THE CONTRACTOR

by R. SAINT HILAIRE

  Bam! I was hit by what felt like a freight train, which took me off my feet and slammed me into a huge pile of…wait for it…nuts! I had just been crushed, and all my brain could think was, How come in the movies it’s something cool like crashing through a glass table, or through a shelf of pottery, but I land in a giant basket of nuts? Thankfully, they break your initial fall nicely. Woven baskets full of different kinds of nuts, all sitting inside a larger, more colorful basket, were now smashed and thrown around the shop and into the street. Also, a very angry man was now lying on top of me, his hands on my throat.

  I quickly bucked him straight up, tucked my knees, pushed them between his legs, and ended up in the guard position with my legs wrapped around his waist. He choked harder, and I started to feel a throbbing in my head. I opened my legs, pivoted on my back to the right, threw my legs over his back and neck, and began to arm-bar the shit out of him.

  He tried to pull away, which only created more pressure on his elbow. I knew it was about to snap when he was ripped from my grip. Local shop owners were breaking up the fight. I lost the arm-bar, damn it. Someone began to help me up. Others were restraining my attacker. I, as the woman, was seen as the victim and was being gently helped up from the pile of nuts—that’s funny to say. But it gave me a total advantage. I grabbed my assailant by the shirt with my left hand and slammed a hiji (Japanese term for elbow strike) into his jaw. He went down. I ran. People screamed.

  I had no idea who any of these people were. Did they work for Erik? Or were they completely unassociated? Did Erik get some kind of payment for kidnapping me? Did those people have anything to do with Nick’s plane going down? Was that even true?

  I slowed down since my heart was beating out of my chest. I had no idea who was after me or why. I just kept moving.

  It took me another twenty minutes to find my way out of the bazaar and back onto the streets. I looked up at the sun to get my bearings and headed south. I had no idea why.

  At that point, the only thing I could think to do that made any sense was to find one of the teams. Either the DSS guys or one of the contractor teams. I remembered you had told me the team names, Cadillac and Avengers. I was pretty sure—sorry, hon—that your team’s name was Cadillac. So I needed to find Team Avengers. They were in the apartment building just down the street from the Sultanahmet Angel’s Home Hotel. I wished I had paid more attention when Erik drove me there for the first time. But I was pretty sure it was close by the hotel.

  I thought, What if Erik is still there? Will he see me? Find me? Kill me? I needed to get to that apartment building without being seen from your hotel.

  The streets in Old Town Istanbul are a labyrinth. I had no idea whatsoever where I was going. But the good news was, just like when mountain climbing, downhill always leads to water—and I could see the water from the Sultanahmet Angel’s Home Hotel. It was close. And the streets I was walking all sloped downward in the same direction, so I knew I was headed toward the bay. The hotel was on Amiral Tafdil Street, so I kept doing my best to ask any friendly faces for that location. The Blue Mosque was now behind me. Close. But I had to approach carefully. I decided to take a right off Mimar Mehmet and onto Akbiyik. I knew where I was. Sadly, so did someone else.

  The next three minutes were very weird. I was living a scene from an action spy movie.

  This is where I got excited. My wife was in a real-life scene from an action spy movie. No matter how scary it was—she had made it through and was able to tell the tale. Damn, she's lucky. And kinda hot right now…

  A dirt-bike-looking motorcycle rounded the corner at the end of the street. The rider was dressed in all black and was racing toward me. I looked right and left for an open door or an alley, but there was nothing. I was in a choke point, and my assailant knew it. The high-pitched sound of the two-stroke engine reverberated off the walls of the narrow street. I was frozen. Men yelling what I supposed was “Slow down you idiot!” jarred me into action. I turned and ran back up the street. He would catch me in seconds. To my right I saw a luggage shop down several steps under a building. A quick glance at the biker revealed there was a pistol pointed my way. Just as I did a dive roll down into the shop, I heard shots, and several suitcases and items close to the shop door shattered as the rounds hit them.

  Through the yelling and chaos in the shop, I heard the bike motor rev, followed by the sound of it skidding to a stop. Shit—he, or perhaps she, was coming for me.

