Codename Files Nos.1, 2 & 3

by Mark Arundel

  His friend was now much more cautious. Instead of poking himself through, he took up an angle against the inside wall and tried to target me. I had to step away and move further along the brickwork to remain out of sight. During those couple of seconds, I considered my predicament. Even if I managed to overcome this second man, my only route of escape was back through the house. It was not an appealing prospect.

  Then I heard a sound that worried me. I looked up. Someone was opening a second-floor window. I saw a hand holding a pistol, and then the courtyard wall beside my head clicked and a powerful white lamp came on. The brilliance seemed to dazzle. I moved instantly. The courtyard had become an illuminated shooting gallery and I wasn’t going to be the duck, sitting or otherwise.

  With one gun in my waistband and the other in my hands, I squeezed off three shots at the man in the laundry room, while I moved to the window and threw myself through. Luckily, the cover shots worked. The man had stepped back from the opening into a defensive position. It gave me the second I needed. This time, I came out of my tuck and roll properly balanced and was able to swing a leg. The scything arc made contact and the man’s feet went. He tumbled and I was on him. I landed two fast blows to the side of his head, followed by a karate chop to the back of his neck. I pushed my foot hard down on his lower back and pulled the gun from his hand. I hit him with it on the back of his head.

  It was time to move and move fast. If I was ever going to get out of this house, I had to do it in the next minute. I moved. The third gun I’d collected went beside the other in my waistband.

  Inside the kitchen, Erico and Sausage Fingers were still down. I went straight to the door. It led to a reception room. I travelled. The door in the far wall was open. I entered an ornate lobby. There was no time to admire it. My feet flew across the marble, and the chandelier could just as well have been a single bare light bulb. I ignored the double front doors and headed for the long corridor. I wanted to make distance and I wanted a quiet back door to exit that would give me the time I needed to vanish.

  The corridor turned. I followed it round. At the end was an outside wall. I was on the far side of the house, a long way from the kitchen. I went through a closed door into a study. The light was gloomy. On the floor and wall, I saw silver and shadows. There was an outside door. Moonlight streamed through the glass panels. It lay across the carpet like an uninvited guest. I knew how it felt. I tried the handle. A lock held the door shut. I gave myself ten seconds to find the key. It only took five. It was in the first desk drawer I opened. My luck was holding. I opened the door and went outside. Two things happened, neither of them good. An alarm sounded and a sensor activated light came on. I realised the alarm system would probably indicate which door had been opened, giving away my location, and the motion-sensor lighting would illuminate the way. I held the gun ready to use and scanned the outside area—which way to go? There was a flower garden, bushes and trees, what looked like a pathway, beyond that more trees, a long tall hedge and a high wall. I needed to reach cover, and fast. I avoided the gravel and ran across the grass to the edge where the pathway turned. I ducked into the bushes, stopped and listened. The light reached to the trees and I could see the wall was too high for an easy escape. It was then that I heard the dogs. A low whine and a growl; it came from behind the hedgerow. There was panting and then two yaps followed by a slow long growl that ended in a series of barks. There were two of them and both were warming up nicely. I held my position. What was the procedure for defeating two attack dogs? I didn’t know. If I ran, they would chase me and catch me. If I didn’t they would most likely attack anyway. It could only be seconds before men with guns arrived. Perhaps armed guards patrolled the grounds, and they had been responsible for releasing the dogs. I was in trouble. My luck had run out. I had one chance and only one. It was to make it back inside the study before the dogs caught me, or anyone shot me. I flew out of the bushes and sprinted for the house. I heard the dogs break through the hedgerow and their excited whine sounded very close. They covered the ground much faster than I did. I heard the dirt fly from their paws like greyhounds round a track. I was too far from the house to make it. I turned. The lead dog was close. I completed the turn and started running backwards. The dog leapt and I fired. He was close enough for me to feel the flying spittle. I aimed for the breastplate. The shot was true. He went down. The second dog was right behind. I was still running backwards. I instinctively aimed. The dog leapt and I remember seeing his wet bared teeth. In the exact same moment, my heel caught something raised on the ground and I stumbled. My shot missed and I fell. The dog loomed in my face. He had caught me. I heard a low sound. The dog was on top of me. I automatically braced for the fight, but he wasn’t savaging me. Then, I recognised the sound I’d heard. It was the noise made by a rifle fired through a suppressor and then I realised the dog was dead.

  I pushed myself free from the lifeless animal and sat up. Blood and tissue matter covered my face and chest, but it wasn’t mine. The rifle shot had struck the dog in the head and its brains had splattered freely.

  I was in the open. I didn’t have time to look. I heard running feet from beyond the house. It came from the far end of the trees. I turned and jumped up into a squat position. Dirt flew up behind me and peppered my back and I heard the unmistakable clatter from a light machine gun. I ran. At the same time, I heard my name called. I looked.

  ‘Over here, this way.’

