Mercenary Part 1

Mercenary.

by DUNCAN FALCONER.

PART 1.

Prologue.

Was.h.i.+ngton DC, Christmas Eve

Stratton checked his watch and, using the car's side and rear-view mirrors, looked in every direction along the street. He was sharing the dark, lamp-lit residential road with several other parked cars but no other people seemed to be around. Many of the apartment buildings overlooking his position had a Christmas light or illuminated decoration in the window but otherwise there was little sign of life.

He had an uncomfortable feeling. It had built gradually since he stepped off the plane. Put simply, he was nervous. This was unusual for him while he was on a job, but he knew why he felt that way. This mission wasn't for the SIS. It was private. Personal. That made the risk he was taking different from those he was used to. He was going to kill a man that night - with luck - and Stratton would be high on any subsequent list of suspects. He was going to punish another for that most primitive of reasons: revenge. This time he would have no safety net. No one would protect him. He was there on his own account and would be treated as a common criminal if he were caught. His plan was high-risk and he could end up in jail for a very long time.

Stratton clenched his jaw at the thought of the chance he was taking. 'Screw it,' he muttered resolutely. It was worth it. In fact, he could hardly wait.

It had taken several years to get the information he needed to plan the operation. In that time Stratton had continued with life as a British military-intelligence a.s.set, using his privileged position to keep a weather eye out for that one piece of data, the clue that might allow him finally to set the trap.

The opportunity had eventually fallen into his lap thanks to Sumners, his immediate taskmaster and SIS human-resources officer. It wasn't altogether surprising that Sumners had led Stratton to his target. The SIS man was tangentially connected to the individual Stratton was after although, luckily for him, he had played no part in the incident that had caused Stratton to embark on this personal mission. Stratton was convinced that Sumners didn't even know what had happened all those years ago. If he had had known he would never have been so careless as to leave lying around the clue that had put Stratton on the warpath. known he would never have been so careless as to leave lying around the clue that had put Stratton on the warpath.

The target was a high-ranking CIA operative, which was why he had been so difficult to track down. As a matter of routine his powerful employers went to great lengths to protect him. The man had a similar background to Stratton's. His core expertise was in Special Forces, the American variety, and, as with Stratton, his country's pre-eminent intelligence agency utilised those skills from time to time.

Over the years Stratton had worried that something might happen to the man before he could get to him. There were no doubt others who had the same aim as Stratton. The man was evil and had plied his trade for many years all around the world. But, much as Stratton wanted him dead, it was more important that the man knew that it was Stratton who was going to kill him because then he would know why.

The clue that Stratton had been waiting for came in the form of a discreet invitation mailed to Sumners from the USA. It was lying on the SIS officer's desk one day when Stratton arrived at the MI6 building beside the Thames to discuss an upcoming operation. The card's succinct inscription cordially invited Sumners to attend a rare gathering of the 'Black Pigs a.s.sociation'. The only other wording was the date, time and address of the venue. Leaving the card exposed was a significant slip - or so Stratton prayed when he read it, since it might not necessarily have come from the person he sought. But, even so, there was still something about it that excited him. His instincts had tingled and even though there was an element of unavoidable doubt he was as undeterred as a heat-seeking missile homing in on its prey. At worst it might lead to another clue.

Stratton had heard the phrase only once before, from Sumners's own lips, the very next time he had met his boss after returning from that fateful mission all those years ago.

'Are you a member now?' Sumners had asked him, his tone sardonic and superior. 'Black Pigs?'

Stratton was in no mood for one of Sumners's characteristic petty jibes but he did his utmost to disguise his feelings. He felt filled with hate: he was desperate for retribution and Sumners represented his only chance of ever finding the elusive agent. If Sumners had had the slightest idea what had gone wrong on that operation he would have clammed up about the subject. But it was clear from his light-hearted reference to the man who had masterminded the task that he knew nothing about what happened. And as long as Sumners was not suspicious his guard on the subject would be low. The SIS officer was, by nature and vocation, a very secretive man.

'What's the Black Pigs a.s.sociation?' Stratton had asked.

'It's the nickname of a certain group of CIA operatives and their select foreign allies,' Sumners had replied, pausing to allow the inference to sink in that he was one such 'select' individual. 'Men from a certain era who were involved in certain unmentionable things in certain places . . . But if he didn't tell you about that then you weren't invited to join,' he added smugly.

Stratton left it at that. Sumners was not the type to elaborate any further once he had finished with a subject. And any attempt to get him to open up more would only arouse his suspicions. Stratton would not risk that.

It had taken several years but Stratton's patience had paid off eventually. He was well aware that his target might not even be at the gathering but the point was that he could be. Stratton would not miss the opportunity, because one might never pa.s.s his way again. The date gave him a few weeks to organise the task and secure the necessary equipment, which was minimal and uncomplicated to acquire. He could plan practically the entire operation from the UK using satellite imagery and the internet.

