Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

The three Woltz’s exchanged glances. It was his wife, Cam Woltz who replied.

  “In that case, you’re working directly for the Agency. Ed Walker III is the deputy CIA Head of Station here in Kabul,” she said. Her voice was soft and seductive. With her looks I could see why Woltz had fallen for her.

  I tried to keep the shock out of my face. I knew we’d gone in over our heads, but not quite how deep we’d sunk. “We didn’t have much choice. The airline was broke, and it was accepting this work with Walker or nothing.”

  Abe excused himself and walked over to a group of men who occupied three of the tables. I heard him speaking to them, and they all got up and came over to our table.

  “Max, if you don’t mind, these guys want to meet you. They won’t have met your grandfather, but his name is kind of a legend to all of them.”

  We shook hands, and I looked them all over. They were all fit, hard and tough looking. Their faces wore that cold, calculating stare that soldiers the world over displayed to the world. When they came over, they moved with a fluid grace that betrayed their high level of physical readiness. They could only have been Special Forces, or something very similar.

  “You’re all security people?” I asked.

  They burst out laughing. “Hell, no,” Abe responded. “That name’s a crock of shit to hide the truth. These guys call it as it is. They’re mercenaries, every one of them. All of them are American, and most saw service in Iraq.”

  After we’d been introduced, we chatted for a short while and swapped stories, and then the mercs drifted back to their tables. As Abe had said, my father’s name was well known in their circles, and his behind the lines exploits for the French Foreign Legion would have filled a book, even if only half of what they said about him was true. The name of Ed Walker III was just as well known, only it in the opposite sense to my grandfather.

  “Let me tell you something about your boss,” Abe said to us. “He’s CIA royalty, make no mistake. The guy is on his way up to the top floor office, and no one’s going to stop him. He’ll crawl over a mountain of bodies to get there if it suits him, so watch out for him. His father was CIA, and his grandfather before him. The other guy you need to watch out for is Joe Ashford; he’s the CIA Head of Station here. He’s even more ruthless than Ed Walker, as treacherous as a wounded rattlesnake.

  “Is Ashford headed for the top floor office too?” Rachel enquired.

  “No, not at all. Ed was born rich. Ivy League college, no shortage of money, he had it all laid out for him on a plate. Joe had to fight his way up. He has one interest in this world, and that’s money. He’s making a mountain of cash from this war, make no mistake.”

  “How does he make money out of the war?” I asked fascinated.

  “He trades anything. Drugs, information, weapons, you name it. And he’ll use you to get richer if he can.”

  Rachel and I both nodded. It was a timely warning. “We’ll be careful, don’t worry.”

  We chatted for a while longer. It turned out that Cam had run a business in Thailand after the end of the Vietnam War. She was in fact twenty years older than I’d calculated, one of those women who retain their beauty. Something to do with the genes, I expect. When the war in Afghanistan hotted up, Abe brought Cam back to her home country with Luk, to start again. It was also where the Americans were, so it satisfied some of the homesickness he still felt; the need to hear a friendly, American voice. So they wound up back here in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, where she had so many relations and contacts, and Abe could chew the fat about the military with the customers who frequented his bar.

  “Do you ever regret coming back here?” I asked them. “I mean, it must be difficult for Cam, seeing how bad things are in the country.”

  Cam answered. “Once, this was a country to be proud of. We had a civilization, a culture, and a history. Now, all we have is barbarism and cruelty, starvation and war. It is my home, true, but if we did not have this business, we would go elsewhere.”

  It was a sobering reply. I asked Abe for the name of a decent hotel, and he wrote down the address of one nearby. The mercenaries got up and left shortly after we’d spoken to them. I asked Abe about them. I was that curious.

  “What exactly do they do, those guys? I mean, I know roughly, but who do they work for? Who employs those kinds of people?”

  “The mercs? They work for the highest bidder, same as it’s always been, as long as it’s someone friendly to the US, of course. Your own father worked several missions in Vietnam, when the Americans were there.”

  “He was a mercenary? That’s not right, during the American war, he ran a civilian airline.”

