Bolt Action

by Charlie Charters

  ‘The one,’ and the moustachioed driver emphasises, ‘the one.’

  Lamayette fumbles to get a Tickle thumb out through the cuff. ‘In this critical moment for our two peace-loving countries, Jahanghir, and all you can think about is the jiggy-jiggy.’

  ‘Most important thing, you told me once, Mr Bill. Sex with monkeys.’

  ‘Monkey sex, I said,’ he corrects, fitting his college football ring on to the third finger of Tickle’s left hand. Just as he wears it himself.

  There’s a moment of studied reflection from Jahanghir as they continue their struggle. ‘Mr Bill. Is that legal in your country? Sex with monkeys?’

  Lamayette speaks through clenched teeth, bent over to fit a pair of shoes on Tickle’s feet. ‘Sex with monkeys . . . good question. I am sure it is legal. Somewhere. Probably in those godless liberal states, like where Ms Ackerman comes from. Vermont. And New Hampshire. Massachusetts. Definitely California.’

  Happy with the information, Jahanghir pulls the sweatshirt over the ape’s gut. Tucks it down. The body had been frozen for more than a month now, and as it thaws it radiates a desperate chill. Jahanghir had been a direct hire by Lamayette himself, not somebody inherited. The station chief made a point of keeping his Peshawar driver off the agency’s books and so had no cause to ask how old he is. He can only go by what he sees. Flashing eyes and a hard, worn face of studied integrity, which could as easily be twenty as sixty years old. Not a pinch of fat on him. Time and time again, the Pakistani had proved himself. Like right now. Thinks nothing of being asked to clothe a dead four-hundred-pound gorilla. Right you are, Mr Bill, and gets on with it. The sort of hire who quickly becomes more family member than arms-length employee. Hence the line of questioning: Jahanghir remains constantly anxious about his boss. Mortified that three women, three, had divorced him.

  ‘Very becoming hips. And she speaks excellent Pashto, Mr Bill.’ His voice cautioning, don’t let this one go. ‘She will follow the path of honour and virtue.’ As he talks, Jahanghir Khan, kneeling on the driver’s seat, concentrates on folding the vast lengths of Tickle’s arms across the gorilla’s lap. ‘She will make a very obedient wife. I see many children.’

  ‘Obedient? The modern American woman? I don’t think you read her quite right, old friend.’ Tickle’s thick, dark head lolls towards the passenger door, where the American stands, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Lamayette’s medical alert bracelet is already on the simian’s right wrist. (Jahanghir had enquired, ‘What is your sickness, Mr Bill?’ ‘Unforgivable weakness around women.’ ‘Oh.’ Pause. ‘I think I have that too, Mr Bill.’)

  Lamayette knows the best he can hope for is a twenty-four-hour start . . . the Pakistani police would be first on the scene, and would recover fragments of a ‘corpse’ from the burnt-out wreckage. The Federal Investigation Agency and Inter-Services Intelligence will sniff around too, trying to get a fix on the bomb and who they can blame. But this being a CIA matter, a death involving a senior diplomat, the cadaver will be locked down by the local consulate at the Khyber Medical College, until a US specialist team arrives. They’d come to this protocol recently after a Homeland Security official stationed in Islamabad died by gunshot in his bathroom; the details of the autopsy were widely leaked by the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences to an already overheated local media. To avoid that happening again Lamayette’s corpse would be flown to Germany for a full post-mortem, and that’s when his ruse will be up. A twenty-four-hour window. The obvious skeletal differences, the braincase and teeth arrangement, will have been missed by the boys from CSI: Peshawar, scooping clods of burnt flesh and bone into a dustpan. But not by a serious pathologist.

  So in that window, those twenty-four hours, the ID will be called on what Peshawar police find at the scene. The car. Bracelet. Mobile phone and pager. His college football ring. And now for the final touch. Something which, with great bitterness, he knows will definitely survive a blast . . . but will be lost to him probably forever.

  It’s a pair of dog tags, one bent in half almost at ninety degrees. They belonged to his US Marine sergeant brother, killed early one morning in October 1983 in Beirut along with 240 other countrymen by a suicide bomb that destroyed the Marine’s Battalion Landing Team HQ. The blast, equivalent to 12,000 pounds of explosive, was so strong the entire four-storey building was jumped into the air, then, freed of foundations and support columns, the structure crashed down on itself. Those inside had had no chance. Lamayette’s brother was found finally, five days later, crushed to death, in the boxer shorts he slept in.

