When the wheels lift off for a mission, you have to go to a place inside yourself that knows, and wants to get you home alive as well, and most important of all, contains no fear, or paranoia, or sense of self. There’s only the ‘Mission Objective’, and the ‘Team Members’, and ‘Extraction’. The calmness and efficiency that’s called for is a mandatory skill, one that comes naturally, and is then reinforced and controlled by training.
I had experienced the strongest seizure of control I’d ever had in any mission yet, just hours before, and was probably still under its control when I started up the valley floor. But I was tired like the dead, mostly from loss of blood, and from the pain. I still hadn’t taken the morphine.
I stayed still, watching to see if there was going to be a surprise attack. The breeze kept blowing, lightly feathering my exposed face with air that was warmer than the sand I was crawling through. Nothing happened, so in my mind I knew then that I had him. When I moved this time, it was slowly, with my right hand I drew the Colt from its holster. When it cleared the sand, I turned to face him, still in my semi-hidden crouch. I felt certain at this stage that he wasn’t going to give up, he was going to fight to kill. It just wasn’t going to be me that he killed, not tonight.
I called out to him not to move, not even breathe, as I rose to a standing position. When I was half way standing, my left hand went for my gun, and when I’d risen to a full stand, I had both guns trained on the spot where I thought he was. As I saw the sand start to shift, I dropped to a crouch and fired two rounds, one from each gun. The sound was almost deafening. I caught him in the left shoulder and the left hand as he rolled into a firing position. The hand I hit had a small gun in it, which became instantly useless. His trigger finger was stuck in the trigger guard, and so his arm went spinning to his left with the force of the bullet. I think it made a mess of his left hand. The shoulder shot should have messed him right up. Unless he had a vest on. There were some in the taxi. One for each of us. The Colonel had declined their use on the mission, stating their non-required status. The other thing was that the Colonel was right handed. The shoulder hit had rolled him back, away from me. He didn’t try to roll to the right again, and it would have taken him too long anyway.
He turned his head towards me without seeming to move any other part of his body. His eyes were hooded, and ringed with sand. The right hand. I fired both guns at once as I dived to the right. They sounded like the thunder from a big storm, only right up close, inside my head. The ‘brrrrp’ sound of an Uzi caught my ear, but I’d already felt the sting in my left arm, but high up, near the shoulder. The bastard had shot me from the grave. I’d fired first, and killed him instantly, both rounds catching him in the throat. As he jerked from the rounds, his finger tightened on the trigger of the Uzi he was holding just under the sand.
The last thing I remember then, was thinking, ‘Shit! I got shot twice in one night by dead guys! This has been a very strange day…’, and then nothing at all, just blackness.
It was nice, quiet, dark, stress-free. I started floating, and then I could see again. I was looking down at myself, and I didn’t look so good. I was lying face down in the powdery sand. I remember thinking, ‘Where’s the tunnel, and the beautiful white light?’. I thought it was all over. Then Sam came into my field of view. He was wading through the sand like you do in deep snow. Plowing his way along until he got to me. My body. He rolled me over and started slapping my face, back and forth, trying to get me back, I guess. I remember I had no feelings about it at the time.
All of a sudden, there was the bright light, but it was moving, so it couldn’t be the one I was looking for. Then I saw the Scorpion swoop in and land in a matter of seconds. I’d called it right.
Then everything went black again, and I didn’t have any more visions, or anything else even faintly resembling consciousness, until I came to in the Scorpion. The blade noise was pretty minimal for a helicopter. These were made for so-called silent running, like they were submarines or something. They had super-duper mufflers is all. The med tech was fiddling with a couple of bags on a hook on the side of the craft. I was strapped down in a fold out bunk the size of a stretcher. Small. I tried talking. It took a couple of tries before any words came out, and they didn’t sound very good, even to me.
“What about the others?” It came out as a hoarse whisper.
The tech looked down at me, surprised that I had spoken, I guess.
“They’re all with us, pal. Don’t go worrying, now. We’ll be home in no time flat. Everybody will be taken care of, I promise.” With that, he turned a small wheel on one of the lines leading from the bags on the hook. I don’t know what was in them, but ten seconds later I was out like a light.
When I awoke, I was in Riyadh. At the U.S. military compound, in the medical center. Under armed guard.
The British got hold of me as soon as they could, which was two days later. The American debriefing for that mission had been intense, to say the least. I had shot one of their officers. That made me a bad boy in their books, and they keep those books forever. Mostly I think they were pissed that he was uncovered by a Canadian.
Once the digging started, it didn’t stop until they ran into the top echelons of the KGB, who were surprisingly cooperative, considering. He’d been controlled by a Major in an internal organization that didn’t have a name. At least not one that anyone would speak of, even in high level clandestine meetings. The feeling in the end was that the KGB were as much in the dark about this group as we were, which was the only reason they would talk about it at all. Until they all sat down for a good heart to heart, I think the Brass on both sides were ignorant of the entire existence of this group. The grapevine came back to me with bits and pieces, and I had to fill in the blanks. I believe that the organization was one that had belonged to the old GRU and was under deep cover. When the GRU had their mandate modified by complete disbandment, this operations group had stayed in place, because the few people who did know about them were the people who ran the whole shebang. It was patently in their favour to ‘disremember’ about it completely.