  I scrambled through a curtain into what I assumed was a storage room, looking for any egress from my situation. I saw a curved stairway and ran up. Rounding the corner, I came into a small office. An old man sat going through papers, a dark cigarette hanging from his mouth. I’m pretty sure he saw the panic on my face and had heard the commotion and gunshots, yet he looked unfazed. He had probably seen some shit in his life. He looked at me for a second and pointed to another stairway between two bookcases. Just as I took a step to run, my assailant burst into the room. The old man at the desk didn’t change his expression as he raised a pistol-grip sawed-off shotgun from behind the desk and blasted a hole in the dark leather suit of the biker. He fell against a small table and then to the floor. The old man gave a small wave that told me to proceed up the stairs. I knew this guy had seen some shit. Cold old bastard.

  The stairs led to a roof hatch, which I opened before scrambling onto the roof. All of the buildings butted up against each other at different heights. The roof I was on was shorter than those surrounding this building. I spied a wrought-iron escape ladder leading to the next highest roof. As I climbed, I could hear the eee-ooo, eee-ooo of police vehicles head my way.

  I don’t do parkour, but I did move out with a purpose across several roofs until I was looking down on the Angel’s Hotel. I was on the row of apartments across the street. I had made it—well, sorta. I had no idea how to get down, so I searched for a roof hatch. No luck. But there was, strangely enough, a huge tree, or vine—I couldn’t tell—that spilled purple flowers onto the roof. It was far enough down the street from our hotel that perhaps nobody would see me.

  I climbed into the flowered branches, but soon realized they would not hold me. I saw a small balcony on the next building. I conjured up some courage and jumped from the giant old vine to land on the balcony. There was a dark brown building next door with a thick old gutter spout that ran down the side of the building to the street. I went for it. I dug my feet into the brick wall, held on for dear life, and was thankful for how many pullups I had done, as I was able to lower my bodyweight down the pipe to the street.

  I straightened myself up and looked for the entrance to the apartments. Well, come to find out, there were no apartments across the street from our hotel. It was a long white two-story building with rows of windows. It looked like it had once been a traditional Ottoman-style city house. Now it was the Avicenna Hotel. Were the guys staying in a hotel? I could have sworn they said apartments… Anyhow, I determined this had to be the place. So I straightened myself up, brushed down my hair with my fingers, and strolled in like I owned the place.

  The lobby was small, opulent, and historic. It was easy to see I was an American, so the man at the front desk asked me in his best broken English, “How to help you, madam?”

  “I’m supposed to meet my American friends in the lounge. Which way?

  “Ah, yes, the Americans. Right this way.” He waved his hand in the direction of a stairway. I followed.

  We came out on a second-story patio with comfortable-looking couches and small tables. A few guests were having tea; others, cocktails. And sitting on one of those colorful couches were four definite Americans. Not an ounce of trying to fit in. Caps, shooter’s sunglasses, t-shirts, biceps, somewhat loud.

  They saw me and didn’t flinch. They just waved me over. I thanked the front desk manager and headed to the couch. Without a word, I sat down.

  The man nearest me took a sip from his Efes beer bottle, set it gently on the table, leaned in close, and aske
d in a low voice, “Was all that ruckus with the motorcycle, gunshots, and sirens you?”

  “Yup,” I smiled and fixed my hair again.

  The man sitting next to him puffed on a cigarette. “We were expecting to have to come find you, but here you are.”

  “You know about me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We heard when you arrived. We know about Nick. We saw you head out with Erik. We saw you come back with Erik. We saw Erik carrying your drunk ass into a car a few days ago. Then we didn’t see you…”

  I squinted at them, trying to understand. “Wait. Did Nick have you watching me?”

  Well, of course I had some folks watching you! Did you think I was gonna just run off into the desert and leave you alone with the likes of…well…us?

  The third man piped in. “Ma’am, my name is Connor. Nick had asked us to keep an eye out on you. We each kinda took turns. Just making sure you were okay, ma’am.”

  So I was getting sick of the ma’am stuff pretty quickly. And I was kinda pissed at you for asking them to do that. I mean, I love you for it—but shit, dude…I can obviously take care of myself.

