by Zoe Sharp
I took a stool where I had a good view, not just of the screen but the rest of the room as well, and shook my head when the barman asked what he could get me.
“I’ll stick to coffee,” I said, indicating my cup. The painkillers I was taking made my approach to alcohol still cautious.
In the mirror, I saw Cadillac man saunter in and take up station further along the bar. As he passed, he glanced at my back a couple of times as if sizing me up, with all the finesse of a hard-bitten hill farmer checking out a promising young ewe. I kept my attention firmly on the motorcycle racing.
After a minute or so of waiting for me to look over so he could launch into seductive dialogue, he signalled the barman. I ignored their muttered conversation until a snifter of brandy was put down in front of me with a solemn flourish.
I did look over then, received a smug salute from Cadillac man’s own glass. I smiled – at the barman. “I’m sorry,” I said to him. “But I’m teetotal at the moment.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the barman said with a twinkle, and whisked the offending glass away again.
“Hey, that’s my kind of girl,” Cadillac man called over, when the barman relayed the message. Surprise made me glance at him and he took that as invitation to slide three stools closer, so only one separated us. His hot little piggy eyes fingered their way over my body. “Beautiful and cheap to keep, huh?”
“Good coffee’s thirty bucks a pound,” I said, voice as neutral as I could manage.
His gaze cast about for another subject. “You not bored with this?” he asked, jerking his head at the TV. “I could get him to switch channels.”
I allowed a tight smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Neil Hodgson’s just lapped Daytona in under one-minute thirty-eight,” I said. “How could I be bored?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dwayne’s head lift and turn as the sound of Cadillac man’s voice finally penetrated. It was like watching a slow-waking bear.
“So, honey, if I can’t buy you a drink,” Cadillac man said with his most sophisticated leer, “can I buy you breakfast?”
I flicked my eyes towards the barman in the universal distress signal. By the promptness of his arrival, he’d been expecting my call.
“Is this guy bothering you?” he asked, flexing his muscles.
“Yes,” I said cheerfully. “He is.”
“Sir, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”
Cadillac man gaped between us for a moment, then flounced out, muttering what sounded like “frigid bitch” under his breath.
After very little delay, Dwayne staggered to his feet and went determinedly after him.
Without haste, I finished my coffee. The racing reached an ad break. I checked my watch, left a tip, and headed back out into the mild evening air towards my chalet. My left leg ached equally from the day’s activity and the evening’s rest.
I heard the raised voices before I saw them in the gathering gloom, caught the familiar echoing smack of bone on muscle.
Dwayne had run his quarry to ground in the space between the soft-top Cadillac and my Buell, and was venting his alcohol-fuelled anger in traditional style, with his fists. Judging by the state of him, Cadillac man was only lethal behind the wheel of a car.
On his knees, one eye already closing, he caught sight of me and yelled, “Help, for Chrissake!”
I unlocked the door to my chalet, crossed to the phone by the bed.
“Your maintenance man is beating seven bells out of one of your guests down here,” I said sedately, when front desk answered. “You might want to send someone.”
Outside again, Cadillac man was going down for the third time, nose streaming blood. I noted with alarm that he’d dropped seriously close to my sparkling new Buell.
I started forwards, just as Dwayne loosed a mighty roundhouse that glanced off Cadillac man’s cheekbone and deflected into the Buell’s left-hand mirror. The bike swayed perilously on its stand and I heard the musical note of splintered glass dropping.
“Hey!” I shouted.
Dwayne glanced up and instantly dismissed me as a threat, moved in for the kill.
OK. Now I’m pissed off.
Heedless of my bad leg, I reached them in three fast strides and stamped down onto the outside of Dwayne’s right knee, hearing the cartilage and the anterior cruciate ligament pop as the joint dislocated. Regardless of how much muscle you’re carrying, the knee is always vulnerable.
Dwayne crashed, bellowing, but was too drunk or too stupid to know it was all over. He swung for me. I reached under my jacket and took the SIG 9mm off my hip and pointed it at him, so the muzzle loomed large near the bridge of his nose.
“Don’t,” I murmured.
And that was how, a few moments later, we were found by Tanya, and the woman from reception, and the barman.
***
“You a cop?” Cadillac man asked, voice thick because of the stuffed nose.
“No,” I said. “I work in close protection. I’m a bodyguard.”
He absorbed that in puzzled silence. We were back in the bar until the police arrived. Out in the lobby I could hear Dwayne still shouting at the pain, and Tanya shouting at what she thought of his stupid jealous temper. He was having a thoroughly bad night.
“A bodyguard,” Cadillac man mumbled blankly. “So why the fuck did you let him beat the crap out of me back there?”
