by Leigh Barker
Harry looked back at Tom, and he climbed into the upturned truck and passed their packs out to BJ.
Ethan did a double take when BJ handed Harry the elbow crutch. “What in God’s name are you doing in a war zone with one of those?”
Harry smiled. “It stops me falling over.”
Ethan looked at him for a long time, as though considering his sanity, and then headed for the Humvee. “Y’know, these Brits are all nuts,” he said to himself.
Harry looked at BJ with an expression of surprise and pointed at himself.
BJ nodded slowly. He’d never had any doubts about Harry’s sanity. The man was totally crazy. So what did that make him? Because it was a certainty that he and Tom would have followed Harry into a burning building — or hell, if that was hotter.
The question the gods on their mountaintop might have been asking was, would he have still followed him knowing that he and Tom would never see another morning.
21
“So who the hell is this Curly Sue?” Shaun asked, trying and failing to connect the drug rip-off and the rifles.
“Everybody knows Curly Sue,” Tweety said, but clearly not. “Runs Oscar’s Pussy Club.” No response. “You know, the Oscar’s Pussy Club?” As if saying it twice would make everything crystal.
“Yeah, okay, Oscar’s Pussy,” Shaun said. “So, Curly Sue gets into some sort of trouble, and she—”
“He.”
“What?”
“Curly Sue is a he,” Tweetie explained.
“Oh, right,” Shaun said. “So he agrees to pay off this guy by ripping off the Jamaicans?” Nod received. “So who is he?”
“Who’s who?” Tweetie asked, frowning.
Shaun needed a drink. “This man, the man who Curly owed big time, the man who was going to cut off her nuts.”
Tweetie nodded slowly, buying time for dots to join up. “An evil mastermind,” he said with gravitas. “The brains behind heists too big for Crimewatch.”
“Oh, please,” Danny said, but then caught Shaun’s hard look. “Nothing’s too big for Crimewatch,” he said quietly.
Shaun wanted to go home, to a bar, anywhere. Tweetie was wearing some disgustingly sweet aftershave, or more likely, perfume. It was musk or some crap like that, and it was getting to his stomach. And he still needed a drink. “This Mr Big, the criminal mastermind?” he said, trying to put the thought of a drink out of his head.
Tweetie looked puzzled.
“Who… is… he…?” Shaun said slowly.
Tweetie nodded again. Still no sign of the glass of water was there, and here he was being all helpful and citizenish, but do they show him any respect? Course not, to them he was just a—
Danny coughed, and Tweetie glanced back to see him pointing at Shaun.
“Oh, you want to know who he is?” He tried a smile, but it was like smiling at a grizzly bear fresh from its winter sleep — with the same result. Shaun leaned forward, took a handful of the long blond locks, and banged his head on the table.
Tweetie screamed and grabbed his hair as Shaun let it go. “Ow! Bloody hell! Ow! You’ve broken my nowsh.”
“Not yet,” Shaun said quietly, “but in about five seconds I’ll sort that.”
“What’s he want?” Tweetie pleaded with Danny.
“Think he wants to know who set up the bloodbath in the warehouse.”
“Then why didn’t he just bloody ask, instead of smackin’ me about?” He put his hand on the growing bump on his forehead. “You could’ve caused brain damage doing that.”
Shaun glanced at Danny, but said nothing. After a second he stood up.
Tweetie’s jaw dropped, then snapped back shut. “It was an Irish bloke, like yourself,” he said in a rush.
Shaun sat down and nodded. See, all it needed was the right word, the right gesture, an act of kindness. Pure police interview technique in practice. His trainer would be so proud.
“Irish?” he said, leaning forward.
“Yeah,” Tweetie said quickly, “a really nasty bloke, you wouldn’t like him.”
“I’ll let you know,” Shaun said with a smile. “Has this nasty Irishman got a name?”
Tweetie frowned. Of course he’d got a name, what sort of question was that? Oh, bugger it. “Yeah, his name is Patrick somefink… O’Conner, I fink.”
