by Andrew Grant
‘I’ll confirm with a voice test,’ I replied. We were fifty yards apart and I was in the zone. I stopped. ‘Mr Chekhov?’ I called out. The man approaching me halted in his tracks and looked expectantly at me. The face was red and silver. Whether it was scar tissue or make-up, I had no idea. I was definitely leaning towards the latter.
‘Yes, I am Chekhov,’ he said in thick English.
‘Anton Chekhov,’ I asked, playing out a silly dangerous game. ‘The very same Chekhov who wrote The Cherry Orchard?’
‘You what? I wrote nothing. No Cherry Orchard. What do you mean? I am Dimitri Chekhov!’ There we had it. No asthmatic wheezing and no broken pauses, just a bluff Russian voice speaking fractured English.
It was about then that the fake Chekhov realised that whatever game he had been playing was well and truly up. He hunched and began running for cover at the side of the track as I started to grab for the Walther.
‘RPGs!’ The voice was Alex’s.
‘Fucking Pizza,’ I yelled quite needlessly, forgetting my gun as I launched myself towards the river in a long low dive, praying I wasn’t going to hit a damned rock or land on a submerged tree. Something scorched the air behind me as I crashed through the fringe of grass and weeds and hit the water with a clumsy belly flop. As I went under, I heard the world explode behind me.
Yes, the comunicators worked in water. I could hear chaos both over the earpiece and through my uncovered ear as I sank, driven by my momentum and the weight of the Kevlar vest. I had no idea how deep the stream was at this point, but I was happy to stay down just as long as I had air in my lungs. Some seriously heavy thuds vibrated through the water and the rattle of automatic weapons and voices penetrated through my headset. My eyes were open. The water was the colour of tea that had been stewed too long. I kept my mouth shut. No way was I sucking in any of that. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the arse end of something with a long tail vanish downstream.
I grabbed a tree root or branch and held on, fighting against my body’s desire to float back to the surface. I rolled onto my back as my feet finally got below my head. Looking up through three or four feet of brown water, I could see what appeared to be flames back the way I had come. It was almost peaceful down here.
Eventually I had to surface for air. I came up as slowly as I could, ready to gulp a lungful of precious oxygen and dive down again. There was still gunfire in the jungle across from where I was, but the frenzy of those first few seconds was gone. Black smoke climbed lazily into the air as dried grasses on the bank above me burned. The grenades Chekhov and his cronies had fired at me had been phosphorus or some sort of incendiary. The bastard wanted me fried, fricasseed or barbecued, as well as dead. Payback! What a hell of an involved scenario for something as simple as that! The guy’s hatred knew no bounds, it seemed. Problem was that I could understand that. I probably wanted him dead at that moment just as much, or even more, than he wanted me fried to a crisp.
I kicked for the cover of the bank nearest the track and hauled the Walther out of its holster. Somewhere along the line I had dropped the cane knife. From back along the track towards the crossroads there was a heavy thump. It was followed by another of the same in quick succession. Those, I guessed, were a couple of the Claymores Alex had set up.
I was about to haul myself out of the water when there was another sound. A fucking helicopter was thudding its way towards me. I made myself as small as I could and pressed my body into the clay of the bank. A very large and extremely obnoxious-looking spider was making its merry arachnidan way along an exposed tree root. It stopped and surveyed me with a multitude of eyes. I left it where it was, a scant two inches from my face, as the chopper came thumping through the air above me.
‘You okay, Danny?’ It was Karl’s voice.
‘Okay but for the chopper,’ I replied. ‘Ours or theirs?’
‘Ours! We’re about to mop up down country.’
‘Okay. I’m still in the fucking river.’
‘Stay there. We’re running for the bottom village, back in five.’
I recognised the chopper now. It was the grey Jet Ranger we’d flown up in. The rear left door was off its hinges and I could see a figure hunched in the doorway. There was a whirring sound, rather like that made by a sewing machine, and I huddled more. The next sound was that of a Gatling gun stitching up the world. The chopper moved on its way. The sound of the mincer came back over the noise of the turbine as the gunner played his deadly tune. A trail of sparkling shell cases fell away behind it, some of them splashing into the water close to me. It was a variation of that fateful morning out in the Andaman.
