Andy McNab - Deep Black

Twenty minutes later, he climbed the ladder to ground level. His running vest and shorts were soaking wet. His body might have been a temple, but the rest of him wasn't exactly a work of art. He couldn't reverse the damage years of working in the Middle East had done to the pale skin that comes with ginger pubic hair. The skin around his eyes and mouth was more creased than the bartender's shirt. Mrs Connor called them laughter lines, but nothing was that funny. Not to him anyway.

I stretched out my hand. 'All right?'

He gave me the once-over. 'You're in shit state. You still getting it in?'

'Nah, been busy, mate.'

'Hey, my boy's nineteen, at university now.'

I was taken aback. Connor had gone off message. Maybe he thought I was a lost cause when it came to the god of training. 'That old?'

'Yep. I'm only getting it in twice a day.' That hadn't taken long, then. He was on a twenty-second loop. 'I'd rather be swimming but the fuckers won't fill the pool. They can, you know – I've heard other hotels have, but the fuckers here won't fill it.'

I was dying to tell him the al-Hamra had a full pool but I'd be here all night listening to him honk about it.

'Who do you work for?'

'CNN. It's a good team. I've been with them since Christmas. We came up from Kuwait with the Marines. It was difficult getting the training in to begin with, but there's no problem now. If the fucking pool was working I could get some decent stuff in.'

'What's it like here?'

As if in answer, another burst of AK rattled around the streets somewhere beyond the safety of the garden.

'Belfast times ten. The Yanks out here, I feel sorry for them. They haven't got a fucking clue what they're doing. They're not trained for all this shit.' He stood with his hands on his hips, panting away. 'Even during the war, we'd be harbouring up for the night and they wouldn't send out clearing patrols. Then they'd honk in the morning that they were getting hit. For fuck's sake! I took two American patrols out myself, just to make sure we were secure.'

There was a massive wave of AK gunfire just the other side of the wall. This time, everyone ducked. Then we heard the warbling of the women. It was OK. It was a wedding.

Connor thumbed towards the noise. 'The Yanks still haven't worked out Thursday nights yet. The wedding opens up, the Yanks think they're firing at them, and they open up in return. The wedding guests get pissed off, they start firing back, and soon everybody's got their heads down. I'll tell you what, watch yourself here – nobody knows what the fuck's going on.'

Connor was still honking about the Americans, something he had always liked doing. I wondered if it was because they couldn't understand his accent.

'The Yanks reckon the militants are stringing cheese wire across the roads to chop their heads off as they scream through in their Hummers. But you know what? All that's happening is the locals are running cable from the parts of the city that have power, and shoving them into their houses. Decapitation, my arse – they just want to get the fucking kettle on!'

He roared with laughter as more tracer zipped across the horizon, followed a split second later by the rattle of gunfire. 'There they go again. The party will start soon. Any cabbying after that will be the real gear.'

'There's a no-firing-till-after-the-confetti rule?'

'Is there fuck. They don't even know the twenty-minute rule. I had to tell them yesterday, while we were filming them.'

One of the rules of urban guerrilla warfare is that if you're static for more than twenty minutes, guerrillas will have time to react and get an attack going.

Connor laughed. 'I should be paid more, I'm training the US Army! Bet they've got a full-on gym.'

The clatter of tracked vehicles came from not many streets away. Armoured troops were on the move. 'I bumped into Rob Newman and Gary Mackie. Not together, but they're in the city.'

'Yeah, fucking Mackie, the bastard. He's got a gym. All I've got is the bottom of this fucking thing. Still, at least I don't get zapped in it.'

That seemed to be the end of the conversation for Connor. He turned to walk away, closing one nostril with a finger and clearing the other on to the grass.

'You heard about any Bosnians in the city?'

'Aye, the fuckers haven't lost any time bringing their tarts over. They got the whorehouses sorted out already. Those dirty fat NGO bastards will be spending their money soon enough.'

'It's a Bosnian ayatollah called Nuhanovic I'm thinking of.'

'What the fuck does a Bosnian ayatollah want to come here for? They got enough of their own.'

I shrugged. 'Just what I thought. You going to the party later?'

'What the fuck for?'

Of course. He'd be going back to his hotel room to knock back a few pints of orange juice or whatever the new fad was, and get his head down.

'See you, Connor. I'm staying here if you hear anything.'

'Yeah. Don't forget to get some in. Sort yourself out, for fuck's sake.'

The night's festivities were slowly getting under way. Some speakers were being rigged up in the garden area and the barbecue was blazing. I walked back into the lobby.

It wasn't just military contractors and security companies that made money after an army had done its stuff. The bars and whorehouses sprang up like mushrooms in shit. It was nothing new – even the Romans had camp followers – but the set-up for these girls would be very different. They weren't self-employed prostitutes, here to make some fast cash for themselves and their families. It was an open secret in the Balkans that people-trafficking rings ran through Montenegro to Bosnia and Kosovo.

The white girl the fixer had said he could get me was probably some poor kid who'd been kidnapped or duped, then smuggled in and forced to 'repay her debt' to her owners. It was just as easy to get these girls now as it had been during the war, when both sides had sold their female prisoners. Ads in the papers in places like Moldova or Romania spoke of well-paid waitressing and bar jobs in the Balkans. When the girls arrived at their new places of work, they were lifted. Their passports were taken off them, and the next thing they knew they'd been sold as sex slaves. It looked like the Bosnians were spreading their wings and going global instead of sticking to Europe.

No sooner had I got to the bar than the main doors burst open. A crowd surged through, chanting and clapping, all the women doing their Red Indian yodel.

Next in was the bride, done up to the nines in a big fluffy white gown. She was young and very beautiful. No wonder the groom beamed beside her, looking very smart in his shiny suit. The bridesmaids were in pink and looked like little princesses, tiaras and all sorts in their hair.

They surged off to the right and down a corridor, probably heading for one of the conference rooms. The women were all in trouser suits or dresses, the men in suits or leather jackets. It could have been a wedding anywhere in Liverpool, except this lot were unarmed. They'd probably had to leave their AKs in the B amp;Q garden shed.

Jerry came in at the end of the conga, clapping and smiling away with the best of them. 'Great, huh?' He grinned. 'Life goes on.'

We headed to the lift.

'Any luck?' I checked out his Baghdad market gear: polyester trousers and shiny plastic shoes. They went down a treat with the lime-green shirt. He looked like one of the wedding party. 'At the mosque, I mean. I can see you had none at the clothes shop.'

'Yeah, funny. I'm not too sure. But I tell you what – he's definitely here.' He looked about him at the others in the lift. 'Later.'

We got to the sixth floor. For once we were on our own. 'He's here, Nick. No one said anything, but you know when they can't quite look you in the eye. The fucker is here somewhere. I had to leave kinda quick – some of the guys weren't too happy that someone was asking questions. Any questions. What about you?'