Honour Among Thieves

on the far side of the road. Nobody spoke as the distance to Kirkuk descended from fifty-five to forty-six, to thirty-two, but with each sign and each new oil well, the traffic became heavier and their speed began to drop rapidly. The only relief was that none of the passing patrols seemed to show any interest in the jeep. Within minutes the little village was swarming with soldiers from Saddam's elite guard. Even in the dark, it took only ten bullets and as many minutes for them to find out where the Cadillac was, and another thirty bullets to discover the unfilled graves of the four dead soldiers. General Hamii listened to the senior officer when he phoned in with the details. All he asked for was the radio frequency of the jeep that had been in Tuz Khurmatoo earlier that evening. The General slammed down the phone, checked his watch, and keyed in the frequency. The single tone continued for some time. 'They must still be looking for a truck or a pink Cadillac,' Scott was saying when the radio phone began ringing. They all four froze. 'Answer it, Aziz,' said Scott. 'Listen carefully, and find out what you can.' Aziz picked up the handset, listened to a short message, then said, 'Yes, sir,' in Arabic, and put the handset down. 'They've found the Cadillac, and are ordering all jeeps to report to their nearest army post,' he said. 'It can't be long before they realise it's not one of their men driving this jeep,' said Hannah. 'If they don't already know.' 'With luck we might still have twenty minutes,' said Scott. 'How far to the border?' 'Nine miles,' said Aziz. The General knew it had to be Zeebari, or he would have responded with the elite guards' code number. So now he knew what vehicle they were in, and which border they were heading for. He immediately picked up the phone and barked another order. Two officers accompanied him as he ran out of the room and into a large yard at the back of the building. The blades of his personal helicopter were already slowly rotating. It was Aziz who first spotted the end of a long queue of oil tankers waiting to cross the unofficial border. Scott checked the inside track and asked Aziz if he could drive down such a narrow strip. 'Not possible, sir,' the young Kurd told him. 'We'd only end up in the ditch.' 'Then we've no alternative but to go straight down the middle.' Aziz moved the jeep out into the centre of the road and tried desperately to maintain his speed. To begin with he was able to stay clear of the lorries and avoid the oncoming traffic. The first real trouble came four miles from the border, when an army truck heading towards them refused to move over. 'Shall I blast him off the road?' said Cohen. 'No,' said Scott. 'Aziz, keep going, but prepare to jump and take cover among the tankers, then we'll regroup.' Just as Scott was about to leap, the lorry swerved across the road and ended up in the ditch on the far side. 'Now they all know where we are,' said Scott. 'How many miles to the customs post, Aziz?' 'Three, three and a half at the most.' 'Then step on it,' said Scott, although he realised Aziz was already going as fast as he could. They had managed to cover the next mile in just over a minute when a helicopter swung above them, beaming down a searchlight that lit up the entire road. The radio phone began ringing again. 'Ignore it,' shouted Scott as Aziz tried to keep the jeep on the centre of the road and maintain his speed. They passed the two-mile mark as the helicopter swung back, confident it had spotted its prey, and began to focus its beam directly on them. 'We've got a jeep coming up our backside,' said Cohen, as he swung round to face it. 'Get rid of it,' said Scott. Cohen obliged, sending the first few shots through the windscreen and the next into the tyres, thankful for the light from above. The pursuing jeep swung across the road, crashing into an oncoming lorry. Another quickly took its place. Hannah reloaded the gun with a magazine of bullets that was lying on the floor while Cohen concentrated on the road behind them. 'One and a half miles to go,' shouted Aziz, nearly crashing into lorries on both sides of the road. The helicopter hovered above them and began to fire indiscriminately, hitting vehicles going in both directions. 'Don't forget that most of them haven't a clue who's chasing what,' said Scott. 'Thanks for sharing that piece of logic with me, Professor,' said Cohen. 'But I've got a feeling that helicopter knows exactly who he's