by Ray Banks
You lie, fight, and die for that faith—that perfect promise that global "win or lose" comes down to your decisions.
Then you get old. You watch Al Jazeera English and eat the same Stouffer’s meals you did when you were a kid. You listen to your West Palm Beach condo association argue the same way you listened to Hamas and the PLO leadership argue. You read The New York Times, and the religious hatreds are the same—only the names have changed.
You watch the YouTube generation grow up, enlist, and die by the same roadside bombs.
And you realize:
The world’s turning doesn’t change. All the faith there is can’t change that, no more than faith could make the world flat.
Your decisions have only one effect: life or death.
You kill someone or you don’t. You get killed or you don’t.
You take two fistfuls of the Ativan prescribed under your CIA health care plan and wash it down with a fifth of absinthe. Or you keep turning the pages, reading on through the chapters of your life, even through the story never gets different.
I miss Beirut sometimes. I was Jason Malone then.
Malone knew what he was doing. He was changing the world, one choice at a time.
It was Beirut, 1987.
It may as well have been 2007. Or 1967. Or 7,000 years ago. Beirut doesn’t change much.
Sure, the language on the signs goes from Phoenician to Latin to Arabic to French. And yeah, the roasting meats now turn upright and run on electricity. It’s Christians against Muslims against Jews now.
But in 1500 BC, it was Egyptian Ra-worshippers against Hittite storm-god followers. The aroma of meat roasting on a spit still slathered the air. The language—the first record of Egyptian and Hittite language together; the Amarna letters—was still discussing war.
I was sent to stop a war. The conflict between Druze Christian militia, Israeli hawks and dozens of Islamic extremist groups was on the brink of boiling over. A peacemaker, David Saxon, on a secret mission for the CIA, had been captured.
Nobody knew by who. Or why. Or to what end.
But my handler at the Company knew that if the captors got David Saxon to talk, it would all end badly.
Fingers would be pointed just to prove nobody was backing down. Israel, the Druze Christian militia of Beirut, the Muslim extremists—all would blame each other of trying to mess up the conflict.
I had to find David Saxon before those names got out. I’d save him or kill him, before whole nations had an excuse for epic bloodshed.
Right out the gate to Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, I should have known someone would have to bleed.
Right out the gate, someone took a shot at me.
I allow myself just one drink these nights.
I swirl the ice in the glass and watch it melt, as ice is wont to do. The waves roll in, roll out, and I think.
I think on the inevitability of these things.
I checked into my hotel in Beirut and went to meet an arms dealer, Hammadi. It was part of my cover: I would act as if I had something to offer Hammadi’s clients on all sides of the conflict. They, in turn, could hopefully give me a lead on David Saxon’s whereabouts.
After I checked in, I checked if I had someone on my tail.
If I hadn’t watched my back, I’d have never met the Israeli agent. For all I know, he could have been killed by the Brotherhood of the Green Flag—the Muslim fundamentalists whose compound I went on to find David Saxon at.
If the agent had died, I’d have hooked up with the Green Flag directly instead. I’d have been led into an ambush. I’d have had to fight my way into their compound rather than have Israeli intelligence parachute me into it.
If I’d been ambushed, I could have shot my way out. If the Israeli followed me undetected that night, maybe he’d have killed me.
It all comes down to who took a bullet first.
They named me "Sniper" at the Company because I shot and hit first. If I hadn’t, my name would have ended up as ash in a Langley burn barrel.
But I lived, and so did Israeli intelligence agent Aaron Ben-David. The KGB-connected Green Flag thug who tried to lead me to an unmarked grave, Omar, he died.
And David Saxon lived. I shot my way through a West Beirut militia ambush. I could have shot my way out of an East Beirut Israeli ambush. I broke into the Green Flag’s compound, grabbed Saxon and shot my way out of there too.
Life or death, that’s the only difference. The men trying to kill me were killed first.
Life or death, that’s all that mattered. I lived. David Saxon lived. His peace deal lived.
