‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Shortt.
‘Yeah, but until you’ve tried it for yourself…’
‘When you two ladies have finished, I’d like John to get on with his briefing,’ said the Major.
Armstrong put the Taser back into its case, and O’Brien, as usual, picked up a sandwich.
Muller pointed at a photograph of the rear of the house. ‘The wall here is only overlooked by one other house. Halim took a look yesterday evening and he tells me it’s empty. We go over the wall here,’ he tapped the picture, ‘and we’re straight into a clump of date palms that runs almost up to a conservatory next to the pool. We should be able to get access through the conservatory and the chances are that the door into the house will be open.’
‘That’s a gamble, isn’t it?’ said Shortt.
‘Like I said, Dubai is almost crime-free. Most people leave their doors unlocked. But we can cut the phone lines first and I’ve got a mobile-phone jammer, so we can always break in if need be.’ He opened an architect’s drawing of the villa.
The Major grinned. ‘How did you get that?’ he asked.
‘Fariq’s villa is a standard design – there’s a hundred of them in the city.’ He stuck it on to the wall. It showed the ground and upper floors of the house, and a front, rear and side view. He pointed to the rear of the left-hand side of the house. ‘This is the master bedroom,’ he said. ‘Fariq will almost certainly be there.’
‘With his wife?’
‘I assume so,’ said Muller. ‘Arab married couples generally sleep together, but if she’s in a different room it’ll probably be this one at the back.’
‘Both overlook the rear garden and the conservatory,’ said Shepherd.
‘But the palms will provide cover,’ said Muller, ‘and there are heavy curtains at the windows.’
The Major studied the drawing. ‘So, Spider and I will go in through the conservatory. Martin, you and Jimbo skirt round the house to the front door in case anything goes wrong. Billy, you open the front door while Spider and I check the ground floor and move to the stairs. Once we’ve secured the ground floor, Spider and I will go up first, Jimbo and Martin following. Billy, you move to the kitchen just in case Mr and Mrs Driver sleepwalk.’
‘And where exactly will I be while this is going on?’ asked Muller.
‘With respect, John, you’d get in the way. We’ve all worked together before.’
‘Well, fuck you very much,’ said Muller, folding his arms and glaring.
‘Like I said, with respect,’ said the Major. ‘You’ll be more use with the vehicles. We don’t want too many of us in the house. I need you outside, to check that everything is as it should be. If there’s a siren, you’ll know if it’s a cop car or a fire engine. If you see a patrol go by, you’ll know if it’s routine or not. Anyway you’ve got a business here. If anything goes wrong, you’ve got far more to lose than we have.’
‘Geordie’s my man,’ said Muller.
‘He’s our man, too,’ said the Major.
The Sniper’s weapon was a 7.62mm Dragunov SVD Sniper Rifle. It had a distinctive wooden stock with two cut-out sections and a chunky ten-round magazine jutting from the bottom. It had originally been used by a Russian sniper in Afghanistan, but he had been killed by the Taliban and the weapon was used to shoot dead more than a dozen Russian soldiers before it made its way to Iraq and ended up in the hands of Qannaas, the Sniper.
The Dragunov had been built for one purpose: to kill at a distance. It came equipped with a bayonet but from the day in 1965 when the rifle was first produced, by Evgeniy Fedorovich Dragunov, no one had ever been injured, let alone killed, with it. It was a sniper’s weapon, pure and simple. The Sniper had a copy of the manual for it, which he had paid a teacher to translate from Russian into Arabic. The manual claimed that the rifle was accurate up to one thousand metres but the Sniper knew that was Russian hyperbole. It was only accurate to about six hundred metres and the Sniper preferred to engage his targets at less than half that distance.
He laid the rifle on the table and stroked the polished wooden stock. It was shorter than that of most American sniping rifles because it had been designed for use by Soviet soldiers who often fought in cold climates and wore bulky clothing. The gun had been well designed but, like most things made during the Communist era, the workmanship and materials were less than perfect and the weapon required constant maintenance and cleaning.
The Sniper shook the bottle of cleaning solution to make sure that the contents were thoroughly mixed: drinking water, ammonium carbonate and potassium bichromate. The solution was used for cleaning the inside of the barrel. He placed the bottle on the table next to the rifle, with a small can of rifle oil for cleaning and lubricating the weapon’s moving parts, a scouring rod for cleaning the bore, and some cloths, which were spotless. He had a chest full of new ones, and threw them away after one use. It was one of his many eccentricities.
When the Sniper had been in the Republican Guard, he had been taught to clean his weapon immediately after he had fired it. But now that he was on his own crusade, he had his own way of doing things. He still cleaned and oiled the weapon each evening, but he did it again in the morning. It was as much a part of his routine as his personal ablutions. The Sniper was a good Muslim and he prayed five times each day, and before he prayed, he bathed. And he had always bathed before he went out on a mission. He had washed his body from head to foot, then washed his hair three times, then washed his body again. When he had started his crusade against the occupying Americans, he had decided to accord his weapon the same treatment he gave his body.
His schedule was the same each day. He rose, bathed and prayed. Then he ate a simple breakfast of bread and fruit. He stripped and cleaned the weapon, taking at least an hour to do the job. Then he bathed again, prayed and went out to kill. It was what he did. It was his life.
He had no regrets about what he was doing. The infidels had no right to be in his country – they were not even Muslims – and he would continue to kill them, one by one, until they left. That they would leave one day was beyond doubt. Iraq was not their country and the longer they stayed the more they were hated and the more they died. He picked up the rifle and began to disassemble it, humming to himself.
John Muller opened the small stepladder and steadied it against the wall. He nodded at the Major, who was wearing a pair of dark slacks, black training shoes and a dark shirt with long sleeves. He had a Glock in a nylon holster tucked into the small of his back and next to it a transceiver from which a black wire ran up to an earpiece. He pulled on a pair of black leather gloves and a ski mask, patted Muller on the back, then climbed the ladder and pulled himself on to the wall. He grunted, slid over and a second later there was a dull thud as he hit the ground.
Shepherd pulled on his own ski mask. Like the Major he was wearing dark clothing, with a holstered Glock and a transceiver with an earpiece. He moved smoothly up the stepladder, hauled himself on to the wall and dropped down on the other side, his knees bending to absorb the shock. He was in a clump of half a dozen date palms, their trunks as thick as a man’s waist. The Major signed for him to move to his right. In quick succession Shortt, Armstrong and O’Brien dropped down to join them. Shortt and O’Brien had Glocks, but Armstrong had the Taser in a black nylon holster clipped to his belt.
The Major pointed at Shortt and O’Brien, and signalled for them to move along the side of the house. The two men slipped away in a low crouch, keeping close to the wall. The Major nodded at Shepherd and Armstrong, then headed through the date palms towards the rear of the house. They moved from palm to palm, keeping low, their feet making no sound on the close-cropped grass.
Shepherd looked up. The windows were blank, the curtains drawn. An airliner flew high overhead, navigation lights flashing. The garden wasn’t overlooked, so no one could see them moving to the conservatory at the rear of the house. There was no CCTV camera, and no sign of an alarm box. The top of the wall they’d climbed over had been smooth: in London broken glass would have been set into the concrete, or metal spikes. Muller had known what he was talking about when he’d said that the average Dubai resident didn’t expect intruders.