Gerry froze on hearing Dan cry out. Then she ran back to the Hamsin house and saw that the gate was now wide open. With a deepening sense of anguish she ran around the back and saw a dumpster beside the wall. She climbed on top of it as quietly as possible and drew the shovel up after her. Peering carefully over the wall she suppressed a moan of despair as she saw Dan lying motionless on the ground. Then round the corner of the house walked a familiar figure with a silenced gun in one hand. Clenching her teeth to stop herself screaming in anger she waited until he was closer and then in one swift movement she stood on top of the wall and jumped down at him.
Parker caught sight of her as she loomed over him. He whirled round and fired off a shot that tore a gash along her lower ribs before her foot slammed into his chest. Somehow Gerry managed to retain her stance as she landed on one foot. Parker was on the ground in front of her. He tried to bring the gun up but she whacked the spade against his arm and he felt his fingers go numb. Then he saw the savage, merciless rage in her face and the edge of the shovel flashing in the setting sun as she raised it above her head. He closed his eyes as the blade swung down and tried to jerk his head aside. His final thought was that she would not miss.
‘Oh shit!’ said Neil Samms as he saw the impact of the shovel on Parker’s head. Gerry whirled round and saw him walking around from the other side of the house. She glanced down at Parker’s gun which lay on the ground beside his outstretched fingers and then at the gun in Samms’ hand. ‘My time has come,’ she thought to herself. She wondered if she should make a frantic, hopeless attempt to dive down pick up the gun roll over and come up firing, but she knew that he would be ready for that. Despite the goofy grin he was a professional. His next words brought her intense relief.
‘I’m not going to kill you, so long as you do what I say. First I’m gonna make sure you don’t try anything stupid. Come and lie face down next to Parker with your hands above your head.’ He pointed at the corpse with the smashed skull. She lay down as commanded and then watched him bend down and drag Parker’s body so that it lay on top of her back. ‘Don’t let me see your hands move,’ he said. ‘If I do I’ll use the shovel on them.’
Gerry watched him pick up Parker’s gun, check it was safe and then tuck it in his belt. Then she heard a groan. He was still alive!
‘Dan!’ she called out.
‘Gerry, I’ve been shot,’ he mumbled.
She wanted to push herself up, throw off the corpse and run over to him. Instead she decided to plead. ‘Samms, please, can I take a look at him… please.’
‘Well, whaddya know,’ he replied with his familiar sneer. ‘The bitch is showing some emotion, or at least a fair imitation. Yeah you can take a look at him. But move real slow, or I’ll blow your head off.’
Gerry scrambled out from under the corpse and knelt beside him. ‘Ok Dan, wake up wake up Dan wake up, damn it wake up!’ She saw his eyeballs twitch about under his lids and then he opened his eyes.’
‘Hi Gerry, I’ve been shot; it damn well hurts.’
‘Well there’s nothing wrong with your brain, then. Now you’ve been shot through the chest, but it must’ve missed your heart,’ she said whilst unbuttoning his shirt and tugging it aside. She inspected the entry wound below the collar bone, a small hole surrounded by bruised and bloodied flesh. ‘Can you roll on to your side?’ He bent his leg up and groaned as he pushed himself slowly over until Gerry could see his back. She grimaced as she saw the exit wound, larger and ragged but not as traumatic as a hole torn by an expanding bullet. ‘Ok it’s gone through and if you don’t feel too bad I reckon you’ve just got ribs and lung damage.’
‘Oh fucking hell!’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Is that Parker and Samms? How did they find us?’
‘Samms I need to bandage him, stop the bleeding. I want to use Parker’s shirt.’
‘Ok, you can do that. Get on with it quick.’
Gerry pulled the shirt and the leather belt off the corpse. ‘Can I sit you up a minute?’
Dan struggled to a seating position and she used the belt to hold the shirt around his chest. He gasped in pain as she secured the belt, mumbled ‘broken rib’ and lay back down.
‘Ok, now we’ve got to get him to a hospital,’ said Gerry.
‘Dream on, bitch!’ Samms replied. ‘I know there’s something hidden in this house; you came to find it. We came here to take it.’
‘But you don’t know what it is?’
‘I’m sure he did.’ He jerked his chin towards Parker, ‘but not me.’
‘Just as well, otherwise you’d probably end up dead, just like everyone else.’ She gazed for a moment at Dan. ‘Are you ok?’
‘Yeah, I’ll be alright. How did you track us down?’ he asked.
‘You were followed from Rutba, and then tracked by drone in Baghdad.’
‘By a drone?’ Gerry asked with a frown. ‘I didn’t know they could do that.’
‘Ok, enough of the chat.’ Samms pointed to the shovel. ‘You just went off to get that, so I guess what we’re looking for is buried out here. That’s why it wasn’t found before.’
‘You mean it was you guys who ransacked the house?’
‘Yeah, I think it was done five years ago. The family’s not lived here since, although they’ve been back from time to time to check on it.’
‘Who in the family?’
‘The wife and daughter. The son’s dead. The father… well you know about him. Ok, you’d better get digging, and who knows if you find it quickly, we might have time to get Hall to the hospital before he croaks.’
Gerry picked up the shovel and then plunged it down, gasping from the pain in her ribs.
‘What’s the matter with you now?’ Samms asked.
‘Flesh wound,’ she said. She untucked her shirt and looked at her side. Blood was oozing from a ragged cut two inches long.
‘Just a graze; you’ll be alright. Sooner you’ve done, sooner you can get a sticking plaster.’
The ground was hard and took an hour of toil until Gerry reached a depth of about two feet. The shovel clanged on to metal. Ignoring the pain in her side she dug with renewed energy and soon unearthed a black plastic garbage bag with something metal inside. She put down the shovel and heaved the object clear of the soil. She placed it carefully on the ground in front of Dan’s feet.
‘Open up the bag and take out whatever’s inside,’ Samms ordered.
She discovered a corroded metal tin with some Arabic writing and a faded, discoloured picture of a palm tree and a bunch of fruit. ‘Shall I open it?’ she offered.
‘Why not?’
Inside was further plastic wrapping protecting a passport, a sheet of paper written in Arabic script and two small bundles of money, one turned out to be US Dollars and the other the Iraqi currency from years gone by, on which the image of the dead dictator was prominent. She opened up the passport and immediately recognised her companion on the life raft, or a much younger version. ‘This is Lebanese and it looks like Yusuf Ali Hamsin. Do you want to have a look at it?’ She took a pace towards him and he instantly aimed the gun at her.
‘Don’t you come any closer than that!’ he snapped.
Gerry cursed under her breath. Samms had correctly assumed that she had been hoping to get within reach of him.
‘Read out that letter,’ he ordered.
‘My beloved husband,’ she read, ‘as you planned we have left our house. Rashid has returned to England to continue his studies. Tomorrow I am leaving for Amman where I will stay with my brother and there I will see our daughter and tell her what has been happening. I am leaving your passport here and enough money to enable you to make the journey to Amman. I pray that we will meet up there soon and that all this madness will soon be over.