Shaun clenched his fists, turning his knuckles white. “Patrick O’Conner? Are you sure?” He spoke very slowly, as though his jaw wasn’t working properly.
“Yeah, Curly Sue said he supplied the guns for the drug buy, reckons he supplies guns and stuff to… well, anybody who’ll pay.”
Shaun turned and walked out of the interview room, turned right down the corridor, and stood by a dirty frosted window, but it didn’t matter, he wasn’t looking at anything except Patrick’s bloody face as he stepped over his father’s body.
Danny watched his friend go, waited a few seconds, then followed. He strode down the corridor and put a hand on Shaun’s shoulder. “Hold up, man. I know what you’re thinking.”
Shaun turned to him with a look he’d seen before, every time somebody mentioned his brother.
Danny took a small involuntary step back. “Come on, man, you know what Baxter said would happen if any of us went off book again.”
“He’s been holed up in Ireland for twenty years,” Shaun said, struggling to contain his anger. “Totally untouchable, with the Boys watching out for him. Well, now he’s out of his hidey-hole, and that little poof in there can give me a reason to go get him.” He shook Danny’s hand off. “What do you want me to do, walk away? Well, it’s not going to happen.”
“But Baxter—”
“Screw Baxter! The Troubles are over, and Patrick’s here, without his Provo minders to protect his ass.” He started to walk away. “Call it a peace dividend.”
Danny had been Shaun’s partner for five years and knew when arguing was a waste of breath. He strode after his friend. “Okay then, but we do it by the book.”
And that would be a first, but it made him feel better.
This time Valentin Tal was hot and wishing he was back in Baghdad, except the hotel had been freezing, so he was caught both ways. He’d been to London many times, but those visits had mostly been legitimate, and he’d been able to stay in at least moderately decent hotels with British air-con that almost worked some of the time, but this visit was… how did the Americans put it? Ah yes, under the radar. So, because he was… under the radar, he was staying in a grubby little hotel in Shepherd’s Bush. No air-con, and no anything else — except unseen vermin.
He was sitting on the grubby bed with his single travel bag unopened beside him. If things went well, he wouldn’t have to stay in this place at all. If things went well, which they rarely did. He stood up slowly and crossed to the wardrobe, slid open the flimsy door, and looked in. Inside was a large khaki canvas bag leaning against the woodwork. He would have preferred something a little quieter about its contents, but he’d had to acquire the weapon in-country, from a common dealer, as shipping it through the normal diplomatic bag route had been ruled out. Too many people involved, and too many opportunities for a leak, now or later.
Someone knocked on the locked door, and he opened it without any of that sneaking about or peering through the peephole — which would have been tough anyway, as there wasn’t one. He nodded at the man standing in the corridor and stepped back to let him in.
“You’re late,” he said as the man brushed past and looked around.
“Didn’t know I was still in the army,” the visitor said in a heavy German accent.
“That would be good,” Valentin said. “Then we could throw you out again.”
The man laughed a deep laugh and put out his hand. “Still the same old Valentin, no?”
Valentin shook the offered hand. “I wish that were so, Branislav, but the great days of the German Democratic Republic are behind me.”
Branislav nodded slowly. “They are behind us all, my dear frien
d.” He smiled. “But one last throw of the dice, for the comrades of the Nationale Volksarmee, yes?”
“Enshallah,” Valentin said, mirroring Branislav’s smile.
“You, my friend, have spent too many years with those heathens,” Branislav said. He looked around the shabby room and smiled broadly when he saw the vodka on the dresser. He picked up the bottle, filled two tumblers, and handed one to Valentin. “Budem zdorovy,” he said, raising his glass and clinking it against Valentin’s. “To the good old days.”
“Good old days that were perhaps not as good as our memories paint them, eh?”
Branislav emptied the glass and nodded slowly. “Oligarch scum sold us out for money.”
Valentin nodded. “A lot of money.”
Branislav glared at him for a moment and then laughed his big laugh and filled their glasses again. “So, do you have it?”
