Once Khalis was a couple of miles behind him, Aziz came to a halt at a crossroads which displayed two signposts. One read “Tuz Khurmatoo 120km,” and the other “Tuz Khurmatoo 170km.” He checked in every direction before climbing out of the car, opening the trunk and letting the three baggage passengers tumble out onto the road. While they stretched their limbs and took deep breaths of air, Aziz pointed to the signposts. Scott didn’t need to look at the map to decide which road they would have to take.
“We must take the longer route,” he said, “and hope that they still think we’re in the truck.” Hannah slammed down the trunk with feeling before they all four jumped back into the car.
Aziz averaged forty miles an hour on the winding road, his three passengers ducking out of sight whenever another vehicle appeared on the horizon.
The four of them devoured the fresh fruit Jasmin had left on the front seat.
When they passed a signpost indicating twenty kilometers to Tuz Khurmatoo Scott said to Aziz, “I want you to stop a little way outside the village and go in alone before we decide if it’s safe for us to drive straight through. Don’t forget it’s only another three miles beyond Tuz Khurmatoo to the highway, so the place could be swarming with soldiers.”
“And to the Kurdish border?” asked Hannah.
“About forty-five miles,” said Scott as he continued to study the map. Aziz drove for another twenty minutes before he came over the brow of a hill and could see the outline of a village nestling in the valley. A few moments later he pulled the car off the road and parked it under a row of citrus trees that sheltered them from the sun and the prying eyes of those in passing vehicles. Aziz listened carefully to Scott’s instructions, got out of the car and jogged off in the direction of Tuz Khurmatoo.
General Hamil was too furious to speak when the young Lieutenant informed him that the Cadillac had passed through the Khalis checkpoint less than an hour before, and neither of the soldiers on duty had bothered to check the trunk.
After a minimum of torture, one of them had confessed that the terrorists must have been helped by a young girl who regularly passed through the checkpoint.
“She will never pass through it again,” had been the General’s one observation.
The only other piece of information they were able to get out of the soldiers was that whoever had been driving the car was the girl’s cousin, and a homosexual. Hamil wondered how they could possibly know that.
Once again, the General returned to the map on the wall behind his desk. He had already given orders for an army of helicopters, trucks, tanks and motorcycles to cover every inch of the road between Khalis and the border, but still no one had reported seeing a Cadillac on the highway. He was mystified, knowing they couldn’t possibly have turned back or they would have run straight into his troops.
His eyes searched every route between the checkpoint and the border yet again. “Ah,” he said finally, “they must have taken the road through the hills.” The General ran his finger along a thin winding red line until it joined the main highway.
“So that’s where you are,” he said, before bellowing out some new orders.
It was almost an hour before Cohen announced, “One Kurd heading towards us, sir.”
As Aziz came running up the slope the grin remained on his face. He had been into Tuz Khurmatoo and he was able to reassure them that the village was going about its business as usual. But the government radio was blasting out a warning to be on the lookout for four terrorists who had attempted to assassinate the Great Leader, so all the main roads were now crawling with soldiers. “They’ve got good descriptions of all four of us, but the radio bulletin an hour ago was still saying we were in the truck.”
“Right, Aziz,” said Scott, “drive us through the village. Hannah, sit in the front with Aziz. The Sergeant and I will lie down in the back. Once we’re on the other side of Tuz we’ll keep out of sight and only continue on to the border after it’s dark.”
Aziz took his place behind the wheel, and the Cadillac began its slow journey into Tuz.
The main road through the village must have been about three hundred yards long and just about wide enough to take two cars. Hannah looked at the little timber shops and the men who were growing old sitting on steps and leaning against walls. A dirty old Cadillac traveling slowly through the village, she thought, would probably be the highlight of their day, until she saw the vehicle at the other end of the road.
“There’s a jeep coming towards us,” she said calmly. “Four men, one of them sitting behind what looks like an anti-aircraft gun mounted on the back.”
