Andy McNab - Exit wound

Mall of the Emirates

Thursday, 30 April

1737 hrs

The taxi stopped off by the rank opposite the Virgin Megastore and I jumped out. Under my arm I had a shirt and a pair of flip-flops wrapped up in one of the hotel’s plastic laundry bags. The white Toyota peeled away and pulled into the valet-parking area. I leant back in to ask the boys whether they were absolutely sure they wanted to carry on.

Red Ken didn’t even wait for me to open my mouth. ‘Wheels already turning, son. We’re past the point of no return.’

‘OK.’ I nodded. ‘Good luck.’

I closed the cab door and tapped the roof as it drove away.

Harvey Nichols and Debenhams faced each other and took up three storeys of the mall. I headed between them, towards the huge Carrefour hypermarket. I grabbed a trolley and pushed it through the automatic barrier. If it hadn’t been for the burqa s, I could have been on the outskirts of Paris or Marseille. It was a one-stop shop for everything from milk to laptops.

I played around with the mobiles and Nintendo games while I waited. It wasn’t long before I spotted Checked Shirt, only today he was in plain blue. He mooched along the store front the other side of the barrier, casting down the aisles for his target. I let him get on with it. When I saw him turn back into the throng of people moving up and down the mall I knew he’d pinged me. He knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Now that I was in, I could only exit through one of the checkouts. He could sit back and keep the trigger. Maybe somebody else would come in later on to see what I was up to.

We’d been followed from the moment we’d left the hotel. This time it was a two-car team: the Toyota and a dark blue Mazda saloon. Going by the way they operated, I was pretty sure they’d been trained by the Brits. They used the same stake-out procedures and trigger techniques.

This morning we’d played another round of golf at the same club, but instead of a buggy each this time Red Ken and Dex shared. Red Ken left us on the sixth tee, which was out of line-of-sight of the clubhouse. He’d collected the Suburban from the airport, rattled it off to the RV and got back while we were still fucking about on the fifteenth.

Checked Shirt had come into the clubhouse as we signed in, just to see if we were meeting anyone. As soon as he saw it was just us on the greens, he went and sat at a table in the corner. They couldn’t come out and follow us round the golf course. All they could do was hole up and put the trigger on where we’d come back.

They’d followed us back to the hotel. If our rooms were bugged, they’d have been disappointed. There was no planning, no talking. We’d done all that on the golf course where nobody could hear us.

I moved further into Carrefour. By now Red Ken would have arrived at the Bur Juman Centre, another of Dubai’s fifty-odd malls. They were the only places we were able to walk around and where we were guaranteed crowd cover. The streets were empty apart from Indians or Filipinos on their way to work.

The plan was now to split up and for each of us to lose his tag. Then we’d RV in the old quarter to carry on with the job as planned. Once Red Ken had dropped him off, Dex wasn’t heading for a mall. He was going to the street markets. He had clothes to buy so he could make like a local and go and nick the wagon.

I was moving down the aisles of pots and pans when White Shirt made an appearance. He wasn’t there long. His job would be to confirm I was still in the store, that I wasn’t meeting anybody, and that if I was, to decide whether they had to follow them as well.

I moved from pots and pans to bags: schoolbags, shopping bags, suitcases, rucksacks and day-sacks. I picked up a Day-Glo orange one and threw it in the trolley. In the camping-gear section I added a head-torch. Toiletries and first aid were next. I threw in a pack of surgical gloves. White Shirt shadowed me for a while, checking I was doing what I was doing rather than meeting anybody for a brush contact to exchange information.

He didn’t follow as I turned past a group of Europeans checking out iPods. He crossed into the next aisle. I carried on to the checkout. I’d lost him by then; I didn’t know where he was. There was no need to look. If he had any sense he’d wait within sight of the exit.

I paid cash, put everything in the day-sack and headed out into the mall. Again, there was no need to look. I didn’t want to show I was aware.

I headed for the escalator to the first floor. One of them would probably come with me, but not until I was at the top and about to step off. You don’t go on an escalator with your target in case they turn around and ping you.

He would wait until I was ‘temporary unsighted’ – perhaps because I turned a corner and was out of view until he did the same – and if he and his mate had any brain cells, they’d try and get ahead of me via the fire-escape stairs or another escalator. But I wasn’t going to let that happen. As soon as I hit the first floor, I moved right and headed for the toilets.

I took a cubicle and locked myself in. There was a gap of about forty centimetres under the door. I sat, feet up, on a very comfortable European toilet seat, surrounded by glossy marble and stainless steel. Everything smelt wonderful. I whipped off my Timberlands and socks and rolled up my cargos then shoved on the flip-flops, put my feet on the floor, and waited.

I hadn’t yet made it look like I was trying to lose them. They’d be checking the immediate vicinity for the VDM, my orange day-sack. They’d be looking through the crowds, trying not to make themselves stick out by pushing people out of the way, all the clumsy stuff you see in films. When they didn’t find me, they’d check the men’s clothing stores, electrical shops and toilets. All they’d see under the door was a pair of white legs and flip-flops. I was now just one of the hundreds of European men in the mall who could be taking a dump in here – and not the one they were looking for.

Soon they’d have to make a decision. I was no longer just temporary unsighted. I was unsighted – and that was a nice way of saying they’d lost me.

Then what? They’d try to lock the place down. They’d need to put triggers on everyone coming out, but that just wasn’t possible. There were too many exits to have eyes-on. Maybe they’d go back and check the taxi ranks. But there wouldn’t be enough of them to go round. They’d have to go back to known locations – either the hotel or the golf club. They’d have to go themselves, or tell their mates to go and stake them out.

There were other known locations. We’d been cruising round the old quarter; we’d visited the gold souk. Maybe they’d check Baghdad and the Indian place we’d eaten at last night.

I sat right where I was as cisterns flushed either side of me and dads coaxed their kids to wash their hands. You didn’t have to be multilingual to understand what was going on out there.

I checked my watch. I’d been there nearly half an hour. It was time to move or I’d miss the RV with Red Ken and Dex. I put my boots back on, replaced my shirt with the dark blue one in the plastic bag and shoved my purchases into my pockets. I put the flip-flops and cream shirt in the day-sack and left it hanging on the back of the door.

I headed for Debenhams without glancing left or right, then down their internal escalator towards the ground-floor exit.

I was surrounded by people getting into cars or cabs, some in burqa s, some in European summer dresses with half their tits hanging out.

The sun was sinking but I didn’t want to hit the taxi rank yet. The Toyota was still out there. I ducked back towards the building. It was still only one up. The lads inside the mall would have to make their decision soon.