Exit wound ns-12 Page 8

I played around with the mobiles and Nintendo games while I waited. It wasn’t long before I spotted Checked Shirt, only today he was in plain blue. He mooched along the store front the other side of the barrier, casting down the aisles for his target. I let him get on with it. When I saw him turn back into the throng of people moving up and down the mall I knew he’d pinged me. He knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Now that I was in, I could only exit through one of the checkouts. He could sit back and keep the trigger. Maybe somebody else would come in later on to see what I was up to.

  We’d been followed from the moment we’d left the hotel. This time it was a two-car team: the Toyota and a dark blue Mazda saloon. Going by the way they operated, I was pretty sure they’d been trained by the Brits. They used the same stake-out procedures and trigger techniques.

  This morning we’d played another round of golf at the same club, but instead of a buggy each this time Red Ken and Dex shared. Red Ken left us on the sixth tee, which was out of line-of-sight of the clubhouse. He’d collected the Suburban from the airport, rattled it off to the RV and got back while we were still fucking about on the fifteenth.

  Checked Shirt had come into the clubhouse as we signed in, just to see if we were meeting anyone. As soon as he saw it was just us on the greens, he went and sat at a table in the corner. They couldn’t come out and follow us round the golf course. All they could do was hole up and put the trigger on where we’d come back.

  They’d followed us back to the hotel. If our rooms were bugged, they’d have been disappointed. There was no planning, no talking. We’d done all that on the golf course where nobody could hear us.

  I moved further into Carrefour. By now Red Ken would have arrived at the Bur Juman Centre, another of Dubai’s fifty-odd malls. They were the only places we were able to walk around and where we were guaranteed crowd cover. The streets were empty apart from Indians or Filipinos on their way to work.

  The plan was now to split up and for each of us to lose his tag. Then we’d RV in the old quarter to carry on with the job as planned. Once Red Ken had dropped him off, Dex wasn’t heading for a mall. He was going to the street markets. He had clothes to buy so he could make like a local and go and nick the wagon.

  I was moving down the aisles of pots and pans when White Shirt made an appearance. He wasn’t there long. His job would be to confirm I was still in the store, that I wasn’t meeting anybody, and that if I was, to decide whether they had to follow them as well.

  25

  I moved from pots and pans to bags: schoolbags, shopping bags, suitcases, rucksacks and day-sacks. I picked up a Day-Glo orange one and threw it in the trolley. In the camping-gear section I added a head-torch. Toiletries and first aid were next. I threw in a pack of surgical gloves. White Shirt shadowed me for a while, checking I was doing what I was doing rather than meeting anybody for a brush contact to exchange information.

  He didn’t follow as I turned past a group of Europeans checking out iPods. He crossed into the next aisle. I carried on to the checkout. I’d lost him by then; I didn’t know where he was. There was no need to look. If he had any sense he’d wait within sight of the exit.

  I paid cash, put everything in the day-sack and headed out into the mall. Again, there was no need to look. I didn’t want to show I was aware.

  I headed for the escalator to the first floor. One of them would probably come with me, but not until I was at the top and about to step off. You don’t go on an escalator with your target in case they turn around and ping you.

  He would wait until I was ‘temporary unsighted’ – perhaps because I turned a corner and was out of view until he did the same – and if he and his mate had any brain cells, they’d try and get ahead of me via the fire-escape stairs or another escalator. But I wasn’t going to let that happen. As soon as I hit the first floor, I moved right and headed for the toilets.

  I took a cubicle and locked myself in. There was a gap of about forty centimetres under the door. I sat, feet up, on a very comfortable European toilet seat, surrounded by glossy marble and stainless steel. Everything smelt wonderful. I whipped off my Timberlands and socks and rolled up my cargos then shoved on the flip-flops, put my feet on the floor, and waited.