‘Green One to Recon Units. Check in.’ Now that the communicator channels were totally open, I lay there against the riverbank and listened as The A Team checked in. They had all survived and it appeared that they had taken out at least half a dozen of Chekhov’s people. Alex confirmed that he had taken out the fake Chekhov and another bandit with his Claymores.
‘Green One to Decoy. You okay?’
‘Okay,’ I replied. ‘Sami?’ I called.
‘Okay,’ came the whisper. ‘X-Ray, we are moving down parallel to the Napalm strike.’
‘Roger, Recon One and Two, copy?’ The four guys doing the heavy hitting copied. They weren’t going to mistake Sami and Jo for bandits.
‘We’ll move back up the hill in five. Decoy, stay where you are for the moment while we sweep the area.’ Alex was the man in charge. I gave an affirmative and hugged the riverbank, listening as he continued to give orders. X-Ray continued to sweep the bush while the recon guys started to double-check the couple of hundred square yards of bush across from where I lay. I wasn’t about to get out of the water and have my behind shot off by a friendly. Dead was dead, no matter who pulled the trigger. As H. Norman Schwartzkopf once commented, ‘There is no such thing as friendly fire.’
The vicious-looking spider had lost interest in me and carried on about his business. I looked around for another source of entertainment but there was none, apart from a green grass snake that was wound around a tree branch across the river. I thought the damned thing was probably in a state of shock after all that had taken place, including the miniature gale whipped up by the chopper’s rotor.
I could still hear the noise of the helicopter echoing back up the valley. The sound of the Minigun underscored the rotor flap. The gun was firing in short rattling bursts along with another automatic weapon I took to be a Minimi. Shit, this was a full out war. I only hoped that Karl and his happy crew kept the collateral damage to a minimum, and that none of Chekhov’s men got an RPG into the Jet Ranger. Why was I so fucking worried? I was alive!
‘Clear,’ came the eventual call.
I scrambled gingerly up the riverbank, glad to quit the water but definitely cautious. Back on dry ground I leaned against the trunk of a tree, gun in hand, and took a look around. There hadn’t just been one missile. It looked as if there had been three, maybe four rocket grenades. There was a small smouldering crater in the road more or less where I had been standing but worse was the stench of phosphorus that filled the thick air. Three separate sticky fires burned on and around the track. I had been right in assuming that Chekhov had been trying to fry me, the barrage of phosphorus grenades had taught me that. Nasty damned things.
I’d been lucky, very, very lucky, thanks mainly to Alex’s warning. Being burned alive covered with flames that even water couldn’t put out was not my idea of a good end, if there were such a thing. Where was Sami and what the hell was he doing? I resisted the impulse to call him.
The sulphurous smoke curled up to the sky from a dozen places in the grass and bushes that fringed the track, where globs of burning phosphorus had landed. I looked back towards the village at the bridge. Two bodies lay sprawled on the track a hundred or so yards away. One of them wore the remains of a white outfit. I couldn’t see Alex, but I figured he was around. The chopper was hovering over the village but the firing had stopped. I was too far
away to see what exactly was going on.
Alex appeared in the tall grass across from me.
‘Not a fair fight, huh?’ he said, nodding at the grenade strikes.
‘I didn’t expect it to be,’ I replied. ‘Any news? Did they get Chekhov?’
‘No word,’ the Special Forces officer replied. ‘He could have been miles away.’
‘No. He wanted to see me burn up close and in person. He’s here somewhere,’ I said with absolute certainty.
‘We’d have spotted him.’
‘Chekhov is an ace jungle fighter. He’s around here somewhere,’ I replied. ‘Believe me, Alex, he wants me very dead but he needs to see me doing the dying. It’s totally personal with him.’
‘Okay, I believe you,’ the grim-faced soldier conceded with a nod. ‘He’s got his tail between his legs about now.’ He indicated the Jet Ranger that was heading nose-down along the bisecting road heading away to the west. They were obviously chasing something. ‘That’s something he didn’t expect.’
‘Neither did I,’ I replied. ‘Nice touch!’
