The Contract Man

by A P Bateman

  King reached up and touched the source of his pain. The lump was the size of an egg. “It’ll go down in a while.” He pulled off the dressing, then looked at her. “What about my pistol, it was in a shoulder holster.”

  “The holster was empty. You must have lost it when the jump went wrong,” she paused and smiled. “There’s a spare mag, but we’re not in Glock country. The 9mm rounds are worth hanging onto though. As for your GPS, well that took a bit of a beating, by the looks of it.” She reached into her jacket pocket and took out a mangled mess of wires and plastic. “Not doing too well, are we?” she commented flatly.

  “No,” King smiled and rose to his feet, flinching at a sudden stab of pain in his head. “But I’ve still got my health…”

  Juliet Kalver drove a battered Toyota pickup. King noticed that it had low mileage, good tyres and that from the scoop in the bonnet, indicated that it was the more powerful model. The bodywork was poor, but he knew that underneath it would be immaculately maintained and reliable. The CIA would always give their assets an edge. However, it bounced harshly over the potholed road, throwing up great plumes of dust in their wake as they drove at speed along the deserted highway.

  King felt a little better now and knew that his injuries were merely superficial and would no doubt heal quickly. His head felt less painful and the lump had gone down considerably. His wrist was giving him less worry and with the improved movement and rapid drop in swelling, he realised that it had just been a moderate sprain to the ligaments.

  Juliet Kalver drove the truck with wild abandon, swerving at the last moment to avoid the largest of the frequent potholes and at times drifting worryingly close to the drainage gullies on each side of the road.

  “How much further?” King asked, shouting above both the engine’s revs and the road’s monotonous hum, as the stony surface wore heavily on the tyres.

  “Approximately eight klicks, as you are probably aware,” she paused, glancing at him briefly. “There is no need for small talk Mister King. You have an objective, and so do I. Yours is to kill the Faisal brothers, mine is to make sure that you do it.”

  King smiled at her. “Oh, I believe you will.”

  She looked back at the road, which was hardly distinguishable from the terrain to either side of it. “Your mistake cost the Kurds many lives. The CIA had built up a great many contacts and had supplied the freedom fighters with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, to encourage them to take up arms against ISIS. The Iraqi army have gone in heavy handed in this past week taking the opportunity to settle a few debts and old scores with the Kurds under the guise of fighting Islamic State. Now the area is too hot, your mistake has cost us the entire operation,” she paused, shaking her head despondently. “It’s increasingly unlikely that we will be able to pick up the pieces.”

  “Crap!”

  “What?” She looked at him in disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Whether I lost the NATO GPS or whether I took it back with me would not have made one bit of difference. The Iraqi government are angry somebody exposed their regional commander as an Islamic State sympathiser. They’re even angrier that we pulled the trigger without consulting them. The Russians need that pipeline to go through the region without the problems they’ve been having and we exploited that. We feel pissed off that they just took the Ukraine back and didn’t give a shit what the west felt about it, so we tried to throw a little egg on their faces,” King paused. “After knocking Saddam off his throne the west has pumped billions into this country. We should have simply told them their Colonel was rotten and told them to do something about it or the money will dry up. But we went in for all this bullshit and it backfired.”

  “Because you fucked up!” Kalver scoffed.

  “Because the CIA were pissed off that the Brits got there first. We identified the threat, took action but didn’t keep them in the loop. This mission has nothing to do with cleaning house, and everything to do with the CIA letting MI6 know that they are the big boys and that if we are to work together in the future and have the US behind us, then we have to perform a little test of faith. To see if we can be trusted. You’re shutting operations down out here and you don’t want the remnants of a failed operation armed, trained and disillusioned with a turnaround in foreign policy. Like in Afghanistan when it was the Soviet’s problem. The CIA funded and trained the very same Taliban fighters we later spent ten years fighting.”

