"He gives them a choice," Tariq had said, as we sat on the roof the night before.
"A choice?"
"Of execution."
"You have got to be kidding me."
"No. You can be shot, hung…"
"Hanged."
"What?"
"Sorry, it's hanged, not hung."
"Oh. Your father said hung."
"Yeah, well. Hanged. I got this scar on my neck when I was hanged. I like to be grammatically correct about the forms of execution I survive. I'm a pedant. Sue me."
"Okay," said Tariq, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, you can be shot, hanged, injected, or he's got this electric chair he's made."
"Made?"
"Yeah, out of a big generator, a dining chair, some wires and a lot of gold."
"Shit."
"Your dad is going to be executed tomorrow. Blythe has decided he won't break, so he gave him the choice."
"Shot," I said immediately.
"Um, yeah, how did you know?"
"Dunno, just seems like the one he'd choose."
"But we have a plan to rescue him and it depends on him changing his mind and sitting in the chair. Unfortunately our inside man can't get a message to him and tell him to change his mind."
"So your plan is, what, I get captured and tell Dad to change his mind?"
"Perhaps. But I think it will not be so easy. Blythe will try and use you to get your father to break. So you may have to improvise."
"Okay. No, wait, hang on. Your plan is that I get captured and then give Blythe an excuse to kill me – but not there and then, later, at his leisure – and I choose the chair?"
"Yes." He saw the look on my face. "I know."
"That is a fucking useless plan."
"I know, I know."
"And who is your inside man?"
"Oh, that's the best bit…"
As the lever slammed home, the arc lights dimmed and flickered.
My back went rigid, I gritted my teeth as my eyes bulged out of my head. The veins in my temples strained to bursting point and the muscles in my neck stood out like ropes. I shook uncontrollably in the grip of the current.
Then I turned my head to General Blythe, smiled, winked, and said "gotcha!"
The lights went out and darkness fell, but not for long.
The chain of high explosives that ringed the walls of the compound exploded one by one, like a string of enormous firecrackers, lighting the room with a blinding orange strobe.
I saw the man who'd turned on the generator run into the room, pistol raised. In his early twenties, dark skinned, of medium height and build, he was nothing to look at. Just another shaven haired grunt made anonymous by the shapeless uniform and regimented body language. But his face was a terrible mixture of fury and pain.
He picked off the guards one by one, calm and efficient, his gunshots timed exactly with the explosions, so it took the guards – those not already dead – a few moments to realise what was happening. And a few moments was all it took.
When the explosions finally ended, he and Blythe were the only men standing in the room, cast into sharp relief by the flickering fires that now raged outside.
"Put down the gun, son," said the general.
"I'm not your son," said the man with the gun.
"Yes, David, you are and you will do as I say."
"Screw you, Dad."
"And who the fuck are you?" I asked the guard with the book.
"David Blythe," he said. "I'm the one…"
"I know who you are. I thought you couldn't get a message to my dad, so what are you doing here guarding him?"
"He's been moved. My dad's taking one last pop at him."
"Where?"
"It wouldn't do any good. Too many of them. You'd just get yourself killed."
"I thought that was the whole idea," I said drily.
"How the heck did you get down here?"
"Scratch two of your dad's goons."
"Holy… well, at least that should have sealed the deal. If you let me take you in, I reckon Dad'll give you the choice."
"Why should I trust you?"
"Tariq trusts me."
"I'm still not entirely sure I trust Tariq."
"Look, I've spent three days setting this up, at great risk," he told me. "Sooner or later someone's going to notice that I've been rewiring things. We get one shot at this. And Dad's been talking about new orders, hinting that we're moving out soon. If we wait too long, he may be too busy to waste time with games; he might just shoot you both in the head. We have to do this now."
"I do not like this plan."
"Complain about it if you survive. Now give me the gun. Thank you."
The crisp chatter of automatic weapons fire drifted across the darkened compound as Tariq and the others fought their way in. All they had to do was create a diversion for a few minutes and allow Dad, David and myself time to escape.
