caught the full  glare of the four arc lights  set on
high steel  posts at each corner of the compound.  A  mass  of  small flying
things had been drawn to the pools of light and buzzed around them.
     I could hear the rustle  of my trousers as my wet legs rubbed together.
I  kept my mouth open  to cut down on  the sound of my  breathing. It wasn't
going to compromise us,  but doing everything  possible  to keep noise to  a
minimum  and make  this job  work made me feel better. The only other sounds
were of their trainers moving over the rocky ground, and the rhythmic scrape
of the nylon berg ens over the chirp of the invisible crickets. My face soon
became wet and cold as I breathed against the shemag.
     We got  to the fence line behind the shed. There were no windows facing
us, just sunbaked wooden cladding no more than a metre away.
     I could hear someone inside, shouting grumpily in French.
     "Oui, oui, d'accord."  At  the same time there was a blast of  monotone
Arabic from a TV set.
     Lotfi held the red velvet  over the bottom of the fence and Hubba-Hubba
got to  work with  his cutters.  He cut the  wire through the velvet, moving
upwards  in a vertical line.  Lotfi re-positioned the  velvet each time, the
two  men working like clockwork  toys, not looking remotely concerned  about
the  world around them. That was  my job, to watch  and listen to the sounds
coming  from the  shed  in  case its  occupant  was alerted by the smothered
'ping' each time a strand of chain-link gave way.
     The telephone  line  snaked  into the compound from one of the concrete
posts that  followed the road, which looked like a slab of liquorice running
left  and right. There was a sign, in both Arabic and English, to be careful
of the bend. I knew that if I went to  the right I would hit  Oran about ten
kilometres away, and if  I went left I would pass Cap Ferrat  and eventually
hit Algiers, the capital, about four hundred Ks to the east.
     Hubba-Hubba  and  Lotfi  finished  cutting  the vertical  line  as  the
one-sided conversation continued  inside the shed, then carefully pulled the
two sides apart  to create a triangle.  I eased my way slowly through, so my
bergen wouldn't snag. I got my fingers through Lotfi's side  of the fence to
keep it in position and he followed suit, taking hold  of Hubba-Hubba's side
while he packed the cutting kit. When  he was through  as well, we eased the
fence back into place.
     We put our berg ens on the ground behind the shed, to the accompaniment
of the monotonous Arabic TV voice,  and the  old guy still  gob  bing off in
French.
     It flashed through my mind that  I had no idea  what had been happening
in Afghanistan this past week. Were the US still bombing? Had troops gone in
and dug  the Taliban out  of their caves? Having been so totally focused  on
the job in the mining camp and then stuck in the  submarine, I didn't have a
clue if OBL was dead or alive.
     We used the light to make final adjustments to each other's she mags
     Everyone  carefully  checked  chamber  for  the last  time.  They  were
becoming like me,  paranoid that they were going  to pull a trigger one  day
and  just get a dead man's  click because the  top  slide  hadn't picked the
round up due to the mag not being fully home.
     Lotfi was hunched down and bouncing on the  balls of his feet.  He just
wanted to get on with it and hated the wait. Hubba-Hubba looked as if he was
at the starting blocks and unconsciously went to bite his thumbnail, only to
be prevented by the shemag. There was nothing we could do but wait until the
old guy had finished his call; we weren't going to burst in half-way through
a conversation. I listened to  the French  waffle, the TV,  the buzz of  the
mozzie things around the lights, and our breathing through the cotton of the
she  mags There  wasn't even  the  hint  of  a breeze to  jumble the  noises
together.
     Less than a minute later, the guard stopped talking and the  phone went
down with an  old style ring of a bell. Lotfi bounced up to full height  and
checked  Hubba-Hubba was backing him. He looked down at me and we nodded  in
time before they disappeared around the corner without  a  word. I followed,
but  stayed out  of  the  way  as  Lotfi pulled  open  the door  and the  TV
commentator was momentarily  interrupted by a single shouted instruction and
the sort of strangulated pleas you make to two weapon-pointing Arabs in  she
mags  I  saw a  sixty-something bloke,  in baggy, well-worn trousers  and  a
tattered brown  check jacket,  drop a cigarette  from between his  thumb and
forefinger before falling to his knees and starting to beg for his life. His
eyes were as big as saucers, his hands upturned to the sky in the  hope that
Allah would sort this whole thing out.
     Hubba-Hubba stuck the muzzle of  his  Makharov into the skin at the top
of  the old boy's balding head and walked around him using the  weapon as  a
pivot stick. He reached for the phone and ripped it from its socket. It fell
to  the floor with one final ring,  the noise blending with  the  scrape  of
plastic-soled shoes on the raised wooden floor as they dragged him over to a
folding wooden chair.
     I could see that he had been watching Al Jazeera, the news network. The
TV  was  black  and  white,  and  the  coat-hanger  antenna  wasn't  exactly
state-of-the-art, but I could still make out the hazy nightscope pictures of
Kandahar  getting  the good news  from the US  Air  Force as tracer streamed
uselessly into the air.
     The  old boy was getting hysterical now, and there  were lots of shouts
and pistols  aimed  his way. I  guessed they were  telling him, "Don't move,
camel-breath," or  whatever, but in  any event it wasn't long before he  was
wrapped up so well in gaffer tape he could have been a Christmas present.
     The  two of  them walked out and closed the  door  behind  them and  we
retrieved the berg ens Things  were looking good. Train hard, fight easy had
always been  shoved down my neck, even  as an infantry recruit in the 1970s,
and it was certainly true tonight. The other half of the mantra, Train easy,
fight hard and die', I pushed to the back of my head.
     We crossed the hard crust of sand that had been splashed with fuel over
the years, and compressed by  boots and tyres, heading for the tanks no more
than fifty metres away. The trucks were to my left, dirty minging old things
with rust streaks  down the  sides of their tanks from years of spillage. If
the sand and dust now stuck to them was washed off, they would probably fall
apart.
     I clambered over the  bung, feeling safe enough to pull  off the shemag
as the other two got on with their  tasks. After I'd extracted the four OBIs
I  checked at the bottom of my bergen for  the nine-inch butcher's knife and
pair  of thick black rubber  gloves that came up to my elbows. They were the
sort  that  vets use when  they stick  their arm up  the  rear end  of large
animals. I knew they were there, but always liked to check such things. Next
out was the thirty-metre spool of safety  fuse, looking a bit like a reel of
green washing line. All the kit we  were using was in metric measures, but I
had been taught imperial.  It had been a nightmare explaining  things to the
boys during rehearsals.
     Lotfi  and his mate,  God, started to play  stone masons  on  the bung,
taking a  hammer and chisel to  the elevation that faced  the target  house,
which was hidden in darkness, no more than two hundred metres away. This was
a problem because of the noise Lotfi was making. But,  fuck it, there was no
other way. He just had to take his time. But at  least once  the first block
was  out, it would be a lot easier  to attack the mortar. It would have been
quicker and safer, noise-wise, to  blow a hole in the wall at  the same time
as the tanks were  cut,  but I couldn't have been sure that the right amount
of  wall had been destroyed,  allowing the fuel to  gush  out  before it was
ignited.
     I laid the four OBIs in a straight line on the floor as Hubba-Hubba and
his  mate, the  evil eye protector, assembled and checked the frame  charges
from his bergen. These were very basic gizmos, eight two-foot-long strips of
plastic explosive, two inches wide, an inch thick, taped on to eight lengths
of  wood.  He was  making sure the PE had connected by  rolling  more in his
hands  before  pushing it into  the joints as he taped the  wood together to
make the two  square frame charges. He had pushed two dodgy-looking  Russian
flash  detonators  into the  PEon  the opposing sides of each  charge,  then
covered  them with yet more  PE. Both charges had then been wrapped in  even
more  tape until  they  looked  like something  from  kids'  TV. It  was bad
practice  using the dets like that, but this was  a low tech job  and  these
sorts of details counted. If  the charges didn't detonate we'd have to leave
them, and  if they looked sophisticated and exotic it would arouse suspicion
that maybe the job hadn't been down to GIA.
