The Contract Man

by A P Bateman

  General Soto smiled wryly, keeping the barrel of the nickel-plated revolver against the woman’s head. “I still have one shot left, stand up slowly,” he smiled. “Do you feel like talking? Because I have many questions to put to you, many matters which need answering…” He held the woman close to him by her hair. She was naked and her shoulder and part of her breast blocked half of Soto’s chest from view.

  King knew that he would have to be quick, a simple shot would not do. He would have to be moving as he fired, he would have to eliminate himself as a target. He moved his feet, testing the rubber soles of his lightweight walking boots against the floor tiles, then made as if to stand. There was no room for mistakes, at this close range, Soto could scarcely miss. King pushed himself upwards, then drew the tiny pistol from his back pocket, as he dived to his left. The big revolver swung out in an arc away from the woman’s head and towards King as Soto tried to aim. King fired twice. He landed the dive rolling onto his left shoulder in a judo break fall. He came up onto his feet with the pistol aimed on Soto’s chest. He fired three more shots all grouping above the first bullet hole which had hit the man to the right of his sternum. One of his first shots had missed. Soto stared blankly at him, swaying unsteadily on his feet, the revolver still outstretched as he continued to aim. King knew that his own weapon was now empty, but was left with the bed between himself and the threat. There was barely time to react, as the dying man continued to hold his gun steady, desperately focusing his last reserves of life on both aim and trigger.

  King darted to his left, noted that Soto was slow in bringing the pistol around on him. He was losing a critical amount of blood. King looked to the Uzi on the floor but it was too far away. He dodged again, keeping the big magnum moving in the Indonesian’s hand. He had closed the gap between them. Again he dodged, this time to the right. The woman elbowed Soto in the face and he wobbled as she pulled away from his grasp. King was just feet from the man now. And as the man struggled to bring the heavy revolver to aim, he lashed out and knocked it downwards. He was on him now. He struck the man’s neck with his ridged left hand and swiped the gun away with his right. King sidestepped and hooked the man’s foot off the floor with his right foot, at the same time he clutched his throat and forced him downwards. Soto hit the floor hard. King caught hold of his head with both hands wrenched it up and slammed it back down onto the hard tiled floor. He did it again and again. Five times in all. Then he stood up and looked down at him. Blood and matter oozed out from under his head and his eyes stared up at him lifelessly.

  King stepped away and felt a sudden elation as he saw the woman sitting down on the floor hugging her legs with her head tucked down. She was sobbing and rocking gently. She raised her head and looked back at him. She was naked, her arms covering her breasts. King could see the bandaged toe. Her wrists and ankles were rubbed raw from ropes or cuffs. She was crying.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” King paused, whipped the bedsheet off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. “He can’t hurt you anymore.” He bent down and lifted her to her feet, adjusted the sheet around her to cover her below the waist and held her arm. “Abdul is outside, waiting for you,” he said quietly. “He is with your son.”

  The woman forced a tearful smile, then looked at him pleadingly. “Please,” she paused, searching for the words. “Don’t tell him what you saw, he must never know what that vile pig has done to me...” She stared down at the corpse, then looked back at King. “Please…”

  King shook his head. “Of course not.”

  She wiped a stream of tears away from her face, then stared at him. “It is a great dishonor for a Muslim, to know that another man has been with his wife.

  I am a Christian, but we share many values…”

  King nodded, aware that the feeling it was not exclusive to Muslims, or indeed any religion for that matter. “I won’t tell him,” he paused. “And you don’t have to either. It isn’t as if you had a choice and I think Abdul will always know that it was his doing, that this happened to you. It was his work which brought you both here…” He spun around suddenly, as he heard the noise behind him, then sighed with relief as he saw the Vietnamese standing in the doorway. “Todi!” he paused. “You’re a bit late…”

  “We heard gunshots,” he explained, staring at the General’s body. He lowered his rifle, then smiled at the Englishman. “Mission accomplished?”