And in the end, it didn’t matter at all.
At the West Palm Beach condo neighborhood meetings, they call me That Shithead.
I earn it. I argue every proposal. When some blue-hair in a Chanel pantsuit raises a voice of opposition against them and looks to be winning her point, well, I argue against her too.
The men who called me Malone in Beirut are all dead or retired. Either way, the people we were are gone from the Earth.
At Senior Speed Dating, the ladies call me Mr. Mystery.
They do it with a wink or a coy downward look. I look like I keep my secrets and they pick up on that. I use that secretive air to pick them up.
Truth is, I could care less about my secrets. The bearded men and boys in keffiyeh who died to keep those secrets, died to protect a policy that is three generations outdated.
At the Company, they still call me Sniper.
I go to the reunions in Annapolis every five years with all the other code names. There’s always less hair and more skin cancer, but the suits never change. And we drink designer beers and shoot the BBQ-laced breeze about black ops, just like former football stars turned car salesmen would talk about their big plays and how they got laid because of them.
Only, people got laid out in morgues, rather than laid. People who we used to know, who no longer are.
The Middle East still is, and still is at war.
In the valley outside Beirut, Goliaths and Davids still do battle.
In Beirut, Israeli intelligence and Druze militias and Muslim extremists still play the game, only the names have changed.
Their faith continues, but mine’s gone.
Beirut was blown up three times, but it’s still here. America is still here and it is still at war in lands where only the language on the signs change.
I keep turning the pages, but the story is never any different—only the adventure is gone.
Matthew C. Funk is an editor of Needle Magazine, editor of the Genre section of the critically acclaimed zine, FictionDaily, and a staff writer for Planet Fury and Criminal Complex. Winner of the 2010 Spinetingler Award for Best Short Story on the Web, Funk has online work indexed on his Web domain and printed work in Needle, Speedloader, Off the Record, Pulp Ink and D*CKED.
BASTARD MERCENARY: Operation Scorpion Sting
By Arch Saxon
(discovered by Andrew Nette)
Arch Saxon’s Bastard Mercenary series, a mainstay of the Australian men’s adventure publisher Nasho Books Ltd., has had a bit of revival recently; a film version is in development. Whether or not the books will come back in print is a different story. Huge thanks go to author and Saxon collector, ANDREW NETTE, for digging up this gem from 1984.
His name was Thong. Thai for gold. But the only thing shining in the weak sunlight that streamed through the cell’s barred window was the glint on the six-inch shiv the lady-boy held in his manicured right hand.
He sliced the air in front of me, shifted his weight from foot to foot. He looked playful, but I could tell he was a professional. The way he held the makeshift blade, to cut not stab. How he kept his distance, stopped me from getting close. Thailand may be known as the "land of smiles," but the only thing the look of glee on his powdered face promised was painful death.
Lefebvre cowered behind the hired killer. Unshaven and dressed in grimy prison fatigues, the Frenchman looked lik
e just another shit-out-of-luck inmate of the Kingdom’s prison system, not the front man for an international Communist-controlled drug syndicate.
Thong made another cutting motion, testing me, gauging my reflexes. He knew he had me at a disadvantage.
I’d spent forty-eight hours in the company of two hundred men crammed into a holding cell barely big enough for fifty. Lefebvre and his bodyguard occupied one of several smaller rooms reserved for prisoners with money.
The only thing to eat had been rice porridge. I hadn’t slept, constantly on guard against the rats that came out at night, not to mention much larger predators. Worst of all, I was unarmed.
"Are you ready to taste my pretty blade, falang?" the lady boy cooed in the local dialect favoured by Thais from the Northeast, the poorest part of the Kingdom.
Thong and I stared at each other, two gladiators about to do battle. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, a sure sign he was on the cheap speed known as yah bah, used by most of the inmates. As if signalling our entrance into the arena, the cacophony of human noise from the surrounding prison reached fever pitch.
"You’ve got one chance," I said in fluent Thai. "Put down the knife, let me have the Frenchman."
