Andy McNab - Exit wound

I turned my back on the view and started to sort myself out.

There was a single bed, a fridge containing a jug of iced water, a wardrobe, a phone, a table and two plastic chairs. There was also a Koran, a prayer mat and slippers, and an old twelve-inch TV. A notice on the table in English and Farsi proudly announced that the Bandar Hotel had ‘why-fi’. The motel we’d stayed at in Dubai had had nothing on the Bandar.

The TV was even older than I’d thought. It didn’t have a remote. I hit the ‘on’ button. It took an age to warm up. As the speaker mushed away, I slung my clothes into the cupboard.

I pulled the laptop out onto the bed and fired it up as the TV behind me finally swung into gear. A slightly fuzzy Oprah was talking to a big-haired woman about losing her home in the recession. I pushed the channel button to see David Hasselhoff saving the world in fluent Farsi and Columbo tripping up yet another bad guy who was too clever for his own good. I didn’t bother trying to find the BBC Persian channel. Aimed at the hundred million Persian speakers in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, it was sponsored by our Foreign and Commonwealth Office – so it wasn’t top of the pops in a government-approved hotel.

This place really was a mosaic. They watched our films and TV, and listened to our music. They wore our clothes and ate burgers. But they had no problem strapping on an explosive vest and taking on a tank or foot patrol. Not because Allah wanted them to, but because it was seen as the only way to win. One thing was certain: we needed to sort our shit out and prepare for what might be coming our way.

Everything on the laptop Julian had provided was seriously geeked up for Jim Manley’s world. There were articles penned by Manley for a whole string of defence journals, email correspondence with his ex-wife about how the property was going to be sold and the cash divvied up.

The system’s history was everything you’d expect it to be. I flicked through email traffic with editors, public-relations consultants, sources within Britain’s defence industry, even plane-spotters.

Plane-spotters.

The guys on the roof of the multi-storey.

I wondered.

I logged on to the hotel’s free why-fi network. These lads had taken to technology obsessively, just like us. Farsi is the most common language on the Internet after English and Mandarin Chinese. Armoured-dinner-jacket even wrote his own blog.

The grindingly slow speed made me feel right at home. Access details eventually came up on my screen. I tapped ‘aircraft enthusiasts’, ‘plane-spotters’ and ‘Iran’ into the search-engine and hit ‘enter’. This would have been Manley’s porn channel for the night. Up popped a website called www.iranianmetalbird.net. Magic. The little fuckers got everywhere, even in a dictatorship. Though the West was poring over every aspect of Iran’s infrastructure, the mullahs hadn’t thought to shut the Internet door.

The website tracked civil and military aircraft that had taken off and landed at most of Iran’s major airports, and was bursting with photos – lots of photos. I didn’t expect to see Altun waving at the camera, but I clearly had a long night ahead of me.

I started by doing what Jim Manley would do pretty much as soon as he arrived. I sent an email to my editor, telling him that I was in the city and going to work tomorrow. I added a note about my new best mate Majid and what a nice, helpful guy he was. Someone in a Tehran basement would be poring over this any minute now, and I wanted to give those lads something to smile about.

I went back to plane-spotting at IKIA as Oprah put the world to rights.

The first clutch of pictures was of C-130s departing IKIA, and a Chinese copy of the MiG-21 landing at Mehrabad. There was even an email address for the guy who’d taken this last one and posted his comments – in English: ‘A Chengdu F-7M used for training flights, tail number 3-7714, taking off from Mehrabad Airport. For more information contact Ali on ali@iranianmetalbird.net’.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Mr Munley?’

I pulled back the bolts and found myself staring at the unblinking eyes of my new best mate. Maybe he’d already read my email and was here to thank me for my kind words.

‘I am sorry, Mr Munley. I hope I do not disturb you, but I forgot to give you this. My profound apologies.’ He handed me a bubble-wrap envelope. ‘It is the press pass for the show and vouchers for food here in the hotel, a gift from Iran. They have no restaurant but will bring whatever you care for so there is no need to go out and face the traffic. Have you tried your mobile yet, Mr Munley?’

‘No, I just emailed my editor.’

‘Your mobile, unfortunately, Mr Munley, will not work. We are taking great steps to update our systems. So you have another gift, a mobile phone for the duration of your stay.’

He smiled and I smiled, both knowing it was all to do with keeping tabs on my calls – and, of course, being able to track me with it once I’d tucked it into my pocket.

‘Thank you very much, Majid. Very helpful.’

‘I will see you in the lobby at six thirty tomorrow morning. I wish you a pleasant evening.’

Tuesday, 5 May

0820 hrs

The traffic was bumper to bumper, just as Majid had predicted. It gave me some thinking time. I hadn’t bothered placing tell-tales in the room to check if it had been investigated while I was out. I was sure it would have been and didn’t want to flag myself up as aware.

When we finally arrived Majid came good. The area around the conference centre was chaotic. We glided through the crowd and past Registration with little more than a wave of his papers. A giant white banner ahead of us didn’t fuck around. It announced in two-foot-high red letters: ‘ IranEx 2009 – The Achievements of the Islamic Republic that Will Make America Suffer a Severe Defeat ’.

The tools of my new trade were proudly on display and I looked the part. My name badge was pinned to my shirt, my Nikon hung round my neck, and I had my laptop, tons of reading material and three thousand dollars in cash in my day-sack. The war on terror and the US trade embargo meant credit cards were a no-no.

I had another two thousand in fifty- and hundred-dollar bills and my Samsung satellite phone, all tucked far enough down both my Timberlands for me to fold the tops of my socks over them. An ordinary mobile was out of the question. I needed something secure to call Julian on, and to yell for help if I was in the shit. Anything but a satellite phone would be tracked and listened in to, which was why the Iranians wouldn’t allow them into the country. I’d only use it when I had to. The Iranians wouldn’t be able to listen in, but they would still see its transmission footprint. They’d come looking to find out who was using it and why.

Finally, my passport was in a neck wallet where it should be, around my neck. If I had to drop everything and run, I had the important stuff physically attached to me.

A few metres further on, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, were a tank and a fighter aircraft. The plane was set on a giant plinth; the tank on a mound of plastic rock. Both had been sprinkled with flower petals. The Third World War had collided with the Chelsea Flower Show.

Majid was looking at the aircraft the way most of the young guys I’d come across studied Zoo and Nuts . ‘You will know, of course, what this aircraft is – a Saegheh 80. “Saegheh” means thunderbolt, Mr Munley. As you can imagine, we are very proud of this achievement, because it is living proof that Iran can stand on her own two feet.’

I’d never given a whole lot of thought to aircraft, other than when I’d been jumping out of them or measuring the threat they represented. But I’d done my homework on the flight and recognized Iran’s first attempt to build an indigenous combat jet. I decided not to tell him that it was little more than a halfarsed improvement of the F-5E, an American fighter designed in the 1950s that had been supplied in quantity to the Iranian Air Force during the reign of the Shah.