     Just  to make sure they'd jump to the wrong conclusion, I'd made  up  a
PIRA [Provisional  IRA] timer unit to detonate them. They were  dead simple,
using a Parkway timer, a device  about the size of a 50p  piece that  worked
very  much like a kitchen egg-timer. They were  manufactured as key rings to
remind  you of when your meter was about to expire. The  energy source was a
spring,  and  the  timers were  reliable  even in  freezing  or wet  weather
conditions.
     I watched as Hubba-Hubba disappeared to  the side of  the  tanks facing
the sea with his squares of wood and  left me to  sort out the OBIs. I heard
the clunk  as the  first frame charge went on to the tank, held  in place by
magnets. He was placing them just  above the first weld marks. Steel storage
tanks are  maybe half an inch thick  at the  bottom, due  to  the  amount of
pressure they  have  to  withstand from  the weight of fuel.  There  is less
pressure above the first  weld, so the  steel can be thinner,  maybe about a
quarter of an inch on these  old  tanks.  The  frame charges  might  not  be
technically  perfect,  but  they'd have no  problem cutting through  at that
level, as long as they had good contact with the steel.
     I heard the magnets  clank into position  on  the  second. He was doing
everything at  a  walk, just  as  we had  rehearsed. This wasn't  so that we
didn't make a noise and get compromised, but because  I didn't want  him  to
run and maybe fall and destroy the charges. We'd only made two, and I had no
great wish  to end this job hanging upside down in an Algerian cell while my
head was on the receiving end of a malicious lump of four-by-two.
     I laid the green safety fuse alongside the OBIs that I'd  placed in the
sand a metre apart. The safety fuse between each  OBI would burn for about a
minute and a half, just like when Clint Eastwood lit sticks of dynamite with
his cigar. A  minute  and  a half was just a  guide, as it could be  plus or
minus nine  seconds or  even quicker if  the core was broken  and  the flame
jumped  the gaps instead of burning  its way along the  fuse.  That  was the
reason why I hadn't connected the fuse in advance, but kept it rolled up: if
there was a break in the powder it could  be too big a  gap for the flame to
jump, and we'd have no detonation.
     Once an OBI was ignited by the  fuse it  would burn for about two and a
half  minutes.  That meant that as soon as  the  first one sparked  up there
would be  about  another minute  and thirty before  the  next one did. Which
meant two  of them burning together for a  minute, and by the time the first
had burnt out, the third would be ignited, and so on to the fourth. I needed
the  sort of heat generated by  two of these things burning at  once to make
sure the fuel ignited.
     I opened the Tupperware lids of the OBIs  and fed  the safety fuse over
the exposed mixture in each of the boxes. They were now ready to party.
     Hubba-Hubba was looking over his shoulder as he moved slowly  backwards
towards  me, unreeling another spool of  fuse  wire as he went. This was now
connected to one of the frame charges via two detonators. It wasn't the same
kind of  fuse I'd  been using. This was 'fuse instantaneous', which goes off
with the sound of a gunshot because the  burn  is so  fast. There's a little
ridge  that  runs  along  the plastic  coating so at night  you  can  always
distinguish it from the straightforward ClintEastwood stuff. He cut the fuse
from his spool without a word, and went  back to do the same with the second
charge.
     The PIRA timer unit would initiate the fuse instantaneous, which  would
burn at warp speed to a four-way connector, a three inch by three inch green
plastic box with a hole in each side. I didn't know what the small  worn-out
aluminium  plate  stuck  to its base called it in Russian, but  that was the
name I knew it by. All this box did was allow three other lengths of fuse to
be  ignited from the one Hubba-Hubba's two lengths  of fuse instantaneous to
the two charges, and my safety fuse for the OBIs.
     Hubba-Hubba was now unreeling the fuse  instantaneous  from the  second
charge back  towards  me as I  took the safety fuse and cut it from the reel
six inches back from the first OBI, making sure the  cut was straight so the
maximum amount of powder was exposed to ignite it in the four-way connector.
I then  pushed the end of it into one of  the rubber recesses,  giving  it a
half-turn so  that the teeth inside gripped the plastic coating. Hubba-Hubba
placed the two fuses instantaneous next to me and went to help Lotfi.
     I cut his two  lengths of fuse in the same way before feeding the lines
into the connector as the sound of Lotfi's rubber mallet  hitting his chisel
filled the  air  and  the navigation lights of an airliner miles  up floated
silently over us.
     I checked the three lines that were, so far, in the connector to ensure
the three  lines into it were  secure before  cutting a metre length of  the
ridged fuse instantaneous and placing it in the last free hole. This was the
length  that  went  to  the  timer unit, a  three-inch-thick, postcard-sized
wooden box.
     Then, as  I lay  on my stomach and started  to prepare, a vehicle drove
along the road from the direction of Oran.
     The noise got  louder as it came round to  the base of the peninsula. I
could tell by the engine note  and the sound of the tyres that it  wasn't on
the road any more, it was going cross-country.
     Shit, police. I heard a torrent of Arabic whispers from the other two a
few metres away. I got their attention.
     "Lotfi, Lotfi! Take a look."
     He got  on to his knees, then  slowly raised his head.  Instinctively I
checked that my Makharov was still in place.
     I  got up  and looked over their heads. The vehicle was a civilian 4x4,
heading  for the house.  The headlights were on full beam and bounced up and
down on the garage  doors set in  the compound wall. As it got closer to the
building the driver sounded the horn.
     Shit, what was  happening? My  information was  that  no one  would  be
moving in or out of the house tonight. George had said that when we hit this
place Zeralda would definitely be in there. He'd assured me the intelligence
was good quality.
     The wagon stopped and I  could  just about  hear  some  rhythmic guitar
music forcing  its way out of  the open windows.  Was the int wrong? Had the
target just arrived,  instead of coming in yesterday? Was this another group
of mates come to join in the fun?  Or was it just a fresh batch of Czechs or
Romanians with bottle-blonde  hair  being ferried  in for  the next session?
Whatever, I wanted to be in  the house  for no more than half  an  hour, not
caught up directing a cast of thousands.
     I watched as the garage shutter rattled open. I couldn't tell if it had
been  operated  electronically  or  manually. Then the  vehicle  disappeared
inside and the shutter closed.
     We got back to business. With the timer unit in my hand and  the bergen
on my back, I climbed over the bung, feeling more than a little relieved.
     The other two  were still attacking the wall and  Hubba-Hubba seemed to
lose  patience, kicking  it with the  flat  of his foot to free  a  stubborn
block.
     I  opened the  top of  the  timer  unit  and gave it  one  more  check.
Basically it consisted of a fifteen-metre length of double-stranded electric
flex coming out of a hole drilled in its side. Attached to the other end was
a flash  det,  a small  aluminium cylinder about  the size of  a third  of a
cigarette, that fitted over the fuse instantaneous. To keep it in  one piece
in  transit,  I had rolled up the  flex and put an elastic  band  around it.
Inside the box there was a twelve-volt battery beside the Parkway timer, the
small rectangular  type  with the positive and negative terminals on top and
next to each other. Both items were glued to the bottom of the box.
     Soldered flat on to the  timer unit was a  small panel  pin, protruding
like a minute hand beyond the dial of the Parkway. It was no more  than half
an  inch  long,  and  had  been  roughened  with emery cloth to make  a good
electrical contact. Also  soldered on to  it was one  of the two  strands of
flex that came  into the  box. Another panel pin, which had also been  emery
clothed, was  sticking out  from the bottom of the box, between the  Parkway
timer and  the battery at the 0 on the Parkway  dial. That, too, had a small
length of wire soldered  on to  it, leading to the negative terminal  of the
battery. The other strand of flex was soldered directly to the positive.
