The Henchmen's Book Club

by Danny King

  “Bring him,” was all the General said before about-turning and wheeling away up the landing.

  I caught Mr Rousseau’s eye and blinked three times to give him the order to shut up shop, but it was clear from his expression that he’d already swung the sign around.

  I was frog-marched in the General’s wake, through the special prisoners wing, past a couple of hundred locked doors and towards the elevators, where two more heavily-armed Deltas were waiting for us. They snapped to a crisp salute at either the sight of me or the General then we all piled into the elevator and rode up two levels to the interrogation unit. Here, the door opened and yet two more Deltas joined the Conga, dancing me past a long line of cells and on to the main interrogation suite.

  I remembered this place from my time under the desk lamp. It was an imposingly big room, even bigger than I remembered, probably thirty feet by a hundred, which looked vast to someone who’d spent the last thousand nights sharing an eight by ten. And it was dark. The edges of the room were lost to shadows while the centre was bright and stark. An empty table kept two plastic chairs apart and a chunky microphone hung from the ceiling like the Eden snake.

  Two of our party dropped off to guard the door outside while four Deltas accompanied us inside to sink into the shadows of the four corners of the room. On his way past one of the Deltas relieved me of my cuffs so I rubbed my wrists and tried out one of the chairs for size.

  “You will sit when you are told to sit,” the General barked.

  “When you start paying me you can start telling me what to do. Until that time blow it out of your fucking arse, Major,” I suggested. Well whatever they were going to do to me, they were going to do to me regardless, so I indulged myself and enjoyed the paradox freedom of the condemned.

  That same Delta who’d freed me of my cuffs moments earlier was just about to slap them back on when a new different voice told them to stand down. The hairs on the back of my neck almost parted when I recognised the voice and turned to see the last person on Earth I’d expected to see in this God-forsaken place.

  Jack Tempest.

  If ever there was a face to make a man rethink suicide.

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Nice to see you too, Mark. You don’t mind if I call you Mark, do you?”

  “My friends call me 2248,” I told him, prompting the General’s features to chisel a few shaves.

  Tempest looked around and raised an eyebrow, then asked the General to wait outside. “And take your men with you.”

  “Very well, but I’ll leave one man here if you don’t mind,” the General replied, mistaking XO-11 for a man who liked to negotiate things as he went along.

  “I do, take them all outside,” Tempest clarified.

  “This prisoner is a very dangerous individual, Commander. A professional mercenary with dozens of kills to his name,” the General quibbled, overlooking the fact that the court had awarded me only one kill.

  “Mr Jones and I are old acquaintances. He’ll give me no trouble,” Tempest assured him.

  “That may be so but he is still a special prisoner of the United States government,” the General pointed out. “And you, Commander Tempest, have no authority over either me or my men…”

  “Take it outside, General. That’s an order!” a new voice barked off towards my left and my shoulders sank even further when these particular dulcet tones struck home.

  “Major Dunbar,” the General said, presumably to remind Rip of his rank.

  “I have Presidential authority over this prisoner and I will bust you and your men down to privates and transfer you to the Iraqi army if you’re still in my line of sight inside of five seconds! Are you clear, General?”

  The Deltas certainly were and started making for the door before the General could flap his yap any more, and finally the message sunk in: the cool kids were having a party and fatty wasn’t invited.

  “Yes… Major,” the General mumbled, wondering for a moment whether or not to salute before deciding not and simply leaving.

  “You remembered my birthday?” I said, jogging a grin out of Tempest and a glare out of Dunbar.

  “That’s right, Mark. We hoped you’d be pleased,” Tempest replied, pulling up a chair while Dunbar paced restlessly behind him.

  “Since when did you two start working together?” I asked.

  “Since my dick fucked your mama in the ass, you mother,” Dunbar shouted down my throat, slamming the table between us before resuming his pacing pattern over Tempest’s shoulder. Tempest shifted somewhat uncomfortably in his seat and confirmed this was indeed a joint US and British operation.

