Cyprus Rage

by J E Higgins

  The mercenaries didn’t wait to be seated. They snagged the table nearest the far corner. They didn’t project the image of men who had a lot of money which may have slowed the arrival of a waitress coming to take their order. It also ensured that no one bothered to pay attention to them at all. They settled in and enjoyed some small talk with each other. The conversation revolved mostly around where to get a good meal and where to stay tonight. The long journey and the last few days of endless travel had made those their top priorities.

  It wasn’t too long before a short, stout Filipino gentleman with a soccer ball head and a neck as wide as his skull sauntered in. Dressed in a pair of slacks and open-collared shirt, he looked like just another tourist of only reasonable means. He was followed by two other men of shared ethnicity, dressed in a similar fashion. The three Asian men strolled across the lounge. They passed the mercenaries’ table without offering them the slightest acknowledgment. The soccer-headed man let a silver medallion attached to a ribbon dangle from his pocket. Rhys recognized the engraving instantly as the image that had been drawn on the note he received. Casually, the New Zealander reached into his coat pocket to retrieve his wallet. He fished from it a Filipino peso that he placed on the table so as it would be visible to the Asian men as they passed by.

  The Asians continued into the circular booth in the corner directly adjacent to mercenaries’ table. For the next few minutes, both parties completely ignored each other. Then, one of the Filipinos suggested to his compatriots that they go somewhere else. The three men rose. As they did, the soccer-headed man glanced over at Rhys and his men. He reached under his shirt and let a small white package slip onto the seat. The three men started out of the lounge with as little notice from everyone as they had received coming in. The mercenaries casually rose to their feet and sauntered over to the now vacant booth. Sliding into it, Rhys scooped the package into his coat pocket. He looked up just in time to see the three Filipinos exit the front door. They had been holding off leaving to ensure that it was their contacts who received the package and not some random stranger who could compromise everything.

  At long last, a striking blond waitress made her way to their booth. She looked a little exasperated as she asked if any of them would like a drink. All three of the men declined as they stepped out of the booth starting to leave. Half expecting the young woman to urge them to stay, not wanting to lose potential tipping customers, he was a little surprised to see a look of relief as she quickly darted back to a collection of well-dressed older men. Apparently, she, like the other girls, decided Rhys and his men were too poor to worry about, and they were only distracting them from the guaranteed big tippers. Neither he nor his colleagues were offended. They weren’t thirsty, and they were glad they could leave with little fanfare attached.

  Outside, they moved up the street until they saw a well-lit café just up the road. It was sparsely populated, catering largely to a more conservative crowd that didn’t seem interested in the more exotic nightlife. Finding a small table away from everyone else, Rhys opened the package. It contained a small disposable phone and another note with instructions.

  They waited until after the server had taken their orders before he called the number written on the note. He waited for three rings before someone answered.

  “Mr. Rhys?” an accented voice asked. He recognized the voice instantly though he couldn’t put a face or name to it.

  “Mr. Sanchez,” Rhys replied with the name on the note. “It is good to hear from you.”

  “I also recognize your voice,” the voice replied in a serious manner. “You will forgive the elaborate cloak and dagger activities surrounding all of this. Our employers cannot afford to have their hands dirty in this affair. They wanted to put us in touch with each other to discuss matters.”

  “I understand completely,” Rhys replied. “You must have been apprised of my arrival. Is there a chance we could meet sometime tonight?”

  “I was about to suggest that very thing,” Sanchez agreed. “There is a bar called the Mirage on the other end of town in the Karnagio district. Go inside the bar, and I will meet you there in one hour. Don’t worry about any elaborate signals or codes. I know who you are, and you know me. One more thing, do not ever go to the hotel again. Our employers must be completely protected from our activities.”

  Rhys didn’t have a chance to answer. He heard a click, and then the phone went dead. He looked at Yadav and Mehendra who were staring back at him waiting for a response. “We meet in one hour on the other side of town.”

  “I’m a soldier, I hate these elaborate games of intrigue these blasted spies insist on playing,” Yadav groaned as he leaned back in his chair tired and exasperated.

  “It’s what they’re paying us to put up with,” Mehendra said in a poor attempt at humor.

  At that moment the server returned with their meals and all three made the unanimous decision to enjoy their first real meal in two days before participating in any more adventures. It was only pita chips, hummus, and some lamb dish with small salads for each of them but it tasted like a feast.

  When they arrived at the Mirage, the three men found they were looking at a quaint bar on a quiet street corner. Piling out of the cab, the three proceeded to their destination. At this late hour, there were hardly any cars on the road and the men marched across as if they were on a military parade field. Tired as they were, neither Rhys nor his associates were in any mood to banter.

  They walked into the bar and made their way to the far end of the counter. The bar was a sharp contrast from the previous establishment they had been in. It was better lit inside, where one could see what was going on around them. The clientele was not the flashy spenders from the Galatex area, but a more modest working-class sort just looking to enjoy a quiet drink and some peaceful socializing.