“Because you deserved it,” I said, rubbing my leg and wishing I’d gone for my Vicodin before I’d broken up the fight. “I thought it would be a valuable life lesson – thou shalt not be a total dickhead.”
“Jesus, honey! And all the time, you had a gun? I can’t believe you just let him—”
I sighed. “What do you do?”
“Do?”
“Yeah. For a living.”
He shrugged gingerly, as much as the cracked ribs would let him. “I sell Cadillacs,” he said. “The finest motorcar money can buy.”
“Spare me,” I said. “So, if you saw a guy broken down by the side of the road, you’d just stop and give him a car, would you?”
“Well,” Cadillac man said, frowning, “I guess, if he was a pal—”
“What if he was a complete stranger who’d behaved like a prat from the moment you set eyes on him?” I queried. He didn’t answer. I stood, flipped my jacket to make sure it covered the gun. “I don’t expect you to work for free. Don’t expect me to, either.”
His glance was sickly cynical. “Some bodyguard, huh?”
“Yeah, well,” I tossed back, thinking of the Buell with its smashed mirror and wondering who was in for seven years of bad luck. “I’m off duty.”
Truth And Lies
This is a brand new story, written especially for inclusion in this e-anthology (e-thology?) of Charlie Fox stories – FOX FIVE. As such, it’s longer and more detailed than the others – I had no word-counts to restrict me, so I could let Charlie’s character have free rein.
I have been deliberately non-specific about the precise location of this tale. It’s nowhere and everywhere, both at the same time. There was so much trouble going on, and so many news teams reporting from civil war zones or other areas of conflict that I wanted to write something that was pertinent to them all. I hope I’ve succeeded.
In this story, Charlie is working as a full-fledged bodyguard for Parker Armstrong’s prestigious New York City agency. She is part of a three-man team sent to escort a news reporter, Alison Cranmore, and her cameraman, Nils, out of a beleaguered country on the brink of civil war.
However, things start to go bad very fast and, as the regime begins to disintegrate, it is up to Charlie, with the help of a local fixer, to work out a plan that will get her principals safely across the border.
It comes at a price.
As long as they didn’t strip-search me at the airport, I knew I’d be OK. Not that I was trying to bring in anything suspicious, never mind illegal. The government security forces were jumpy enough without giving them mor
e of an excuse to imprison or expel yet another foreigner.
But I was attempting to enter the country as a harmless civilian, and I knew if I was forced to undress there was no way anyone could misinterpret my scars. Old knife and bullet wounds are hard to disguise, especially from people who are experts at inflicting them. To me they were a physical reminder of past mistakes – lessons painfully learned and not forgotten.
Three of us had set off from New York twenty-four hours earlier. A rush job – emergency evac. Some news team who’d got in deeper and stayed in longer than was good for them and suddenly needed out. Now. Probably a month after common sense should have told them to leave.
I’d seen it happen before to those exposed to long-term danger. A gradual dulling of the natural flight response until a fifty-fifty chance of living or dying on the job seemed like workable odds.
I had some sympathy with that. Before the evac team left, we’d been briefed by experts on the current political situation here. When they’d told us our chances of survival were not much better, we’d shrugged and carried on packing.
We travelled separately, via half a dozen different neutral countries. I’d dressed with authority rather than intimidation in mind, safely dowdy, and careful to avoid any kind of contact – eye or otherwise – that might have aroused attention. I’d also reverted to my British passport – the one without the Israeli stamps. But in the end I think the success of my infiltration was down to good old-fashioned chauvinism.
The soldiers who’d taken over the immigration process, with casually slung AKs and obligatory dark glasses, simply did not believe that a woman travelling alone posed any significant threat.
Maybe they were right.
They let me pass with a grubby fondle through my belongings that was cursory at best. Still, as I walked out of the building I was half-expecting the shouted order to stop, to drop to my knees. It was not only the blistering heat of late afternoon which caused the sweat to pool between my shoulder blades.
I ignored the garrulous taxi drivers who pushed and shoved for my notice by the kerb, knew they were weighing up my worth both as a fare and a potential hostage in equal measure. And I kept a firm grip on my bag, even though I was intending to dump it anyway. For now it was valuable camouflage.
A piercing whistle momentarily silenced the drivers. A man sailed through the crowd towards me, dressed in the local flowing robes. He might once have been handsome, until a large sharp blade – probably a machete – had bisected his face on a ragged diagonal from temple to jaw, destroying the line of his nose and his left eye in the process, and giving him a permanent lop-sided grimace.
The others fell away at the sight of his ruined features. He seemed almost to revel in their revulsion.
“I am Zaki – Zak, yes?” he announced, as if I might not recognise him from appearance alone. “We go please, yes?”
