by Andrew Grant
‘You can’t trust him,’ Karl was saying.
‘I don’t. I want cover, a bullet-proof vest and I’ll be carrying a gun as well.’
‘Let’s get back to the map,’ Alex suggested. This was the game he knew best, I would concede that. Right at that moment in time I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I might have been. Hate and fear combined were messing up my ability to think logically and rationally. Alex was a trained pro and he wasn’t personally involved. Because his emotions weren’t in play his perspective was a damned sight clearer than mine.
Karl and I fell in behind the Special Forces man and started back to our HQ. Alex looped us wide around the hut where Sami was still grieving over his lost child. I knew that when those sounds of grief stopped, my old friend would emerge ready for war.
Back inside the command post the satellite map was spread on a table. Alex spent ten seconds looking down at it, then his thick finger tapped a position on the map. ‘You stop here where the river comes closest to the track. We’ll have four in the bush here in close support.’ Alex indicated an arc in the jungle on the opposite side of the track to the river. You get into trouble, hit the water. Looks like its deep enough and there’s a bank for cover.’
I glanced at my watch. It was 09:00. There wasn’t a lot of time on our side. Alex was calling some of his men in. They arrived in a matter of minutes and grouped around the map. The Special Forces boss laid out the ambush. Then he turned to me. ‘Keep your headset on throughout. We need a go word,’ he said as he started out to see to his squad.
‘Pizza,’ I replied, thinking of Chekhov’s ruined face. ‘I say that and it’s all on.’
‘Okay,’ he agreed, then he was gone. A couple of minutes later and the big boys were off to war. Four of The A Team started for the track off the plateau which had been stripped down for action. They were in pairs. One in each pair carried a modified M16, the other a silenced H&K MP5 in addition to his personal armament. There were canteens, a LAW each and loaded ammunition pouches. Jungle camouflage paint covered any naked flesh. They were gone in a minute.
‘Chekhov’s probably got people already in position,’ I said to Alex.
‘We’re counting on it,’ a voice replied in my earpiece. It wasn’t Alex who spoke. I hadn’t realised the unit was in full send-and-receive mode. I flicked it back a notch. I didn’t want to hear this show take place.
‘X-Ray, the guys on the thermal imager are already registering hits. Chekhov maybe didn’t count on that,’ Karl explained. ‘This is the latest technology and far, far better than anything the Soviets had or have. So even if Chekhov has imagers, which I doubt, they’re shit compared to this puppy. X-Ray will direct our recon teams in on them. If all of Chekhov’s guys are above ground without thermal shielding or not hidden in folds in the terrain, we’ve got them cold. We just need time to get onto them.’
‘Great,’ I said with feeling. That was good news. I thanked God for Uncle Sam’s technocrats.
‘The rest of the squad will stay here and hold the hill,’ Karl said. ‘I still don’t trust Chekhov to do what he says he’ll do.’
‘Neither do I,’ I replied with more than a little conviction in my voice. Chekhov’s word wasn’t even a consideration in my book. ‘Let’s set me up so I can do exactly the opposite to what I said,’ I added.
‘You going to shoot him if you get close enough?’
‘You fucking bet on it,’ I promised. ‘You’ve seen what this bastard can do with a knife.’ It was focused now. A razor sharp, heavy-bladed cane knife could take out bone and muscle with ease. That was obviously what Chekhov had used on all of his victims. I knew without a doubt he’d killed them all simply because, as I’d defined days before, this whole thing was totally personal as far as he was concerned. As it was for me then, for that matter! It couldn’t get any more personal.
Then I remembered something that made me chuckle. Karl was looking at me as if I’d tossed my last marble out of the crib. Once again in a moment of stress my mind had wandered, seeking something, anything to take off some of the heat and keep me sane. ‘Recall a scene in an Indiana Jones movie,’ I asked Karl, ‘where this dervish comes at Harrison Ford waving a sword in each hand?’
‘Yeah,’ replied Karl. ‘Old Indy pops him.’
‘That’s me, buddy. I get close enough, he gets it in the head.’ I promised.
