by Danny King
“You still have crimes to pay for. And twenty years will see you out in your lifetime.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I snapped.
“Would you rather the ninety-six you’ve left to do?” Dunbar suggested.
“Ten,” I tried.
“They won’t wear it,” Tempest said. “You have to do a serious stretch.”
“What, and ten’s not a serious stretch?”
“Not for murder and crimes against humanity,” he reckoned.
“Have you even tried talking to them?”
“Hey, we don’t negotiate with killers,” Dunbar grunted, his forehead casting an even greater shadow than usual. “Take it or leave it.”
“But I won’t get out until I’m an old man!” I fumed.
“That’s the idea,” Tempest pointed out. “They won’t release pros like you while you’re still in your prime. Besides, sixty’s not that old. Not these days.”
“Time served.”
“What?”
“If I agree to twenty, I want what I’ve already done down as time served,” I said.
Tempest thought about this, then looked at Dunbar.
“If we give you that, then you’ve still got seventeen to serve,” he said.
“That’s right.”
He thought about it some more, while Dunbar simply glared in either contempt or confusion at the maths.
“Jabulani was worth ten of you,” he grunted.
“Believe me Major Dunbar, no one regrets Jabulani’s death not like I don’t,” I assured him as solemnly as I could. “And if I could turn back the clock… well, that’s all I’ve got to say about that really.”
While Dunbar mulled over those heartfelt sentiments, Tempest came to an executive decision without deferring to knuckles.
“Okay then Jones, have it your way; twenty years with time served. Now, get us onto Île de Roc.”
31.
THE BEST OF THE WORST
Some fifteen hours later I was on the well deck of the USS Bataan overlooking the hurriedly assembled assault team. I knew every one of them having served alongside them all in either field or can.
Mr Smith, Mr Woo, Mr Rousseau, Mr Jean, Mr Capone, Mr Petrov, Captain Campbell, Mr Son, Mr Kim and two-dozen other Affiliates. All Agency men. And all just a few years into their ninety-nines at McCarthy.
This had been a crucial part of the deal I’d struck; that we’d lead the assault ourselves and those who’d volunteered would get the same remission as me – twenty years minus time served.
The UN had been extremely reluctant but I told them to go ahead and think on it if they liked. Mull it over. Discuss it. Debate it. I had all the time in the world. I could wait. Could they?
After an hour of pointless stalling they finally came to their senses and all at once my stock was such that I could’ve probably asked for a foot rub off the Russian President and got it.
I’d insisted on my guys carrying out the assault because our plan depended on our friendlies on the island helping us gain a foothold. If I’d simply called in a few favours to get Dunbar a free pass, then no one would’ve walked away from this thing alive. Not the enemy, not our guys and probably not the kids either.
I remembered only too well the fun he’d had in Greenland. Rescue missions weren’t really Rip’s forte.
So we’d spearhead the assault. Dunbar and Tempest would tag along for the ride but they’d take their lead from us. We’d get them ashore. We’d breach the defences. And we’d rescue the kids. They’d be the ones who’d deal with X3 once we were in. It was a compromise everyone could live with, particularly the various Presidents and Prime Ministers around the UN table who could no longer hold each other responsible if things fell apart. We were independent. Therefore we could safely be blamed by everyone for everything.
Of course, the danger of mounting a full scale assault on Île de Roc was the fact that X3 could just step up the timetable start playing war with the kids the moment we stepped ashore but this was where we’d really scored at the negotiations table. See, the beauty of having people on the inside meant we could not only make it off the boats in one piece, but that we had friends on hand to protect the kids from reprisals during the fighting.
This had been our ace in the hole and the one thing all the SEALs, SBS and COMSUBIN in the world couldn’t ensure.
The only problem had been convincing our guys on X3’s payroll to change sides.
See, the promise of doing twenty years in a secret military prison wasn’t likely to tempt anyone not already doing ninety-nine years in a secret military prison so the UN reluctantly agreed to grant them full immunity, plus pay them one million dollars a piece if they threw their lot in with us.