“Just keep driving slowly, Aziz,” said Scott. “And Hannah, keep talking us through it.”
“They’re about a hundred yards away from us now and beginning to take an interest.” Cohen pointed to the tool bag and grabbed a wrench. Scott also selected a wrench as they both turned over slowly and rested on their knees.
“The jeep has swung across in front of us,” said Hannah. “We’re going to be forced to stop in about five seconds.”
“Does it still look as if there are four of them?” asked Scott.
“Yes,” said Hannah. “I can’t see any more.”
The Cadillac came to a halt.
“The jeep has stopped only a few yards in front of us. One of the soldiers is getting out and another is following. Two are staying in the jeep. One is behind the mounted gun and the other is still at the wheel. We’ll take the first two,” said Hannah. “You’ll have to deal with the two in the jeep.”
“Understood,” said Scott.
The first soldier reached the driver’s side as the second passed the bumper on Hannah’s right. Both Aziz and Hannah had their outside hands on the armrests, their doors already an inch open.
The second Aziz saw the first soldier glance into the back and go for his gun, he swung his door open so fast that the crack of the soldier’s knees sounded like a bullet as he collapsed to the ground. Aziz was out of the car and on top of him long before he had time to recover. The second soldier ran towards Hannah as Scott leaped out of the car. Hannah delivered one blow to his carotid artery and another to the base of his spine as he tried to pull out his gun. A bullet would not have killed him any quicker. The third soldier started firing from the back of the jeep. Cohen dived out into the road, as the fourth soldier jumped from behind the wheel and ran towards him, firing his pistol. Cohen hurled the wrench at him, causing him to step to one side and straight into the firing line of the mounted gun. The bullets stopped immediately, but Cohen was already at his throat. The soldier sank as if he had been hit by a ton of bricks, and his gun flew across the road. Cohen gave him one blow to the jugular vein and another to the back of the neck: he went into spasms and began wriggling on the ground. Cohen quickly turned his attention to the man seated behind the gun, who was lining him up in his sights. At ten yards’ distance, Cohen had no hope of reaching him, so he dived for the side of the car as bullets sprayed into the open door, two of them ripping into his left leg. Scott was now running towards the jeep from the other side. As the soldier swung the gun around to face him, Scott propelled himself through the air and onto the top of the jeep.
Bullets flew everywhere as they tumbled clumsily off the back, Scott still clinging to his wrench. They were both quickly on their feet, and Scott brought the wrench down across the gunner’s neck—the soldier raised an arm to fend off the blow, but Scott’s left knee jackknifed into his crotch. The gunner sank to the ground as the second blow from the wrench found its mark and broke the soldier’s neck cleanly. He lay splayed out on the road, looking like a breaststroke swimmer halfway through a stroke. Scott stood mesmerized over him, until Aziz dived at his legs and knocked him to the ground. Scott couldn’t stop shaking.
“It’s always hardest the first time,” was the Kurd’s only comment.
The four of them were now facing outward, covering every angle as they waited for the locals to react. Cohen climbed unsteadily up
into the jeep, blood pouring from his leg, and took his place behind the mounted gun. “Don’t fire unless I say so,” shouted Scott as he checked up and down the road. There wasn’t a person to be seen in either direction.
“On your left!” said Hannah, and Scott turned to see an old man dressed in a long white dishdash with a black-and-white spotted keffiyeh on his head, a thick belt hung loosely around his waist. He was walking slowly towards them, his hands held high in the air.
Scott’s eyes never left the old man, who came to a halt a few yards away from the Cadillac.
“I have been sent by the village elders because I am the only one who speaks English,” he said. The man was trembling and the words came stumbling out. “We believe you are the terrorists who came to kill Saddam.”
Scott said nothing.
“Please go. Leave our village and go quickly. Take the jeep and we will bury the soldiers. Then no one will ever know you were here. If you do not, Saddam will murder us all. Every one of us.”
“Tell your people we wish them no harm,” said Scott.
“I believe you,” said the old man, “but please, go.”