  I hadn’t yet made it look like I was trying to lose them. They’d be checking the immediate vicinity for the VDM, my orange day-sack. They’d be looking through the crowds, trying not to make themselves stick out by pushing people out of the way, all the clumsy stuff you see in films. When they didn’t find me, they’d check the men’s clothing stores, electrical shops and toilets. All they’d see under the door was a pair of white legs and flip-flops. I was now just one of the hundreds of European men in the mall who could be taking a dump in here – and not the one they were looking for.

  Soon they’d have to make a decision. I was no longer just temporary unsighted. I was unsighted – and that was a nice way of saying they’d lost me.

  Then what? They’d try to lock the place down. They’d need to put triggers on everyone coming out, but that just wasn’t possible. There were too many exits to have eyes-on. Maybe they’d go back and check the taxi ranks. But there wouldn’t be enough of them to go round. They’d have to go back to known locations – either the hotel or the golf club. They’d have to go themselves, or tell their mates to go and stake them out.

  There were other known locations. We’d been cruising round the old quarter; we’d visited the gold souk. Maybe they’d check Baghdad and the Indian place we’d eaten at last night.

  I sat right where I was as cisterns flushed either side of me and dads coaxed their kids to wash their hands. You didn’t have to be multilingual to understand what was going on out there.

  I checked my watch. I’d been there nearly half an hour. It was time to move or I’d miss the RV with Red Ken and Dex. I put my boots back on, replaced my shirt with the dark blue one in the plastic bag and shoved my purchases into my pockets. I put the flip-flops and cream shirt in the day-sack and left it hanging on the back of the door.

  I headed for Debenhams without glancing left or right, then down their internal escalator towards the ground-floor exit.

  I was surrounded by people getting into cars or cabs, some in burqas, some in European summer dresses with half their tits hanging out.

  The sun was sinking but I didn’t want to hit the taxi rank yet. The Toyota was still out there. I ducked back towards the building. It was still only one up. The lads inside the mall would have to make their decision soon.

  The two shirts emerged. Checked was on his mobile, waving his free hand like a madman. White bollocked the driver, as if it was his fault they’d lost me.

  They jumped into the car and took off, and I joined the taxi queue.

  26

  Last light

  I went straight into the toilet block without hanging about. Dex was lifting the Tata. Red Ken would meet me opposite the construction site to back him if things went tits up. A guy in dishdash and sandals bent over the sink, a finger blocking each nostril in turn while he snorted snot from the other into a trickle of water. I headed for one of the cubicles. Glossy marble and stainless steel it wasn’t, and the smell was indescribable.

  With my feet on the porcelain pads each side of the hole, I fished my docs and cash out of the dark blue Rohan trousers I’d chosen to match my long-sleeved shirt. They were wrapped in a hotel laundry bag. As soon as the snorter had left the block, I moved out and reached up to the ledge. My fingers found two more sets of docs up there, and the weapons gone. This was our final RV. We stored our means of escape here so we could go into the job sterile. All I had on me now was about six hundred dollars of on-the-run money.

  It didn’t matter what I felt about the job now. It was happening. If I let myself think too much about what might go wrong, I’d end up paralysed.

  I retraced my steps through the subway towards the Creek. I turned right as I came out, following exactly the same route as yesterday. Dhows were still tied up along the pavement
, half a dozen deep. The Indian lads were still working their arses off in the dark.

  I chose the ill-lit side of the road. As soon as the construction-site floodlights came into view I waited for a break in the traffic and crossed back.

  Red Ken stood in the shadows by a massive set of roll shutters set into the wall of the fire station, fishing in his day-sack with rubber-gloved hands. ‘All right, son?’

  I gave him a nod as I put on my surgical gloves and slipped the head-torch around my neck.

  ‘Here.’ He handed me a Taurus, a Brazilian version of the Colt. 8 Special. ‘It’s loaded.’ He pressed a speed loader into my palm. ‘Spare.’

  I checked it. When I needed to reload, I would open the Taurus’s cylinder, push the bar, and the six empty cases would fall out. The speed loader had six rounds ready to drop into the chamber. All I had to do was press a button and the rounds would drop into position. I’d close the cylinder again and carry on firing. I slid the speed loader into a pocket in my Rohans and the weapon into my waistband. If we needed more than twelve rounds each to get out of the shit, we were really in it.

