Jeffrey Archer - Honour Among Thieves

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.

Scott could now see the Kurdish checkpoint ahead of him as the helicopter swung even lower on its final attempt to stop them. A flurry of bullets hit the jeep’s hood, ricocheted off the bridge and into the windshield. As the helicopter swung away, Scott looked up and for a second stared into the eyes of General Hamil.

Scott looked back down and punched a hole in the shattered windshield, only to discover he was faced with two rows of soldiers lined up in front of him, their rifles aiming straight at the jeep.

Behind the row of soldiers were two small exits for those wishing to enter Kurdistan and two entrances on the other side of the road for those driving out of Kirkuk.

The two exits to Kurdistan were blocked with stationary vehicles, while the two entrances had been left clear — although no one at that moment was showing any desire to enter Saddam’s Iraq.

Aziz decided that he would have to swing across the road and risk driving the jeep at an acute angle through one of the small entrances, where he might be faced with an oncoming vehicle — in which case they would be trapped. He was still losing speed, and could feel that the rim of the front left-hand wheel was now touching the ground.

Once they were within range, Cohen opened fire on the line of soldiers in front of him. Some fired back, but he managed to hit several before the rest scattered.

With a hundred yards to go and still losing speed, Aziz suddenly swung the jeep across the road and tried to steer it towards the second entrance. The jeep hit the right-hand wall, careened into the short, dark tunnel and bounced onto the left-hand wall before lurching out into no-man’s-land, between the two customs posts.

Suddenly there were dozens of soldiers pursuing them from the Iraqi side. “Keep going, keep going!” shouted Scott as they emerged from the little tunnel.

Aziz was still losing speed as he steered the jeep back to the left and pointed it in the direction of the border with Kurdistan, a mere four hundred yards away. He pressed his foot flat down on the accelerator but the speedometer wouldn’t rise above two miles per hour. Another row of soldiers, this time from the Kurdish border, was facing them, their rifles pointing at the jeep. But none of them was firing.

Cohen swung around as a stray bullet hit the back of the jeep and another flew past his shoulder. Once again he fired a volley towards the Iraqi border, and those who could quickly retreated behind their checkpoint. The jeep trundled on for a few more yards before it finally whimpered to a halt halfway between the two unofficial barriers that the UN refused to recognize.

Scott looked towards the Kurdish border. A hundred Peshmergas were lined up, their rifles now firing — but not in the direction of the jeep. Scott turned back to see another line of soldiers tentatively advancing from the Iraqi side. He and Hannah began firing their pistols as Cohen let forth another burst which came to a sudden stop. The Iraqi soldiers had started to retreat again, but sensed immediately that their enemy had finally run out of ammunition.

Cohen leaped down off the jeep and quickly took out his pistol. “Come on, Aziz!” he shouted as he rushed forward and crouched beside the driver’s door. “We’ll have to cover them so the professor can get his bloody Declaration across the border.”

Aziz didn’t reply. His body was slumped lifelessly over the wheel, the horn sounding intermittently. The unanswered radio phone was still ringing.

“The bastards have killed my Kurd!” shouted Cohen. Hannah grabbed the canvas bag as Scott lifted Aziz out of the front of the jeep. Together, they began to drag him the last few hundred yards towards the border with Kurdistan.

Another line of Iraqi soldiers started to advance towards the jeep as Scott and Hannah carried the dead body of Aziz nearer and nearer to his Kurdish homeland.

They heard more shots whistle past them, and turned to see Cohen running towards the Iraqis screaming, “You killed my Kurd, you bastards! You killed my Kurd!” One of the Iraqis fell, another fell, one retreated. Another fell, another retreated, as Cohen went on advancing towards them. Suddenly, he fell to his knees, but somehow he kept crawling forward, until a final volley rang out. The Sergeant collapsed in a pool of blood a few yards from the Iraqi border.