Assassin (John Stratton)

by Falconer, Duncan

  Stratton removed his Afghan coat and opened up his arms to show his body.

  It wasn’t enough for the guard, so he opened up his shirt and raised his T-shirt to show his naked chest, beginning to wish he’d taken the civilian entrance. These things usually depended on who was manning the checkpoint at the time. Either this bunch had had a recent scare or intelligence had warned them of a potential attack. That or they were just in an officious mood.

  One of the soldiers approached and Stratton kept his arms outstretched, holding his ID, so as not to unnerve the man. The guard took the ID and inspected it, before handing it back. He lowered his rifle, shouting something at Stratton to direct him towards the checkpoint hut.

  Stratton got back into the Hilux, drove to the hut and stopped. A private security officer arrived with a sniffer dog, letting the animal lead the way around the vehicle. When they’d completed a circuit, the pair of them walked casually back to a chair beneath a shelter. The man sat down, the dog beside him.

  Stratton was beckoned forward and he drove to the next part of the checkpoint, where another soldier inspected his ID card. The soldier took Hetta’s and gave that the once-over. Satisfied, he waved them through. They drove around a bend lined with HESCO walls to yet another checkpoint, this one run by US soldiers. Their IDs were inspected again, after which Stratton and Hetta finally drove into the vast complex.

  Inside a ten-mile security perimeter, Kandahar Air Base, or KAF as it was known, was a mixture of military compounds, civilian contractors, and military and contractor air terminals, as well as an Afghan civilian airport sharing the same airfield and runways.

  They made their way along a busy main drag lined with contractor compounds, warehouses and vehicle parks, both military and civilian. There were several large, tented areas used for surplus military accommodation. They could see no evidence of the snow that had fallen that morning. Stratton pulled the Toyota off the dusty road into a car park beside a large warehouse-type building familiar to him.

  ‘You hungry?’ he asked her.

  Her way of acknowledging was to climb out of the pick-up.

  They took off all their Afghan clothing and joined a line of soldiers and contractors filing in through a gap in a staggered line of concrete blast walls. Inside the building, they showed their IDs to a US Army administrative clerk, who let them through, and they walked through a pair of doors into a vast hall.

  The place echoed with the conversations of hundreds of men and women. It was like a food fair, with more than a dozen stalls, each along a different theme: grills, sandwiches, salads, Chinese, roasts, pizzas and burgers, fruits, ice cream and drinks of all kinds excluding alcohol. The tables and chairs, placed in rows and sections, could seat a couple of thousand people.

  Stratton made for a stall providing fresh salad and filled a plate. Then he looked for a table, and not an empty one. The clientele were mostly men, civilians and soldiers, and mostly soldiers. The obvious difference between the soldiers and civilians, apart from their clothing, was the amount of hair on their heads and the size of their bellies. Most of the civilians looked fat and unfit, an indictment of the unlimited food, little of it on the healthy side of the line.

  He hadn’t chosen the mess hall just to get a meal. He saw a dozen civilians seated at a close group of tables, one in particular catching his eye: a man in a jumpsuit with a pair of wings on a chest badge.

  A good starting point.

  He looked around for Hetta, who was attracting the attention of several young soldiers at a nearby table. They were more than curious. Her fatigues were not regular military and her belt and holster were unconventional. And there was the Magnum semi-automatic cannon sitting in it. Regular soldiers were restricted to carrying standard-issue weapons. A Magnum wasn’t even special forces issue.

  She had a plate of food and was looking around the room for Stratton. She saw him looking directly at her and nodded towards an empty row of tables. He shook his head and motioned towards the table of contractors he’d singled out. He headed over and placed his tray down at the end of the table, where there were a couple of empty seats.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ he asked the nearest of the men.

  ‘Sure thing,’ the man said politely in an American accent.