  The lads hanging around by the main gate of the construction site didn’t look like they’d moved an inch since last night. The one in the guard hut was still watching something loud from Bollywood. Everyone else was busy brewing up.

  Dex had been standing off somewhere in the darkness, keeping a trigger on Red Ken, waiting for me to arrive. Within the minute, he walked past us without a second glance. He looked like he’d done his clothes shopping in a skip instead of a street market. His short-sleeved shirt was ripped and the brown trousers held up with a plastic belt were caked with dust. His sandals slapped along the pavement. He smelt rancid from ten paces. He’d prepared well. Smells count.

  Dex disappeared into the site.

  I checked we were still in shadow, and spotted the sign above our heads. The building we were standing outside wasn’t just a fire station – it was also the police station and HQ for Civil Defence.

  Red Ken saw me reading it. ‘Nobody said it would be easy, son.’

  As if on cue, there was a blip of a siren and two green-and-whites pulled out of a side road. The police the other side of the tinted glass didn’t give us a second glance before turning right and speeding off down the main.

  A Tata truck that had seen better days trundled out of the construction site. Not a single head turned as it nosed through the gate.

  Red Ken and I started walking. The Tata pulled in about a hundred metres further down the road. A crane was mounted behind the cab, and a thick steel cable was attached to a chunky hook. Ten metres or so of webbing straps were wrapped around the mesh screen protecting the rear window.

  I opened the door and eased myself into the footwell. Dex stared straight ahead. Red Ken came in on top of me, trying to lie flat on the passenger seat. His day-sack dug into my back as he passed Dex his revolver and speed loader. ‘It’s loaded.’

  I concentrated on not fucking up the wiring that dangled beneath the steering column. Dex had rigged it up to get this thing started.

  We stopped at a set of lights, which glowed red on Dex’s face. He wiggled his surgical-gloved fingers. ‘Man, rubber gloves and Tata in perfect harmony.’

  27

  It stank like a derelict house down there in the footwell. The rubber mats had worn through to bare metal, and there was a thick coating of sand.

  Dex gave us a running commentary from the driver’s seat. If the shit hit the fan we needed to know exactly what was happening and where. ‘That’s us about to go into the tunnel.’ Everything went dark. Strip-lights flickered. ‘Coming out.’

  All I could see was skyscrapers that blocked out the stars.

  ‘Approaching traffic-lights… looks like they’re going to be red…’ He sounded like a bad ventriloquist. He didn’t want other drivers to see him talking to himself.

  ‘That’s all the traffic in front slowing… slowing… lights are red. There’s a very nice Maserati down there, with a very beautiful woman… short skirt, lads… I can’t believe it, she’s not even looking up at me…’

  ‘Show her a picture of your castle, son.’

  ‘Lights changing, lights to green…’

  The Tata shuddered before we moved on.

  ‘Nearly there, chaps.’

  My right leg was cramping up. I had to get it straight. ‘Red – got to move, mate.’

  He wasn’t impressed. ‘For fuck’s sake.’ I was treated to a cloud of cigarette breath.

  My face ended up just a couple of centimetres from Dex’s flip-flops as he worked the pedals. They’d come from a skip as well.

  He rumbled along, not speeding, but bumping around to keep his place in the freeway chaos.

  I got cramp again. If a job kicks off well, the rest of it seems to flow. If it judders out of the blocks, it often turns into a nightmare.

  ‘Two hundred to go before our first stop.’

  Air rushed through the open window and I caught a glimpse of streetlights. There was a bump and then darkness, like someone had thrown a switch.

  ‘Let’s see who’s with us, shall we?’ Dex checked the vehicles that had no choice now but to pass us. ‘So far, so good, chaps. No Toyota or Mazda, no one turning off, staking out, or even giving us a second look.’

  The Tata shook itself like a wet dog and moved forward once more.

