The Cait Lennox Box Set

by Roderick Donald

  Following in his daughter’s footsteps, G ignored his wife’s words of wisdom, picking up his own glass of firewater and said in toast fashion, “Dec. This one’s for you, my son. We’re all here for you. Now you’re going to pull through, you hear.”

  With that, G immediately emptied the whole glass of grappa into his mouth, grimaced, and then swallowed. Pursing his lips, he sucked in a mouthful of air through his clenched teeth as the liquid painfully burned its way from the back of his throat all the way down to his stomach. He almost enjoyed the pain, as if it was a form of quid pro quo for Dec’s suffering.

  “Ahh,” G hissed, closing his mouth and squeezing his lips together, pulling them backward in a reflex action by puckering his cheeks.

  “Well G, I can’t follow suit on that one,” said Jools, who had been observing from the wings, thinking to herself that their antics more resembled a drinking game than a voice of concern for her son. But then again, she realized, everyone needed to let go ever so slightly, so maybe this was a good coping mechanism for tonight’s shock.

  Jools picked up her glass, paused, then said, “To my darling son. Godspeed and a successful recovery. We’re here for you.”

  With that she hesitated and took a sip, then another sip, said a silent prayer to her God and sent a message through the ether to Dec, then placed the half-full glass back down on the table.

  “Okay, finish your drinks. It’s time to go back to the hotel. We all need to rest,” Jools said in a motherly fashion. “We have to be back at the hospital tomorrow morning. Dec needs us.”

  As if anyone at the table tonight would find solace in bed. They would all be lucky if they drifted off, let alone actually slept.

  “Miss Cait, Miss Cait, I need to talk you,” said Aziz, approaching her table at Caffè Prestipino, emerging unseen from the shadows of the buildings fronting Piazza del Duomo. It was morning and Cait needed some time to clear her head. She had stepped outside the rather pleasant hotel where the White Knight had arranged for them to stay, straight onto the familiarity of Via Giuseppe Garibaldi. As if on automatic pilot, she turned right and walked sixty meters up the busy street back to the piazza where the bomb had exploded yesterday afternoon.

  A force that was unbeknownst to Cait was dragging her thoughts back to where the mayhem had occurred sixteen sleepless hours ago. She knew she had to return to the piazza to find something. There was a clue among the chaos waiting to be found. Voices had been murmuring to her on and off all night as she had drifted between the conscious and the semiconscious, floating in and out of the Otherworld during her four restless hours of downtime. Visions of the blast kept replaying in her head in graphic detail, over and over.

  The events of yesterday afternoon were like a giant, confusing jigsaw puzzle to Cait, still sitting in the box waiting to be pieced together. She was only able to glimpse snippets of what had occurred, then the vision would quickly fade, replaced by a graphic visual of fire, flames, thick black smoke, carnage . . . and Dec, lying on the ground, a twisted pile of arms and legs, bleeding, mortally injured.

  In each unsettling vision Cait could feel the presence of a disturbing, ever-present black force that was there, somewhere but nowhere, hovering on the edges, trying to invade the present, making its presence felt. Like an evil shadow, she could feel it stalking her in the fourth dimension, trying to drag her into its dark web. It reminded her of the evil being that she saw in one of her earlier visions; the unworldly thing that cut out James’s heart.

  The Gatekeeper.

  Or am I just imagining it? Cait thought to herself as she replayed the vision in her head while she was having her morning coffee.

  And each terrifying visualization would always end with the same two bottomless black eyes, like two unfathomable orbs appearing from the mayhem, menacingly glaring back at her. The angry eyes were frighteningly familiar—she had experienced the coldness of that glare before—but where? Then James would materialize and reach out to her with his ethereal hand and gently guide her back to the waking reality of consciousness, always whispering the same warning to her.

  “Beware of the man who’s old but young. He’s evil, and he knows you’re here. Search for the one who is not as he seems.” The prophetic words repeated often, softly heard on the periphery, faint whispers that made no sense.

  Cait looked up at Aziz with a vacant stare, her sad eyes bloodshot with tears and exhaustion.