  “You’re an asshole!” Kalver exclaimed. “You think you’ve got it all worked out…”

  King shook his head and glared at her, as she swerved the truck round the body of a rotting goat. “Put your hand on your heart and tell me that the Faisal brother’s deaths will save the operation and put you back on track. Go on, do it!” He laughed contemptuously. “Of course you can’t, because it’s a bogus solution. It makes the CIA feel better and it gives them a hold on the SIS, who as we both know, will be reminded in due course of how Uncle Sam gave them the chance to redeem themselves. Your operation was heading towards the gutter long before I arrived, and long before Colonel Al-Muqtadir took a fucking bullet…”

  Juliet Kalver remained silent and swerved the pickup truck around yet another dead goat. It would seem that Iraqi drivers didn’t respect that the goats were somebody’s livelihood. She looked at him briefly, then shook her head. “I am following orders, I was told of your mission and I was ordered to see it through. I don’t plan the operations, I just complete them.”

  “How astute,” he commented flatly. He watched the road ahead, then looked back at her suddenly. “Get off the road!” he snapped.

  She looked at him in astonishment, her mouth gaping open.

  “Do it now, woman!” King caught hold of the wheel and wrenched it across, sending them off the road and into the even harsher roadside terrain. “Can’t you see the dust?”

  The woman strained her eyes to see against the bright glare of the sun, as she stared blankly into the distance. There was dust drifting into the air, but it had to be over three or four miles away. She looked back at him and shrugged. “So there’s a lorry coming, what’s the big deal?”

  “Many lorries,” King stated flatly as he watched the horizon. “The dust is spread out in a long line. You know the territory, what need is there for a convoy of road trains this far north, and with the border all but shut down? They’re military vehicles, I’d bet my life on it.”

  The CIA agent brought the vehicle to a halt and turned around in her seat and reached into the rear foot well of the truck where she retrieved a formidable pair of binoculars. She sighted on the dust clouds, then brought the binoculars up to her eyes, keeping perfectly still to avoid losing precious time. She adjusted the magnification slightly, bringing the vehicles into clear focus.

  “Holy shit, you’re right! There’s about a dozen of them, all military!” She looked around her and turned back to him, panic-stricken. “There’s nowhere for us to go. They’ll stop and check us, that’s the procedure in these parts!”

  King turned around briefly, then looked back at the horizon. “Get us back on the road, and turn us around. Quickly!” He waited for her to swing the vehicle back onto the road, then looked back towards the approaching dust cloud. “About two and a half miles back there was a dried-up river bed, get us to it,” he said calmly.

  She crunched the gears, located first and accelerated rapidly back up the road. The pickup bumped harshly as she drove flat out, no longer avoiding the potholes, dead goats or other obstacles which had been abandoned on the highway.

  King studied the terrain, then pointed to his right. “Okay, slow down and pull off the road at that outcrop of boulders.” He turned around in his seat and watched the dust cloud, which was still high up in the sky. “You see the river bed?” he asked. She nodded nervously. “Good, now slow down and get us into it…”

  “I can’t, it’s too steep!” She stared at the drop as they approached, then looked back at him. “You do it
!”

  King shook his head. “No time! Just slow the revs, take us down into second gear and head for the drop. These things will go anywhere, just keep the engine bay away from large boulders.” She did as he said, then at the last moment, she hit the brake. “No!” King reached his leg across the floor pan, then pressed hard against the accelerator. The Toyota lurched forwards and dropped heavily into the riverbed. The impact was heavy, but the pickup continued to advance over the huge boulders lining the course of the dead river.

  “How the Hell do we get out?” Juliet asked, as she looked at the steep walls enclosing them on both sides.

  King pulled up the hand brake and knocked the gear stick into neutral, bringing the vehicle to a sudden halt. “We’ll worry about that later.” He turned back and noted to his relief that they were well out of view from the highway. “Right, now I want to get a look at those trucks.”

  “Why?” She looked at him as though he were insane.

  “Why not?”