  The bartender, a bear of a man with a thick bushy mustache, towered over everyone as he made his way around the semi-circle filling glasses of old customers and taking orders from new ones. When he got to the mercenaries, it took a brief attempt at speaking to each other to realize the language barrier. He waved to a pretty, auburn-haired woman who looked to be in her early forties. She was working some of the tables when the bartender called to her. She addressed the men in English, to which they responded with requests for beers. She nodded, relayed the order to the brawny barman and quickly returned to her charges.

  The barman delivered three full mugs to the mercenaries and returned to his business. Slowly, they sipped their drinks as they waited for their contact to appear. “It’s been more than an hour,” Mehendra whined. “What the fuck is keeping him?”

  “He’s probably outside, somewhere across the street, scoping out the place to verify if we are who we’re supposed to be,” Yadav answered.

  “That’s my guess,” Rhys said as he sucked up a few drops from his mug. “Whatever we’re dealing with, we’ve apparently gotten ourselves in the middle of some serious intrigues. So, I guess we’ll be playing spy for a little while.”

  His colleagues nodded as they enjoyed their drinks. Their attention turned to the door when a small Asian man with dark, shoulder length hair and a slight mustache walked in. He was dressed casually in a blue collared shirt under a tan sports jacket and black slacks. He looked drained, almost defeated. To anyone paying attention, he looked like a guy stopping in for a drink after a long day at the office.

  The man caught sight of Rhys, who was looking back at him over his beer mug. Rhys knew the man well. He had provided protection for him on a couple of occasions when the man had business dealings that took him into the jungle. His name was Jose Managua ─ he was a lawyer by occupation, a litigator of sorts really. He worked for many of the old money families handling dealings with underworld types that prominent citizens couldn’t deal with directly. He handled assorted affairs that involved underworld factions dealing with hostile foreign powers and, when necessary, negotiating with guerrilla groups.

  Managua
gave the New Zealand mercenary a slight nod as he strolled over to a table in a more deserted part of the establishment. Rhys looked around to see if any attention was being drawn in their direction. The patrons in the place kept mostly to their business, not paying the slightest attention to anyone else. The barmaids seemed only concerned with filling orders and retrieving whatever gratuities awaited them at the tables they had served. Managua had chosen his location well. The mercenaries rose to their feet and sauntered slowly toward the table occupied by the Filipino. They didn’t wait for an invitation, they slid into seats around him.

  “I appreciate dispensing with the elaborate cloak and dagger bullshit,” Rhys opened the conversation.

  “I sometimes fear the people who employ us are too interested in alleviating the boredom by making things more difficult than they need to be,” the Filipino replied.

  “You took your time getting here,” Rhys complained.

  Managua exhaled a breath of air. “I wasn’t given any warning of your arrival. Your benefactor dispatched you here without consulting the other parties involved. I was only told that you were being brought in for additional support. That was it. We had no timetable of your arrival. I was informed that you were in the country just a short while ago. Your decision to go straight to the hotel hosting the important people from our country sent quite a few people into a tizzy. They called me and told me to expect your phone call. I am to deal with you from here on out and see to your needs.”

  Rhys couldn’t help noticing that Managua took great care not to reference any direct connection to the delegation of Filipino businessmen in the penthouses of the luxury hotel he had just come from. The lawyer checked his surroundings before speaking to ensure that he did not offer any information that could expose those retaining his services. “Right now, my needs are to know exactly what is going on and who it is we’re dealing with that has everyone in a panic.”

  Managua remained guarded ─ hesitant to speak. It wasn’t until he saw the group that was within earshot stand up and leave before he started to speak more freely. “The truth is we don’t really know what we’re expecting. Our benefactors had an initial meeting with the arms trafficker in Warsaw, Poland. It had been arranged by one of the prominent East European law firms that represent numerous interests and apparently facilitate such introductions for a fee. After that, I was brought in to manage our side’s interests in this operation and report back to our masters on the progress. What has happened is that allies to our enemies at home have stumbled onto our operation. To what extent we don’t know. And, what they plan to do is anyone’s guess. Our intelligence resources for gathering information in this part of the world is limited.”

  “Have you informed your arms supplier,” Yadav interjected. “I mean a man of his caliber must possess viable intelligence resources that could possibly help.”

  Managua replied. “The concern I have, and it is shared by our employers, is that we don’t know this trafficker very well and if we inform him of a possible threat, we can’t be sure of his reaction. He may help us find and even eliminate this problem, or he may decide to capitalize on the situation by approaching our enemies and work another deal with them and play both sides. Worse, he may reach out to them, get a far better deal and betray us outright. No, this is something we need to handle. At least, our superiors have agreed we need to enlist some additional assistance in this matter.”

  “That still leaves us operating in an environment with limited intelligence,” Rhys reminded the lawyer.

  Managua nodded as he pressed his finger to his chin. “Our masters understand this dilemma. They have recommended the services of a firm that supposedly specializes in intelligence gathering in this part of the world. In the meantime, our intelligence resources are vast, and our networks are working to figure out who we’re up against from their end. When I hear from them, I’ll reach out to this firm to pursue the inquiry here.”

