Читать книгу Last Light - Alex Scarrow - Страница 14

3.37 p.m. local time Desert, Salah Ad Din Region, Iraq

‘Where the hell are they going?’ yelled Mike.

The Iraqi police vehicle ahead of them had suddenly lurched to the right off the bumpy road heading south-west back to Al-Bayji.

Andy watched the vehicle rattle away across the rough terrain and then on to a small tributary road. The other two police trucks followed suit, pulling out of their convoy and heading off after the lead truck, away from them.

‘Shit. What do we do? Do we follow them?’ asked Mike.

Andy shrugged, ‘I don’t know, that’s taking us in the wrong direction.’ He watched the three vehicles recede amidst a plume of dust.

‘They have other business,’ Farid offered from the front seat. The old man pointed to the radio recessed into the dashboard, ‘Al-Tariq, the radio station, say Sunni-Shi’a unrest in Saudi has spreading over here. They have much explosions, a lot of fighting in Baghdad.’

Mike looked at Andy, ‘That’s just great.’

Farid frowned uncertainly, not getting the irony. ‘The police now go and fight for their side,’ he added.

‘Sunnis?’

The old man nodded.

Andy bit his lip and took a deep breath. They were dangerously exposed now. With no escort they were going to be a very tempting soft target. There was, of course, their driver, a young man called Amal, and in the other Land Cruiser there was another driver called Salim. Both drivers had on them AK47 assault rifles. How prepared they were to use them in a stand-up fight, he wasn’t so sure. The truth was he couldn’t expect Farid, Amal or Salim to lay down their lives to protect him or the other three westerners. Shit, if the roles were reversed and they came across an American patrol looking for some likely looking ragheads to play around with, it’s not like he, Mike and the other two contractors would level those same guns at the Americans to protect them.

They just had to hope the road back into town was open, and everyone with a gun and a chip on his shoulder would be too busy laying into each other to worry about jacking them.

He looked out of the window at the passing scrub and dusty ground, the occasional cluster of date palm trees, and wondered just what was going on this morning. Mike said his phone call had been from his head office in Austin, Texas, to tell him what they were hearing from Reuters; that all hell had broken loose in Saudi Arabia after some mosques had been blown up, with hundreds killed. That country was ripe for this; a tinderbox waiting to go up. Understandably, with the situation so volatile in Iraq, things were predictably going to flare up in sympathy, and the same was probably going to happen in other vulnerable Arabic nations: Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman.

Andy could imagine the focus of world news right now was on events in Riyadh as they unfolded hour by hour, and he guessed that experts on Arabic culture and Islamic affairs were being rushed into television studios across the globe to pontificate on what was going on. But he wondered who was taking a look at the bigger picture.

As of this morning, with the troubles rapidly destabilising Saudi Arabia, the world had just lost the regular supply of somewhere between a quarter and a third of its daily oil needs.

He reached into a pocket and pulled out his mobile.

‘Who’re you calling?’ asked Mike.

‘I’m phoning home,’ Andy replied, flipping it open and hitting the quick-dial button. There was a long pause before he finally heard a flat tone. ‘Shit, can’t get a signal.’

‘It’s hit and miss, some cells work better than others,’ said Mike. ‘We’re on the move, so try again in a minute.’

Farid turned round in his seat to talk to them. ‘Maybe bad driving into Al-Bayji. Riots, fighting.’

‘Shit, well what else do you suggest we do?’ snapped Mike. ‘We can’t stay out here.’

Andy looked up. ‘I think we could skirt the town, and head on for K-2. It’s another hour or so.’

K-2 was an airstrip extensively upgraded by the Americans and a pivotal supply and extraction point for forces deployed in the north of the country.

‘You want to leave Iraq?’ asked Mike.

‘Yeah, I want to leave Iraq. I see this getting a lot worse.’

Andy tried the home number again, and this time he got a tone. Several rings later he got their answerphone, his own voice coming back at him. ‘Shit.’

Do I try her mobile?

She was likely to hang up on him. He wanted the kids back at home, not at school or university, and he wanted Jenny to go down to their local Tesco and buy up enough food and water for a few weeks.

Christ, am I being paranoid?

Maybe. But then if he was over-reacting, so what? It’s only food, it would get eaten, eventually. But right now he suspected Jenny would just tell him to piss off, and that she wasn’t going to mess the kids around just because he was having some sort of panic attack.

Or maybe she would just be more concerned about him, being over here whilst this was all kicking off. Not thinking for one moment that what was happening in Saudi Arabia would have the slightest effect on her cosy life in Shepherd’s Bush, London.

He tried Jenny’s number anyway, and got a ‘this phone may be switched off’ message.

‘No luck?’ asked Mike.

‘Nope.’

Andy wondered whether he should just bypass her for now. He could see this getting a lot worse. If he was right about things, they were going to know about it in two, three or maybe four days. That’s how quickly he suspected the impact of a sudden oil strangulation would be felt. Even now he suspected emergency oil conservation measures were being discussed in Downing Street, and would be announced by the Prime Minister sometime before the end of the day. And when that happened, the penny would drop for everyone else and all hell would break loose.

Sod Jenny.

Andy called the only other mobile number he had on quick-dial.