Deep Black

89

‘You know him?’

This was about me finding out what he knew, not the other way round. ‘What’s George got you doing?’

‘He said you’d take care of me, help me find him. Once we did, I had to press a button on the side of the battery pack, then carry on with the shoot. I had to make sure the session lasted at least two hours. If we had to go early, I had to leave the camera.’

I started walking back towards the VW.

Jerry shuffled along behind me, trying to keep up so I could hear him over the engine.

‘I know what he’s got me doing, man. I’m not fucking stupid. It’s some kind of tracking device, right? I press the button, they know where he is. They find him, they kill him. As soon as we got to the Palestine and then the Sunny Side Up I had to call him and press the button. That’s all I know, man, that’s all. I swear.’

He sat in the beam of the headlights, dabbing the rag at his face, as if that was going to help.

‘What did you tell George about Rob and Benzil at the al-Hamra?’

‘He wanted to be on top of things. I had to tell him everything that was happening, every day. So when I called him about the military grabbing our asses, and then about Rob and Benzil, he wanted pictures. You gotta believe me, Nick, I only got the Beemer because that’s where you guys were at. Can’t have been anything to do with the hit . . .’

He let the rag fall from his face and his swollen, bloodshot eyes searched mine for help, forgiveness, anything.

‘Why did you do it, Jerry?’

I reached into the cab and picked up the blue disc.

Blood dripped off his chin, making a small puddle in the mud. ‘He said it would be one job, and all my problems would be over . . .’ He coughed up some stuff from the back of his throat and spat it out.

‘What problems? What’s he got on you?’

Jerry had calmed a little. ‘I fucked up.’ He started dabbing again. ‘I went to one of the training camps in Afghanistan with guys I’d met from Lackawanna. I got arrested when I landed back in Detroit.’ He sounded almost angry. ‘I’m no fucking terrorist. I was just chasing a story. They fucking knew that, but they still sent me to the Bay.’

‘You were at Guantanamo?’

‘Two fucking months, man, held in solitary. Speaking to no one, nobody speaking to me. In the dark. Renee was totally out of her freaking mind – she didn’t know where I was. Then one day this guy George turns up and plays the good cop, says he can get me out of there in a heartbeat – but I have to do something for him some time. Like having a favour in the bank. Well, he finally called it in. I told him I didn’t wanna go, but I had to. He said if I didn’t go find Nuhanovic, he’d kill Chloë.’

He crumpled, his face in his hands, sobbing into the rag, his shoulders heaving.

I pulled out the blue disc and put it on the van bumper. The technology had come on apace since the Paveway days. This wasn’t just a tracking device. It was much more than that: it was a location device for time-critical targets. Once they’re marked, they’re hit. No need for man-in-the-loop technology. Now they had the Predator UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle], a remote-controlled aircraft about the size of a single-engined Cessna. They’d been around when I was here last, cruising at anything up to twenty-five thousand feet, but only used for what they were designed for, battlefield surveillance. They had real-time feed from infrared, thermal and normal cameras mounted in the nose; commanders could view the battlefield as easily as if they’d switched on the TV to watch a live traffic report on the Beltway.

Then, in around 2000, some boffin had had the bright idea of strapping an LTD to its nose alongside its surveillance package, and giving it a couple of hundred-pound Hellfire missiles to play with. So these days the operator just sat and watched a screen in the comfort of an operations room, until one of the sensors in the nose located the target – a tank, perhaps, or a carload of terrorists. All the operator had to do was splash it with the LTD then zap off the Hellfires, which would strike with an accuracy of plus or minus two metres. The only hard bit was identifying the target, especially if it was a single person. That had to be why George needed us here. It was back to the old man-in-loop technology again. Jerry would kick off the target indicator, which would start to transmit. The Predator would pick up the signal; the operator would home in the LTD and kick off the Hellfires.

I turned to Jerry and leaned against the front of the van. ‘You’ve fucked up big-time. That’s not just a tracking device. You’re at the arsehole end of the detect, decide, destroy gang now.’ I held up the blue disc in the light. ‘This thing brings in missiles. George wants Nuhanovic dead . . . you and me are just collateral damage.

‘We’re in the shit, Jerry. He won’t care that the camera’s fucked. To him, the mission is everything. Believe me, I know the man.’

I clenched the device hard in my fist. The White House could have wanted Nuhanovic dead for any of about a dozen reasons that I could think of, from plunging Coke sales to Islam getting a bit more friendly with itself. But right now that didn’t matter. What did was the bit about collateral damage.

Jerry pulled the rag away from his mouth. ‘What we going to do, Nick? Call George? Maybe tell him what’s happening?’

Jerry still hadn’t quite got the hang of this. I paused. ‘What was Salkic talking about back there, outside the cave? He say anything about Nuhanovic?’

He looked up, his face still creased with pain. ‘No, just weird stuff, really. He wanted to thank me for killing the son of an aggressor whore. He said Nuhanovic would be happy – they were animals and not good for business, they messed up business . . . something like that . . .’

‘What the fuck did he mean by that?’

‘Dunno . . . he was pretty spaced out . . .’

I looked down at Jerry as he tried to clear enough blood from his nose to breathe. Why hadn’t Salkic just said Goatee was the son of an aggressor whore, and leave it at that? ‘You sure he said “business”?’

He didn’t bother looking up. ‘Yep, for sure.’

‘Shit.’ I took a couple of very deep breaths and threw the locator to the ground. ‘You’re not the only one round here who’s fucked up . . .’

I dragged him to his feet. ‘Come on, in the van. We’re going.’