The Saint Of Baghdad

by Michael Woodman

  In the next twenty minutes, four cars rolled up to the guardhouse, passed through and turned into the lot. CJ dismissed them one by one as he watched their drivers park and head up to the clubhouse or across the road to the tennis courts opposite the parking lot. Then he saw the Lincoln and he knew it was Kowalski. The barrier went up as soon as it rolled into view. No stopping. It didn’t even slow down. But it didn’t turn into the parking lot either. It drove straight past the entrance and continued up the road to the clubhouse. CJ groaned. His plan was in meltdown already. Kowalski had a chauffeur. All those scenarios he’d rehearsed—but none of them included a chauffeur. He’d planned for Kowalski the regular guy, a normal human being who would drive his own goddamn car. But what he got was Kowalski the big shot. What was it Masterson called him? Strategic director. Of course he had a driver. Tratfors was a billion-dollar company now.

  A few minutes later, the Lincoln was back, turning into the parking lot and looking for a shady spot. There were plenty to choose from, but the driver was lazy. He just rolled it to a stop under the awning beyond the last parked car, gobbling up the best part of two slots. He got out and stretched. He was big. Six five or more, with muscles stuffed so tight under his jacket it looked two sizes too small. He opened the trunk and took something out of a sports bag. A tie. He folded it carefully, then stashed it in the glove box and got back in the car. But he left the door open, and a few minutes later, the rhythmic thud of hip-hop drifted across the concrete.

  So Kowalski had a driver with a tie, big muscles and a taste for hip-hop. But not the kind of driver you get from a rent-a-chauffeur company. That kind of guy knows how to wear a suit. It happens every day. But this guy was clearly uncomfortable in his. He walked in it like a penguin. Even the few steps he took to the trunk were animated with weird stretches, his fat neck writhing like he was trying to crawl out of his jacket via the collar. Then there was that odd ritual with the tie, stashing it for availability so he wouldn’t have to wear it unless it was absolutely necessary. Maybe Kowalski had a big lunch date after golf, so the poor guy had to dress up.

  CJ waited ten minutes.

  He couldn’t see what the guy was doing through the tinted glass, and the shade of the awning made it doubly difficult. But he could guess. He was doing what everyone does when they’ve nothing else to do and what most people do even when they have something better to do. He was playing with his phone. Surfing the web. Checking his social media feeds. Playing some stupid game. The internet—that global seductress—was making out with one of her slaves and she had him in a trance.

  CJ edged out from behind the oak tree. He slipped between the cars and the fence and worked his way towards the Lincoln. He’d always admired confidence. But where was the line between confident and cocky? This guy was getting that all wrong. He was huge. Muscles with muscles. A gun. And this was an empty parking lot in a secure location. R and R time. So why not kick back, listen to a few tunes and kill a few scumbags online playing your favorite game? He’d left the door open too, and that was a bonus. He couldn’t see CJ approaching in the side-view mirror, and when he did see him, two blades of CJ’s multitool were already pressing against his throat.

  He dropped his phone on the floor.

  “Hands on the dash.” The big guy did as he was told. “It’s a serrated blade and a wood saw,” CJ said. “I know you were wondering.”

  A smear of blood oozed down the driver’s throat, running in grooves of muscle. CJ reached under his jacket and pulled out a 9mm pistol. “Sig. Nice.” He let the gun hang by his side and kept the blades under his chin. “Hands on thighs.” He waited until the man had complied. “Out.” The driver stepped out of the car in slow motion, CJ guiding his progress with the blades under his chin. “Hands on the car. You know the routine.” CJ held the gun on him as he leaned on the car. He put the multitool on the ground and searched him. No backup gun, but a jackknife with an exotic wood handle and turquoise inlay. CJ slipped it in his pocket. “Now open the trunk.”

  The guy turned around and gave him a look like this was going to be a deal breaker. CJ was standing a few feet off. He lowered the gun, pointing it at the man’s groin. “Please,” he said.

  Whether it was the gun, the target or the please, it worked. The driver trudged to the back of the Lincoln and opened its trunk.

  “Drop the keys on the ground.”

  He did it.

  “Now empty the trunk.”

  “There’s nothing in it.” It was the first time he’d said anything. CJ couldn’t place the accent. American, obviously. But no Southern drawl or New York twang.

  “Sure there is. The sports bag. Kick it under the car.”

