Cooch

by Robert Cook

  “Yeah, as much as I want to know,” Alex said, as he accepted a glass filled about halfway. “I’ve long since figured out that the time of my life when big intellect was fertile ground is past me. It would take me ten years to get a decent PhD. Still, I’d guess I am the smartest assassin active today. Don’t quite know what to make of that.”

  Mac sipped a second time from his glass. “Still a nice port,” he said softly.

  Alex swirled the thick red wine around his glass, then stuck his substantial nose into the glass and took a long smell. “‘Tis,” he said, and then took his first sip.

  “I guess I’d call myself a patriotic assassin, rather than plain vanilla assassin,” Mac said.

  “Yeah? You figured out how to rationalize who you are—who we are?”

  “Yeah. I think we’re making a difference in the fight against the dark side. If I have to be an assassin to do that, that’s okay. But I gotta do a good job of things if I’m going to pay that price. I’m selfish. Those clumsy, greedy politicians should never get a clean shot at me or mine. I might be willing to die for the idea, but I’m not going to jail for those windbags.”

  “I’ve gotten that impression from you over the past five or six years that we’ve been killing brain cells out here, telling lies, with the best port we can find,” Alex said. “I guess I’ll rationalize with you, and call myself a patriotic assassin rather than an efficient, cold-blooded killer. It sounds better.”

  “You know what I am hoping you’ll decide to do someday, of course.”

  “Yeah, I do, Mac. But I don’t think I’m wired for your job; we talked about that kind of thing. You’d be better off with someone who loves to plan right down to the gnat’s ass, just the way you do. You tell me what needs to be done and how to do it, and I’ll make it happen with good applied intelligence, or I’ll be the dangle that gets it started. I get no joy from figuring out the how. You love that shit. I love getting in the zone and just letting my training and instincts take over. I love to see a structure disintegrate exactly as I planned, and watch the bodies spinning in the air. The shooting is less fun; it just starts when targets show up and ends when they’re down. They’re just targets to me. I got over the guilt part before I was twenty years old. I’m a sick puppy, I guess.”

  “I suppose most would say that about the whole bunch of us here at the Farm. But there’s not much resistance to funding our budget. We seem to be a necessary resource to have available, but it often ain’t pretty. Even the agency people look at us like we’re more than a little strange.”

  “You think?” Alex laughed. “Just because we’re a bunch of stone-cold killers on a twenty-four-hour call alert? Hell, you do the planning for it. They could just get rid of you and it would fall apart in a hurry. Feeling any career pressure, big guy?”

  “I’m not,” Mac said with a little smile. “Assassins that can plan and execute well seem to be in short supply. The good news is that you may be the most lethal individual on the planet. It’s made things easier.”

  “I’m a boomer and a killer, Mac. I blow shit up and kill people. I’m good at it, but I can’t see me doing it for twenty years. It’s time for me to move on.”

  Mac poured a bit more port into Alex’s glass and said, “I can’t quarrel with your logic and I love you like a son. I’ll scratch this mission and have you both discharged with pensions within sixty days. You know what you want to do? If I can help, I will.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” Alex said, then took another sip of his port. “This is six months to a year’s notice, not six hours; and giving me a pension at my age would be politically dangerous. This is just when we talk. I haven’t even talked at length to Jerome about any of this—not since he finished his degree. It may change. I got no clue what I’m going to do, and that may change as I think it through. I’m just letting you know that the time is coming.”

  “Okay, that makes my life a little easier,” Mac said. “We’ll talk more about it, and we’re out of port, once again. This is my last bottle.”

  “It’s my turn. I found a six-pack of sixty-three Dow for only a little less than the price of a house. We’ll start on that next. When’s the mission brief?”

  Mac leaned over, poured a little more of the purple juice into his glass, put the cork back into the bottle, then leaned back and said, “It’s tomorrow at ten in the secure conference room. Dopers—Thailand, maybe Burma.”

  Alex took a sip and studied the sly movement of the eddies in the river below. “Jerome’s been alerted?” he said.