Valentin put his glass down untouched and crossed to the wardrobe, sliding the stiff door open again, reached inside, and brought out a battered attaché case of the sort much favoured by wannabe execs in the seventies.
“You are showing your age,” Branislav said, smiling and shaking his head slowly.
Valentin dropped the attaché case onto the bed, opened it, and dropped the photographs onto the dirty sheets. Branislav stopped smiling.
“These are the targets?” It was a redundant question. He drew his breath in sharply. “The hornets will be buzzing.” He picked up the photo of the US President. “You have arranged a speedy exit for us?”
“No need,” Valentin said. “We will almost certainly be killed.”
Branislav nodded without emotion. “It is a good time to die, as it was once before.”
Valentin nodded. “Ah, Berlin. It was… how do the movies say? Hot. It was hot.”
“One minute,” Branislav said, picking up his vodka. “One minute was all that saved us from the CIA death squad.” He raised his glass. “Cheers!” He smiled.
Valentin clinked his glass against Branislav’s. “To staying ahead of the death squads.”
Branislav nodded and downed the vodka and looked across at the open wardrobe. “I see you have the tools.” He stood. “Let me see.”
“No, my friend,” Valentin said, crossing and closing the creaking door. “We will meet at a more appropriate venue, and there you will choose your bride.”
“And Jurgen?” Branislav asked. “This is a job for the Brothers Vogel, yes?”
Valentin glanced at his watch, a reflex action, since he knew exactly what time it was, he always did, a habit from in his days in the field. “He will be here,” he said quietly, and that was enough for both men. He picked up the tumbler of vodka, raised it, and drained it in one swallow.
They were back in the game.
22
Harry sat back against the side of the Humvee and closed his eyes as it rocked and bounced its way from wherever they had been to wherever they were going. His leg hurt, his head hurt, and just about everything between hurt, but that’s what’ll happen when you fall off a mountain in a crappy pickup truck.
“Where we going, Master Sergeant?” he called between bumps
Ethan spoke without turning. “Somewhere that ain’t here,” he said, watching the desert for any sign of an ambush. There wasn’t any, and that was worrying. Those boys just giving up like that when they had them cold, well, it just wasn’t natural. He didn’t like it, though he admitted to himself that he would have liked the alternative a whole lot less.
Harry leaned forward and watched the grey desert bounce past through the small side window. Like Ethan, he couldn’t understand why the insurgents hadn’t finished them off when they had the chance, and they definitely had more than a chance back there. Maybe they didn’t want to lose any more people because between them, the boys had taken a heavy toll. Truth was, though, these fanatics didn’t care about being dead, you only had to see those nutters who blew themselves up to kill women and kids in a market someplace — he didn’t know, and probably wouldn’t have cared, that his travelling companions had instigated just such a nutter-blast in a village not that far from where he was right then. Something isn’t right, he thought and watched the desert more closely.
The Humvee stopped, and everybody instinctively checked their weapons and tensed, ready for a firefight.
“Village,” Ethan said.
The men in the back leaned forward and saw a stone village at the bottom of the long hill on which they’d stopped. Nothing moved down there, but that wasn’t news, it was near midday, and sensible people stayed in the shade. But nothing moved, not even a bird or a scraggy dog.
“That Agha Dal?” Eddie asked and then shut up under Ethan’s icy stare.
“I don’t like it,” Harry said quietly.
“Ya think?” Ethan said, signalling Al to go forward. “Slowly,” he added, unnecessarily.
Al took the Humvee down the long slope at near walking speed, everybody inside ready for whatever it was that was spooking them. The vehicle was moving so slowly they could hear the scrunch of gravel beneath its huge tyres and the steady thump of the engine barely turning over. The men in the back craned forward and watched the surrounding slopes for the ambush that was almost certainly waiting for them, but there was still nothing, not a hint of life. It was eerie and, yeah, a little scary.
Harry carefully slung his rifle over his shoulder and took one of the M16s from the rack without asking, or even thinking of asking. The L115 could give a chicken a new arsehole at a thousand yards, but in the close confines of a village, it was only slightly better than a big stick. Eddie glanced at him and grinned maniacally. He was teetering on the edge of crazy, and Harry made a mental note to make sure he was behind this guy’s rifle if things turned dramatic.