  “I see. Going well is it?” I deduced.

  “What can you tell us about Operation Candy Snatch?” Tempest asked.

  “That depends,” I told him. “What can you tell me about it?”

  “We ask the questions, dick wad, so get talking!” Dunbar growled, balling up both fists to threaten the table again.

  “I know a few things,” I bluffed, wondering if I could con anything out of them with a few strategic fairy tales.

  “Bullshit. He’s lying!” Dunbar grunted.

  “Why would I?”

  “Garbage like you always lies. It’s in your nature, douche bag,” Dunbar replied. “This is a waste of time. I told you we shouldn’t have come.”

  “I don’t know if you got the memo, Rip, but I spilled my guts for three months when I first arrived. Ask away and I’ll tell you what you want to know, for the right price of course,” I invited, catching Tempest’s eye.

  Dunbar stopped circling and glared down at me. After a few seconds he shook off his tight black Special Op’s jacket to show off his tight black Special Op’s T-shirt. It had been three years since I’d seen him and it was clear his book shelf had grown dustier in that time by the way his shirt now bulged like a bag of apples.

  “Brother, I’m gonna ask you just one more time then you’re gonna start hurting,” he snarled. “Tell us about Candy Snatch.”

  I mulled this over, shrugged, then asked Tempest how he’d been keeping.

  “Pretty fair,” Tempest replied with a shrug.

  Dunbar was obviously disappointed at how poorly his “bad cop” was going over but he resisted the temptation to insert any slap-stick into the act and let “good cop” take it for a bit.

  “So what have you got for us Mark?” Tempest asked.

  “What’s on offer?”

  “What do you want?”

  “What do you think I want? A new wanking sock? I want out. I want to go home,” I told him.

  “That’s a pretty tall order, Mark. I don’t know if I could swing that for you, not after all you’ve done,” Tempest said solemnly.

  “Don’t give me that, you can do anything you want, you’ve already said you’ve got Presidential authority. And you’re obviously desperate for some sort of a lead otherwise you wouldn’t be in here talking to the likes of me,” I pointed out.

  “Not freedom,” Tempest said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah you’re staying right where you are and rotting you fucking mother!” Dunbar agreed, promoting me from brother again.

  “Then what can you do for me?” I fished.

  “Well I can definitely get you that new wanking sock,” Tempest conceded.

  “Oh you’re hilarious you are,” I glowered. “Thanks for looking me up, this so beats sitting in the hole for a month.”

  “If they die, you’ll do more than a month in the hole, you one-eyed maggot. You’ll do the whole of your fucking short-assed life down there,” Dunbar snapped.

  “If who…” I started to ask, before biting my tongue to claw back the words.

  Tempest picked up on my lapse and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “I know enough,” I told him, frantically back-peddling to refill my spilt bluff basket.

  “Of course,” Tempest smirked. “So why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “I will, but
first I want to know what’s in it for me,” I insisted.

  “Mark, you’ve got nothing to trade and no knowledge of Candy Snatch. You couldn’t possibly have. We knew that already,” Tempest smarmed, opening a silver cigarette box and tapping a cigarette against the side of it before slipping it between his lips.

  “Then what has all this been about?” I wanted to know. “Are you just following hot dog vendors again?”

  Tempest lit his cigarette with a glow from his cufflink and puffed a long stream of blue grey smoke towards the microphone.

  “I wanted to see how amenable you were to doing a deal,” he said. “After all, if you’re willing to deal when you’ve got nothing to deal with, just imagine how amenable might you be if you found you actually did have something?”

  “Is it Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in a fit of self-indulgence?” I guessed.

  “That’s it, asshole!” Dunbar roared, grabbing me by the neck and pushing me out of my chair.

  Somewhere behind Dunbar’s delts, Tempest was shouting at him to desist and trying to wrestle the Major away, but Dunbar was conscious of the fact that he hadn’t killed anyone in almost five minutes and that was a long time for him.