  “Our own people don’t know who’s threatening us,” Rhys said in hushed exasperation as he was again reminded of how blind they were to this looming threat. This situation could seriously jeopardize a major operation.

  Managua shrugged. “Whoever is doing this is not acting at the insistence of the president but rather as an independent body acting on their own. This makes the state of affairs more difficult. We would normally have found everything out through our contacts in the military and intelligence organizations. We do know who the president’s most loyal supporters are, and who would have the means and connections to be a threat. It is only a matter of time before we know who to look for.”

  Rhys grimaced as he looked around the table at his cohorts, who registered equally negative expressions on their faces. “It still does us little good right now. This brings us to the next question. When do we discuss the particulars of the shipments?”

  Managua lifted his hand in a halting gesture. Rhys looked over in time to see the auburn-haired bar-maid approaching. She arrived asking the Filipino what he wanted ─ he ordered a bourbon straight. She asked the three mercenaries if any of them wanted a refill for their half-empty mugs, all three declined.

  After she was out of earshot, Managua continued. “We’re still in the process of working on that. It is a large order and one that is going to be loaded here in Cyprus. This breaks with the normal routine where they obtain the weapons in one of the old Soviet republics and ship from a port there to the intended location.”

  “Why the change?” Rhys asked.

  The Filipino shrugged and shook his head. “Normally the method of moving arms shipments in this part of the world is through the air. When the cold war ended, all the Soviet cargo planes were languishing on forgotten military bases. Former Soviet military commanders going into the black-market business bought fleets of these crafts and used them to make deliveries to their usual markets in the Middle-East and North Africa where they have established many contacts for maintenance and fuel along the route.”

  “Since most of the European arms business is in those areas of the world, major arms traffickers from here don’t have the established connections and routes to support transportation to Southeast Asia. So, that leaves going through the next best option, cargo ships. For an order of our size, this changes the usual supply source from Russia to Bulgaria where the port city of Sophia is more amenable for our purposes. The weapons will be brought here to Limassol where they will be transferred onto another ship that will head to the Filipinos.”

  “And, where will this second ship come from?” Rhys inquired.

  Managua raised his finger in a ‘matter of fact’ manner. “The ship is coming in from Thailand, captained by someone we’ve used from time to time for such business. He has acquired the several ships through a shell company in Bangkok that associates of ours have set up for the supply end of this operation. It set out from port three days ago. It will make good speed until it gets to the Suez Canal. Then it will reduce speed and tug as slowly as possible until we have a fixed time for it to move into port. It will get here around the same time as the ship from Sophia. The cargo will hurriedly be transferred from ship to ship, and our ship will immediately pull out and head for home.”

  “You aren’t worried about port authorities here giving you trouble?” Rhys questioned.

  Managua raised his hand in a reassuring gesture. “It is no coincidence we are here in Cyprus for this transaction. We feared that conducting this business inside a former Soviet state such as Bulgaria might prove rather complicated with the current issues and uncertain political dynamics. Both sides agreed that it would be best for all if we made the transaction here in a neutral location that has a history of being somewhat more accommodating to our sort of business than other ports in Western Europe. Here we will more easily be able to swap out the cargo manifests to show that the equipment came from some country like France or Spain ─ somewhere that would assume less suspicion if our craft were to be boarded by some military presence conducting random checks
.”

  “Remember, this is not some quick operation. After this initial run, we have five other large cargo ships being dispatched to this location, one after the other, ready to pick up the cargo in the same fashion. They will then make their way home to their respective islands where the captains will make contact with our representatives who are in contact with the prominent guerrilla group of each area. The amount of weaponry and ammunition we will hand over to them should be more than enough to keep them stocked for a few months of intensive combat. They’ll think that more is coming so, hopefully, they won’t horde it. By the time our forces are called in because it has become too much for the military, the ammo should nearly be gone and the pipeline cut off.”

  The mercenaries nodded; it made sense. The barmaid returned with Managua’s drink. The meeting continued with Managua now asking the questions. “As I said, I knew you had been dispatched from Manila. However, I understand you did not bring many of your own people. Instead, you were looking to recruit from the local talent to augment your team.”

  Rhys nodded as he took another sip of his beer. “Before arriving here, I stopped off in London and met with an old friend of mine from my military days. He’s a former soldier with her majesty’s 22 SAS Regiment. He retired out and drifted into the realm of private soldiering. He’s worked around quite a bit and is close to the mercenary community here in Europe. He’s found me about seven additional men who we’ve hired for this mission.”

  “So, you’re hiring men for this operation sight unseen?” Managua was taken back.

  Rhys sighed before answering. “Keep in mind, I don’t know what kind of timeline I have to work with, and I’m dealing in unfamiliar territory. And, I don’t have the luxury of properly vetting people to recruit for this mission. I’ve known my friend for years ─ we go back a long way. We’ve even worked as private soldiers together. I know him well enough to trust his judgment. The boys he’s recruited are ethnic Greeks all with backgrounds in the French Foreign Legion 2eme Rep Commando Parachute Group and their foreign engineering regiments. They’ll be making their individual way into this country, and I have scheduled a meeting with them in the Molos area of the city along a noted pier within the next few days.”