Aggressor (27 page)

He was tumbling down, images from the street spinning past his face as he fell. The crowd fell on him, blocking out the sun. They were kicking him, pulling his hair, ripping his clothes. He tried to shield his face with his hands, but his arms were nearly pulled from their sockets.

Then he heard a volley of shots and suddenly saw daylight again. He struggled to his feet, as his assailants scattered. He saw blood, his blood, dripping into an open drain. When he looked up, he found himself staring into the unsmiling face of Captain Lutfi Al-Qadi of State Security.

The Guide watched from the tiny latticed window of his second-floor room as the ‘agnabi Girling was led away, flanked by two plain-clothes police officers, with a third, short and overweight, leading the way down the street.

The Guide found that his exchange with the ‘agnabi had vexed him deeply. It was partly the look in the young man's face, partly the reminder of times past, dredged up so publicly, that preyed on his mind.

Most of all, though, he caught in Girling's eyes a vision of troubled times to come. Not for himself; the Guide was beyond caring for his own physical well-being. He was old and his moment, the moment he had been waiting for all his life, was near. But for his brothers Girling spelled danger. He must pass the message on.

He called over his scribe, the katib, and proceeded to dictate a letter.

Bookerman leaned against the fuselage of his Sikorsky smoking a cigarette. He watched the comings and goings of the Russians dispassionately. The Soviet investigation team, a bunch of technicians from Qena, had been brought in on another Hind, accompanied by a fully-armed detachment of Spetsnaz.

A Soviet sergeant, in charge of the armed escort, informed Bookerman that the troops were there to ward off any inquisitive Bedouin who strayed into the wadi. But Bookerman knew that was only part truth. He had little doubt their primary task was to discourage the Pathfinders from getting too close. Some things never changed. He had been at the Paris Air Show once when the Soviets' pride, the MiG-29, had crashed during the display. The Russians closed ranks and began blaming anyone or anything except their flawless fighter. He sniffed the same paranoia in the air in this hot and dusty wadi.

As the Sikorsky which Bookerman had requested as back-up disgorged its complement of Pathfinders, he was able to relax. Bookerman didn't like to spend more time than he had to in the company of Russians, particularly when they outnumbered him.

As he pulled a last drag from his Marlboro and tossed the butt away, Bookerman became aware of a commotion around the twisted remains of the Hind's tail boom. He joined a group of three Pathfinders and set off towards it.

The boom had carved out an enormous trench in the centre of the dried-out river-bed. It was so deep that from where Bookerman had been standing beside his helicopter, it was possible to see only the mangled blades of the tail rotor. Now as he came closer Bookerman could see a group of technicians huddled around the boom like archaeologists gazing at a newly excavated dig.

The Pathfinder group was still thirty yards away when a young Spetsnaz soldier spun round, his Kalashnikov pointed right at them. The Russian screamed something and Wallace, the leading American, stopped in his tracks. The two other Pathfinders made to unsling their weapons.

‘Stoi!' the Russian shouted. There was a wild look in his eyes.

Wallace held his arms out, the palms of his hands face down. His escort let go of their weapons.

Wallace looked the Russian, a fair-haired corporal, squarely in the eye. ‘What the fuck is with you, boy?'

‘Sabotage!' the soldier yelled, jabbing his weapon. ‘You killed them, Yankee.'

Bookerman could tell from the expressions on the faces of the other Russians that the belief was shared.

A Russian officer, a major, sprinted across from another area of the crash site. He shouted at his corporal, but the soldier appeared not to hear. He kept his eyes fixed on Wallace, his gun aimed at the middle of the American's ribcage. Bookerman tensed. From the set of the Russian soldier's jaw and the look in his eyes, he was going to blow a hole through Wallace's chest. The major swung his 9mm into a firing position. The corporal saw the movement and started to turn, bringing his assault rifle round with him, but the officer's pistol found its target first and jumped, the shots booming in the confines of the wadi. The bullets lifted the soldier off his feet and threw him into the pit gouged by the tail boom.