  King glanced down at the blood-soaked body, then looked up and returned the man’s smile. “Mission accomplished,” he replied, then gently guided the woman forwards with his hand and bent down and retrieved the Uzi. “Now, let’s get the Hell out of here…”

  78

  Emotions were running high in the stifling heat of the vehicle and King could not help finding the celebrations a little premature. Abdul Tembarak was embracing his family and tearfully pledging his undying love for wife and child, while Jusi and Todi’s celebrations were merely for the death of General Soto and an end to another potential communist uprising amongst the poverty-stricken people of Indonesia.

  “Right, quieten down everybody!” King shouted. “If you heard the gunshots, then I am sure you were not alone.” He looked at Jusi and nodded his head towards the driver’s seat. “Get back behind the wheel, get us out of here. Don’t race, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” He turned back to the Vietnamese, but the man had stopped smiling and was covering Sergeant Grogol with his rifle once more. King looked at the soldier and nodded. “You’re going to get us out of here,” he paused. “Don’t try anything stupid. General Soto is dead, it just wouldn’t be worth it.”

  “Give yourselves up,” Grogol said. “You are all dead men. You just don’t know it yet.”

  “No, I’ll take my chances thanks,” King reloaded the Uzi and hung the strap over his neck, keeping the weapon across his chest. He took out the last spare magazine, thumbed out six bullets then started to load the magazine of the tiny R9 Stealth pistol.

  Grogol looked at him dubiously as Jusi started the noisy engine and pulled away steadily. He kept the lights dimmed to draw less attention. “You will kill me when I am of no further use to you,” he shook his head despondently. “Why would you let me live?”

  King put the pistol back in his pocket and looked at him. “How many people have you killed?”

  The man shrugged.

  “How many people have you tortured? How may did you make beg to die?”

  Again the man shrugged.

  “Well stop your bitching. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.” King stared at him coldly. “My job is done, I will fly out from Jakarta today or tomorrow and never come back.” He leaned back against the canvas covering, having casually laid this false information. He was in fact leaving via Bali, to the East, not Jakarta to the West. But King never knew what was around the next corner and it paid to practice deception in his profession. He shook his head and looked at the man intensely. “I don’t care if you live or die, but I said that I wouldn’t kill you, and I will not,” he paused. “Now, get us through security at the main gates and don’t try anything stupid. You will not live to regret it if you do,” King lied easily. He would not kill him, but he would have no qualms about leaving his fate to Abdul and Wyan Tembarak…

  Security was conspicuously present as they made their way through the compound, but as they watched, it seemed less of an orchestrated investigation into the gunshots and more chaotic by the second. Troops ran around covering the fence with automatic weapons and a group of MPs were darting between the huts hastily rousing sleeping soldiers.

  Grogol sat up in his seat, constantly reminded of his plight by the barrel of Todi’s rifle prodding painfully into his back. He looked back warily at King, then turned towards the approaching gates and breathed deeply. The guard stepped out from his booth, glanced at the three soldiers who were acting as cover on the other side of the road, then held up his hand to halt the approaching vehicle. King and Todi craned their necks to
see the soldiers. Todi looked at King, nodded his head towards the three guards on his side. King nodded, both sensing and agreeing with his concerns and Todi took the weapon away from Grogol and shouldered it, the muzzle pointing in the general direction of the soldiers. King tightened his grip on the Uzi. At the same moment the young boy started to whimper. Tembarak and his wife shushed him quietly, all three laying on the floor in a close embrace. The more the couple tried to silence the child, the more the child became agitated. The moaning was about three whines from becoming a full-blown cry and both parents knew it. They soothed him and cooed gently, but their faces were panicked and the child picked up on the desperation in their mood.

