by Andy Maslen
The man on Gabriel’s side stood back a couple of feet from the driver’s door and shouted. Gabriel didn’t need a translator for this short speech.
“Hundred dollar! You pay now!” He glanced at Gabriel’s left wrist. “Watch, too!”
On the other side, the second man was peering in at Eli. He hadn’t seen the M16. Yet.
23
Iced
Gabriel uncrossed his arms and stretched them out as if crucified. But the pain coming was all for the two gangsters. Two double-taps to the head put each man on the ground, blood and brain matter spraying out from their shattered skulls.
Leaving the smoking pistols on his seat, Gabriel jumped out of the cab, catching a slight fluttering of Eli’s eyelids as he did. He rolled the man on his side into the ditch, then skirted the front of the truck to grab hold of the second man’s wrists and drag the body round to join his friend in the stagnant green water. He grabbed the AKs and placed them in the truck bed under a tarpaulin then ran to the gangsters’ truck. The idiots had left the key in the ignition. Not used to resistance, Gabriel thought as he swung himself up into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
He spun the steering wheel onto full lock and threw the truck backwards towards the banana palm. On contact, he pushed the transmission in Drive and slewed the truck round, narrowly avoiding dropping the front wheel into the ditch, before driving past his own truck and then pulling off the tarmac and nosing the truck into the underbrush.
He climbed down and ran back to the Ranger. Eli was awake. Her eyes were unfocused though and when he placed the back of his hand to her forehead he could feel the fever burning right out of her skin. He tried to give her some water but the liquid just ran out of her mouth and over her chin.
Nothing for it but to floor the throttle and hope he reached the guest house in time to save her.
Twenty minutes later, Gabriel pulled off the road and onto the rough, stony track that led to the guest house. In front of the two-storey white building two children were playing. They spoke English well enough to hold a conversation, he’d discovered, so he jumped down and ran to them.
“We need a doctor. It is very urgent. Important. Where are your mummy and daddy?”
The little girl straightened. His tone must have impressed her because there was no giggling or sidelong glances at her brother.
“Mummy is inside. I go tell her you need doctor. She telephone Siem Reap.”
“OK, good. Good girl. Thank you. Ah-koon .”
She clasped her palms together in front of her nose in a hurried sampeah and then ran inside.
Gabriel returned to the truck and wrenched the passenger door open. Eli had passed out again. He slid his hands under her thighs and around her back before taking a firm grip and lifting her out of the seat. The M16 toppled sideways and for a moment he worried about the children seeing it, but then dismissed the thought. He swung Eli clear and booted the door shut. With sweat streaming down his face and the inside of his shirt, he carried her up the five wooden steps to the front door, which the little girl had left open and into the mercifully cool interior.
Eli’s bedroom was on the ground floor, along a narrow hallway. Reaching the room he bent his knees until he could turn the brass knob and nudge the door open. Finally, he reached the double bed, made up with crisp, white linen as beautifully as any upmarket hotel, and laid Eli on her back.
He racked his brains trying to remember what he’d been taught about infections and fever. Cool the patient, in an ice bath if necessary . He snorted at the thought. “Ice! Yeah, right!” he said out loud. Then he gasped as he thought of an answer. The battered red ice cream freezer on the roadside, connected to the house by a snaking blue cable. Jorani, the lady of the house, sold coconuts and cans of Angkor, Coca Cola and Sprite to passing motorists He dashed out of the room, almost colliding with her.
“I called the doctor. He says one hour. Is it Eli?”
“Yes. Her knee is badly infected. She has a fever. We need ice. The freezer?”
Her face, full of concern, lit up with a smile.
“Jah ! Yes. Lot of ice. Take laundry basket. You fill it!”
Each guest room was supplied with a rattan laundry basket like something from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Big enough for a child to hide inside. As Gabriel and Eli had discovered, laughing, when the owners’ four-year-old son had popped up just as they were about to make love under the spinning fan. Gabriel grabbed it, emptied the laundry onto the floor and ran for the front door.
