The fuel compound was an oasis of yellow light and bright enough to make me squint until my eyes adjusted. It was just under two hundred yards to my half-left. From my perspective the tanks were sitting side by side, surrounded by the bung. To the right of them was the not-so-neat row of fuel trucks.
The perimeter of the compound was guarded by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence, sagging in places where the trucks had backed into it over the years.
In the far corner of the compound, by the gate that faced the road, was the security hut. It was no more than a large garden shed. The security was for fire watch just as much as for stopping the trucks and fuel disappearing during the night; the depot had no automatic fire system in the event of a leak or explosion. Lotfi told us there was a solitary guy sitting inside, and if the whole thing ignited it would presumably be his job to get on the phone.
That was good for us, because it meant we didn’t have to spend time neutralizing any fire-fighting apparatus or alarms. What was bad was the police barracks. A complete fuck-up on our side was only a phone call and three miles away. If we got caught it would be serious shit. Algeria wasn’t exactly known for upholding human rights, no one would be coming to help us, no matter what we said, and terrorists were routinely whipped to death in this neck of the woods.
Chapter 3
The target house was to the right of us, and closer than the compound. The wall that surrounded it was a large, square, high-sided construction of plastered brick, painted a color that had once been cream. It was built very much in the Muslim tradition of architecture, for privacy. The main door faced the fuel tanks, and we knew from the satellite that it was rarely used. I couldn’t even see it from where I was, because the lights in the compound weren’t strong enough. From the shots Lotfi had taken during the CTR, I knew it consisted of a set of large, dark, wooden double doors rising to an apex, studded and decorated with wrought iron. The pictures had also shown a modern shutter-type garage door at the side, facing away from us toward the road. A dirt track connected it with the main drag.
Inside the high protection was a long, low building. It wasn’t exactly palatial, but showed that the fuel and teabag business paid Zeralda well enough for him to have his own little playground.
Double doors from quite a lot of the rooms opened onto a series of tiled courtyards decorated with plants and fountains, but what the satellite photographs hadn’t been able to show us was which room was which. That didn’t really matter, though. The house wasn’t that big and it was all on one floor, so it shouldn’t take us long to find where Zeralda was doing his entertaining.
The paved road flanked the far side of these two areas and formed the base of the triangular peninsula.
Lotfi moved back down into the dead ground and started to scramble along in the darkness to his left, just below the lip. As we followed, two cars raced along the road, blowing their horns at each other in rhythmic blasts before eventually disappearing into the darkness. I’d read that eighty percent of men under the age of thirty were jobless in this country and inflation was in high double figures. How anybody could afford fast cars was beyond me. I could only just about afford my motorbike.
We got level with the tanks and moved up to the lip of the high ground. Hubba-Hubba took off his bergen and fished out the wire cutters and a two-foot square of red velvet curtain material, while we put on and adjusted the black-and-white-check shemags that would hide our faces when we hit the hut. I wouldn’t be taking part directly because of my skin color and blue eyes. I would only come into the equation when the other two had located Zeralda. It wouldn’t matter that he saw me.
When Hubba-Hubba got his bergen back on and his shemag around his head, we checked each other again as Lotfi drew his pistol and did his tour guide routine, with a nod to each of us as we copied.
Breaking the operation down into stages, so that people knew exactly what to do and when to do it, made things easier for me. These were good men, but I couldn’t trust my life with people I didn’t know very well and whose skills, beyond the specifics of this operation, I wasn’t sure about.
Following Lotfi, with me now at the rear, we moved toward the fence line. It was pointless running or trying to avoid being in the open for the thirty or so yards: it was just flat ground and the light in the compound hadn’t hit us directly yet as the arc lights were facing into the compound, not out. We would get into that light spill before long, and soon after that we’d be attacking the hut, so hell, it didn’t really matter. There was no other way of crossing the open ground anyway.
There came a point where, bent over, as we tried instinctively to make ourselves smaller, we caught the full glare of the four arc lights set on high steel posts at each corner of the compound. A mass of small flying things had been drawn to the pools of light and buzzed around them.
I could hear the rustle of my pants as my wet legs rubbed together. I kept my mouth open to cut down on the sound of my breathing. It wasn’t going to compromise us, but doing everything possible to keep noise to a minimum and make this job work made me feel better. The only other sounds were of their sneakers moving over the rocky ground, and the rhythmic scrape of the nylon bergens over the chirp of the invisible crickets. My face soon became wet and cold as I breathed against the shemag.
We got to the fence line behind the shed. There were no windows facing us, just sunbaked wooden cladding no more than three feet away.
I could hear someone inside, shouting grumpily in French. “Oui, oui, d’accord.” At the same time there was a blast of monotone Arabic from a TV set.
Lotfi held the red velvet over the bottom of the fence and Hubba-Hubba got to work with his cutters. He cut the wire through the velvet, moving upward in a vertical line. Lotfi repositioned the velvet each time, the two men working like clockwork toys, not looking remotely concerned about the world around them. That was my job, to watch and listen to the sounds coming from the shed in case its occupant was alerted by the smothered ping each time a strand of chain-link gave way.
The telephone line snaked into the compound from one of the concrete posts that followed the road, which looked like a strip of liqorice running left and right. There was a sign, in both Arabic and English, to be careful of the bend. I knew that if I went to the right I would hit Oran about ten miles away, and if I went left I would pass Cap Ferrat and eventually hit Algiers, the capital, about four hundred miles to the east.
Hubba-Hubba and Lotfi finished cutting the vertical line as the one-sided conversation continued inside the shed, then carefully pulled the two sides apart to create a triangle. I eased my way slowly through, so my bergen wouldn’t snag. I got my fingers through Lotfi’s side of the fence to keep it in position and he followed suit, taking hold of Hubba-Hubba’s side while he packed the cutting gear. When he was through as well, we eased the fence back into place.
We put our bergens on the ground behind the shed, to the accompaniment of the monotonous Arabic TV voice, and the old guy still babbling in French.
It flashed through my mind that I had no idea what had been happening in Afghanistan this past week. Was the U.S. still bombing? Had troops gone in and dug the Taliban out of their caves? Having been so totally focused on the job in the mining camp and then stuck in the submarine, I didn’t have a clue if OBL was dead or alive.
We used the light to make final adjustments to each other’s shemags.
Everyone carefully checked chamber for the last time. They were becoming like me, paranoid that they were going to pull a trigger one day and just get a dead man’s click because the topslide hadn’t picked the round up due to the mag not being fully home.