Honour Among Thieves

man, who came to a halt a few yards away from the Cadillac. 'I have been sent by the village elders because I am the only one who speaks English,' he said. The man was trembling and the words came stumbling out. 'We believe you are the terrorists who came to kill Saddam.' Scott said nothing. 'Please go. Leave our village and go quickly. Take the jeep and we will bury the soldiers. Then no one will ever know you were here. If you do not, Saddam will murder us all. Every one of us.' 'Tell your people we wish them no harm,' said Scott. 'I believe you,' said the old man, 'but please, go.' Scott ran forward and stripped the tallest soldier of his uniform while Cohen kept his gun trained on the old man. Aziz stripped the other three while Hannah grabbed Scott's bag from the Cadillac before jumping into the back of the jeep. Aziz threw the uniforms into the jeep and then leaped into the driving seat. The engine was still running. He put the vehicle into reverse and swung round in a semicircle as Scott took his place in the front. Aziz began to drive slowly out of Tuz Khurmatoo. Cohen turned the gun round in the direction of the village, at the same time thumping his left leg with his clenched fist. Scott continued to look behind him as a few of the villagers moved tentatively out into the road and started to drag the soldiers unceremoniously away. Another climbed into the Cadillac and began to reverse it down a side road. A few moments later they had all disappeared from sight. Scott turned to face the road ahead of him. 'It's about another three miles to the highway,' said Aziz. 'What do you want me to do?' 'We've only got one chance of getting across that border,' said Scott, 'so for now pull over into that clump of trees. We can't risk going out onto the highway until it's pitch dark.' He checked the time. It was 7.35. Hannah felt blood dripping onto her face. She looked up, and saw the deep wounds in Cohen's leg. She immediately tore off the corner of her yashmak and tried to stem the flow of blood. 'You all right, Cohen?' asked Scott anxiously. 'No worse than when I was bitten by a woman in Tangier,' he replied. Aziz began laughing. 'How can you laugh?' said Hannah, continuing to clean the wound. 'Because he was the reason she bit me,' said Cohen. After Hannah had completed the bandaging, the four of them changed into the Iraqi uniforms. For an hour they kept their eyes on the road, looking for any sign of more soldiers. A few villagers on donkeys, and more on foot, passed them in both directions, but the only vehicle they saw was an old tractor that chugged by on its way back to the village at the end of a day's service. As the minutes slipped by, it became obvious that the villagers had kept to their promise and made no contact with any army patrols. When Scott could no longer see the road in front of them, he went over his plan for the last time. All of them accepted that their options were limited. The nearest border was forty-five miles away, but Scott now accepted the danger they could bring to any village simply by passing through it. He didn't feel his plan was foolproof, far from it, but they couldn't wait in the hills much longer. It would only be a short time before Iraqi soldiers were swarming all over the area. Scott checked the uniforms. As long as they kept on the move, it would be hard for anyone to identify them in the dark as anything other than part of an army patrol. But once they reached the highway, he knew they couldn't afford to stay still for more than a few seconds. Everything depended on how close they could get to the border post without being spotted. When Scott gave the order, Aziz swung the jeep onto the winding road to begin the three-mile journey to the highway. He covered the distance in five minutes, and during that time they didn't come across another vehicle. But once they hit the highway, they found the road was covered with lorries, jeeps, even tanks, travelling in both directions. None of them saw the two motorcycles, the tank and three lorries that swung off the highway and headed at speed down the little road towards Tuz Khurmatoo. Aziz went as fast as he could, while Cohen remained seated on the back behind the gun. Scott watched the road ahead of him, his beret pulled well down. Hannah sat below Cohen, motionless, a gun in her hand. The first road sign indicated that it was sixty kilometres to the border. For a moment Scott was distracted by an oil well that kept pumping away