  “That’s not the whole truth, Max. Did you know his outfit was known as the ‘Devil’s Guard’ during the French Indochina war? At least, that’s what the Viet Minh called it.”

  I shook my head. It was news to me.

  “Yeah, the Viet Minh changed their name to the Vietcong afterwards, and they sure as hell didn’t like Jurgen’s outfit. His Foreign Legion guys, they were tough fighters, maybe the only soldiers the Viet Minh ever really respected. In the early days, they were ordinary serving legionnaires, but Jurgen trained them to use tactics that were not what you’d call conventional. They were not unlike those guys that just left the bar. I guess you’d call them the modern Devil’s Guard. Those men served in a variety of outfits, mostly Special Forces in Iraq, and one or two other foreign wars the Americans prefer to forget. The insurgents hate them when they go into action. They’re not bound by politicians and rules of engagement, and just like in Jurgen’s day, they fight to win, by any means necessary.” He grinned. “So I guess you could say that Jurgen almost invented that kind of behind-the-lines warfare. Shock and awe, they call it these days, except that his battles took place behind their lines. It frightened the shit out off them, then and now. But enough of that, tell me about this job you’ve taken for Ed Walker?”

  I told him we were due to fly out at dawn with a mixed cargo of security men and cargo.

  “You don’t know where you’re going?”

  I shook my head. “He wouldn’t tell us, something about need to know. But we’ve an agreement. We only fly in and out of established airfields, so we’ll avoid any rough field, Special Ops type stuff. We just want to finish the job, pay off the mortgage and carry on running a business.”

  Abe chuckled. “And you believed that he’d keep to that agreement?”

  “Well, yes, I did. We’ve got it on paper.”

  “Well I wish you luck if it doesn’t turn out the way you planned.”

  We all looked to the front of the bar just then. There was a loud explosion outside, like a grenade going off; then gunfire, shouts and screams. Abe turned to Luk.

  “Time to put up the shutters, son. It looks like we’re in for another riot.”

  “You get many riots around here?”

  Luk had run outside and was pulling the heavy wooden shutters across the windows. Abe looked grim. “I don’t know how things are in Kandahar, but they hate us, the Afghans. Some of them do, anyway. These Pashtuns, they go crazy for the slightest insult. So when out soldiers hit their people in a friendly fire accident, it’s a reason for a permanent vendetta. There’ve been too many accidents, and too many of them hate us as a result. Riots are a fact of life, I’m afraid. There’s always some crazy mullah to wind up these people as well, and they’re deeply religious. Then there’s the suicide bombers, that’s a trick they picked up from the Iraqis. Most of them are not Afghans, though. There are a lot of foreign fighters who’ve come in to join the Jihad, and they’re the ones most likely to carry out the suicide bombings. Iraqis, Chechens, Saudis, even a few Brits. The Afghans don’t see that as productive. They’d sooner live to fight rather than die to fight. We’ve learned to be pretty careful.”

  I walked to the door and looked out. Luk had finished fastening the shutters, and we stood watching the nearby crowd, about forty people waving their arms and shouting at a bar that
was blazing along the street. I felt Rachel come up behind me and touch my arm.

  “What are they doing?” I asked Luk.

  He shrugged. “I’ve no idea. It could be the mullahs getting upset about an Afghan bar selling liquor to Muslims. That’s the usual grouse, something crazy like that. Maybe women taking a walk outside without their heads covered too. They go crazy for this Islamic stuff.”

  Then we ducked because there was another explosion, even bigger. The crowd seemed to split apart like dust in a sandstorm. Luk pushed us both down and led us back on all fours inside the bar. He locked the door securely, and when he turned to us, his face was grim.

  “Another bombing, and could be a suicide. The poor devils that got caught in the blast never stood a chance. You need to be careful when you leave, they sometimes have a second bomber to wait for the police and emergency services, that’s assuming they turn up. Often they don’t even bother to come. I can’t blame them. Too many have been killed trying to help the wounded.”

