Brute Force

96

As we slowed to join the queue of waiting traffic, I told Mansour to put on his shades.

I tucked the Makarov under my thigh. 'Got that .38 within reach?'

Lynn shuffled about in the back.

'Make sure you can get to it.'

The old familiar feeling was crawling through my stomach – that sickening lurch, when you know you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and, worst of all, with no one and nothing to back you up.

'Get about $400 out of the case. Then keep it closed and under your feet.'

Our passports didn't have visas or entry stamps. To a guard who was even half alert we'd stick out a mile. But a few hundred USD might help us on our way.

I watched a sentry making his way towards us, past taxis laden to capacity, the odd private car and a couple of long-distance trucks headed for Benghazi and beyond. Immediately in front of us was a Toyota pick-up stuffed with farm produce. A goat stared vacantly at us from the tailgate, alongside a stack of bamboo cages filled with emaciated chickens.

I left enough room to pull a hard right into the scrub and loop back on the road to Tripoli if it turned into a gang fuck. We'd have to find another route to Ajdabiya. I wanted this sorted; I didn't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.

The checkpoint was basic: a red-and-white-striped pole tied to a couple of sand-filled oil-drums. The sentry was picking vehicles out of the line at random and waving them through. A voice at the back of my head told me we weren't going to be one of them.

I'd normally expect guys like this, in the back of beyond, to be half asleep, bored or just pissed off. But he and his mates looked particularly switched on; they wore shades under their ball caps, crisply pressed green uniforms and carried AKs across their chest.

Mansour gave a low groan. 'Money will not help us.'

'Why not?'

'They are Kata'eb Al-Amn – Security Battalions. Gaddafi's men.'

I looked at Lynn. 'What's he talking about?'

Lynn spat something in Arabic. Mansour grunted back.

'What?' I hated being out of the loop.

'It's unfortunate.' Lynn's head appeared between the front seats. 'You don't usually find the Security Battalions at VCPs. They consider themselves above this kind of thing. Checkpoints are normally manned by the army or the People's Militia. Draftees. Eminently bribable. But not this lot.'

Unfortunate? Not quite the term I'd have used. 'Are they looking for something – us, maybe?'

Mansour sucked his teeth. 'Perhaps they had some trouble here. There have been protests over the price of bread and rice. They could be looking for troublemakers.'

'What are you going to tell them?'

'Quiet; I will deal with it.'

The guard reached the Toyota and started talking to the driver. Even the goat was starting to look uncomfortable. Mansour's time was up and I wasn't liking this one bit.

I turned to Lynn. 'Weapon?'

The strain was registering on his face too. 'On my lap.'

I checked. It was concealed by his jacket.

I nodded towards Mansour. The sweat was starting to trickle down his face. 'A word out of place, shout and I'll put my foot down. Then shoot him through the back of the seat.'

The guard handed back a fistful of papers to the driver of the Toyota. The goat celebrated by trying to bite the head off a chicken that chose that moment to stick its neck through the bars of its cage.

The guard turned his attention to us.

Our fate rested in the hands of a man who'd have slit his own mother's throat twenty years ago on the say-so of the Great Leader with the big lapels.