     The Parkway  wasn't set, so I'd pushed a  wedge of rubber  eraser  down
over the vertical pin to stop the two making contact. If they did,  it would
complete the circuit and initiate the flash det.
     I  lay there  for another  ten  minutes  or so  until the other two had
finished. It would have been a bit quicker  if I'd gone and  helped, but you
never,  ever lose  control of the  initiation device  until  you're ready to
leave the area. I wanted to know that every second we were by the tanks, the
eraser was still  covering that panel  pin. The faint  sound  of  Al Jazeera
floated through the air. I could feel the wetness of my clothes cold against
my skin now that I'd stopped moving.
     It was time  to connect the flash  det and the timer to  the  device. I
held up my hand and showed the boys the wooden box. They knew what was about
to happen, and got up and left for the cut in the fence line I knelt down by
the fuse instantaneous  to fit the flash det, checking the eraser  was still
in place before feeding  the fuse into the small aluminium tube. I made sure
the fuse  end  couldn't  get any further inside, so it would  initiate  then
taped the whole lot in place. There was a crimping tool that would have done
the job much better, but it had to look low-tech.
     I then  unwound  the wire from the elastic as I climbed  back  over the
bung. This was very bad drills. I had connected the initiation device to the
charges and was climbing about: if I dropped it, I'd turn the whole job into
a gang fuck as the  charges took out  the tanks as well  as me. But fuck it,
this was the only way to do it tonight as far as I was concerned.
     I lay as flat as  I could in the sand, even forcing my heels down, with
the  extended wires  running over  the  bung, before removing the top of the
box.
     To  arm  the  device,  I turned the Parkway  dial to 30. Then I gave it
another one or two minutes for luck, all very high-tech stuff.
     I let go of the dial and could hear the ticking as  the spring began to
unwind. I had tested this unit over  and  over again and, give  or take five
seconds, it was  always on  time over the half-hour. The  panel pin that was
attached flat to the dial had maybe an  inch and  a  half  to travel  before
connecting with its vertical twin.
     All  that remained was  for me to take off the rubber wedge and replace
the wooden lid on the timer unit so no  dirt could find its  way between the
two pins. I joined the others.  All being well, fragments of  the timer unit
would confirm that tonight's devastation  was the work  of  an  old and bold
ex-muj who'd  been up to no good. It would just underline what the  security
guy told them.
     As we  went past the hut the door was open and an Al Jazeera newscaster
was  taking us through more  fuzzy black  and white  pictures of the night's
events in Afghanistan.  We  made  our way to  the cut in the  fence line and
Lotfi pointed  to his shemag as a  signal for  me  to cover up. I tucked the
cotton around my mouth and saw the  security guy,  still bound up with tape,
now lying  in  the sand  below  the lip.  He had  shit  his  baggy  trousers
big-time,  but he'd live  through the night. Hubba-Hubba knelt down and gave
him a few highlights in rapid Arabic from the GIA party political broadcast,
then at  Lotfi's nod we all left him praying noisily to himself through  the
gaffer tape and ran directly towards the house.
     Lotfi pulled out the alloy  caving ladder from his bergen and  unrolled
it in the sand. Hubba-Hubba moved round to the other side of the wall facing
the road to check the garage door. Why climb the wall if there was an easier
way through?
     I gave the heavy  wrought-iron door handle a  twist. It turned, but the
door wouldn't budge. Hubba-Hubba came back shaking  his  head. We were going
to need the caving  ladder after  all. Made from two lengths of steel  cable
with alloy tube rungs in between, the whole thing was about nine inches wide
and fifteen feet long,  designed  for cavers to get up and down potholes, or
whatever they do down there.
     Lotfi brought  out the two poles we'd  picked up at the hardware store,
the telescopic  jobs you  can stick a squeegee on if you  want to clean high
windows. Like  all the  other kit except for the timing unit, this should be
coming back with us; but if anything got left behind, it couldn't have a B&Q
label on it.
     He  taped them  together to make one long pole,  just slightly  shorter
than  the wall itself.  Lotfi used it to lift  the large steel hook that was
attached  to one end of the  wire ladder,  and eased it  over the top of the
wall.
     I  checked  chamber  on my Makharov  yet again, and the others  copied.
Then, after a shemag check, we were ready to go. I stepped closer.
     "Remember, if we have a drama no head shots." I'd been boring these two
senseless for days about  this,  but  it  was imperative  we didn't  fuck up
Zeralda's head. I  didn't know  why, but I was starting to  make an educated
-well, sort of guess.
     I checked  traser: with luck, just  over twenty-two minutes left before
the tanks became infernos. I tapped Hubba-Hubba on the shoulder.
     "OK, mate?"
     He  started  to climb, with me steadying  the  waving ladder under him.
Caving ladders aren't climbed conventionally; you twist them through  ninety
degrees  so that they run between  your  legs and you use  your heels on the
rungs, not your toes. Back at the mining camp, watching  these two trying to
get up and down  had been like  a  scene in a slapstick comedy. Now, with so
much practice, they glided up and down like chimpanzees.
     Hubba-Hubba disappeared over the  top  of the  wall and I heard a faint
grunt  as he  landed the  other side. Then came  the slow metallic creak  of
bolts being  gently  prised open, while Lotfi  retrieved  and rolled  up the
ladder before stashing it back in his bergen along with the poles.
     The door opened and I moved through into a small  courtyard, hearing at
once the  gentle trickle of one of the ornamental  fountains. I couldn't see
it, but knew from the sat photos that it was in front of me somewhere.
     Lotfi  followed close  behind  me. It  was  very  dark in here, with no
lights on at  all this side of the  house.  The  building's irregular  shape
meant that light from another part of  the  building could easily be hidden.
If we  hadn't seen  the car turn up, we wouldn't have known there was anyone
at home.
     I  felt leaves against my shemag  as  I  stood  by  the  compound wall,
looking and  listening  as my face became wet with  condensation  once more.
Hubba-Hubba closed the door behind us, bolting it shut so that if we screwed
the  job up and Zeralda was able to  do a runner, it  would take a while for
him to escape.
     Once they had got their berg ens back on, I was going to lead. I wanted
to  be  in control  of  my own destiny  inside  this cage.  Pulling  out  my
Makharov,  I followed the building around to the right. I still couldn't see
anything, but  I knew from the sat  pictures that the floor of the courtyard
was paved with large tiles in bold blue North African patterns.
     We left the soothing sound of the fountain behind and rounded a corner,
past  a  set  of french windows behind closed  wooden  shutters. Maybe  four
metres  in  front of me,  light spilled from a second set of  doors on to  a
wrought-iron garden set,  wit ha mosaic  pattern  on  the circular  table. I
stopped to  try  to  control my  breathing,  and  heard  faint, intermittent
laughter ahead.
     I eased off my bergen and  left it on  the ground, then got down on  my
knees  and put out my  hand to make sure the others  were  going  to hold it
right there.
     I crawled to within a couple of feet  of  the french windows, and could
suddenly hear guitars and cymbals. I smiled when I recognized Pink Floyd.
     I  lay  down and  craned my neck until I could  see  what was happening
beyond the glass. As soon as I'd done it, I wished I hadn't. The whole  room
was a haze of cigarette smoke. Zeralda was  naked and covered in either  oil
or sweat,  I  couldn't make  out  which, and his  fat,  grey-haired body and
almost  woman-sized  breasts  were wobbling  about as he  wrestled on a  big
circular bed. In the blue corner was a very frightened boy who couldn't have
been any more than about fourteen, with a crew-cut and ripped T-shirt.
     In all there were three boys in  the room,  all in  different states of
undress,  and  another adult, younger than Zeralda,  in his thirties  maybe,
with greased-back hair, still clothed in jeans and white shirt but with bare
feet. He seemed to  be a spectator for now, sitting in  a chair, smiling and
smoking as he watched the one-sided bout. The other boys looked as scared as
their friend, starting to realize what they'd let themselves in for.
