Badiyat al-Sham
True dawn had started to show by the time the Ghost drew close enough to the cluster of lights to see what it was. He had worked his way into position using the contours of the land and the remains of the night to hide his approach. He was now lying on the upslope of a shallow berm and staring straight at the settlement through field glasses.
At first glance what he saw did not strike him as particularly remarkable. It appeared to be another of the thousands of oil drilling compounds that had spread like a contagion over large parts of the country since the end of the war. There was a thin drill tower in the centre, a collection of silver-sided buildings to house the workers, and a large transport hangar for vehicles and supplies. On the far side of the compound a flat, concreted area with a large painted ‘H’ showed where helicopters could land, though none were parked there at the moment.
Everything seemed normal – and yet there was something not right about it.
For a start, it wasn’t on an existing oilfield. There were no other drilling operations for at least a hundred kilometres in any direction and the whole place was too clean. Exploratory drilling gear got moved around from site to site and usually bore the scars of oil grime and years of standing out in various godforsaken places being blasted by extremes of weather. The equipment here all shone with newness, as if everything had been shipped straight from the factory, taken out of its packaging and dropped into the desert like a theme-park version of a drill site. It was clearly operational, the drill was turning but there was no oil in either of the holding lagoons.
He remembered a government outfit seven or eight years back sinking a few wells out here. They moved on pretty quickly when they came up dry. All of this would be on record and it seemed unlikely that one company would now succeed where another had failed; especially with all the technology they used to sniff out oil these days. Down to a certain level you could pretty much see what was there using seismic readings, and beyond that it was too expensive to drill anyway.
The thing that really aroused his suspicions was the level of security. Iraq was still a dangerous place and any Western corporation had to have some protection, if only to dissuade opportunistic insurgents from kidnapping their employees and charging exorbitant ransoms. But the security levels at this place were off the scale. Two layers of razor wire formed a perimeter around the entire compound with two steel gates barring the only road in. There were guard towers positioned at the four corners, each with a shooting platform at the top and a gun visible through the slits in the side panels. They were M60 Mk43s, the US Army’s heavy machine gun of choice. With an effective range of around a thousand metres and a fire rate of six hundred rounds a minute they were easily capable of stopping any approaching vehicle, even an armour-plated one, long before it reached the main gate. What they could do to a man was unthinkable. It didn’t make sense that such heavy artillery was being used to protect what looked from the outside to be nothing more than a dry well. There had to be something else he was missing, something valuable enough to warrant this small, lethally equipped army.
The Ghost dropped down and moved in closer. Wary of the men in the towers casually scanning the land with their hands resting on their heavy guns, he went as far as he dared then crept back into an observation position.
He could hear noises now, drifting over from the compound: the clank of the turning drill; the hum of motors and air-conditioning units; voices speaking a mixture of Arabic and English.
A bunch of men in white overalls emerged from the main building and headed over to the drill where others were waiting to be relieved. Up in the towers the guard details changed too, staggered by a few minutes each time to ensure the compound was not left vulnerable by a simultaneous changeover. It was all very slick and professional, and all the more strange because of it.
The Ghost continued to watch, slowly building up an operational picture of the place. The sun would be up soon and he would have to slip away or risk being seen. He was about to switch position when the sound of diesel engines punctured the low-level operational hum of the place, and three jeeps emerged from the transport bay. They pulled up in front of the main building and waited.
More men emerged from the building and climbed into the vehicles. The men in front wore the same white overalls as the drill workers and carried an assortment of picks and spades. Those at the rear wore the desert camouflage of the tower guards and the jeep they climbed into had a flatbed at the rear and a roof-mounted M60. It was standard convoy protocol, expendable scouts in the front, security at the rear, VIPs in the middle. It was this group that the Ghost now focused on.
There were three of them, two Westerners and one Iraqi, dressed in a mixture of khaki and sand-coloured clothes that hung off their well-stuffed, out-of-condition bodies. Two of them had beards and long hair poking from beneath salt-stained sun hats. They were obviously civilians, and by the way they were carrying themselves and talking to the drivers, they were obviously in charge. The Iraqi seemed to be in overall command and there was something about him that seemed familiar, though the distance, combined with his beard, made it hard to get a proper look at his face. Then another man stepped out from the shadow of the building and a big piece of the jigsaw fell into place. He walked up to the leader of the group, spoke to him for a few moments, checked his watch and waved to the tower by the main gate.
The first of the two steel barriers rolled back and the convoy moved off, stopping in the no-man’s land between the two rows of razor wire until the first gate was fully shut. Only then did the second slide open to release them back up the dirt track the Ghost had followed here. The man in the compound watched them leave then scanned the surrounding terrain. He paused as he looked at the Ghost’s position and for a moment the two men seemed to stare at each other, though the Ghost knew he could not be seen. Then Hyde turned and walked away, disappearing into the shiny shell of the main compound building.