Bookerman was the first to unfreeze. He jumped into the pit and knelt beside the body. A shadow fell across him and Bookerman looked up into the face of the corporal's executioner. The officer was holstering his Makharov. His face was devoid of any expression.

‘Perhaps it was the heat,' the officer said.

Bookerman shook his head. ‘Don't give me that horseshit. He said something about sabotage.'

The officer shrugged and turned away. Bookerman got to his feet, grabbed the Russian's shoulder and spun him round. ‘Tell me what he meant.'

The Russian hesitated, then indicated that Bookerman should follow him to the centre of the crash site. A small section of skin had been pulled back from the tail boom. Bookerman examined the guts of the machine. For the most part it was intact, with little sign of internal damage. His gaze skirted past the ribs, wires, and incidental components of the helicopter's dynamic systems to rest at a point where the shaft linking the main transmission drive and the tail rotor had sheared in two. Orange hydraulic fluid dripped onto the gleaming metal.

‘He thought this was sabotage,' the officer said.

‘And you?'

‘No sabotage.'

‘Then what?'

‘Structural failure, maybe.'

‘But this was a new helicopter,' Bookerman said. They didn't come newer.

The officer clambered to the top of the trench and looked down. Bookerman had not moved.

‘We go back to base now,' the Russian said. ‘No doubt Colonel Shabanov will issue orders to recover the wreckage later.'

Bookerman heard turboshaft engines spooling into life a little way down the wadi.

He climbed wearily to the top of the pit and paused before heading back to his Sikorsky. It was some moments before he realized Wallace was standing there beside him, waiting for orders.

‘Are you all right, Major? You look like you were the one who nearly got blown away.'

Bookerman didn't answer.

‘It's time to get going, sir,' the sergeant said, more firmly.

Bookerman nodded and started walking. ‘You're right, Wallace. The quicker the better.'

‘Sir?'

‘Someone took a saw to that shaft and cut it almost in two. That Hind was flying on borrowed time. And the Russians think we did it.'

Al-Qadi clicked his fingers and the driver tore off down the road. A turn close by the train station confirmed they were heading for the Mukhabarat's interrogation centre in Shubra.

The main drag gave way to the oppressive squalor of slums. Here, there were no children playing, no dogs, even, roaming the gutters for scraps. The air was thick, every molecule charged. The Fiat splashed through open drains and the stench of the water rose to meet them. Al-Qadi removed a soiled handkerchief from his top pocket and wiped it under his nose.

The interrogation centre seemed to have cast a pall over the surrounding area. It was a desolate place, a place you went to and never returned. As they pulled up before the red and white barrier and Al-Qadi wound down his window Girling realized there ‘was something more. Shubra felt as if it had been sealed in a vacuum. There was no sound.

He was marched, a policeman on either side to support him, into the bowels of the building. Al-Qadi's plastic soles squeaked on the smooth flag-stones as he led the way down the corridors of cells. From time to time the investigator would stop, slide back a hatch and peep inside. From one, Girling heard a sudden cry. Al-Qadi responded by gargling some phlegm in the back of his throat and spitting it to the floor.

At last, Al-Qadi kicked in a door, letting it swing on its hinges as he groped in the darkness for the switch. Greasy yellow light pulsed from a bare bulb hanging in the centre of the room. The current crackled as it fought against the build-up of damp in the flex.

Al-Qadi gestured to a chair by a table, the only furniture in the cell. There was a strong odour of urine. Girling took three steps before his legs gave way and he fell. The concrete floor was cold and wet against his face.

The door crashed shut behind him and he looked up in time to see Al-Qadi's face momentarily framed by the bars. Girling struggled to his feet and stuck his head as far as possible into the opening. He bellowed down the corridor, but all he heard was his own weak echo and the squeak of Al-Qadi's soles disappearing into the distance. When he turned back to the room, the light had failed and the cell was quite dark.

Girling moved to a corner where the odour of excrement was less pungent. He tilted the chair, his back resting against the wall, and listened. At first he heard nothing. Slowly, however, sound bubbled up through the silence. He was able to identify the desolate cry he had heard before, the murmurings of a man deep in prayer ritual, and a third voice, very weak, probably a woman.