"Ser'nt Keegan, untie him," yelled David.
Dad was already working at the straps that bound me, but it was slow going with only one useable hand.
"What is going on, son?" Blythe sounded calm and reasonable, even indulgent, as if this was all just some little misunderstanding that could be sorted out with milk, cookies and a moral homily from Papa.
"You're not my father. Not any more."
"I assure you, I am."
"My dad's a soldier, not a butcher. The man who raised me doesn't massacre civilians, impale people for fun, strap kids into electric chairs. My father was a man of honour and principle, proud to serve his country. You're just a madman."
My head and chest were free.
"David, I'm just following orders," said the general. "Same as I've ever done."
"Bullcrap. What orders? Who the heck is there left to give you orders? And even if there were, these orders are illegal."
The general shook his head. "That's not my judgement to make." Was that regret I could detect in his voice?
"You told me once that a soldier's greatest duty is to protect the people from their rulers," shouted his son. "Refusing to obey an illegal order is a soldier's highest duty. That's what you told me. Remember that, Dad?"
My right hand came free and I started loosening the strap on my left.
"I surely do," said the general. "But the world has changed, son. New laws, new rules."
"I don't accept that."
"That would make you a fool, and I didn't raise a fool."
With both hands free I got to work on my feet.
"Weapons," I said, and Dad nodded, moving away to salvage guns and knives from the corpses of the guards.
There was a huge explosion somewhere nearby. The room shook and my eyes were dazzled by a flash of pure white light. When my vision returned, the general had gone.
"Shit, where'd he go?" I yelled.
David just stood there, gun still raised, dazed by the enormity of his betrayal.
"He just vanished," shouted the young man, surprised. But I'd seen how fast his father could move. I was amazed he'd chosen to run rather than fight.
We urgently needed to be anywhere else.
As the last strap came free I leapt out of that awful chair. I held out my hands for a gun, but Dad dropped the weapons to the floor and grabbed me, holding me in a tight, choking embrace and kissing my head.
He muttered over and over: "thank God, thank God."
I squirmed free, embarrassed and annoyed by his show of emotion; we didn't have time for this. I held his good hand in both of mine.
"We have to go," I said.
"So you're giving the orders now, huh?" he said, shaking his head in wonder.
I wanted to say "can we bond later, yeah? When there's less chance of sudden, bloody death? That okay with you?" But I decided to go with the more laconic "looks that way."
I bent down and picked up an M16, cocking it as I stood. I handed a sidearm to Dad.
"You still able…"
"Oh yes."
"Then let's get the fuck out of here."
At that moment Tariq came haring through the door, bullets churning the ground behind him, and yelled: "RUN!"
He ran right through us and kept going, so we turned and followed him, scattering the chunks of plaster that had been knocked free from the ceiling and walls by the earth shattering explosions. At the rear of the entrance hall was a sweeping marble staircase and Tariq made to climb it. David shouted at him not to, and he took the lead, dodging right and taking us to ornate double doors behind the stairs. These led into a kind of sitting room, empty except for one painting of Saddam on to which someone had felt-tipped a noose, and a large cock and balls squirting into the dead dictator's face.
David held one door open as we all ran through it, and then raked the hall behind us with fire to discourage pursuit.
"Where?" shouted Dad.
"This way," replied David breathlessly, and ran to the corner of the room. In the half light I would never have noticed the door ring, but David had planned this well, and he went straight to the hidden door, pulled it open and ushered us through into a dark passage.
I was last through, and as I passed the threshold I heard a metallic clatter from behind me which, although new to me, I instantly realized was the sound of grenades bouncing across marble. I grabbed the door and pulled it closed just in time. A deafening roar, amplified by the cold stone acoustics of the enormous, empty room, filled my senses and flung me backwards.
The door held.
David reached across me and slid a bolt home, locking it behind us. Then he leant down, helped me to my feet, and dragged me away into the depths of the unlit passageway.
"Lee!" hissed Dad urgently.
"I'm all right," I replied.