Eighteen hours before the hit Stratton boarded a flight, arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton DC, picked up the car and equipment, carried out a detailed reconnaissance of the target location and with time to spare sat back to gather his thoughts and imagine the moment he had been waiting for for so long. He no longer even bothered to consider the possibility of the man not being there.

Tears began to form in Stratton's eyes. He blinked but did not wipe them away. They rolled down his cheeks, over his lips and to his chin, from where they fell to his chest. His reason for being there, the images of those moments that had led him on this campaign of revenge, filled his head. It seemed as if the execution of the plan had reopened the wounds of that day, the last time he had cried for her.

Stratton wiped his face on his sleeve and tried to put the thoughts aside. He pulled the hood of his heavy fleece over his head, smoothed the thin leather gloves around his fingers and climbed out of the vehicle. The icy air gripped his face and his breath turned to steam. He was pleased it was so cold because of the advantage it gave him: projectiles travelled more true in freezing air.

He walked around to the boot of the hire car, took out a backpack, which he placed over a shoulder, hit the remote that secured the car's doors and made his way along the street, head down in case there were any CCTV cameras.

He turned the corner and walked along a busy road which he cut across to enter a dark alleyway dividing the block. He weaved around overflowing garbage dumpsters and bags of trash, scattering foraging vermin that had been taken by surprise at his silent approach. At the end of the alley he broke into a jog to cross a brightly lit road and to avoid an oncoming car and disappeared into another quiet street.

Halfway along it he turned into the entrance to an underground car park, headed down a steep incline, ducked under an unmanned barrier and walked calmly into a low-roofed, cavernous and dimly lit enclosed s.p.a.ce that amplified every noise. A tyre screeched somewhere below as a car turned a tight corner. Stratton speeded up to a fire exit and pushed his way in through the door as the vehicle appeared.

He paused to listen inside a concrete stairwell that zigzagged tightly upwards. The car drove off and the only sound that remained was a gentle hum from the stairway lighting. Stratton took the first flight at a brisk pace he could easily maintain and carried on to the top.

The stairs ended abruptly at a heavy metal door. Stratton paused to catch his breath and listen before easing it open to reveal a s.p.a.cious flat roof in darkness, crowded with ducts and air-conditioning units. He stepped out into the icy breeze, closed the door quietly and crossed the familiar roof to a spot between two fan housings. The edge of the building was only feet away.

He removed the parts of a professional crossbow from his pack and quickly a.s.sembled the weapon, placing a foot in the stirrup and levering back the string that rolled through pulley wheels on the ends of the prods until it was locked by the trigger mechanism. The final component was a sophisticated telescopic sight that he locked into place.

Stratton opened a narrow plastic box to reveal three lethal bolts, their tips viciously barbed, their fletchings painted orange and with long slender green quetzal-bird tail feathers attached to the nocks by a line of gut. These were symbolic rather than a flight aid and an important part of Stratton's message to his target.

He placed one of the bolts in the bow's launch groove, inched forward to where he could see the street far below, rested the bow beside him and focused a pair of binoculars on the ornate entrance of a building opposite. Stratton could make out the partial figure of a man standing inside the gla.s.s entrance, illuminated by the colourful lights from a Christmas tree. A doorman or a security guard. With the party scheduled to end at midnight, in just over an hour, it was time for the old waiting game. An activity with which Stratton was more than familiar, particularly in the cold and holding a pair of binoculars with a weapon close by.

Stratton watched for more than an hour before the first men sporting dinner jackets walked out into the chilly air and down a flight of steps to the pavement. The flow of guests, all men, was intermittent, their breath turning to vapour as they came outside.

One of them paused at the top of the steps to pull on a coat. He looked familiar. Stratton scrutinised him through the binoculars. It was indeed Sumners, b.u.t.toning up his coat and looking back though the gla.s.s doors as if waiting for someone.

Stratton put down the binoculars, picked up the crossbow and balanced the stock in his hand. He made sure that the quetzal feather was neatly tucked behind the bolt and brought the tiller tight against his shoulder. He focused the cross-hairs of the scope on Sumners before moving them to the gla.s.s doors.

A group of four men came out. In their middle, holding court while fastening the b.u.t.tons of his own coat, walked the one that Stratton had been waiting for. It was difficult to miss him, unfortunate perhaps for a man in his business - covert operations. He had a full head of thick white hair and he was also burly - not fat, just robust. He stood out in a crowd. Stratton had not seen him for several years but the last time was etched indelibly in his mind. The man had been standing on a cliff and looking down on Stratton hundreds of feet below, a gun in his hand. Their positions were now reversed: a poetic irony.