  In the shadows, above the wall, I could just make out the dark shape of a person. The figure held a rifle and they were signalling to me with their arm. I changed direction like a chased jackrabbit and headed for the wall. A rope ladder unrolled and dropped. I adjusted my run and jumped at it. My hands and feet found the wooden struts and I climbed. Above my head, I heard the rifle fire twice more, one shot after another. Then I was at the top and threw myself over. A raised platform waited for me. I dropped down, below the parapet and out of sight. The person, dressed in black and wearing a balaclava, still holding the rifle dropped down beside me. I recognised who it was from the eyes. It was Xing.

  She called down to the driver in rapid Cantonese. I recognised the head sticking out; it was one of the ducklings. The hydraulic platform lowered. We both jumped off and got into the cab. The duckling drove us away.

  Xing pulled off her balaclava. She fixed her eyes on me. She seemed happy and worried, both at the same time. She didn’t speak.

  ‘Have you got some water?’ I asked.

  She produced a plastic bottle.

  ‘...any painkillers?’

  I swallowed the pills and drank the bottle dry. She watched me.

  I studied her outfit and the belt and webbing that she wore. She carried a backpack. There was a Type 56, which is a Chinese manufactured AK-47 over her shoulder and the sniper rifle was still in her hand. She was carrying the combat weapons and ammunition of a special operations commando.

  ‘You were going in,’ I said, ‘on your own.’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘...to rescue me, save me?’

  ‘I need you,’ she explained.

  ‘On your own,’ I said again, to make the point. ‘There’s a high probability you’d have been killed.’

  ‘Jemima wouldn’t allow any of his ducklings to go with me, and there wasn’t enough time to get anyone else. It was me, on my own, or no one.’

  ‘Jemima was right not to allow it. It’s what army people call a fool’s mission. You had no idea of the layout, no idea where I was, no idea how many you were going up against and no idea how to get out once you were in.’

  Xing ignored me and said, ‘You’re covered in dog’s brains.’ She produced a cloth from somewhere and started to clean my face. I knocked her hand away.

  ‘How did they know about the supermarket?’ I asked. ‘It was your idea; you chose the supermarket, so how did they know?’

  She took her hand down.

  ‘They didn’t know. They were watching Erico. He must have been in
communication with them. He told them. They were after me, but they couldn’t get me, so they took you instead.’

  ‘How did you know I wasn’t dead, and how did you know where they’d taken me?’

  ‘I didn’t, but Jemima did. He was still following you, not him but one of the ducklings. The duckling saw you carried out and then followed the car back to the house. He said you were unconscious, but he didn’t think you were dead. Something about the way your head moved when they carried you.’

  She began cleaning my face again. This time, I gripped her wrist. She didn’t struggle. We stared at each other. She broke the silence.

  ‘How did you get away?’ she asked.

  ‘The chair I was sitting on broke. It had a Made in Hong Kong sticker on it.’ She didn’t get the joke.

  ‘What happened in there?’ she asked.

  ‘They wanted to know where you were.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I told them.’

  She pulled her arm away.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t be there,’ I said. ‘It was just to buy some time.’

  I pulled the guns from my waistband and dropped them into the foot well.

  ‘That’s where they were going, to the hotel to look for me.’

  ‘Did you see them leave?’

  ‘Yes, a duckling has followed them.’

  Xing undid her combat belt and pulled off the webbing.

  ‘When I realised it was a trap I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer,’ she said. ‘I knew I was too late.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  She stared at me in the gloom as if she hadn’t seen me for a week.

  ‘I thought they were going to kill you,’ she said.

  22

  MONDAY, 00:00—00:10

  JACOMO XABIER CARDOZO ALMADA

  A few minutes earlier, Jacomo Xabier Cardozo Almada, the man nicknamed by Meriwether and Xing as Missouri, had run urgently around the east side of his house while recklessly adjusting his assault rifle. His moccasin house slippers were not the ideal footwear for after dark activity in the grounds, particularly when that activity was chasing the escaped Englishman in an attempt to halt his getaway by shooting him dead.

  While he ran the house alarm was sounding, two of his men lay unconscious on the kitchen floor, another two were down, one in the study and one in the courtyard and two others, ahead of him now, were anxious to release the guard dogs. He continued to struggle with the rifle clip and his moccasins that hampered his progress along the gravel pathway.

  ‘Release them, release the dogs,’ he said, growling the words with fury every bit as sincere as the real thing.

  Both hounds tore away and were out of sight in seconds. The clip finally worked and he scrunched his toes in an attempt to catch up.

  Then he heard a gunshot quickly followed by a quieter rifle shot. Reaching the corner, he turned to the south and stopped. Ahead, one of his two men fired across the garden at the squatting Englishman. Both dogs lay dead. The bullet spray from the LMG [LMG: light machine gun] missed. Then, out of the darkness, beyond the wall came two rifle shots in rapid succession. Ahead, both men dropped. With fear biting at his slippers, Jacomo rushed behind the bushes in a desperate attempt to take cover and find safety.

