Luke peered out of his side window. Up above, he could see a chopper. It was hovering low — maybe a hundred feet — with its nose slightly dipped, but staying resolutely on the Israeli side of the fence. It looked like it had eyes on, but on what?
Luke exited the Land Cruiser and opened up the back. This was where all their additional equipment was stashed. He removed a small hand-held scope and used it to scan beyond the border fence. The buffer zone between the two states was about 500 metres wide, and there, making no attempt to stay hidden, was an open-topped technical. A Palestinian man stood on the back in desert fatigues and a black and white keffiyeh. On his shoulder he was carrying what looked to Luke like an old Blowpipe anti-aircraft rocket launcher. The Blowpipe was a pile of shit, almost impossible to fire accurately — the British Army had covertly offloaded all theirs to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan back in the 1980s when the Javelin came into service. Next to the THOR launcher that Luke had been training with on the Brecon Beacons it was prehistoric.
He lowered the scope, returned to the 4 x 4 and reported his finding.
‘Nothing like a warm welcome,’ Finn muttered as they disembarked from the vehicle, 53s slung round their necks.
‘I’d rather have a potato gun than a Blowpipe,’ said Fozzie.
Luke wasn’t so sure. The Blowpipe might be old, but because it was neither heat-seeking nor laser-guided, it wasn’t susceptible to modern countermeasures. The chances of the raghead on the other side of the fence bringing down the heli if it infringed Hamas airspace were small. But he might get lucky and no doubt there were plenty more of his type waiting to do the mopping up should the first line of Palestinian defence fail. He remembered someone telling him once that the Muj in Afghanistan had taken to using them not as anti-aircraft weapons, but anti-vehicle. It wasn’t lost on him that they’d soon be driving within its range.
The chopper was the only thing that made a noise out here. Otherwise this crossing was silent. Like the personnel on both sides of the border were holding their breath. Luke opened the back door of the Merc and leaned in to look at Stratton. ‘We’ll transfer you to the Land Cruiser now, sir,’ he said.
Stratton didn’t answer for a moment. He was staring out of the other window, lost in thought. Suddenly he snapped out of it.
‘What?’
‘Get out. It’s time to cross.’
Stratton nodded and shuffled awkwardly along the back seat of the Merc. Once he was out of the car, he looked around, but Luke immediately grabbed him by the right arm and manoeuvred him towards the armoured vehicle. Stratton looked like he was going to protest, but a harsh glance from Luke ensured he kept quiet.
As Luke was leading Stratton into the back of the Land Cruiser, one of the Israeli military guys approached. He had a shaved head, tanned skin and deep, dark bags under his eyes. ‘You ready?’ he asked.
Luke nodded.
The man pointed to the chopper. ‘The pilot’s reported some kind of presence on the other side of the buffer zone. Three vehicles. Armed. Be careful over there.’
Luke looked over at the anti-aircraft gunner on the other side. ‘Seems pretty tense,’ he said.
The soldier shrugged. ‘Half the citizens of Gaza would be happy to live side by side with us. Same goes for the Israelis. But it’s not the moderate ones you have to worry about. It’s the extremists, and there’s plenty of those. And those Hamas mamzer. Wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to pick you off the moment you get over there.’
‘They’re welcome to try,’ Luke said.
The soldier inclined his head. ‘Rather you than me, my friend. I’ll instruct my men to open our barrier. Once you go through that, you’re on your own.’
He turned on his heel and headed back towards the terminal buildings. Luke climbed into the back of the Land Cruiser with the rest of the unit. Stratton was sitting in the middle, eyeing the Regiment men’s weapons nervously. ‘I hope those things are safe,’ he said.
Luke scowled at the stupid question. ‘Depends which end’s pointing at you,’ he muttered. He caught sight of Fozzie in the rear-view mirror. ‘They’re opening up the barrier,’ he said, before activating his sat phone. ‘Zero, this is Tango 17.’
‘Go ahead, Tango 17. Send.’
‘We have the Cardinal on board. Crossing the border in figures two.’
‘Roger that, Tango 17. We have your position marked.’ A crackly pause. ‘It’s hotting up in the capital, Luke. Reports coming in of militants taking to the streets. Don’t come home in a box, yeah?’
Luke took a big breath and his eyes flickered towards Stratton.
‘Roger that, Zero.’ He disconnected the sat phone and nodded at Fozzie. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Fozzie drove the Land Cruiser slowly. The barrier, when they came to it, was a sheet of solid steel. It took two armed IDF men to slide it to one side before waving the Regiment unit through. Russ, Finn and Luke adjusted the position of their weapons so they were facing towards the window. They couldn’t fire them from this position, of course — not through the bullet-resistant glass of their vehicle — but it meant that if the worst came to the worst, they could kick open the doors and their guns would be ready. With a bit of luck it wouldn’t get to that. Even the stupidest Palestinian squaddie would know that a high-value target like Stratton would only venture on to Gazan soil at a time like this with a special forces team. And a special forces team meant special force.
Beyond the barrier there was the buffer zone, a bare patch of no-man’s-land extending from the wire border fence to another, lower fence on the Gazan side. The zone was even more scarred by artillery fire than the Israeli territory they had just left, and the ground was littered with twisted pieces of shrapnel. The road across the buffer zone, such as it was, ended with another steel barrier. The Land Cruiser trundled towards it and, when it was about ten metres away, the barrier opened seemingly of its own accord, a gateway into Gazan territory.
The terrain beyond the barrier was as featureless as the Israeli side, the grey December sky and the dusty ground a mirror of each other. But the Land Cruiser was still five metres from Gazan soil. Luke saw that a very different welcome awaited them. A second technical, mounted with what looked like an old Russian DShK machine gun, stood directly in their path, the weapon pointing straight towards Stratton and the unit. Flanking it on either side were two Land Rovers, their doors open to protect a team of keffiyeh-wearing soldiers armed with assault rifles.
Fozzie ground the Land Cruiser to a halt and the vehicles faced each other.
For thirty seconds, nothing moved. It was silent in the Land Cruiser too, until Stratton spoke quietly. ‘They won’t fire,’ he said. ‘Not with me on board.’
‘Shut up,’ Luke told him. He saw Fozzie look at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘Sir,’ he added under his breath.
Stratton looked like he was going to respond, but at that very moment the technical started to reverse. It steered round the back of the left-hand Land Rover, leaving the road ahead clear.
‘Guess that means a green light,’ Fozzie said. He knocked the Land Cruiser into first gear and moved slowly through the barrier.
It hardly mattered that the vehicle was armoured. A burst from the DShK and a barrage of rounds from the assault rifle would be enough to make things difficult: a pitched battle on what was effectively enemy territory was exactly what they needed to avoid. So, as they approached their hostile receiving line, the tension among the men was palpable. They passed a jumble of corrugated-iron storage buildings and concrete watchtowers, many of them little more than piles of rubble, others plastered with graffiti. The Arabic lettering was meaningless to Luke, but he did notice a five-pointed star of David with a crude image of an assault rifle stamped on it. A picture telling a thousand words. On one side of the road was the burned-out shell of an old VW van, and beyond that a cargo lorry from which the wheels had been removed and whose chassis was rusting away.