Exit wound, p.9
Exit Wound, page 9
‘Two hundred to go before our first stop.’
Air rushed through the open window and I caught a glimpse of streetlights. There was a bump and then darkness, like someone had thrown a switch.
‘Let’s see who’s with us, shall we?’ Dex checked the vehicles that had no choice now but to pass us. ‘So far, so good, chaps. No Toyota or Mazda, no one turning off, staking out, or even giving us a second look.’
The Tata shook itself like a wet dog and moved forward once more.
‘“Swing, swing to-ge-ther . . . With your bo-dies be-tween your knees . . .”’
For the next ten minutes we had to put up with his favourite chorus in between snatches of commentary.
‘Here we go, up the kerb.’
We’d reached our final stop and check. We bumped up onto the rough ground surrounding the target. The sky went dark and we came to a halt. The engine ticked over as Dex let the traffic zoom past.
‘No vehicles that came past last time.’ He gave it another thirty seconds. ‘That’s it, we’re clear. No one following and I have no movement or light on target.’ He killed the headlights.
28
Red Ken gave me room to stretch. ‘OK, that’s it. Let’s switch on.’
Dex rolled the wagon slowly over the wasteground towards the target. A couple of hundred metres away from it, he started easing up the handbrake instead of using the foot pedal. We didn’t want red taillights flashing on derelict ground.
We came to a halt and Red Ken and I jumped out. The lights of the city glowed all round our island of darkness. The ski-slope tower blinked about a K away so the Dexes of this world didn’t fly into it. About five hundred metres behind us, hundreds of vehicles flowed along the well-lit main.
We moved forward on foot.
The target wall was maybe a hundred and fifty ahead.
The gates facing the entrance to the building were immediately in front of us. From here on in, that side of the rectangle was White. The left-hand side was Green, the right was Red and the rear section Black. Colour coding prevented confusion: your rear could be someone else’s front.
We eased off to the left. Sweat trickled down my neck as we rounded the first corner of White and Green. We did a complete 360 of the compound wall, gradually spiralling in until we came right up against it where Red met White.
There was a constant hum of traffic. Helicopters buzzed from one high-rise to another in the background. We listened for movement inside the compound. We stayed like that for a couple of minutes, just listening and tuning in. The ambient light wasn’t strong enough to cast a shadow onto the wall, but now my night vision was kicking in I could see the dust and rubble below our feet. My fingers had pruned inside the surgical gloves, floating in pools of sweat.
Red Ken gave me a tap on the shoulder to check if I’d heard anything.
I shook my head.
We followed the wall on White until we reached the entrance.
29
The gate had once had a coat of paint, but I couldn’t tell what colour it had been. The desert wind had sandblasted some patches bare. Wind from the sea had made it rust and peel.
The three big padlocks Red Ken had spotted on their last recce were still in place: massive square things, just the body exposed so you couldn’t attack the shanks with a cutter.
Red Ken went down on his knees, scanning the ground for tread marks. The wind would have obliterated anything more than a few days old, so anything visible could be taken as recent. It was one more combat indicator, something that showed the enemy was close – because tonight there were no friendly forces.
A foot-high ridge of sand had built up along the bottom of the gate. If somebody had made entry recently it would have been disturbed. We were going to leave it just as it was.
Red Ken leant his back against the wall, knees bent. He cupped his hands on his lap. I put my right foot into his gloves, steadied myself with my hands on his shoulders, then reached up and grabbed the top of the wall. He stood and guided my feet to his shoulders.
The yard was pitch black. No vehicle lights, no lights from the windows either side of the shutters.
I waited twenty seconds before looking again, so my unconscious had time for everything around it to sink in. I came back down. ‘OK. We’re on.’
Red Ken moved a little further along the wall towards White and Red to be the marker for the Tata and I moved towards Dex to guide him in. He’d be driving without lights and using only the handbrake and gears.
I pulled my torch up onto my forehead. Its three LEDs shone white or red, as a stable beam or flashes for emergencies. Stable and red would do us fine, but not just yet. I walked until the Tata was almost on top of me and the cab blocked out the city lights behind it. I gripped the sill of the open window to murmur in Dex’s ear, ‘You can see the wall?’