  He looks at the beaded chain and bent stainless-steel tag. Closes the palm of his hand. Feels a prickle of tears, a memory of that singular moment. The pair of naval officers approaching his parents’ porch. A Friday morning after the Sunday blast. His father falling to his knees, hands clasped together. The door creaking open. Everyone begging, begging that they’d got it wrong. ‘The Secretary of the Navy has asked that I inform you . . .’

  Lamayette kisses the metal. Feels the cold rub of the raised lettering against his cheek one last time. Jahanghir is watching from a distance, like an honour guard, proud and erect.

  LAMAYETTE

  JOHN J

  743-99-8179

  USMC L

  NO PREFERENCE

  ‘Bro. This being Memorial Day weekend and all, I hope I’m doing the right thing by you. But I don’t know.’ Tears film his eyes. ‘That’s why I always said I needed you around. Forgive me, please, if I’m not.’ He glances away, rubbing his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose hard. Slowly collects himself. ‘Semper Fi. Love you, bro.’ Finally, he places the chain around Tickle’s neck. Straightening it slightly so that it hangs just right. ‘Always faithful.’

  The set-up is simplicity itself.

  First, the Ford Expedition is lifted up using an inflatable car jack, a big, reinforced yellow canvas bag, like a life raft, attached to the exhaust pipe and wedged under the SUV. As the engine idles, one side of the car eases up into the air.

  Next, Jahanghir rolls several canisters of oxygen under the Ford. To create a devastating thermobaric effect. Packing them in tight. Then Lamayette deploys the power-step running board (naturally, the CIA car has all the extra options). The electric motor drive quietly extends the high-strength aluminium bar to a convenient stepping height.

  The hand grenade is a Soviet-style RGD-5, which you could buy in a Peshawar bazaar for a couple of bucks. Lamayette pulls out the hooped pin, then slides it into a long, tall Collins cocktail glass. The sides of the glass trap the lever in place, ensuring the four-second fuse is not triggered. He places the glass carefully on the ground, lining it up so that it’s immediately underneath the extended running board on the side of the SUV that’s raised up into the air.

  The car park is still quiet. Deserted. The two of them retreat behind the trunk of a date palm bordering the hotel wall. A dozen yards from the Ford. ‘Right, my friend. Let’s screw with some government property.’ And faithful Jahanghir hands him the loaded Kalashnikov, with a devilish grin of the whitest white teeth.

  Ackerman is sitting on her own in an old red 4WD Mitsubishi Pajero parked on the Khyber Road almost opposite the Grand Continental. Civilian plates. Feeling pretty vulnerable.

  Suddenly she’s aware of movement between her and the hotel. Two people stalking through the car park, their bodies silhouetted against hotel lights.

  Cries go up. Long adulatory cries, ringing clear into the night. ‘Allllllaaaaahh Akkhbaaaar.’

  ‘Allah Akhbar’, God is Great. Again and again.

  The gunfire starts, she ducks instinctively. Bursts of four or five shots. Little streaks of tracer, spraying up into the sky and around the car park directly in front of her. Metallic ting and twang noises.

  The two figures sprint from the shadows. They dash across the empty road. Round the far side of the Pajero, pressing themselves against the car. Crouching. She picks out Lamayette’s unmistakable buffalo shape.

&nbs
p; Through the window, she hears his muffled voice. ‘You’d better get down.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Get down!’

  Several bursts of 7.62mm rounds have been fired directly into the canvas gut of the inflatable car jack. It’s slowly giving up its air. Hissing to the ground. As it does so, the extended running board sinks, crushes down on the tall Collins glass. Releasing the lever of the hand grenade, starting the fuse.

  Ackerman insistent now. ‘I said, what’s going . . .’

  The first explosion cracks loudly but not devastatingly. Enough for Ackerman to turn around, face towards the hotel, What’s going on? written across her face. Then the oxygen canisters erupt, whuummmpp, one after another. Bucking the 2009-model SUV twenty feet into the air, riding a bright ball of flame. In total there are four thick, concussive blasts smothering the night sky in plumes of light. Finally the SUV crunches to the ground on its back and the gas tank ruptures. Consumed by fires of the most perfect intensity.

