Deep Black

45

They bundled me out through the lobby. Straight out through the main doors, into dazzling sunlight, then into the back of a Hummer. The driver gunned the engine. A group of fixers were staring in after me, smoking themselves to death. My boy was there with a sack in his hand: Saddam’s pistols had arrived.

It’s more cramped than it looks in these things. There are only two seats front and back, and a raised square section of steel, covering the drive shaft, running down the centre. One of the MPs jumped in next to me; his belt-kit pressed me hard against the raised section. I leaned over to my right, trying to relieve the pressure.

The dash-mounted radio crackled. Another MP jumped in from the other side. He kicked me out of his way with a scuffed and scabbed-up desert boot. He was aiming for the turret, to man the roof-mounted machine-gun, and needed my bit of cover to stand on.

I had webbing and a body to my left, boots and legs to my right. I wasn’t going anywhere. The sergeant was still outside the vehicle. Were we waiting for Jerry? I hoped we weren’t. If he could avoid getting lifted, maybe he could help me out. Then again, it would be comforting to know I wasn’t the only one in the shit. How much in the shit I didn’t have a clue, but I was sure going to find out soon enough. The best bet was to keep quiet with these boys: it was pointless resisting or protesting. They were here to lift me, and that was it, no matter what I said or did. Keep quiet, keep passive, keep uninjured.

The hotel doors opened and Jerry was heaved out past the fixers. He hadn’t come quietly. Blood streamed from a cut on his forehead. ‘Where are you taking me?’ He looked at the crowd. ‘Remember me if I disappear. Remember what happened here. I’m an American.’

Why didn’t the fucker just shut up and get in the back of the wagon? If they were going to kill us, they would hardly have done this in broad daylight, in front of half the world’s media.

The sergeant leaned in and produced a length of cloth. I got a kick from one of the boots level with my right shoulder.

I closed my eyes to protect them as the blindfold went on. The cloth wasn’t fit-for-task. Daylight still got in: I could feel it through my lids.

The doors slammed, the engine roared and the Hummer started to move. The sergeant got on the net to tell whoever wanted to know that he was on his way with two ‘pax’, while the gunner shouted at whoever was within reach to get the fuck out of his way. The MP next to me adjusted himself in his seat, forcing his belt-kit deeper into my ribs. ‘What you been doing, pal?’ I couldn’t tell where the accent was from.

‘Dunno. I was hoping you could tell me.’

The sergeant’s voice boomed from up front. ‘Shut the fuck up, both of you.’

I lifted my head a little and opened my eyes as much as I could behind the blindfold. I could see just a sliver of reality. The inside of the Hummer, like any military vehicle during operations, was in shit state. To the right, the other side of the roof gunner, was a blue plastic cooler box, probably full of ice, mineral water and Coke. Candy wrappers and empty bottles littered the floor. The driver gripped the wheel with his left hand and a Beretta with his right. There was a Walkman on the dash. When the guys got bored I guessed they’d treat themselves to a blast of Eminem.

The matt green paintwork had been chipped, rubbed and worn down to bare steel and aluminium. Danny Connor was right: American troops hadn’t been prepared for the sort of war they were fighting now. Someone had secured sets of body armour to the doors. Before that, there’d have been just a thin sheet of steel between them and the enemy.

These guys had been prepared and trained for a fast, mobile and aggressive war, not the guerrilla action they were being treated to round here. As Danny Connor had said, it was like Belfast, only worse. I almost felt sorry for them, driving these big vehicles down narrow streets, open to attack every inch of the way. They had no protection at all against RPGs and only sandbags in the footwells as some kind of barrier to the IEDs. There was so much rubbish in the streets they were impossible to spot.

As we drove I tried to make it look as if my head was bouncing around like everybody else’s, so I could get a decent view of where we were going. I thought it might make me feel better if I could get a rough idea of where I was.

I wasn’t scared, just pissed off.

I caught the glint of sun on water, and recognized the silhouette of the bridge over the Tigris. I’d looked at it often enough from my hotel room. Shit, it was hot in here.