“We go,” I agreed, and followed him to a dusty Toyota not so much parked as abandoned on the far side of the road. I climbed into the back seat – a pale-haired woman sitting up front beside a local man would have had us pulled over within minutes.
Zak cranked the engine and shot out into traffic without troubling his mirrors. A dented Mercedes, old enough to be a classic, fell into step behind us. The two men in the front seats were wearing dark glasses and identical moustaches. Security forces. Following foreigners was considered something of a national sport.
“Did my . . . friends arrive yet?” I asked.
Zak shifted in his seat so he could let his good eye roam over me while he drove seemingly more from memory than observation. He shook his head, regretful.
“They did not make it.”
All kinds of nasty scenarios flitted through my mind. “Didn’t make it how, exactly?”
He shrugged, a gesture that involved both hands as well as shoulders. “They were arrested,” he said simply. “It was not to be, yes?”
Shit. So I’m on my own.
“Will they be OK?”
Another shrug. “A few nights in jail. A few bruises, broken bones. Nothing serious. Then they are put on next flight home.” The grin broadened. “My government, it does not like mercenaries, yes?”
“We’re not mercenaries,” I murmured automatically. “We’re bodyguards.”
Zak’s roaming eye lifted to my face for the first time. “You fight and die for money, yes?” he said. “What is difference?”
***
The Hotel Royale had once boasted an elegant ambience, a blend of western decadence and eastern mystery. It was now a pockmarked survivor with faded paint and barred windows all along the ground floor. The management had placed a number of large concrete blocks outside, making it hard for anyone to take a run at the lobby with a truckful of explosives. A strategy born of experience.
Zak pulled up as close to the entrance as the concrete landscaping would allow. The government watchers in the dented Mercedes hung around long enough to see us get out, then U-turned in the road and headed back for the airport. It was reassuring to know they weren’t taking their duties too seriously.
I had a handful of folded dollars ready to pay Zak for the trip – removed discreetly from the money belt around my waist in one of the brief periods when his focus had actually been on the road. He might be my contact here, a man to be trusted – but only to a point. It would not be wise to put undue temptation his way.
As it was, he waited expectantly while I shouldered my bag. I paused a beat, then said, “Could I have my other bag, please? I believe you put it in the trunk.”
Zak beamed, as if he’d been testing me and could not be more delighted that I’d passed. He opened the Toyota’s boot and lifted out a small holdall I’d never seen before. He’d been given careful instructions about what was needed, and I hoped he’d been able to get everything on the list. After all, I could hardly check it right there in the open. Still, it felt reassuringly heavy.
I palmed him the cash and he slammed the boot lid. The sun was almost down and the city would soon be in curfew. A scruffy kid slithered over and tried to con me with a fake bellboy act, gesticulating angrily when I refused to cooperate.
Zak took a step towards him, raising his arms like a bogey man as his face caught the light. The kid ran. Zak laughed, but there was something hard and bitter behind it.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning – as soon as you can get through,” I said. “We’re counting on you.”
Zak beamed. “Honour is mine, thank you, yes,” he said, sketching a small bow.
He jumped into the Toyota and roared away, for all the world like a man who really did think himself honoured, instead of being involved in a crazy suicidal rescue scheme that was already two-thirds down on manpower.
***
If I’d had nerves about the security of the Hotel Royale, they were settled as soon as I entered the lobby area. The occupants of the shabby chic room were three-quarter female and clearly of a professional bent. But if the local hookers felt safe enough to ply their trade here, the chances are it would be OK for the rest of us. For one night, at least.
I signed in under a false name and slipped the manager a hundred when he asked for my passport.
“Thank you, madame,” he said with a flash of teeth as the note disappeared into his sleeve. “That seems to be in order.”
He offered me a room on the ground floor, which I bullied him to change to the third. High enough to make anyone breaking in work for it, but not so high I’d die before jumping if there was a fire. I took the stairs, pausing on each landing to listen for footsteps behind me. There were none.
Safe in my room, I checked the locks and turned on the radio to a raucous local station before finally unzipping the holdall Zak had given me. Inside, as per his instructions, was an assortment of useful items including old clothing, a thin paper map of the city, compass, field medical kit, duct tape, survival knife with a 20cm blade, and an old Sterling Sub-Machine Gun with a spare magazine and two boxes of 9mm rounds. A
ll essentials I dare not risk trying to carry through the airport. Never mind the gun – just having the map and the compass was likely to get me condemned as a spy.
I stripped the Sterling and reassembled it. It had a folding stock that made it short enough to deploy inside a vehicle, but gave the shooter some stability for more distant targets. A long time ago I’d trained on just such a weapon, back when the SMG was standard issue to all members of the Women’s Royal Army Corps. When I started my Special Forces training we’d moved on to more sophisticated armament, but sometimes simplicity was best.