This was info that came my way through the SAS channels which were pretty solid. In addition to exposing the Colonel, I found out later from the British that not only had I killed him, but I had been very accurate, as usual, and I had used both guns at once. The ‘hot load’ dum-dum slugs had decapitated him.
When I first came into the U.S. compound by chopper, I was persona non grata, in extremis. I think they would have rather had me die in the field operating theater. Fortunately for me the doctor who did the patchwork on my leg was a surgeon that believed in his medical oath first and his national duty second.
I was in the operating theater twenty minutes after landing. The first hit from the AK 47 had passed right through my left calf muscle, but it had severed a significant artery on the way through. I had lost fully one third of my blood by the time we touched down at Camp Hell. The official name of the place was Station Nine, and covered about fifteen square miles of desert, just outside of Riyadh itself. The Uzi wounds in my left upper arm weren’t as nasty as they looked, having been only surface wounds, really. Still, I was in a fairly bad way with my leg for a few weeks.
The Saudis had been working both sides of the fence when it came to the good guys. King Faisal wasn’t in good shape even back then. The Royal Family had been plagued with health problems for all of his sons, and when Fahd took over it was more of the same. They went abroad, to Switzerland, at least twice a year for medical attention that the King just couldn’t yet acquire at home. They were in the process of building the infrastructure of a modern nation and diversifying their GNP. Changing from total dependence on crude oil, and getting into manufacturing, engineering, financial institutions, farming, dairy products, and a slew of other industries. It still was only a drop in the bucket compared to the oil revenue, but a few generations down the line, it would look pretty visionary in hindsight.
In order to fu
lfill that mission, and balance the traditional Saudi lifestyle simultaneously, the aid of the British, American, and Canadian governments as well as corporations was required. They made friends of all three, and that was working well for them. It also gave the three foreign nations an opportunity to trade technology and planning for some influence. Anyone who remembers the oil embargo of the seventies would understand the importance of that influence, no matter how minor.
Once the British took me back, it went better for me. They had a different slant on the issue, Sam having worked for them for many years made a significant difference to the perspective they had on the whole mission. I got decorated. I got promoted. Then I tried to quit. It ended up being like most things in life, a compromise. I stayed on one more year, then retired with my commission intact. I moved back to Canada and set up a private practice in Toronto, the Queen city. I was happier. The Americans were happier. It worked out Okay all ‘round.
~
Chapter Nineteen
W
hat Sam had said to me had taken me back, too far back for my liking. I was somewhat dazed by the memories that had come rushing unbidden to the surface. I took a few minutes to compose myself before I could speak again. While I had found it difficult to absorb what Sam was saying to me, those memories were so powerful that I had had to work very hard indeed to bury them in the sand that we’d left behind that night on the edge of the Rub’ al Khali.
There were places in that desert that had dunes a thousand feet high. The first time you climb to the top of one of those dunes, you get to experience something that most people don’t even know exists. The Singing Sands. At the top of the dune there’s a phenomenon that’s created by the constant wind and the top layer of sand. If you look closely, you’ll see that all around your feet is a mist of sand. It has a depth of about two to six inches, depending on the strength of the wind. It’s all the smaller particles of sand, moving at a pretty good clip, and as it flies along, it moans and whispers to you. If you listen closely, and stay still, you’ll hear it change tone, playing out a melody that changes constantly, never repeating itself, but going on forever. Then there’s the silt sands.
The British were the first westerners to discover that peculiarity of the Rub’ al Khali. What happens is, you’re driving along in your half-track with your convoy of adventurers, feeling pretty good about being such a fine explorer and all-around seeker of challenges, and you look in your rear-view mirror just in time to see your buddies in the half-track behind you and maybe a little to the right or the left of your position, sink like a stone in the ocean. Fine powder sand covering up a sink-hole that may go down thirty feet, or three thousand. There’s no way to rescue anyone who drops into the silt-sand. It’s like quicksand in the swamp, except it’s faster to take you down, and mostly deeper than any quicksand from a swamp. Nobody has ever been pulled out once they’ve gone down. The Bedouin are the only ones who know the ins and outs of that desert.
I squared my shoulders, shaking off my morbid thoughts, recovering from the intensity of Sam’s statements. I stood up and went around the table. He rose to meet me, and we hugged, then separated.
All I had to do was say thank you and leave. Simple, right? I held my emotions in check as I answered him.
“Sam, if it’s what you want, I agree, but with the condition that I’m allowed to use the funds as I see fit.” I was thinking of Katie, and maybe Sam could tell that.
“There are no restrictions whatsoever Jeffry. None. This is something I have always planned, and now I’m doing it. Of course, if you happened to get married and have a little one of your own, it would be nice if there was money for a good University. Maybe the Sorbonne, or Oxford.” Then he gave me a serious look, pointing his finger, saying “You know, a doctor in the family is always a good thing.” Typical Sam.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I thought about what he had said about not being around forever.
“Sam, if I come back at the same time next year, will I see you here?” There was an extended silence. “I see.”