  Eventually Rip’s fingers left my windpipe, though he’d choked me so hard it took me almost thirty seconds to realise this. Stars popped and floated in front of my eyes, which was interesting seeing as I only had one, but it was true and I saw with them both. I wondered why this should be and half thought about asking Dunbar to do it again, but suddenly I was being shoved into my chair again.

  Tempest apologised for his colleague’s behaviour and asked if I was okay.

  “Don’t apologise to that motherfucking killer, he murdered my buddy,” Dunbar barked.

  “Hmm, bad luck old chap,” Tempest replied, although who he was saying this too – me or Rip – I couldn’t tell.

  When I’d finally caught my breath, Tempest warned Dunbar not to touch me again and fetched some water from the cooler by the door. I don’t know why people did this. Being strangled doesn’t make you any thirstier than normal. If anything, it actually makes it harder to drink than if you haven’t been strangled but I took a sip all the same just to show my gratitude.

  “I’d butt-fuck that fucking mother to within an inch of his life if it was up to me!” Dunbar was raging behind Tempest, finally pushing his partner over the edge.

  “Enough Major. Enough!”

  “Enough? Enough? You come in here and deal with this scum and you tell me enough, you mother!” Dunbar ad-libbed, straying off the page a beat or two.

  “I wish I was your mother, Rip, because I’d wash your bloody mouth out with soap,” Tempest replied.

  “I’d like to see you try, you limey fuckwipe!” Dunbar invited, stepping up to the plate as Tempest took his turn in the firing line

  “Fuckwipe?” Tempest grimaced in confusion. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means my dick up your ass, you goddamn honey dew faggot, that’s what!” Dunbar barked, making even less sense than usual. I wondered how Rip went down on first dates. In flames, I concluded.

  Tempest looked around for subtitles. “It’s just a nonsensical stream of Tourettes. Do you even know what you’re saying yourself?”

  “Goddamn right I do. You say enough, do you? Well I say enough too. Enough talking!”

  “Shall I come back later when you’re both free?” I suggested, helping myself to another cup of water.

  “Get your ass back in that chair, eyeball!” Dunbar demanded, aiming one of his fat, hairy fingers at my face.

  I retook my seat and waited for Dunbar to slap the water out of my hand, but he was too busy laying into Tempest to concern himself with the basics.

  “This is bullshit! I said from the start that this was bullshit and when it all blows up because you trusted this piece of garbage, I’ll skull-fuck your fucking ass!” he insisted.

  Tempest just stared at Dunbar for a moment, at a loss to know where to even begin, before finally conceding the point.

  “Fair enough, Rip. You can skull-fuck my bottom if it all goes wrong,” he agreed, eventually retaking his seat and offering me a cigarette. “So Mark, why don’t we talk about this book club of yours?”

  30.

  OPERATION CANDY SNATCH

  Three years earlier, while I’d been away in Greenland partying with Rip, the British Secret Service had been running an operation of its own. Nothing unusual there, as the various intelligence services around the world are running dozens of operations at any given time. But what was so special about this particular operation was that the initial lead had come from me.

  X3.

  That’s right, that tenuously sketchy titbit I’d tossed Tempest outside the pub in Sussex had led him all the way to Marbella and back (nice work if you can get it) and right to the very centre of a plot to bury every sea port on the Mediterranean under twenty feet of sand by engineering a month-long artificial sandstorm in the Western Sahara. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps X3 had bought shares in Dyson or something. I didn’t know, but thirty dead scientists and one destroyed storm-maker later, the Med was once again safe thanks to XO-11 while Sun Dju ended up sinking into a bottomless Saharan dune in her somewhat unsuitable stilettos. Silly cow.

  Hooray for Jack Tempest and British Secret Service. Martinis and medals all round!

  There was only one problem “Triple X”, as he’d decided to call him, had got away. And it was this lapse that would come back to haunt him three years later with the launch of Operation Candy Snatch.

