Angela opened her mouth to speak, but before she could reply Bronson’s attention shifted and he fixed his eyes on the horizon over to the north.
‘What is it?’
‘I can see a dust cloud over there,’ he replied. ‘There’s a vehicle approaching.’
Angela followed his gaze, but then shook her head.
‘There’s a track that runs out to the west of us. I think it links a couple of villages. It’s probably just some local going about his business.’
‘That’s a pity,’ Stephen said. ‘I was hoping it might have been the police already, because then we could give them our statements and get back to Kuwait.’
‘Not a chance,’ Bronson retorted. ‘We only made the call to the police in Baghdad about an hour ago and it’ll take a lot longer than that for them to get here. Even if they’re only coming here from Basra, which is the nearest big town, they’ll still be at least another hour or two. There’s no way they could have got out here so quickly.’
Stephen studied the dust cloud for a few seconds, then turned back to Bronson.
‘You could be wrong,’ he said. ‘They could have used helicopters to get to Basra and then switched over to 4x4s for the last part of the journey.’
Bronson shook his head.
‘If the police had access to helicopters, why wouldn’t they land right here? No, I don’t know who that is, but it isn’t the Iraqi police.’
Bronson looked again towards the slowly moving cloud of dust and sand and shook his head. It was a shame it wasn’t the police; he was about ready to get out of this place.
10
Khaled was sitting in the passenger seat of the jeep staring through the windscreen at the collection of canvas tents that formed the archaeological camp, looking for any signs of movement.
But that wasn’t all he was watching for. He was alternating his gaze between the camp and the road in front of the vehicle, waiting for a suitable location to initiate the next part of his plan.
And then he saw a steadily rising line of dunes on his left-hand side, and gestured for the driver to slow down. As soon the vehicle moved below the crest of the highest dune, he ordered the vehicle to stop, and the moment it did so Farooq and the other armed man in the rear seat opened their doors and climbed out on to the dusty track, pushing the doors closed as silently as possible behind them. The moment they were clear of the jeep, the driver accelerated away, so that if their progress had been observed, it would not be apparent that the vehicle had even stopped.
Farooq and his companion were still wearing sand-coloured camouflage clothing, which made them virtually invisible against the dunes, at least until they moved, so their approach to the encampment was slow and careful, taking advantage of every scrap of cover that they could find.
They stopped behind the sparse shelter afforded by a stunted bush growing near the base of a dune, and for a few minutes just stared at the rows of tents about half a mile in front of them. Even through the low-power binoculars Farooq was carrying, the camp looked almost exactly the same as it had when they’d left a few hours earlier.
But there was something different about the place that he couldn’t immediately identify. Something had changed. Something that was niggling at his subconscious, either something that he’d noticed during the killings that morning or something that now seemed out of place.
He squinted into the brightness of the sky above as a faint motion attracted his attention.
And then he realized what that something was and a broad smile creased his swarthy face. He handed the binoculars to his companion and gestured towards the tents.
‘Someone is there,’ he said confidently. ‘Or at least somebody has been there.’
‘I don’t see anybody,’ the other man replied after a few moments, as he stared through the binoculars. ‘What did you spot that I didn’t?’
‘It’s not in the camp,’ Farooq said. ‘It’s above the camp. The vultures are circling and that could mean they’ve been driven away from the meals we kindly left them, but actually it doesn’t. It’s much simpler. They can’t feed on any of the carrion for the moment because somebody has covered up the bodies. It must be the woman. Either she was hiding somewhere when we arrived this morning or she’s arrived at the camp since we left. We’re too far out for anyone to have just stumbled across this by chance.’
He took out his walkie-talkie, passed on what he had seen to Khaled, and then the two men continued their stealthy approach through the dunes, Kalashnikovs held ready in both hands, and their eyes scanning the camp in front of them, alert for the first sign of any movement.
11
When Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov designed the assault rifle that bears his name just after the end of the Second World War, he was in part prompted to do so by the poor quality of Russian military weapons at that time, and in particular by their notorious unreliability. From the start, he was determined that his assault rifle would work. At all times and under all conditions.
And the reality is that the AK-47 will function even if the mechanism is choked with mud or sand, or is full of water, and it simply will not jam, overheat or break, and that’s why it’s the weapon of choice for the armed forces of over thirty countries worldwide, and the favoured arm of virtually every existing terrorist group. Roughly one hundred million of these rifles have been produced both legally and illegally as counterfeit versions since the design was finalized in 1948.
What Kalashnikov was much less concerned about was accuracy. The purpose of an assault rifle is to produce a high rate of fire — a theoretical 600 rounds a minute in the case of the AK-47, though the normal maximum is 100 rounds a minute — and to spray the enemy with bullets. A modern sniper rifle like the American Barrett M82 can reach out and consistently hit targets at well over a mile, but even an expert with the Kalashnikov would have to fire around five shots from a bench-rest or lying prone to hit a static mansized target at less than half that distance. And if either the target or the shooter is moving, the effective range of the weapon drops dramatically.
And that, Bronson knew immediately as he heard the staccato clamour of an assault rifle being fired on full auto, was the only reason they were still alive. He grabbed Angela by the arm and pulled her down to the ground.
‘What—’ Stephen spluttered when Bronson reached up and pulled him down as well.
‘They’ve come back,’ Bronson muttered urgently, looking out to the north from the illusory shelter of the tent behind them.
He could see two figures perhaps four or five hundred yards back, both wearing camouflage clothing. What disturbed him in particular was that only one of them was moving, running towards the camp but keeping well out of the line of fire of the second man, who was pointing his Kalashnikov directly at the tents. These men clearly knew what they were doing: one getting close enough to guarantee killing shots, while the other covered the targets, keeping them pinned down.
‘We’ve got to run for it, right now,’ Bronson said, ‘before they get any closer. Jink from side to side to throw off their aim, and run like hell. Back to the Toyota.’
Even before he’d finished speaking, Angela was on her feet, ducking and weaving as she sprinted away from the camp, still clutching the satellite phone. Bronson and Stephen jumped up and followed her, their feet pounding on the hard-packed sand and rock.