At the roadside, he lifted the dented lid of the freezer, pushed the coconuts and drinks to one side and starting grabbing double handfuls of ice and dumping them into the basket. He was torn between wanting to race back to Eli and staying to collect as much ice as possible. In the end, he compromised. Once he’d half-emptied the freezer, he grabbed the basket by its woven handles and ran back to the house. He stumbled over a discarded length of bamboo scaffold pole left by a careless builder and almost lost his grip on the basket.
Recovering his balance, and keeping up a stream of inventive cursing that his old Regimental Sergeant Major would have approved of, he reached the steps, took them in two strides and was inside the house.
Jorani was sitting on the edge of the bed, pressing a wet flannel against Eli’s forehead. She looked up as Gabriel entered the room.
“Eli, she is very hot. ”
“I know. We need to make her cold with the ice. Help me undress her.”
Together they eased Eli out of her clothes. Gabriel used the Böker to cut her trousers off her to avoid harming her injured leg. He sighed when he saw the skin above her knee. It was red and cracked, weeping clear fluid from several fissures.
“Oh, Jesus, Eli. I’m sorry. Hold on. The doc’s coming.”
Leaving her bra and knickers in place, Gabriel and Jorani laid the laundry basket to Eli’s left and gently tipped it up until the ice tumbled out onto the bed with a clicking that would have signalled the cocktail hour in more civilised times. They dragged it around Eli’s ribs, neck and head, and scooped handfuls onto her chest. Gabriel fetched a hand towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around a couple of handfuls of ice, then returned to the bathroom to run the improvised cold pack under the tap. This he placed over Eli’s forehead, telling Jorani to hold it in place.
“Can you stay with her, please?” Gabriel asked. “I need to do something with the truck.”
Jorani nodded vigorously.
“Yes, of course. Go. I stay with Eli.”
24
Army Man
Gabriel left the room and went back to the Ranger. The two children had resumed their game at the foot of the steps. Relieved that he wouldn’t have to explain to their parents what they were doing playing with a fully automatic assault rifle, Gabriel collected the M16, the Sig and the Makarovs and walked back inside with the mini-armoury clutched to his chest. Now the children did look up.
“You have lot guns,” the boy said, his dark-brown eyes wide. “You army man?”
Gabriel smiled.
“Sort of. British army man. I took these from bad men.”
The boy smiled back.
“You very brave man.”
Inside his bedroom, Gabriel stacked the weapons inside the wardrobe and turned the little brass key before pocketing it. The flimsy lock wouldn’t keep a determined thief out, or even a determined child, but he was counting on the absence of a key deterring the owners’ children from investigating further. Then he left and knocked gently on the next door along the corridor before entering Eli’s room .
“How’s she doing” he asked, sitting next to Jorani and looking down at Eli.
“I’m not sure. She breathing better. Head not so hot. But she won’t wake up.”
As if to prove her point, Jorani patted Eli’s left cheek lightly and crooned to her.
“Eliii, Eliii, waaake up, waaake up.”
The ice was melting and soaking into the bedlinen. If anything it would h
elp keep her cool, Gabriel thought. He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the lips. And his heart leapt as she returned the pressure, just a little.
“Eli, can you hear me?” he asked, squeezing her hand.
Her lips parted with a tiny clic .
“Do you always kiss girls when they’re unconscious?”
“Only when they’re as beautiful as you are.”
“Charmer!”
Her eyelids fluttered open. She focused on Gabriel.
“A beer would be nice,” she said.
“Maybe later. How about some water?”
“OK. Water. Then beer.”
He fetched a glass from the bathroom and filled it from a litre bottle of Eau Kulen on the night stand. Eli drank greedily this time, runnels of water trickling from the sides of her mouth and onto her chest.
Inwardly, Gabriel was rejoicing. The fever was down. She was going to be all right.