The target picture was perfect. The man had paused halfway down the steps to press home a point he was making, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the others. Stratton aimed the cross-hairs at the centre of the target's torso and eased them closer to one of the man's shoulders. It was important that he should drop him with the first bolt but not kill him. That was difficult to ensure because of the steep angle. He had to avoid the heart, of course, but also the main arteries leading from it or the man might quickly become unconscious.

Stratton exhaled. As his lungs emptied he steadied his grip on the crossbow and took first pressure on the trigger. The weapon jerked as the prods straightened, sending the bolt at four hundred feet per second towards its mark.

It struck the man with the force of a horse's hoof, hitting him in the chest. The tip must have cut through his spine because his lower limbs folded instantly and he dropped like a dead weight, his heavy frame rolling down a couple of steps before he came to a stop on his back. The other men froze, except for Sumners who moved to the cover of the doorway.

None of them went to the man right away. He stared up at the night sky, an expression of utter shock on his face as he struggled to understand what had just happened to him. He fought to breathe and his hand quivered as he tried to find the object that was burning his chest. He was aware that his body had been pierced by something that was not a bullet. It occurred to him that perhaps something had fallen on him. But as his fingers found the end of the bolt and explored the fletching he realised it was an arrow of some kind. The quetzal feather moved in the breeze and through his fingertips and when he realised that it was attached to the arrow's nock a memory worked its way into his thoughts. He had seen such a thing before. He inched up his head, forcing his chin towards his chest in order to look at it, but he was unable to raise his head far enough.

One of the other men finally dropped to his knees beside the wounded man. 'Call the police!' he shouted in the direction of the doorman. 'Get an ambulance! Hurry!'

'I want to see it,' the wounded man rasped, grinding his teeth in determination. 'I want to see it!'

His colleague seemed unsure what to do. But he put his hand behind the man's head to help raise it up.

The man grimaced with the pain but he had never lacked grit or tenacity. When he saw the fletching and quetzal feather he knew its meaning straight away and relaxed his neck muscles as if there was nothing more to be done. His helper lowered his head back onto the step.

The man knew only too well the significance of the arrow. He squinted at the rooftops high above, hoping to see who had launched it. He could make out nothing but blackness, not even stars, but it didn't matter. He knew who was there and that his nemesis had not yet finished with him.

A thin smile began to form on his lips but it faded as the vivid images of what he had done those years ago filled his head. If he could have said a final word to his executioner it might have been an apology, for it was the only awful deed in his life that he regretted. At the time it had all seemed necessary to him but even his black heart had been touched by the vileness of his actions. He wondered how long he had before the end.

The second bolt struck him in the throat, cutting through his larynx and smas.h.i.+ng a chunk out of the concrete behind his neck. The man went still and blood trickled from his mouth, his open eyes glazing over as the life went out of them.

PART 2.

Six Weeks Later: Central America

Harris looked exhausted. He sat on a rotten log, taking a breather, his safari clothes covered in a patchwork of sweat, his trousers muddy up to the knees. The narrow track they had come along had dried since the climb out of the valley and the trees had thinned. The sun - and the air - were welcome. He dug into a breast pocket and pulled out a stick of gum, unwrapped it, tossed the paper onto the jungle floor and pushed it into his mouth. 'Gum?' he asked his young a.s.sistant who was photographing some kind of insect on the ground.

'Thank you, no,' Jacobs replied, with a cheerful smile. Jacobs was as dishevelled as Harris but he did not look as tired as his boss.

Harris hardly knew Jacobs. He was a new guy on the team, fresh from the factory, an Ivy League graduate who had spent barely a couple of years stateside before getting a transfer to the Centrals. Rumour had it that his family was well connected. As far as Harris was concerned, apart from both of them being in the same business they were worlds apart. 'Where's he gone?' he asked.

'The soldier?'

'No. I was suddenly worried about Elvis. Of course I'm talking about the d.a.m.ned soldier!'

'He went into the bushes.'

Harris looked up and down the goat track that disappeared into the forest in both directions. 'Are you screwin' with me?'

Jacobs looked a bit startled by his boss's apparent bad mood. 'No, sir. I'm sure he-'

'I know he's in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned bushes somewhere because there's nothing else around here but but bushes!' bushes!'

A short South American Indian man wearing a grubby khaki army uniform stepped from the jungle, clutching a bunch of lush green leaves and chewing something. He had a single chevron on his jacket sleeve and carried a battered old rifle slung over his shoulder. He offered some of the leaves to Jacobs who accepted them with an appreciative nod, shoving them into his mouth.

Harris stopped chewing his gum, his mouth falling open as he watched his a.s.sistant munch the leaves into a pulp. 'Jacobs?'