  “Oh . . . Aziz,” she gasped to the onlooker out of surprise, but in reality the shock of seeing him in front of her triggered another recall of last night’s revelations.

  “You were here yesterday when the explosion occurred, weren’t you?” said Cait, the realization hitting her with the force of a knockout punch. A feeling of intense unease overcame her. The flash of her brief vision a few seconds ago had shown Aziz and Tariq lurking in the shadows, lingering with intent, a foul black cloud enshrouding Tariq that to her resembled a terrible dark mist cast by the devil himself.

  Yes! The realization hit Cait like a bolt of lightning out of the blue.

  The eyes in my visions. They’re Tariq’s eyes, the same ones glaring back at me when I made contact with him yesterday afternoon. I know it!

  “Maybe you’re the clue I’ve been sent to find,” mumbled Cait, words meant for her ears only.

  Cait had been so immersed in staring across the piazza at the crime scene and the burned-out car that had been left on the edge of the square like a lone sentinel, the scattered debris from the explosion roped off with blue and white checked police barrier tape, that she had been lost in her own world as she was trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle into place.

  In her mind’s eye, Dec’s presence was still there, hovering above where he had fallen.

  Or was it just his lingering residue clinging to the memory of a pleasant day before his life was destroyed by that bomb?

  The forensic police had made an early start and were sifting through the mayhem. The Carabinieri guards were pacing the periphery of the crime scene, looking very official in their dark blue uniforms, complete with a red stripe down the side of their trousers and white belt slung across their chest, each wearing black sunglasses hidden under a blue peaked cap with an insignia on the front and shiny visor, and just to add a machismo touch, a Beretta 93R sidearm peeking out of a matching white holster. A midnight blue Alfa Romeo with a bold red stipe running horizontally down the length of the car delineated the edge of the do-not-cross zone, its roof lights flashing, casting a broken orange glow into the dark corners of the piazza yet to be lit by the sun.

  It was so very Italian. Such pomp and circumstance among the carnage.

  “Sorry miss, I do not understand,” said Aziz, a querying look crossing his face.

  “Aziz, where’s your brother?” Cait asked in a forthright manner, totally disregarding all pleasantries. She had to know. He had something to do with the bomb. She’d just seen it in her vision.

  “Tariq, he no here,” said Aziz.

  “How can I speak to him?”

  “Miss Cait, Tariq has gone. He left after the big bang. He not come back to Cara di Mineo last night.”

  The well-built man with the sunglasses and baseball cap having a coffee at Cathedral’s Bar on the other corner of the piazza put down his magazine he had been reading, took out his camera with the telephoto lens and snapped off a series of rapid-fire shots of Cait and Aziz across the square.

  Mr. Happy Snap. Again.

  “That’s the second time Aziz has spent time talking to that girl. I’m sure she’s the one who ran to the injured tourist when the bomb went off,” he muttered to himself under his breath, taking out a notepad and scribbling down his observations.

  His training had taught him not to believe in coincidences.

  He made a mental note: I need to chase this up.

  EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO - AFGHANISTAN

  The Special Air Service Regiment sergeant peered out the window of the Chinook MH-47G helicopter into the in
ky blackness of the desert, seeing nothing, but seeing everything at the same time. The familiar adrenaline rush coursing through his veins heightened his senses, sharpening his perception and tightening his insides in anticipation of the unknown. It was 4:26 in the morning and he was about to be dropped into the Afghan desert in the middle of nowhere along with the three troopers under his command.

  “Time to kit up,” yelled Sergeant O’Donnell to his men almost ineffectively over the loud thumping noise of the twin spinning rotors as the helicopter slowed and started to vertically descend at a diagonal to the rapidly approaching ground below. The cargo bay of the Chook was so noisy and bone-jarringly uncomfortable that he followed his shouted words up with a joined-up series of hand signals—get your shit together and let’s go!