  44

  He eased himself forwards cautiously, taking great care not to raise the thick layer of dust above the sunbaked crust of sandy earth. With the sun on his back, he knew that he was in the best position to observe the approaching convoy.

  Juliet Kalver had argued vehemently but King had been adamant. He needed to know more about the convoy. Fewer vehicles in the north meant that he might well be able to make good his escape over the Turkish border.

  His desert pattern combat fatigues blended him effortlessly into the barren landscape, and the scattering of large boulders and dried-up tributaries gave him what little cover he needed. He watched the convoy as it drew near, and even at this distance, he identified the two leading vehicles, which were driving abreast, as American Humvees. Behind these, also travelling two a breast were old Soviet-made BTR-80 Armoured Personnel Carriers. Iraq took its equipment from its allegiances of the time.

  He eased himself back a few feet and kept as low as he possibly could, with his chin resting against the warming ground. The convoy drove at a fairly rapid pace, close to the limit for the two lead vehicles. King rose his head slightly to improve his view, but kept his movements deliberately slow, just in case any sudden movements caught a soldier’s eye.

  He counted the vehicles - fifteen in all. Four APCs, two Humvees, five old lorries with canvass sides, which could be carrying either soldiers or, more likely the supplies needed by the soldiers who were travelling in the APCs. Behind the old transport lorries travelled two vehicles, which King recognized as 130 Land Rovers. These towed artillery pieces. Behind these were two open backed Land Rovers. In the rear of the lead vehicle were two men dressed in civilian clothing. Sunglasses, jeans and leather jackets. Secret police for sure. The driver was the obligatory corporal and beside him sat a tough looking soldier, riding shotgun. Only it wasn’t a shotgun, it was a .50 Browning machine gun mounted above the screen on a one hundred and eighty degree mount.

  King studied the remaining Land Rover then stared at the man who knelt in the rear. Head down, eyes blindfolded, hands bound behind his back. He could only catch a glimpse of him as the vehicles raced past, but he recognised the man’s build and clothing all the same. It would appear that Osman Emre was alive, if not well.

  As the last two APCs shot past his position, King felt hopeless. A man’s life would soon not be worth living. It didn’t matter how tough a man was, the Iraqi secret police would get anyone to talk, sooner or later. When Ozzy talked, King would soon be hunted once more and Iraq would know of a second British mission in their country. He hadn’t even begun to clean house and things had become even worse.

  King watched the convoy disappear into the distance.

  “Happy now?” The tone was more than sarcastic, there was a hint of actual hatred towards him as he slid down the slope and into the gully.

  King looked into her hard eyes, then nodded. “Extremely. Now I know that we’re in trouble.” He walked around to the driver’s side and glanced at the key in the ignition. “I’ll get us out of here if you like.” He opened the door, not giving her the chance to object.

  Juliet Kalver opened the passenger’s door and climbed up onto the seat. “So what did you see that puts us in so much trouble?”

  He started the vehicle and selected first gear, then slipped the ratio lever into low. The vehicle crawled forwards slowly and King carefully eased through the myriad boulders and smaller rocks, taking great care not to ground the underside and risk damaging the drive shaft. “The pilot who flew me in is alive and looks reasonably uninjured. They have him prisoner and he will end up talking. Everyone does, sooner or later.” He looked at her intensely. “The pilot is an MI6 unofficial, but no matter how much SIS deny it, the Iraqis and the rest of the world will know he’s the real deal. He knows I was meeting a contact, and he knows the rendezvous point. It’s not safe here at all. Once we get to Kalsagir, take the truck and get yourself out of there.”

  “Fuck you!” she snapped savagely, then stared at him with distaste. “Who the hell do you think you are? I'm in charge of this sector, I make the goddamn decisions, don’t you forget it!”

