Marine C SBS

by David Monnery

  He lit a rare cigar, and sat back in his orthopaedic office chair.

  If the Florida and Provo ends were both blown, he realized, then there was no chance that the Tiburón Blanco had escaped. Joutard on Haiti was probably immune, at least until such time as US forces went ashore.

  Arcilla picked up the phone to summon his radio operator, then put it down again. Making contact with Joutard in these circumstances might not be the wisest of moves.

  He walked out on to the roof garden and leaned over the parapet, looking down at the Sunday promenaders on Calle Ocho. To his right the towers of Downtown split the blue sky, and between them he could see Miami Beach and the distant sparkle of the sun on the sea.

  He was not used to set-backs, not any more. He would have to think this through with care, and not let anger get the better of him.

  The operation had not been important, or at least not in the financial sense. He could do without such profits fifty times over. The problems were merely legal, and as far as he could tell not particularly acute. He had been careful to interpose numerous cut-outs between himself and the operation, and those who had actually worked in the business would happily go to prison for him, secure in the knowledge that they and their families would all be well rewarded.

  The British might try and extradite him, but in a case like this, where the law could be endlessly muddled with moral issues, the process could be delayed for years. US laws had been broken too, but his friends in the CIA would ensure that any legal action against him here would be deferred indefinitely. With Castro’s regime crumbling at home they knew they might be needing him at a moment’s notice.

  No, there was nothing much to worry about. The only obvious crimes had been committed in Haiti, and there was no way he could be held accountable for them.

  Still, he thought, turning away from the Miami skyline and grinding the cigar beneath his foot, he would have no more contact with Haiti. There was no point in taking unnecessary risks for a psycho like Toussaint Joutard.

  Worrell Franklin arrived at the airport around five o’clock, and made no bones about what his priorities were. ‘I’m coming,’ he told Marker belligerently.

  The SBS man sighed. ‘How the hell did you know we were here? And going somewhere?’

  ‘I gave him a call,’ Cafell said apologetically.

  Marker opened his mouth to say something, closed it again, and eyed his partner with a tolerance born of affection.

  ‘I want to come,’ Franklin said.

  ‘Who’s stopping you?’ Marker said. The ex-SAS man had been in on this business from the beginning, and Marker had no fears he would let the side down. In fact, if Joutard had twenty men, he would narrow the odds from 5–1 to 4–1.

  Franklin, who had been expecting more of an argument, looked at Marker, surprise written all over his face. ‘My wife would like to,’ he said, and then smiled ruefully. ‘No, that’s not really true. She wants to help Nick. She’s just scared I won’t come back.’

  ‘I can’t guarantee it,’ Marker said quietly.

  ‘I can’t guarantee surviving my next fucking drive on the Leeward Highway,’ Franklin said.

  In the Tortuga camp office Joutard handed Calderón a small glass of rum. The doctor raised an eyebrow.

  ‘This is the last night,’ Joutard explained. ‘I want you to start half an hour earlier. When you’ve finished the usual, the Englishman will be killed. And the woman too.’

  ‘The woman,’ Calderón echoed, but he didn’t object.

  ‘She will talk,’ Joutard said, as if the doctor had. And because she once spat in my face, he added to himself. It had only been her indispensability that had kept her alive that day. The thought of taking her that evening crossed his mind, but he let the idea go. There would be no pleasure in it. Certainly nothing to compare with the profit her body would bring him on the operating table.

  ‘How will they be killed?’ Calderón was asking.

  ‘Head shots?’

  Calderón nodded. ‘That is best . . .’

  ‘And after you’ve taken what you can from them, I want you and Bodin to take out the other kidneys,’ Joutard decided. There were already two many people in camp bearing the tell-tale scar.

  Calderón finished his rum and left. Joutard called in his number two. ‘Once they’ve started with the operations I want you to bring me a girl,’ he told the man. ‘The one with the perfect body – her name is Françoise, I think. You know the one I mean?’

  ‘The orphan Françoise?’ the man said doubtfully.

  ‘Of course the orphan,’ Joutard said. Emelisse Alabri’s hold over him was a thing of the past, and he could now take whom and whatever he wanted.

  Forty minutes after leaving Provo the Haitian coast hove into view. ‘Remember, anyone carrying a gun is to be taken out,’ Marker shouted over the noise of the rotors. ‘And don’t wait for them to pull the trigger first. This isn’t Tombstone.’

  The other four men nodded their agreement.

  Marker could now see the cliffs rising from the sandy beach, and the walled compound above them. Beside him Cafell was waiting to check his diagram against the reality.

  Felix lifted the chopper a little higher, and they could see the mosaic of buildings, trees and open spaces which lay inside the walls. It was not well lit, Marker noticed with relief. There was electric lighting in some of the buildings, and a few fires outside them, but darkness was the rule. If the watch-tower on the landward side was equipped with a searchlight it hadn’t yet been turned on.