  “Roger, Sarge,” said his men, almost as a single voice, each man following it up with a thumbs-up sign to let him know that they had understood. They all knew the ropes and acted in unison in an unspoken routine that was a vestige of countless hours of training and many similar missions.

  The pilot switched on the red night lights in the cargo bay of the craft. The eerie soft lights spilled over the four soldiers, adding shadows to their features, making them look as if they were the bad guys in a horror movie. Searching around for any loose gear, each trooper systematically checked his belts and harnesses, confirming for the hundredth time that his assault rifle was on safety, then sat back and waited in anticipation for the “Go, go, go” command.

  The soldiers became lost in private thoughts, letting their minds wander to clear the clutter. They all knew the worst thing they could do before setting foot on unfamiliar ground was to have a head full of baggage.

  Lack of acuity and mental sharpness killed, if not as they touched the ground, then downstream. So they all went through the ritual of zoning out in preparation for action.

  O’Donnell was a veteran of a thousand such drop-offs into yet another war zone in some godforsaken country that was being ravaged by conflict and hostilities. Unfortunately, it was part of the job description of being in the SAS. The only positive was that there was never a shortage of work, as trouble was always happening somewhere around the world, and he was basically a gun for hire, so more often than not he ended up in the thick of it.

  “Three minutes to the drop zone. No sign of hostile activity,” radioed the pilot to his four passengers. “Looks like you guys are in for a walk in the park.”

  The blue-blackness of the night sky was just starting to wane in the east as a hint of lighter blue crept up from behind the snow-crested mountain peaks of the Hindu Kush fringing the sparseness of the desert in the distance.

  It would be dawn soon, but at the moment it was the bewitching hour. A fitting time to enter into the abyss.

  “Any last-minute questions?” O’Donnell yelled to his men, speaking to no one in particular. As speech was difficult over the constant background noise, his words were minimal. Looking at each man as he cast his eyes around the inside of the helicopter, each of his charges nodded and gave the thumbs-up okay sign.

  They were all ready to hit the deck.

  As the loading ramp at the rear of the helicopter slid open, the rear gunner took up his defensive position, cocked his M240 7.62mm belt-fed machine gun so it was ready for action, and scanned the desert outside through his night vision goggles for any signs of life.

  “All clear,” yelled the rear gunner over his headset to the pilot and gave the thumbs-up signal to O’Donnell and his men.

  The Chook slowed and skimmed along two meters above the ground, the trailing end of the ramp about a quarter of a meter above the desert below.

  Time to go!

  The four SAS operatives sprinted down the incline together. Jumping off the end of the ramp in unison, the four of them spread out like a fan, each running like a man possessed for ten to fifteen paces before dropping to the ground and immediately taking up a defensive position.

  Laboring under the weight of his ninety-pound pack, O’Donnell had tripped and staggered as he hit the deck and was forced to center his balance on the run before dropping behind a clump of scraggly low bushes, eyes on the alert, searching for danger.

  Forty-five seconds flat from the time the ramp dropped into position to when they were prostrate and on the ground, ready for action. And all completed without the Chook having to land.

  Lowering his single night vision goggle over his left eye, O’Donnell quickly scanned the immediate area, then searched out his men. Bravo Three, his buddy, was twelve meters to his left and gave him the thumbs-up sign. Bravo Two and Four were to his right. They were all clear. O’Donnell made circles in the air with a raised arm, then pointed forward in a northeasterly direction.

  They had to get out of here and fast! They all knew the drill. They’d regroup in about a kilometer, then O’Donnell would brief his men on the mission. At this stage his men still had no idea where they were and what their mission was.

  As they hastily moved out, O’Donnell glanced back behind him at the heavily camouflaged Chinook, taking in the blotches of black, green and sand-colored camouflage paint, and gave the pilot the all clear. Sand and exhaust fumes spat back at him as he watched the helicopter lift vertically ten meters, then rapidly disappear upward to the northwest at a thirty-degree angle toward the heavens and back to base.

  And now the fun would begin. The SAS troopers had to survive using their wits. They were on their own in a hostile land, with a dangerous enemy baying for their blood.