25
Two Sugars, One Cyanide
Later, after the doctor had visited, Gabriel and Eli were sitting on the stilted verandah at the rear of the house. It had been built on the side of a hill, so beneath them was thirty feet of clear air. Gabriel was wearing shorts and another Hawaiian shirt, Eli a grey marl vest-top and a turquoise sarong. She’d washed down the tablets he’d given her with water, as instructed. But as soon as his dusty Toyota Camry had turned out of the track and back towards Siem Reap, she’d demanded a beer from Gabriel.
“In fact, bring me two,” she’d said, grinning.
Her right leg was propped up on a pink silk cushion on a rattan stool. She’d opened the sarong to her groin so her freshly bandaged knee and cream-smeared thigh were uncovered.
“How are you feeling?” Gabriel asked, after taking a pull on his second beer.
“Not bad, all things considered. The knee still hurts but it’s manageable, and I don’t know what was in that gunk he put on my burns but they hardly hurt at all.”
“Probably some kind of herbal salve. He said they use what the local people have always used, alongside modern medicine.”
“Well, he should be selling it all over. He’d make a fortune.” Then she frowned. “Never mind Doctor Phan’s Amazing Elixir, what the fuck are we going to do about Win Yah?”
“I was thinking about that on the drive back. We can’t risk another ground attack. He’ll be expecting it. I’m going to call Don. If he can scare up a plane, I’m going to drop in on Mister Yah from a great height.”
* * *
In his office at the army base in Essex, MOD Rothford, Don Webster was staring at a large sheet of paper. Its contents were so dispiriting he was on the point of heading off early for a pre-dinner gin and tonic. Or two. The printed-out spreadsheet in front of him was a patchwork of rectangles highlighted in neon shades of magenta, acid yellow and what he had come to think of as “arrow-poison-frog blue”. The screen of his laptop, which was open but pushed to one side, was filled with a document titled, in bold, scarlet, capital letters:
DRAFT REVISED OPERATIONAL PROTOCOLS (FINANCIAL DISBURSEMENTS TO OPERATORS OVERSEAS) – VERSION 17.9
Don leaned back and scrubbed at his closed eyes with his fists.
“Jesus wept! How did I get from commanding 22 SAS to this?” he moaned. Then, louder, “Monica!”
A few seconds later, a woman in her midfifties, elegantly dressed in a dusty pink trouser suit and high-heeled black court shoes stuck her head round his door.
“Yes, Don?”
“Would you pop over to the Armoury and fetch me a Glock 17? Make sure it’s loaded, please.”
She smiled.
“Hollow-points OK?”
“That would be perfect.”
“Going to blow your brains out again? ”
“It’s these infernal memos from finance, or accounting, or operational directorate six-bloody-teen or whatever they call themselves these days. I don’t know, Monica. Can’t I just run The Department and hire someone to do,” he jabbed his forefinger at the screen, making it tremble on its hinge, “all this?”
“With great power comes –”
“If you say ‘great responsibility’ I’ll shoot myself and then you!”
His PA, used to his theatrical outbursts whenever admin threatened to take over his life, smiled at his joke.
“I think the Armoury’s closed for the day. How about a nice cup of tea?”
“Fine. Two sugars, please. And one cyanide.”
Monica withdrew and Don forced himself to concentrate on the Word document on the laptop. It was no use. The text was written in a mixture of civil service waffle and sub-military jargon. Since The Department had been overseen by the Privy Council, the number of meetings, memos, reports and the dreaded protocols had multiplied exponentially. His encrypted work phone rang. Thanking whichever God looked after solid combat troops who through no fault of their own had been promoted high into senior management, he looked at the screen. And smiled.
“Hello, Old Sport. I was beginning to think you’d forsaken us. What news on Operation Creek?”
“Not so good, boss. Target’s still alive. Eli was captured. She’s free now and we killed three enemy but she’s hurt. Infected knee wound from a landmine. I need to take the lead on this one and go back to finish the job.”
Don switched instantly into ops mode. His favourite.
“Right, Save the debrief for when you’re back. I assume Eli’s OK?”
“She’s fine. She’s seen a doctor and her fever’s down. He gave her some weapons-grade antibiotics and stitched her up. But she’s not really mobile.”
