Skala Kallonis, Lesvos, Greece
He watched as a fishing boat chugged slowly across the huge lagoon toward him. It was a simple family boat – royal blue, with yellow edgings, hand painted – and was being piloted by one of only a few villagers venturing out in this lull in the storms.
A heavy awning flapped over the boat’s open deck like a loosely pegged tent. Stretched, as it was, over a simple metal frame, this tarpaulin afforded some scant protection from the cold and spray, but Vittalle doubted that the fisherman would venture beyond the enclosed gulf’s mouth today.
It had been unusually cold this winter. There had even been an inch or so of snow, a few days ago. It was all melted now, but Jack still needed to light a fire every evening to keep his little villa warm.
Jack looked out across the five kilometres of grey, washboard rippled water toward the distant, mist-shrouded shoreline. Forest covered mountains rose from this hazy horizon toward half blue, half cloud, skies as if they were hovering, suspended in midair. Perched here on his personal sofa – an old abandoned tractor tyre, that he’d manhandled down to his secluded little beach, years ago – and wrapped, as he was, in several layers of faded cotton tee-shirts and a couple of his favourite chunky-knit sweaters, he felt cosy enough.
He wouldn’t want to be on that boat though.
It had been weeks and, as much as it was pleasant to spend time here, he was bored. The excitement of Poland, then the distractions of his journey overland to Madrid to collect his equipment, and then onward across southern Europe to here, had soon faded away to nothing. Now there was too much time to think. Too much time to remember.
This morning had been particularly bad.
He’d wandered down here to try to distract himself, but the tiny village of Magdullah, straddling Highway A74 as it climbed into the mountains north of Kandahar, with its sparse line of tumbledown dwellings, continued to wash around his mind. He could see the dusty roadside erupting into hundreds of tiny fountains of angry spray, as lines of heavy calibre machine gun fire splattered down from multiple concealed fire points. He could see the screaming villagers, barking dogs, livestock, and children running in all directions. Could see them falling, as innocent as his squad, amongst the hail of metal.
And he can see the improvised explosive devices going off...
Despite being called to the village to help reconnect a damaged water supply, they’d actually been herded, like sheep, into a carefully calculated killing zone.
It had been an organised and sophisticated humanitarian fiction for inhumane annihilation.
Flames and metal spewed from all sides.
He watched as Pete called in air support, and then collapsed, dead, with his head exploding sideways under a horizontal storm of white hot shrapnel.
He watched the red brown soil sliding under his elbows, as he crawled along the roadside ditch, and listened as he screamed for mercy to God, to Jesus, and even to his unknown mum, while his only real family were torn to shreds around him.
He sat there, miraculously unscathed in the sudden silence, with Mike cradled in his arms, trying to staunch the hot blood which was pumping vigorously from his best-friend’s many puncture wounds, promising to tell a young wife that his comrade’s final words had been of his love for her, with angry tears pouring down his cheeks, as his closest and last remaining brother slipped away from him.
He sat there in some godforsaken distant land, swearing to the heavens that he would avenge them all, and watched as his friend drifted into unconsciousness, then passed away.
The boat chugged close as it continued onwards, and its lonely Captain raised a friendly hand in salute as he passed. Jack forced himself to lift his heavy arm, away from the ghost cradled in his lap, and returned the gesture.
Then roughly he swiped at the dampness round his eyes, and decided he would take his battered old motorbike for a ride into town later.
He needed company.
~~~~~
Barfold
It’s taken a long time and a remarkable number of failures to get to this point.
A battered pig’s haunch dangles lifelessly from the wooden A-Frame I’ve built at one end of the garden. I stand as far away as I can – by the back of the house – and carefully notch the latest of my homespun creations into Vengeance.
I’ve had to go with a steel shaft to counter balance this latest mechanical arrowhead. If I’ve finally got it right then four, initially backward facing, sprung metal barbs will snap out forwards on impact, like a star, from the sides of the tip. It could be a nasty piece of kit: streamlined enough to fly and, if it penetrates flesh, the only way to get it out will be to cut it out. Given that the fully barbs-extended radius is almost two centimetres, that would be a big hole.