  He did that too while CJ edged close enough to look into the trunk.

  “The tools too. Under the car.”

  The guy hunted around and pulled out a tool kit rolled up in plastic and emergency medical supplies in a box with a white cross. He dropped it all on the ground and kicked it under the car. CJ was edging closer all the time. “Now get in,” he said, and as the man turned to clamber into the trunk, CJ cracked him on the head with the gun butt. It was easy enough. He’d done it before. One thump and down they go. The big man groaned and his body jolted with the impact. Now all he had to do was keel over and collapse in the trunk.

  But that didn’t happen. Instead, his elbow slammed back into CJ’s ribs and he spun around with an upright palm shooting out and smacking CJ in the face. The gun skidded off the concrete, and CJ tumbled back against a parked car. The driver glanced at the gun but he ignored it. He lurched at CJ’s throat, arms outstretched. CJ was leaning back with his weight on the car so the crescent kick was easy, his leg sweeping the man’s arms aside and clearing the way for his elbow. An oblique strike. Driving it down into the man’s face, flattening his nose with a crunchy squelch like a truck tire rolling over a can of oil. The man staggered back, and CJ swept his trailing leg. The man teetered, then fell like a giant timber, his head cracking on asphalt. CJ stared at his spread-eagled form. The man’s chest was cycling up and down, so he was alive at least. CJ picked up the Sig and stuck it in his belt. He dragged the man to the trunk, hauled him up and poked and prodded him inside it.

  Son of a bitch.

  CJ stared down at him in awe. He’d whacked his head like he was knocking home a six-inch nail, and the guy had shrugged it off. CJ took the tie from the glove box and tied his hands behind his back, still puzzling it over. Whacking people on the head with a gun butt and stuffing them in the trunk seemed so familiar. Routine, even. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he’d never actually done it. He slammed the trunk lid down and sat in the car. It must have been in some movie, but he couldn’t even remember which one. This had all sounded so easy when he’d planned it the night before. But where was the contingency plan for a chauffeur-bodyguard with a pistol, a couple of black belts, and a head like a cement block? He picked the man’s phone up off the floor. That was another problem. Kowalski was certain to call at the end of his game to summon his driver.

  What then?

  Fake an American accent? Try and talk like the big guy?

  That was out of the question. One time in Iraq when they were waiting between jobs, CJ and Alex had passed the time by teaching each other accents. Alex had a gift for it, with an impressive repertoire of British accents. But CJ’s best American was feeble, like an old-fashioned Southern gentleman with a speech impediment. He was never going to pass for the steroid penguin in the trunk. So hours later when the phone rang, CJ ignored it, letting it ring through to voicemail. It rang again a few minutes later, and that was followed by two text messages in prompt succession. CJ ignored them all. Sooner or later Kowalski would run out of patience. Then he’d have three options. Send a club employee to investigate, call the office and get them to send in a cavalry platoon, or come and investigate himself. CJ remembered Kowalski as self-assured to the point of arrogance. He was also bound to be armed. Besides, there could be
an innocent explanation. The driver might have fallen asleep. Or something as simple as a flat battery in his phone.

  CJ crawled under an SUV parked close by the Lincoln and waited.

  Ten minutes later, he knew he’d called it right.

  The boots. Expensive.

  It had to be Kowalski. Some sort of reptile, Texas designer stuff. CJ let them disappear behind rows of tires before crawling out from under the SUV. He watched Kowalski slide between parked cars, drop into a crouch and pull a SIG 9mm from his sports bag. It was a P228 like the chauffeur’s gun, which CJ poked in his head the moment Kowalski figured it was all clear and straightened up.

  He raised both arms. No heroics.

  CJ took his weapon and stuck it in his belt.

  “Pick up the bag and head for the car,” he said.

  Kowalski snatched up the bag and walked with confident strides, like having a gun barrel stuck in his ear was all part of his plan. CJ had him drop the bag on the hood of the Lincoln, and he searched it. It didn’t take long. A pair of fancy golf shoes and a phone. CJ pocketed the phone and waved the gun at the back door of the Lincoln.

  “Get in,” he said.

  Kowalski didn’t budge.

  “Where’s Grambo?” he said.

  “Who’s Grambo?”

  “My driver. I can see you already met him.” Kowalski smirked, nodding at CJ’s face. CJ wiped at it. Blood. Congealed for the most part and now strewn in lumps across the back of his hand.

