The Circuit by Bob Shepherd

traditional Arabic greeting. ‘Sabah al khayr. Salam alay khum.’ (Good morning. Peace be upon you.)
    The men looked at me without smiling and greeted me back. My heart was thumping as my eyes bounced between them, searching for any hint of a weapon. If I saw one, I was ready to drop to one knee, take out my pistol and fire. With my magazine of thirteen rounds I could double-tap each one of them and still have five rounds left.
    The vehicle passed me and crawled to Martin’s position. They gave him a short wave, then picked up speed and continued down the track until they disappeared into a patch of dead ground.
    I returned to our vehicle and asked Martin what he thought of the men. Martin said they didn’t look friendly and it wouldn’t surprise him if they were Fedayeen out on a recce.
    Our first potential surveillance by the Fedayeen underscored just how challenging our investigation would be. Inspecting the scene of an incident in an active war zone is infinitely more difficult than conducting a forensic investigation in non-hostile circumstances. For example, there’s no police tape to prevent people from tampering with evidence, not to mention looting it. The biggest difference, however, is time. When you’re operating in an active war zone, you don’t have all day to do your job. The longer you’re on the ground the more you expose yourself to danger.
    Martin and I reckoned we’d be operating in the same defined area for several days. Though we were trying our best to remain low profile, two Brits driving around in a well-supplied 4x4 on the outskirts of Basra still stuck out. It looked like the Fedayeen could already be observing us, assessing our movements, possibly with the intent to kidnap or kill. Martin and I were in Iraq to look for the missing, not to join them. With that in mind, we estimated we could spend fifteen to twenty minutes tops per day at the incident area without compromising ourselves or our mission.
    The day before we’d done an initial cast thirty metres out from Terry’s vehicle. Today, we wanted to get a good look up close, not only at Terry’s 4x4 but at the Fedayeen truck as well. We also wanted to push out on both sides of the highway to see if there were any blood trails or signs of the missing men’s bodies.
    We pulled off the main highway across from Terry’s vehicle. The road was busy with traffic; lorries, cars, people on bicycles going about their business. At times it was hard to believe there was a war on. Down the road, some forty metres south, a group of kids aged six to sixteen were playing around the burnt-out hulk of an Iraqi military truck. It looked as if the truck had been bombed from the air, and Iraqi artillery shells were strewn around the area. Some of the kids were playing with the live ammunition; kicking it, picking it up and aiming it at each other. That ammunition was incredibly delicate, having been burnt and then lying around in the hot sun. I said to Martin if one of those kids drops a shell the ground is going to shake. The kids were completely unaware of the dangers involved in what they were doing. It pained me to watch them. Martin and I desperately wanted to intervene but we were in no position to wander down the road and sort out a bunch of reckless kids. We had a job to do and we were already attracting enough attention just sitting by the side of the road.
    We needed to be as inconspicuous as possible so we made the call to leave our AKs in our 4x4 and walk to the incident area armed only with concealed pistols.
    We began by focusing on Terry’s 4x4. It was so bullet ridden, it looked like a sieve. As we walked toward it, we noticed many fresh footprints on the surrounding ground, indicating that we weren’t the first people to check it out. Being so badly shot up, the vehicle must have been a magnet for looters and curious onlookers. We approached our investigation systematically, beginning with a 360-degree survey of the wreckage. We