  We waited for a half hour. There were no more explosions, and a couple of ambulances arrived to carry away the dead and wounded. But the ground was still littered with the debris of the second blast, broken bodies, men, women and children. There were fragments of glass, odd possessions, women’s purses, hats, and shoes. Pieces of wood and metal, the flotsam and jetsam of a war that gave no quarter to civilians or soldiers alike. Abe came and joined us.

  “If you think this is bad, you wait until you get out into the boonies. They shoot first, and ask questions afterwards there.”

  I looked at Rachel. “How would you feel about employing some kind of protection? I feel we could be getting in over our heads. I’m not too happy about us being thrown in at the deep end with Ed Walker and his buddies. We know nothing of their kinds of operation they undertake.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, their kinds of operation?”

  “Exactly.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I get the point. Maybe that would be a good idea. We’ll get caught out like babes in the wood. We know nothing about the CIA, and the games they play. I’ve heard stories of what they got up to in Vietnam in the old days. Here, who knows?”

  I turned to Abe. “Can you suggest anyone that could help us out?”

  “My son here, Luk.” He looked at the young man. “How about it?”

  His son looked enthusiastic. He also looked solid enough, and he had a soft, almost feminine face. He was quite short, so he’d taken after his mother more than his father. But he had the eyes of a marksman, a level, intense stare that never wavered. And he carried himself with a fluid grace that demonstrated a high level of fitness and strength.

  “Sure, I’m looking to find work outside of the bar.”

  Abe looked back at me. “What do you think?”

  “Is he any good?” I asked him. “I mean, with weapons, stuff like that.”

  “He was a champion marksman in the Afghan Army, did military service and joined me in the bar when he’d finished his time. Yeah, he’s real good, and I know that the ANA doesn’t have a great reputation. And even more important, he knows the country and knows the people. In Afghanistan, that can be the difference between life and death.”

  Rachel indicated her agreement. I turned back to Luk.

  “Ok, then, you’re hired. But it would be better if we called you the engineer. I don’t want to upset Ed Walker by taking a mercenary with us.”

  “That’s fine by me, Mr. Hoffman.”

  “It’s Max, and Rachel. We’re not American Airlines, not yet, anyway.”

  “We do share one thing with them,” Rachel smiled. “I believe they’re as broke as we are.”

  We said our goodbyes and agreed to collect Luk on the way to Kabul International in the morning. In the meantime, Abe directed us to the hotel. He also gave us a card with his contact details.

  “I’ll give Luk my satphone. He carried it when he was on his military service. It’ll mean you can get through to me at any time if you have problems.”

  “Thanks, Abe, I appreciate it. But I don’t think we’ll have any problems, I’m sure Luk won’t be called upon for anything drastic.”

  “Maybe not, but hear this. Jurgen, your grandfather, saved my life on more than one occasion. That’s a debt that is still outstanding, and I always pay my debts. Any trouble, you get Luk to call me. Hear?”

  “I copy that. And thanks.”

  We left the bar and found the hotel nearby. It wasn’t too bad, by Afghan standards. Which meant it was a shithole by any normal standards.

  “What do you think?” Rachel asked me.

  “Of the hotel?”

  “No, of this new deal we’ve got for ourselves. The whole shebang.”

  I thought about her words for a few moments. But there was only one honest answer I could give her. “I think it stinks, and I think that Ed Walker will be trouble, and I think I’d like to screw you, right now. You’re the only sane thing about this place.”

  “We’re going to share a long and satisfied relationship, Max,” she smiled. “We operate along the same lines.”

  Afterwards, we lay on our backs on the bed, still naked.

  “We need to finish this contract as fast as possible and get out of here,” Rachel said suddenly. “I smell trouble, and when I say trouble, I mean big trouble. I’m glad we’ve got Luk coming with us.”

  I couldn’t have agreed with her more.

  It was still dark the next morning when we awoke, showered and dressed. We went out to find a taxi and pick up Luk. Abe had one last surprise. He handed each of us a pistol, a military Colt .45 in a canvas shoulder rig. Each of the guns had three pouches with spare clips that were already loaded with bullets. I protested, but he’d have none of it.