Scott ran forward and stripped the tallest soldier of his uniform while Cohen kept his gun trained on the old man. Aziz stripped the other three while Hannah grabbed Scott’s bag from the Cadillac before jumping into the back of the jeep.
Aziz threw the uniforms into the jeep and then leaped into the driver’s seat. The engine was still running. He put the vehicle into reverse and swung around in a semicircle as Scott took his place in the front. Aziz began to drive slowly out of Tuz Khurmatoo. Cohen turned the gun around in the direction of the village, at the same time thumping his left leg with his clenched fist.
Scott continued to look behind him as a few of the villagers moved tentatively out into the road and started to drag the soldiers unceremoniously away. Another climbed into the Cadillac and began to back it down a side road. A few moments later they had all disappeared from sight. Scott turned to face the road ahead of him.
“It’s about another three miles to the highway,” said Aziz. “What do you want me to do?”
“We’ve only got one chance of getting across that border,” said Scott, “so for now pull over into that clump of trees. We can’t risk going out onto the highway until it’s pitch dark.” He checked the time. It was 7:35.
Hannah felt blood dripping onto her face. She looked up and saw the deep wounds in Cohen’s leg. She immediately tore off the corner of her yashmak and tried to stem the flow of blood.
“You all right, Cohen?” asked Scott anxiously.
“No worse than when I was bitten by a woman in Tangier,” he replied.
Aziz began laughing.
“How can you laugh?” said Hannah, continuing to clean the wound.
“Because he was the reason she bit me,” said Cohen.
After Hannah had completed the bandaging, the four of them changed into the Iraqi uniforms. For an hour they kept their eyes on the road, looking for any sign of more soldiers. A few villagers on donkeys, and more on foot, passed them in both directions, but the only vehicle they saw was an old tractor that chugged by on its way back to the village at the end of a day’s service.
As the minutes slipped by, it became obvious that the villagers had kept to their promise and made no contact with any army patrols.
When Scott could no longer see the road in front of them, he went over his plan for the last time. All of them accepted that their options were limited.
The nearest border was forty-five miles away, but Scott now accepted the danger they could bring to any village simply by passing through it. He didn’t feel his plan was foolproof, far from it, but they couldn’t wait in the hills much longer. It would only be a short time before Iraqi soldiers were swarming all over the area.
Scott checked the uniforms. As long as they kept on the move, it would be hard for anyone to identify them in the dark as anything other than part of an army patrol. But once they reached the highway, he knew they couldn’t afford to stay still for more than a few seconds. Everything depended on how close they could get to the border post without being spotted.
When Scott gave the order, Aziz swung the jeep onto the winding road to begin the three-mile journey to the highway. He covered the distance in five minutes, and during that time they didn’t come across another vehicle. But once they hit the highway, they found the road was covered with trucks, jeeps, even tanks, traveling in both directions.
None of them saw the two motorcycles, the tank and three trucks that swung off the highway and headed down the little road towards Tuz Khurmatoo.
Aziz went as fast as he could, while Cohen remained seated on the back behind the gun. Scott watched the road ahead of him, his beret pulled well down. Hannah sat below Cohen, motionless, a gun in her hand. The first road sign indicated that it was sixty kilometers to the border. For a moment Scott was distracted by an oil well that kept pumping away on the far side of the road. Nobody spoke as the distance to Kirkuk descended from fifty-five to forty-six, to thirty-two, but with each sign and each new oil well, the traffic became heavier and their speed began to drop rapidly. The only relief was that none of the passing patrols seemed to show any interest in the jeep.
Within minutes the little village was swarming with soldiers from Saddam’s Elite Guard. Even in the dark, it took only ten bullets and as many minutes for them to find out where the Cadillac was, and another thirty bullets to discover the unfilled graves of the four dead soldiers.
General Hamil listened to the senior officer when he phoned in with the details. All he asked for was the radio frequency of the jeep that had been in Tuz Khurmatoo earlier that evening. The General slammed down the phone, checked his watch and keyed in the frequency.