‘I thought so.’ He almost smiled. ‘Let’s head back.’
‘What about Sami?’ I asked. Alex shook his head.
‘He’s a jungle fighter,’ the Special Ops man replied. ‘You said that, and he’s on a mission. If you’re right about Chekhov, he’ll be hunting him.’
‘But what about the imager? X-Ray would have spotted him if he were there.’
‘Only if he was in a direct line of sight. If he was in a bunker, down a gut or had on a chill suit he’d be invisible to them.’ Alex gave the order to move out.
Two of his team appeared twenty paces further up the track while the second pair came out onto the track twenty behind us. All of the troopers were carrying more weapons than they had gone into the bush with. Two of them had RPGs over their shoulders with their rockets still fitted. Another had an M60 machine gun complete with ammo belt in addition to his own MP5. We started back the way I had come, with Alex and I in the middle of the column. The guys at the rear walked backwards, eyes and weapons covering our retreat. I walked hunched, ready to dive for the river again. Alex just walked. He moved like a big cat in his clinging camouflage wetsuit, or whatever the hell it was.
‘Decoy to X-Ray. Any sign of our guys?’ I used the communicator to at least give the illusion I was more than just bait.
‘Roger that,’ came the reply. ‘We have images of friendlies working the ridge. No living bandits in sight. X-Ray out!’
‘Chopper has taken out an SUV loaded with bandits. No sighting of principal target. Control out!’
‘Damn,’ I muttered to myself. If Chekhov were still alive—and I had every reason to believe he was—he had seriously underestimated me, or rather he had underestimated the resources that had been given me. He would never make the same mistake again, and there was absolutely no comfort in that for me. I lit a cigarette in defiance of the gut-busting steepness of the now heavily inclined track. The chopper thudded overhead, heading for a landing on the plateau above. I wished I were on it. What the fuck was Sami doing?
37
I was gasping when I reached the top of the track. Alex wasn’t even breathing heavily. One of Sami’s drug makers was standing beside the imager waiting for me.
‘Message from Mr Somsak,’ he said in English. ‘In there!’ He pointed to the hooch that Sami had gone into carrying Kim’s head. I jogged to it, my lungs bursting. Got to give up the cigarettes, I thought as I took the half a dozen steps in one clumsy stride.
The hut was empty but for a bundle wrapped in silk sitting on a small table in the centre of the room. Beside it was a note. I grabbed the single sheet of paper. The words were in English, written in Sami’s beautiful copperplated hand.
Daniel
I must avenge my family. If I return, so be it. If I do not return, please take care of Kim for me. Until we meet again.
Your friend
The Onion Man
I almost smiled at the way he’d signed off. I carefully folded the note and put it in my shirt pocket. I had to see what the hell was happening with Sami. Was Chekhov in the bush or back at his base? I ran back to the imager. Alex was standing at the operator’s shoulder. ‘They’re halfway down the ridge,’ he said as I joined him. ‘If your theory about Chekhov wanting to watch you fry is true, he’ll have positioned himself on the slope above the kill zone to get a good view. We never saw an image more than 200 yards above the track, normal rifle range. If he’s higher and holed up we just wouldn’t have seen him.’
‘Can I take a look?’ I asked. Alex nodded.
‘This isn’t Radio Shack but it isn’t secret either,’ he replied with a grin. The trooper working the unit moved to one side to let me settle my forehead against the rubber headpiece. The green infrared world of the heat sensor filled my vision. ‘Magnification left hand,’ the trooper said, putting my left hand around a grip. ‘Forward or back, traverse with your right,’ he instructed and I gripped the other handle. Firstly I pulled the magnification back and then moved the lens left to follow the ridge above the river. The ghostly images showed the cooling bodies of the dead as orange and yellow fading to blue. Two bright orange–red blobs part way down the line of the ridge had to be Jo and Sami.
The Special Forces boss had been right: Chekhov had to have been up there somewhere on the high ground as an observer, but far enough away to avoid being part of the fight. That was why Alex’s men hadn’t swept the high area after being guided to their targets by X-Ray. They were out to take down the combatants, not any spectators, so had stayed within easy rifle and RPG range of the road.