  “Take them. Without a gun in this place you’re not dressed, and you may as well walk around without your pants.”

  I protested hard. I’d never forget the nightmare of the guy I’d killed. Never be certain whether he was about to shoot or not. Never be sure if I’d be able to kill an enemy if I was faced with one again. But Abe was insistent, and I gave in. We thanked him and strapped on the weapons. They felt heavy and uncomfortable, but it did give me a certain reassurance. If it ever came to it, maybe the threat of being armed would be enough. Helene, my grandmother, had insisted I learn how to shoot a pistol from a young age in case it was ever needed. After that, I’d had very little weapons training in the Royal Thai Army, until that fateful day. Rachel had learned in the Air Force, of course, so we both had no problem about knowing which end the bullet came out. When we reached Kabul International, the Twin Otter was fueled, loaded and ready to go. The security men were already aboard and Ed Walker looked impatient. This time he was wearing camouflage combat clothes, canvas boots and carried an assault rifle. A man we hadn’t seen before accompanied him. I could see Rachel’s nose twitching.

  “Where’ve you been, Hoffman? It’s late.”

  “It’s the time we agreed, Mr. Walker,” I replied.

  He grunted. I was looking at the other man, and Walker caught my gaze.

  “This is Joe Ashford. He heads up the Afghan operation for Double Eagle Security. Kind of the regional manager,” he chuckled.

  So this was the Head of Station, the CIA’s chief spook. We shook hands, and his grip was cold and hard. He was an immensely strong man, which was obvious from the start. Ashford had the physique of a college footballer. He was both tall and heavy with broad, strong shoulders, but none of it was fat. His huge, hard muscles told of a man who was very strong. He didn’t talk, he growled. “Pleased to meet you, Hoffman. Don’t let me delay you, the boys are waiting to go.”

  There was no warmth in his handshake, or his hard, cold tones, and the message was clear. The master had spoken, and the help had better get his shit together and jump to it. His voice was pitched deep, a low thunder, like the sound of an earthquake miles below the surface. He had a broken nose, and his face bore the obvious scars of bruising
encounters during his football career. Or perhaps from his career since then, which had clearly been colorful. I noticed his expensive and complicated Swiss watch, no doubt sequestered from an enemy in some previous CIA operation. Both men eyed our pistols, Rachel’s and mine. They didn’t like them, which pleased me for some crazy reason. Then they looked at Luk.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Oh, yes, this is Luk Woltz. I took him on as our engineer. The facilities can be primitive in some of these places, and it’s advisable to carry an engineer in case of any emergencies.”

  Walker grunted. Joe Ashford stared at him for a few moments, and I could see he didn’t believe a word of it. But neither was he pilot-in-command. I was, and he had no choice but to demur to my wishes where aircraft operational safety was concerned. He stared at me.

  “It’s late, you should get moving.”

  “Mr. Ashford, I haven’t even filed a flight plan yet. Where are we going?”

  “It’s all taken care of. Ed’s coming with you, and he’ll let you know when you’re in the air. Just take off and fly north west.”

  It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. It was crazy to take off from a war torn country to an unknown destination with an aircraft crowded with armed mercenaries and a cargo of dark secrets. I wanted to protest, and saw Ashford smiling, waiting for me to ask. He knew he held all the cards, so I didn’t give him the satisfaction. I turned to Rachel and Luk.

  “Let’s get aboard, we’ll take off now.”

  The three of us climbed aboard the Twin Otter. The cargo area was crammed with armed men. They were talking quietly between themselves, and two of them were checking their assault rifles. There was a stack of wooden crates at the rear of the aircraft, and their lack of markings suggested that questions about them would not meet with any kind of an answer.

  “Where do I sit?” Luk asked. He was carrying a long, thin, canvas case. As a former champion sniper, I didn’t need to ask him what was inside it. It wasn’t the most convincing appearance for our new flight engineer. I corrected his ignorance about where an engineer would be stationed.