Payment dependent on results, of course.
Now, this was a very tempting offer because, like I think I’ve said before, most plans have a tendency to go socks-up more often than not, so a cast iron assurance of cold hard cash from a legitimate government was one hell of an incentive. At least, that was the theory.
There was only one way to find out.
“I need a computer,” I’d told them.
Surprisingly, the authorities still hadn’t found our website yet, probably because we’d hidden it too well so in order for me to log on, they first had to find me one of our encrypted keys. A search of the evidence stores at McCarthy turned up one of my hollow point .38 USBs and I was able to log on.
The website had changed a lot since I’d last seen it. New pop-up windows appeared. Flashing icon, blogs and buttons had all been added. And The Day of The Triffids had taken one hell of a pounding, but I ignored the frills and got to work putting out feelers.
To my immense relief I found we did indeed have three book club members currently plying their trade on Île de Roc. I’d had my doubts because of X3’s experiences up in Scotland, but he’d obviously had a change of heart about Agency Affiliates after his RS- or EE-manned plan had come apart in the Sahara. This meant that within a few emails I’d been able to make contact with some of his guys, identify myself as Book Mark and post five stars for John Grisham’s The Client, which was far better than The Chamber in my opinion, but that’s neither here nor there.
As you can expect, Tempest, Dunbar and most of the UN insisted on eyeballing everything I sent but I’d still been able to stay on top of all the bullshit and structure the offer in such a way as to make it appealing to the boys. Basically, I’d told them that they weren’t going anywhere following X3’s banner. Believe me I knew. It was only going to end badly for them as it always did, but if they threw their lot in with us for once they’d reap the rewards. And not only that, they’d be helping out almost three dozen of their book club brethren who’d been swept under the world’s rug.
“And saving the lives of twenty-nine children,” Tempest reminded me.
“What?”
“I said, they’d also be saving the lives of the children as well remember? Which is the whole point of this exercise, surely.”
I blinked at Tempest a couple of times and thought about this one.
“Whatever.”
Our friends’ response came back within the hour.
“0600 hours. We’ll be expecting you.”
My fellow McCarthy residents hadn’t taken too much convincing either and one supersonic flight across the Atlantic later, we were refamiliarising ourselves with the tools of our trade on the Bataan under the contemptuous glare of a squad of SEALs.
“Fucking scum,” one of them spat.
They were obviously scorned at having been overlooked for this mission in favour of a bunch of dirty cons, but I told them they didn’t have to be that way.
“Lieutenant, if you’d like to go before us, please be my guest. There’ll be less bullets to threaten us with and we can always use your dead bodies for cover.”
“Hey, fuck you, dirt bag!” he replied, obviously a fellow of the Rip Dunbar school of deportment.
This jocular exchange would
have probably escalated had someone not shouted “Officer on deck!” causing all the SEALs to snap to attention like toy soldiers as Dunbar and Tempest entered the fray.
“Make a hole!” Dunbar barked, sliding down a metal ladder and barging through the middle of the SEALs as Tempest followed closely behind apologising. “Excuse me. Sorry, can I just get through. Thanks…” etc.
“Hey Rip, how’s it going?” Mr Woo beamed as he strode past.
“Don’t talk to me,” Dunbar hissed without breaking stride. Like us, Dunbar was togged up in his combats, but unlike us he’d obviously spent the last three hours in the armoury filling every available pocket with bullets and bombs. One unexpected pat on the back and he could take the whole ship down with him.
Tempest on the other hand, had opted for style over substance and was tarted up in Special Op blacks that fitted him so well he had to have had them especially tailored.
“Now listen up dick wads I’m gonna be watching all of you, so one step out of line and I’ll blow your asses away!” Dunbar threatened, waving his Heckler & Koch under all our noses and simultaneously stepping in as many faces as he could.