  Grogol leant across Jusi’s lap and shouted out of the open window, as the vehicle slowed down to a halt. “Soldier! Come here at once!” Everyone tensed as the soldier walked up to the vehicle. “There has been shots fired on the base!” He looked at the guard, realising that it was the same man he’d chastened earlier. “Corporal Gandok, hurry!” Grogol looked at Jusi next to him, then flung his elbow into the man’s face sending the man reeling into his door. “Gandok! The intruders are in here, they have taken me hostage! Help! Help!”

  The young soldier hesitated, then flinched as gunfire ripped through the canvass side of the truck and the three soldiers, caught off guard on the other side of the road started to fall. The stunned guard went for his weapon, but King buffeted Grogol forwards onto the dashboard and got the Uzi in front of Jusi and the barrel out of the window. The guard fumbled his weapon up to aim, but he knew he had been too slow. He started to kneel, remembering his training to present a smaller target, but a moment too late. The last thing he saw was the muzzle flash of the machine pistol, then he fell backwards and lay still.

  Jusi screamed as his ears caught the full blast from the Uzi. He held both hands up and cupped his ears in agony. King beat Grogol on the side of the head several times with the butt of the machine pistol and turned to Jusi. He shouted over the gunshots as Todi finished the soldiers off with single, well aimed shots. “Get moving! Drive man, drive!”

  Jusi could hear only ringing in his ears, but he got the gist. He floored the accelerator and the heavy truck lurched forwards towards the gates. Jusi spun the wheel at the last moment and drove parallel to the fence. They bumped along the grass and he turned hard to the right bringing them back deep into the base.

  “What the Hell are you doing?” King shouted. He was holding on to a grab handle and bracing himself against the inertia as the vehicle turned a wide circle, its tyres squealing as they mounted tarmac once more.

  Jusi battled with the large steering wheel. He couldn’t hear King shouting, but he yelled; “Not enough speed! We need to go through the gates! Without speed we’ll just bounce off or get stuck in the wire!”

  Soldiers outside various huts were watching the scene unfold. Startled by the gunshots at the gate, they seemed to get the idea and a few started firing at the truck as it almost completed its arc. A few bullets pinged off the metal sides, then bullets started to rip through the canvass sidings. King and Todi hit the deck for cover simultaneously alongside the Tembarak family, then Grogol, who was stirring from his beating and attempting to hold on in the cab screamed as bullets ripped through the door and into his legs.

  “I’m hit! I’m hit!” he shouted, but seeming to realise that he was of no concern to anyone in the vehicle he pushed himself upright and went for his door. His door opened and almost at once impacted against the guard hut and was wrenched from its hinges. Grogol went to jump through the open door but found himself gripped tightly by the collar. He fought against Jusi, who held him tightly with his left hand while struggling to steer the vehicle with his right. Grogol elbowed him repeatedly but the wiry Indonesian kept a firm grip, ignoring the blows as the vehicle bounced and veered towards the gates. Grogol pulled, and at the same moment Jusi pushed the man through the door opening as the vehicle hit the metal gates and smashed its way out of the compound.

  Grogol travelled through the air, free from the vehicle. The gates were flung wide open at a terrific speed, but hit the concrete curb on either side and were flung back into the truck with as much force and momentum as the initial impact. Grogol found himself sandwiched between the metal gate and the side of the speeding truck, severing his leg, pelvis and buttock, and his arm at the shoulder.

  King watched out of the open rear of the truck and saw the man’s limbs fall near his body. He turned back to Jusi and watched as the man struggled to correct his steering, clipping a curb as he swung the heavy vehicle into the road leaving the notorious Yogyakarta Military Installation and Intelligence Centre in a heightening state of chaos.

  79

  There was a coolness to the light breeze, a welcomed addition to the burning heat which seared down from the azure blue sky and reflected brightly off the shimmering sea.

  For the first time in weeks, Alex King felt alive. Few things in life could better the feeling of wading towards a sun kissed beach after a swim in the ocean, and in King’s opinion the temperate waters of the Indian Ocean lapping at the rugged southwestern coast of Bali could rank with any spot on earth.