  The Englishman had escaped.

  Now, back indoors, Jacomo Almada sat at the kitchen table in a thunderous mood. Around him, injured men held ice packs to their heads and groaned like demented walruses. An explanation of how the Englishman had gotten free and then escaped leaving behind such carnage was yet not established. The house alarm no longer sounded that at least was something.

  His phone rang. He checked the screen and then answered.

  ‘Did you get her?’ he asked, speaking rapidly in Portuguese.

  ‘No, boss, she wasn’t there. We must have missed her. She’s gone.’

  Jacomo swore loudly. They had missed Mosquito. The opportunity to find her and kill her was lost.

  ‘Come back,’ he said. ‘The Englishman has escaped.’

  ‘...escaped, how has he escaped?’

  Jacomo didn’t answer. ‘Just get back here,’ he ordered.

  He didn’t want to think that the person who fired the rifle shots from beyond the wall, the person who helped the Englishman escape was Mosquito and that had it not been for his slippers he may have been in front, and had he been in front then now it would be he that was dead. The thought of dying scared him. Despite his familiarity with death, when it came to his own mortality he was a coward. He cursed again.

  Still holding his phone, he went to messages and reread the anonymous offer that had appeared unexpectedly the previous day. It contained evidence of the author’s assertion that the offer was genuine. The evidence was true. Initially, the triad boss had dismissed it. Yesterday, he still had Erico and the likelihood of a successful outcome in the pressing matter of Mosquito, but not anymore. He glanced at Erico who pressed ice to his temple and moaned. He imagined Mosquito aiming a rifle. She was aiming it at Jacomo.

  Jacomo considered the unidentified offer with renewed interest and then reached a decision. Inside his pocket, he found the bank device for generating code numbers. It was like a key fob. Using his phone, he made the transfer payment of one million pounds and then sent a message. The message read: Payment made, send information, urgent.

  He returned the key fob to his pocket and sat back. Would the information come through he wondered and would it be any good? He didn’t care who the person was that would betray Mosquito for money as long as he, Jacomo Xabier Cardozo Almada, got Mosquito before she got him.

  23

  MONDAY, 00:10—03:00

  Our duckling stopped the truck outside a garage that had a tyre sign hanging above the entrance. The double doors humbly displayed oily black streaks of age.

  Jemima was waiting for us in his taxi.

  Xing thanked the duckling with just two words of Cantonese, and then we changed from the truck to the advertisement-covered Toyota.

  Jemima turned to look at us as we slid onto the back seat. He couldn’t hide his expression of surprise.

  ‘I told you I’d get him out,’ Xing said, making a point. Jemima conceded with an Englishman’s acquiesce of his head.

  ‘I’m very pleased you’re safe,’ he said, looking at me, and then added, ‘both of you.’

  Xing made a huffy sound and then said something in Cantonese. Jemima’s face turned pink with shock.

  These two had obviously argued about what to do, and now hostility was back.

  ‘Stop this,’ I said. ‘Listen, Jemima was right about the risks, and you were brave to take them on. I’m safe now. It doesn’t matter that you disagreed. It’s over. Now, we move forward, together.’

  ‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ Jemima said.

  Xing huffed again, but this time, it came dipped in chocolate.

  Peace was back, for now.

  The painkillers were kicking in, but my bare torso still felt like a piñata doll. I rubbed the cut bruise and Xing studied it closely.

  ‘A rubber bullet,’ she observed, ‘and the cut is from the point of a knife.’ Her eyes searched my face, but she didn’t question me.

  ‘What did Meriwether say?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Xing replied. ‘After he refused to order help from the ducklings I wouldn’t speak to him.’

  ‘He was genuinely concerned,’ Jemima said, ‘but you must understand it was a difficult position. There was nothing he could do.’

  Xing was huffing again.

  ‘What about C?’ I asked.

  ‘...C? Oh, yes; no, I didn’t call her,’ Jemima said.

  I looked at Xing.

  ‘Why would I call her?’ she said.

  Jemima said, ‘I assumed Meriwether would tell her.’

  ‘...but she hasn’t called you?’ I asked.

  Jemima shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘she hasn’t called me.’

/>   I wasn’t sure what to make of that. I filed it for later consideration.

  ‘They took my K106,’ I said.

  Jemima nodded.

  ‘It’s been destroyed,’ he said. ‘We tried to pinpoint you in the house, but we couldn’t get a signal.’

  Xing put her hand around my wrist.

  ‘They took your watch,’ she said. I nodded. ‘I’ll kill them,’ she said. I wasn’t certain Jemima knew she was joking. I thought I heard him swallow. He coughed and said, ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘Somewhere that sells shirts,’ Xing suggested.

  This time, Jemima got it and gave a polite laugh.

  ‘Do you still have your passport and credit card?’ he asked.