The single tone continued for some time.
“They must still be looking for a truck or a pink Cadillac,” Scott was saying when the radio phone began ringing. They all four froze.
“Answer it, Aziz,” said Scott. “Listen carefully, and find out what you can.”
Aziz picked up the handset, listened intently, then said, “Yes, sir,” in Arabic, and put the handset down.
“They’ve found the Cadillac, and are ordering all jeeps to report to their nearest army post,” he said.
“It can’t be long before they realize it’s not one of their men driving this jeep,” said Hannah, “if they don’t already know.”
“With luck we might still have twenty minutes,” said Scott. “How far to the border?”
“Nine miles,” said Aziz.
The General knew it had to be Zeebari, or he would have immediately responded with the Elite Guards’ code number.
So now he knew what vehicle they were in and which border they were heading for. He picked up the phone and barked another order. Two officers accompanied him as he ran out of the room and into a large yard at the back of the building. The blades of his personal helicopter were already slowly rotating.
It was Aziz who first spotted the end of a long line of oil tankers waiting to cross the unofficial border. Scott checked the inside track and asked Aziz if he could drive down such a narrow strip.
“Not possible, sir,” the young Kurd told him. “We’d only end up in the ditch.”
“Then we’ve no alternative but to go straight down the middle.”
Aziz moved the jeep out into the center of the road and tried desperately to maintain his speed. To begin with he was able to stay clear of the trucks and avoid any oncoming traffic. The first real trouble came four miles from the border, when an army truck heading towards them refused to move over.
“Shall I blast him off the road?” said Cohen.
“No,” said Scott. “Aziz, keep going, but prepare to jump and take cover among the tankers, then we’ll regroup.” Just as Scott was about to leap, the truck swerved across the road and ended up in the ditch on the far side.
“Now they all know where we are,” said Scott. “How many
miles to the customs post, Aziz?”
“Three, three and a half at the most.”
“Then step on it,” Scott said, although he realized Aziz was already going as fast as he could. They had managed to cover the next mile in just over a minute when a helicopter swung above them, beaming down a searchlight that lit up the entire road. The radio phone began ringing again.
“Ignore it,” shouted Scott as Aziz tried to keep the jeep on the center of the road and maintain his speed. They passed the two-mile mark as the helicopter swung back, confident it had spotted its prey, and began to focus its beam directly on them.
“We’ve got a jeep coming up our backside,” said Cohen, as he swung around to face it.
“Get rid of it,” said Scott.
Cohen obliged, sending the first few shots through the windshield and the next into the tires, thankful for the light from above. The pursuing jeep swung across the road, crashing into an oncoming truck. Another quickly took its place. Hannah reloaded the gun with a magazine of bullets that was lying on the floor while Cohen concentrated on the road behind them.
“One and a half miles to go,” shouted Aziz, nearly crashing into trucks on both sides of the road. The helicopter hovered above them and began to fire indiscriminately, hitting vehicles going in either direction.
“Don’t forget that most of them haven’t a clue who’s chasing what,” said Scott.
“Thanks for sharing that piece of logic with me, Professor,” said Cohen. “But I’ve got a feeling that helicopter knows exactly who he’s chasing.” Cohen began to pepper the next jeep with bullets the moment it came into range. This time it simply slowed to a halt, causing the car behind to run straight into it and creating an accordion effect as one after another the pursuing jeeps crashed into the back of the vehicle in front of them. The road behind was suddenly clear, as if Aziz had been the last car through a green light.
“One mile to go,” shouted Aziz as Cohen swung around to concentrate on what was going on in front of him and Hannah reloaded the automatic gun with the last magazine of bullets. Scott could see the lights of a bridge looming up in front of him: the Kirkuk fortress on the side of the hill that Aziz had told them signaled the customs post was only about half a mile away. As the helicopter swung back and once again sprayed the road with bullets, Aziz felt the front tire on his side suddenly blow as he drove onto the bridge.