  ‘“Swing, swing to-ge-ther… With your bo-dies be-tween your knees…”’

  For the next ten minutes we had to put up with his favourite chorus in between snatches of commentary.

  ‘Here we go, up the kerb.’

  We’d reached our final stop and check. We bumped up onto the rough ground surrounding the target. The sky went dark and we came to a halt. The engine ticked over as Dex let the traffic zoom past.

  ‘No vehicles that came past last time.’ He gave it another thirty seconds. ‘That’s it, we’re clear. No one following and I have no movement or light on target.’ He killed the headlights.

  28

  Red Ken gave me room to stretch. ‘OK, that’s it. Let’s switch on.’

  Dex rolled the wagon slowly over the wasteground towards the target. A couple of hundred metres away from it, he started easing up the handbrake instead of using the foot pedal. We didn’t want red taillights flashing on derelict ground.

  We came to a halt and Red Ken and I jumped out. The lights of the city glowed all round our island of darkness. The ski-slope tower blinked about a K away so the Dexes of this world didn’t fly into it. About five hundred metres behind us, hundreds of vehicles flowed along the well-lit main.

  We moved forward on foot.

  The target wall was maybe a hundred and fifty ahead.

  The gates facing the entrance to the building were immediately in front of us. From here on in, that side of the rectangle was White. The left-hand side was Green, the right was Red and the rear section Black. Colour coding prevented confusion: your rear could be someone else’s front.

  We eased off to the left. Sweat trickled down my neck as we rounded the first corner of White and Green. We did a complete 360 of the compound wall, gradually spiralling in until we came right up against it where Red met White.

  There was a constant hum of traffic. Helicopters buzzed from one high-rise to another in the background. We listened for movement inside the compound. We stayed like that for a couple of minutes, just listening and tuning in. The ambient light wasn’t strong enough to cast a shadow onto the wall, but now my night vision was kicking in I could see the dust and rubble below our feet. My fingers had pruned inside the surgical gloves, floating in pools of sweat.

  Red Ken gave me a tap on the shoulder to check if I’d heard anything.

  I shook my head.

  We followed the wall on White until we reached the entrance.

  29

  The gate had once had a coat of paint, but I couldn’t tell what colour it had been. The desert wind had sandblasted some patches bare. Wind f
rom the sea had made it rust and peel.

  The three big padlocks Red Ken had spotted on their last recce were still in place: massive square things, just the body exposed so you couldn’t attack the shanks with a cutter.

  Red Ken went down on his knees, scanning the ground for tread marks. The wind would have obliterated anything more than a few days old, so anything visible could be taken as recent. It was one more combat indicator, something that showed the enemy was close – because tonight there were no friendly forces.

  A foot-high ridge of sand had built up along the bottom of the gate. If somebody had made entry recently it would have been disturbed. We were going to leave it just as it was.

  Red Ken leant his back against the wall, knees bent. He cupped his hands on his lap. I put my right foot into his gloves, steadied myself with my hands on his shoulders, then reached up and grabbed the top of the wall. He stood and guided my feet to his shoulders.

  The yard was pitch black. No vehicle lights, no lights from the windows either side of the shutters.

  I waited twenty seconds before looking again, so my unconscious had time for everything around it to sink in. I came back down. ‘OK. We’re on.’

  Red Ken moved a little further along the wall towards White and Red to be the marker for the Tata and I moved towards Dex to guide him in. He’d be driving without lights and using only the handbrake and gears.

  I pulled my torch up onto my forehead. Its three LEDs shone white or red, as a stable beam or flashes for emergencies. Stable and red would do us fine, but not just yet. I walked until the Tata was almost on top of me and the cab blocked out the city lights behind it. I gripped the sill of the open window to murmur in Dex’s ear, ‘You can see the wall?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘OK, go half right then turn in. Red’s your marker.’

  Dex kept it at gentle revs as he rolled forward. There was no rush about this bit. The noise wasn’t important; not hitting the brakes was. He pulled up the handbrake when he got to his mark and left the engine running.