‘Someone once said never take a knife to a gunfight, and I couldn’t have agreed more.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Karl was saying. ‘There’s a Kevlar vest in my kit. You get that on, I want a word with Alex.’ Karl ran off. He’d come up with a plan! Whatever it was I wasn’t about to find out. I retrieved the vest. It was lightweight, of the expensive variety and definitely not standard issue. I stripped off my T-shirt and slipped the armour on, adjusting the Velcro fasteners to get it sitting as comfortably as it was going to get. When I said it was a lightweight, I was talking ten pounds as opposed to twenty. Nevertheless, it would stop a small calibre round or a knife for that matter. I found a cotton shirt in my pack and put that over the top. The loose fit of the shirt would hide the vest and whatever I decided to stuff down the back of my trousers. I figured a Minimi would be just the thing but I’d need to be the size of King Kong to hide that. I settled on the Walther.
Sami suddenly appeared in the doorway. He was minus his grisly burden of half an hour before, but the bloodstains on the side of his face and his shirt bore mute witness to Kim’s death. Sami’s face was expressionless, except for his eyes. The eyes wore a look that I had never seen in my old friend. It was like looking into the window of a furnace. If I didn’t get Chekhov, then Sami was prepared to go into hell after him. We were both of the same mind.
Sami didn’t say anything and neither did I. We just embraced and hung together for a long moment before he drew away. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘When this is over! For now we get Chekhov, Daniel. I should go.’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I saw him first,’ I said and Sami almost smiled. ‘I need a cane knife, a very sharp cane knife.’
‘I will organise that.’ Sami turned and was gone, leaving me to finish what preparations I still had to make. I needed a shit, badly. My stomach was churning and it had nothing to do with the food. I went to the stinking latrine set as far away from everything on the plateau as it was possible to get. It wasn’t a place to linger.
When I emerged I could see Sami talking to one of his men up by the dope kitchen. The guy was sitting in the shade of a tree by the side of the shed using an old-fashioned foot-operated grinding wheel attached to a machete. I joined my friend and we stood and watched.
The method of sharpening might have been old-fashioned but, by the time the man at the wheel had finished, the machete blade was like a damned razor. ‘Very sharp,’ he said as he handed the cane knife to me with a big grin.
‘Just the way I like it,’ I replied, taking a practice swing at nothing. The handle wasn’t that great as far as the grip was concerned, but the blade whistled through the air like a scythe. Old man Time—or was it the Spectre of Death?—was waving his big curved blade behind my shoulder. If all else failed and I had to take Chekhov on in a hand-to-hand rumble, this damned thing would be a real asset.
Sami and I started walking back to the command hut without talking. As I walked I swung the blade, trying to get some sort of feel for it. Karl was beckoning to us. Sami pulled me up. ‘I will say goodbye and good luck now, Daniel. There is something I must do.’ Sami grabbed me in a bear hug and said words I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand Japanese. Then he was moving away rapidly. Confused, I turned and went to where Karl was waiting on the porch of our HQ.
‘Okay,’ the CIA man was saying as he led us back to the map table. ‘Alex has delegated himself as extra cover. He’s getting ready now.’ I went to Karl’s shoulder. He ran a forefinger down the course of the river on the map. ‘He’s going into the stream and he’s going to go past the meet point to about here.’ Karl tapped the map. The point he
indicated was maybe a hundred yards beyond the place where I would stop and wait for Chekhov.
‘Chekhov might try and draw you further down the track towards him,’ Karl continued, ‘or he might have a team following him in addition to the ones he’s already positioned. If Alex is between them and Chekhov, he can cut Chekhov off from his cover or take him out if he puts you down.’
Alex came back into the war room about then. Gone were the battle fatigues. In their place he had on some sort of skin-tight body suit. It was like a wetsuit but made of some light fabric that was a mottled broken pattern of dark greens. There was a small rucksack of the same material on his back. He had a sheathed knife attached to one thigh and a handgun in a tactical holster attached to the other. There were goggles and a snorkel hanging around his neck and he wore a communicator under his hood. I guessed the damned things were waterproof. ‘I’m getting into the river fifteen minutes before you hit the track,’ he said. ‘I’ll get into position beyond you. If the shit hits the fan, you get in the water fast. I’ll have Claymores positioned to sweep the track and the jungle fringe in my zone. You stay in the river until you get the all clear.’
