Gaunt turned his face to the morning sun and breathed the sweet scent of aviation fuel.
‘They revoked our pass, Ese,’ said Raphael.
‘The chit?’
‘Expired. They won’t renew.’
The Provisional Authority had been superseded by the Interim Governing Council. All private contractors had to renegotiate terms.
‘They want us out, Ese. End of the month. Vacate and give them the keys.’
‘I’ll talk to the main office,’ said Gaunt. ‘Try to buy us more time.’
‘I heard there’s a vacant warehouse near the Central Station. We could rent space. Bid for police contracts.’
‘A few helmets, a few flaks. Pocket change. Go down that route and we’ll end up bartering AKs for cows. No. All the big deals are happening here. This is the hub. This is the action.’
‘Ten months, bro. Been here ten months.’
‘Just got to hold our nerve. Everyone else is making out hand over fist. Why not us?’
‘You said we’d get Agency work. You said they were desperate for guys.’
Gaunt had approached an intel analyst at the Al-Rasheed two months ago. The basement sports bar favoured by Central Intelligence document recovery teams sent to scour bombed-out ministry buildings for paperwork and hard drives. The analyst was sitting alone, sipping scotch. Only guy in a shirt and tie. Gaunt took a stool next to him, begged for work, begged for a way in. The guy drained his glass and walked away without saying a word.
‘Like I say. Just got to hold our nerve.’
Gaunt and Raphael unloaded the truck.
Engine revs. An SUV with a damaged muffler. They watched it approach up the service road. An armoured Suburban with heavy ram bars. Scorched, bubbled paint work. Body pocked with bullet strikes. Cracked windshield.
Lucy and Amanda.
Lucy got out the car. She raised her Oakleys and tucked them in her hair like an Alice band. She approached Gaunt and held out her hand.
‘How’ve you been?’ she asked.
‘Fuck you.’
Amanda hung back and kept a hand on the butt of her sidearm.
Lucy checked out the interior of the hangar.
Stacked crates. Boxes of cheap boots. Blue Iraqi police uniforms still sheathed in plastic. MRE food pouches.
Gaunt’s desk, cluttered with manifests, transit papers and end-user certificates. There was a framed photograph on the desk. Young Gaunt and his father, both in dress blues.
Amanda looked Gaunt up and down. Young guy. Crucifix round his neck. An old burn on his forearm, skin like melted wax. He wore a big skull ring on one hand, a West Point graduation ring on the other.
‘What the fuck are you doing here, Lucy?’ asked Gaunt.
‘We need a ride. Three-day charter. We heard you might be looking for business.’
‘You’re kidding me, right? Take your shit-heap car and get out of here.’
Amanda lifted the lid of a green wooden crate labelled ‘engine parts’. An ancient Russian machine gun. Bipod. Chipped wooden stock. Drum magazine.
‘Where did you get this stuff?’ she asked. ‘A yard sale?’
‘No market for American carbines,’ said Raphael. ‘Not round here. Fancy scopes and laser sights. Not interested. They want AKs. They trust them. They can get the spares, they can get the ammo.’
Amanda worked the slide and aimed at Raphael’s dog. She pulled the trigger. Clack of an empty chamber. The dog barked and jerked its chain.
‘Where does all this shit end up?’ asked Amanda.
‘Burqan oil fields, mostly,’ said Raphael.
She laid the weapon back in its newspaper bed.
Lucy opened a crate and examined grenades. Russian. Green baseball grenades with a long aluminium fuse. Gaunt took a grenade from Lucy’s hand. He pulled the pin. The safety lever flipped, and clinked on concrete. He tossed the grenade. Lucy caught it, unconcerned.
‘Doubt you’re dumb enough to pack them fused.’
She put the grenade on Gaunt’s desk. It rolled among paperwork.
‘Get out,’ said Gaunt. ‘I’m not going to tell you again.’
‘Thousand dollars a day,’ said Lucy. ‘Plus a cut of the haul.’
Gaunt spat on her boot.
‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘I got some work for you.’
Gaunt leant on his desk, hands planted either side of a Colt pistol resting on paperwork.
‘Guess I’m not making myself clear.’
Amanda popped the restraining strap of her side-holster.
Raphael stepped between them.
‘They got money, Ese. I want to hear what they have to say.’
Raphael led them between stacked crates of 7.62mm ammunition. African import stamps on the crates. Kinshasa. One battle zone to another. Half the rounds would probably misfire.
There were two Huey choppers at the back of the hangar. Vietnam-era war-birds. Bad Moon and Talon.
‘These things actually fly?’ asked Lucy.
‘I bet my life on these girls,’ said Raphael.
‘Mind if we check them out?’
‘Go ahead.’
Lucy and Amanda circled the choppers. Crude avionics. Old-time gauges and altimeters. Leather seats patched with duct tape.
‘These things are older than my grandpa,’ said Amanda. ‘We’re wasting our time.’
‘Gaunt is just running his mouth. Look around you. He needs money. Needs it badly.’
‘What about tattoo guy? The barrio gangbanger? What do you know about him?’
‘Raphael? I asked around. Shitload of combat flight hours. Flown everywhere. Night recon. Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan. Any stan you care to mention.’
Gaunt and Raphael watched them inspect the Hueys.
‘The two chicks are wearing rings,’ said Raphael. ‘What’s the deal with that?’
‘What do you think?’
‘We need the bucks, Ese. We need to eat.’
‘I don’t care if I fucking starve.’
‘We ought to hear what she has to say. Thousand dollars a day, Ese. We can’t turn it down.’
Lucy ducked beneath the tail-boom. She approached Gaunt and Raphael.
‘How much can these things haul?’ asked Lucy
‘Sling-load, or cabin?’
‘Cabin.’
‘Three tons each, give or take,’ said Raphael. ‘We can take out the bench seats, easy enough.’
‘Can they handle desert?’
‘They’ve got filters.’
‘So what do you say?’
Raphael relit his cigar.
‘I’m wondering why you’re talking to us and not military liaison.’
‘Those grenades. Where did you guys pick them up? Pretoria? Liberia? They’ve got to be twenty years old. Corroded to hell. Sell those to some warlord down south and you’ve got a real problem. They’ll crack open a box for training and find they don’t go bang. They’ll snatch you off the street. Cut you up slow.’
‘That’s my concern,’ said Gaunt.
Lucy smoothed out a map, spread it like a tablecloth over a couple of grenade crates. Raphael fetched Dr Pepper from a refrigerator and cracked cans. Gaunt hung back, arms folded.
Iraq. All the major cities clustered east in the fertile alluvial plains of the Tigris and Euphrates. Irrigated vineyards. Pomegranate and date groves. Oil money down south near the gulf.
Lucy pointed west. Al Anbar. The Western Desert. Terra incognita. A here-be-monsters blank. No towns, no cities.
‘Here,’ she said.
‘Middle of the desert.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Nothing out there,’ said Raphael. ‘Sand and scorpions. Might meet a few Bedouin. A few Talib. Slit your throat given a chance.’
‘Those choppers. Could they make the trip?’
‘Edge of their range but yeah, they could make it.’
‘It’s a salvage run. Stuff from the war. We find it. We load it. We bring it back.’