Free Killing for the Company by Chris Ryan Page A

drive through the berm, it wasn’t immediately obvious how the smugglers had crossed the ditch or got through the barbed wire.
    As Luke got out to investigate with three of the guys from the pick-up, the cold desert wind blew sand into their eyes. It took them no time to locate two long planks of wood abandoned in the trench. These they used to bridge the gap, then examined the barbed-wire fence. Someone had cut and unfurled it, before closing it back up again so it didn’t attract attention. Luke curled the cut wire back and returned to the car. Fozzie had left the pick-up, and now all six Regiment men were standing round the Toyota.
    ‘You’ll radio check with base, let them know we’ve crossed over?’ Luke asked.
    Fozzie nodded. ‘Take care, fellas,’ he said. He grinned. ‘Hope it’s not a one-way ticket.’
    ‘Next time there’s an opportunity for one of us to get his bollocks shot off by a raghead,’ Luke retorted, ‘the job’s yours.’
    ‘Deal,’ said Fozzie. ‘We’ll RV in twenty-four hours.’
    Luke and Finn got back into the car, and a moment later they were trundling over the planks and through the breach in the fence. In the mirror Luke saw the guys returning everything to normal. He looked at the clock on the Toyota. 22.18. They’d gone from safety to danger in a matter of seconds.
    ‘Welcome to Disneyland,’ he muttered, and started driving.
     
    It was two minutes past midnight when they joined the arterial road that ran west back to the border and east through the desert and eventually to Baghdad. Luke and Finn wouldn’t be travelling that far. According to their intel, the Bedouin village they were heading for was approximately eighty miles east of this location. Not far in ordinary circumstances; but behind what were effectively enemy lines, it was a very long way. The road wasn’t busy, but occasional vehicles passed in either direction.
    They drove in silence. As they passed a large Arabic road sign, Finn turned the radio up slightly and the wailing of an Arabic singer filled the air. ‘Voice of a fucking angel,’ Luke muttered. Finn said nothing.
    They’d been driving for no more than an hour when Luke saw lights up ahead. ‘Checkpoint,’ he said tersely. It wasn’t a surprise. They knew there was one permanent checkpoint between the border and the place where they were intending to turn off into the desert. This was it. ‘Hope you’ve got the lingo, mate,’ said Finn.
    Luke’s Arabic was good, but it wasn’t perfect. Not for the first time in the past six years he found himself wishing that his partner on this op was an old friend.
    ‘Guy I know called Chet Freeman,’ he murmured. ‘We could use him here.’
    ‘The pegleg who caught a frag out in Serbia?’
    Luke kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead. ‘You call him that again,’ he said bluntly, ‘I’ll waste you here and now. Roadblock or no fucking roadblock.’
    Yeah, Chet was a good man in a tight spot. At least he had been once. His days of adventure were at an end. But with a bit of luck, Luke’s own language skills would be sufficient to get them across this roadblock.
    Finn switched off the radio, removed his Sig from its holster strap, slipped the headdress on again and tucked the weapon into the folds of the burka. Luke pulled over on to the stony ground beside the highway. He removed his own handgun and placed it beside him in the door, before keeping his eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror.
    They stayed like that for five minutes, until Luke saw three sets of headlamps approaching from behind. It was better to hit the checkpoint as part of a convoy rather than on their own, as it meant they had less chance of being stopped. A reasonable strategy, but reasonable strategies sometimes have a way of going pear-shaped. As the third vehicle passed – a pick-up not unlike the one the guys were in back at the border – he pulled out into the road and drove towards the checkpoint.
    Two hundred metres to