The Wreckage

25

Daniela can tell something is wrong long before they arrive. Black smoke rises above the rooftops like a genie being released from a bottle. Five hundred yards from the Finance Ministry and the traffic is at a standstill. Sirens are competing to destroy the silence. Police. Fire engines. Ambulances.

The first blast destroyed the concrete safety barrier to the right of the outer checkpoint. A second vehicle tried to drive through the hole but crashed into the crater. It didn’t reach the Ministry, but the blast has shattered some of the windows on the northern side. Curtains are flapping from the gaping holes and torn scraps of paper swirl across the ground.

Edge is out of the car and running. Daniela can’t keep up. She can only watch him.

Avoiding the first security cordon, he uses a fire engine as cover and follows two paramedics who are carrying a stretcher. There are bodies in the foyer. One of the security guards is lying across the counter with a bullet hole in his forehead. Another is beside the X-ray machine, having dragged his body across the marble floor leaving a red smear like a snail trail. The cleaner is face down beside his polishing machine, a pool of blood beneath his chest.

Edge leaps the metal barrier, ignoring the shouts of two policemen, who draw their guns. He shoulders them aside and reaches the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time. Already he can see what happened. The scene is played out in his mind like moving pictures behind his eyelids: a film with a soundtrack of gunfire and screaming.

The car bombs were a decoy. The gunmen were already inside the cordon, men in Iraqi military uniforms. Two of them are lying dead in the basement corridor. Shaun’s body is ahead of them. He had lunged for the door, but was a fraction of a second too late. The muzzle of the weapon came through the opening. The first bullets hit his Kevlar vest, rocking him backwards. They expected him to be dead, but Shaun shot both of them. As one of them fell he kept firing, spraying the wall with bullets and Shaun’s brain matter.

The rest of the security team had barricaded the door to the IT room. That same door is now hanging off its hinges. The Hispanic girl-Edge can’t recall her name-is lying with one leg twisted beneath her. A shard of wood is sticking from her left eye. Ventura… he remembers her name.

They must have had heavy weaponry-a mortar or maybe an RPG. The shell came through the door and exploded against the opposite wall, where it blew a gaping hole and took Anderson through it. His body is lying in the next room.

Otis is sitting against the desk, the last to die. The legs of the chair next to him have been sheared off. They shot high and low, the vest-free zones, aiming for the groin and neck. He double-killed before he went. He also had time to get a morphine shot from the medical kit and find a vein. No pain.

Otis was first Gulf War, big and black, from somewhere down south. Edge had never asked where. The south was a different America. Otis was a different American.

Glover is missing. He was the target. Daniela Garner was meant to be with him.

Shaun. Vanessa. Anderson. Otis. Weigh it, dice it, julienne it-makes no difference-they were carved up and cooked. Outnumbered. Outgunned. How many of the shifty cocksuckers did it take?

Edge should feel like crying. Instead he feels like getting even. He wants to tear down the world until he finds them. Then he’ll bury them under the rubble of whatever’s left.

As the taxi turns into his street, Luca senses something is wrong. The checkpoint is deserted. Normally the guards would be playing cards or tossing coins against the wall.

He tells the driver to stop. Pays. Walks forward, crouching behind a blast barrier. There are three police cars parked in front of his apartment block. Two officers stand outside the vehicles in green uniforms with berets and sunglasses. They light cigarettes and lean on the Land Cruiser, heavy boots resting on the tarmac.

Police are often not police. Not real. Imposters in stolen uniforms. He glances to his right and left, considering his options.

Cutting through a pathway between buildings and then along an alley, he tries to get closer without being seen. The pistol pressed against his spine feels as though it’s wrapped in barbed wire.

Creeping along the backs of houses, he cuts the distance. Faces become clearer. He recognizes one of them-the flunky who was with General al-Uzri at the burnt-out bank.

Decision time. Fight, flee or stay.

A policeman steps on to Luca’s balcony. He glances over the railing and takes a moment to realize that the journalist is below him. He yells to his colleagues and guns are drawn. Luca steps from his hiding place. His eyes go to the open car door, darkness inside.

“You must come with us,” says the senior officer.

“Why?”

“The Commander of Police wishes to speak with you.”

“Did General al-Uzri give a reason?”

“He gives orders, not reasons.”

Luca is listening to an internal dialogue. He should run. Let them shoot. Better to fight than surrender. Better to die on the street than in some stage-managed execution. He glances up at his apartment. The barrel of an Uzi is pointed at him, the hole gaping blackly.

“I have an American passport. I want to call the US Embassy.”

The policeman gives a rumbling chuckle.

“Why do people like you criticize America until you’re in trouble and then all of a sudden you become patriots?”