  Anyhow, I ordered a dirty martini and told them my story. Then they told me your story, as much as they knew at least. I was glad you were alive. I was pissed at you again because I had no idea where you were, or when you were coming back. So we drank, we laughed, we cried. In the end, with Magyar gone, I kinda became their new principal…

  She’s a badass, isn’t she?

  CHAPTER TEN - One Shot

  The D300 ends at the Iranian border. Beyond that, the roads are…well, they sure aren’t highways. They are paved, mostly. Unsettlingly, they all have gravel soft shoulders or a mountain on one side and a cliff on the other. You know you are in western Azerbaijan. It has a look, a feel, a smell. Hot dust one day, cold mountain air the next.

  Two well-used flatbeds roared down the Khoy Qotur Border Checkpoint road, a blue cargo container on the back of each. Inside each cargo container were four large tanks of uranium hexafluoride salt, the raw material used in nuclear reactors. The tanks at one time had been clearly marked with multiple warning symbols for radioactive and or fissile materials. But those had been removed, and each tank had been spray-painted silver with no distinguishing markings other than “milk” stenciled in Turkish on the sides.

  There was no scenario in which trucks laden with nuclear materials would make it across the Turkey–Iran border. But apparently there was an exception—a multiple tank system. Without getting too Einstein: a tank of nuclear material, surrounded by a thin layer of lead, surrounded by a thin layer of brass, inside a container filled with salt water, wrapped in lead, inside a container filled with milk, with a thin lining of lead.

  When checked, no materials are detected, paperwork is all in order, milk flows from the spigot, palms have been greased, and orders have been passed down from various “tops.”

  The tanks of bovine udder excretions were bound for secret sites in Khoy and Natanz. Well, that’s what the Iranians thought, and that’s what the Turks thought, and that’s what the Israelis thought, and that's what the Americans hoped they all thought.

  Erik Olsen didn’t have to think about anything. He knew what was in those tanks, what time they crossed the border, when they would approach Qotur, and when the Special Forces would be ready to stop them and discover the nuclear materials. It was all choreographed quite well.

  How did he know this? Because he had planned it. Well—he had taken part in the planning. The overall strategy had been planned at a much higher pay grade. His little tactical encounter was part of a much larger strategy for an entire region that involved far more than the discovery of these nuclear materials. A cog in a wheel, which turned the cogs of larger wheels, which turned the dials that ticked away the moments until the day the mid-east was finally our very own giant gas pump.

  In all seriousness, Erik didn’t give a shit either way. He was here to double-dip paychecks from whoever wanted to buy his wares. He didn’t particularly like that things had gotten a little personal with the whole Nick-and-Melissa thing, but life is messy.

  We were moving just fast enough to be going too fast, which probably wouldn’t have been noticed if we hadn’t come to a screaming halt—complete with a little slide into the gravel of the soft shoulder near one of the few clumps of trees I had seen since we crossed the border.

  “What in the Samuel L. Fuck?” I had to ask as the moon dust settled around the vehicle.

  “Un-ass ladies,” Rusty grunted. “New ride.”

  We stepped out, everyone’s head on a swivel. Rusty walked directly into the small grove of trees, and I heard an engine roar.

  Merlin and I looked at each other, smiled, and grabbed all the gear we could carry.

  Another black SUV pulled from behind the trees and threw some gravel as it pulled up onto the road. Nobody talked. We just opened the back to toss in the gear, but—happy surprise—there wasn’t a lot of room since it was racked and stacked with shiny black toys. Oh, yes, my friends. This was a very hard car that, in turn, was making us all very hard…

  Weapon slings hung from the ceiling of the SUV. Two mounts in the back; one by each passenger seat. The glass was thick. Definitely bulletproof. The doors were heavy, probably the same. Two SAWs hung from the trunk mounts. Ammo boxes were stacked. 9mm pistols were mounted to the wheel wells on either side. Two Benelli M4 semi-automatic shotguns were mounted to the ceiling. They had definitely been modified.

  Jim and I jumped into the back passenger seats. “This is one bad bitch,” I commented to Rusty.