"Ahead thirty metres, then turn left and up the stairs," said David loudly. I dimly heard Tariq give a grunt of acknowledgement somewhere ahead of us.
We made our way forward in the pitch darkness as quickly as we could.
"Thank you," I said. "You saved my life."
David said nothing. I wondered which he was regretting most – betraying his father, or not shooting him when he had the chance.
We soon reached a door, and huddled together, lit by the chink of light that gleamed through the tiny crack that outlined its frame.
"This leads into a private bedchamber," whispered David. "Uday would bring his whores here in secret. It should be unoccupied, but you never know. Once I open the door we run to the balcony. It looks out over the river, and over the wall. There's a ladder under the bed. I'll get it; we lay it across the gap, walk over the wall and drop down. Clear?"
"And if the room is occupied?"
"Then, Sergeant, we have fight on our hands. Everyone ready?"
There was the sound of four guns being cocked and then David counted down from three. We burst into the room, guns waving.
"Clear," said Dad. I got to the balcony first, and looked out into the night. I couldn't see much because the balcony looked out of the compound across the waterway. There was less gunfire than before. It was coming in sporadic bursts now, somewhere off to my right, from a building that stood close to where one of the bombs had exploded. I could see the riverside wall was ablaze, flames licking out of the empty window frames. Tariq had only a few people left to him after last week's massacre. The plan was that they would stay outside and lay down covering fire at the points where the wall was breached, that way the Yanks wouldn't know which breach we planned to exit by. We would go across the wall here and then we and the rest of the gang would simply melt away into the darkness. It was a good plan, but it had one fatal flaw.
"Where is it?" hissed Tariq urgently, behind me. I turned to see the three of them standing by the bed. No ladder.
"I don't know," said David. "It was here this morning. Someone must have taken it."
"Fuck," said Tariq, succinctly. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. What now?"
"Can we jump it?" asked Dad.
I shook my head. "It would be suicide. Options? David, you know the layout of this place. Where's the nearest breach in the wall and how do we get there?"
"Two hundred metres east. I set a charge near the swimming pool."
"Okay then," said Dad, looking for the door. "Hang on. Where's the door?"
"There isn't one," replied David. "Secret bedroom, remember? The passage is the only way in or out."
"Jesus," I said. "Who the fuck builds a secret chamber with only one entrance?"
"The Ba'ath party," said Tariq, "never could do a damn thing properly."
"So you mean we're trapped?" asked Dad, incredulous.
"Yeah," said David.
"And how long before someone figures out where we are?" I asked.
"Not long."
"Then we have to go out the window."
"You said it was too high," protested the Iraqi.
"He didn't say anything about jumping," said Dad, smiling. Weird, but that moment, when he read my mind before the others, made me feel closer to him than all the hugging and wailing a few minutes earlier.
"We climb," I said.
One of the good things about the palace compound is that the buildings were as ornate as they could possibly be. It wasn't hard to climb up on to the roof using all the elaborate cornices, cupolas and jutty-out bits. Tariq went first, then me. Then David gave Dad a boost while Tariq and I pulled him up. David was still outside on the wall, perched on the ledge above the balcony, reaching for the lip of the roof when Uday Hussein's secret fuck pad was blown to shit by grenades.
The shockwave dislodged him and he began to topple backwards. I leaned out and grabbed his flailing right hand, pulling him back in. He scrambled up, flinging himself on to the roof. Almost immediately we heard someone run out on to the balcony and shout "clear!" I silently mouthed "close". David nodded and mimed back "thank you". I smiled and patted his shoulder.
The flat roof was littered with discarded bits of stone, half cut rolls of waterproof tar stuff and other assorted junk left behind by the builders responsible for this architectural abortion. We moved away from the edge so we couldn't be seen from below.
"Now they're going to be confused," whispered Tariq grinning.
"I hope so," replied Dad. "Because if they figure out where we are, they'll just blow up the building, or worse, set a fire and leave us up here to burn."
That shut us all up for a moment, and in the silence we all realized the same thing; the gunfire had stopped. Tariq's forces had fled, been captured or killed.