  The past few days had come as a welcomed relief after the tense happenings on the neighbouring island of Java and King had decided to take refuge amongst the hordes of tourists in the coastal town of Kuta. It had not been his intention to take a short sabbatical, but for the purposes of a successful exfiltration, a less than hasty departure would give the security forces more chance to settle back into their traditionally somnolent approach to their work. Kuta was an ideal place to lay low, it was a town which served as a stopping off point in Asia before going on to Australia or Europe. It was a backpacker’s Mecca where drink, music and cheap accommodation was plentiful and where soft drugs could be easily purchased and taken publicly with little consequence, and where shady characters would entice gullible tourists into becoming drugs mules who sometimes paid the ultimate price.

  After their escape from the military compound, they had driven back to the village of Purwodadi by a devious route, arriving shortly after daybreak. Their overriding priority was one of self-preservation. It would not take the military long to discover that General Soto’s killer, along with his accomplices, had escaped the compound in one of the army’s own vehicles. A detailed search would naturally ensue and the incriminating vehicle would have to be abandoned well away from Purwodadi if the village’s inhabitants were to be spared from reprisals. This would be a two man task, and Jusi and Todi had both volunteered for the duty. Todi knew of an abandoned Bauxite mine where the vehicle could be hidden permanently. The task included taking the bodies of the dead soldiers killed at the railway station from where they had been earlier hidden. In the heat, this would have been a repulsive task. The two men had done this stoically and returned four hours later in the Suzuki four by four.

  Abdul Tembarak, his wife and their son had waited with King, making good use of Jusi’s small living quarters to the rear of his vehicle hire premises. After a refreshing shower and a basic meal of steamed rice and curried vegetables along with fresh papaya and bananas, King had walked to the station, where he bought four tickets. Three were one way rides west to Jakarta, the fourth was a single east to the port town of Banyuwangi.

  Abdul Tembarak was heading straight to his intelligence service’s headquarters in the Manui district of East Jakarta, where he would give his superiors a full account of his ordeal, but carefully avoid details concerning a certain British agent. Even after such events, Tembarak could never inform his service that he was also on the British SIS payroll, on however casual a basis.

  King on the other hand was to take the hot, uncomfortable and arduous train journey through the mountains to Banyuwangi, where he would board the ferry to Gilmanuk, a mere mile and a half away, on the Island state of Bali.

  King had bid his farewells, much the same as before, knowing full well that those he thanked, whose hands he shook, and even promised
himself to remember, would soon be a distant memory, never to be seen again. Such was his life, such was his profession.

  He had arrived in the tourist town of Kuta by taxi from the port town of Gilmanuk and had known instantly that he could disappear into the hordes of travelers - for that seemed to be the name for the few tourists who simply took a longer holiday than most on a tighter budget. Surfers, gap-year students and retirement aged couples searching for their hidden youth now that they were free from the restraints their children had put on them.

  With a cheap yet comfortable room secured and having spread the legend of being a recently divorced traveler on his way to Australia, King had simply fitted neatly into the hustle and bustle of the town. He felt at ease as he openly walked through the streets to the numerous restaurants and trendy bars such as Tubes. There he found he could eat good value meals washed down with ice cold bottles of Bintang, watch the latest film releases or football matches on a large screen television, and eye the groups of traveling Europeans.

  King waded through the knee-deep water and rubbed salt from his eyes as he searched the beach for his towel. He looked up for the beachfront bar which had been his landmark, then realised that the powerful current had taken him almost one hundred metres down the beach. He walked out of the water and started along the damp sand, which the intense heat was quickly drying to a hard crust that broke with a loud crack under every footstep.

  The traders watched his progress intently, brandishing their wares every time he looked up. Governed by a law which forbids them to venture past the high tide mark, the traders tended to swamp visitors to the beach, creating a human barrier of shouts, offers and occasionally insults. King had already politely refused a man’s offer of a wooden blowpipe. But the man had him marked. He couldn’t look up without seeing the man grinning at him and holding the blowpipe in the air.