‘Yep.’
‘OK, go half right then turn in. Red’s your marker.’
Dex kept it at gentle revs as he rolled forward. There was no rush about this bit. The noise wasn’t important; not hitting the brakes was. He pulled up the handbrake when he got to his mark and left the engine running.
I scrambled on top of the cab and jumped onto the wall. I dropped into a stretch of finely powdered sand that had had no way of escaping the compound. One hand on my pistol to keep it in my waistband, I ran to Black. All clear.
By the time I got back, Red Ken was checking the shutter. The glow from his head-torch bathed its sides and then its base. He scooped away years of encrusted sand. ‘I got fuck-all to get hold of, son. It’s got to be electric.’
Whoever had closed this down had done so from the inside and then come out via the door in the shutters. Three Chubbs secured that. We’d be here all night trying to defeat them. ‘We’ll have to pull out the frame.’
Silhouetted against the city lights, Dex stood astride the cab roof with the crane’s control box in his hand. The electric winch whined and the steel cable snaked down our side of the wall. Red Ken grabbed it and started walking towards the right-hand window.
30
I helped Red Ken loop the heavy steel hook round the eight bars and back onto the cable. He turned to Dex. ‘All right, mate, let’s do it. Nice and slow.’
The winch hauled in the cable until it was taut. Red Ken and I slipped round the corner of White and Red to get out of the way. If the cable snapped under tension, the whiplash would tear up anyone in its path, like shrapnel from a mortar round. Dex lay flat on the cab for the same reason. We heard the strain in the steel strands, and then a loud crack and rumble as the whole section of wall came away. It hit the ground with a thump and sent up a cloud of dust.
There wasn’t time to celebrate.
Red Ken undid the hook. I turned on my head-torch to constant red and climbed through the hole. I couldn’t see a thing. The red light bounced straight back off the dustcloud, like headlights in fog. The air was hot and musty. It felt like we were breaking into a pyramid. Coughing and spluttering, I began to make out plasterboard walls. I was in an office. I groped for the door. My nose and mouth had filled with grit. I gobbed it onto my shirt. I needed to contain my DNA.
I carried on through the door. My coughs suddenly echoed. I was in the warehouse proper. I turned towards where I thought the shutters should be and my torch beam hit their metal slats. The operating mechanism was mounted on the side wall. I tried pressing the ‘open’ button just in case. Then I grabbed the chain as high as I could and pulled. It didn’t budge. Years of disuse had seized it up.
I jumped up, with arms extended, and hung on, then kicked out from the wall like a kid in an adventure playground to apply some weight and traction from another angle. It gave an inch. I went through the same routine again, jumping up and kicking out, until it gradually relented. I sank to my knees as the slats began to concertina. My sweat-soaked face was coated with sand.
One final wrench and the shutter ascended. I could see Red Ken’s boots in the glow of his head-torch. The hook and webbing straps lay beside them. As soon as the gap was big enough, he rolled under and helped me pull. The shutter came to a complete stop as the inset door hit the top of the roll.
Dex was still on the wagon, silhouetted against the starlit sky.
The dust had almost settled. Our torch beams criss-crossed the interior of the building like lasers. The crates lay in the middle of the warehouse. Six feet by four and two feet high, they each stood on an individual pallet. We moved forward. I felt my heart beating faster. I didn’t want these two silly fuckers to be here – and I didn’t want to be here either.
Red Ken dropped his day-sack on the nearest crate and pulled out a mini-crowbar. We needed to be sure this wasn’t just a bulk shipment from the nearest burqa factory.
I went out to keep Dex in the loop. ‘Found the boxes, just checking – wait out.’ I ran back inside.
‘You need to have a look at this.’ Red Ken was surrounded by tiny white polystyrene balls. They still streamed from the panel he’d wrenched back from the corner of the nearest crate.
I leant down and did as I was told. A few little white balls still clung to the glimmering sheet of engraved yellow metal inside, but not enough to obscure the familiar moustache and smiling face of Saddam Hussein.
