‘Like a log.’
‘Was it my imagination or did I see Carol creeping out of your room this morning?’
‘Screw you, Martin.’
‘Okay, I get it. None of my business. But you are one jammy bastard. She’s fit.’
Shepherd took another sip of his coffee. Carol Bosch appeared at the doorway. She had changed into clean fatigues and was carrying her flak-jacket, helmet and shotgun. A holstered automatic hung on her hip, and a large hunting knife was strapped to her right leg.
‘Speak of the devil,’ said O’Brien.
‘What’s that?’ asked Bosch, as she sat down at the table and winked at Shepherd.
‘I just asked if Spider thought you’d want breakfast in bed,’ said O’Brien.
‘I’d be careful how I talked to a woman wielding a shotgun,’ said Bosch.
‘How do you like your eggs?’ asked O’Brien, with a grin.
‘As they come,’ she said. She put her gun on the table. ‘How’s it going, Spider?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Butterflies?’
Shepherd shrugged. ‘With you guys watching my back, I’ll be fine.’
O’Brien put plates of food in front of them. Fried eggs, tomatoes, lamb sausages and fried bread. He put his own plate on the table and sat down. ‘How long have you been in Baghdad?’ he asked Bosch.
‘Almost two years,’ she said. ‘I’ve been with John for the past eighteen months.’
‘Good money?’
Bosch grinned. ‘Bloody good,’ she said. ‘A thousand dollars a day basic, plus overtime, plus lots of paid time off and flights home. And there’s nothing to spend your money on here so everything you earn goes straight into the bank.’
‘How’s it going to end?’ asked Shepherd. ‘Everyone I talk to says we’re wasting our time in Iraq.’
‘Everyone’s right,’ said Bosch. ‘You can’t force these people to live together. The only guy who could do that was Saddam and now he’s out of the equation.’
‘You’re saying democracy won’t work here?’ asked O’Brien, through a mouthful of egg and sausage.
‘I’m saying these people don’t understand democracy,’ said Bosch. ‘Look what happened to Yugoslavia. So long as you have a hard man forcing people to live together, they get on with it. Take away the hard man and they kill each other.’ She sliced her sausage into neat sections, popped a piece into her mouth and swallowed it without chewing. ‘When Saddam was in power, the Sunnis ran Iraq. They account for barely a fifth of the population. Once we have elections, power transfers to the majority Shias. Which leaves them with scores to settle.’ She put down her knife and held up her index finger. ‘Possible scenarios down the line,’ she said. ‘Number one. All-out civil war, with the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions fighting it out to the death.’ She held up two fingers. ‘Two. The Shias take over Iraq, override the wishes of the Sunnis and the Kurds and align the country with Syria, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.’ She grinned. ‘How stable would the Middle East be then?’
‘Not very,’ said Shepherd.
‘I was being rhetorical,’ she said. She held up three fingers. ‘Three. Through some miracle, democracy holds, but with the three factions infighting all the way. To keep the masses happy they’re constantly picking fights with their neighbours. The Iraqi Kurds hate Turkey, the Iraqi Sunnis hate Shia-dominated Iran and the Shias in Iraq hate the Sunnis in Jordan. To make it worse, there are three factions within the Shias, all jostling for power. Saddam was a bastard, but a weak government barely holding together three warring factions would be just as destabilising to the region.’
‘So it’s a nightmare all round?’
‘It’s worse than that,’ said Bosch, picking up her knife again. ‘The fundamentalists are using the place as a training ground. They’re coming here in their thousands. More than half the suicide-bombers in Iraq are Saudis. Less than a quarter of the insurgents killed here are Iraqi, the rest are all foreign fighters. Terrorists come here from around the world to cut their teeth and once they move on they’ll be taking the jihad to the West, big-time. What you’ve had so far in Europe is just a taste of what’s coming. You know your history, right? What happened in Afghanistan?’
Shepherd knew what had happened in Afghanistan, all right: he’d taken a bullet in the shoulder and almost died. ‘I guess so,’ he said. He put down his knife and fork. He had barely touched his breakfast.
‘Back in the eighties, the Soviets were the bad guys and Uncle Sam wanted them out of Afghanistan,’ continued Bosch. ‘The Americans poured money into the Afghan Mujahideen, effectively funding a guerrilla campaign that was ultimately successful. After the Russians pulled out, the Mujahideen didn’t lay down their weapons. Far from it. They declared a global jihad and went off in search of new battles. Remember the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993? The men behind it were connected to a group that collected money for the Afghan jihad . Talk about chickens coming home to roost. Other Mujahideen went back to Algeria to set up the Armed Islamic Group, which ended up murdering thousands of Algerian civilians in their attempt to set up an Islamist state. Another group left Afghanistan for Egypt to start a terror campaign that killed thousands of Egyptians. More Mujahideen left to set up the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines. And let’s not forget the most successful graduate of the Afghan conflict, Osama bin Laden himself. He turned against his former masters big-time. Most of the bad shit that’s happened in the world goes back to what happened in Afghanistan – the Twin Towers, the London Tube bombings, Bali.’
Shepherd sat back and stretched out his legs. ‘And that’s what’s happening here, isn’t it? It’s a breeding ground for terrorists.’
‘On a bigger scale than Afghanistan, in a place where the enemy is the United States, Britain, Australia and the rest of the coalition forces. The Americans have captured insurgents with British passports, French, Dutch, almost the entire EU spectrum. They’re learning urban warfare, how to make improvised explosive devices, how to brainwash suicide-bombers, how to kidnap, and once they’ve graduated they’ll take their jihad to the West, spreading like a virus.’ The South African grinned. ‘You’re fucked, you just don’t know it yet.’
‘You paint a pretty picture,’ said Shepherd, ‘but you don’t seem particularly worried.’
‘The crazier the world gets, the more work there is for me,’ she explained. ‘I get paid in dollars and I spend in rand. You should visit my game farm some time. Two hundred acres and Iraq paid for it.’
‘It’s an ill wind,’ said Shepherd.
O’Brien pointed at Shepherd’s plate with his fork. ‘Are you going to eat the sausages?’ he asked. Shepherd shook his head. O’Brien stabbed them and transferred them to his plate.
‘You should think about it,’ said Bosch, ‘you and Martin. Guys like you with your SAS training, you’d get work out here no problem.’ She leaned over and squeezed Shepherd’s forearm. ‘Have to fatten you up a bit first.’ She laughed.
The Major walked into the kitchen. ‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’
‘As I ever will be,’ said Shepherd.
‘Let’s go and see John, get you kitted out,’ said the Major.
Shepherd stood up. Bosch smiled up at him. ‘Good luck, Spider,’ she said.
‘It’ll be fine,’ he said, and wished he felt as confident as he sounded.
He walked into the courtyard with the Major. ‘You sure about this?’ asked Gannon.
‘It’s a bit late to change my mind now,’ said Shepherd.
‘No one would blame you if you did.’
Three helicopters flew overhead, low enough to ruffle the tops of the date palms. They were Hueys, American-made Bell UH-1Hs but with the markings of the Iraqi air force.
‘It’s Geordie’s only chance,’ said Shepherd. ‘If our roles were reversed, he wouldn’t hesitate.’
‘Yeah, well, he was always the headstrong one.’
‘He saved my life. I owe him.’
The Major clapped Shepherd on the shoulder. ‘We’ll be close by.’
‘Not too close,’ said Shepherd.
‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’