THE CONTRACTOR

by R. SAINT HILAIRE

  The plan was to head east toward the border and get off the D300 at Kapikoy. From there, they would head out on foot through the hills and over the border to find the wreckage. It would be a twenty-hour drive, but it had to be done. Each would take a ten-hour shift driving while the other would take security. And each would take the opportunity to significantly break the speed limit when the opportunity arose.

  The hours passed as they drove by mountains and through valleys, across wide plains and through small towns. First the E80 and E89 took them to Ankara. Then they jumped on the O21 to Alayhani. There they grabbed the D300, passed through Kayseri, the last city they would see for quite a while, and continued east to Van.

  A day and a night passed. They stopped for gas and grub along the way whenever they saw the sign of a place that looked like it was from the twentieth century. They finally rolled into Van around 10:00 am.

  “So that ride was a bitch.”

  “Did I just hear your giant Viking ass complain?” Dave sneered at Rusty.

  Rusty shook his head. “I am getting too old for this shit.”

  “You are fucking thirty-six years old. What the fuck are you talking about? Check your tampon, dude.”

  Rusty chuckled. “I love you brother—thanks for the check.”

  Dave side-eyed Rusty, not really satisfied with that answer. This was definitely not the time for whining. The mission hadn’t really started yet. “That ride was just foreplay.”

  Rusty laughed, then lowered his head in false shame.

  Van was a great place to stop for breakfast. It is a modern city with modern accommodations and modern food. Even western food if you so desired. And the giants did so desire. It took beaucoup calories to keep their systems running.

  They stopped at Sutcu Fevsi, a well-known breakfast spot on the lake about eight kilometers from the airport. Rusty and Dave sat outside, having left their apparel of war in their highly secure truck, and enjoyed the cool breezes off the lake. The traffic was a bit noisy, but the copious amount of food was great. There were omelets, cheeses, gozleme, mememen, and they even ordered kebabs. In their typical fashion, they destroyed their food in minutes, and then relaxed with some tea as they discussed the plan.

  Goldman had a contact in Kapikoy, the border town. They were to meet up with him, and he would take them to the wreckage. It was safer to go with a local who knew the area.

  The border was only an hour and a half from Van, so they had to take it slow. Even though every fiber of their bodies told them to get to the crash site as fast as possible and hopefully rescue their friends, the plan was to get there late in the day and execute their little hump across the wastelands under the cover of night. So they had to put it out of their minds for a few hours to ensure their timing was right.

  After an hour, and some glares from the restaurant staff, they paid their bill and headed back to the truck.

  “Hey, Dave, it’s almost lunchtime,” Rusty said with a big smile.

  “Well, I guess we’re going to need to find someplace to eat.”

  Rusty laughed and nodded his head in agreement. “And perhaps a little something to wet the whistle.”

  Dave gave a big thumbs up.

  They pulled into Kapikoy in the late afternoon, when the sun was getting low against the mountains. Kapikoy sat mostly in a valley, though some of its small houses sprawled up onto the hillsides. Most homes were single-story mudbrick or cinderblock constructions. If there were fifty homes, it would have been surprising. There was also a customs office whose parking lot was often filled with all kinds of trucks carrying goods across the border. There were generally good relations between the Turks and Iranians in this area. Sure, there were various local tribes that squabbled from time to time, but in general it was a relatively peaceful place. Of course, armed border guards and gun turrets on the hillsides armed with large caliber weapons played no small part in maintaining said peaceful atmosphere.

  Their arrival time was perfect. The sun would soon set behind the mountains, giving them the cover of darkness, they needed to move out to their illegal border crossing. But they weren’t doing this alone. Being big and bad means nothing if you have no idea where the hell you are going. They were going to need some local knowledge, and local knowledge was going to need some cash. Luckily, Dave was a cash man who always carried a nice stash of government money to entice cooperation.

  Goldman had set up a local guide. Rusty and Dave just needed to find him and pay him, and then they could all take a joyous hike through the wilderness together.

  The town was a strange mix of modern and ancient. The light that flickered from windows and doorways could be anything from a candle, to a firepit, to a single electric lightbulb dangling bare from the ceiling. There were mothers’ voices calling their children to dinner. There were the voices of goats, too. Cigarette smoke was as prevalent as the smoke from cooking fires. Men stood together in doorways discussing the many exciting things that didn’t happen that day, along with bits of gossip about neighboring villages and the goings-on at the border crossing. Their contact would be waiting in one of those doorways—but which one?

  Rusty and Dave decided they didn’t have to decide. They didn’t fit in here at all. They could simply walk the streets, two giants enjoying a chat, and everyone, including their contact, would absolutely notice them. Hopefully, their contact would then pull them into a doorway or alleyway to discuss the plan and, more importantly, the cash. Goldman had provided them with a code phrase challenge-and-response. So off they went, just two heavily armed sightseers roaming the quaint streets of Kapikoy.

  “Yo! Get your giant asses over here!” came a loud whisper from a dark alley to their right.

  The big boys did what looked like a well-choreographed right-face and moved toward the voice, hands placed nonchalantly on their firearms.

  “Come on—let’s move,” the voice ordered.

