The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [28]
He lives because he is a man.
“You are American?”
“I was born there. My mother is Iraqi.”
“I like George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. How come Americans don’t like football? Everybody in the world likes football.”
“We have our own sort of football.”
The old man grunts, unimpressed. The girl appears on the narrow stairs. Barely sixteen, her face still covered. She feels her way, pressing her palm against the wall. The old man calls her closer. She raises her chin. Her eyes are a dull and sightless white.
“She heard them,” he says.
“What did she hear?”
The girl speaks softly in Arabic. “There was a truck and two cars. Men were arguing.”
“How many men?”
“Seven or eight.”
“What were they saying?”
“Some of them were told to go into the house. They were beating at the door, trying to get out. The other men loaded the truck.”
“Did you hear any names?”
She shakes her head. “They were driving Land Cruisers.”
“How do you know?”
The old man answers for her. “She can recognize different engines.”
“Did they say where they were going?”
She hesitates. The old man barks, “Tell him, wife.”
Not her grandfather!
“I heard them say Al Yarubiyah,” she says.
It’s a crossing on the Syrian border, eighty miles to the west.
“The men in the building were yelling and screaming,” she says, covering her ears. “There was a big noise and then they stopped.”
Luca leaves a bottle of antibiotics on the table and tells the old man how many to take. He steps into the brightness of the afternoon. A dozen men are watching him, their faces wrapped in kaffiyehs. Eyes empty.
Jamal and Abu are waiting at the vehicles. Abu is eating a homemade sandwich of bread and meat. He has a weapon slung across his chest.
“Time to go,” says Jamal, glancing over his shoulder.
They leave the village in a cloud of dust but even before it settles Abu spots a vehicle tracking them, a battered pickup about two hundred yards away, travelling in the same direction, bouncing over ruts.
The driver is dressed all in white. He’s not alone.
Jamal puts his foot down, swerving around potholes, his knuckles white on the wheel.
“How far to the dual carriageway?”
“A mile and a half.”
Luca pulls a Kevlar vest from his bag. “Put this on.”
Jamal shakes his head. “I’m fine. You wear it.”
“We both wear one.”
Jamal takes one hand off the steering wheel and puts it through the sleeve, then the other one.
Reaching beneath the seat, Luca pulls out a machine pistol. He cracks the car door, holding it partially open, keeping his weapon out of sight.
The pickup is still with them, the distance closing.
“They could be farmers,” says Luca, not believing it. He raises the machine pistol and fires a warning shot. The pickup doesn’t slow down or change course.
Ahead, lying discarded beside the road is a hessian sack. Jamal swerves violently, bouncing through a gutter and sending the Skoda rearing like a rodeo bull. At the same moment the sack explodes, blowing out the side windows and lifting the Skoda on to two wheels where it balances for what seems like the longest time, trying to decide whether to roll over or right itself.
Gravity is kind to them. Four wheels kiss the earth. Luca’s ears are ringing. Jamal is yelling.
“He’s coming in! He’s coming in!”
The pickup has closed to within thirty yards. The passenger is firing on them, sending bullets pinging off the side of the Skoda.
Luca leans over the back seat and shoots through the rear window. Ejected cartridges, brass, red-hot, rattle on to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Abu in the Toyota HiLux, rearing over the dunes and the undulations. He has pointed the vehicle directly at the pickup, closing at speed.
The gunman in the passenger seat recognizes the danger and changes his aim but it’s too late. The force of the collision sends the pickup spearing into an embankment. Its nearside bumper digs into the earth and the entire vehicle lifts off the ground and rolls once… twice… three times in slow motion before exploding. Black smoke rises and billows like