“Really?” Mr Smith replied, locking and loading his own MP5 and pointing it at Dunbar. “Then I’m afraid, Major, I’m going to have to do this.” Smith aimed the gun and pulled the trigger but nothing happened. He pulled it again, but the weapon just clicked. Dunbar flexed the muscles in his forehead as he glared at Mr Smith repeatedly clicking away on the trigger.
“You shouldn’t play with guns, it’s very dangerous,” Tempest calmly advised, stepping in to take the gun from Mr Smith before pointing it out through the open well dock. He squeezed the MP5’s trigger, but this time a burst of fire echoed around the deck as the submachine gun spat out 9mm rounds, ripping up the surf.
Dunbar continued to stare with homoerotic intensity but he did nothing. Mr Smith had just been larking around. Dunbar had been in no danger. See rather thoughtfully the US government had fixed the guns and vests with ID sensing microchips to prevent “blue-on-blue casualties” in the heat of battle. At least, that had been the official line. Really, they’d fixed them to stop us from shooting Tempest and Dunbar the first opportunity we got.
I didn’t know about blue-on-blue but by the way Dunbar was staring at Mr Smith, we were in danger of suffering a few man-on-man casualties before this day was out.
“Try me,” Dunbar finally invited.
Mr Smith just smiled and suggested they saved it for after the kids were safe. “After all, that’s why we’re all here, isn’t it, hey guys?” he shouted.
On cue, everyone laughed raucously and agreed that “of course that was the reason we were here” much to Tempest’s despair.
“The things I do for England,” he sighed to himself.
We raced across the surf, flying towards Île de Roc at sixty knots on a quartet of Navy hovercrafts. It was three minutes to 0600 hours and the tiny island appeared on the horizon, black like a lump of coal against a blood red dawn.
The execution party would be on its way to cash out the first kid. Time had run its course. For us. And for them.
There were ten of us on each craft, not counting the crew and SEALs manning the mounted guns. We’d planned to hit the southern and eastern slopes, taking our hovercrafts right up the rocky beaches to provide extra cover as we went in. This hadn’t been an option the Italians had had because they’d been trying the stealth approach whereas we didn’t care if X3 knew we were coming. It wasn’t important.
This was probably just as well because all of a sudden the skies above our heads ripped with a dozen F-16s. They hit the slopes with cluster bombs and cannon fire in an effort to knock out some of the defensive guns and I couldn’t help but marvel in awe at the sight of Île de Roc flickering and flashing in the distance beneath all that death.
I wondered if any of the anxious parents could see what was happening. If so, they’d probably be having kittens at all the firepower dropping on Île de Roc. But this was necessary to soften her up, small explosions to take out the surface guns. It was doubtful we were even knocking any pot plants off the telly down in X3’s inner sanctum, so their little bundles of precociousness would be safe from our bombs.
In fact, hopefully even safer than they’d been two minutes earlier, because if all had gone to plan, the execution party would have been taken down by our friends on the inside and the kids shoved out of harm’s way until the main force could reach them.
This was the optimum moment to hit Île de Roc. X3’s forces would be divided and his resolve fractured. But this window wouldn’t stay open for long. Not once X3 realised the moment had come to take off the gloves. We had to be quick.
“Thirty seconds,” the hovercraft’s pilot told us over the airwaves, a moment before the SEALs on either side of the ramp opened up with their .50 cals.
I wondered if it was possible for anything to survive all that we were throwing at it, but a curtain of tracer fire from the island assured me it was.
Just to my left Jack Tempest was smiling serenely.
“Nervous Jones?”
“Of what?” I asked, just as the steel ramp drawn up in front of us clattered with indents, courtesy of my peers on Île de Roc.
Tempest snorted.
“You know, you’re a queer fish, Jones,” he told me. “If we get through this thing, I might even buy you a drink.”
“Why? Are you a queer fish as well then?” I said. “Because I don’t swim that way mate, magnetic belt or not.”