“Good. What’s the plan?”
“HALO. I need a ride and a chute. ”
“High Altitude, Low Opening, eh? I seem to remember that was always your favourite jump. That all? Any more firepower?”
“Nope. We’re good.”
“Leave it with me. I’ll make a couple of calls that’ll let you bypass security. I’ll let you know the wheres and whens once we have the plane sorted.”
26
National Carrier
Gabriel’s phone rang at ten that same evening. He calculated the time difference: 4.00 p.m. in England.
“Hi, boss. Got me a ride?”
“I tried the Thais, but they’re in the middle of a big war games exercise – all their aircraft are committed. However, our friends at British Airways came through, just like they used to. Remember?”
Gabriel had a flash of memory. He and three other SAS men jumping from a modified BA cargo plane – a Boeing 707 – over Helmand Province in Afghanistan at 25,000 feet. Shooting towards the desert like bombs. It was a part of the job he always loved. That sense of freedom, speed and purpose.
“How could I forget? Though I never did get my Air Miles.”
“Very droll. You need to be at Siem Reap airport tomorrow at 11.00 a.m. There’s a fruit stand about half a mile from the perimeter. Stop there and offload your weapons. The chap manning the stand’s one of ours. He’ll see your kit gets onto the plane. He’ll say, ‘do you like local-grown mangoes?’ You answer, ‘Only if they taste of coconut’. Oh, and try the rice in the bamboo tubes. It’s rather delicious. Once you arrive, go to the BA desk and introduce yourself as Mark Light.”
In the morning, after having an early breakfast with Eli and telling her to stay in bed, or at the very least to take it easy, Gabriel climbed into the Ranger and headed back towards Siem Reap. Once again, he’d dressed in his tourist disguise of shorts and another loud Hawaiian shirt. This one featured palm trees and parrots.
A leather weekend bag on the passenger seat held a set of camouflage fatigues and a pair of sturdy, sand-coloured combat boots. The weapons, zipped into a canvas kitbag, were in the truckbed under a tarp.
Before leaving, he’d placed a hand gently on Eli’s shoulder and looked into those grey-green eyes.
“You OK?”
“I’m fine,” she said, smiling. “Jorani told me she used to be a nurse in Phnom Penh. Then she and Borey bo
ught this place and she quit. My only worry is she’ll kill me with kindness before you get back. How about you? You ready?”
“Uh-huh. Drop the guns at the fruit stand, go to the BA desk. Pick up my escort. Go to the plane. Jump out of the plane. Find Win Yah. Kill Win Yah. Exfil. Extract.”
Eli grinned.
“Easy as falling off a log.”
“Or stepping on a mine.”
27
Departure Lounge
Two hours later, Gabriel drew up on the side of the road in front of a ramshackle arrangement of trestle tables, umbrellas, plastic chairs and children’s toys. Forty feet back from the road, a shack constructed from rough planks and sheets of corrugated iron was all but obscured by palm trees and ferns. Beside it, a white Toyota Corolla was parked under a tarpaulin.
The trestle tables were groaning with mangoes, green coconuts, watermelons and apples. To one side, thick pieces of rice-filled bamboo were grilling over a charcoal fire. To the other, a shiny red moped was parked under an umbrella tied to a length of bamboo cane. A little boy, maybe three or four was playing with a bucket of water round the back of the stand, flicking spoonfuls at a scruffy, yellowish mongrel with swollen teats.
“Sus’aday, sok sa bai ?” Gabriel said. Hi. How are you?
The little boy’s eyes opened wide and then he giggled.
“Hello! Hello!” he said.
A movement from the shack caught Gabriel’s eye.
A lean man of maybe twenty-nine or thirty ambled out from the doorway and along the path towards Gabriel. He wore loose cotton pyjamas of yellow cotton that gave him an innocent look .
“Do you like local-grown mangoes?” he asked, pointing at a wooden tray of yellow-green fruit that were emitting an intense perfume.