Dead Centre - Andy McNab [83]
As the lead wagon joined the celebration, green tracer snaked from the muzzle of its 12.7. The gunner lost control as they bounced back through the potholes and pummelled the buildings four hundred metres away.
Awaale didn’t seem to mind. ‘Mr Nick, that was good, yes? We kicked the ass, oh, yes indeed.’ He pulled the Marlboro pack from his sweat-soaked shirt and offered me one. When I shook my head he slapped the driver gleefully on the shoulder. He laughed, and his white teeth gleamed.
Everybody had had a great night out. Well, apart from the lad whose body now lay on the flatbed behind us. There was a curious innocence to their violence. There was no anger. They seemed to bear no hatred towards Lucky’s crew. Killing and maiming wasn’t an outrageous act to them. It was what they did. It was all they knew. They had no boundaries. And that was what made them so dangerous.
I leant forward. ‘You did really well, Awaale. I think your father will be very proud of you.’
‘I know. I know he will be.’
He pulled out his mobile, hit the speed dial and was soon waffling away. He sounded as excited as a child. I didn’t need to be a Somali speaker to understand the facial expressions and the boom-boom-boom. There were nods of agreement from the driver, and I twice heard my name.
Awaale turned to me with the world’s biggest grin and handed me the phone. ‘It’s my father, speak to him.’
‘What’s his name?’
He looked puzzled. ‘Awaale, of course.’
Of course.
To start with, I could just hear a female voice announcing that the Northwest flight from Chicago had been delayed. Minneapolis was eight hours behind. It must have been about midday there.
‘Hello, Mr Nick. My son tells me that you have helped him to do great deeds today. You’ve made me a very proud father.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re there to buy back your loved ones, yes?’
‘Yes. I’m hoping your son will be able to help me. Maybe you can too. One of them is the wife of a dead warrior. One of them is a small boy, a little boy. I know you’re a brave man, a famous man here in this city. Will you be able to help me?’
The Tannoy came to his rescue. The Jet Blue from LaGuardia had landed.
‘Mr Nick, I have to go. My passenger has arrived. Please tell my son I love him.’
He rang off. I passed the phone to Awaale. ‘Your father says he loves you.’
‘I know. I love him too. He’s a great man.’
It was smiles all round in the front of the cab as we drove past the Olympic Hotel. The streets came alive with movement and light. Everybody had a weapon. It was like we’d just come back from a carnival, all on a high, and we were the three winning floats.
12
WE WERE SOON passing the airport. The same guards sat on the wall and smoked under the hand-painted sign. They didn’t even look up as our convoy drove by. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil was the secret of survival round here.
Only the shells of once-great buildings remained each side of the boulevard. In this part of town, even the trees were fucked. Maybe this was what the Italian Riviera would have looked like if it had been carpet-bombed in the Second World War. This had to be the old city, where the Italians and other ex-pats had hung out on the beach in their all-in-one bathing suits in the 1920s. Now there wasn’t even a dog to be seen. It was a ghost town.
We bounced over mortar craters and potholes, slaloming to avoid big lumps of concrete picked out by our headlamps. They provided the only source of light in this part of town.
Awaale started gobbing off on his mobile again. I wasn’t sure how anyone would hear anything that was being said. The driver waffled away. The music blared. Awaale closed down and shouted, ‘Nearly there, Mr Nick.’
We bumped over what was left of the central reservation, down a side road and into a large square with an empty concrete plinth at its centre. It would once have borne a statue of a Somali puppet dictator or an Italian general with a hat full of plumes. Bodies were silhouetted against the flames of a fire beside it.
As we got closer, I saw we were