Andy McNab: Exit wound

I’d looked around at our fellow passengers in Departures. One or two groups looked much the same as us. Our cover was good. Nothing could be discovered about us because nothing was hidden.

The four PMC (private military company) guys on their way to Kabul had also been easy to place, with their chunky Luminoxes hanging off their wrists with mini compasses on the straps, and high-sleeved T-shirts to show off their new biceps. The only air bridges into Kabul were via Delhi and Dubai, and I knew from past experience which airport I’d rather transit through. Apart from work, the only two things to do out there were watch porn and take part in Operation Massive: hitting the weights. The NAAFI in Kandahar sold more tubs of body-building supplements than Mars bars. But what really gave these guys away were the desert-coloured Bug Out day-sacks that everyone bought from the American PX. Every bit as much a badge, I supposed, as our stupid golf bags. They’d certainly looked back at Merryweather, Khan and Simmons the same way Dex had looked at his plastic cup.

The other two knew what they were doing when it came to drivers and putters, but I was on the five-day trip as a golf atheist. They were going to enlighten and convert me. There would be no talk of the job during the flight or at any time unless we were out of a building and on our own. Dubai might be Disneyland on Gas Mark Ten, as Red Ken called it, but the place was swarming with police informers. The government had an image to protect. They were even thinking about a law to prosecute locally based journalists if they hinted Dubai was being hit by the world downturn.

Besides that, first-class seats in aircraft had been bugged on European and American airlines as early as the 1980s. Industrial espionage was rife. It still was. We worked on the assumption that every seat was bugged on every airline.

Red Ken’s plan had few moving parts. Keep it simple, stupid, was a principle all three of us knew worked, and as we were all stupid to be on this job it was a good one. We were going to play a round straight off the plane at six thirty. That was when we’d meet the man who’d organized it – organized it far too much, in fact, even down to the passports.

Red Ken wouldn’t give any more details about who he was. ‘He doesn’t want you to know until you meet, son. He’s a funny fucker like that. But he’s going to make us all a lot of cash – so just wait.’

I’d been bombarding him with questions for days. For starters, why had Red Ken, Dex and Tenny been picked as a crew?

‘Because we’re good.’ Red Ken was serious. ‘There can’t be any room for fuck-ups. That’s what Special Forces are about – in and out before anyone knows. This isn’t about running into a bank with sawn-offs and grabbing the till. This is about lifting gold that no one knows exists – it needs to be done covertly. That’s your reason, Nick.’

I explored the chicken-something while Dex put on his headphones and laughed too loud at a movie.

Red Ken leant across the spare seat between us and gave me a nudge. ‘He was like that when we came over last time. I even think it’s the same film.’

The final of the two recces had been a week before the funeral. Tenny would have been on his post-tour leave, before returning to the battalion to go through the process of getting out – having massively boosted his pension.

Dex caught us laughing at him and pulled off one earphone. ‘What?’

Red Ken pushed himself forward so his head was nearly between the rests. ‘I was saying Nick should apply to your club.’

‘You’d love it.’ One earphone was still on his cheek. ‘I’ll introduce you to the pro and maybe we can get your game up. Then I’ll-’

I reached between the seats, pulled back the earphone and let go.

‘Very funny.’ He broke into a laugh and then his eyes were back on the screen.

I bit the cellophane off my rectangle of cheese. ‘I wish I was like knob-head Laughing Boy, not a worry in the world, just getting on with life and a dodgy G-and-T.’

Red Ken sat back in his seat and stared at the blank screen in front of him. ‘That’s not the way, mate. You got no one meeting you when you get back from the trip?’

‘Like I said at the funeral, no one.’

‘That’s harsh. I’ll have my girls waiting for me. The youngest, Charlotte, has just brought my first grandchild home for a second christening. It’s a girl.’ He ripped the end off a citrus handwipe. ‘The Brits got pissed off over the fact she was going to get christened in Sydney. It’ll be a great day. Looking forward to it big-time.’

We dumped our bags at the hotel and had a quick shower and shave. We had to look the part: no stubble on the car-showroom salesmen. The choice of hotel was perfect – near the airport and the golf club, and just short of the city proper. It had seen better days, but fitted our apparent budget.

Half an hour later we met up again in the foyer, golf bags beside us and spiky shoes hanging from the straps.

Red Ken turned down the concierge’s offer of a hotel car. We could have been going to any of the eight or nine courses, so why give away a precise destination when we didn’t have to? Hailing a cab from the main drag didn’t turn out to be easy. It got to the point where Dex was thumbing hopefully at every 4x4 that passed. As if.

Red Ken had been smoking in the shade along with the rest of the social lepers. He took me to one side. The sun bounced off his gigs as he moved his head and grinned. ‘You might not like who we’re meeting up with this morning any more than we do, but it’s too late to say no. Just think of what this gives us, Nick. Think about Janice and the kids. That’s why we’re here. Besides, you have to look after us two, right?’

Dex wandered back, dejected.

I laughed. ‘Didn’t they teach you cab skills in the RAF?’

Red Ken looked up and down the road. ‘I’ll show you how it’s done in Para Reg.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and stepped off the kerb. Of course a cab was approaching – that was why he’d done it. He waved it down.

We loaded the clubs into the boot and Dex jumped in next to the driver. He was an Indian in a white shirt and tie. Dex was going to blend in perfectly. ‘Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club.’

There wasn’t much else to say. We weren’t going to talk in front of our new mate, even though the big thing for me was that we were on our way to meet the middleman for this ‘little wheeze’, as Dex kept calling it. He had his head buried in Golf Clubs of the World and was getting very hyper.

He turned and nodded with excitement. ‘Par seventy-one, 6,857 yards.’

I nodded back as if I gave a shit. Red Ken smiled, but it faded as he looked out of the window at the throngs of Filipinos and Indian cleaners washing store-fronts. Cranes cut into the sky in all directions above half-finished buildings. The ones that had been completed towered above us. I’d never seen so much marble, glass and steel. Dubai looked like Hong Kong on steroids, designed by architects on LSD.

We peeled off the highway and hit the approach road to the clubhouse. It had been designed to look like an enormous white Bedouin tent, pitched in a sprawling oasis of green.

The cab drew up outside the main door and Dex jumped out. He busied himself with loading the bags onto a trolley while Red Ken left to look for the elusive fourth man of this crew. I was left to pay the taxi. That was one bit of cab skills they both knew.

A Land Cruiser drew up behind Dex while he was still unloading. The driver and passenger were two sun-dried women in their sixties. They looked like they’d been getting drunk in the city since Margaret Thatcher’s era. They had all the golf gear on, down to the peaked plastic hats without the crown. Their jewellery jangled, but not as much as their accents. The driver left the engine running. One clambered down in a pink polo shirt, checked shorts and golfing shoes and shouted back into the wagon, at her blue-shirted friend, ‘I’ll get a boy.’ She was Romford, born and bred.