  The intention was total revenge. No pay off, no prizes and no extortion. Just pure and simple satisfaction.

  Okay, where to start?

  The United Nations, that wondrously powerless organisation that was meant to foster peace and prosperity in the wake of World War Two, but in fact oversaw one of the bloodiest half centuries on record, came up with yet another “winning idea” when it charged the kiddy branch of its outfit, UNICEF, with the task of organising the PR stunt to end all PR stunts. The idea, obviously dreamed up over a bowl of cornflakes, was stunningly lame in its naivety; every world leader with a child under the age of eighteen was to send their offspring to represent them at the “United Nations Children’s Summit”, which was basically a weekend-long jolly with jelly, ice cream and six-thousand special forces bodyguards. I think the basic idea was that all the Kings and Presidents would see their little darlings playing happily alongside one another and go all Coca Cola on their neighbours, prompting a new dawn of unprecedented peace and reconciliation.

  Yeah, my thoughts exactly.

  Anyway, everyone got very excited about the idea, not least of all the kids when they found out there’d be X-Box, and astonishingly thirty-one world-leaders sent their little sweethearts along to the newly constructed UNICEF compound in Provence.

  France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Libya, Gabon, Niger, Mali, Zambia, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Canada and New Zealand.

  China.

  Russia.

  And of course, Britain and America.

  Where elderly statesmen or women didn’t have kids under the age of eighteen, they sent other relatives, or in the case of Ireland, a competition winner off the telly. The President of the United States sent his granddaughter, while the Presidents of both China and Russia sent their nephews. Britain, officially recognised as the most gullible country in the UN, sent the Prime Minister’s youngest daughter, born just four weeks before the PM took office and at only six years old, the youngest of all the delegates. Naturally, her mother travelled with her, but she stayed out of camera shot with a dozen other proud mothers while their VIP cherubs put the world to rights and ganged up on Peru for his pocket money.

  Well everything went swimmingly that first day and proceedings were televised, if not watched, around the world. All the kids mingled
, newspapers were filled with pictures and a small army of bodyguards got to enjoy the easiest assignment they’d ever known.

  At least until the gas bombs went off.

  For hidden amongst the fixtures and fittings of the UNICEF compound were dozens of canisters of a nerve agent that rendered everyone inside unconscious. Kids and ex-Spetsnaz minders dropped to the floor and slept like babes-in-arms, while those that were able to escape the suffocating clouds stumbled clear to raise the alarm.

  Maybe a couple of hundred UNICEF and security personnel stationed around the perimeter avoided the trap, but with barely a hundred gas masks in the entire place and all of them held at fire stations within the compound, they were powerless to help the others.

  That’s when things began to stir within the clouds.

  See, also hidden amongst the fixtures and fittings were several black figures, bedecked in breathing apparatus and cold suits, they’d avoided the extensive pre-summit security sweep with guile and technology. How long they’d been hibernating in their hidey-holes was anybody’s guess but like snakes waking after a long cold winter, they slithered out of cracks in the furniture and began silently and meticulously gathering up the young.

  Right at the centre of the compound, in an open-air courtyard between the buildings, stood a collection of life-sized plastic play vehicles: a fire engine, an aeroplane, a dumper truck and a helicopter. The most popular of these had been the brightly coloured helicopter, with its blue and yellow bodywork and bright red rotor blades. The kids had played on this all the previous day, pressing buttons and stirring the rotors. Now one of the black figures climbed aboard and inserted a missing chip underneath the yellow dashboard. The plastic helicopter suddenly roared to life, shaking off its garish red and yellow bodywork to reveal black steel beneath. The pilot huffed and puffed to throw out all the colourful plastic interiors while the others loaded the rear and soon a fully laden UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter warbled away in the centre of the playground.

  “That’s it, let’s go,” the pilot said when the final child had been loaded on board and a moment later they took off.