  “He’s in the trunk.”

  “The trunk?” Kowalski smirked again. “Not the boot.” He looked to the side, as though there was an imaginary audience to appreciate his humor. “You’re a fast learner.”

  CJ sucked it all up. He didn’t have much in the way of smart one-liners. But he did have two guns. He pulled the second Sig from his belt and stepped up to Kowalski, guns hanging loosely on either side. Daring him. Hoping. He leaned in close enough to smell the soap on Kowalski’s face.

  “I’m a trainee American,” he said, his voice gravelly. “I’ve only been on the job three days, and already I own two guns. I’d call that a very fast learner.”

  The smirk fled. The applauding onlookers too. There was only CJ and Kowalski left. And only one way this was going to go. Kowalski got in the car.

  There were two backseats separated by an amenities dashboard. CJ made him fold it out of the way and wriggle across to the far side. That proved to be something of a challenge. Kowalski was not the guy CJ remembered. He still had the broad shoulders and thick arms, but now he had a belly that looked oddly out of place. It was perfectly round, and it sat on his frame like a bolt-on extension, something he might have ordered online and been sent the wrong size.

  CJ stuck one of the guns in his belt. He sat beside Kowalski, jammed the other gun against his extension belly and shut the door.

  “Did you kill him?” Kowalski said.

  “Grambo?”

  He nodded.

  “He’ll be okay.”

  “Christopher.” Kowalski intoned it, dragging out all the syllables like it was the opening line in a Shakespearean soliloquy. “There is no reason for any of this.”

  Ten years. That was how long it had been since he’d shared a conversation with Kowalski. That might be long enough to forget. But this wasn’t forgetting. This was remembering. CJ hated that name. Regardless of whose mouth it came out of, the only voice he ever heard belonged to Mr. Philpot, the misanthropic psychopath who had run his high school. That was Kowalski’s forte. He was a master goader. He always knew exactly where to poke that finger. And CJ couldn’t fault him for trying. He was on the wrong end of two guns and his only play left was to put CJ off his stroke. And his plan was working too. CJ needed answers, but his thinking was clouding up already. Needs battling wants. And what he wanted most was to break Kowalski’s ribs. But he had to fight that urge. Kowalski was the man. CJ was sure of it. He had Alex’s blood all over him. But who else was part of the deal? CJ needed Kowalski alive and cooperative if he was ever going to get to the truth.

  “Tell me why you set us up in Iraq and I’ll be on my way.”

  “No one set you up.”

  “What about Rumbleby?”

  Kowalski swept the question aside with a snort and a toss of his head.

  “Your luck ran out that day. Face it and move on.”

  So that was it. Their chitchat was all done. And needs lost and wants won.

  CJ shot him in the leg. No preamble. No threats. And not much of a shot either. But then it wasn’t meant to be. It was an interlocutor shot. A go-between. A shot to communicate all the things that were getting lost in translation, draining away in the gap between British and American English. CJ waited while Kowalski noted the new information with a lot of writhing and squeaking. But no screaming. CJ had to give him that. He was an ex-Ranger after all. A tough mother. But not that tough. The groaning went on and on.

  “C’mon, Sean. Don’t be a wimp. I just nicked the bone. The bullet went in the door there.”

  “You’re crazy.” Kowalski’s face was pulsing red.

  “I prefer cognitively challenged.”

  “Screw you, asshole.”

  “You’re going to miss a few rounds of golf. No big deal. You’ll be back in those cute golf shoes in weeks. But imagine if I’d caught your knee by mistake.”

  He left it there, the unspoken threat.

  Imagine. No kneecap.

  The squeaking and groaning stopped. For all his faults, Kowalski was a realist.

  “Someone wanted to get rid of O’Brien. That’s all I know.”

  “Why?”

  “Ask Preston. He told me to set it up.”

  “Why not shoot him? Easy enough in Iraq. Stage some kind of accident.”

  “They wanted to get something out of him. Something he’d only talk about with his balls wired to a twelve-volt battery. But it all got cocked up.”

  “How was it supposed to go?”

  “I made a deal with the militia. You all get grabbed at the ministry. Then they split you up and we get to work on O’Brien. When we’re done, we stage a rescue and O’Brien gets tragically killed. You and Alex and the Boers get rescued. Problem solved.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “Iraq went wrong. Same as always. There was a complication. The militia had a rat. He went into business for himself. He wanted to trade your asses for some of his relatives held by Al-Qaeda.”

