‘Better this than we get blown to pieces,’ said Hubbard.
‘Yeah, well, it was driving like this that got the little girl killed,’ said Keizer. ‘And Buddy’s been a mess ever since.’
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ said Hubbard. ‘The inquiry cleared him.’
‘That was a whitewash, and you know it. What did you think they’d do? Throw him to the wolves? Have him stand trial in an Iraqi court? That was never going to happen.’
‘He wanted to talk to the parents, you know that?’
‘Yeah. He said.’
‘The brass told him not to go near them. Didn’t want him to admit liability, but all he wanted to do was to tell them he was sorry. He’s got a five-year-old sister. It’s fucked him up and the army’s doing nothing to help him.’
‘Which is why I’m doing his shift,’ said Keizer.
‘Nah, you don’t know how fucked up he is. He’s talking about killing himself.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Damn right,’ said Hubbard.
‘That’s heavy,’ mused Keizer.
‘Jeff!’ yelled Hubbard. The Humvee ahead had braked and was skidding to the right. Keizer stamped hard on his brake and cursed. He twisted the steering-wheel to the right and the vehicle started to skid. He pumped the brake and cursed again.
The Humvee skidded to a halt just feet away from the vehicle in front. A second later Keizer and Hubbard lurched forward as the third Humvee in the convoy thudded into them. Keizer looked in his rear-view mirror. The driver behind was throwing up his hands and swearing.
‘What the hell happened?’ asked Hubbard. He twisted in his seat and shouted up to his machine-gunner, Jack Needham, who was still at his post. ‘You okay, Jack?’
‘Bit bruised, but I saw it coming,’ shouted Needham.
‘What happened? Why did they stop?’ asked Keizer.
‘A pick-up truck shed its load at the intersection,’ Needham yelled back. ‘Boxes everywhere. You know how they overload those things.’
‘Anyone hurt?’
‘Two other cars have rammed the pick-up but our guys are okay. There’s a row going on between the drivers. Road’s blocked.’
‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ said Keizer.
‘If it had been an ambush they’d have started shooting by now,’ said Hubbard. ‘Chill, Jeff.’
Keizer used his radio to call up the front Humvee. ‘What’s happening, Sarge?’ he asked.
‘Stay put,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’ll let the locals sort it out. No reason for us to get involved. A cop car’s just arrived so the road will be clear in a minute or two.’
‘Roger that,’ said Keizer.
‘Told you,’ said Hubbard. ‘You worry too much.’
‘It’s not-worrying that gets you killed out here,’ said Keizer.
A small girl in a black headscarf ran towards their Humvee, wailing and waving her hands. ‘What’s her problem?’ said Hubbard. ‘Is she hurt?’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ said Keizer. He picked up the radio microphone again and clicked ‘transmit’. ‘Sarge, are we ready to go?’
‘Hold your horses, Keizer.’ The sergeant’s voice crackled over the radio. ‘The drivers have turned on the cops now.’
‘Do you want our guys out?’
‘Let’s see if the locals can handle it. It’s no big deal, just a fender-bender. If they can’t handle that then we’ve been wasting our time out here.’
‘Lighten up, Jeff,’ said Hubbard.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling, that’s all,’ said Keizer.
The girl banged on his window and yelled at him in Arabic.
‘What’s wrong?’ Keizer asked her, but she just shook her head.
She pointed at the intersection and said something in Arabic, then wiped her eyes.
‘I can’t understand you,’ he said.
‘Open the window, Jeff,’ said Hubbard.
‘She could be an insurgent,’ said Keizer.
‘She’s a kid, and she doesn’t have a weapon,’ said Hubbard. ‘Scared of a child now, are you?’
‘It’s not about being scared, it’s about following procedure.’
Hubbard grinned and clucked like a chicken.
‘Screw you, Mother,’ said Keizer.
The child put her face close to the window. She was sobbing and now he could make out what she was saying: ‘Please, please, please, please…’
She was younger than Keizer had first thought. Twelve, eleven, maybe. ‘Okay, okay,’ said Keizer. He pressed the button to wind down the window. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her.
The girl took a step back as the window wound down. She was still making sobbing noises but Keizer saw that her cheeks weren’t wet. There were no tears.
The bullet smacked into the centre of his forehead. The back of his skull exploded, splattering blood and brain matter over Hubbard. Hubbard screamed and scrambled for the window control. Keizer slumped forward, what was left of his head smacking into the steering-wheel. The girl held on to her headscarf and ran down the road, away from the convoy, her bare feet slapping against the Tarmac.
It was almost midnight. Shepherd and Bosch were alone in the main room at the guesthouse. Yokely had left an hour earlier and the Major had gone to the kitchen with O’Brien for a late-night snack. Armstrong, Shortt and the other South Africans had turned in. The plan was that they would head out just after dawn but Shepherd didn’t feel sleepy and Bosch seemed disinclined to go to her room.
She was drinking a Corona lager from the bottle with a piece of lime pushed down the neck. It was her sixth or seventh, Shepherd hadn’t been counting, but they didn’t seem to have had any effect on her. He was drinking Jameson’s with ice and soda and wasn’t trying to keep up. They were sitting together on a black sofa and had propped their feet on the low table in front of them.
‘You’re taking one hell of a risk,’ said Bosch. ‘If anything goes wrong, you’ll both be dead. And the way those bastards kill isn’t pretty.’
‘I owe it to him to try,’ said Shepherd.
‘All for one and one for all, the Three Musketeers crap?’
Shepherd took a swig of whiskey. ‘There’s more to it than that.’
‘He’s your gay lover?’
‘You’re a funny girl, Carol.’
‘Just trying to lighten the moment, you being about to ride into the valley of death and all.’
Shepherd chuckled. ‘Geordie saved my life in Afghanistan ten years ago. Another century.’
‘Threw himself in front of a bullet for you?’
‘Dug one out of my shoulder and patched me up, then carried me to a helicopter. He was the medic in my brick.’
‘Brick?’
‘That’s what we call our four-man units. He was the medic. A captain had just been hit by a sniper and I was holding him while he died. Big mistake on my part, I should have been looking for cover but I stayed with the captain and got hit in the shoulder probably by the same sniper.’
‘Can I see the scar?’
‘What?’
‘Come on, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.’
‘I don’t want to see yours.’
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Please.’
‘If it’ll shut you up.’ He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it back to reveal the scar just below his right shoulder. ‘Satisfied?’
Bosch moved closer and ran a fingertip along it. ‘Nice,’ she said. She put her hand on his shoulder and turned him so that she could see his back. ‘No exit wound,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Shepherd. ‘It hit the bone and went downwards. Just missed an artery. Geordie got it out and stopped the bleeding.’
‘Tampon?’
‘What?’
‘Best thing to plug a bullet hole. Can’t beat them.’
‘I’m pretty sure he used a regular field dressing. If he’d used a tampon he’d have told me. And I’d have got stuck with a new nickname.’
Bosch ran her finger across the scar again. ‘I’m guessing a 5.45mm round?’
‘Good guess,’ said Shepherd, admiringly.
‘AK-74?’
‘And you know your assault rifles. Most people assume it was an
AK-47.’
‘I’m a big fan of the AK-74,’ said Bosch, ‘but you don’t want to go firing one out here. The Yanks hear it, they’ll assume you’re with the bad guys.’