     I moved my head away to have  a think  about what I'd just seen. It had
never  crossed our  minds that Zeralda's  fun and games involved boys;  we'd
been told it was women.
     When I was far enough from the window  I stood and walked back  to  the
others. Our heads closed in and I quickly checked traser: eleven-ish minutes
to go before the device went off. Before that happened we needed to be in on
target  and for  Zeralda to  be  dead.  That way, we'd  have  contained  the
situation  before there was any  sort of  follow-up by the  fire brigade or,
even worse, the two hundred policemen.
     The nylon of their berg ens rustled gently as they moved inn for  me to
whisper.
     "He's in there with another man and three young boys."
     Hubba-Hubba raised his shovel-like hands in disbelief.
     "Boys? No women? Just boys? Young boys?"
     "Yep."
     There was a collective Arabic mutter of disapproval. Hubba-Hubba  could
only just about control his breathing.
     "I will do it, let me kill him."
     Four.
     Lotfi wasn't going to let that happen. TSfo, we have our tasks."
     Hubba-Hubba was still in a state of disgust.
     "How many?"
     "For definite, two  men, three boys. That's all I've seen." Lotfi had a
change of heart. Then I will kill the other one." Hubba-Hubba agreed.  I was
starting to worry.
     "No, only the target.  Just the target, OK, we're just here for him. No
one else, remember?" Doing things  outside your limits of  exploitation  can
lead to horrendous  fuck-ups elsewhere. We didn't know the whole story, just
this little bit.  I felt  pretty  much the  way  he did, but..  . "Just  the
target, no one else."
     Lotfi said he would lead, as the colour of my eyes and skin could still
be a problem for a little while longer. I caught his shoulder.
     "Remember. If there's a drama He finished my sentence.
     "No head shots." I tapped my  traser. We had  less  than six minutes. I
could hear Hubba-Hubba still murmuring quietly to himself about what Zeralda
was getting up to as there was a burst of laughter from inside the room, and
I remembered that his own sons were nearly as old as these boys.
     We stopped just short of the door. I could hear a little Arabic waffle,
then more laughter from inside the room. Then I hear da young voice, clearly
pleading: whatever was going on in there, he didn't like  it. I felt a surge
of anger.
     Traser  told me there were  four minutes left  on the Parkway timer.  I
undid the top flap  of my bergen, dug  out  the rubber gloves and started to
put them  on. Those two,  and their invisible  mates, had  better get  their
finger out once we were inside: we didn't have much time.
     Hubba-Hubba picked up  a wrought-iron chair  and hurled it against  the
windows. The noise of  smashing glass was  followed by startled screams from
inside, and then by even louder screams of aggression as he and Lotfi kicked
out the remaining glass and pushed their  way through.  Even Pink Floyd were
no match for this lot.
     The next distinguishable sound I heard was begging, this time  from the
men.  I didn't want to know what was going on in there now, or how Lotfi and
his mate  were  choosing to control  the  situation.  I heard more  breaking
glass, the racket of furniture being pulled about.
     A  split  second  later  the loud  crump of  the devices  made me  duck
instinctively as what  looked like sheet lightning filled the sky. There was
a renewed frenzy inside; more furniture being hurled  about, and the screams
became wails.
     All at once the boys' cries ceased, as if a switch had been thrown.
     I checked my  she  mug took the bergen in my left hand and the Makharov
in my  right, and  poked an  eye round the corner to see what was happening.
The room reeked  of cannabis smoke. Pink Floyd were still going for  it next
door.
     Both  men were on the floor, being kicked and  stamped on by Lotfi, who
was alone  in the room with them. Zeralda was about to collect a boot in the
teeth.
     "Not the face," I yelled.
     "Not the face!"
     Lotfi turned, his huge black eyes wide and quivering. I  jumped through
the french  windows,  my  trainers crunching on shards  of  broken glass.  I
dropped  the bergen and put my gloved left hand on  his shoulder, keeping  a
good grip on theMakharov with my right,  and my thumb on the  safety in case
he totally lost control and I had to stop him.
     I gave his shoulder a squeeze  and  eased him away  from the whimpering
and bloodstained heap on the floor. I had to speak up  to be heard over  the
music.
     "Come on, mate, remember why we're here ..."
     I understood what was disturbing him and  liked him  for it, but not so
much that I'd let him jeopardize the job. He moved  back against the wall as
I looked down to  check out  Zeralda's  head. I caught the other one looking
into my eyes.  I guessed that  he knew  I wasn't an Arab, that this wasn't a
GIA attack.  Bad  decision on my part, not waiting  until Lotfi had finished
and called me in. It was  just one of those fuck-ups that happen once on the
ground. And  a totally bad  decision on his  part, having ears and eyes:  no
matter what the  reason for no one else being killed in the  house, he would
have to die.
     He seemed  in control,  even if his overfed face didn't look that good;
most of the blood that should have been inside his head was now on the front
of his shirt.
     I kicked Zeralda over on to his back. His face wasn't too bad. He had a
few teeth missing and blood leaking out of his mouth and nose,  but not much
else. His eyes were closed and his body wobbled as he, I presumed,  tried to
explain why I should keep him alive.
     I stepped  back,  raised  the  Makharov, and double-tapped him  in  the
chest. After a couple of jerks, he wobbled no more.
     Zeralda's mate's eyes  were shaking  in  their sockets  now,  just like
Lotfi's, but  there was  no  gasp of horror  or any begging from  him as the
music  took over again, punctuated  by the  distant  cries of  the boys from
somewhere else in the house.
     Hubba-Hubba came back into the room.
     "Where are the boys?"
     "Bathroom." Hubba-Hubba pointed back the way he'd come.
     "Get them out of here before  the fuel cuts us off. Give them  the car.
Go,  mate, just get  them  out  of here. This fucker  stays,  I want  him to
watch." Lotfi had pulled the grease ball on to the bed and was yelling abuse
at  him. He let fly with his fist,  punching him hard in the mouth for  good
measure.
     As Greaseball tried to separate  his hair from the blood on  his face I
made sure  he saw me  take  out  the butcher's knife. He  began to  get  the
message. His brown eyes bulged and shook some more.
     I pulled Zeralda by the arm and rolled him back over on to his stomach,
then sat astride him and  grabbed a  fistful  of his hair in my left hand. I
yanked it back and positioned the knife below his Adam's apple.
     I  looked up  to  double-check that Greaseball was  watching, and  then
started  to cut. I had prepared myself for days by telling myself  that this
was going to  be shocking, but this  wasn't the time to be shocked. I  had a
job to do.
     The  knife was razor  sharp, and I felt little resistance  once  it got
through the  first layer of skin and  I pulled back on his head to  make the
cutting easier. I was beginning to feel a little lightheaded.  Maybe  it was
because of  the  cloud of wacky baccy that still  hung in  the  air,  but  I
doubted it. Pink Floyd were still at full pitch, singing  about the happiest
days of our lives.
     Greaseball closed his eyes but Lotfi thrust his pistol against his ear,
uttering in Arabic. His eyes opened again, just in time to see  blood stream
from his dead friend on to the tiles, and flow between his own feet dangling
from  the bed. It  was too  much for him; he vomited on to the bedding as he
tried desperately to keep his feet off the ground, as if it was on fire.
     He  started  to  gob off  in vomit-soaked Arabic to  Lotfi,  but halted
abruptly as a blinding light burst  through the haze of sweet-smelling smoke
that still filled the air.
     It  came from the area around the tanks. The OBIs had done their stuff.
The fuel  was  burning  good-style: I  could  see  the  leaves on  the trees
outside,  which were higher than the perimeter wall, reflecting  the  bright
orange flames.