‘Pizza and I’m in the water,’ I confirmed.
‘Luck,’ said the Special Forces man. He turned to Karl. ‘Is our friend coming in?’ he asked.
‘Be here in ten,’ Karl confirmed. Alex nodded and was gone.
I was going to ask what they were talking about but didn’t. I had enough going on in my mind and I needed another shit. My gut was turning somersaults and kicking the hell out of my heart with every gyration. I went back to the stinking latrine and delivered up virtually nothing. Maybe it was all in my head.
I came back to our hut, lit a cigarette and opened the half-empty bottle of Mekong the previous occupants had left behind. I didn’t care what anyone might say. I was about to do the traditional ‘Tombstone Shuffle’ down Main Street, and nicotine and a belt of something containing a lot of alcohol were probably the only things in the world that were going to settle my nerves and still allow me to function. Damned shame I didn’t have a bottle of bourbon in my kit. That had been a major oversight. I settled on a hefty shot of the embalming fluid. It was way better than nothing.
I had the Walther in the small of my back and two spare magazines in my hip pocket. I doubted I would need them. Either Chekhov would be dead by the time I’d emptied magazine one or I would be. End of story.
My watch was telling me it was time to start my walk. Karl accompanied me to the top of the track. The mist was gone now, and the day had cleared, despite the fact storms still hovered grey and heavy on the far horizon. A good day to die, I thought, remembering an old American Indian saying. Karl shook my hand.
‘Go get him, Dan,’ he said. ‘Remember, I’ll be talking to you. The guys on the imager will be talking to the scouts on a closed channel. You won’t hear them unless they want you to. Anyone above ground and not hidden behind a fold in the ridge is visible to them. They’ll already be calling our teams in on Chekhov’s guys. There’ll be a lot happening. Just remember, you won’t be alone. Just don’t get distracted.’
‘I’ll be praying,’ I replied with true feeling as I switched my communicator fully on. I looked around for Sami, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Anyway, I thought, any more of this farewell shit and I’ll start getting dewy-eyed or chicken out.
‘Lone figure leaving the village, walking towards us.’ The man on the imager was talking to me from four feet away, sans communicator.
‘Roger. Let’s get this show on the road,’ I replied with a hell of a lot more bravado than I felt. I could almost hear the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly playing somewhere in my head as I took that first step down towards the OK Corral, or wherever. Clint Eastwood I wasn’t. I wanted another shit but I held on and prayed for the water in my gut to quickly turn to concrete.
36
Five minutes further down the track the bush crowded in. The light there was no longer as clear and bright as it was up above. This was a world of greens and browns. The clay and mud underfoot supplied the earthy tones. Everything else was a shade of green. The colours of the jungle foliage ran through the entire green spectrum, ranging from light, yellow–green tints to some so dark they were almost black. Welcome back, I thought to myself as I moved down through the mottled shadows. This was the world I had lived in for so long, once upon a time. Then it had been both a friend and a foe, but mainly a friend. This time, I hoped, it would treat me the same way.
‘I’m in position. The advancing subject is 200 metres away.’ Alex had made it to his position undetected.
‘We have a big lens on our subject. We are reasonably positive it is Chekhov.’ Karl was back in the act. ‘Subject is a thick-set man with a badly scarred face. Age indeterminable. He is carrying a machete in his right hand. There is no other visible sign of a weapon.’
‘Chekhov was left-handed,’ I said, cutting across the commentary. I remembered the Russian’s file. I also remembered Babs. I’d calculated at the time that a left-handed man had cut her throat.
‘Injuries may have forced him to change hands,’ Karl responded.
‘Maybe,’ I agreed. I was at the second bend in the track. Soon I would be on the river flat and Chekhov, or whoever it was advancing down the road, would be able to see me. I had no doubt that whatever big lenses we had on Chekhov, he would have some of the very same on us. I reached the flat and followed the track as it curved parallel to the stream. Now I could see him. A tiny figure dressed in white was moving in the distant haze. The track, like the stream, had carved its path out of the green of the jungle and the tall grasses. It appeared as a dark ribbon from down there. The white of Chekhov’s clothes was in vivid contrast to both the brown–yellow dirt of the road and the dark green of the jungle mass.