'Sir?' the a.s.sistant replied, looking at him.

'Do you know what that is?' Harris asked like a disconcerted parent.

'Uh-huh.' Jacobs nodded.

'Jacobs . . . We're FBI. We don't do cocaine.'

'This isn't exactly cocaine.'

'That's coca leaf, right?'

'Yes.'

'It's an opiate, for Christ's sake . . . How long you been chewing that stuff ?'

Jacobs shrugged. 'Since a while back.'

'Well, at least that explains why you've been bouncing along like Peter f.u.c.kin' Pan.'

'It helps take my mind off the discomfort.'

'That's how it starts . . . Do you mind? If I have to place you under arrest it's only going to complicate matters right now.'

Jacobs looked hurt.

'Spit it out,' Harris snapped.

The younger man did as he was told and wiped his mouth.

Harris sighed. 'That's gonna be a story for the guys when I get back,' he muttered. 'Whenever the h.e.l.l that'll be.'

Once again he wondered who was behind this mission that had brought him into such a h.e.l.l-hole. The order had reached his small office on the second floor of the US emba.s.sy in Salvador, coming directly from the top of the FBI tree without any of the usual bureaucratic diversions. Alarmingly, he thought he had detected that familiar sinister whiff of the CIA about it. The Agency was happy enough to get the Bureau to carry out some of its dirty work and to a man of Harris's experience this job had some obvious indicators. A search in this beaten-up and backward country, which had suffered guerrilla conflicts for decades, for the murderer of a US Special Forces colonel suggested that the victim had in some way been involved in the country's past troubles. Harris knew there had been no official official US presence in the country during its most recent conflict, which indicated that he had been employed by a covert intelligence outfit, the CIA being the most likely candidate. That particular rebellion had ended a couple of years ago and the only compar - able danger these days came from bandits, which was why the local governor had supplied Harris with just one highly trained bodyguard . . . currently out of his tree on coca leaves, along with Harris's a.s.sistant. US presence in the country during its most recent conflict, which indicated that he had been employed by a covert intelligence outfit, the CIA being the most likely candidate. That particular rebellion had ended a couple of years ago and the only compar - able danger these days came from bandits, which was why the local governor had supplied Harris with just one highly trained bodyguard . . . currently out of his tree on coca leaves, along with Harris's a.s.sistant.

Harris got to his feet, banged out of his hat any c.r.a.p it contained, put it on his head and looked out through the trees at the stretch of country that they had covered since dawn. The lush tree-canopy stretched like a rolling ocean, reaching towards a line of craggy hills that marked the horizon. He would have appreciated the landscape's natural beauty more if he knew how much more of it he had to cross.

He hoped that he would find out more about this mysterious scenario when he got to the d.a.m.ned village that they were headed for, otherwise this nightmare trip that had so far taken three days' trek from Salvador was going to be a waste of time.

'If this was such a high-priority task why wasn't there enough in the budget to book a G.o.dd.a.m.ned helicopter?' Harris muttered to himself.

'What was that, sir?'

'I was talking about flying there, but then I guess I'm the only one who isn't . . . Since you're so pally with our military escort here perhaps you could ask him how far we still have to go.'

'Oh, less than two kilometres,' Jacobs replied matter-of-factly, taking a close-up snapshot of a flower.

'You know that for a fact?'

'He told me.'

'And when were you gonna let me know?'

Jacobs put down his camera and shrugged while smiling politely.

Harris nibbled his bottom lip as he adjusted his pack on his back. It hurt wherever he put it. 'Let's go,' he said, facing the soldier and looking at him accusingly.

Barely a hundred metres further on the track joined a wider one with wagon-wheel ruts in it. A kilometre later they broke out of the dense foliage to find themselves facing a hill whose slopes were covered in small mud and wood huts.The dwellings were packed tightly together, the roofs a mix of straw, corrugated metal sheets and colourful plastic tarpaulins. Hundreds of smoke spirals rose skywards. The immediate impression was of a shanty town.

The first villagers to notice them paused long enough to register that they were foreigners and then went back to harvesting beans in the fields at either side of the track. The children reacted with more liveliness. They cheered, gathering around the two Americans as they entered the village.The kids' grubby little hands, as filthy as their bare feet, tugged at the men's clothes. The soldier made a useless attempt to shoo them away but soon gave up when he realised that Jacobs was enjoying the attention. Instead he approached one of the local adults in order to ask for directions.

Jacobs tried to engage the children in conversation, asking their names and using sweets to tempt any of them who came forward. Harris didn't mind since it kept them away from him.

The soldier thanked the villager and beckoned Harris to follow him.

'Jacobs - let's go,' Harris called out as the soldier headed for a narrow path between some huts.

Jacobs dealt out the last of his sweets and hurried to catch up.