     I concentrated  on the job in hand,  working  at the  top of his spinal
column like I  was  cutting a section of ox-tail.  Lotfi had got fed up with
his supporting role and  was pistol-whipping  the  other paedophile.  If  he
hadn't before,  Greaseball  now got the  message: he  was  in  deep shit. He
started begging, his legs  and red-stained soles up by his chest,  his hands
down between them trying to protect himself as he lay on the bed.
     "Please,  please, I'm a friend. I'm a  friend ..." something like that,
anyway.  His English sounded pretty good;  I  just couldn't hear too clearly
with the music this loud.
     I  yelled at Lotfi:  "Turn that fucking  noise off, it's  doing my head
in."
     He kicked his way  past  the furniture that had been thrown  around the
room, and  seconds later the music stopped,  just as Greaseball tried wiping
the vomit from his mouth before realizing his hands were bloodstained.
     Hubba-Hubba appeared in the doorway and for a moment looked appalled by
what I had nearly finished.
     What?"
     "Glasses," he said.
     What?"
     "One of the boys needs his glasses."
     I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
     "Fuck him, just get rid of them. We're running out of time."
     "He can't. He needs them, they're difficult to get. Really expensive to
buy here."
     He rooted around  on the floor  next  to the bed, then pulled  back the
blood-soaked covers as I finished what I'd come to do.
     I  grabbed the top sheet, pulled it from under  Greaseball, and wrapped
Zeralda's head in it.
     Hubba-Hubba stood over the headless body.
     "Can you turn him over?"
     "What?"
     Turn him over. They could be under him. You have the gloves."
     I did as I was told. The precious glasses were under his legs, one lens
cracked and bloodstained.
     Hubba-Hubba picked  them up between his thumb  and forefinger as if  he
was holding a scorpion. They can go now, I'll put them in the car."
     Lotfi hadn't returned, but I knew what he was up to.
     I  wiped the  knife blade on  the bed and put it back into  the bergen,
then pulled out a black bin liner and threw in the shrouded head.
     And that  was it.  I'd never cut off a man's head before, and  I hadn't
been looking forward to  it one bit. But after seeing Zeralda with the boys,
I'd had  all the incentive I needed. In fact, I felt pretty good as I turned
to Greaseball.
     The roar of burning fuel now filled the night. Flames licked higher and
higher, brushing against the sky. The police could only be minutes away.
     Greaseball raised himself up from the bed.
     "You  can't kill me, I am too important. No one but  Zeralda is  to  be
killed  you  know  that,  don't you? You  can't  kill  me,  that is not your
decision to make, you are just the tools."
     I looked him straight in the eye, but  said nothing, feeling  angry and
deflated as he spat out some vomit. Then he almost smiled.
     "How do you think your people knew that he  would be here  tonight? You
cannot kill me, I'm  too  important. You need me. Now, stop being stupid and
crawl back into your kennel until required."
     Windows were being smashed  about  the house now, to feed the  fire  we
were  going  to  start  in  here.  Lotfi and  Hubba-Hubba would be  stacking
furniture for good measure. This was  the bit they'd really loved during the
training.
     Lotfi  pulled the  last of the squeezy  bottles from his bergen. They'd
been  half filled with boiled washing up  liquid, then topped up with petrol
and given a good shake. He gave  the  bed a squirt,  then saved the rest for
Zeralda. One match and this place would be an inferno.
     Greaseball  made a  run for it into the  house  and Hubba-Hubba started
after him.
     "Leave him. Not enough time."
     The phone  rang and we all jumped.  It could have been anyone maybe the
police,  maybe  one  of Zeralda's  family, or one of  his paedophile  mates.
Whatever, Hubba-Hubba turned and gave the phone a good old squirt as well.
     "Come on!" I  shouted, 'time to move.  Let's light up,  let's go, let's
go!"
     I shouldered my bergen, and heard the rush of fuel being ignited in the
room next door. Lotfi ran  past me and out into the courtyard. I followed as
Hubba-Hubba transformed the bedroom into a furnace.
     There was no great plan for the next  bit just run down to the boat and
get out to sea for a pick-up and  some hot sticky black tea and a noseful of
diesel fumes.
     As I ran through the perimeter door  I  saw the  flaming fuel  from the
bung flowing out of the breach and down the incline, exactly like it said in
the script. The sky was bright  orange. After all that  practising, all that
rehearsal, it  looked  just beautiful. I stood there  for  what  seemed like
ages, looking at the flames as the heat gently seared my skin.  I was almost
sorry that we  wouldn't be  around to see the best bit. As the flames flowed
under the  fuel trucks, they, too,  would soon  be joining  in the fun, with
luck just as the police arrived.
     Lotfi gave me a shove, and  our shadows followed us  until we got  over
the  lip. Once we hit the sand  it was  simply a  case of turning  right and
following the shoreline to the Zodiac.
     As I  scrambled down the hill  I felt nothing but exhilaration. At long
last I'd earned my US passport and the right to a whole new life.
     Five.
     FRIDAY, 16 NOVEMBER, 11:56 hrs
     I  sat on the T, the smart aluminium commuter train that had brought me
from Logan  airport into  Boston  and, after  a quick change,  north towards
Wonderland.
     Wonderland always sounded to me like some kind of glitzy shopping mall;
in fact, it was only the drop-off point for people from the northern suburbs
heading into Boston. Today,  though, no  destination  could have been better
named.  Carrie had been lecturing at  MIT this morning, so was picking me up
here  instead of at  the airport,  then taking me  to her mother's  place in
Marblehead, a  small  town about  twenty miles  north  along the  coast. Her
mother had lent us the granny annexe, while she  carried on with her B-and-B
business in the main house. Carrie and I lived there alone now that Luz  had
started high school in Cambridge. To me it was home, and it was  a long time
since I'd felt that way about anywhere.
     The other passengers looked at me as if I'd just escaped from the local
nuthouse. After two days of  travelling back from Egypt, my skin was greasy,
my  eyes  stung, and  my  socks, armpits and breath stank. As some  kind  of
damage limitation before I saw Carrie I was brushing my teeth and swallowing
the foaming paste  as  I  looked  out  of  the window. It  wasn't  going  to
transform me into Brad Pitti on Oscars night but it was the best I could do.
     I picked up the nylon holdall near my feet and put it on the empty seat
beside  me. I needed to check just one more time that the bag was sterile of
anything  that could  link me to the job  before she picked  me up. My  hand
passed over  the smooth, rounded shape of the  Pyramids snowstorm shaker I'd
bought  her at Cairo airport,  and the  hard edge  of the  small photo album
she'd lent me for my weeks away.
     "If you don't look at it and think nice things about me every day, Nick
Stone," she'd said, 'don't even think about coming back."
     I opened  it  and felt a grin spreading across my face, as it did every
time I saw her. She was  standing  outside Abbot Hall in Washington  Square,
Marblehead, on the start of what she'd called my US Heritage Induction Tour.
Abbot Hall was the home of The Spirit of '76', the famous portrait of a LIFE
and drum at the head of an infantry column during the revolutionary war. She
wanted me  to see it because she said it embodied the spirit of  America and
if I was going  to become  a US  citizen one day, it was  my  solemn duty to
damned well admire and be moved by it. I said I thought it  looked more like
a cartoon than a masterpiece, and she pushed me outside.
     Her short brown hair was being  buffeted by  the wind blasting off  the
Atlantic as I pressed the shutter. She  looked like GI Jane in green fatigue
cargoes  and a baggy  grey sweater.  She certainly didn't look  in  her late
thirties, even  though  a certain  sadness  in her  smile,  and a  few small
creases at the corners of her mouth  and eyes,  told  anybody who was paying
attention that the last couple of years had not been easy on her.
     "Nothing  Photo Shop can't  handle," she  said, 'once I've scanned them
into the PC."