  Mac rolled his neck around to look again at Alex and raised one eyebrow, “Duh.”

  Alex snorted with amusement just as he was sipping the last of his port, sending wine squirting painfully up his nose.

  Rural

  Thailand

  A LOCAL warlord and major supplier of raw opium to the world’s heroin dealers, together with his major growers and processors, was reportedly planning a strategy meeting on how to increase production. Cuchulain and Jerome Masterson had been inserted into the area to see if a serious crimp could be put into their plans.

  Alex and Jerome had been encamped on a jungle hilltop above the crowded compound for five days, waiting for signs that the meeting was still on. Their mission became complicated quickly. During their fourth day of observation, they saw a trio of men carrying some electronic gear into the main house. A quick look through their spotting scope confirmed that the equipment was of the latest security technology, similar to what they themselves had used only eighteen months before.

  “Shit! Let’s get down there and do our dirty before they get that stuff calibrated tomorrow,” Alex said. “We’ll just wait until the bad guys show up later to arm it.”

  Jerome nodded and began to pick up his gear. He had been recruited from the marine sniper school by Mac several years before. He was a master with many weapons and had the patience to get in place to use them, nearly invisibly if required. “I’ll find a spot that covers the main house. It’s big enough that they’ll stay there, I’d think.”

  They moved the half mile down the hill at midnight, and just before three, Alex went to the main house and slipped into the kitchen through a partially open window. Jerome was set up about a hundred yards away in a small clearing just up the slope that led to their holding site. Watching Alex through the night-vision scope of his rifle, and looking around the compound, Jerome saw no sign of life. He double clicked his radio, to let Alex know that all was still okay, and got a quick double click in return.

  The house was empty and huge, with at least six bedrooms. Alex moved quickly through the house, setting charges where they wouldn’t be seen, and placing listening devices that could be activated remotely to avoid—at least for a while—notice by electronic detection devices. As Alex placed a brick of C5 explosive into the toilet tank of the master bathroom, he felt a soft bag hanging. He cut it loose and dropped it into the flap pocket of his shirt. Alex quickly wired the remaining rooms and moved back to the kitchen window. He double clicked his radio and was chilled by a quick four-click back: a stop signal from Jerome. Somebody, or something, was moving out there.

  He peered from the window into the courtyard and saw a large yellow dog, nose to the ground, moving toward him, alert. When the dog was fifteen feet from the window, it suddenly rolled over with a whimper and then jerked once. His radio double clicked; Jerome had taken care of the problem with two silenced shots.

  Alex slipped through the window and moved quickly to two other buildings, placed a few charges, then ran to the dog, snapped its neck for insurance against having a large wounded dog awaken right next to his throat, and threw it over his shoulder. He kicked dirt onto the bloodstains to hide them, then began to run toward Jerome. The extra hundred pounds or so of the dog’s carcass slowed him only a little, until Jerome stepped out to the trail with his bag and spread a large poncho liner on the ground.

  Alex dumped the dog’s remains onto the cloth and picked up two corners. Jerome g
rabbed the other two corners and brought all four together to tie them; there was good reason to leave neither the dog nor a blood trail. Alex picked up the bag and loaded it over Jerome’s backpack. They moved quickly back to their hide to wait for daylight. Jerome buried the dog and dug another hole to bury their trash when they left. Alex took transmitters from his pack, inserted fresh batteries in them, and checked the trail alarms.

  “Good shot on the dog,” Alex said as he set up the listening gear and moved the alarm monitors closer to where they were going to sit and wait. They leaned back against a pair of trees, and began to wind down.

  “Thanks. It wasn’t hard, but you don’t want a big pool of blood there for someone to notice, so I took the head shots.”

  Alex nodded and took a drink of water. “We should be okay. I kicked some dirt over what was there.” He nodded at the alarm monitors. “I suspect we’ll get plenty of notice if there’s an issue.”