I’m not entirely sure what it will do though. I know that the arrow will expend some of its kinetic energy to release the barb trigger and, up to now, I’ve had the internal trigger spring set so stiff that the mechanism hasn’t tripped, and the arrow has ended up behaving more like a blunt medieval broad-head which, because of the still-latched barbs, hasn’t stuck in very far at all. Worse, afterwards, it’s also been easy to pull out. If this attempt doesn’t work then, despite all the effort, I might abandon this experiment – it’s starting to look like a standard carbon fibre shaft, with a sawtooth-sharpened three or four flange traditional arrowhead, is about as destructive as the two of us can get.
With a familiar creak of pent up energy, Vengeance bends its tips toward me. Gently... gently... I hold my breath and ease the target into my sights. Nice... Now. My fingers move in a smooth fluid movement, so that the taut cord can accelerate cleanly from static, and for a microsecond I feel the backdraft from the high-modulus polyethylene filament as it sighs over my toughened fingertips.
The heavy arrow makes a fizzing noise as the metal shaft oscillates away into the air, propelled by all of Vengeance’s colossal 313fps of kinetic energy, and it hurtles forward toward the innocent carcass.
I’m transfixed and I watch it as it races away, arriving at the meaty target with an almighty crash.
The whole A-Frame is picked up bodily by the suddenly horizontal hunk of ham, and I instinctively jump backwards as the whole contraption is lifted clean off the ground, and thrown back violently, into the fence a further four metres behind it.
I wasn’t expecting that!
It would seem that the extending barbs have translated the arrow’s forward momentum directly into the target. Hurling it backwards. Lifting the meat, and then the heavy frame!
My distant fence panel is now sporting a big hole full of amateur carpentry and a pig’s leg.
Goodness only knows what kind of targets this arrow will be useful for!
I dance around like some delighted lunatic, clutching at my aching midriff, laughing my head off.
Perfect.
~~~~~
Constanta, Romania
Two men huddled, sheltered below the great arched window which entirely dominated one side of the decadent, white stone, art nouveau Cazinoul building. The Black Sea stretched away to the east of the Romanian port of Constanta, with its waters looking very like its name as it raged under icy gale force winds. Sea spray lashed out horizontally on either side of the building, and white-topped waves fizzed away southwards along the sea wall as if they were hurrying toward the far distant Turkish city of Istanbul. During the hot summer months, tourists and courting couples would wander along the sea front and pose here for happy pictures in front of the building’s impressive façade, but today no-one was going to brave the bitter northeasterly winds blasting down from the Russian Steppes.
“They’re not coming,” Azat Sikand muttered in Turkmen from under his damp woollen hat. His sunken eyes, narrow face and pointed nose were angled downward toward his shorter colleague.
Murat Nagpal dragged his unseeing gaze away from the huge port complex which sprawled in front of them, and checked his watch. It was nearly fifteen minutes past eleven. Azat was right. “You have no stamina,” he said. “If you could only grow some hair, on that bald ball of solid bone that you call a head, you would be better off. The tribesmen will laugh at you, when we get back home and into the mountains.”
Sikand growled angrily, “There are no mountains on our plains and, if they laugh, I will cut their balls off. It’s well past time. If they were coming today, they’d be here by now.”
“I know,” Nagpal sighed. “This weather reminds me of when we were stuck in Qal-eh Wust, during service.”
“Yeah. It’s miserable. Like most places I end up, with you. And don’t remind me of that waste of life.”
The shorter, stocky, olive-skinned man pulled pointlessly at the already vertical collars of his greatcoat. “We needed the training. It’s done us good. We needed to know how to do this. We are the sacred champions of our people. The only ones who had the courage and commitment to do something. We will be remembered forever. We will be heroes.”
“It was a high price to pay. Five years of pretence: serving Afghan wool-head commanders, and kowtowing to infidels.”