Thong put a hand over his mouth, his hot pink nail polish standing out in the drab surroundings, and stifled a high-pitched giggle.
"Don’t fucking flirt, you idiot," hissed Lefebvre in Thai. "Kill him."
The Thai swung the blade savagely, missed me and followed up with a rapid criss-crossing movement. The blade bit into my shoulder, spreading a pool of dark crimson on my prison fatigues.
Emboldened by the sight of blood, Thong came in close, hoping to finish me quickly. He lunged. I careened the upper part of my body to one side as the blade cut the air where my face had been, grabbed his knife hand by the wrist and bent it backwards. It snapped with a sickening crack.
The shiv clattered to the concrete floor as the Thai fell to his knees, clasping the broken appendage to his chest. Lefebvre edged backwards across the floor until his back was pressed hard against the wall. I smiled at him, took Thong’s head in my hands and twisted it sharply.
It was a thing of beauty, the look of raw fear on the Frenchman’s face as I let go of the Thai’s lifeless body and picked up the shiv.
"Who the hell are you?" he said in heavily accented English as I rested the blade under his chin. His breath stank of nam pla, the pungent fish sauce the Thais used to season all their food.
"Name’s Bruce Kelly. Mates call me Boomer. You can call me your worst nightmare."
"Please, I beg you, don’t kill me."
"I’m not going to kill you, Froggie. That is unless you don’t tell me what I need to know."
He nodded vigorously, his pores popping sweat. "Anything."
"Start with the location of Scorpion’s Bangkok headquarters."
"They’ll kill me."
"Well, it looks like you’re shit out of options, because I’ll kill you if you don’t."
"Not like Scorpion’s people you won’t—"
Most people think pain is the most effective interrogation technique. But in my extensive experience, one gets even better results from pain when it’s combined with surprise. Before Lefebvre could finish his sentence, I drew the shiv across his cheek, paused for effect, and then repeated the action on his other cheek.
The Frenchman dabbed his fingers on the wounds, put them in front of his face. His eyes bulged as he looked at the blood.
"It’ll be your ears next, then your nose. I’ll keep going all the way down to your balls."
Five minutes later I had everything I needed. I threw the shiv to one side, stood, and turned to leave. A crowd of prisoners had gathered in the cell doorway: Thais, a Russian who’d beaten a prostitute to death, a couple of gigantic Africans arrested for passport theft.
They parted, wary looks on their faces.
"He’s all yours," I said as I passed.
I could hear Lefebvre’s screams as the guard unlocked the rusty door to the holding cell and let me out.
Three days earlier, I’d been sitting at the bar of the Sunrise Club, the joint I own on Soi Cowboy. A quiet night, monsoonal rain and rumours of another military coup keeping all but the most persistent punters off the streets and out of the bars.
Not that I minded. Hank Williams was on the turntable—there’s no disco in my bar—and I nursed a cold beer. The lull also gave me an opportunity to concentrate on more important matters, like my newest waitress, Lek. She was a fresh-faced little thing from the North with an eye for making a buck in the big city and a firm arse you could bounce a five baht on.
Might have even tried my luck if it weren’t for the fact that I was already exhausted after a day of lovemaking with Elise, a German Lufthansa stewardess who always paid me a visit when she was in town. She moved her body with the finesse of a panzer commander manoeuvring across the Russian steppes.
I was contemplating taking down the "Happy New Year 1981? banner in tinsel slung across the bar when a Western man walked in. He was older than me by at least a decade but still in good shape. His snow-white hair was cut military style and he wore an immaculately pressed tan safari suit. I hope he wasn’t trying to be incognito because he stank of old school spook.
The man glanced around the club and walked towards me. "Bruce Kelly?" he said with a Midwestern American accent as he shook my hand. "My name’s Rex Bannister, I have a proposition for you."
"That’s a turn for the books. It’s usually me doing the propositioning."