Tempest didn’t have a chance to tell me he didn’t mean it like that because all at once we rose out of the sea and beached on solid rock. The ramp dropped in front of us and our moment had arrived.
After three long years of enforced retirement I was finally in the game again.
32.
OF CRADLES AND GRAVES
The rocks were hot, smoking even, from where the F-16s had been emptying their undercarriages but I canoodled the jagged basalt all the same as the sky above throbbed against tracer fire. I’d made it barely six yards before diving into an inviting blast hole to escape the hailstorm of flak. My feet cooked and my gloves started to smoke but at least I had a modicum of cover. And on this beach, that was going to attract a lot of towels this morning.
“Book Mark, Book Mark, this is Big Cat, do you copy, over?” my radio barked the moment our frequencies found each other.
“Big Cat, this is Book Mark. I read you,” I told our man on the inside. “What’s your situation, over?”
“Puppies are safe and I have five guns with me, but…” the transmission broke off with a crackle, although it wasn’t a crackle of radio static but a crackle of gunfire.
“Big Cat, do you copy, over?” I asked before the response came back once more.
“… I repeat, puppies are safe and five guns with me but we’re being hit hard, over,” Big Cat said, explosions and screams echoing over the airwaves to mirror the explosions and screams echoing all around me on the beach.
“Big Cat! Big Cat, can you hold out?” I had to ask several times before Big Cat responded.
“Ten minutes but no longer.” A raking hiss almost popped the earpiece from my ear as Big Cat roared at someone to “Take that you bastard!” before leaving me with a word of advice. “Don’t stop to read nothing, over.”
“Understood,” I promised him, twisting the dial to dim the fighting in my ear just as the lip of our crater began exploding with ricochets.
At that moment, Mr Smith and Mr Capone tumbled in on top of me, knocking me against the sides of the smoking hole I was crouching in.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Mr Smith asked, helping me to my feet again.
“Fantastic. You?”
“Pretty sweet,” he agreed.
“Is this it?” Mr Capone wanted to know, rock chips spitting in our faces as the ridge of our crater was raked.
The three of us had been on the easternmost hovercraft to beach, maybe thirty yards fr
om the next nearest craft, but we were pinned-down by a suppressing force of fire from three separate gun positions. I had hoped more guns might have been knocked out by the time we came ashore. But then again, I had also hoped that Harry Potter might have been knocked out of book club by the time we came to commemorate our fifth anniversary but that didn’t look like happening either.
I guess bad things sometimes happen to bad people.
“I see the guns are still firing?” Mr Smith pointed out as more splinters peppered our necks.
“Yeah, I thought this was going to be a cake-walk?” complained Mr Capone.
“When has anything we’ve been involved in ever been a cake-walk?” I asked. “Fuck me, if we were to organise an actual cake-walk, to pick up cakes as we walked, we’d still lose three men along the way. You should know that by now.”
“So how do you wanna play this?” Mr Smith asked. “We can’t sit here all day.”
“No we can’t,” I agreed, mindful of the hell raging several storeys below us. “Let’s see if some of this kit Dunbar gave us actually works,” I said, slipping the backpack off my shoulder and pulling out one of my flying frags.
As you’d expect, the UN had kitted us out with some of the best weapons available. And then the US had taken us to one side and kitted us out with some of the best weapons not available. The flying frag had been one such under-the-counter item.
I pulled out the pin to arm the grenade and tossed it into the air just above our position. When the frag reached the peak of its throw, two tiny blades popped out of either side and began buzzing like bumblebee wings to hold it in mid-air.
Mr Smith pressed a couple of buttons on a tiny accompanying handset and a picture appeared on-screen of the landscape around our blast hole. Some hundred yards north we could see tracer fire pouring out of a gun slot, only to explode around our hole a nanosecond later. Mr Smith used a joystick to steer the frag to the right, away from the stream of fire and across the terrain until he’d taken it to within a few yards of one of the guns. In the little screen, we saw the faces of the two-man gunnery team, grim and determined as they unleashed a storm across our position.