“We bow to no-one, Azat. No-one. We were the smart ones. We chose to mislead the Afghans and NATO. We took their training, used their contacts, learned their lessons and secretly collected our armoury. We gained all of these things and more in those godforsaken mountains. We could not have struck our blow in the infidel capital without such learnings. We have spent much of their blood. They know of us now.” Murat Nagpal looked up into the smouldering face of his lifelong friend. Sikand had been a blunt instrument since they had been young children: tall, strong and easy to manipulate. He had proved himself time and again to be highly effective muscle. A valuable asset which supported his ambitious and imaginative mind.
“How long do we wait?” Sikand asked miserably.
“We can return to the apartment for today.” Nagpal made to walk away.
“I meant, how many weeks?”
Nagpal shrugged, “We will wait as long as necessary. There is no indication in the internet newsrooms that any harm has befallen the brothers. Remember: Sergei is smart. He will follow a long and winding path and meet us here. Of that I am certain. Better that he does that, than he inadvertently leads our enemies to us. We will benefit from being together and, more important, we do not want either of them falling into our enemies’ hands. They know too many of our secrets.”
“And the younger one? I always said he wasn’t ready.”
“I agree. Jeyhun is a worry.” Nagpal watched the cold waves smashing against the sea defences. “The machine is gone, so we have to assume he’s been compromised. He will have heard my message and known we were under threat, so let’s hope he’s not been captured. I suspect he hasn’t been. The British press are berating their security forces and government for letting us get away. If there was any hint that one of us had been captured, then it would be being paraded for the world to see. We should, however, make sure that he knows to make his way here. We need to leave him a message on his mobile. The ‘Icarus’ codeword. Otherwise, he might stay where he is or, worse, head for the wrong rendezvous point.”
“Let’s do it then.” Sikand made to walk off. “From somewhere warm.”
Nagpal stayed static, “You shall go: to Serbia.”
“What?”
“Yes, we’ll get you a rental car. It’ll be cosy enough for you, and your little brown numbskull, since you can’t tolerate the cold like a real man.” The answering expression on Azat’s face was more chilling than the freezing squall which blew behind his tense silhouette. “You can drive there, past Bucharest.”
“That will take days!”
“We’re not doing anything else, soldier.” Murat stepped close to him. “We cannot risk calling the cell from here. Not even from inside this country, if we can avoid it. You can drive into Serbia, find a pay-phone and call the youth. If he answers or not, it makes no difference. Say the codeword...”
“Icarus.”
“Yes, Icarus. Then hang up. No conversation. Then come back here. Hopefully, Sergei will be here by then. I will stay, to continue to maintain the daily visits to this meeting point.”
“What if they both arrive while I’m away?”
Murat smiled, “Then you won’t have to rejoin me here, every day, to assist in my vigil until they do.”
“And the borders?”
“The fictional identities have caused us no complications up to now. If you hit a problem at the crossing, then leave the message from the border itself and return. Draw no attention to yourself.” Murat heaved himself upright from where he’d been leaning against the wall. “I’ll use the time you’re away to procure some fresh papers. There are some excellent forgers in this city, and we have more than enough cash thanks to the generosity of all of our foolish, worldwide, internet friends. The sob-story swindle that Omid dreamed up, and posted on their ridiculous social networking sites while we were back in England was an act of genius, wasn’t it? Who would have believed that so many stupid people would give blindly to a cause they know nothing about?”
Azat Sikand’s taut smile was, to those who didn’t know him, only moderately less hostile than his snarl, but Murat was pleased to see it reappear on his comrade’s face. “That was the one useful thing that filthy Javed did for us,” he said.
“Ha!” Murat Nagpal exclaimed in agreement. “Well, apart from keeping us fed and watered for several months.”
“He truly was a worthless piece of godless scum.”
“That, he was.”
~~~~~
Guildford, England
I’m standing, speechless, in the middle of the pavement. Grumbling pedestrians are circumnavigating my human roadblock as they struggle through the treacherous, grit-darkened snow. They’re not being particularly vocal though – it must be my formidable physique and facial expression that’s making them cautious – and it’s a good job too, because, in the mood I’m in at the moment, I’m likely to lash out.