  Breathless, Lamayette opens the door. ‘Now this is what I need you—’

  ‘Stop. Stop.’ She’s waving her hands, disbelievingly. ‘Have you just blown up that embassy car?’

  Ackerman sees the whites and yellows of the fire reflecting in the shiny glaze of Lamayette’s forehead. ‘Yeah,’ like, of course I have. Sundry small explosions leap from the burning wreck. Little pockets of gas.

  ‘Jesus, Bill. That’s the end of your career. You do know that?’

  ‘Look, maybe it is. Then you get to blab to Ambassador Zoh how you were there, you saw it all, what a monster I was. That makes you today’s paper-shuffling, do-nothing hero of the hour . . .’

  Commotion streams from the hotel. People stumbling towards the fiery wreckage. From a long way away, there’s the faint sound of sirens.

  ‘. . . But maybe I’m right, in which case you can still be the hero. Maybe tonight we can flush out the truth about General Ali Mahmood Khan and what he’s up to. If I am right, there’s one thing I need you to do. Please. Now. Just one thing. Either way, you’re in the money on this thing.’ Jahanghir fusses around behind Lamayette, peering this way and that. Unnerved and agitating to get away.

  She closes her eyes. Aaaaarggh. ‘What?’

  He passes a handwritten note. A mobile telephone number. ‘Get inside the hotel. Tell them in your best bazaar Pashto you need to call your brother. That you’ve been visiting your sick husband. Drama, drama: big explosion. Now brother must pick you up. Ring this number. It’s one of General Khan’s sons. A big fat-headed gasbag called Shafiq. Tell him . . .’ and here Lamayette looks a bit self-conscious, trying to bend his limited Pashto into shape ‘. . . Amrikaayi CIA saaqhib tshaawd.’ American CIA chief dead.

  ‘Shit, your language is off, Bill. They use verbs as well, you know.’

  ‘You get the drift. The CIA boss man is dead. You saw it. Big bomb. Lots of gunfire. Shafiq’s a big cheerleader for this sort of terrorist drama, a tittle-tattling lounge lizard. He’ll check with the police, then the news will roll. Text. Emails. Websites. He’ll tell the world I’m dead, so he can play the man who shot Liberty Valance. My bet is, that’ll flush them into action, things in the Khan household will start to move.’

  As the sirens near, Ackerman pulls down the Afghan-style veil. She stands by the car, readying to cross the road, and her eyes find him one last time through the little lace window. ‘Give this up. I’ll vouch for you. I promise.’

  He gives her a wink and a confident thumbs-up. ‘Get going, Red.’

  Operation Macchar, twenty-six hours to go

  In the Swat River valley

  Malakand District

  Two and a half hours by truck north of Peshawar

  Eight hours later. They’re known as jingly-jangly trucks. Or just jinglies for short. The forty-year-old Bedford truck, labouring under a huge gaudily decorated wooden superstructure of painted gold and silver motifs, has broken down. The rear axle deliberately but artfully sheared in two, requiring the vehicle to be beached by the side of the narrow road that heads down to the river crossing. It’s conspicuously busted and out of action.

  The driver and his assistant, close family to Jahanghir, have begun the slog towards the city of Malakand twenty-five miles away. Making sure not to go too fast. The only person remaining is a guard, fierce looking with an up-to-date Kalashnikov, dust-streaked dishdasha, angry eyes and a beard as long as a shovel. He stands watch. Instructed to be firm and rude in refusing all offers of help. Another Jahanghir cousin.

  Inside the vehicle’s wooden cabin, hidden within the superstructure by tight-packed sacks of molasses and fertiliser, are Bill Lamayette, Kirsten Ackerman and Jahanghir, together with an icebox, a lot of expensive optical and audio equipment and two dangling drop-lights wired to a car battery. Plus another pair of assault rifles and a dozen or so clips of ammunition. A reminder they are in seriously lawless territory.

  The only thing in the cabin that even vaguely resembles high-tech is the surveillance gadgetry. Positioned against a series of peepholes, they are watching a madrasa some four hundred yards away. A two-level whitewashed adobe building configured around a tiled compound the size of a football pitch. The school has carefully tended plots of land on three sides and on the other the bubbling snowmelt waters of the River Swat. Thrusting up through the rich, loamy soil, and shadowing the whole structure, are thick stands of evergreens. Pine and olive trees.