     It  was  rare to see  her  expression  so relaxed, even  when  she  was
sleeping.  Normally  it  was  much  more   animated,  most  often  frowning,
questioning, or registering disgust  at Corporate America's latest  outrage.
She had good reason  to look weighed down.  It had been hard for her and Luz
since the two  of them had come back from Panama, one without a husband, the
other  without the man  who'd become  her father.  Since Aaron's death there
hadn't been a day when  he didn't come into her conversation. I still tended
to cut away  from stuff like  this, but  the way she  saw it, he'd been  her
husband for fifteen years and dead for only a little over one.
     In  the whole of my life as a Special  Forces soldier, and later, as  a
"K' working on  deniable operations for the Intelligence Service, I'd always
tried  to  turn my back  on the  guilt,  remorse and  self-doubt that always
followed a job; what was done was done. But watching her trying to deal with
it moved me more than I'd thought possible.
     I'd  been  sent to  Panama in September 2000  to coerce a  local  drugs
racketeer  into  helping  the  West.  Carrie and  Aaron  had been  my  local
contacts; they'd  been environmental  scientists running  a research station
near the Colombian border, and on the CIA  payroll as low-level intelligence
gatherers.  I  was staying  at  their house when  the racketeer's boys  came
looking for me, and Aaron had paid the price.
     There hadn't  been many days since when I didn't wonder if there'd been
something more I could have done to save him.
     There  was  another photograph  of Carrie in her  mother's  kitchen  at
Marblehead. She was cooking  clam chowder.  Just to  one  side of her was  a
framed black and white portrait of her with  her father, George, a handsome,
square-jawed all-American in a uniform, probably taken in the early sixties.
     I gazed at the one of her standing outside her college. Carrie had been
encouraging me  to give the place a try; I'd always  loved medieval history,
and had been reading quite a lot about  the Crusades lately. I'd  told her I
wasn't sure the whole  mature-student thing  was  me,  working in Starbucks,
being  bollocked  by an eighteen-year-old  team  leader.  I hadn't quite got
round to telling her that my formal education had ended when  I was fifteen,
so the college was  unlikely to take  me on as a janitor, let alone enrol me
on one of its courses.
     I guessed there was quite a lot of stuff, one way or the other,i that I
hadn't told Carrie. There was my trip to Algeria, for a start. It wasn't the
job itself; I wouldn't have said  a word about that anyway. It  was the fact
that I'd promised her I'd never get involved in dirty work again. The carrot
George  had  dangled  in   front  of  me  was  irresistible;  with  American
citizenship papers in my pocket,  I'd be free to work at whatever I  wanted.
But I wasn't sure Carrie would appreciate the method behind the madness.
     The  story I'd  told her  was that I'd  been offered three weeks'  work
escorting thrill-seekers into  Egypt. After the 9/11 attacks, tourism to the
Middle East  had all but dried up, and the few travellers still brave enough
to go wanted minders. Carrie agreed it was a good idea for  me to  make some
money before I started the long process  of  applying for citizenship. Until
that happened,  all  I could do were menial jobs, so money would be tight. I
hadn't a clue  how I was going to explain to her why my citizenship had come
through so fast, but  I'd cross that bridge when I  came  to  it. I  sat and
looked  out at the dull grey  day as ice-covered trees zoomed past along the
side of  the track and vehicles  in  the distance with  cold  engines tailed
exhaust fumes behind  them. It wasn't a good start to us being together, but
it was done now. I should just look to the future.
     After   two   days   of  mincing   around,   ninety  metres  below  the
Mediterranean, following the North African  coastline, we'd finally  made it
back into Alexandria. The weather had closed in as predicted about ten hours
after we got on board, not that we knew, so far  below water. A Chrysler MPV
was waiting at the dockside; somebody took my bergen, and that was the  last
I saw of it. For the next  week I just had  to wait in a hotel room in Cairo
while the head I'd brought back was confirmed as Zeralda's. If not, we might
have been sent back to get the correct one.
     I still didn't know why I'd been asked to bring back Zeralda's head and
I still  didn't care. All that mattered was that George was coming to Boston
in a few days' time, and  I'd be getting Nick Stone's shiny new US passport,
social security  number and Massachusetts  driver's licence. I  was about to
become a real person.
     I  looked  around the train. Most  of my fellow travellers had now  got
bored looking at  the  dickhead cleaning his  teeth and wiping the foam that
ran  down  his chin, and were buried in their papers.  The front pages  were
plastered  with  the war in Afghanistan, reporting that everything was going
well  and  there   were  no  casualties.  Northern  Alliance  fighters  were
silhouetted  against  the  sunset as they stood watching  US Special  Forces
soldiers carrying enough kit on their backs to collapse a donkey.
     I looked out and  chewed on my brush. To my right, and running parallel
with  the track, was the coast road, also cutting through the icy marshland.
We  were overtaking  a  taxi,  his  side windows  festooned  with  patriotic
imagery; there was even  a little  Stars  and  Stripes fluttering  from  his
aerial. I couldn't see the driver, but knew he just had to be an Indian or a
Pakistani.  Those guys  didn't want to  leave  anything to chance  in  these
troubled times.
     The  marshland  petered  out, and  whitewashed,  weather-boarded houses
sprang up either side of the train, then the  blur of  supermarkets and used
car lots also draped in the Stars and Stripes.  I felt my pulse quicken with
anticipation. I didn't have to work for the Firm any more, didn't have to do
any  more jobs  for George. I really felt I'd  been given a new  start, that
life was coming together. I was free.
     Six.
     I shoved the toothbrush into my brown nylon holdall  as the  train came
to a halt  and people stood and  got their hats and coats on. The  automatic
doors drew back to reveal  the  signs for Wonderland Station,  and I stepped
out  of the  carriage,  hooking  the holdall over  my  shoulder.  I  got  an
immediate and fierce reminder that I wasn't in North Africa  any  more.  The
temperature was several degrees  below zero. I  zipped up my  fleece jacket,
which did nothing to keep out the bitter wind as I joined the throng heading
for the barrier.
     She  was  standing  by a ticket  desk, dressed in a  green  nylon Puffa
jacket and a  Russian style black sheepskin hat, her breath billowing  about
her face as we both waved and smiled.
     I got through the barrier and threaded my way through the crowd. Taking
her in  my  arms, I planted a big,  exaggerated kiss on her forehead, hoping
that the  toothpaste routine  hadn't been in  vain. I ran  my fingers gently
down her cheek as I drew back and we exchanged huge smiles.
     Her large  green eyes stared  into  mine for  several seconds, then she
hugged me hard.
     "I missed you big-time, Stone."
     "Me too." I kissed her again, properly this time.
     She linked her left arm in mine and rubbed her free hand up and down my
stubble.
     "Come on," she said.
     "Places to  go, things  to  do. Mom's  at a church  meeting  until this
evening so you don't have to say hello until later. Gives us a little time."
She rested her head on my shoulder as we walked outside.
     "But we're not going home just yet. There's something I want you to see
on the way."
     We weren't quite in step: the leg she'd broken in  Panama  had left her
with a slight limp. I grinned like an idiot. I'm all yours."
     The  dog-track parking  lot was  used by commuters during  the day. The
November  air had  already worked its magic on line upon line of windscreens
and frozen them white.
     I looked down at her face poking out from the sheepskin.
     "How's Luz?"
     "Oh, she's fine. She says hi. She might be coming back next week with a
new friend."
     "It'll be good to see her. Who's the lucky boy?"
     "David somebody, I think." She turned to me.
     "But you're not to ' "I know." I held up my hand to swear the oath.
     "No jokes, don't worry, I won't embarrass her..." If I did,  though, it
wouldn't be the first time.
     We reached the main drag and  waited for the lights, along  with ten or
so other pedestrians heading for the lot.
     "So, how  was  your trip? I notice I didn't get  a card of the Pyramids
like I was promised."