In front of me, a huge bookstore’s windows are entirely filled with their latest promotion. There are literally hundreds of identical copies of one book cover, and my little terrorist friend is staring back at me from every one of them. He’s smiling and brandishing his clenched fist under a bold block capital title. One word. ‘ABUSED’. Then a strap-line: ‘Standing Up For The Innocent, by Khandastanian activist, Javed Omid’. Then there’s a small citation, from some no doubt money-grabbing nobody: ‘An uplifting essay on the struggles of a multicultural society’.
Abused. Yes, that just about sums this up. Surely there must be some sort of law to prevent people from profiteering on the suffering of others? Surely there must be – in any society, let alone a multicultural one? According to the window display, it’s already a bestseller. Nice. Good to see that the general public feels the same way, and are shunning this heartless, greedy propagation of evil. It’s taken me a while, but now I can understand why you used to say the things you did. I can feel the last few tenuous fragments of my old peace-loving forgiveness and human empathy being stamped out deep inside me.
My demons are not going to let the old me survive.
They’re building a new fire, and it is raging.
A very dark fire: with flames the colour of the darkest shadows, with a touch that is colder than the hardest frost, which consumes everything it touches, which doesn’t understand tolerance, and, most of all, which knows no mercy.
I’ve been following you – you little, evil, selfish bastard – for months. You can stand there in front of me, and leer, and wave your fist as much as you like: it won’t help you. I’ve seen you playacting your injuries. Seen you being brought back, head bound in swathes of bandage like Mr. Bump, by your personal taxis, to the same terrace house that Shaz and her police squads raided all those many months ago. Seen your day care nurses helping you to hobble up the path with your expensive shopping bags. Seen the various brochures for unaffordable Central London apartments being posted into your letterbox. Seen your helpers leave for the evening. Followed you as you make your daily miraculous recovery, and creep out of the back door, suddenly bandage free, and sprint like some Olympian down your back alleyway and jump into the brand new car you have parked on another street.
You are stupidly repetitious.
I’ve also followed your car.
I know the casinos you like to visit. I know the gentlemen’s clubs you like to go on to. I know you drive back in the early hours, doubtless inebriated, and most likely emptied of your flawed seed, and creep stealthily back into your den.
I could call in the Press. They’d probably enjoy berating you for a couple of days. Maybe your expensive, ambulance-chasing, legal firm would get cold feet? More likely, it’d only add to your notoriety and therefore marketability. This publishing deal is evidence of how little someone like you, with no moral scruples, would be affected by simple embarrassment.
I could call the police: but a drink-driving related prosecution isn’t going to stop you doing what you want to. The laws weren’t written for you, were they?
Well, unfortunately for you, you’re not the only one who thinks like that.
Not having seen firsthand our wonderful laws in action.
Not having had life transformed into a horribly conscious death.
Not having suffered this ongoing – true – abuse.
It would seem that the laws aren’t written for me, either.
~~~~~
London
Sentinel watched as Brigadier Crispin Greere visibly squirmed in the uncomfortable chair opposite him. The little toad doubtless had aspirations to be on his side of the desk at some point – probably soon – and if recent events hadn’t unwound so dramatically, then chances were that he would have been a good step closer than he was right now. Sentinel was determined to, quietly, enjoy making him suffer. It was a mild form of compensation for the levels of grief he was getting from the PM’s Office and other Agencies.
Greere’s mouth looked like he was sucking on something evil-tasting, “It’s true that Tin also has a history, sir.”
“Hmmm,” Major Charles thumbed through the open file on his desktop. “A very violent history, and one which includes desertion.”
“He was badly affected by the ambush in Afghanistan that wiped out his Squad. Desertion is not strictly correct. He elected to leave his post and vanish, unsupported and unaided, into the Afghan Mountains for several months. Then he returned and gave himself up.”
“A period, during which, he single-handedly tracked down and summarily executed several Afghan citizens.”
