It was as if he had no strength to resist, for the wave’s power was beyond resistance. It drove him down and tumbled him around, over and over. It pummelled him senseless, rolling him so that he had no sense of up or down, and all the while the air in his lungs soured, his desire to inhale growing by the moment so that his chest burned and his head pounded with an irresistible craving to breathe, breathe, breathe. Yet, round and round he was driven, the surf careless of his life, which must surely slip from his grasp at any moment. It was as if a great hand had forced him to the bottom and held him there, grinding his limbs and his face on the coral, slicing, piercing, the water reddening with his ebbing life force.
And then suddenly he burst to the surface at the last moment of desperation to inhale the sweet clear air. Only this time, there was nothing but sand to breathe; mouthfuls of rasping sand that filled his lungs with a dry burning. Kadar Al-Jahani regained consciousness as he coughed and hacked to free his lungs of the concrete dust. There was silence in his head, the silence of the deaf. He began to crawl slowly. His shoulder was torn and loose, the ball rolling freely in soft muscle made him want to cry out, but he bit down on it, channelled it, harnessed it to his will to survive and escape. His hands were secured behind his back, so Kadar fell on his face several times as the rubble shifted under his bloody knees. And still the dust choked. He crawled for days and weeks like this, stumbling, falling, searching for air, air that was sweet, a clean breath above the roiling dust.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Wilkes heard Monroe say.
‘Let’s roll,’ said Wilkes with a nod of his head to Benyamin.
The Israeli gunned the diesel and the Merkava bucked forward, rearing over the scattered debris like a frightened horse. The soldiers waiting in the building choked as the billowing waves of grit coated their lungs.
‘Where’s Kadar?’ asked Monroe.
‘He’s with you,’ said Glukel.
‘Shit,’ said Monroe.
Some long seconds of silence followed. ‘Okay,’ said Monroe. ‘I do not have the prisoner. REPEAT! THE PRISONER HAS ESCAPED!’
‘Kaaakaaaat!’ yelled Glukel.
Shit! Wilkes resisted the temptation to say it into the mic. Without Kadar Al-Jahani, the mission would be worse than a complete disaster. So many pointless deaths… Wilkes checked the monitor in front of him and cycled through the various levels of information. Major Samuels and all his men were dead, according to their flat-lines. And if they weren’t dead before his arrival with the Merkava, only a miracle would have saved them during the explosion of the HEAT ordnance. He again counted the signatures of Samuels and his people and the lines were as before — all flat. But there was something unusual. Lieutenant Glukel was in the process of conducting a search of the demolished building to find Kadar, ordering teams of two to perform a systematic search of the various rooms. The Saudi could well have just been hiding somewhere amongst the rubble.
‘Lieutenant Glukel?’ Wilkes said.
‘I’m busy.’
‘Lieutenant. How many in your troop?’
‘Twelve. No, thirteen, including your friend Monroe.’
‘Atticus,’ said Wilkes. ‘You wearing a wristband?’
‘No,’ said Monroe.
‘Okay, well I’ve got thirteen signatures here on screen. So why is that?’
‘Christ! I forgot. I put my band on Kadar after we cuffed him,’ said Monroe.
‘I’m with you,’ Baruch said, interrupting. ‘Give me a minute.’
Wilkes heard him talking heatedly with the technician. Wilkes wondered whether the American had pulled up his daks now that the stress levels were elevated. A refreshed view of the building flashed onto the screen in front of Wilkes and on it floated twelve bright red dots, each representing a soldier’s homing beacon. But there was one missing. Unlucky number thirteen.
‘Tom, we’re going to have to send Dragon Warrior on a bit of a fly-around. The target couldn’t have gone far,’ said Baruch.
The view of the building changed as the UAV swept around it slowly, stopping every dozen metres or so in a hover to scan the surrounding buildings. And then, suddenly, there it was, or rather, there he was, Kadar Al-Jahani. There was a brightly coloured red sphere inching down the street behind the target building.
‘You got that?’ said Baruch.
‘We’re on it,’ said Wilkes. ‘Benyamin?’
The tank moved forward, swung right, then advanced slowly. It was a tight fit in the side street. It took out the front wall of a two-storey dwelling that promptly collapsed around the tank. The Merkava stopped in the T-intersection at the rear of the building, Benyamin rotating the turret so that it fitted between the buildings. There was not enough room to turn the tank through ninety degrees without destroying more buildings. The tank’s TSS cameras revealed a small dust-coloured mound moving slowly down the middle of the street. Benyamin targeted the main gun on the lump and loaded the spare HEAT round into the breech.
‘I think you’ve got him covered, Ben,’said Wilkes. ‘Crack the doors and leave the motor running.’ Wilkes released his safety harness, picked up the Glock and disappeared through the rear. The tank’s floodlights snapped on. Wilkes gagged on the thick dust boiling around the tank. It stung his eyes and made them water. The atmosphere in the tank had been cool and clean, purified by the air-con. Wilkes pulled himself up on the tank, picked his way over it and then jumped back down into the rear lane. He walked up to the lump, a man with his hands snap-locked behind his back, crawling along on his knees, his skinned face and broken shoulder pushing into the dirt as he tried in vain to escape.
Glukel’s people materialised from the target building, dragging their feet slowly, exhausted, crunching the rubble and grit collected on the road. Seven faces, seven pairs of white eyes blinking from black faces. They carried their people who were too badly wounded to walk. One of the men carried a dead comrade over his shoulder.
‘I hope he’s fucking worth it,’ said Glukel too loudly, her ears clogged with the thunder of battle. She didn’t wait for a reaction, but pushed past Wilkes towards the tank.
‘What kept you, Mr Cojones?’ said Monroe, the smile for once wiped from his face.
Lieutenant Colonel Baruch stood in silence as he watched the monitor, the green clouds of dust settling. He knew this would be his last op. He would be retired, probably with yet another medal. In the words of the American technician beside him, it had been ‘a cluster fuck’. A nice term. He couldn’t have put it better himself. All the technology in the world and still, at the battle front, flesh and blood had stopped the bullets. That crazy Australian bastard. If not for him, more body bags would have been required. But how the hell was he going to keep the warrant officer’s involvement from leaking? If it was important enough, someone else higher up could worry about that.
Besides, Baruch no longer cared and his knees trembled with the realisation. He felt a great despair within. More letters to mothers and fathers explaining the hero’s death earned by their sons. Baruch headed from the rooftop to the stairwell, and checked the magazine in his sidearm as he walked. It was full. No doubt someone would find a use for the nine rounds that remained.
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
It had never happened before. Annabelle Gilbert was late getting to the station. She leapt from the taxi and flew through reception, running onto the set trailing a make-up artist who fussed with a tube of mascara. This was not good enough, she told herself, and there was no excuse. Okay, so Saunders had taken her to lunch, told her she had the world at her feet, and the two bottles of vintage merlot had worked their magic, dissolving her guard and melting time. Suddenly, it was five thirty-seven in the evening and the red light on the camera facing her would wink on in exactly twenty-three minutes. No, correction, twenty-two and a half minutes, she realised, glancing at her TAG Heuer.