  King looked her in disbelief. “So what do you suggest? I just thought that your operation would stand more chance of success if I distanced myself from you,” he paused, sneering at her. “Of course, if you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”

  She stared ahead for a moment, then looked at him decisively. “Your pilot will talk, that’s just a fact of life. Once we get out of this river bed…” she sneered. “If we ever do, then we head straight for Kalsagir, locate the Faisal brothers and you do your stuff. After that, we head straight for the border, I know a good spot for you to get through. I have guards either side on the payroll. Leave my operation to me, I’ll sort it out by myself.”

  King remained silent. Kalver was certainly tenacious, but far from open minded. If she chose to reject his suggestions, then he could be of no further help to her. He would simply have to do his job and leave her to the Iraqi army, who would no doubt catch up with her very soon. He looked at the left-hand side of the riverbed, where the bank seemed a little less steep. He positioned the Toyota at a slight angle, turned the front wheels into the bank and eased a little pressure onto the accelerator. The pickup shot violently upwards, then lost momentum. He applied more throttle, then slipped the stick into second gear, and eased off the power. The vehicle’s engine groaned and strained, then the pickup crawled smoothly out of the gully, powered only by the engine’s idling revs.

  King grinned, thankful that it had been so easy. He slipped the gear stick into neutral, then pulled up the hand brake and looked at his passenger. “Right, better get yourself back in the driver’s seat and get us to Kalsagir.” He opened the door and stared coldly at her. “I’d hate to be late for a killing.”

  45

  “Rather chilly location for an assignation, don’t you think?” Bryant paused and smiled at his old friend. “I suppose that this is your regular rendezvous for discussing your dodgy dealings.”

  “I don’t have dodgy dealings, only delicate matters for discreet and confidential discussion.” The man returned his friend’s smile, then sat down on the empty park bench and looked up at Bryant, who remained standing. “Please…” he swept a hand elaborately beside him. “Do take a seat, this is merely an extension to my office…”

  Bryant sat down beside him, then shivered as a sudden gust of wind stabbed ruthlessly through him. “Well, back in Indonesia, my swimming pool and patio are the extension to my office,” he paused, rubbing his shoulders to relieve himself of the cold. “For heaven’s sake Sandy, why can’t we discuss this somewhere in the warm? I only got off a bloody plane this morning, it was touching a hundred and ten degrees when I left!”

  “Well, it will teach you to live in such a God awful place then, won’t it?” The man looked at Bryant seriously, then smiled. “Honestly Charles, this will suit us just fine. There’s no prying eyes or twitching ears. Look around,
there isn’t anyone for a hundred yards!”

  “Too bloody cold, that’s why,” Bryant muttered.

  The man smiled, then studied his old friend’s haggard and slightly bloated face. “Come on Charles, let’s get down to it, I can only spare you half an hour, I have an important meeting after lunch.”

  “This meeting is important Sandy, believe me,” Bryant paused then stared at him skeptically. “Tell me, what do you know about Indonesia?”

  “Hah! What don’t I know about Indonesia more like? That should be the bloody question!” he smiled, shaking his head. “The place has become a giant, political hot potato. Britain exports arms and the Indonesian government uses them to suppress the people. We export machinery, and the Indonesian government operates it with slave labour.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked blankly at him. “What can I say? There is far too much money at stake to become politically correct all of a sudden. Britain makes a fortune, or at least helps to keep the deficit down, out of exports to Indonesia. And besides, it is an awfully long way away… It’s not like taking a shit on our own doorstep.”

  Bryant nodded. “OK. Now, what do you know about its stability?”

  “There is none.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “You live there for half of the year, figure it out for yourself,” he paused. “It’s not like other countries where it’s always kicking off, but there’s always murmurs, always something simmering underneath. The tourists are oblivious of course, but let’s just say, the country’s future stability is uncertain.”

  “So is our own, that’s not what I’m getting at,” Bryant shook his head. “What I want to know is; do you know what I know?”

  “Just get to it Charles.” He glanced at his watch, then shrugged impassively at him. “I do have a meeting to get to after all.”