“Taliban.”
“If you say so,” Sentinel was enjoying himself. “Are you sure he wasn’t just pilfering somewhere?’
“Iron was a mistake, sir. One which I’ve already apologised for.” Greere was babbling, with more than a hint of desperation in his voice. “His story was credible. Maybe if we’d had longer to train him, before we activated?”
“Are you making excuses, Crispin?” Sentinel watched his subordinate’s cheeks redden – though whether it was from embarrassment or fury, he couldn’t tell. He knew that Greere hated being referred to by his first name. It was, after all, terribly condescending.
“No, Major.”
“So how confident are you, that this remaining, ex-military Agent isn’t concealing another dangerous rogue tendency? There are limits. Even if we tend to ignore most of them.”
Greere knew that his boss was referring to the Berlin-debacle. “I also accept that Steel was psychologically disturbed, sir. Again, I can only apologise. His condition wasn’t obvious during training. He did a very good job of concealing it.” Greere’s ugly forehead was moist with sweat; presumably it was the stress of watching his career aspirations sliding away into the distance. “We do know that Tin did an excellent job in Spain and Poland. He’s waiting quietly for further instructions.” Greere hurried on. “Berlin was, I accept, messy but one of the cell has been eliminated, we have disrupted their communications, and planted tracking devices so that we can home in on the others, when it’s appropriate to recommence. The brother, Sergei Ebrahimi, continues to make a circuitous route across Europe. We’re waiting for him to go static. He will, most likely, be with the others when he does.”
“A predetermined rendezvous?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re counting on them waiting for the youngster to turn up?”
“Yes, sir. A message was left on the younger boy’s cellphone earlier today,” Greere continued to babble on excitedly. “A one word message: Icarus. We presume that this is an extraction call-sign, intended to advise the boy to break camp and reconvene with the main group. Unfortunately, the call was too brief to trace. Background noise suggested a random pay-phone was used. Somewhere in Central Europe is the consensus...”
“What a good job,” Sentinel interrupted him, “that I managed, at some great personal inconvenience, to persuade so many agencies to keep a lid on that whole German f*ck up!”
“Yes, sir.” Greere sounded utterly deflated. Even his bug-eyes seemed to have receded slightly.
“Tin is one man. I’m not sure that’s enough.” The Bull twisted the knife. “Your credibility is in tatters, Brigadier. Anything less than a complete success, after the last two disasters, well....” He let his sentence trail off ominously.
Brigadier Crispin Greere sat silent. Defeated. His experiment was in shreds. He’d lost two agents already. One agent would not be enough to complete the mission.
Sentinel sat forwards, time had come to hand his minion the glimmer of a lifeline. He snapped the file closed so that the brown manilla cover once again shrouded the uppermost pages, which had been filled with photographs of Jack Vittalle. But there were more pages in this file. Tucked away underneath the top ones. Some of them describing a vehicle recently dredged from a nondescript Sussex reservoir. “Greere,” he said. “Flawed as your execution has been, there may still be merit in your idea. The highly distributed and loosely coupled nature of modern terrorism doesn’t lend itself to traditional prosecution. Sometimes the only way to fight fire is with fire.”
The toad nodded obediently.
Sentinel hoped the man had picked up on his deliberate repetition of their earlier discussion, when Greere had made his original proposal to him. Sentinel wanted to make sure Greere knew that he hadn’t forgotten whose idea this had been. “You’d better hope your man, Ebrahimi, continues to take his time wandering around Europe,” he continued.
“Why, sir?”
“Because I might have someone for you.” Sentinel didn’t continue with the remainder of his sentence: someone ultrahigh risk that I can make you take responsibility for, but who might, just, add enough extra firepower to save this mission from failure. “You can go now.” He picked up his cellphone, stood, turned to his windows, and watched with satisfaction as the reflection of his subordinate scurried out of his office. ‘It’ll be some time before I’m giving up this desk to you, or anyone else, you little weasel,’ he thought to himself. ‘Watch and learn.’
~~~~~