The gunshots sounded as a crisp three-round burst, followed two seconds later by another of the same. ‘M16,’ Karl said. I could see only the figures of Sami and Jo in the imager. They were close together but I couldn’t tell if they were lying or standing. Another burst of three rounds sounded.
‘Controlled fire,’ the man from The A Team kneeling beside me said softly. ‘Trained shooter.’
‘Jo,’ I said aloud. ‘Thai Special Forces.’
‘That’s him then,’ Alex replied. There was a rattle of full automatic fire and then a short burst from another weapon followed by the thump of a grenade. Then there was silence. We froze, waiting. I could still see my two figures, still close together. A few yards away, another figure miraculously appeared out of the green mist.
‘Got three images,’ I said aloud. ‘One came out of nowhere.’
‘Underground,’ Alex was saying. ‘Update. Sami, what’s happening?’ he called as I watched the three figures merge.
‘Got Chekhov,’ came the call. It was Sami, his voice totally void of emotion in my earpiece. ‘He and two others were in a cave. The other two are dead. Chekhov is alive!’
‘Kill him!’I said.
‘My way, my time,’ came the reply. ‘We’re going down to the road. Please do not try and stop what will happen.’
‘Be careful!’ was all I could think of to say. The only response was an almost chuckle from my old friend, then radio silence. I refocused on the imager. No way was the trooper getting it back. I pressed my face into the mask and watched as the three blobs of colour started to pick their way down towards the road. What was Sami planning?
The trio of multi-coloured figures were moving closer and closer to the road. They were a kilometre away from us but travelling directly across our line of vision from left to right. Who was who? There was no way I could decipher that through the imager. Maybe it was five minutes, maybe ten, until they were at the track, only yards from the edge of the jungle. I raised my head long enough to locate the switch on the side of the imager to change the vision from infrared to binocular and was nearly blinded as a bright, full-colour image flooded my vision.
I was just in time to see the gleam raised in the tall grass that fringed the track. It was the gleam of silver, of naked steel. ‘There,’ I yelled to the others as Sami Somsak emerged from the jungle.
In his right hand he carried his magnificent katana, while with his left he was pushing a figure ahead of him. Jo was walking behind Dimitri Chekhov, his M16 jammed in the man’s back. ‘Yes,’ I whispered.
I pulled the image in and Chekhov sprang into view, larger than life. He was dressed in sweat-soaked tiger-striped jungle fatigues, but his head was bare. The passage through the jungle and the heat of the day had flushed him, making his scars an angry red and silver colour. His mouth was moving. He was speaking to Sami but the actions weren’t those of a man pleading for his life. Watching I could plainly see that the mad Russian was taunting his captor. Sami turned his head slightly at a comment from Jo, but he was shaking his head. They both had their communicators turned off. In fact, Sami was no longer wearing one. He was instead wearing a headband. It was white, with a red pattern through it. The red was Kim’s blood. The cloth had been a piece of her shroud.
‘They’re going to fight,’ Karl was saying. I didn’t tear my eyes away from the imager, but I knew that he and Alex had binoculars jammed to their faces. They were going to fight. Jo was moving, backing away from the pair, his rifle held at the ready position. He was leaving Sami and Chekhov standing a few feet apart in the centre of the track. At first I thought the cane knife Jo stooped to pick up was the one I had dropped, then I realised that it was the one dropped by the ersatz Chekhov an hour before. Mine was probably still in the river.
Jo walked back towards the two figures standing motionless in the sun facing each other. Chekhov was still talking. Under the magnification of my imager I could see that Sami stood impassively, his face set, showing no expression at all. Jo halted five or six yards away from the pair and lobbed the cane knife underarm towards Chekhov. The heavy knife raised dust as it spun to a stop beside the Russian’s combat boots. Chekhov didn’t pick it up immediately. I could see him still talking to Sami, grinning, grimacing. No doubt he was trying to unsettle his opposition. I could imagine the things he was saying, telling Sami what they had done to Kim before they had killed her. He would be saying anything he could to gain an advantage. Sami continued to stand motionless and emotionally unmoved, the long sword held low across his body.