going to get very nasty here. But listen, this is really important, Leona.’
She reached the student union bar and pulled the door open. Inside she could see Daniel sitting in a window seat, watching for her. He waved.
‘Dad, I’ve got to go.’
‘No! Listen. Leona . . .?’
She halted, nodded at Daniel and put a finger up to indicate she’d be with him in a minute. And then let the door swing to, shutting out the noise coming from inside.
‘What is it?’
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘She said something about going up to Manchester for something . . . to visit some friends, I think. She’s up there until the end of the week.’
Leona heard him curse under his breath.
‘Listen sweetheart, I’d like you to go home to London, right now.’
‘What?’
‘I’d like you to pick up Jake from his school, go to the supermarket and spend as much as you can on food, water and—’
‘Dad! I can’t do that!’
‘Leona . . . I’m asking you!’ he replied, his voice beginning to develop that tone; the one that ultimately led to a bollocking if you pushed him hard enough.
‘No, you can’t ask me to do that. I can’t bail out of uni before the end of term—’
He surprised her when his voice softened, ‘Please, Leona. I know you’re all fed up hearing about crap like this. I’m not stupid. I know I’ve bored you with all those oil things. But I think this situation is going to get bad enough that you need to be prepared for it. I have to know you’re all okay.’
‘We’re fine! Okay? We’re absolutely fine.’
‘Leona, you know I’m not go—’
The call disconnected suddenly and left her with the soft purr of a dial tone. She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked down at it as if it was some kind of alien life form.
My God, that was strange. Really strange.
She waited a moment for the phone to tremble again, and after hanging on patiently for a minute, she tucked it away into her jacket pocket, pulled the door open and entered the bar. Daniel was still sitting in his seat, same posture, but with a quizzical look on his face.
As she sat down beside him she said, ‘Don’t ask. It was my dad being really weird.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Oh God, it would take too long.’
He smiled and shrugged. ‘Fair enough. What do you want?’
‘Half a lager.’
Daniel got up and squeezed past her, placing a hand on her thigh and pinching gently - a little gesture that he was thinking about last night - and then wandered over to the bar.
But her mind was elsewhere. On the call from Dad, and also on those short soundbites she’d heard on the radio that morning, only what . . . four or five hours ago? Surely things hadn’t changed that much in such a short time.
CHAPTER 9
6.42 p.m. local time Road leading to Al-Bayji, Iraq
‘I don’t know for sure. They look like ours.’
Andy squinted at the line of vehicles in the weakening light of the early evening. They were motionless, none of them with their lights on. The only light was a muted, flickering torch coming from beneath the bonnet of the front vehicle. They looked like Land Rovers to him, at least the silhouettes did.
‘British,’ muttered Farid.
‘Brits?’ echoed Mike. ‘Yeah, probably. Those definitely aren’t Hummers.’
Andy watched as the torchlight flickered around, catching the movement of several men standing outside the front vehicle.
So why are they sitting around like that, lights off?
‘Bloody suspicious,’ Andy offered after a while.
‘What? Like us?’
As the light had begun to fail, they had elected to drive on with the lights of their two vehicles off. With the police escort’s sudden departure earlier in the day, they had felt dangerously exposed, and as the shadows of the late afternoon had lengthened and given way to twilight, they had decided not to advertise their presence any more than they had to.
The engine of their Land Cruiser idled with a steady rumble as Andy took a couple of steps away from the open door and studied the short column of vehicles, three - four hundred yards away.
Mike climbed out and followed him. ‘You know, if we can see them—’
‘They can see us. I know.’
And we’re sitting here with our lights off.
Andy found himself hoping they were British, and not a trigger-happy US patrol. Over the last year, it had been the American troops that had policed the worst of the growing chaos the Iraqi government still refused to call