He banged the slat back into place. ‘This is the one we’re going to have. Fuck checking the rest.’
We fed the strapping under the pallet, secured it and worked the hook into the side of the webbing strap.
I ran back out. ‘OK, mate. Gently.’
There was nothing gentle about his reaction. ‘Pay day, pay day!’
The electric motor whined as the winch took the strain. The pallet groaned and jerked, then started to creep across the concrete floor towards the exit. Soon it was gouging its way over the open ground. We kept either side of it to make sure it didn’t tip over. We were just metres from the wall. At this rate we’d be fully loaded and out of here within thirty minutes.
Dex slackened off the cable. We grabbed the hook and moved it to the top of the webbing.
‘OK, mate, take it up.’
All he had to do was lift it over the wall, swing left, and lower.
Nothing happened.
I looked up. Dex was on his knees, leaning down towards us.
‘Not good, chaps. We have headlights moving towards Black.’
Red Ken had already grabbed the cable and hoisted himself up to join him.
31
I followed Red Ken up onto the cab roof and watched the single set of headlights, maybe two hundred away, career over the wasteground towards us.
Red Ken drew down his weapon and Dex copied.
I gripped Red Ken’s arm. ‘We’ve got no blue lights. It’s just one vehicle. Could be taking a shortcut.’
‘Maybe,’ Dex said. ‘But it’s going to pass really close. Bound to see us.’
‘Skyline!’
I had already jumped but Red Ken needed to drag Dex down.
We stayed in the shadow at the corner of White. I could now hear the rumble of tyres over rough ground. The approaching vehicle was hugging the wall on Red, its headlights throwing us into deeper shadow. The vehicle stopped just short of the corner.
Dex looked ready to lunge. I held him back. ‘We can contain this. Nobody’s got out yet. There’s no doors slamming, no shouting.’
The headlights died.
Red Ken was calm. ‘Dex, go play local. We’ll hold back. Keep whoever it is in the vehicle while we check them out.’
Dex didn’t hang around. Red Ken and I kept a few metres back. I moved away from the wall so we could deploy all three weapons without cutting into each other’s arcs.
An interior light came on at the rear. The vehicle was big, a 4x4. A dark-coloured Yukon, as big as Red Ken’s Suburban. I moved forward, weapon up, both eyes open. Dex orbited round to the rear cab. The wagon’s suspension shifted as a body changed position inside. Dex grabbed the door handle and pulled hard.
‘Don’t hurt me!’ The voice was terrified and female.
I closed on Dex as he covered her with a brown, swirly-patterned nylon fur blanket so she couldn’t see his face or know he wasn’t alone. The rear cab was littered with carrier bags full of clothes and towels, toiletries, packets of food and bottles of water. Whoever this was, the Yukon was her home.
Red Ken worked quietly up front in the glove compartment and under the seats. He found her handbag and pulled out a purse. Our three head-torches bathed the plastic card he produced in a rubber-gloved hand. The Canadian driver’s licence told us she was Sherry Capland.
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She had about five hundred dollars’ worth of dirhams in her bag. There were no pictures of kids, just a wedding photo, her in a white veil and him in a tuxedo. She’d had long brown hair back then, permed up. A sob shook the blanket. ‘Please, please, don’t hurt me. Just take what you want.’
Red Ken tapped Dex on the shoulder and gave him the waffle sign with thumb and fingers.
He understood. ‘Shut up!’
Red whispered into Dex’s ear.
‘Where’s your husband?’
‘He’s in prison. He lost his job and—’
Red Ken sliced his index finger across his own throat.
Dex slapped the blanket. ‘Enough!’ He slammed the door on her and we got into a huddle.
‘She’s homeless.’ Red Ken spoke quietly. ‘It’s like I told you, if you get binned from your job and you’ve got debts you can’t cover, you’re fucked. You can’t leave the country. They fling you in prison. That’s why there’s all those wagons at the airport and the planes are full. If her old man’s locked up, that makes her an illegal.’
Dex nodded. ‘But what do we do with her?’