It was several hours before Girling heard the approaching squeak of Al-Qadi's shoes once more. He shook himself awake and waited for the door to be thrown open. But the sound wasn't anything to do with Al-Qadi, nor was it coming from the corridor. The rats were in his cell.

Ulm strode purposefully down the centre line of the hangar, glancing left and right at the squat shapes of the MH-53Js. His engineers swarmed over, under, and inside them. The noise of engines spooling and the clatter of wrenches and power drills working against machines was the same sound he heard every time he walked into the maintenance shop at Kirtland. Yet, there was also something missing. It was only when he was half-way down the hangar that he realized what it was. There was no chat, no laughter as his men worked. He wasn't the only one who had been stung by the Soviets' sabotage allegation. The order from the crew chiefs had been check and double-check the machines. Lightning was not going to strike twice.

It was not a good day to be leaving Qena, but he needed to make contact with the embassy in Cairo to collect the codes that would trigger the mission. He was due on the northbound express later that evening.

He found Jones in the back of one of the MH-53Js. The sergeant had just finished binding his head with bandage from the helicopter's first-aid box.

‘How are you doing, Spades?'

‘I've felt better, sir.'

Ulm pulled down one of the folding troop seats and sat opposite his sergeant. ‘Tell me what happened.'

Jones told him about their desperate search for water and the incident with the bedouin at the well.

‘Bitov killed them?'

‘I wouldn't be talking to you now if he hadn't.' He paused. ‘If you ask me, we were never meant to find any wells. I'll bet that bastard doctored the maps.'

‘Who?'

‘Shabanov. With respect, sir, the son of a bitch is capable of anything. Which reminds me. Who came in last on the E and E exercise?'

‘Kerrigan and Tarantinov,' Ulm said. ‘But they won't be doing it again.'

‘How come?'

‘Our friend the colonel is too preoccupied with the crash of his

Mi-24.'

‘What's the latest on the helicopter?' Jones asked.

‘They're still bringing in the bits, but I think it's a fair assumption we won't be riding into the Lebanon on Mils.'

‘Well, at least something's going our way,' Jones said. ‘I never much liked the look of Soviet hardware.'

‘Spades, there are two men dead because of that crash and the Soviets think we had something to do with it.'

‘What do you think, sir?'

‘I think Bookerman was mistaken, that it was most likely some kind of structural failure. Why would any of us want to sabotage one of their helicopters?'

‘Maybe one of them tampered with it,' Jones said.

‘Come off it, Spades.' Ulm put a hand on the sergeant's shoulder. ‘You look like you could use some rest.'

Jones opened his mouth to speak again, but thought the better of it.

Ulm looked at him thoughtfully. ‘What's on your mind, Spades?'

‘It's probably nothing.'

‘Spit.'

‘He said something that's got me beat, that's all.'

‘Who's that?'

‘Bitov. It was while we were on the cliff. He was telling me about some kind of mission-impossible in Afghanistan from which only he and Shabanov came back. Thing was, the unit they were attached to wasn't Spetsnaz.'

Ulm shook his head. ‘Shabanov has been in Spetsnaz twenty years. And the Sovs went into Afghanistan in 1979.'

‘So where does Opnaz fit in?'

‘Slip of the tongue?'

‘I don't think so, sir.'

‘Then maybe that bedouin hit you harder than you thought.'

Jones passed his hand over the newly applied bandage and managed a broad smile. ‘You could be right there,' he said.

Doyle had just finished submitting his daily report to TERCOM when Ulm appeared at the door of the communications room. The intelligence officer followed him outside.

‘Anything shaking out there?' Ulm asked.

The IO shook his head. ‘TERCOM's still in silent mode.'

‘Shit, this is shaping up to be one big bitch of a day.'

‘You're bound to pick up some news when you go to Cairo tonight.'

‘I wouldn't count on it. The Angels of Judgement managed to give an entire task force the slip when they pulled that stunt at Beirut. Who's to say they've got any easier to find since?'

‘It'll do you good to get off the base,' Doyle said, then hesitated. ‘You think there's anything in this sabotage shit?'