We were on our own, trapped on a roof in the middle of a compound swarming with people who wanted to kill us.
"I told you I hated this plan," I said.
There was little we could do but wait.
From our vantage point we could see that the area was heavily patrolled, plus there was a team sorting out David's creative rewiring of the backup generator, so the building was a hive of activity. Come daylight, things would start to return to normal. This part of the compound was usually pretty quiet, said David; the main activity was all focused on the barracks, supply dump and vehicle store, about half a mile away on the compound's northern side.
"It may sound counter-intuitive," he said, "but we've got a better chance of sneaking out in broad daylight tomorrow than we do now."
And so we decided to get some sleep. I was just clearing a space to lie down when Dad came over to me and sat beside me.
"I'll take first watch, keep an eye out," he said.
"Okay," I replied.
There was an awkward silence. I don't think either of us knew what to say to each other.
"When I last saw you, you were a just a schoolboy. It was all Doctor Who, Grand Theft Auto and wondering if you were going to snog that girl from the High School, Michelle, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," I muttered.
"Did you?"
I looked at him, incredulous. This is what he wanted to talk about?
"She's dead, Dad."
He looked down at his feet. "Yeah, of course she is."
Another silence.
"So you're going to take watch, yeah?"
"Um, yeah," he said, lifting his eyes and regarding me curiously, as if he had no idea who I was. "You get some sleep."
"Wake me when it's my turn."
"Will do."
I lay down and turned away from him, resting my head on my folded arms and closing my eyes.
"And Lee, thank you," he said softly.
I said nothing. A moment later I heard him moving away.
Of course he didn't wake me. A distant secondary explosion jolted me awake; the fires must have reached an old fuel tank or gas cylinder in one of the other buildings. It was still dark, but I checked my watch and saw I'd been asleep for four hours. I lay there for a moment looking up at the stars, so clear and bright now, without electric light bleeding into the sky to hide them. I pulled my jacket tighter around me as protection from the cold, even though I knew it was still hot by English standards.
I looked around and saw that Tariq was on watch now; my dad was asleep over to my left, and David was sitting balled up in the middle of the roof, head rested on his knees, staring blankly into space. I didn't think he'd welcome it if I approached him.
I could tell I wasn't going to get any more rest, so I got up and went to sit next to Tariq.
"Anything happening?" I asked.
"Not really. They've fixed the generator and gone away, but they are still searching all the buildings. It's the third sweep they've done, but Blythe must think we're still here so he's getting them to do it over and over. Just pray he gives up soon. I don't want to starve to death up here." He gave a quiet, sardonic laugh.
"Back when I first met you, you told me you were a celebrity blogger," I said.
Tariq nodded. "I used to blog about life in Basra under the occupation. I had two hundred thousand readers. Some of it was printed in a British paper and a publishing company wanted to do a book. A few other bloggers did it, made big bucks. I'd just signed the bloody deal when everyone started dying. Just my luck."
"So how…"
"Did I become a soldier? My knowledge of covert stuff made me a natural, I suppose."
I was confused. "But how does a blogger become an expert in covert stuff? I mean, why would you need it?"
"You really know nothing about what life here was like, do you," he said, shaking his head in wonder. He wasn't annoyed at my ignorance, merely resigned, as if he expected the rest of the world to be blind, stupid and uninterested.
"Enlighten me."
"Bloggers were targets. If I dared to criticize one of the militias, there was a very good chance they would find me and kill me. And that's just for writing about how hard it was to buy bread in their district."
"People would try and kill you just for blogging?"
"And I did more than that. I investigated. I chased stories, played the journalist, tried to find the truth about certain things."
"Like?"
"Kidnappings, massacres, bombings. It wasn't hard. Basra was not a huge city, the grapevine was very good. And all the time I had to keep my identity secret. If anyone ever connected me with my blog, I was dead."
"And did anybody ever realize it was you?"
