Ultimate Weapon Read Free

his mother.
    Jed scowled, then looked away. He could see the boy from the corner of his eye. Then he started walking towards him. He was saying something in Arabic, but Jed couldn’t understand it: back in Hereford they’d been running elementary Arabic classes – with an Iraqiinstructor giving them the right dialect – for the last six months, but most of the lads hadn’t signed up for them. The only Arabic I need to understand is the rattle of an AK-47, as one of his mates had put it. It’s not as if we’re planning on talking to the buggers. Jed paused, wishing he understood the language. Then he waved at the boy with his arms. Go, he mouthed silently.
Bloody well piss off
.
    The boy pointed at Jed’s camera. He was just a dozen yards from him now. Jed was thinking fast. Any closer, the kid was going to realise he was a foreigner. Any kind of commotion right now and half the Republican Guard was going to be steaming towards him. His orders were ringing in his ears. ‘Any trouble, get the hell out of there. The last thing we need is for an SAS guy to get picked up in Baghdad while we’re still trying to get the bloody surrender monkeys at the UN to sign up to the war.’
    In the end, there had been no choice but to evacuate. He had fifty snaps of the plant already on the compact digital camera, and that meant the mission was complete. Retracing his steps through the dark, quiet city, within an hour he’d been back at the drop-off point, collected by a chopper and back in Kuwait. In less than twelve hours, he was on home soil again. The pictures didn’t show much, but they were all he could get in the circumstances.
If they didn’t like them, they’d just have to go and get their own
.
    ‘Can you tell us exactly what you saw, Jed?’ said David Wragg. He coughed nervously. ‘As you know, we haveto examine every piece of evidence coming out of Iraq with minute care. It would be bloody embarrassing if we ended up invading the place, and then found out they didn’t have anything more dangerous than a couple of pea-shooters in their locker room.’
    He was a thin man, with greying hair and green eyes that bore down into you as you spoke, like a drill cutting into rock. He was smartly but casually dressed: he wore chinos and an open-necked shirt, but still had cufflinks and black lace-up brogues. The Firm was edging its way into the dress-down era, noted Jed, but none of the senior guys looked really comfortable with it. Give them a chance, and they’d be back in their three-pieces and bowler hats.
    ‘It’s all in the pictures,’ said Jed.
    ‘Yes,’ said Wragg carefully. ‘The trouble is, the pictures don’t tell us that much.’
    Muir leant forwards on the table. ‘We’re looking for what our friends in the porno business call a come shot, laddie,’ he said. ‘A nice big picture of Saddam cuddling up to a missile with the word anthrax written on the side.’
    Jed noticed Wragg leaning into Muir’s ear, and whispering something. Cool it, maybe. If so, it was good advice. Any more lip from the Scotsman and he was going to get that bright red nose smacked.
    ‘Well, this is all we have. Like it or lump it.’
    Laura smiled at him icily. ‘We all have to understand that there is a lot of pressure to come up with some convincing intelligence about Iraq’s WMD and comeup with it quickly. All our sources tell us that this is a very important facility. Whatever is going on in that lab, it matters a lot to the Iraqis. That’s why we sent you there.’
    ‘I got the best pictures I could, short of risking capture,’ said Jed coldly. ‘If you wanted me to go in, those should have been my orders.’
    ‘We appreciate that,’ said Wragg quickly. ‘And we appreciate your bravery. We just want to get a fuller description, that’s all.’
    From the corner of his eye, Jed noticed that Muir was doodling a picture of a naked woman, with outsized breasts and a tiny miniskirt. Christ, he thought, when did they