Andy McNab - Exit wound

‘The software “sees” all commercial air traffic along with all the details of a particular flight. Take this one, for example. From the data on the screen I know that it’s an Emirates flight out of Dubai, that its registration number is A6-ZDA, that it’s en route to London and that it’s at fifteen thousand feet and climbing.’ He then pointed to some untagged dots within Iranian airspace. ‘You see these? These are all uncorrelated tracks. The system registers their presence – it has to know where they are for it to operate safely – but the tracks themselves carry little if any data. Some do not even carry call-signs.’

‘And those are military flights?’

‘Yes. The Falcon effectively fell into this category when it flew out of UAE two days ago, but reverted to a civilian mode of operation inside Iran. That is very odd. They must have been keen to hide something.’

He geeked about the screen a bit more. ‘Would you like to see the photographs?’

I couldn’t help sitting upright.

‘I told you, Jim. Nothing flies in and out of the country that we don’t know about. We had never seen a Falcon 7X before. It is a very rare bird. When it was on the ground we photographed it from every angle we could.’

‘Yeah, OK, then. Let’s have a look. Why weren’t they on your website?’

‘I have to work, Jim. I haven’t had time to unload.’

I didn’t want to sound too full-on about it. ‘If they’re any good, I’ll buy them right now.’

‘Even though it’s a big jet, the Falcon has a short take-off and landing capability.’ He scrolled down a list of files. ‘It was one of the few large corporate aircraft to have been cleared for service at London City – as you know, Jim, an airport that’s renowned for stringent regulations governing the aircraft that use it.’

I nodded. If you needed STOL capability to get you in and out of London City, the airstrip RV would have been a piece of piss. That was why it had been used. It could carry the weight, get in and out, and didn’t look military.

He opened a file and up came hundreds of aircraft thumbnails. ‘Found them.’

The first few were of the Falcon coming in, nose high, flaps dangling, over the perimeter fence at IKIA just hours after Red Ken and Dex got dropped. I wondered if their bodies were on board, or whether they’d been burnt or cut up and fed to animals – anything to ensure they’d never be seen again. There was a good picture of the Falcon as it hit the tarmac – you could see little puffs of white smoke coming up from the wheels. There were several of it taxiing and many more of it parked up in front of M3C’s very own terminal, the building tucked away on the far side of the airport.

We were getting closer to what I hoped was going to be gravy time. With his long lens, Ali had snapped several clear pictures of the aircraft’s passengers as they disembarked. First off was Tattoo, still wearing the clothes he’d had on when he’d dropped Dex: short-sleeved blue shirt, tail hanging out over jeans. One snap had him putting his sun-gigs on, exposing his ink-covered arms.

And then, in the next shot, there was my target: standing at the top of the air-stairs, sniffing the breeze. The picture was an improvement on the black-and-white, but not by much.

‘You know who any of these people are?’

‘Just M3C people, I suppose.’

There was another shot of Altun as he made his way down the steps and then, finally, the money shot: staring out over the airport, his face turned to the camera, almost as if he was posing, one hand smoothing back hair that had been ruffled by the wind…

‘Ali, they’re excellent. The magazine will love them.’

‘Really? You are sure these are good enough for you?’ He was a happy man.

‘More than sure, Ali. I’ll take all of them. I’m sure my editor would agree for me to pay, say, a thousand dollars.’ I didn’t want to fuck about. That would have been more than he made in a couple of months behind the wheel of the Paykan. And the three of them could do with it. I would have liked to give them more, but I still had a job to do and no idea what it would end up costing.

‘I have more!’ His fingers darted across the keyboard.

I found myself staring at several good clear shots of a forklift truck offloading the wooden crates. The second loadie from the airstrip was in charge. There was nothing that looked like a couple of freshly wrapped bodies.

I needed to get them out of my possession and into Julian’s as fast as I could. Majid would be going ape and I might find myself hung upside down and searched with rubber gloves.

I couldn’t send them from Ali’s apartment: Vevak would pick it up. I didn’t want this rebounding on him or his family.

There were internet cafes, of course, but they were definitely monitored.

There was the press-centre at IranEx. In among the images of boring take-offs and landings, people standing next to an undercarriage wheel and all that shit, my editor would be getting the Falcon, the gold and the faces that accompanied it. By the time Vevak cottoned on to what I’d sent – if they ever did – I would be away from IranEx and hiding in the city, trying to find Altun and the loadies. With the Falcon now in Pakistan, I only had one known location for Altun and that was IranEx. There were two more days of the exhibition, so that was where I’d wait. I still had more to do for Julian, then for Red Ken and Dex.

I checked my watch. It was already past midnight. Majid would have staked out the room after searching it, and getting his lads to check for me in all the Western hotspots.

‘Ali, any chance of me staying the night? It’s a waste of time going back to the hotel now. And if you want a job in that taxi of yours, you could take me to IranEx in the morning and work with me for the next couple of days. I’ll pay you another five hundred.’

His eyes lit up. ‘It would be a pleasure. What time do you need to be there?’

‘Soon as it opens.’

We ate dinner cross-legged on the carpet – a meal that Aisha had prepared that was a cross between soup, and potato, tomato, chickpea and mutton stew. She was a busy girl. As well as looking after these two she was a medical student at the university, and had joined Mousavi’s green movement for reform. She had the wristband to prove it.

Ali was munching away like a good ’un, his pockets stuffed with the wad of oners I’d just given him.

Aisha, however, didn’t seem too pleased to have the extra income in the house. She was almost ignoring me. Ali was either too blind to see it or chose not to notice.

Every so often one of them would get up to check on their dad, but the Naloxone had worked its magic and he was no longer in any danger. It wasn’t the first time he’d overdosed, Ali said. He’d done it so many times, in fact, that when their mother left and they were just kids, they had become experts on what to do. Some days, the two of them would come home to their dad crying in a corner of the bathroom, clutching his knees, shaking with fear – or just throwing a wobbler and smashing the place up.

‘Have you two heard of post-traumatic stress disorder?’

They looked at each other for any recognition.

‘It’s an illness that some people can develop after having experienced one or more traumatic events – like fighting a war, like getting blown up, like seeing fourteen-year-old boys being blown to bits beside you. It affects some people hard. There’s no telling who. Maybe your dad…’

Aisha acknowledged me at last. Well, sort of. At least she was listening.

‘Guys with PTSD can have problems with alcohol and drugs. Sometimes they can’t communicate with family and can get violent against them.’