  Southern, Stratton guessed. He pulled out a chair and sat down. The others at the table glanced at him, some taking a second look. Stratton presented an unusual sight in the generally conventional military base. His hair was much longer than a regular soldier’s and he had several days’ worth of facial growth. His chemical warfare fatigues were unusual, as well as being grubby. He had his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, his sleeves rolled up to reveal the tattered long sleeves of his T-shirt, the cuffs of which had long since failed. If a regular soldier were to turn out in such a manner, he’d risk getting charged for being improperly dressed.

  Several of the men gave each other glances but Stratton didn’t look up at any of them as he ate. When Hetta placed her tray on the table beside him, the men visibly paused to look at her. In her case, they were not just impressed by the unusual fatigues and the monster gat hanging from her hip. To a gun-toting Southern militiaman, which several of these gentlemen seemed to be, she was a dream.

  One of the men, a large individual with a beard, dark glasses and a pony tail, who was sitting across from Stratton, couldn’t contain his curiosity.

  ‘How you folks doin’?’ he asked. ‘Name’s Larry.’

  ‘Fine, Larry,’ Stratton said with a smile and an interested look. He noticed several of them were wearing the same shirts with a company badge on the breast and ‘CAMCO’ emblazoned across the top. There were several baseball hats on the table bearing the same badge.

  ‘You new here?’ Larry asked. ‘Pardon me for askin’, I ain’t tryin’ to poke my nose in. It’s just that we’ve all been here quite a few years and I ain’t seen you guys before.’

  ‘We are new here,’ Stratton said. ‘What do you guys do here, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘We’re in construction. Jack here runs the cement-making machines.’ Larry indicated the largest of the men, who must have weighed 150kg, most of it fat.

  Jack gave Stratton a polite nod while he ate.

  ‘George runs transport,’ Larry said.

  ‘How’d you do,’ said George, a grey-haired man in his sixties.

  ‘Hank’s our engineer, Bob’s our site manager. And Doug here visits once in a while,’ Larry said, referring to the man with the wings and the one of most interest to Stratton. ‘And the rest of us, well, we join in where we can.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re the lucky one,’ Stratton said to Doug. ‘You only get to visit.’

  ‘Well, sometimes I get to stay overnight,’ Doug said. His voice was soft and his accent mellow.

  ‘If we don’t screw up the load or the weather don’t close him in,’ Larry said. ‘If you haven’t already guessed, Doug’s our favourite pilot.’

  ‘That’s only because of the contraband I smuggle in,’ Doug said with a wry smile.

  ‘Hey, that’s supposed to be top secret,’ Bob said.

  Everyone found the comment amusing.

  ‘Just in case you’re thinkin’ bad things,’ Larry said to Stratton, ‘Doug’s referring to beer and pirate DVDs.’

  ‘And the occasional case of Jack,’ Doug added.

  ‘And the occasional case of Jack,’ Larry agreed. ‘And if the 27th’s commanding officer who lives down the road from us doesn’t get his cut, there’d be hell to pay.’

  ‘Where do you fly to?’ Hetta asked.

  ‘Dubai mostly,’ he said. ‘We also go Stateside sometimes. CAMCO’s Mid-East office is in Dubai but our head office is in Houston.’

  There were dozens of civilian contract companies on the base and most had their headquarters in the States.

  ‘I guess you’re heading out soon?’ she asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Doug said. ‘Tomorrow morning. You want a ride?’
He was smiling, getting a few winks and smirks from the others.

  ‘Might do,’ Hetta said, forcing a smile. ‘Depends where you’re headed.’

  ‘Houston. Soon as I can get these guys to finish unloading and reloading.’

  ‘We’ll unload tonight and reload first thing in the morning,’ Larry said. ‘The thought of you sittin’ in Hooter’s, sippin’ a cold one by tomorrow night, don’t make us want to hurry none.’ He grinned, as did most of the others, including the pilot.

  Stratton had finished eating and now he stood. ‘Well, gents, it was nice to meet you all. We have to be going.’

  ‘Good to meet you too,’ Larry said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t get your name.’