  Rusty and Dave looked at each other with eyebrows raised as if to ask, “Who the hell does he think he’s talking to?” They raised eyebrows again when they saw that their contact, in this small town in the middle of nowhere, was not Mid-Eastern. Oh sure, he had the dress and the beard and all, but when observed at close range, he was obviously a very tanned European or American.

  “Alex Trebek,” the contact said, using his code word.

  “Your mother is a whore,” Dave responded in his best Scottish accent.

  The three men restrained their laughter and spent a moment contemplating what made Goldman choose these particular challenge-and-response lines. He must like Saturday Night Live.

  They moved into the cover of the alley.

  Dave tapped the contact on the shoulder as they moved further into the darkness. “Are you American?”

  “Yessir. I’m from Ocean Beach. That’s in San Diego, near Point Loma. You ever been there?”

  “Nope.”

  The contact continued moving through the darkness. The blackness of the alley was punctuated with light from a window here and there. A cat scurried away in fear as they passed.

  “Not that you care, but I was Navy out at Coronado, then began to work for The Company. Why they took a beach-and-ocean dude and put him in the desert is still a damn mystery to me.”

  Dave whispered, “Maybe they think you like sand.”

  Rusty whispered loudly, “Well, you really look the part, anyway.”

  “You guys? Not so much…” their contact and soon-to-be-Sherpa responded sarcastically.

  The Giants realized that was the truth.

  “So…how far?” Dave asked.

  “I am going to take you a few miles outside town. Then you gotta follow the grids Goldman gave you. You’ll be on your own at that point.”

  Dave grunted. “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

  Soon the men moved past the dwellings, through some goat pens, by several large water cisterns, and around what looked to be a junkyard. Within fifty meters, they were in complete darkness and silence. Only the sound o
f their boots crunching sand and pebbles and the slight rattle of their equipment entered their ears. Within another fifty meters, their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the sky seemed to light up above them. It was a deep bluish black with millions upon millions of stars. Using peripheral vision, one could easily make out an arm of the Milky Way splashed across the sky. This ambient light did allow the giants’ eyes to see their way ahead. The sand and certain rock formations reflected light well, while areas with dirt or plants were black against the silvery floor of the high mountain desert. Time moved quickly as they hiked forward, and soon more than an hour had passed. They stopped at a tall outcropping of rock that stood black against the unusually bright night sky.

  “This is it, gentlemen. This is where I stop. You need to do a little scramble over this hillside, and then follow the valley floor. Based on what gossip I have heard, what you are looking for is three or four klicks in that general direction.”

  Rusty and Dave fist bumped their CIA-operative desert tour-guide in silence. They both made little jumping motions as they readjusted their packs higher on their backs, then pulled on their sling releases and moved their carbines to the back-slung position. They were ready for a hump.

  It was a good thing that they were ready for a hump, as it would be several klicks just to reach the border of Western Azerbaijan. They had headed southeast from Kapikoy to avoid the section of the border where people paid attention to who crossed.

  It was cold. Really cold. Yet both men were sweating. They stopped to hydrate and get their bearings. An old sign bolted to a metal pole let them know they were at the border. There was no fence or wall; this could be considered an “open border.”

  Rusty pulled out his handheld GPS unit, shielded the blue- white light with his huge hand, and assessed their position relative to the crash site. Dave did the same exercise with a laminated map and a compass illuminated in the red filter light from his flashlight. Both compared location, estimated distance and time. They were on the right path. Perhaps another two hours or so would put them at the site, which was perfect since the sun would be rising close to that time. They could recon the site before the sun was up and find a secure position from which to observe the site without exposing themselves. When all was safe, they would go to the site, evaluate the wreckage, and search for any signs of survivors. After gathering intel, they would have to hump it all the way back. Good times.

  The smell of jet fuel in the air let the DSS giants know they were in the vicinity of the crash. There was nothing yet visible as they trudged their way along the rocky path, but the source of the smell was indisputable. The horizon was now turning a bright silvery blue as the sun was soon to rise. The day would be clear and hot. If the sunrise had taken on an orange hue, the men would have known that dust was in the air and that the day would be windy and miserable. As it turned out, their choice to be DSS agents and not meteorologists had been a good one: the sky was crystal clear, the temperature was actually dropping, and the wind was picking up. Fun in the high desert.

  Rusty and Dave made their way a few meters up onto a rocky hillside for a better view of the valley below. As they continued forward, they moved around a large outcropping, holding onto large boulders to make it around a bend of their makeshift trail.

  There in a broad, flat sandscape lay the wreckage of a corporate jet. It was broken into several large sections of fuselage. Looking in both directions, the men could see that the aircraft had skidded into this valley intact but had made contact with several large rocky mounds at high speed, which was what caused it to split apart. The once-white exterior was scorched black and had burnt down to bare aluminum ribs in parts. There were broad holes in the fuselage, obviously made by large rounds. One of the wings must have been first to contact the ground, as it had split from the aircraft and crashed up against the hillside several hundred meters before the plane had stopped. The nose was half buried in the sand. Wires, cables, and hydraulic tubes hung from the ceiling and walls of the forward section of the jet. Seats could be seen intact inside the fuselage. A center section had broken away and collapsed in on itself, perhaps in the crash or maybe in the fire afterward. Fifty yards away from the center section was the tail section. It looked somewhat intact, with the T-tail assembly completely secure and untouched. There was no smoke, but there were large, dark stains on the sand and rocks where jet fuel either burned or splashed as the plane careened across the valley floor.

