“It’s about another three miles to the highway,” said Aziz. “What do you want me to do?”
“We’ve only got one chance of getting across that border,” said Scott, “so for now pull over into that clump of trees. We can’t risk going out onto the highway until it’s pitch dark.” He checked the time. It was 7:35.
Hannah felt blood dripping onto her face. She looked up and saw the deep wounds in Cohen’s leg. She immediately tore off the corner of her yashmak and tried to stem the flow of blood.
“You all right, Cohen?” asked Scott anxiously.
“No worse than when I was bitten by a woman in Tangier,” he replied.
Aziz began laughing.
“How can you laugh?” said Hannah, continuing to clean the wound.
“Because he was the reason she bit me,” said Cohen.
After Hannah had completed the bandaging, the four of them changed into the Iraqi uniforms. For an hour they kept their eyes on the road, looking for any sign of more soldiers. A few villagers on donkeys, and more on foot, passed them in both directions, but the only vehicle they saw was an old tractor that chugged by on its way back to the village at the end of a day’s service.
As the minutes slipped by, it became obvious that the villagers had kept to their promise and made no contact with any army patrols.
When Scott could no longer see the road in front of them, he went over his plan for the last time. All of them accepted that their options were limited.
The nearest border was forty-five miles away, but Scott now accepted the danger they could bring to any village simply by passing through it. He didn’t feel his plan was foolproof, far from it, but they couldn’t wait in the hills much longer. It would only be a short time before Iraqi soldiers were swarming all over the area.
Scott checked the uniforms. As long as they kept on the move, it would be hard for anyone to identify them in the dark as anything other than part of an army patrol. But once they reached the highway, he knew they couldn’t afford to stay still for more than a few seconds. Everything depended on how close they could get to the border post without being spotted.
When Scott gave the order, Aziz swung the jeep onto the winding road to begin the three-mile journey to the highway. He covered the distance in five minutes, and during that time they didn’t come across another vehicle. But once they hit the highway, they found the road was covered with trucks, jeeps, even tanks, traveling in both directions.
None of them saw the two motorcycles, the tank and three trucks that swung off the highway and headed down the little road towards Tuz Khurmatoo.
Aziz went as fast as he could, while Cohen remained seated on the back behind the gun. Scott watched the road ahead of him, his beret pulled well down. Hannah sat below Cohen, motionless, a gun in her hand. The first road sign indicated that it was sixty kilometers to the border. For a moment Scott was distracted by an oil well that kept pumping away on the far side of the road. Nobody spoke as the distance to Kirkuk descended from fifty-five to forty-six, to thirty-two, but with each sign and each new oil well, the traffic became heavier and their speed began to drop rapidly. The only relief was that none of the passing patrols seemed to show any interest in the jeep.
Within minutes the little village was swarming with soldiers from Saddam’s Elite Guard. Even in the dark, it took only ten bullets and as many minutes for them to find out where the Cadillac was, and another thirty bullets to discover the unfilled graves of the four dead soldiers.
General Hamil listened to the senior officer when he phoned in with the details. All he asked for was the radio frequency of the jeep that had been in Tuz Khurmatoo earlier that evening. The General slammed down the phone, checked his watch and keyed in the frequency.
The single tone continued for some time.
“They must still be looking for a truck or a pink Cadillac,” Scott was saying when the radio phone began ringing. They all four froze.
“Answer it, Aziz,” said Scott. “Listen carefully, and find out what you can.”
Aziz picked up the handset, listened intently, then said, “Yes, sir,” in Arabic, and put the handset down.
“They’ve found the Cadillac, and are ordering all jeeps to report to their nearest army post,” he said.
“It can’t be long before they realize it’s not one of their men driving this jeep,” said Hannah, “if they don’t already know.”
“With luck we might still have twenty minutes,” said Scott. “How far to the border?”
“Nine miles,” said Aziz.
The General knew it had to be Zeebari, or he would have immediately responded with the Elite Guards’ code number.
So now he knew what vehicle they were in and which border they were heading for. He picked up the phone and barked another order. Two officers accompanied him as he ran out of the room and into a large yard at the back of the building. The blades of his personal helicopter were already slowly rotating.
It was Aziz who first spotted the end of a long line of oil tankers waiting to cross the unofficial border. Scott checked the inside track and asked Aziz if he could drive down such a narrow strip.
“Not possible, sir,” the young Kurd told him. “We’d only end up in the ditch.”
“Then we’ve no alternative but to go straight down the middle.”
Aziz moved the jeep out into the center of the road and tried desperately to maintain his speed. To begin with he was able to stay clear of the trucks and avoid any oncoming traffic. The first real trouble came four miles from the border, when an army truck heading towards them refused to move over.
“Shall I blast him off the road?” said Cohen.
“No,” said Scott. “Aziz, keep going, but prepare to jump and take cover among the tankers, then we’ll regroup.” Just as Scott was about to leap, the truck swerved across the road and ended up in the ditch on the far side.
“Now they all know where we are,” said Scott. “How many miles to the customs post, Aziz?”
“Three, three and a half at the most.”
“Then step on it,” Scott said, although he realized Aziz was already going as fast as he could. They had managed to cover the next mile in just over a minute when a helicopter swung above them, beaming down a searchlight that lit up the entire road. The radio phone began ringing again.
“Ignore it,” shouted Scott as Aziz tried to keep the jeep on the center of the road and maintain his speed. They passed the two-mile mark as the helicopter swung back, confident it had spotted its prey, and began to focus its beam directly on them.
“We’ve got a jeep coming up our backside,” said Cohen, as he swung around to face it.
“Get rid of it,” said Scott.
Cohen obliged, sending the first few shots through the windshield and the next into the tires, thankful for the light from above. The pursuing jeep swung across the road, crashing into an oncoming truck. Another quickly took its place. Hannah reloaded the gun with a magazine of bullets that was lying on the floor while Cohen concentrated on the road behind them.
“One and a half miles to go,” shouted Aziz, nearly crashing into trucks on both sides of the road. The helicopter hovered above them and began to fire indiscriminately, hitting vehicles going in either direction.
“Don’t forget that most of them haven’t a clue who’s chasing what,” said Scott.
“Thanks for sharing that piece of logic with me, Professor,” said Cohen. “But I’ve got a feeling that helicopter knows exactly who he’s chasing.” Cohen began to pepper the next jeep with bullets the moment it came into range. This time it simply slowed to a halt, causing the car behind to run straight into it and creating an accordion effect as one after another the pursuing jeeps crashed into the back of the vehicle in front of them. The road behind was suddenly clear, as if Aziz had been the last car through a green light.