  “Sergeant O’Donnell, the CO wants to see you, sir,” said the messenger.

  “Ah, I’m not an officer, so don’t call me ‘sir,’” O’Donnell said as he examined the trooper’s name tag. “. . . Fitzgerald.”

  “My apologies, sir . . . I mean sergeant.”

  Fitzgerald was a newly badged Special Air Service Regiment trooper on his first posting in a war zone. And he had hit the jackpot. Afghanistan. A troubled land that had seen more invaders over the last two and a half thousand years than he’d had hot feeds—Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Persians and the Arabs, just to name a few, and more recently the British, the Russians and the United States—yet it was a land that had never really been conquered.

  The country was landlocked and unforgiving, strategically situated between the riches of the East and the markets of the West, surrounded by the forbiddingly rugged, snowcapped Hindu Kush mountain range to the north and east, and a barren rocky desert that only saw rain every few seasons to the south and west. These natural barriers to invasion had protected Afghanistan over the millennia and bred a warlike race of fiercely independent, tough survivors.

  And to this day there was still only one main road in and out of Afghanistan—the Kabul-Jalabad-Road, as the southern Silk Road of old is now known: a metaled two-lane road, surfaced to the west of Kandahar by the Russians and the Americans to the east. The road ran across the country from Iran on the European side to the treasures of Pakistan and beyond in the East.

  As evidence of foreign powers attempting to leave a footprint, there was a distinct join across the newly built metaled road in the middle of nowhere that resembled a zipper, as obvious as the Berlin Wall, that was like a demarcation line between the east and west of the country, noticeable where the red tarmac laid by the Russians joined the American black.

  Herat, Kandahar, Kabul: names of the three main Afghan towns on the Silk Road. Even today, they conjured up images of mystery, danger, violence and romanticism. The ancient caravansary trail that the southern reaches of the Silk Road followed for a thousand or more years still meandered through the same route of best fit between the desert tracks, carving its way through the desert wasteland and on to the deep valleys cutting a path between the impenetrable peaks of the Hindu Kush, down through the dangers of the Khyber Pass then on to Pakistan and beyond.

  “Another intel-gathering mission, no doubt,” O’Donnell muttered to himself more than to the messenger. He knew what to expect—disc
omfort, bugs, insect bites and constantly feeling dirty and hungry.

  O’Donnell and the three seasoned SAS troopers under his command had proven themselves adept at infiltrating enemy territory unseen and carrying out covert operations under the noses of the Taliban, then retreating like the true ghosts that they were, all without leaving a trace of their presence.

  “O’Donnell, we don’t want another intel clusterfuck like happened in ’08 in Oruzgan,” the CO told the sergeant in no uncertain terms when he was briefing him for his impending mission.

  Information had filtered through to the top brass from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service in the last twenty-four hours via their extensive network of spies that the Taliban were building up their numbers in Kandahar in preparation for a possible major offensive, so O’Donnell and his men were about to be given orders to monitor the enemy movement and report back. As was usual for the SAS, O’Donnell and his three troopers would be free to roam wherever was required within reach of the drop zone in the area between Kandahar and the Pakistan border, with a focus on the main road from Kabul to Kandahar.

  O’Donnell’s CO pushed the printout of the data that had been collected to date across his immaculately presented makeshift table they were both sitting at. Using a pen as a pointer, he circled some points of interest, skimming a centimeter or so above the surface, over the high-altitude satellite photos that were among the brief.

  “See these buildups here, here and here. Looks like there’s a migration of fighters, all converging on Kandahar. Ice, I need you to scope this out.”

  Ice was O’Donnell’s SAS nickname that he had been given because of his unflappable, super-coolness under pressure.

  The memory of the Battle of Khas Oruzgan in 2008 still lingered heavily in the minds of Special Operations Command. Over two hundred Taliban fighters attempted to ambush a joint force of American, Australian and Afghan troops who were on patrol in the area, searching for insurgents. But intel hadn’t warned the Allies about the size of the enemy force that was waiting for them in ambush, and it took them by total surprise.