‘Two o’clock,’ Finn said suddenly, his voice tense. ‘Someone’s got eyes on.’ Luke looked in the direction his mate was indicating.
‘Got him.’
The man Finn had pointed out was on a street corner, standing by the grubby awning of a meat shop that had the carcasses of a few animals hanging in the window. His head was wrapped in a keffiyeh, and he made no attempt to hide the AK-47 that was slung across his front. He had a mobile phone pressed to his ear and he was clearly watching the Land Cruiser as it passed. An official pair of eyes, or something else? Impossible to say. The unit passed him in silence.
A couple of hundred metres on they drove by a building site where attempts had been made to reconstruct one of the bombed-out edifices. A single storey of grey breeze-blocks was completed, but it was clear from the faded Arabic lettering graffitied over the blocks, and from the broken pallets littered around the site, that no work had been done here for many months. A thin man sat on the pavement outside it. Spread out in front of him were a few pairs of shoes and a couple of handbags. He had a rather hopeless demeanour, and behind him two kids were crouched, hugging their knees with their hands. It didn’t seem likely that this man would be selling much today. His eyes followed the Land Cruiser as it passed, just like everyone else’s.
The Regiment men’s faces were grim as they ventured deeper into the city. ‘What happens to the poor bastards who get bombed out of their homes?’ Fozzie asked out loud.
It was Stratton who answered. ‘There are a number of refugee camps dotted around the Strip,’ he said. ‘Two in Gaza City itself.’ He sounded matter-of-fact about it.
‘Nice,’ Fozzie muttered.
Stratton’s jaw was set.
‘If things go to shit today,’ Luke said quietly, ‘they might need a few more of those IDP camps.’
‘Absolutely,’ Stratton replied, a bit too quickly and with very little emotion.
‘Absolutely,’ he repeated, a little quieter this time.
‘You don’t sound very concerned?’
‘I’m very concerned,’ Stratton replied, still looking straight ahead. ‘I can assure you of that.’
It was a sudden thing. For a split second Luke was back in St Paul’s, listening to urgent warnings. A wild conspiracy theory that he would never have believed if it hadn’t been confirmed by the dull thud of four fatal rounds just a couple of minutes later. Now he was in Gaza City, war-torn and fucked up…
I’m very concerned. I can assure you of that.
The mist in Luke’s mind was starting to burn away.
Back in Jerusalem, Stratton had asked Maya Bloom if she wanted to be part of history. Quite what that meant, Luke couldn’t imagine. But Stratton was planning something. And whatever he was planning, one thing was suddenly clear to Luke.
This was part of it.
Don’t you see? Doesn’t anybody see? First the Balkans, then Iraq, now this… Stratton and the woman were planning some sort of terrorist atrocity in Jerusalem on Hanukkah. Sticking close to him wasn’t enough. Luke had to prevent him from reaching Hamas. He had to abort the mission.
Somehow.
He fingers felt for his radio as he started formulating a communication in his head.
He felt Stratton’s eyes. Somehow he knew the bastard was on to him.
They had to turn back. Luke opened his mouth to give the command.
But too late.
On Russ’s instruction, Fozzie had taken a sharp right-hand turn at a crossroad and started heading north-east up a busy commercial street. With no warning, he hit the brakes and the Land Cruiser came to a screaming halt.
‘Er, Houston,’ he said. ‘We have a problem.’
Luke leaned over and stared out of the front windscreen.
Then he looked out the rear.
Fozzie was right. They had a problem. Big time.
TWENTY-FIVE
It took Luke just a few seconds to size up the situation.
It was a busy street. The concrete buildings along either side were mostly four storeys high. One of them, fifty metres ahead, had a flagpole sticking out at an angle, with the bright green flag of Hamas hanging limply from it. Many had balconies on the upper floors, and although some of these were dilapidated and clearly not suitable for anybody to stand on, others were occupied.
At ground level there was a smattering of parked cars on either side of the road. The street was lined with shops, most with metal grilles closed over them, and the grilles themselves were covered in graffiti. Behind the Land Cruiser and to the right, twenty-five metres from their position, was a particularly run-down building. There was no glass in the windows, and the concrete facade was streaked with black marks which suggested a fire had raged through it at some point in the past.
But it was something else that told the unit things were turning to shit.
About 150 metres ahead, the road was blocked — not by vehicles this time, but by a mob of people, maybe a hundred of them. They were advancing chaotically, but even at this distance and through the bullet-resistant glass of the Land Cruiser, the voices of the crowd were audible. They were shouting some slogan — a dull, rhythmic sound, like the beating of drums — and at least twenty of them were waving rifles in the air.
Behind the vehicle the same story — a crowd had appeared from nowhere and closed off the access to the street. The mob to their rear was perhaps half the size of the one in front, but it was closer — 100 metres maybe. Luke looked left and right, searching for side streets from which they could exit the position. Nothing.
He was aware of Finn raising his weapon to his closed window. ‘Let’s not go the way of those Signallers in the Province,’ his mate said. Luke knew what he was talking about. During the Troubles two green army boys were driving round Northern Ireland when they came across a Republican funeral, heavy with IRA marshals. The Provos mistook them first for a Protestant hit team. A crowd developed round the car and some of them dragged the Signallers out and examined their ID. One of the soldiers had been stationed in Herford, Germany. The IRA misread that as Hereford and the moment they thought their captives were SAS, their fate was sealed: they were stripped naked, dragged over some wrought-iron fencing, where one of them had his calf ripped off, and then they were executed with their own pistols.
If the Signallers really had been Regiment, it might have been different. The SOP would have been quite clear — start shooting before the mob managed to drag you out of the car. Finn was preparing to do just that.
Fozzie put the Land Cruiser into reverse. He hit the accelerator and the tyres screeched as he sped backwards, moving faster and faster towards the smaller crowd.
‘What’s going on?’ Stratton demanded.
‘You tell me,’ Luke retorted. Through the rear windscreen he saw a few members of the crowd run to either side of the road as the Land Cruiser approached, but the bulk of them — about thirty men — stayed where they were, chanting and thrusting their fists in the air.
‘Hamas?’ Finn demanded.
‘They wouldn’t dare,’ spat Stratton.
Luke was still looking through the rear windscreen. ‘Incoming!’ he shouted. He had picked out the shooters when they were about seventy-five metres from the crowd: two men in jeans and T-shirts and carrying old AKs. The age of the weapons made no difference: they pumped several bursts of 7.62s at the Land Cruiser.