Deep Black - Andy McNab [52]
‘You fashioned up yet?’
I’d drawn the curtains behind me so I wouldn’t be someone’s warm-up shot before a night’s sniping at any soldier who stood still long enough.
Jerry was changing out of his local ‘look at me, I’m one of you’ clothes. ‘Nearly. I’m dying for a beer, but the fridge is fucked.’
I looked down. Either the party had split into two or there’d always been rival events. The grassed area was full of people, and about twenty or so were congregated round the barbecue near the pool. Johnny Cash’s dad had moved out of the bar to serenade a group of Iraqis and whites sitting round a plastic table, and the Balkan boys were doing a meet-and-greet.
The raffia cabanas and fencing now made sense to me. They hadn’t done it to make it look good: it was to stop outsiders having an unrestricted view and therefore a good arc of fire into the compound. It obviously worked. Everybody looked very relaxed, even though a random cabby into the fencing might take any of them out. But fuck it – as Gaz would say, ‘It’s a war, innit?’
Quite a few more people wandered around the pool as Bob Marley sparked up from the speakers and went into competition with Johnny’s dad, but neither of them was making much headway against the rumble of conversation and laughter. The whole lot got drowned out as a helicopter swooped low over the rooftops just the other side of the hotel.
Jerry came out and watched it go as he clipped his bumbag round him. ‘Must be the cheese-wire patrol . . .’
As we headed for the lift I wondered if Rob would turn up. I hoped so. Seeing these people again made me feel as if nothing had changed, and I liked that. It wasn’t as if Rob and I’d been in and out of each other’s houses during our time together in the Regiment, but whenever we met up we connected – mostly because we were the sad fucks who hadn’t scored down town all night and were still trying to chat up women at the Chinese takeaway on the way back to camp.
The lobby was still heaving. Loud Arab music drifted out of the wedding reception and the women were warbling big-time. They’d be knackered by the morning.
Outside, a crowd had gathered round the far end of the pool, waiting to collect food from the barbecue. The necks of beer bottles stuck out of big bins of ice like the spines of frozen hedgehogs. An Apple PowerBook had been rigged up to a couple of speakers, its screen displaying the music menu. The Wailers were fighting hard to make themselves heard over the country-and-western.
Jerry swayed to the beat and pointed at the strings of fairy-lights in the palm trees. ‘This could be the Caribbean, man.’
‘Must be what makes it so popular,’ I said, as I made my way along the pool side. ‘And I bet the Yardies don’t have many of those.’ A tracked vehicle screeched noisily down the road just the other side of the wall and helicopters clattered across the sky.
The guests were mostly Brits and Americans and seemed to know each other. The news agencies always did have a pretty incestuous set-up, with the same crews moving from war zone to war zone. None of their protection was carrying: the guys all had their party kit on, lurid Hawaiian shirts and Bermudan shorts. It was fun time, and we were the right side of the fence. They outnumbered the women by about sixteen to one, and hovered round the few available like flies round shit.
Jerry picked up a beer for himself and a Coke for me and we gave the place a good scan, me keeping an eye out for Rob, him for anybody who looked like they might know the secret of the Bosnian ayatollah. We must have looked like the proverbial spare pricks.
Sporadic gunfire punctuated the hubbub