     "I know, I know. It's just that  I thought by the time I got back  into
Cairo and posted it I'd be here. Especially this time of year..."
     "Not to worry. You're back, that's all that matters."
     The traffic stopped and the bleeper on the crossing ushered us across.
     "Did you get hit by the storms?"
     "We were much further south."
     "I  was  worried." Those little  lines  appeared at the corners  of her
eyes.
     "Six hundred people died in the floods in Algeria ..."
     I looked straight ahead.
     "Six  hundred? I didn't know." We'd just got in among the cars when she
stopped and faced  me, her arms  pushed in under mine  and linked around  my
waist.
     "You stink like a camel, but it really is good to have you back all the
same." She kissed me lightly on the lips, her skin cold but soft.
     "You  know what?  I don't want you  to go away ever again.  I  like you
right here, where I can see you."
     We  stayed wrapped in each other and I fought the urge to tell her  the
truth. Sanity prevailed. I would find a time and a place to do that, but not
now, not yet.  She was too happy, I was too happy. I wanted to keep the real
world outside.
     She let me go.
     "Magical-mystery-tour time."
     We  got to  her mother's  Plymouth sedan. Carrie  hadn't got  round  to
buying  a car since she'd got back:  she'd been too busy. She'd arranged the
transportation of  Aaron's  body from  Panama to Boston, then the cremation,
before  returning to Panama to scatter his ashes in the jungle.  After that,
she'd had to get Luz settled into high school, and herself into her new job.
She'd  also  had  to set up  house then change her life around again when  a
not-too-reliable Brit turned up begging for a spare room.
     We  split as she  went  to the driver's side of the Plymouth,  reaching
into her bag for the keys and hitting the fob. The car unlocked with a bleep
and a flash of the indicators. I pulled open the door, threw my holdall into
the back and climbed in, as Carrie closed her door and put on her belt. That
frown  of hers had  reappeared, the  one  that  went  along  with the raised
eyebrow and slight tilt of the head.
     The engine  turned  over and we  rolled  out of the parking  space. She
cleared her throat.
     "I've been thinking about  a whole bunch  of stuff while you were away.
There's something very important I want to say to you."
     I  reached  across  and  pulled  off her  hat before running my fingers
slowly through her hair,  as she negotiated the Plymouth over  the  potholed
tarmac. We hit the main drag and turned left up the north shore  for the ten
miles to Marblehead.
     "Good important or bad important?" She shook her head.
     "Not yet. It'll be easier for me to explain when we get there."
     I nodded slowly.
     "OK. Tell me some other stuff, then."
     Luz liked her new school, she said, and had started to make some really
nice friends; she was staying over with one of them for the rest of the week
to  give  us time  together. She also told  me how her mother's  B-and-B had
picked up a little since September. Oh, and that she thought  there might be
a part-time job for me at the yacht club as  a barman. I  wanted to tell her
that I didn't need  a job pulling  pints of Samuel  Adams for  weekend water
warriors.  Come  Wednesday,  I  was going  to be  a  bona  fide, flag-waving
citizen; the US was my oyster, and all that sort of thing.
     Marblehead old town was like a film set: brightly painted wooden houses
with neat little gardens sitting  on winding streets. Cornish fishermen  had
settled there in the  1600s, maybe because the rocky coastline reminded them
of home. The only fishermen there  now  dangled lines off the backs of their
million-dollar boats in the Boston yacht club.
     Marblehead  today  was where  old' Boston  money met new Boston  money.
Carrie's mother had  been born there, and was blessed with plenty of the old
stuff. She'd come  back ten or  so years ago, after her divorce from George,
and took in B-and-B guests because she enjoyed the company.
     Carrie made a couple of  turns that took us off the main street and  we
came  to a  stop on a  small  road that ran along the water's edge. Tucker's
Wharf  jutted  just  a  little into  the  water,  with  old  weather boarded
buildings either side, now restaurants and ye olde shoppes. This is it," she
announced.
     "We're here."
     We got out,  zipped up against the cold, and Carrie took my arm as  she
walked me towards a wooden bench. We sat and looked out over the  bay at the
large houses the other side.
     "Mom used to bring me here when I was a kid," Carrie said.
     "She called it  Marblehead's gangway to the world. That  sounded pretty
magical to  a ten-year-old, I can tell you. Itmade me think my home town was
the centre of the universe."
     It sounded pretty magical to me,  even now.  The place I'd grown up  in
was the centre of a shit-heap.
     "She used to tell me all kinds of stories of  fishing boats setting off
from  here  to  the  Grand  Banks,  and  crews  gathering  to  join  in  the
revolutionary war and the war of 1812." She smiled.
     "You're  not  the  only   history  buff  around  here.  I  hope  you're
impressed." The smile  faded  slowly as her thoughts turned  elsewhere.  She
looked into my eyes, then away, across the water.
     "Nick, I don't really know where to start with this."
     I  gave  her hair a stroke. I didn't know where this was  going, but  I
guessed it had  to do with Aaron. I had a sudden flash of him  sitting under
guard in that store room in Panama, smoking. His nose  was bloodied and  his
eyes were swollen, but he was smiling, maybe feeling happy with himself that
he'd helped the  rest of us  escape into the jungle as  he enjoyed his  last
cigarette.
     I  hadn't had a clue  how I was going  to get  him  out of there. I was
unarmed; my options were  about nil. Then he had made the  decision for  me.
The door burst open and Aaron launched himself into the night.
     As  he slithered into the darkness there was a long burst of  automatic
fire from inside the house. Then the guard got to the door and took aim with
a short, sharp burst.
     I had heard an anguished gasp, then a chilling,  drawn-out scream. Then
the sort of silence that told me he was dead.
     "I brought  him here,  you know, soon after  we'd met. We  came up from
Panama one vacation. I knew it would  scandalize my parents. Turned out they
had a whole lot of other stuff on their minds. George was too  busy fighting
whoever were the designated  bad guys that  year  to notice I was  there.  I
shouldn't have been surprised. He couldn't even  remember Mom's birthday. So
back we went  to Panama to study while the folks  got divorced."  She smiled
wistfully.
     "Jeez, I'd gone to all that trouble to round off my rebellious years by
getting laid by my teacher, and my straitlaced parents were too busy messing
up their own relationship to pay any attention  ... Shit!" she said, rolling
her eyes.
     "Maybe I shouldn't be encouraging you into college."
     I gave her a squeeze.
     "I  spent  my  rebellious  teenage years  nicking  cars, and the ones I
couldn't get into I'd just smash up. I think they're over now."
     Suddenly she pressed herself against me.
     "I hated you being away, Nick. It scared me. I guess it made me realize
how much I've got used to having you around.  After Aaron died I told myself
I'd be very careful about laying myself open to that sort of pain again."
     I lifted a hand to her face and brushed a tear from her cheek.
     "I was worried about being with you, Nick.  Dependability isn't exactly
high on your resume."
     I gave my resume, as she called it, a quick glance. This time last year
I'd been living in sheltered housing in Camden, had no money, had to line up
to  get free food from a Hare Krishna  soup-wagon.  All my friends were dead
apart from one, and he despised me. Apart from  the clothes I  stood  up  in
when I arrived in Panama,  my only other possessions  were in a bag stuck in
Left Luggage at a London railway station. She had a point.
     "And  no sooner have we  settled down here than you take off again. Not
much for a girl to brag to her mother about, is it?" She paused.
     "Then there's Kelly. What if we don't get on? What if she and Luz don't
get on?"
     I  was Kelly's guardian:  she was the other woman in my life I was busy
disappointing. She was  thirteen and not nearly as grown-up as she liked  to
think  she was. I'd  be seeing  her  at Christmas down  in Maryland.  Not on
Christmas Day itself, because she was doing the  family thing with  Josh and
his children, her new family, but I'd be seeing her on Christmas Eve.
     "Carrie, I ' She placed a finger to my lips.