"No, but they laid a trap for me. I thought I was so careful, but they threatened the family of one of my contacts and lured me into an ambush. I was looking into the looting of the stores outside town. My contact told me he knew a British soldier who was helping the looters. But the militia was waiting for me at the rendezvous. Luckily a routine patrol came past, and I was able to just walk away. One in a million chance.
"But after that they knew who I was, so I could never go home again. I had to go into hiding, which is why I ended up working with your dad. I was lucky. Some of my friends, fellow bloggers here and in Baghdad, they were not so lucky."
"And now you lead the resistance."
"What's left of it. Anyway, I've got nothing better to do; my laptop's run out of batteries. If only I had an XO, with wireless mesh networking and some good cantennas we could have a local network up and running in no time."
"Stop," I laughed. "I have no idea what you're saying. I can use computers but I have no idea how they work"
"So what were you going to be, huh?" asked Tariq. "Before The Cull turned you into soldier boy. You were going to university to study?"
"I have no idea. I wasn't a failure at school, but I didn't exactly get the greatest grades either. I'd probably have ended up doing English at some crappy university, assuming I got in. After that, God knows.
"All my life I've had my dad telling me what he didn't want me to be – a soldier. I never had a clue what I wanted to be. Rich, I suppose. Irresistibly attractive to women. I dunno. I was fourteen when The Cull hit. I hadn't even chosen my GCSEs yet, although I had one meeting with a careers advisor to help me choose."
"Careers advisor? Someone who tells you what jobs you'd be good at, yeah?"
"Yeah, something like that."
"What did they recommend for you?"
"Promise not to laugh?"
"I swear on the grave of Warren Ellis."
"They said I should go into banking."
"Ha!"
"Yeah, that was my reaction too."
He fell silent, and I could see he was trying to frame a question.
"What you did," he said eventually, "was insane. You know that, right?"
"Which bit? Flying here, giving myself up to Blythe, trying to escape, letting him strap me into an electric chair?"
"All of it. Fucking insane. I mean, I know a lot of it was my idea, but honestly, if someone had tried to persuade me to do what you did I'd have told them to go fuck themselves."
"He's my dad."
"Is that all, though? I wonder if maybe you do not have a death wish."
"Don't be daft," I said, but he didn't seem convinced.
He pressed on. "You would not be the first. Many of the people who survived The Cull took their own lives. Those who could not do that looked for people to do it for them."
I felt a sudden surge of anger. "Well that's not me, right?"
He just looked at me, head cocked slightly to one side, his face asking silently "are you sure?"
"Fuck you, Tariq," I hissed and made to rise. He grabbed my arm and I shook it off angrily before walking back to my clear patch of roof and lying back down.
I lay there seething. How fucking dare he!
"Why so angry, Nine Lives?" said the voice in my head. "Touch a nerve, did he?"
I lay there a long time watching the night turn to grey twilight before the soft glow of morning bled across the skyline. David didn't move a muscle in all that time. Tariq, on the other hand, was restless and unsettled. He moved from one side of the roof to another, checking the area, keeping his head low to avoid being spotted. He must have been worried sick about his friends.
Dad slept like a log, proving that he was the only real soldier amongst us; he once told me that the ability to fall asleep anywhere, at any time, is one of the best tricks a combat soldier can learn.
He woke with the sun and we gathered in the centre of the roof. No-one would make eye contact with me.
"Sitrep?" asked Dad.
"They've stopped searching, and the generator's fixed," said Tariq. "I think we can go now."
No sooner had he said that than there was a hum of power, a screech of feedback, and Blythe's voice echoed across the compound.
"Good morning," he said.
"Oh crap," said David.
None of us moved, waiting to hear what the general had to say.
"I hope you slept well," said the echoey tannoy voice. "I know you're still inside the walls. Your chances of getting out of here alive are not that great."
"How the fuck…" began Tariq, but David shushed him urgently and ran to the edge of the roof, looking north. He gestured us to come and see. Blythe was standing on a clear patch of ground off in the distance, with a small group of men. It was too far to make out details, but I assumed he had a mic headset on, patched into the speakers which I now saw were hanging from every lamppost. But we were close enough to make out the detail that mattered. Five stakes driven into the ground, each with a person kneeling beside them, their hands bound behind their back.
