The Killing Ground by Jack Higgins Page A

This is Sara. Sara, this is Rawan Savage.”

T H E K I L L I N G G R O U N D
    51
    She turned to Sara. “I’ve known you were here for some months, but we’ve never had an opportunity to meet. My, you are pretty, aren’t you?”
    All this was delivered in English.
    Sara said, “Were you born in Baghdad?”
    “Yes, but to a Druze family.” She turned to face Hussein. “I need to see your uncle right away, Hussein. Can I go up?”
    “Of course. He’s in the orange grove.”
    “Until I see you again,” she said to Sara, and started up the steps leading through the oranges to where Rashid was seated.
    Rashid greeted her courteously, and leaned close to her while she spoke, and when she had finished, he placed his hand on her head in a blessing. She stood up and returned to the boat. He called to Hussein.
    “Wait for me here,” Hussein said and mounted the steps. “Uncle?”
    “See Sara goes to her room and I’ll send women to help her pack.”
    “Pack, Uncle?”
    “I’ve prepared for this day for months. It is time for us to go. She’ll need a woman, take Jasmine. We’ll need two Land Rovers, I think, three of the men to assist with security. You’re in charge.”
    “But where are we to go?”
    “Kuwait. Only four hundred miles by road. The instructions are in the briefcase I’ll give you. My people there will make all arrangements for your onward flight to my brother Jemal in Hazar.”
    “But why, Uncle?”
    “Rawan brought me disturbing news. That her husband is engaged in a plot with two men from England, named Dillon and Salter, to kidnap Sara and return her to my son in London.”
    “This cannot be,” Hussein said.
    “I have made what I trust will be a suitable greeting for them. She informs me they arrive later today.”
    “Then I’ll deal with them.”
    “No—I hope I have taken care of it. Sara is my most precious jewel.
    You are the only one I can trust. Swear to me you will guard her with your life, always.”

    52

J A C K H I G G I N S
    “In the name of Allah, I swear it.”
    “Go now, and Allah go with you,” and he turned and went in, content, for Hussein Rashid was no ordinary man. Twenty-three years of age, dark hair but blue eyes, he could have passed as a Western European.
    He was slim but muscular, and hugely intelligent, and when his anger sparked in the eyes, he changed, became truly frightening, the warrior few people realized he was.
    He’d been a medical student at Harvard when the Gulf War started, and had immediately packed his bags to go home, only to be arrested at Logan Airport in Boston. It was six months before lawyers succeeded in obtaining his freedom, and he had gone home to discover that his parents had been killed in a bombing raid three months earlier.
    His uncle had kept him sane during the bad time, had provided him with money, set up accounts for him in Paris and London, had provided him with addresses, the right people to see, people who would pass him hand by hand until he reached the camp in the Algerian Desert.
    There they’d turned him into the man known as the Hammer of God, and it was there that he’d grown the luxuriant long hair and the beard that became his trademark.
    He was not a religious fanatic, hardly religious at all, but he’d discovered his true calling there: to be a soldier. They’d taught him everything, and by the time he was done, he was an expert in weaponry, explosives, hand-to-hand fighting, vehicles and the fine art of assassination. His medical training was just a bonus. They even taught him to fly.
    He had worked for what some people might call terrorist organizations in such places as Chechnya and Kosovo, but his specialty had been assassination and he had become a master. In the mess that Iraq developed into, he had lived with his uncle, operating as a freelance sniper.
    His personal score was twenty-seven American and British soldiers and Iraqi politicians. It was all the same to Hussein. And then his uncle had