     "Sssh..." She turned and looked me straight in the eye.
     "I was  worried, but I'm not  worried any more. I  don't care about the
past. You're a tour guide now, a barman, whatever -I  don't care, as long as
you're good at it. The  last few weeks have been good for me.  They  gave me
time to think, and  I realized something. I can  finally think about  what's
ahead. It's  like I was just treading  water the  last year, my life was  on
hold.
     That's what I want to tell you,  Nick. I want us  to be together really
together." She looked down, then up again and into my eyes.
     "New Carrie, new Nick, new life. That's why I wanted to bring you here.
Tucker's Wharf, gangway to the world. Gangway to the future.
     "You've been so patient  about  Aaron. I  know I'll never get over him,
but I am ready to move on, and that's the important thing. I want the future
to be about us."
     "I don't know what to say."
     Then don't. You don't need to say anything."
     We stood  up  and walked arm in arm for about  twenty  minutes until we
reached a small protected cove.
     "Little Harbor." She swept her hand across the bay.
     "Mom always called this the  place where  it all began.  The  founders,
some of them her family, put down their roots here in 1629. The settlers cut
back the forest  to build  tiny thatch-roofed cottages  and fishing boats. I
can still hear Mom saying, "From here, strong-hearted  men  set  out to fish
uncharted  waters." I loved her stories of the founding families. They  were
gutsy, venturesome, in search of  personal  liberty, a plot of land, a place
by the sea..."
     They had a point." I was surprised to hear myself saying it out loud.
     "Marblehead  is pretty much my fantasy,  too, you know." I hadn't known
places like this existed when I was bunking off school in Peckham.
     Tucker's Wharf was about departures, Nick. This is about arrivals. It's
our new start. I feel we're at the start of something, and I wanted to bring
you here to tell  you that. I've never shared this  place with  anyone,  not
even Aaron." She smiled again.
     "Ready for  some  more history?  Our ships traded with the known world,
dried fish  for clothing, tools, gold  and  silver. Everybody  prospered and
there were  two big news stories  -war with the  French, and  pirates.  They
harassed the coast for decades."
     She hesitated for a moment, embarrassed.
     "I got you this." From  under her coat she produced a carefully wrapped
gift, tied with shiny blue ribbon. She beamed.
     "Go on, then, open it. It won't bite."
     I removed the ribbon as delicately as I could.
     A General  History of the Robberies  and Murders of the  most Notorious
Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson.
     She could barely  conceal her delight as  I  flicked through the pages,
pausing at each illustration.
     "It  was  first published  in  1724. I had  to get this edition from  a
little place  in New York. I  know  it's not the Middle  Ages, but there's a
whole  lot about ships from New England being boarded  en route to London. I
knew you'd like it. And, besides, it's to remind you of everything I've been
boring you about just now."
     I closed the book.
     "You haven't been boring me. I loved every word of it."
     We got back into  the car and drove to Gregory Street.  The  house  had
been in the family for years. Built in 1824, it was originally a fisherman's
cottage overlooking the sea. Various extensions and rebuilds over the years,
probably during the Golden Age she was talking about, had turned it  into  a
spacious family home. A wooden pineapple was nailed above the  front door as
a sign of welcome. They were all over the place in this part of the world. A
couple of hundred years ago, sailors returning from long voyages would place
a pineapple by their  door to show they were back and people were welcome to
come and visit. I would normally have made some quip about that, but thought
better of it today.
     She swung the  car  into the  gravel led driveway  and headed towards a
white Taurus parked  in front of the annexe,  next to my covered-over Yamaha
600 motorcycle.
     Carrie didn't seem too concerned.
     "I thought Mom wasn'texpecting anyone until Saturday. Oh, well, I'll go
see  if she remembered to put out  the cookies and coffee. Got to look after
the guests!"
     As we got closer I  could see Massachusetts plates.  The vehicle was so
clean and sterile it had to be a hire car.
     She parked beside it and we both got out. She threw her keys at me over
the roof. Tell you what, why not  take a shower and I'll be  right back? And
make sure  you  shave. We  have  some catching up to do."  There was a smile
before she nodded at the annexe.
     "Go."
     Excited, she ran back  down the drive towards the front of the house as
I went  into the annexe.  It was huge, much bigger  than the last house  I'd
lived in, and tastefully furnished in dark wooden furniture that had been in
the  family for generations. I always felt  as if  a photographer from Homes
and  Gardens would appear at any minute  to take pictures of me reclining by
the log  fire. I didn't spread myself around too much, though. I didn't have
much to spread.
     She had made a big effort for  my homecoming. There were flowers, and a
bottle of champagne on the mantelpiece. Leaning against it was a plain white
card that  said  in her distinctive,  large and  neat handwriting,  "Welcome
home."
     I put my holdall on the floor  in  the bedroom, went into the en  suite
and got the shower sparked up while I undressed. The hot  water ran  down my
smelly  body  and I did  something I hadn't done for a  while. I  started to
think seriously about the future.
     I got to work with the soap and razor before stepping out to dry myself
with soft white towels.
     I heard the front door shut.
     "I'm in here ..."
     The bedroom door opened and she  stood in the frame, tears running down
her red face.
     I  had  a  bad  feeling  about  this,   and  it  had  to  do  with  the
Massachusetts-plated Taurus parked in the driveway.
     "Carrie?"
     Her  green  eyes,  just  as red  as  her  face, stared at me as I moved
forward to  comfort  her.  "George  is here.  Tell me what he's saying isn't
true, Nick." Her eyes searched mine, and I had to look away.
     "What's he saying?"
     That you've been working for him."
     "Carrie, come and sit down '
     "I don't want to sit down."
     "I have something to tell you."
     Then  tell me,  before  I  go  crazy,"  she said, and I could  hear her
starting to lose control.
     "What are you going to tell me? Why won't you simply say that my father
is lying?"
     "Because it's not that simple," I said.
     "It is simple! It's fucking simple!" She could no longer keep the panic
out of her voice.
     "He says you work for  him. But that's not true, is it,  Nick?  Is  it?
You've  been in Egypt, haven't you,  as a  tour  guide? Christ, Nick, are we
living a lie here?"
     I shrugged. I didn't know what to say.
     Carrie looked at me as if I'd knifed her.
     "You bastard!" she gasped.
     "You fucking bastard!"
     "You don't need to know this shit," I said.
     "My work for him is finished. I've done one job for him. I only  did it
to get my citizenship. George has got me a US passport. We can '
     "We nothing!" she snapped.
     "We don't exist any more."
     "But '
     "You don't understand what you've done to me, do you?"
     The  next  few  seconds seemed  to pass in  slow motion.  Carrie  moved
towards the door, anger  and sadness etched across her face. She stopped and
looked at me for a  long time, as if  she had  something to say but couldn't
find the words. Then she was gone.
     I didn't move. I told myself I needed to give her some space. In truth,
I just didn't have the bollocks to go after her.
     Then the decision was made for me. The engine of the Plymouth  fired up
and the car shot down the drive.
     Seven.
     A gang of  seagulls screeched  overhead  and dived into  the water just
forty metres away as I ran towards the front of the house.
     The sea was choppy; there was a wind getting up that made the yachts in
the bay  bob agitatedly at their moorings, and their rigging sound like  the
rattle of a hundred cages.
     I  opened  the insect  screen and as soon  as I  was through  the heavy
wooden front  door I  was hit  by  the overbearing heat. Her mother kept the
temperature at a solid ninety degrees, day and night.
     George called out from the rear, "In the kitchen."
     My Timberlands clunked on the dark hardwood floor of the hallway and  I
passed the loudly ticking grandfather clock.
     George was sitting, straight backed, at the old pine rectangular table.
A dozen or  so photographs  of boats were stuck to a  cork board behind him,
and he was looking down at a picture frame in his hands.  Little doilies and
smelly candles sat on every scrap of surface.
     "You