Al took the Humvee past the high walls surrounding the first houses in the village, up to the square in the middle, and stopped, keeping the engine running and his foot covering the gas pedal.
There was a market in the square, a couple of dozen ramshackle stalls selling farm-type produce of every kind. There were tented stalls selling clothes and sandals, fixed table stalls heavy with vegetables, and glorified wheelbarrows loaded high with the produce from a single crop. And between the stalls were the corpses.
The men in the Humvee had seen it all, been there, done that, but this was worse than anything they’d ever seen. Old men, women, and little kids sprawled out in the unmistakable posture of agonising death.
Harry opened the side door and dismounted, keeping the M16 pointing where he was looking as he scanned the surrounding buildings for signs of life, but there was no life in this village, even the dogs were dead in the dust.
He didn’t need to be an expert on WMD to recognise a bio-weapon attack when he saw one — and he saw one right here.
The rest of the men climbed out of the Humvee, cautiously sniffing the air and searching the harsh shadows for anything that needed killing. Caponetto stayed in the vehicle, his foot still hovering over the gas pedal and his eyes scanning the buildings.
It was utterly silent, without even a breath of wind to disturb the scene from hell. They instinctively formed a skirmish line, five or six feet apart, and advanced slowly into the market and onto the clear circle in the middle.
And there lay the bodies of sixteen marines, a whole patrol scattered like broken toys.
Ethan tore his eyes off the marines and searched the surrounding buildings for any sign of the bastards who’d killed these boys. The bodies were bait, he was sure of it. He signalled urgently for the others to move forward, but it took several seconds for the signal to register through the shock. Then one by one they recovered, spread out again, and moved ahead. Nobody asked what they were looking for, they’d already found that, but they moved on anyway almost on autopilot, through the sprawl of dead marines.
“I don’t get this?” Tom said to nobody in particular. “Patrol like this in a village like this one, they wouldn’t have stood a chance against those 5
0 cals, so why use chemicals?”
“I can guess,” Harry said, his borrowed M16 tracking across the tops of the surrounding buildings. “Now we know why they took off in such a hurry back there.”
BJ gave him a questioning look and then nodded. “Yeah, they wanted us to see this.” He stopped and looked around quickly. “And they wanted us here!”
On the flat roof of the most prestigious building overlooking the market square, a sniper watched the infidels through the scope of his rifle. He put the cross hairs on Harry as he was carrying a sniper rifle of his own, but then switched it to the American nearest the buildings. Eddie. This one first, and in the chaos that would follow, he would kill the sniper. He breathed out slowly and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet was probably on its way when Eddie stopped to look down at a little girl holding a grubby rag-doll.
They all heard the bullet pass, but instead of the expected panic and chaos, they moved like a machine, dropping onto one knee and swinging their weapons in the direction of the shot. In the stillness, the recoil had raised a tiny puff of dust that hung in the air like a Google map pointer. They opened up on that spot.
One of the hornet swarm of bullets hit the sniper, barely skinning his cheek. Normally that would have been his lucky day, normally. The shock lifted him, just a little. The next two rounds hit him in the forehead. Strike one insurgent shootist.
At the first sign of trouble, Caponetto floored the pedal, and the Humvee jumped forward faster than it seemed possible for a monster like that, dust and grit spraying from its tyres. Without a word, the rest of the men turned and ran round the stalls to meet it, piling in through the open doors, as the square suddenly came alive with automatic fire from every window.
Caponetto hung a U right through the market stalls and across the open area in the middle, but even in the reckless dash, he instinctively slowed to avoid the bodies of his fallen comrades, and then floored it again and took off at maximum acceleration in the direction they’d arrived, reasoning that since they’d come in that way, the truck should fit the road on the way out. A reasonable assumption, except for the pickup truck blocking the end of the narrow street. Caponetto took an instant to recognise the truck and the 50-calibre machine gun on its flatbed.