  ‘Stratton,’ he said. There was no point in hiding it. Anyone who cared to ask for his ID card would see it and every checkpoint he passed through would be aware of it. ‘And this is Hetta,’ he added, since all of them seemed much more interested in her than him.

  ‘You be safe now,’ Larry said. ‘You too, Hetta.’

  ‘We will,’ Stratton said. ‘All the best.’

  He picked up his tray, noting Hetta was walking away and had left hers behind. He picked it up, disguising a frown. The men were all watching her go.

  ‘That’s one helluva lady, I’ll tell you right now,’ Larry said.

  There were no disagreements.

  Stratton followed her out of the mess hall, through the trash room, where he dispensed with the trays, and outside into the warm, dusty air. They sat in silence for twenty minutes before they saw Larry and the other CAMCO men file outside. The contractors walked through the crowded car park to a couple of company 4×4s. The large CAMCO logo on the doors matched the ones on their shirts and baseball hats. When they headed out of the lot, Stratton followed, keeping a couple of military vehicles between them. The main drag was relatively busy and the severe speed restrictions in the camp meant everyone drove around at a sedate pace.

  He had a rough idea where he was in the camp from previous trips. They were heading towards the airfield. A Boeing 737 suddenly appeared, climbing above a line of hangars directly ahead. The CAMCO convoy reached a T-junction, the hangars and warehouses running across their front in both directions. They turned left, following the perimeter of the airfield. Less than a kilometre from the T-junction, Stratton watched the vehicles slow and turn sharply in through an opening between a couple of three-metre-high blast walls – reinforced concrete slabs two metres wide with a large, flat base.

  Stratton and Hetta looked in the entrance as they drove past. It had a gate but it wasn’t closed after the vehicles went inside. And since there didn’t appear to be a sentry on duty, it had to be assumed the gate remained open, during the daytime at least. He took the next left up ahead, around the corner of the CAMCO compound. The compound perimeter extended along the line of the road about thirty metres in, on the other side of a machinery park full of cranes, generators, flatbeds, bulldozers and other bits and pieces of machinery. The CAMCO compound was noisy. It stretched for another couple of hundred metres to a minor road that separated it from its neighbour to the rear. Stratton didn’t take the turn.

  ‘I take it you have a plan?’ she asked.

  ‘Kind of.’

  She glanced at him, wondering what that meant exactly.

  ‘The pilot’s leaving in the morning,’ he said. ‘The CAMCO guys are unloading the plane tonight and reloading it early tomorrow. Which suggests whatever they’re loading will be in their compound overnight.’

  ‘You hope.’

  He shrugged. ‘If it doesn’t work out with this outfit, we find another one. I can go to the air movement office and find out every cargo flight leaving this week and who’s chartered them. I take it we’re not exactly in a rush, right?’

  She didn’t reply. He got the feeling she didn’t agree with him.

  They came to another T-junction. Left meant back into the built-up part of the base, right seemed to head out towards the bottom end of the airfield, where there were few structures and little activity. He took the left, following the road for a kilometre before pulling into a busy car park surrounded by several large, modern, prefabricated buildings.

  ‘We should get out of these clothes,’ Stratton said. ‘Slip into something less war-like.’ He pointed to their front. ‘Home from home shopping.’

  The building was a US Army PX store filled with everything they could possibly need.

  ‘Do you have money?’ he asked.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘Would you mind taking me shopping? I’m travelling a little light.’

  Half an hour later they emerged from the store, each carrying several plastic shopping bags.

  ‘You’re fun to shop with,’ he said as they walked through the lot. ‘Most girls take for ever choosing clothes. You’re like a bloke. You see it, grab it, pay for it. I like that.’

  She ignored him while they got into the pick-up and he drove them back the way they’d come. When they reached the junction that led right to the CAMCO compound, he went straight on. From that point on, they were the only car moving on the road, which led to nowhere in particular.

  A large stretch of ground opened up on their right, with layers of razor wire stretched across its outer reaches. A couple of hundred metres up ahead, the road came to a dead-end, blocked off by concrete barriers and razor wire, so Stratton turned the pick-up into the open ground in front to an old, empty hangar that appeared abandoned. He carried on around the back of it and pulled the car to a halt. The engine went quiet.

