Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

– and had heard the man shriek as he was hustled further down the corridor. The door opened. Bart was taken down the corridor, but not to an interrogation room. A brightly lit room with easy chairs and a polished desk, and Eddie bloody Wroughton: 'You confessed, nothing we can do, you told them everything. You went down into the desert. You made your own bed, Bart, and now there's nothing we can do to stop you lying on it. They'll try you, closed court, condemn you, and then they'll execute you. You're beyond our help.

When it comes to the end, try to put up a good show, try to walk tall, try to have a bit of dignity… It'll be quick. What I don't understand, Bart, is why you were so incredibly stupid.' Taken back to his cell, and listening to the screams and shrieks of others.

' The dream was a circle that was routed from the square to the airport concourse, to the cell block, and back to the square. .

He knelt in the silence. He imagined that a thousand throats gasped in anticipation. He smelt the fresh sawdust. He seemed to see the machine that shredded wood and made the sawdust that spilled from the machine into a sack's mouth. He could not see the sack but the scent of the sawdust was in his nose. He hunched. The sun and a gentle breeze were on the skin at the back of his neck. He tried to make the space, the skin between the back of his head and the top of his shoulders, so small that the executioner would find no place that his sword could strike. He buried his neck in his shoulders. He had not slept in the night. The dawn had come after an endless wait.

Before he had been walked to the black van, he had been stripped of his prison uniform and dressed in a robe that was stiff from many washings and, in spite of them, was stained. The back of his head nestled against the top of his shoulders and he made no target for the executioner. He felt the pinprick at the base of his spine, where it merged with his buttocks. The prick was sharp pain, the executioner's trick with the sword point. Bart could not help himself.

He jerked forward. His neck extended.

The dream ended.

He was not on the seats of the Mitsubishi but on the floor, his face squashed against the accelerator and brake pedals.

Above him, the chrome lit by the moon, the keys were in the ignition.

Bart could have pushed himself up, could have sat in his seat, wiped the sweat off his face and from his eyes, could – in one movement – have turned the ignition key and driven away into the sand in the hope of finding the track, might have been back in Riyadh by the late afternoon. Possibly, he would have lifted a telephone, have said: 'Mr Wroughton, it's Bart here, I've something really rather extraordinary to tell you. When and where can we meet?' Should have saved himself.

'Fuck you,' Bart murmured. 'Fuck you all. I hope he, whoever he is and whatever he does, hurts you.'

Bart looked at his watch. Three more hours of night before the next injection.

He had purged the dream. He slept.

It was a risk, but necessary.

First Caleb slotted the battery coolant unit into the grip stock, then . he depressed the impulse-generator switch – as the manual told him to. He was in darkness, could not see, could only feel and hear. The manual said – he had read it and memorized it – that 6000 PSI pressurized argon gas coolant… He did not have to remember a scientist's jargon, but had to listen and watch. The whine grew, but the red light winked at him. The manual said that a red light's sporadic winking indicated low battery power. When it was exhausted the red light would be continuous. The manual recom-mended that the battery coolant unit be recharged or replaced when the red light winked – only in circumstances of exceptional combat conditions should an attempt be made to fire a Stinger at a hostile target when the red light was winking. He killed the switch, the whine faded and the red light died. Caleb might have used the last of the battery's power when he made the test: the final chance of firing might have gone.

He fell back, the launcher resting on his body.

It all depended on the boy, on the freshness and youth of Ghaffur's ears. Without his hearing – if the Predator's eye was above him – he would not succeed in the last leg of his journey back to his family.

He had had to know that the missile would fire, would eject from the launch tube, would seek out a target.

Caleb lay on his spine. The exertion of lifting the Stinger's tube had brought back the throbbing pain to his leg.

He rested, was relaxed. What had disturbed him was not what he would do in the morning after the light came when he would stand and hobble to the guide, Rashid, and take his rifle: what had churned in his mind was that the battery powering the Stinger had lost its life.

They had Carnival Girl up over the track that ran north to south. On the map boxes, she would fly from Al Ubayiah at the northern point and down above Bir Faysal and At Turayqa to Qalamat Khawr al luhaysh in the south.

Because they tracked a lorry they were both awake. Marty brought Carnival Girl down to the low limits of loiter speed and they kept pace with the lorry and its trailer. The infra-red real-time picture had the lorry as a clean dark shape on the screen. They might have been ready to doze, might have needed more caffeine to keep them upright, but the lorry diverted them from drooping. It wasn't the first . lorry on the track, but all of the others had been going south to north, which was pretty much a straight line running through the centre of the map boxes. What was a lorry with a trailer carrying?

Marty said, 'It's refrigerated and it's got a load of iced root beer.'

'I wish.'

'Or it's got Big Macs, and ketchup and chillies and fries.'

'Dumb-ass.'

Marty said, 'My last go, it's got fans and air-conditioning units.'

'I tell you what it's got,' Lizzy-Jo chuckled, 'it's got sand. There's not enough sand here so they're hauling it down from the north what you think?'

In the dulled light inside the Ground Control – easier to see the screens – George's entry was not noticed. They were both laughing: Lizzy-Jo thought they needed laughter as a distraction to stay awake, keep working.

George said, 'What you got is a visitor.'

He told them. The laughter went cold. She snapped upright, listened to all of it, then she called up Langley. Oscar Golf was on the headsets. George hadn't the authority to challenge a visitor. Marty was flying Carnival Girl. Lizzy-Jo said she'd do it, the challenge, and Oscar Golf would take over the sensor operator's controls via the satellite link. Effortless transition. Oscar Golf told her to take the guy on the perimeter-gate bar with her.

'Lizzy-Jo, go careful. Don't start a war, and don't give a yard.'

'Hearing you, Oscar Golf. Out.'

She took a swig from the water bottle, did up a couple of the lower buttons of her blouse and followed George down the steps, into the night. He'd been working on First Lady. The wings were off, and the engine was being stripped, the camera units already taken out.

By the time it was daylight, First Lady would be ready for her coffin.

The transport plane was due in at ten hundred and was scheduled for lift-off at twelve ten hours, and for Carnival Girl to be stashed and loaded in time for lift-off, then her sister craft had to be packed and crated in the coffin. George's people swarmed round First Lady.

George left her when they reached the armourer, who had a stubby rifle hanging across his spine from a strap, but his hand was hooked back and had hold of it.

The armourer pointed up past the gate in the razor wire, then handed Lizzy-Jo his night-sights. The binoculars were heavy in her hand, and she took a moment to get the focus right. A Mercedes was parked two hundred yards up from the gate bar, with a chair by the front passenger door. On it sat an Arab. He was middle-aged, had an austere, thin face and trimmed moustache, wore a dark outer robe, an under-robe of white brilliant enough to flood her glasses, and a headcloth held in place with woven rope. Around his neck, hanging from straps, were his own binoculars. Behind his chair the Mercedes' rear doors were open and three men stood close to the body of it. She gave the night-sight glasses back to the armourer.