  It’s an idyllic setting. Remote. Secure. And, surrounded by open space, easy to protect from interlopers. The school has invested a serious amount in barbed- and razor-wire fencing. The only access is through a single cinderblock guardhouse. It was from there that a posse of mean-looking goons, with Kalashnikovs and bandoliers, had sauntered, to check on the Bedford and make sure their stop was genuine. Evidently the lie had worked, because on a second visit there was none of the menace and they came offering Jahanghir’s guard oranges and mint leaves.

  To get here, they’d driven through the night, weaving and creaking up one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Gearbox whining, sliding into each other as the venerable truck hugged its side of the winding pass.

  At first there’d been good news. Exactly as Lamayette had predicted. Jahanghir has a briefcase holding a dozen mobile phones, their numbers known to various radical cells. Within twenty minutes of Ackerman calling General Khan’s son Shafiq, the phones erupted. One after the other. Different correspondents. Wave after wave of text messages. Like gossiping honey bees abuzz, in equal measure jubilant and vengeful. All knowing. The CIA chief is dead. A mighty blow has been struck . . .

  Ackerman was stunned by it all – SMS software can handle only 160 characters, yet, as Jahanghir read off each screen, the Pashto messages seemed to cram into so little so much precise detail. These were mass mail-outs moving at breakneck speed. And in the dead of night too; imagine the volume if this were daytime.

  What’s that Mark Twain line? A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes . . .

  Central to the surveillance is a holy man called Pir Durbar. He lives in a small outlying house at the madrasa, giving holy-man consultations to the rich and the bewildered in these suitably ascetic surroundings.

  On the journey up, Lamayette had explained his theory to Ackerman: the Pashtun don’t think about today and tomorrow, their plots span across an almost glacial time frame, to win prestige for their clan’s people, across the generations, for ever . . . that’s the measure of Pashtun success.

  Lamayette continued: General Khan knows it will be left to his children and their children to roll out the dynasty, using the hundreds of millions of US dollars he’s embezzled from the Defense Department’s Coalition Support Funds . . . he will have sacrificed everything, including his life if necessary, to give his descendants the chance to deliver.

  ‘OK. I get the theory.’

  ‘Only trouble is . . . Khan’s children are fucking nitwits. Like Laurel and Hardy, but without the
laughs. You spoke with Shafiq. He’s number-two boy; a fat, indolent prick. Low, greedy cunning but no damn balls. Just sits on his ass, watching movies, planning his first cabinet, talking big. Never walking the streets, or agitating a crowd. You don’t know Hamza yet. Son number one. Unlike his brother he probably knows he’s hopeless. Everything’s on his shoulders yet he’s so lacking in confidence it’s painful. No charisma: tall. Skinny. Nervy jitters. Biting his nails. Classic daddy-whipping-boy screw-up.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘Well . . .’ and in the darkness of the truck bumping along, Lamayette had lit one cigarette from the butt of another ‘. . . Hamza has taken to visiting this guy Pir Durbar. At the madrasa. The old holy man, after much crossing of the palm with silver, has convinced Hamza he just needs to lie back and be wafted into power by these benign celestial forces that only this holyman witch doctor can summon. My bet, when he hears I’m dead, Hamza will scoot up here. If you’re that inadequate you’ll want to hear from your own holy man, have him regurgitate one more time why the universe continues to smile on you, how come you keep beating the odds, drawing royal flushes every hand.

  ‘It’s a chance, a small chance, that we might be able to get a fix on what the fuck they’re up to.’

  That was the plan. Outlined almost eight hours ago it had sounded reasonable. Intriguing even. But that was then.

  It’s now midday. A crow caws overhead. Bored out of its mind, like the rest of us, thinks the young woman.

  A whole third of a day has passed with them on this mindless vigil. Staring through the shimmering fields at the school. The only thing moving is the sun, mature in its slow daily track. Whatever adrenalin they’d been running on has long since flagged. Those in the madrasa are taking their two-hour lunch-slash-siesta.

  Just so you’re completely in the picture . . . Team America has bupkis to show for eight hours of cramp-inducing hanging around. Worse still, the window on Lamayette’s spectacular deception is closing . . .