at a bus stop. To a Predator, it was always a bright sunny day.
Once they had imagery, it could be bounced anywhere, including to my laptop in the Serena. Down in Helmand and the south, they circled 24/7. They watched and waited for the Taliban to come out of their caves, jump on their flatbeds and scream across the plains. The operator, hundreds of miles north in the ISAF camp, just marked the target with a laser beam and kicked off a couple of the Hellfires strapped to its wings.
'You got coverage?'
'I'm looking at pictures now.'
'Tell the operator to focus on the saddle between the two antennae farms. I'm on my own, facing north.'
I stood there like a dickhead while the Yes Man steered the operator on target.
'They want to confirm it's you.'
'I'll walk down the road on their go. Tell them I'm in local dress and I have a rucksack on my back. Apart from their boys with the guns, I'm the only fucker up here who's standing. The rest of them are sitting and eating.'
'He's ready.'
'I'm walking.' I headed down the track. A couple of the old guys waved at me as I passed. I kept my head down, mobile to my ear. 'That's a hundred and fifty short of the target. White rectangular, two storeys, flat roof.'
'We have you, Nick.'
'Fifty short. On my left, building about ten metres back from the road. There's a black four-by-four parked to the left of the target.'
'I can see a white building ahead of you now, Nick.'
'That's it. I'm about twenty short.'
'There's movement!' His voice shot up an octave. 'Movement from the back. Someone's heading towards the four-by-four.'
I swivelled my eyes under the shemag. A massive body appeared from the back of the house and opened the wagon's hatch.
He was no more than five metres away. I heard him mutter to himself as he sniffed and chugged up the contents of his lungs.
He bent forward slightly from the waist, as if his massive frame was weighing him down. His head was down, maybe to hide his scabbed-up face, but he looked aware. Both hands were stuck inside his clothing. One would be gripping a weapon.
His gingery beard was almost as big as the wizard's last night. He could be local. There were plenty of big Afghans running around here, even ginger ones with blue eyes.
He lifted out a case of bottled water and dropped it on to his sandalled feet. 'Fucking goddamn fucking shit!'
So, not a local, then.
A few more paces and he was unsighted. I heard the rear hatch slam shut behind me.
'He's going back to the rear of the house, Nick. He's opening the back door. He's now inside.'
'It's no longer a possible,' I said. 'That's the target.'
71
Serena Hotel
1834 hrs
I came out of the shower still honking of Marmite but wearing a nice bathrobe. My arm was red and sore. My fault, I'd kept scratching.
The TV was tuned to an Iranian station. No need to buy any of those street-market DVDs of Americans getting blown to shit by IEDs. You could watch it all on state-sponsored news. I picked up the remote and flicked. It was all the normal shit. CNN, fuzzy HBO, some Russian channels, hundreds of Indian ones. I settled on some girls in bikinis playing beach cricket in Australia. I wondered what the boys up in the hills would make of it.
The Yes Man's mobile bounced across the desk where it was busy recharging next to my personal one.
'The latest imagery is with you. If he's in there, get him down into the city and away from ISAF before contacting me. I will arrange pickup and fly you both out within the hour.'
I fired up the laptop with my left hand. 'You need to make sure the unmanned aerial vehicle is retasked and not covering the hill. Neither of us would want anything recorded.'
'Agreed.'
The mobile cut and I powered it down. I picked up the personal one and tried Magreb. It just rang and rang. Maybe he was at a crucial stage with the stir-fry.
The downloads finished. I was looking at a series of black-and-white thermal images. The hotter the source, the whiter it showed. A live human, even fully clothed, would show as a precise silhouette.
The 4x4 glowed with varying intensities of white. The bonnet was bright. The exposed bit of exhaust pipe was incandescent.
Scaled against the 4x4, the target looked about twenty metres by ten. There were no power lines going in, not even