We worked our way through a market selling vehicle parts, American uniforms, weapons, and some of the drugs that should have been in the kids’ hospital they’d visited that morning. The skeletons of Iraqi military trucks were everywhere, along with the twisted remains of the odd Hummer and a burnt-out AFV.
‘I hope we can meet. I know I can convince him it’s the right thing to do. He’s a target for so many people. The West want him dead because he can unite Muslims, the corporations because of the boycotts, the fundamentalists because he’s preaching the wrong message.’ He nodded out towards the crush of people in the market. ‘Some of his enemies are here, just the other side of this glass.’
He removed his gigs and leaned back against the door. ‘I have talked enough about our situation. But what about you, Nick, what is your place in the story? Would you like to be part of something different? Would you like to be part of keeping him alive?’
Soon the market was behind us. We bounced along pitch-black, deserted streets and Rob hit the lights.
Both of them were silent now. I didn’t know if it was because we were nearly there, or they were giving me time to think.
Benzil must have been reading my mind – or was it showing on my face? ‘No need to rush your decision, Nick. We have time.’
There was a heavy, dull thud. The front of the vehicle lifted. The windscreen shattered. The car rose up and over to the right, then bounced back down. Rounds rained into the bodywork, punching through the steel.
Rob lunged for the footwell, scrabbling for the AK. Two rounds thumped into his neck, spraying the interior with blood. His head lolled from his shoulders, held by just a few ligaments.
I shoved the door and rolled out on to the road. Glass showered down on me. Petrol spewed out of the vehicle as more heavy 7.62 AK rounds ripped through metal.
I turned back, trying to grab Benzil, but I was too late. He was slumped in the footwell. The rounds poured in. I kept low, sprinted back to the junction, turned right and leaped over a fence. I landed in a garden.
60
Kids screamed. Dogs barked. My legs weren’t moving as fast as my head wanted them to. It felt as if I was running in mud.
People peered from their windows and shouted when they spotted me. ‘American! American!’ A couple of women started the Red Indian warble.
There were a couple of long bursts from near the vehicle as I ran down a narrow alley between two tall breezeblock walls. Arab screams echoed behind me. A burst water main had left the ground slimy and I lost my footing. I stumbled over a pile of rotting garbage and fell face down. Scrambling on all fours to move forwards and get up, I saw headlights moving back and forth about seventy metres ahead. All I wanted to do was get there and turn, it didn’t matter which way – anything to get out of the line of sight and fire.
I kept running, not bothering to look back. My feet kicked old cans and newspapers. My hands were stinging like I’d fallen into a nettle bed.
I stopped about two metres short of the road, and had a quick check left and right. A few pedestrians hovered on the dark pavements. Some shops and houses had electricity, others just a flicker of candlelight.
I was covered in Rob’s blood. My hands were soaked with it; shards of glass were sticking to it. My heart pounded in my chest as I tried to regain my breath.
There was a junction about twenty metres down. I stepped out of the alley and started along the pavement, concentrating hard on the weeds growing in the cracks between the paving-stones, keeping myself in the shadows.
A couple of people spotted me immediately and pointed. Somebody behind me shouted. I ignored it and kept going. All I wanted to do was get level with the junction and run across the road. They shouted again, this time more distinctly. ‘Hey, you! Stop! Stop!’
I turned my head but kept moving. A Hummer patrol was parked on the same road, just too far up for me to be seen from the alley. With them were some Iraqi police, standing next to a new blue and white, carrying AKs.
The patrol challenged me again: ‘Stop!’ The police joined in, in Arabic. I looked to my half right and spotted an alleyway. I crossed the road and broke into a run.
‘You – fucking stop! Stop!’
The Hummers and police revved up and started rolling. I reached the other side of the road and was into the alleyway. My mouth was dry and I fought for breath. Sweat diluted the blood on my face and hands. There were rough breezeblock walls either side of me again, only this time closer together. Light streamed through the shutters. I kept running as police sirens wailed behind me.
The blow to my throat was so swift and hard I didn’t see who’d delivered it.
I lay on my back, gasping for breath, trying to get my Adam’s apple moving as I listened to vehicles shrieking to a halt and pissed-off shouts coming from a house to my left, now in darkness.
American voices joined in, screaming at each other: ‘Where the fuck is he? Let’s go, let’s go!’
As I pulled myself on to my hands and knees, I realized I’d run straight into a cable stretched between two buildings. The fuckers were getting their kettles on.
I got up and ran, stooped. I tried to suck in air but my Adam’s apple was still glued to the back of my throat.
A powerful torch beam swept the alley. I hugged the wall to the right, crouching among piles of garbage and old mattresses.
61
I came to a turning. Fuck knew where it led to, but it would take me out of the line of fire.
I ducked down it and found myself in a crap-filled courtyard. There was no obvious way out. The shouts behind me were getting louder. The troops were on their way down the alley.
I ran into a washing-line and it snapped with a loud twang. Torchlight flashed along the walls. Orders were shouted in Arabic.
A couple of old pallets were stacked against the far corner. I lifted the top one and leaned it against the breezeblocks as a makeshift ladder. A vehicle drove past about twenty metres the other side of the wall, its lights flickering along the top of it. Grabbing an armful of washing off the line, I scrambled over. As I dropped, two shots rang out, heavy rounds, AK. The fuckers didn’t even know what or who they were firing at, or why. American voices echoed down the alleyway. ‘Hold your fire, hold your fire!’
If these Iraqis had been trained by Gaz, he deserved the sack.
I landed on firm ground and started running again. My hand went down to my waist: the bumbag was still with me.
I got to just short of the road and stopped. There was no follow-up behind me, just plenty of commotion.
I threw the clothes to the ground and ripped off my shirt. A damp T-shirt from the pile got what I hoped was most of the blood and sweat off my face and hands; then I pulled on an old stripy shirt that smelt nothing like washing powder.
I moved out on to the street and turned right, keeping in the shadows, moving quickly, head down. Checking out those weedy pavement cracks again, I gulped in oxygen, trying to slow myself. Sweat streamed down my face, stinging my eyes.
The shops were open, and bare bulbs hung from wires. People sat outside cafés, drinking coffee and smoking, engrossed in their conversations. There was a line of three parked cabs about fifty metres down. Two guys leaned against the first one, a rusty 1980s Oldsmobile with orange wings. I walked up to them with my best smily face on and gave them a thumbs-up. They smiled back. They were both young, hair brushed back, beards a week old. Their shirts hung out of their trousers and both wore sandals on bare feet.