‘I see him,’ I said aloud to myself as much as anyone else. I passed the cane knife from my right to my left hand. The butt of the gun was positioned for a right-handed draw. Not that I would need the Walther for at least 150 paces. Chekhov and I were still some 300 yards apart at this stage of the game.
‘X-Ray has two figures following the line of the ridge down from the village. Sami?’ It was Karl speaking.
‘Yes,’ came the reply.
‘Fuck!’ I thought but then I realised I’d said it aloud.
‘In case you miss him, Daniel!’ Sami’s voice was a whisper.
‘Stay high, Sami,’ Karl urged. ‘Our killing ground is 200 yards above the track.’
‘We will,’ came the reply. ‘Good hunting!’
Damn, damn, damn, I thought as I tried to refocus on what I was doing. I tried to gauge how quickly Chekhov was moving and how far and how fast I had to move to ensure that we met at the point we had designated as our own personal killing field. I quickened my pace slightly. If I reached where X marked the spot first, I would just wait there for him. If he reached it and came on beyond, how was I to get him to back up?
‘At the present rate you will arrive sixty seconds ahead of the subject,’ Karl said. He had obviously been doing his maths.
‘I figured that,’ I replied, slowing slightly.
‘Any activity at the lower village?’ I didn’t recognise the voice.
‘Negative. The lack of activity suggests that there is a lot going on,’ Karl responded.
‘I concur,’ Alex said in a close-miked whisper. ‘Subject has just passed me. I’m setting the Claymores.’
‘Gotcha,’ Karl confirmed. ‘Recon one reports they have bandits on visual and are positioning for the kill.’
‘Roger that. Green One over,’ Alex replied.
I felt a momentary shiver of relief. Once Alex’s team had been vectored onto unfriendly types, they were guaranteed to take them out. Thank God these guys are on our side, I thought as I trudged on, watching Chekhov grow larger with every combined step we took. My heart gave a grateful thump thirty seconds later when the same voice came back on the line.
‘Recon One reports bandits terminated,’ Karl relayed to the Special Ops boss. ‘Recon Two getting into position on bandit nest number two.’
‘Roger. Claymores are hot. Let the party begin, gentlemen!’ I detected more than a degree of enthusiasm in Alex’s voice. Karl came back again. ‘Recon Two reports RPGs and a heavy MG in bandit position. Cannot cull silently. Will cover and terminate at first sign of hostilities.’
‘Confirmed. Go to red on verbal Pizza or on gunshot, whichever comes first. Green One over.’
‘Roger that.’
Listening to all the rogering and stuff, the uninitiated might have thought we had a boy’s-own gathering of Hooray Henrys playing scout games. They slipped in and out of civilian speak but who cared? This was serious shit, and having these guys roger my ears off, pardon the expression, was pure bliss. I wasn’t totally alone in wonderland and that was fine by me.
Chekhov and I were maybe a hundred yards apart. Now it was fifty paces each until we would be in each other’s faces. I squinted through my sunglasses to get a look at his face. It was just a blur. I needed to get closer, but something still wasn’t sitting right. The man walking towards me had on a white shirt. The cuffs of the sleeves had been rolled back up to his elbows. His arms were bare. The machete this guy carried was still in his right hand. His left arm was moving normally as it hung at his side. He was moving too freely for a man with a breathing problem caused maybe by burnt, scarred lungs.
‘Decoy to HQ. Get X-Ray to scope our man up close. Has he got a left ear and is there hair on his arms?’ I wanted to know. I only had seconds to wait.
‘Roger that. Both ears intact and there is hair on the arms, dark hair and plenty of it,’ came Karl’s response, relayed back from the man with the hundred power eyes. I wondered if he were the one who counted pussy hair. I almost laughed aloud.
‘It’s not Chekhov,’ I said. ‘Repeat, not Chekhov. He was fair-haired going grey before he was burned and he lost his left ear.’
‘Setup,’ Karl jumped in.