  “I’d be surprised if we hear from them,” Jerome said and stared out into space a bit. “I had a dog that looked a little like that once. Great dog. Almost sent me to college.”

  “Helluva dog, to do that,” Alex said. “College can be expensive.”

  “Yeah. When I was a teenager, I used to do chores for a rich couple that lived on the other side of town. Grass mowing, car washing, hedge clipping, shit like that. Got to know them a little over a couple of years. Then the old man died of a heart attack.

  “It like to broke her heart when he died—I’d like some woman to like me that much someday,” Jerome said as he settled in for the wait, sitting with his back against the second tree and his legs stuck out in front of him. “Anyhow, the old man bought a yellow Lab; Wilson was his name. Paid a fortune for him, I found out later. Wilson was a national field trial champion, from a long line of them. The old man bought him for a ton of money from the trainer who handled him, after Wilson won the nationals.”

  “Named him for a basketball?” Alex asked incredulously. “And why pay all that money when you could buy a good pup, cheap, and have someone train it?”

  Jerome laughed quietly, remembering. “Named him for a town where they had a summer place: Wilson, Wyoming. And the old man told me, ‘I’m too goddamned old to wait for someone to train a dog, and too rich to need to. If I drop a duck, I want to know that my dog will pick him up and bring him to me with no bullshit, and sit still as a stone on his stand until I need him. In fact, I want the best damn bird dog in the US of A. So I bought Wilson.’

  “They hired me to run with Wilson—to exercise him—and I gave him a bath when he got into a skunk or poison oak. The old man got poison oak if he drove near it, he was so sensitive, but that dog was with him all the time, so he had to be clean. I gave that dog a lot of baths.”

  Alex chuckled. “Hell, if it was enough to pay for college, you must have damn near drowned him!”

  “It was a skosh more complicated than that,” Jerome mused. “After the heart attack, the old lady couldn’t look at Wilson without thinking of the old man, and starting to cry. After a couple of weeks of that, she asked me if I’d take Wilson, and I said, “Sure!” She gave me all of his papers, a bill of sale, his crate, and all of his food and stuff, and said she was going to put the house on the market and travel a bit. She cried a little when I took Wilson too.

  “When I got home, all excited, my daddy told me I had to pay the dog’s way if I was going to keep him. Him and me, we sat down and tried to figure out how I was going to do that. When Daddy got to reading all of the paperwork, there was a letter from the trainer that asked if the old man would breed him, if he was paid. I don’t imagine the old man ever answered, but I sure did. Got paid eight hundred bucks a breeding, and Wilson was happier than a hog in slop to help out. That’s where I first got interested in accounting, what with keeping track of the stud fees and the costs and all, for the taxes.”

  Alex laughed and said, “I guess Wilson would be happy! And it was enough to pay for college?”

  “After three years, I’d saved about two grand, after expenses. Then Wilson got snakebit while he was flushing pheasants for me, ran right through a nest of rattler babies. The vet bills were about two grand, but then we finally had to put him down. Rattler babies are worse than the adults. Bye-bye, college money.”

  “And how was your dad about that, the losing two grand?” Alex said.

  “Not too happy, but he said it was my dog and my call,” Jerome said softly. “My daddy was a good guy. Back then I didn’t realize how good he was; I guess you never do. Six weeks after Wilson died, I graduated high school and joined the corps.”

  They woke at dawn, and settled in to watch the compound. There was soon frenzied activity, as the service people ran about with arm-loads of blankets, food, and drink for the main house.

  By midmorning, armed outriders in Jeeps and trucks began arriving at the compound, followed by cars with armor and darkened windows. As men emerged from the cars, they were met by local women bearing bouquets of flowers, who led them to the main house. By noon the procession of incoming cars slowed to a trickle, and workers began to carry steaming plates of food to the main house. Guards armed with automatic weapons stood at the perimeter of the compound, looking out into the jungle.

  During the afternoon Jerome patiently reloaded tapes in the recorder as used ones ran out. The recorded conversations would make their way back to Virginia, by high priority air delivery, for translation and intelligence analysis. Alex lay on his stomach and watched through binoculars, alarm alerts in front of him.