  “And Rumbleby? Masterson told me, so don’t deny it.”

  “Forget that. We can still make this right.”

  “Not for Sami, we can’t.”

  “That was Masterson’s idea. But we can still do this my way. Just disappear. South America. Get lost.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you lived. You’re a witness. And now you’re boning his sister. None of that’s good. Then you start asking questions. And too many people with the power to say who lives and who dies don’t like that.”

  CJ took Kowalski’s phone out of his pocket, but he got stuck at the PIN prompt. He looked up at Kowalski.

  “Did you hear about Phillip’s gardening accident?”

  There was a beat of silence while Kowalski considered his response, his eyes drifting down to his hands, each with a complete set of fingers.

  “Three-nine-eight-seven,” he said.

  “Good man.” CJ tucked the gun under his arm. He logged into the phone, opened a browser window, typed in a short URL, and clicked through a few screens, all as per Enya’s instructions.

  “Did you hear about CJ’s blowtorch accident?” Kowalski was smirking again. Not a good sign.

  CJ looked up from the phone.

  There was a man leaning on the Lincoln’s hood. He was wearing a blue baseball cap with the initials LA embroidered on it in a different color blue. But CJ wasn’t looking at that. He was looking at the Benelli semiautomatic shotgun the man was pointing at him. Tratfors’ cavalry had gotten lucky, sneaking up while CJ’s hearing wa
s still numb from the gunshot he’d let off in the enclosed space of the Lincoln’s cabin.

  Tap-tap.

  CJ turned his head. There was a man at the side window. He didn’t have a hat or shotgun. He had a 9mm pistol and he was using it as a drumstick to tap out a tune on the window. The door on the other side opened, and a third man, wearing a suit, helped Kowalski out of the car. CJ’s door opened too, and the pistol man took the Sig from under CJ’s arm and the other gun from his belt. He dragged him out of the car while the shotgun man covered him from close range. The suit man with Kowalski left him leaning against the Lincoln while he opened the trunk, and Grambo clambered out of it. His hands were still tied, but he’d managed to slip his legs between his arms so they were tied at the front. The man cut the tie off his wrist and Grambo walked over to CJ.

  “See this?” He grabbed an amulet hanging from his neck, cowboy jewelry made out of silver with a turquoise gemstone. He clicked it open. It was full of electronics. CJ looked around. They all had one. “Technology. You dickhead dinosaur. An emergency transponder.” He slammed his knee into CJ’s groin and he folded up, protecting his chest and belly with one arm and his head and neck with the other. But Grambo wasn’t fussy. He kicked and punched him all over while the shotgun and pistol were trained on him from a safe distance.

  An SUV rolled up, fetched by the suit.

  “Take him to the factory,” Kowalski said as he hobbled to the SUV, his arm around the suit’s shoulders. “You can break stuff. But do not kill him.” The pistol man shouldered his gun and opened the trunk. Grambo dragged CJ to the trunk and tossed him inside it.

  Fifteen

  Jihadi Jill liked to tie CJ’s hands behind his back and hoist him up over an open door, latching his arms over the top so his body would hang by the armpits. It was a poor man’s crucifixion. Bloodless. Hours would pass with the pain growing and moans morphing into screams. But then, they too would pass.

  Pain and breath.

  So long as you had them, you were still alive. CJ was back in that space, following his breath. Pain everywhere. But muffled like the sound of a distant bomb blast from inside a shelter. He was more concerned with damage, maintaining a constant inventory. Head, neck, back, arms and legs. He was bloodied and bruised with humongous swelling. But nothing was fractured yet. And although the ribs had taken a beating, no bones had penetrated his pleural cavity, so his breathing was still good. He was sitting in a metal chair, his wrists bound to its arms with cable ties. The chair was set like a stage ringed by a wall of silent machines, a production line running in a U-shape under a roof of corrugated metal, surrounded by a yard littered with steel barrels. Grambo and the suit were standing at a nearby table. They were taking a break, drinking water from bottles and staring at CJ. The suit wiped his sweaty hands on his white shirt. His collar was open and his tie loose, his jacket flung across the table and topped by a pistol in a shoulder rig.