  Both men kneeled motionless behind a large boulder. They shivered in the morning cold. Even though their clothes had absorbed their sweat, the wet cloth was still frigid against the skin. Each prepared his rifle and pistol for any aggression or resistance they may face. Rusty pulled out a small pair of binoculars and surveyed both the crash scene and the surrounding landscape. There was no sign of anyone in the vicinity. Of course, both men realized any combatants could be hiding their presence from them, too. Rusty pointed out tire tracks and footprints to Dave. After fifteen minutes of observation, they decided to trek down to the wreck.

  Both the wreckage and the various tracks around it told a tale. It looked as if there had been survivors, as two distinct sets of boot tracks moved in, out, and around the plane, staying next to each other. There were obvious tire tracks, which looked like they came from a small SUV or pickup truck. They had come from the east, stopped at three places along the wreckage, then circled away from the site and headed east again.

  Rusty moved into the nose section, being careful that his pack did not become entangled in the various wires and aluminum parts that hung from the fuselage. A pilot and co-pilot were dead and fly-covered in the cockpit. It didn’t look like the crash had killed them based on the sliced throat of the pilot and the knife sticking out of the co-pilot’s chest. The white frock worn by the co-pilot led Rusty to conclude this could have been an extremist assassination– suicide. Interestingly, neither was strapped into his chair. Did this happen after the crash? Did this cause the crash?

  Dave moved close to Rusty and whispered, “There were more, right?”

  “Yuh,” Rusty whispered back. “Magyar and Saadi were with them, too.”

  Both looked through the front section. Finding nothing more, they moved to what was left of the center section. It was a molten mess. Most of the fuselage was burnt away; the sagging aluminum struts and burnt, broken seat frames did not allow the men to get inside. Nothing would have survived in this section anyhow. Flesh would have been ash. They moved on.

  The tail section looked remarkably intact. Perhaps it broke off early and was spared the burning jet fuel. There were no bodies in this section either. Strange. For a flight that had at least four passengers and two pilots, finding no bodies other than the Jihad pilots seemed unusual.

  Maybe the tire tracks told the rest of the story. Maybe there had been multiple survivors, and the Iranians, or a local tribe, had gotten to them first and were holding them for ransom or notoriety. There was a small possibility that there had been one or two survivors who had simply walked away, while the dead had remained and been removed by humans or animals.

  Dave walked into the broken tail section and worked his way up the inclined floor, holding onto the seats on both sides of the aisle. He looked between seats to ensure he missed nothing. No signs of survivors.

  “Let’s follow the boot tracks—maybe there is a clue there.”

  “Why not?” Rusty said, somewhat doubting that the action would reveal any more information.

  Rusty was wrong. Two minutes into observing the tracks closely, Rusty recognized the classic tread pattern of Bates boots. The edges of the boot prints told him that both sets of prints were made by casual tactical boots or shoes. The tracks didn’t belong to Iranians, or local tribe members. They certainly didn’t belong to the dead pilot and co-pilot. And neither Magyar nor Saadi wore boots; they were dress-shoe guys. It seemed a ridiculous thought, but perhaps both Nick and Merlin had somehow survived.

  “Do you think…?” Rusty
asked his fellow giant.

  “Definite possibility,” Dave said, nodding.

  They followed the tracks a bit more, and Rusty surveyed the horizon with his binoculars.

  Dave looked down at the tracks again. There was a small metal loop connected to a piece of clear plastic sticking out of the sand. His heart jumped for a second—he thought it might be a grenade—but the metal loop was too thin. Dave took a knee next to the object.

  “Rusty, check this out.”

  Rusty tucked the binoculars into his cargo pocket and kneeled next to his partner to brush the sand away from the item. Dave picked up the ring, which passed through a hole in two pieces of laminated plastic about the size of a credit card. He brushed the dust from what looked like laminated pictures. Both the giants squinted their eyes, their brows protruding forward like the Neanderthals of whom they were likely descendants.

  “Is that...?” Rusty started.

  “Ho-lee-shit,” Dave stretched the words. “That’s Branson’s wife!”

  “Who’s the guy?” Rusty asked.

  Dave shrugged his shoulders. “No idea…but this definitely is Nick’s. This was his good-luck charm. He walked outta here!”

  “Fuckin-A,” Rusty grunted.

  “So what’s the plan? We gonna hump through the desert that-a-way? Or should we head back?” Dave asked.

  “We ain’t doing either. I was keeping this little surprise a secret. Goldman hooked us up!”

  Dave smiled and smacked Rusty on the shoulder. “You know, this marriage isn’t going to last with us keeping secrets from each other.”

  Rusty just shook his head. “Listen, I just need to give Sven the signal over this-here little SAT phone, and a big ol’ bird is gonna fly in and get our sorry asses outta here.”