  The helicopter was coming down now, aimed at a stretch of open ground surrounded by several small fires. At first Marker thought a square had been marked out as a landing sight, but then realized he was looking at a baseball diamond. As the helicopter sank towards the hard dirt surface Cafell made frantic alterations to the diagram.

  Two men stood waiting close to one of the fires, both armed with sub-machine-guns. The chopper was still a foot from the ground as Marker stepped off, rather in the manner of a man leaving a moving London bus, and fired a concentrated burst from his silenced MP5. Both men collapsed, sending little clouds of firelit dust into the night air.

  The other five men piled out, Felix with rather less enthusiasm than the others. ‘This way,’ Cafell said, and they were all off at a run, heading for a gap between a long, low building and a stand of royal palms. So far no one else seemed aware of their presence.

  Reaching a path Cafell stopped for a moment. ‘Is that Joutard’s office?’ he asked Felix, pointing at a one-storey building a hundred yards or so to their right.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The gate’s this way,’ Cafell told Marker.

  ‘Good luck,’ Marker told him, and the group split up, with Finn following Cafell at a run, the others the team leader.

  Marker’s group sped along the tree-lined path, conscious of the darkened windows in the buildings to either side, and came to the edge of an open space. On the far side was a line of three identical buildings, which would have looked like barracks but for the full-length verandas. According to Felix, the middle one of these contained Joutard’s office and living quarters.

  Marker paused in the shadows before gesturing the others to follow, and they were only about ten yards short of the veranda when a shout came out of the dark to their right. The SBS men sank instantly to the ground, and their eyes were still seeking out the shout’s source when a short burst from an SMG exploded in their ears, and knocked down the still-standing Felix.

  Suddenly two men were running towards them like idiots, only to be hurled backwards by the silent power of the MP5s.

  The new silence seemed less natural than the old. For a few seconds the birds and the cicadas seemed to hold their breath, and during that time the SBS team could hear music coming from inside the building. To Marker’s astonishment it sounded like Elvis Presley.

  He managed a quick look at Felix, and realized his wounds were not life-threatening. ‘I’m going in. You two get him
under the steps,’ he whispered, just before another burst of fire erupted out of the night, longer this time, but also wilder.

  Dubery and Franklin scrambled for the ground beneath the raised veranda, as Marker leapt up the three steps and hurled himself bodily at the office door. Crashing through, he found himself flying across the room inside, and landing almost at the feet of a running man.

  The man’s surprise was greater than Marker’s, and the SBS man managed to grab an ankle and flip his opponent towards the duty desk, which he hit head first.

  As the man slid motionless to the floor the first door in the passage swung open, and Marker had a momentary picture of a naked man looking out, and a naked girl sitting up somewhere behind him, before the door was slammed back shut. He strode swiftly across the intervening yards, raised his right foot, and rammed its sole against the door, sinking down on to his left knee almost in the same motion. The naked man was waiting with pistol raised, but the only shot he had time for went over Marker’s head, and the burst from the MP5 stitched a line of momentary agony across his chest. He sank back on to the girl behind him, who lay there whimpering in terror. ‘Is your heart filled with pain?’ Elvis was asking. ‘Shall I come back again, tell me, dear, are you lonesome tonight?’

  In the operating room everyone had heard the gunshots, but had done nothing beyond share questioning glances. The Americans couldn’t be here already, Russell thought, as he snipped carefully through one of the minor arterial links. It was probably just Joutard’s goons entertaining each other. Still . . .

  He looked across at Emelisse, whose skin seemed stretched even tighter across her lovely cheek-bones than usual. ‘Just keep on going,’ she murmured, so softly that he couldn’t be sure whether she was talking to him or herself.

  Marker put an eye round the corner of the office door, just as another burst of automatic fire ripped across the front of the building. A splinter caught in his cheek, drawing blood. He waited a few seconds and then swung himself through the rail and down to the ground, before rolling instantly back into the shelter of the veranda.

  ‘Hi,’ Cafell said casually.

  ‘How’s the gate?’ Marker asked him.

  ‘It’s ours. One man climbed over it and disappeared, but we had to take out the guy in the tower. Finn’s in occupation now. No one’ll get past him without learning an interesting fact.’

  Marker grinned. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘And Joutard’s dead,’ he added. ‘At least, I think it must have been him. That makes about eight of them accounted for – still a few to go. I think we’d better get to the hospital before anyone gets the idea of taking hostages. Then we can clear up. Frankie, you and Ian keep the bastards busy.’

  ‘OK, boss.’