He didn’t smile. I drained my beer, burped, and motioned across the bar to Tiger Lily, my bar manager.
"Hey baby, get me another beer. Make sure it’s cold." I looked at Bannister. "Want one?"
He gave me a curt shake of his head. I peeled the tab off the can of beer and took a long drink.
"I was hoping we could talk somewhere in private."
I led Bannister to my office, a small back room that doubled as a change space for the waitresses, sat behind the desk strewn with papers, and swigged my beer.
Bannister sniffed, gave the room a slow one hundred and eighty degree sweep, as if trying to locate the source of an unpleasant odour.
"I hear you’re a veteran," he said, his eyes on the centrefold of Miss April pinned to the wall just above my right shoulder.
"I’ve been around." I re-adjusted the patch on my right eye, the legacy of a Russian-made land mine in central Vietnam in 1969. "You?"
"Korea." He threw me a defiant look. "A real war."
I shrugged and sipped my beer. He might have been a soldier once; now he was just another desk jockey employing others to do the killing. I’d met plenty like him, uptight, church going Langley types. I’d even done some work for one or two of them in the past, which I presumed was where Bannister got my name.
"Let me make it clear, I don’t like you, Kelly. I don’t like your bar, your drinking, and your taste in wall decorations. But you’re supposed to be good at what you do and we need your help."
"Like’s got nothing to do with it, Bannister," I replied between sips. "If I only took jobs from people I liked, I’d be a poor man. Just tell me what you want, and let’s see if we can do business."
Bannister swept a pair of black lacy underwear off the wooden seat in front of the desk, sat, and gave me his best man-to-man look.
"For some time now, the US government agency I work for has been tracking the activities of a highly organised drug syndicate operating in Bangkok."
I put my legs on the desk. "It’s not like Uncle Sam to give a toss about a few hopheads overdosing on cheap junk."
"This outfit is different." Bannister leaned forward. "It’s headed by a former Chinese Communist Red Guard, known only by the code name Scorpion. He’s smart and cunning, got links with the cops, the military and Bangkok’s Sino-Thai elite. Now he’s expanding his operation, making connections with Communist regimes in Laos and Vietnam, opening up new trafficking routes.
&nbs
p; "Conventional policing activities don’t work against him, and he’s eliminated every agent we’ve tried to infiltrate into his organisation. Fortunately, we have a new President in the White House, one who understands the threat posed by Communism in all its forms and is prepared to take whatever steps necessary to combat it."
Jesus, what was next, a rendition of the Stars and Stripes? I raised the beer can to my lips and gazed at Bannister.
"Let me guess: that’s where I come in."
"Precisely. Find Scorpion’s Bangkok headquarters and take it off the grid using whatever means necessary. We’ll pay you twenty thousand US dollars, half now, half after the job is complete, plus we’ll bankroll any expenses. Totally off the books, mind you. Maximum deniability."
"That’s a pretty tall order, mate," I drained my beer. "Bangkok’s a big city. Any idea where I would start?"
"Scorpion works through cut-outs. One of these is a Frenchman called Lefebvre. He’s a veteran red, got his start organising dockworkers in Marseilles, spent time in Peking. Like all Europeans, Lefebvre has a weakness. Thai police busted him a couple of nights ago with an underage hooker in a short-time room off Sukhumvit, threw him into the main holding cell of Bangkok’s Klong Prem Prison to await trial.
"Nothing that a bribe in the right place couldn’t usually fix, had Lefebvre’s file not come to the attention of a corrupt but observant police colonel who knew how much he was worth to the reds. And to us. While the Commies negotiate his release, we’ve cut a side deal with the colonel for someone to pose as an inmate and get to him first."
"And you want that someone to be me."
"Correct. Get in there, make contact with Lefebvre and find out what he knows about Scorpion’s operation. Then do what you bastard mercenaries do best."
"And what exactly do you think that is, Bannister?"
"Unleash mayhem."
People like Bannister use the term mercenary as an insult. I wear it as a badge of pride.