Free The Killing Ground by Jack Higgins

make a rapid exit.
    Dillon called Roper, who answered at once. “Just listen,” Dillon said and gave him an account.
    “My God, you have been in action. Why does this sort of thing always reach out to touch you, Dillon?”
    “Just tell Robson to alert the boys to get us out of here. God knows where to. The mad side of me wants to pursue them to Hazar, but I don’t think the General would approve.”
    “No, he damn well wouldn’t,” Ferguson cut in. “Outrageous, finding my plane has been hijacked. Get yourselves back here immediately.”

    62

J A C K H I G G I N S
    A T B A G H D A D A I R P O R T , they were admitted through a discreet security entrance, and found Lacey and Robson waiting in a Jeep.
    “Just follow,” Lacey called to Billy, which he did and found the Gulfstream waiting.
    “Off you go,” Robson said. “We prefer to think of you as never having been here.”
    They went up the steps and Lacey locked the door. “Thanks a lot, you bastards. The General was not exactly thrilled when he tried to book his personal plane for the flight from Paris and found it elsewhere. What in the hell were you playing at?”
    “Didn’t I tell you?” Dillon said. “Trying to win the war.”
    D I L L O N G O T H I S F L A S K O U T as they climbed, but it was empty. He waited until they leveled off at forty thousand feet and peered out the window.
    “Good-bye to Baghdad, city of romance, intrigue and adventure.”
    “Yes, everything you can do without,” Billy said. “I can’t figure it. So the Rawan bird is fed up with Jack and spills her guts to old Rashid—and he responds by having someone arrange to have the launch blown up?”
    “He was after the three of us—Savage, you and me. It was just too bad about her.”
    “And what about the car bomb?”
    “A daily risk. A man like him would have more enemies than he could count.”
    Dillon got up and went to the rear of the cockpit, opened the first-aid drawer and helped himself to the half bottle of brandy it contained.
    “Purely medicinal,” he told Parry, who had glanced over his shoulder.
    “Always is with you.”

T H E K I L L I N G G R O U N D
    63
    When Dillon returned to his seat, he found Billy examining the Irish passport taken from the man he had killed in the bar.
    “Terence O’Malley, age forty-two, an address in Bangor, Northern Ireland.”
    “A nice place.” Dillon opened the brandy and poured some into a plastic cup. “What else does it tell us?”
    “Apparently, he’s a schoolmaster.”
    “I’d bet he’s not been that for a long time.”
    “IRA?”
    “I’d say so. We know many old hands have moved into organized crime. It’s a very small step from what they were doing into the world of the mercenary, Billy. Wild Geese, that’s what they’ve always been called, in Ireland or out of it. If you’ve been a Provo for all those years, it’s difficult to turn your hand to something else when it’s all over. What have you got in there?”
    “A monthly rental bill from Dublin, a letter from a man named Tom, a please-come-home letter, signed ‘your loving mother, Rose.’ Address in Bangor. Cash, five one-hundred-dollar bills, American.” He looked up.
    “What do we do? About his mother, I mean?”
    “I’d let it go, Billy. If she knows nothing, then it leaves her hope. Now I’m going to catch a little sleep,” and he dropped his seat.
    O N T H E R O A D S O U T H from Baghdad to Kuwait, it was a macabre situation, a landscape of burned-out tanks and trucks and civilian vehicles dating back to the original Gulf War. The Highway of Death they had called it, a landscape that also contained the remains of many thousands of refugees. And yet all the way along the highway at suitable in-tervals, there were gas stations open twenty-four hours, for that was the one thing they weren’t short of, and places you could get coffee and short-order cooking, and the telephones worked.
    In the first Land Rover were Hussein’s three