  Marker and Cafell crawled along the front of the veranda to its end, turned the corner and scrambled to their feet. To their right they could see several curtained windows, each with lines of brilliant light seeping through. ‘Let’s go,’ Marker murmured.

  They were halfway down the side of the building when someone came running round the far corner. Seeing the two SBS men he had the presence of mind to throw himself on the ground and cover his head with his hands. Marker left him for Cafell, and headed straight for what seemed the only entrance to the hospital building. He was only a few feet from the door when a bullet whizzed past his head and zipped into the vegetation beyond.

  He ran even faster, hurling himself through the door as another shot echoed in his ears, and a cry of pain came out of the room ahead.

  Russell’s head spun round just in time to see Calderón’s dead body hit the ground. The kidney he had been holding slithered bloodily across the white floor, and Marker came tumbling in through the open doorway.

  For a second no one moved.

  ‘Dr Russell, I presume,’ Marker said.

  An hour later the compound was secure. Joutard and six of his men had been killed, another ten had wounds of varying severity. The remaining few had escaped across the walls.

  Emelisse had spoken to the orphans, many of whom were now wandering around the compound as if they finally owned it. The doctor herself, as Russell told Marker, was back in the operating theatre, sewing the surviving three kidneys back into their donors. ‘The tissue match couldn’t be better,’ he added wryly.

  ‘Some woman,’ Marker murmured.

  ‘Yeah,’ Russell agreed. ‘And I’d better go and see if she needs any help.’

  Marker walked slowly down to where Cafell, Dubery, Franklin and Finn were sitting with a bottle of Joutard’s rum. But despite the drink, despite the fact that they all had survived, the mood was far from cheerful. The enormity of what had happened in this place was still sinking in.

  Marker accepted a glass, but after a while he got up again and walked on alone to where a gap in the cliff-top wall allowed a view out across the shining water. He sat there, remembering the look of terror on the girl’s face, and Elvis asking if her heart was filled with pain.

  He thought about the other orphans, who had paid with their own flesh for the things which he had always taken for granted, and about the Americans who were no longer slaves to dialysis because of this devil’s bargain.

  He remembered the haunted loneliness in Tamara Arcilla’s eyes, and the hunger in himself which he hadn’t even known was there.

  He thought about Penny, and knew she was finally gone.

  And he stared out across the moonlit sea, drawing on its strength and beauty, so that the healing might begin.

  OTHER AVAILABLE TITLES IN THIS SERIES

  MARINE A SBS: Terrorism on the North Sea

  MARINE B SBS: The Aegean Campaign

  MARINE D SBS: Windswept

  MARINE E SBS: The Hong Kong Gambit

  MARINE F SBS: Royal Target

  MARINE G SBS: China Seas

  MARINE H SBS: The Burma Offensive

  MARINE I SBS: Escape From Azerbaijan

  MARINE J SBS: The East African Mission

  MARINE K SBS: Gold Rush

  MARINE L SBS: Raiders From The Sea

  OTHER TITLES IN SERIES FROM 22 BOOKS

  SOLDIER A SAS: Behind Iraqi Lines

  SOLDIER B SAS: Heroes of the South Atlantic

  SOLDIER C SAS: Secret War in Arabia

  SOLDIER D SAS: The Colombian Cocaine War

  SOLDIER E SAS: Sniper Fire in Belfast

  SOLDIER F SAS: Guerrillas in the Jungle

  SOLDIER G SAS: The Desert Raiders

  SOLDIER H SAS: The Headhunters of Borneo

  SOLDIER I SAS: Eighteen Years in the Elite Force

  SOLDIER J SAS: Counter-insurgency in Aden

  SOLDIER K SAS: Mission to Argentina

  SOLDIER L SAS: The Embassy Siege

  SOLDIER M SAS: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

  SOLDIER N SAS: The Gambian Bluff

  SOLDIER O SAS: The Bosnian Inferno

  SOLDIER P SAS: Night Fighters in France

  SOLDIER Q SAS: Kidnap the Emperor!

  SOLDIER R SAS: Death on Gibraltar

  SOLDIER S SAS: The Samarkand Hijack

  SOLDIER T SAS: War on the Streets

  SOLDIER U SAS: Bandit Country

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 1: Valin’s Raiders

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 2: The Korean Contract

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 3: The Vatican Assignment

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 4: Operation Nicaragua

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 5: Action in the Arctic

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 6: The Khmer Hit

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 7: Blue on Blue

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 8: Target the Death-dealer

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 9: The Berlin Alternative

  This electronic edition published in 2015 by Osprey Publishing Ltd

  First published in Great Britain in 1995 by 22 Books, Invicta House, Sir Thomas Longley Road, Rochester, Kent

  © 2015 Osprey Publishing Ltd

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  ISBN: 1-898125-39-2

  PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-4728-1649-8

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-4728-1650-4

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