“Don’t make a fuss, Jeffry. This is the way life goes. I’ve had many extra years of happiness, and all because of you, so I can’t complain. Maybe you could drop by to see Samira, if you would… she always enjoys seeing you. Today, though, maybe it’s better…” I supplied the missing words.
“If I just leave and don’t look back, because it’s too hard for you, isn’t it?”
“You know me like a son knows his father.” He held out the envelope, and I took it, slowly. I held his hand for longer than I had to, then I honoured his wishes.
“Au revoir, my old friend. I’ll come back here after I’ve finished this mission. Wait for me.”
“I fear for you, Jeffry. Use all the power at your disposal before you take your fight to these people. Use every trick and advantage you can and watch your back. If I hear anything more, where can I reach you?” I pulled out one of my business cards and wrote the European Roamer numbers for my pager and cellular on the back.
“It might be better if you weren’t in possession of the card itself. Maybe copy it and burn it. I made sure that I wasn’t followed, but these people have access to information that they shouldn’t, and that may include my relationship with you. Although I have to admit, even my own people never realized that we’d connected on that night so long ago.”
We both smiled, and then Sam waved at me as I collected Godsen and left by the door opposite to the one we’d come in. I never looked back, turning left as we exited, and hailing the first cab that came down the street, which was before we’d walked ten paces. Godsen was uncharacteristically quiet during the whole time. Just before we’d left she had downed what was left of the kirsch in her glass.
I gave the taxi driver an address that corresponded to an ancient church right downtown where they had an equally ancient larger-than-life statue of Alexander the Great in the basement. It was also minutes from the eastern end of the Niederdorf, which in turn was only three blocks from the safe house. Mark’s bolthole.
The envelope felt heavy in my jacket pocket, but I’d have to put that whole issue on the back burner until I had a chance to consider all of the implications. Sam believed for some reason that he had less than a year to live. I had no specific information, so I couldn’t even begin to deal with it, but I’d come back to this before the next month was done.
The cab let us off at the stairs up to the front of the church and the surrounding square and fountain. The stairs were a good climb, and it took us about five minutes of steady climbing to get up to the top and enter the square. We took a few minutes to sit by the fountain, just enjoying the age-old beauty of the place. There was a small statue in the square, not in the fountain, but on a pedestal, where you could reach out and touch it. A small cherub style child riding a winged horse. The child had small wings, and the horse had larger ones. It was supposed to bring good luck to lovers. I told Godsen that it just brought good luck, I didn’t mention the lovers part of it. She walked up to it and stared for a minute, then stepped up to the pedestal and patted the child’s protruding belly in a circular motion.
Stepping back from the statue, she turned and smiled at me. When she smiled she was quite the woman. You could feel the intensity of her character then. It felt good. Then her smile was gone, and she was all business again. So much for life’s little pleasure which reminded me, I should call Cynthia, but I had to be sure that there was no connection made between us during this case. It may have started out as a serious murder investigation, but it had been ratcheted up several notches this morning. I had no doubt in my mind that I’d never have seen Godsen or Westwood alive again if I’d let them get into that Mercedes this morning.
That changed all the rules. Now I was reverting to the precise agent I’d once been. If you try hard, you can bury it pretty deep, but you can’t make it go away. Ever.
The popular opinion is that an ex-agent can be rusty, and so makes an easy mark. That was horse ma
nure. If you’d been good before, you were good forever. That’s the way it really worked. Some old adages weren’t worth the time it took to repeat them.
For example, ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach’. That’s a classic as applied to the intelligence gathering community. If the people who taught the recruits weren’t able to ‘do’ what they were teaching, they’d all be killed rather quickly. In the agent business, the ‘Instructor’ was the guy who took you out into the field on your first missions, until they felt that you knew all they could reasonably teach you. If they weren’t any good to start with, nobody would come back from their first missions. It wasn’t like you could start at the shallow end of the pool and work your way to the deep water at your own pace.
When you were on a mission, no matter how humble it appeared to be, in the blink of an eye the water could turn so deep that you’d need a nuclear submarine to get anywhere near the bottom.
Which brings us back to where we started. It seemed that whomever we were up against hadn’t had access to any of my DEEP files, as is proper and expected. I still didn’t know how Godsen had gotten hold of the few pages she had from the innocuous section of my DEEP file, but she was under the impression that she had the facts straight. I don’t think I could get access to that file if I needed it to survive. Anyone I could contact that hadn’t been working with me when I was active would simply deny all knowledge of what I was talking about. The people I had worked with would be in the same position, unable to access. When those files are coded DEEP, they virtually disappear.
This morning’s shenanigans had provided her a small glimpse into what those files contained. I think she was still trying to process it all. I was still the same man that had walked away intact from the most dangerous job in the world. I’d been classified as ‘Level Zero’, meaning that nothing more had to be done once a mission had been given to me. My teams always completed the job, and I always brought everyone home, that was important to me. Dead or alive. All of the men under my command knew that, and it made for an extended family type of loyalty, not just to the SAS, but to the team. When you’re in the field, your team is all you’ve got.
The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel Page 43