Red Ken turned back to the Yukon and opened the door. ‘Sit up, love. We’re not going to hurt you. It’s OK, so for fuck’s sake shut it, will you? Wrong place, wrong time, that’s all.’
She sat cross-legged with the blanket around her shoulders. She was maybe mid-thirties, but looked older. It’s difficult not to when your cheeks are tear-stained, you’ve got snot running from your nose and your hair’s plastered all over your face.
Dex pulled us back again, out of earshot. ‘We’ve got a problem. She’s seen us now. Why did you do that, Red? How do we keep the job secure?’
‘Tell you what.’ I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll drive her wagon. We’ll just keep her with us until we fly out.’
Red Ken nodded. ‘Let’s get on with it, then.’
I held out my hand for the keys. ‘I’ll bring the wagon round. You two can get on with the first load.’
I opened the back door. Sherry was curled up on the floor, wanting the world to go away. I couldn’t blame her. One eye peeped out from under her arm, like a child’s. Scared people have to be gripped. They don’t hear what you’re saying. They get more confused and more frightened, not less, and more danger to us and to themselves.
‘Sherry, listen in. Everything will be OK. You’re going to be with us until the morning. Just do what you’re told and you’ll be fine.’
Her bloodshot eyes fixed on mine. She nodded quickly, wanting to please me.
‘But if you try to run away, scream, shout, or do anything we don’t tell you to do, then all bets are off. You understand?’
She wiped snot from her nose and nodded some more.
‘Climb into the seat behind me. Cover yourself with the blanket.’
She scrambled over.
‘Now get in the footwell. Stay down there.’
I went round pulling up all the child locks, slamming and checking the handles wouldn’t open. I heard the electric motor kick in once more.
I got in behind the wheel and swung the wagon round so it paralleled the Tata’s cab. Dex could keep eyes-on while Red Ken and I worked in the building.
I locked the door behind me just as our crate cleared the wall. Dex manoeuvred it to the rear of the flatbed. Red Ken was already over the wall, heading back in to sort the next load.
Dex beamed at me. ‘Only five to go.’
I jumped down into the compound and helped Red Ken rig up the second pallet. ‘She secure?’
‘Yep, Dex has eyes-on.’ I put the hook into the side of the webbing and gave Dex the signal. ‘Red, I reckon we keep her all the way to the airport, yeah?’
‘Got to, so we know she isn’t gobbing off. But I don’t think she’ll be running to the police. She needs to stay underground and wait for that handsome young husband of hers.’
The second crate inched out of the warehouse and onto the sand.
33
2238 hrs
The city twinkled far behind in my rear-view. The Tata’s head-lights carved through the inky darkness in front of us.
Sherry kept her head down and didn’t breathe a word.
The Tata’s indicators kicked off and it turned to the right. Wooden benches and tables were dotted about the desert. It was some kind of picnic site. The Tata’s headlights raked the length of the white GMC Suburban and then stopped beside it. Dex got out and climbed onto the back of the truck to untie our crate. Red Ken opened the two doors at the back of his wagon.
I pulled in behind the truck, so Dex could keep an eye on Sherry, and got out to help.
It wasn’t long before our crate, still on its pallet, was being slowly hoisted into the back of the GMC. A set of headlights moved along the main and swept over us. They kept on going.
Dex manoeuvred it to just above the level of the rear sill. Red Ken positioned the roller, a short length of scaffolding pole, and we pushed the suspended crate until about a third of it penetrated the boot space. ‘OK, Dex, lower it.’
The suspension groaned as it took Saddam’s weight. Dex jumped down to help us push it all the way inside.
Red Ken brought out his cigarettes. ‘OK, order of march. Me, Dex, Nick. Nice and slow, keep within the limits.’ He turned to Dex. ‘Just short of the airport I’ll point out where I want you to park and wait out.’ He sparked up his lighter. ‘Nick, follow Dex and wait out when he parks. I’ll come to you. You then drop me off at the Tata and we move to the airstrip.’ He moved to the front of his Suburban without waiting for a reply.
