They walked together to a large table on the terrace, where O’Brien was already sitting. Shepherd and Bosch sat down opposite him. ‘I could get used to this,’ said O’Brien, through a mouthful of steak. Shepherd picked up his knife and fork. He didn’t feel like eating, but he knew his body needed fuel for what lay ahead. He cut a piece of steak and forced himself to chew.
Muller’s transceiver crackled. He put it to his ear and spoke into it. Then he said, ‘The cavalry’s here.’ A minute later there was a knock on the front door. He went to open it and came back with Richard Yokely. He was wearing a blue flak jacket over a cream safari suit and was holding a Kevlar helmet.
‘I just hope that Charlotte Button doesn’t know you’ve ridden into town,’ said the Major, shaking Yokely’s hand. ‘You’re just about her least favourite person at the moment.’
Yokely grinned. ‘What’s upset the lovely Charlie now?’ he asked.
Shepherd raised a hand. ‘That would be me,’ he said.
‘She’s on your case, is she?’
‘She’s not a happy bunny,’ said Shepherd.
‘She knows you’re here?’
‘She does now, yes.’
‘And she’s given her blessing?’
Shepherd shrugged. ‘It’s more that I’m here on sufferance.’
The Major put a hand on Yokely’s shoulder. ‘For those of you who don’t already know him, this is Richard. He’s going to help us keep tabs on Spider.’
Yokely raised a hand in salute, and the Major introduced the rest of the team to him. ‘Have I missed much?’ Yokely asked.
‘We were waiting for you,’ said Shepherd. ‘Not everyone knows what’s going to happen, so I’ll run through it from the start.’
‘I’m all ears,’ said Yokely.
The Sniper liked shooting at night. For one thing, it was cooler. During the day, lying in wait for hours meant putting up with the interminable Baghdad heat, always in the high forties and often the fifties. Even if he was lucky enough to find a place in the shade, it was still unbearably hot and he had to keep drinking to replenish the water he lost through sweat. The nights were more comfortable: there were fewer patrols and fewer locals, which meant there was less chance of him being spotted. There were only two downsides of killing at night: fewer Americans were around to shoot at – mostly they stayed in their vehicles – and the flash from the barrel of his rifle could be seen.
The Americans had helicopters over the city all the time, and above them the unmanned planes they used for surveillance, with cameras so powerful they could look down through cloud and see everything. At night his body temperature was more visible to infrared sensors, so he shot from a concealed position whenever he could. He’d found an abandoned apartment on the fourth floor of a building that overlooked one of the city’s busy intersections. He had a locksmith friend who had made him a key to get into it.
Tonight’s kill was to be special. The Sniper was hunting a specific target. A month earlier an American Humvee had killed a four-year-old girl. It had been in the middle of the day and the child had been with her mother, walking on the pavement. The woman had stopped to cross the road. She’d seen the Humvee speeding towards them, followed by three troop-carriers, but the little girl had been looking the other way and had stepped into the path of the convoy. The Humvee hadn’t even slowed and she had died immediately. Bits of her body were scattered over fifty yards.
When the Humvee stopped, the driver had stayed in his cab. A lieutenant and four soldiers had piled out of a troop-carrier but there was nothing they could do. A group of angry Iraqis had gathered and youths threw stones at the soldiers. As word of the little girl’s death spread, the crowd grew and within minutes several hundred men and women were screaming at the Americans. More stones were thrown and the lieutenant had pulled his men back. The convoy had driven off, leaving the mother kneeling in the road, weeping for her dead child.
Afterwards there had been no apology from the soldier who had been driving the Humvee, no acknowledgement from the army that they had been responsible for the little girl’s death. The father had queued for hours to get into the Green Zone to talk to someone about what had happened, but had been refused entry. He had phoned but no one in authority had spoken to him. He had hired a translator to write a letter in English but it was ignored. The driver of the Humvee had never been put on trial. After a month the army announced that there had been an internal investigation and the little girl’s death had been ‘an unfortunate accident’. The case was closed. That was when her father had approached the Sniper. He had offered to pay him a thousand dollars to kill the Humvee driver, but the money had been refused. The Sniper did not kill for money. He killed because he wanted the infidels out of his country. He killed because they were the enemy, and because he was serving Allah by doing what he did best. The Sniper was happy to kill Americans, and even happier to know that every one he killed went straight to hell. He had turned down the offer of payment but told the father that, once the soldier had been killed, he was to pay for a party for the street he lived in: he should kill a dozen lambs and distribute the meat to the poor. The father had readily agreed.
The patrol varied its route each night, but the Sniper had a dozen men around the city waiting to report on which way it would be coming that night. On the three previous nights the patrol had taken a different route and the Sniper had gone home without firing his weapon. He shifted his weight. He had padded his knees with foam rubber but, even so, it was painful kneeling on the wooden floor. The tip of the Dragunov barrel was resting on the windowsill.
As the Spotter’s mobile phone burst into life the Sniper jumped. The Spotter put the phone to his ear, listened, then grinned. He nodded at the Sniper. ‘He is coming,’ he said. ‘He will be here in five minutes, inshallah. There are three Humvees and he is driving the second.’
The Sniper got himself into position. Tonight’s would be a difficult shot, perhaps the most difficult he had ever made. The windows of the Humvee would almost certainly be up and the glass was bullet-proof. For him to make the shot, the window had to be down.
As he waited, the Sniper recited a passage from the Koran. Reciting the Koran brought him closer to his God and relaxed him. He knew that he did what he did with God’s blessing. God had given him the talent to kill Americans, so the Sniper was sure that God smiled on him with every kill he carried out. And when it came time for the Sniper to leave his life on earth, he knew that God would have a special place for him in heaven.
The mobile phone rang and the Spotter took the call. ‘Two minutes,’ he said. ‘ Inshallah.’
The Sniper took a deep breath. In two minutes another American would be dead.
Jeff Keizer yawned and wished he’d finished his coffee before he’d got into the Humvee. He badly needed a caffeine kick – he could barely keep his eyes open. He gripped the steering-wheel with gloved hands and blinked as he tried to focus on the vehicle in front of him.
‘Come on, Jeff, stay awake,’ said the soldier in the front passenger seat. Lance ‘Mother’ Hubbard was twenty-three but looked younger and always had a comic tucked into his body armour.
‘I’m double shifting,’ said Keizer. ‘I should be asleep.’
‘Who are you covering for?’
‘Buddy. His stomach’s playing up again.’ The Humvee ahead turned sharply to the left and Keizer swung the wheel to follow. ‘Call him up and tell him we’re not in a race, will you?’
‘There was an IED attack along this stretch yesterday,’ said Hubbard. ‘Everyone’s a little jumpy.’
‘Yeah, but we’re supposed to be patrolling,’ said Keizer. ‘How are we supposed to see anything at this speed?’