  Happily, there were no unusual sounds inside the house, and no sign that their little presents had been detected.

  As darkness fell, Alex quickly armed the electronic transmitter and set the detonation time for midnight. He then put a small charge on the transmitter and set the fuse for 0200. He pulled a miniature burst transmitter from his vest pocket and keyed the number five, then hit Send. The green LED winked faintly as the message was sent and bounced from a satellite high above them. They had let their minders know they would be at the pickup LZ in five hours. The brass in turn would point the nuclear carrier Enterprise toward land to get into position to launch the helicopter that would pick them up, as well as launch the fighters that would protect the helicopter.

  Alex and Jerome quickly put on their night-vision goggles and began the jog to their extraction point, fifteen miles away. The helicopter would be near that clearing for a maximum of ten minutes, but would return for each of the next two mornings at the same time, waiting for the signal to drop down for the pickup. Masterson and Cuchulain had no intention of missing the first pickup.

  They reached the clearing with seventy minutes to spare, having spotted only one patrol. The local militia moved noisily, confident no one would dare to invade their domain. Ten minutes after the patrol was out of earshot, they continued their jog; the trip to the clearing had been uneventful. Cuchulain pulled the transmitter from his pocket and set it to send their all clear for pickup message every five minutes. At five minutes before midnight, they heard the whooshing sound of the stealthy special operations helicopter dropping to the clearing. Alex re-keyed the transmitter to the coming in now signal, and they ran toward the middle of the clearing just as the chopper touched down. In ten seconds they were feeling the extra weight of the helicopter at maximum climb. A crewman handed them headsets. “Any injuries?” the crewman said.

  “Negative,” said Masterson, “just get us out of here.”

  “I just love you fucking spooks,” the crewman grinned. “You’re where you’re supposed to be the first time; you’re early—no injuries, no one shoots at us, and no one knows.” He sniffed, then grimaced. “Jesus,” he grinned. “Didn’t you guys ever hear of Right Guard?”

  Just then the sky lit up as the villa, several miles to the east, exploded. Chunks of timber could be seen tumbling in the air, and flames shot high into the sky. The crewman stared at the flames for a second, stunned, then grinned even wider. “At lea
st none of the good guys get hurt, but I think you just ruined someone’s morning.” He got no response from Cuchulain or Masterson.

  Two hours later they were back at the Enterprise, being escorted to their assigned quarters. Their weapons and night gear would be shipped in the diplomatic pouch to the Farm when the carrier next came to port. After five days in the jungle, there had been only two quiet shots fired, and those at a dog.

  As Cuchulain stripped the rancid jungle fatigues from his body, he felt the lump of the chamois bag in his pocket. He dropped it into his toilet kit, took a quick shower, and rolled into the bed, physically relaxed, but emotionally exhausted now after days of constant danger and maximum alert status. Seven hours later he and Masterson sat buckled in rear-facing web seats aboard a two-engine prop plane for the flight to Singapore, and felt the slam of an enormous steam piston as it launched their ride down the carrier deck. They were dressed as naval warrant officers and each carried a small bag of personal effects. The surveillance tapes from the villa were in the hands of a courier, ready to be carried to Langley.

  It wasn’t until they were at the airport in Singapore that Cuchulain remembered the little sack from the villa. He reached into his bag, opened his toilet kit, and dug it out. Discarding the plastic wrapping, he opened the throat of the bag and looked inside. Glinting back at him were at least eighty very large, cut diamonds. He had found the escape money of a drug lord. He closed the bag and dropped it back into his toilet kit. A small smile of contentment crept across his face. No one could ever know he and Masterson had these diamonds, and if they were careful, they could do whatever they chose with them.

  “You look like the cat that ate the canary, Cooch,” Masterson said. “What’s up?”

  “I’ll tell you on the plane,” Alex said. “We have a lot of hours to kill, and they’re starting to board.”