‘Much happening?’ asked Yokely, as the Humvee drove away from the plane.
‘Same old, same old,’ said the soldier. ‘How long are you here for this time?’
‘Flying visit,’ said Yokely, fastening the strap of his helmet.
They reached the airport perimeter. The barrier went up as they approached and the two Humvees roared through and out on to the road.
‘That’s it?’ asked Shepherd. ‘No Passport Control, no Customs?’
‘I don’t exist,’ said Yokely, adjusting the straps of his body armour. ‘And as long as you’re with me, neither do you.’
The Humvee picked up speed. Through the window Shepherd saw a convoy of trucks heading towards the airport, topped and tailed by nineteen-ton eight-wheeler Stryker light-armoured vehicles, their 105mm cannons sweeping the roadsides. Metal mesh screens were wrapped round them, offering some protection against rocket-propelled grenades. In the middle of the convoy there were three soft-skinned Nissan pick-up trucks in which uniformed Iraqi troops were strap-hanging. None was wearing body armour although they had Kevlar helmets. Shepherd glimpsed one of the drivers as they raced by, an Arab wearing a baseball cap the wrong away around and headphones. His head was bobbing back and forth in time with whatever music he was listening to.
A strip of land more than a hundred feet wide separated the carriageways, sandy reddish soil dotted with dried grass. Emaciated cattle grazed on what little vegetation there was, seemingly oblivious to the speeding traffic.
‘Can you tell me where we’re going? Or is that classified?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Now we’re on the ground I can tell you,’ said the American. ‘The Baghdad Central Detention Centre.’
‘That would be Abu Ghraib prison, right?’
‘The name changed a while back,’ said Yokely, ‘but yes. That’s where our man is being held.’
‘That’s where you abuse your prisoners, isn’t it?’
Yokely chuckled at Shepherd’s attempt to rile him. ‘In 1984 alone, Saddam Hussein had more than four thousand men executed there, so let’s not make out that a bit of teasing is on a par with what the great dictator got up to. He held his enemies for up to twenty years, often packed fifty into a tiny cell with standing room only, and he used a lot as guinea pigs in his chemical and biological weapons programmes. And while we’re on the subject, it’s worth mentioning that you Brits built the place for him.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ admitted Shepherd.
‘Back in the swinging sixties, when the West was more than happy to do business with Iraq,’ said Yokely. ‘Funny old world, isn’t it?’ He tightened the Velcro straps on his body armour. ‘Most of our troops take out the reinforcing plates,’ he said. ‘They complain about the weight.’
‘They’re heavy all right,’ said Shepherd, ‘but given the choice between carrying a few extra pounds or taking a bullet in the chest…’ He banged his fist against the Kevlar chest plate.
‘It’s not snipers you’ve got to worry about,’ said Yokely, as the Humvees accelerated past a pick-up truck with half a dozen live goats in the back. ‘They call this road Sniper’s Alley but most of the casualties are from IEDs. The insurgents rarely use snipers.’ He grinned. ‘And you know who’s to blame for the boom in IEDs?’ he said. ‘No pun intended.’
‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me,’ said Shepherd.
‘One of yours,’ said the American. ‘Lawrence of Arabia. The fag who drove the motorcycle. Way back in the Arab Revolt of 1916 to 1918. He pioneered the use of explosives as a terrorist tool. He blew up seventeen of the Turks’ locomotives over a four-month period and after that they were scared shitless of travelling by train. Fear’s the greatest tool of a terrorist, and IEDs are a great way of spreading fear. The insurgents here have taken what Lawrence did and raised it to the tenth power. Do you have any idea how much the Department of Defense spent last year on counter-IED measures?’
‘Again, I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘Three and a half billion bucks. That’s billion, not million.’
Shepherd raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s one hell of a lot of money, all right.’
Yokely smacked his palm against the side of the Humvee. ‘They’ve just poured almost four hundred million dollars into reinforcing these babies. Imagine what you and I could do with that amount of money.’
‘Retire?’
Yokely chuckled. ‘You’ll never retire,’ he said. ‘You’re the same as me. You love the thrill of the chase, the eternal struggle between good and evil.’
‘I don’t see life as simply as that,’ said Shepherd.
‘You won’t admit it, but you’re addicted to the adrenaline rush,’ said Yokely. ‘We all are.’ They drove past the burned-out shell of a saloon car. ‘The IED is the terrorist’s weapon of the future,’ he said. ‘They’re perfecting the technique here, but before long they’ll be using them all over the States and Europe.’
‘We’ve had that before, with the IRA,’ said Shepherd.
‘Different animal,’ said Yokely. ‘The IRA were interested in spectaculars. Big showy explosions and, more often than not, they gave warnings. The fundamentalists are concentrating on small explosions designed to kill and maim. No warnings. Imagine the havoc devices like that would wreak on our freeways. Or in New York City. Or London. They already account for two-thirds of all American combat deaths in Iraq. And how many of the bastards placing the devices do we catch? Hardly any. The bad guys love odds like that. Maximum terror, minimum risk. It’s a hell of a lot easier to recruit a guy to plant IEDs than it is to recruit a suicide-bomber. I tell you, they can fight like this for ever. It doesn’t matter how many troops we send, how much equipment we give them, we can’t win. Because the enemy is untargetable. Overwhelming firepower is all well and good, but in Iraq we’ve got nothing to shoot at.’
The Humvee slowed to walking pace. Ahead a flock of bleating sheep were wandering across the road, guided by two Iraqis wearing dusty dishdashas, their heads swathed in black and white checked scarves. ‘You have to be careful of livestock out here,’ said the driver, over his shoulder.
‘Ambushes?’ said Shepherd.
The driver grinned. ‘Ambushes we can handle,’ he said. ‘It’s the compensation claims that bust our balls. If you kill a sheep, you don’t just pay to replace the animal. You have to pay for the generations of sheep that would have been produced by the animal you killed. So you run over one and you pay out twenty thousand dollars.’
The drive from the airport to the prison took just over half an hour. They were waved through several roadblocks manned by American and Iraqi soldiers, and barrelled across road junctions without slowing. The first time they came to a complete stop was when they pulled up in front of a sandbagged barrier outside the main entrance to the prison.
Two soldiers with M16s spoke to the driver of the first Humvee, then a red and white striped pole was raised to allow both vehicles to approach the main gate. It rattled back and the Humvees drove through. Ahead, a second metal gate barred their way until the one behind was shut. Two more soldiers with M16s looked down on them. Both men wore impenetrable sunglasses.
‘Who are we here to see?’ said Shepherd.
‘An Iraqi by the name of Umar al-Tikriti,’ said Yokely. ‘I’ve reason to believe that he knows the guy holding the RPG in the video of your friend.’
‘And he’ll tell us who he is?’
Yokely grinned. ‘Hopefully, if we play it right,’ he said.
The inner gate rattled open and the two Humvees drove into a central courtyard. The soldier opened the rear door and Shepherd and Yokely climbed out. Shepherd shaded his eyes against the unrelenting sun. His shirt was soaked under the body armour and he was holding his leather jacket.
‘You can strip the Kevlar off now, gentlemen,’ said the soldier. ‘You’re among friends here.’
Shepherd and Yokely took off their helmets and armour and tossed them into the back of the Humvee. Yokely picked up his laptop computer case.