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Authors: Gerald Seymour
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SUVs, Pajeros from Mitsubishi’s factories in Japan, were battered and abused. They looked like heaps of sand-scarred, rusted crap but the armour-plated chassis, doors and windows were hidden from any but the most persistent observer. The vehicles were off the road but the engines murmured, and their weapons were armed.
She stood nearest to the road and the dust from lorries’ wheels and pick-ups flew on to her burqah . The Yank was Harding and the Irishman Corky. They were close to her, khaffiyeh s draped round their faces and covering their hair. They had on dirty jeans, and jackets weighed down with grenades and gas in the inside pockets; each had a pistol at the hip, held in by his belt. In the Pajeros, with heavier firepower on the empty front passenger seats, were Shagger, the Welshman, and the Scot they called Hamfist. They were employees of Proeliator Security, a private military contracting company, and were paid to be bodyguards to Abigail Jones, a Six girl.
Without them – and their show of grudging loyalty – she would have earned the title ‘Eternal Flame’, the one that never goes out. She was far from her secure base in Baghdad’s Green Zone, or the premises at the Basra airport complex, because she trusted, with a degree of fatalistic humour, the Jones Boys’ dedication, the quality of their noses and their understanding of when stupidity overtook duty. She did not deal with them on a need-to-know basis but talked each move through with them so that Hamfist, Shagger, Corky and Harding were privy to the secrets of the Six operation that had now run for some two years – ever since an unexploded device had been recovered and subjected to analysis for the uniqueness of a man’s deoxyribonucleic-acid deposits. She had been permitted two four-month extensions of her posting, almost unique, but she hoped to see the operation to its conclusion, to have a part in its death. The Jones Boys would be on the ground as long as she was. It was a commercial relationship that had become family, but they called her ‘miss’ or ‘ma’am’ and took no liberties of familiarity. Each time, though, that she went out and they hit the road, she took care to explain where they went, and why. Now it was to meet an informant.
He hadn’t shown.
There should have been, approaching through the mirage mist of the road, a motor scooter with an old man astride it. The heat would have distorted their first view of him from perhaps a mile down the straight highway; and as it had cleared they would have known him by the matted grey beard. Many months before, the informant had gone through the marshes and along the berms crossing them, with the papers in his pocket to identify himself as a resident of the Ahvaz Arab community on the far side of the frontier. The scooter had been left well hidden and he had walked, waded where there was still water in the lagoons, and had cut old reed fronds to make a broom for sweeping. He had cleaned a road and a pavement, pocketing cigarette butts strewn behind a man who smoked as stress gripped him.
A few days before, the relative by marriage of the ‘cleaner’ had travelled as a pillion passenger on the same scooter with two baskets of dates. He had had similar identification papers – forged but good enough to pass a check by Iranian police, border guards, even men of an al-Quds Brigade detachment posted for the security of a valued man. He had asked vague questions in a coffee shop, had had gossip answers, and had overheard enough of a conversation to win the glowing smile of Abigail Jones, Echo Foxtrot. A fistful of dollars had been paid to the informants for the retrieval of the used cigarette filters and for a snatch of talk. She thought it most likely that either the informant and his relative had decided they had made enough money for their needs, had been intercepted and robbed, had unwisely shown a glimpse of riches in a coffee house, or had boasted and been heard by any of the
She stood nearest to the road and the dust from lorries’ wheels and pick-ups flew on to her burqah . The Yank was Harding and the Irishman Corky. They were close to her, khaffiyeh s draped round their faces and covering their hair. They had on dirty jeans, and jackets weighed down with grenades and gas in the inside pockets; each had a pistol at the hip, held in by his belt. In the Pajeros, with heavier firepower on the empty front passenger seats, were Shagger, the Welshman, and the Scot they called Hamfist. They were employees of Proeliator Security, a private military contracting company, and were paid to be bodyguards to Abigail Jones, a Six girl.
Without them – and their show of grudging loyalty – she would have earned the title ‘Eternal Flame’, the one that never goes out. She was far from her secure base in Baghdad’s Green Zone, or the premises at the Basra airport complex, because she trusted, with a degree of fatalistic humour, the Jones Boys’ dedication, the quality of their noses and their understanding of when stupidity overtook duty. She did not deal with them on a need-to-know basis but talked each move through with them so that Hamfist, Shagger, Corky and Harding were privy to the secrets of the Six operation that had now run for some two years – ever since an unexploded device had been recovered and subjected to analysis for the uniqueness of a man’s deoxyribonucleic-acid deposits. She had been permitted two four-month extensions of her posting, almost unique, but she hoped to see the operation to its conclusion, to have a part in its death. The Jones Boys would be on the ground as long as she was. It was a commercial relationship that had become family, but they called her ‘miss’ or ‘ma’am’ and took no liberties of familiarity. Each time, though, that she went out and they hit the road, she took care to explain where they went, and why. Now it was to meet an informant.
He hadn’t shown.
There should have been, approaching through the mirage mist of the road, a motor scooter with an old man astride it. The heat would have distorted their first view of him from perhaps a mile down the straight highway; and as it had cleared they would have known him by the matted grey beard. Many months before, the informant had gone through the marshes and along the berms crossing them, with the papers in his pocket to identify himself as a resident of the Ahvaz Arab community on the far side of the frontier. The scooter had been left well hidden and he had walked, waded where there was still water in the lagoons, and had cut old reed fronds to make a broom for sweeping. He had cleaned a road and a pavement, pocketing cigarette butts strewn behind a man who smoked as stress gripped him.
A few days before, the relative by marriage of the ‘cleaner’ had travelled as a pillion passenger on the same scooter with two baskets of dates. He had had similar identification papers – forged but good enough to pass a check by Iranian police, border guards, even men of an al-Quds Brigade detachment posted for the security of a valued man. He had asked vague questions in a coffee shop, had had gossip answers, and had overheard enough of a conversation to win the glowing smile of Abigail Jones, Echo Foxtrot. A fistful of dollars had been paid to the informants for the retrieval of the used cigarette filters and for a snatch of talk. She thought it most likely that either the informant and his relative had decided they had made enough money for their needs, had been intercepted and robbed, had unwisely shown a glimpse of riches in a coffee house, or had boasted and been heard by any of the
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