  All of the building’s windows had been broken. A large pair of doors were open, piles of trash inside, the roof partially collapsed. A line of razor wire ran past them to the edge of the airfield. Much of it was hidden by a million plastic bags caught on its barbs and flapping in the breeze.

  Beyond the wire he could see one end of the airfield. It looked dusty and unused. It was the world’s busiest single runway airport, but aircraft rarely ventured that far. Further beyond, several hundred metres away, he could see the main airport perimeter of HESCO barriers topped with razor wire, and beyond that a vast, open plain of grey sand framed by rolling hills, the crests of which were miles away.

  They both changed their dirty clothes for new, nondescript earth-coloured trousers, T-shirts, shirts and fleeces. Before Stratton tossed his trousers, he searched the pockets. There was something in one of them and he dug it out – a large coin on a chain. Chandos’s SBS stone. He’d forgotten all about it.

  He put it in a pocket of his new trousers and checked his face in the Toyota’s side mirror. His straggly hair and beard would continue to be useful in civilianising his look. And if challenged for identification, they would also pass as off-duty soldiers.

  Stratton watched a big transport aircraft come in over the airfield. Looking at the clear skies, he guessed it was around three in the afternoon, and his watch confirmed it. They’d have to wait till dark before he could crack on with the next phase of the plan. He climbed into the rear seat of the Hilux and lay down. Daytime dozing wasn’t something he was good at, but the night could be a long one and since there was nothing else to do, he might as well try and get some sleep.

  He exhaled and let his body relax, as Hetta climbed into the front passenger seat and reclined the seat as far back as it could go. The air was still. Few sounds in it. They were in a safe place and it was peaceful.

  ‘Why’d you join the military?’ she asked.

  The sound of her voice surprised him, as well as the fact she’d asked him a personal question. He wondered why.

  ‘You don’t have to answer. I know how it feels when people ask personal questions. I’m not passing the time. I’d like to know.’

  ‘Quid pro quo?’ Stratton said.

  ‘I doubt it. Yesterday you sounded like you knew all about me anyway.’

  ‘I was only testing some theories.’ He thought about her question. ‘Because I’d nothing better to do,’ he said. ‘I was young and lost. So I j
oined the Marines. The Royal Marines to you Yanks. I’d no idea what I was good at. If I was good at anything.’

  ‘Didn’t your parents help you with that?’

  ‘I didn’t have any. And there was no one else close enough to share those sorts of things with. One day I went for a walk in the city, London. I found myself looking at a shop window. A sign was offering careers in the Marines. To this day I don’t know quite why, but I just walked in and signed up.’

  ‘It was your destiny calling.’

  He glanced at her. Her eyes were closed. ‘I didn’t have you pegged as the destiny-believing type,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure if our lives are already written, but I do believe we have a calling in life. There’s something that each of us can do better than most others. We’re all unique enough to have a purpose. Some of us get to discover what that calling is. Most of us don’t.’

  He thought about what she had said.

  ‘You don’t agree,’ she said.

  ‘Where were you when I was seventeen?’

  He glanced at her. Her eyes were still closed, but he thought he could detect the very slightest of smiles on her lips.

  ‘I take it you had the benefit of good advice when you were young,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you discover your true calling?’

  ‘No. I was taken to it.’

  ‘How’d you know it was the right choice?’

  ‘It was my father who showed me. It had been his calling. And he told me it would be mine too.’

  ‘Your father was a soldier?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she said finally.

  ‘So, where’d you grow up?’

  She didn’t answer.

  He looked at her again, with her eyes still closed, but her expression had changed. It was one question too many. But it was more conversation than he’d expected from her.

  He closed his eyes and did his best to wash everything from his mind. The high-pitched engines of an aircraft intensified for a few moments as it accelerated along the runway and grew muffled and less intense as it took to the skies.