I heard Tariq gasp in horror. My dad put his arm around him and hugged him tightly. It was a comradely, even paternal gesture and I felt an unexpected pang of jealousy.
"Is that all of them?" I asked.
Tariq nodded.
"I have with me," the general continued, "five of your friends. I am going to kill them whether you give yourselves up or not. But you have a choice."
"Always a bloody choice," said Dad.
"If you surrender now," said the general, "I will kill you all quickly and painlessly. You have my word."
"And if we don't?" muttered Dad.
"If you don't surrender now," Blythe went on, as if he could hear us, "I will impale your friends one by one and leave them to die slow, painful deaths. My soldiers will then lay fires in every building in this compound and burn them to the ground. All the gun towers are manned, there's no way to escape. Wherever you're hiding, we'll smoke you out. And if you survive the fire, then you'll join your friends on a stake. Quick and easy; slow and painful. Your choice. You have two minutes to make your position known."
We moved back from the edge. Tariq was in shock, David looked furious, Dad's face gave nothing away; he was busy calculating the odds.
"Okay," said Dad, "here's what we do…"
"Pardon me Sar'nt, but I think I'd better handle this," interrupted David. "I can get us out of here."
Dad looked skeptical.
"How?" I asked.
"I'm Special Forces, Mr Keegan. I'm trained for this kind of thing. Just before deployment I completed a SERE course."
"Seriously?" asked Dad. "You're like, what, twenty?"
"When you've got a father like mine, Sir, you don't have much choice but to be the best. He started preparing me for Special Forces the day I finished potty training. I'm the youngest soldier ever recruited to my unit, and trust me, I did it all on my own."
"Your father must have been very proud," I said, sarcastically.
"I no longer have a father," he replied, matter of fact.
"What's SERE?" Tariq asked.
"Survival, evasion, resistance, escape," he replied. "I can get in and out of anywhere."
"Then we have to stop him," said Tariq, finally. "I can't watch this happen again."
He looked at us desperately, but none of us could meet his gaze.
"We can't leave them! We can't!" he said urgently. "If you won't help me, I'll do it myself."
"Sit down, T," said Dad.
"John, I won't let this happen," said Tariq, almost shouting now. "They're going to die because they followed my orders. Orders I gave trying to save your life. We can't abandon them."
But his face, the tears in his eyes, betrayed the truth. Tariq knew it was hopeless.
Dad put his arm on Tariq's shoulder and gripped it tightly, leaning forward and resting his forehead against the distraught Iraqi's. "They're dead already, T. It's over."
"So what, we just run?" said Tariq, crying now. "We let him kill our friends and we walk away? Then what the fuck has this all been for? What's it all been for?"
"Oh no, we don't walk away," said Dad. "Not now. Not after all this." He turned his attention to David. "You know this camp, right?"
David nodded.
"You can help us move through it undetected?"
"If you do exactly as I say and keep your heads, I believe I can, Sir."
"Then here's what we're going to do," said Dad, and I could see the resolve harden in his eyes as he spoke, seeing my father the soldier fully apparent in front of me for the first time. Suddenly I could see why he'd commanded the respect of the resistance. When he turned to us and outlined his plan, the force of his determination was impossible to resist.
Ever since I'd arrived in Iraq he'd been on the back foot, imprisoned, reacting to events, frightened for me. But now he was in a position to take direct action again. I realized there was a whole side to my father I'd never seen before. And it echoed in me. I learned as much about myself as I did about him in that moment, and I felt proud.
"We're going to hunt and kill General Blythe before the hour is out," said Dad, calmly. "And anyone who gets in our way dies. Everyone with me?"
All eyes were on the son of the man we were proposing to kill.
An awful, gut wrenching scream of pure terror and agony erupted from a hundred tiny speakers.
"I believe that is an achievable objective, Sir," said David.