  “Speaking of bitch,” Big Dave said in my direction while he adjusted his newly-donned bulletproof plate vest, “you are riding bitch, so jump back there, tail gunner!”

  Okay, most of the time, being told to ride bitch isn’t a good thing. It’s like a “ride my ass” instruction on a motorcycle or jet ski. But this time, it was most definitely a good thing. I am a shooter, and there were two black mambos back there waiting for me to caress their underbellies.

  “Make sure to hook up number two,” Jim half mumbled to me, knowing that he needed to say it but afraid that he did.

  I lifted my shades and looked at him side-eyed. “Been to this fucking rodeo, mutherfucker.” I use that word too much. Anyhow, I pulled the two bungees around the barrel and stock, which held the Squad Operated Weapon tightly up against the side of the vehicle. Don’t need swinging steel smacking you in the side of the head as you run and gun.

  Big Dave looked over his shoulder. “The old beast is great for Execs and shit, but we are now headed directly into the dark and hairy asshole of the world, so we needed Bessy.”

  I don’t know who Bessy was, but she must have been large. I cannot tell you how many large things have been called Bessy in my lifetime. Several firearms, a bull mastiff, a bass guitar, one or two vehicles, a tree, and maybe a couple of actual people. There was that one lady in New Orleans—well, that’s another story. Either way, she must have been big and mean, because only big, mean things like this SUV get called Bessy. But I digress.

  I did a test fit of the SAW into my shoulder and cheek weld, checked the range of fire through the back window, then opened the feed tray and snapped it closed. “Nice.”

  Big Dave called back to me, “Don’t close her up—load her up!”

  “Right on!”

  I opened a box of 5.56 NATO, which came in a M27 linked disintegrating belt for the SAW. I grabbed a 200-round ammo canister, pulled out the belt, opened the M249 feed tray, and satisfyingly laid the belt into the feeder. Once the cover was closed, I pulled back on the charging handle, racking the first round. Safety on…? Nah.

  “Good to go!”

  As Bessy began to roll on down the road, I ceremoniously ensured the 9’s and the Benellis were also locked and loaded and ready to play.

  Dave handed out headsets, which we all donned before replacing our caps. Tested them out—all good.

  “Merlin,” I said,
testing the squawk, “do you know where we’re going?”

  He looked over his shoulder like I was crazy. “Why the fuck are you asking me? Over.”

  Dave jumped in. “Gents, weez going to war! Guess who knows where Olsen is?”

  “How the hell do you know that? Wait, let me guess—the DSS knows shit,” I said sarcastically.

  “Exactly. You know…”

  Jim interrupted. “Nick, you dick, remind me—why the hell do you keep calling me Merlin?”

  There was a second of silence, not even breathing. Then the rest of the boys burst into laughter, the volume almost doubling since you could hear it both in the truck and over the comms.

  “Whaaat…?” Jim whined.

  “Dude, have you not ever seen your hands when you’re talking? You look like you are casting friggin’ spells or something,” I said, half chuckling.

  “Fuck you all very much!” Jim said loudly—yes, while casting those damn spells with his hands. Cracks me the fuck up.

  “So, where the fuck is Erik?” I asked.

  Our giant Viking driver replied, “Just outside a delicious little resort town. You’re all gonna love it.”

  Shit, I knew what that meant. Goats, fleas, camel spiders, dust, contaminated water, unfriendlies. Honestly, I might have been a tad excited.

  Qotur is a mix of very old and somewhat new. With a population of about thirty-five hundred, mainly Kurds, it is known for basically nothing other than the fact that it sucks. Only about 15km from Turkey, it may have as many sheep and goats as people.

  Of course, we stuck out like a sore thumb as we pulled off the main road and onto the dirt roads that led into town. A few men stood against an old dusty truck, smoking cigarettes and looking suspiciously at us as we slowly drove past.

  Qotur is stark. Newer buildings are intermingled between ancient mudbrick houses. The mudbrick buildings stand upon the remains of ancient stone houses. Old rusty Toyotas that were once white are parked randomly, and herds of sheep wander the street.