He moved tentatively—nothing big broken—and oriented himself. He was tucked behind the ridge of boulders at the bottom of the slope directly over the main adit. That part had worked. He was invisible to Kowalski in his sniper nest and Kowalski was stuck there. Leila had an M16, a rifle that could shoot eight-inch groups or better at that distance in the hands of a trained Marine. That wasn’t Leila, but Kowalski was highly unlikely to put her to the test.
The dead man was lying next to CJ. He grabbed his arm and swapped watches. The dead man had his pistol too. It was stuck down his pants. CJ tucked his hand under his belt and pulled it out. He felt woozy, not in pain, but concussed. He stared at the pistol, struggling to keep it in focus. He couldn’t risk peeking over the rocks, so he had to hope that Leila had kept the faith and was looking for his movement to trigger the next phase. He was still dizzy, but his head was as good as it was going to get. So he unhooked the scalp from under his chin, tossed it aside and crawled along the ridge to an arroyo, a dry watercourse cut in the rocks. It was a few feet deep, a crawlspace to conceal his approach. And that was vital. It was dark now. Kowalski would be cruising up and down the slope with his thermal imaging scope. Most of the time, he’d be focused on the boulders in front of the upper adit, waiting for Leila to sneak out in the dark. But now and again, he’d go back down the slope to the main entrance below, then scoot over to the adit in the northern slope, figuring that she might cut back into the mine and try her luck at another exit. With all that wandering, he might catch CJ’s approach. Not in the arroyo, but at the bottom where it flattened out into a wash plain of gravel. That was a twenty-to-thirty-yard shooting gallery. An easy shot for Kowalski. But CJ was counting on being lucky. And counting on Leila Rose.
Kowalski had all but given up when Leila’s voice rattled the comms into life.
“You win, Kowalski. I’m coming down. But before I do, I want to tell you something. Or even better, I’ll show it to you.”
Kowalski roamed the rocks with his scope, looking for the white blob of her head.
Show him what?
He was expecting her to hold something up.
The hard drive? A white flag?
Then he saw her. A splash of heat at the end of the rocks. Barely that. No head. Just hands. Sticking her gun out over the rocks and shooting blind like a raghead insurgent. Three bursts. Short on the first and wide on the second. But the third was spot-on. Kowalski ducked below the concrete block as bullets shredded wood and pocked holes in the metal of his makeshift hide.
“Did you get the message?” she said. “The message is—I know how to shoot.”
Kowalski pulled his face out of the dirt and curled in closer to his concrete block, his finger sliding back into the trigger guard.
Another bullet.
Thwack.
Kowalski screamed, hitting the trigger of the Remington by reflex, blasting its lethal round somewhere north of the Pole Star. He dropped the rifle and rolled over grabbing his knee. And there he was—back from the dead yet again—CJ Brink staring down at him.
Kowalski dived under his jacket, going for his pistol, and CJ put a second shot in his shoulder. Then he shot him twice more. Once in each elbow. Kowalski howled, writhing like a snake stuck with a pitchfork. CJ searched him, tossing aside his pistol and a Bowie knife. Leila was hurrying down the slope and kicking up a few stones on the way. She was carrying Enya’s satchel and the M16. CJ waved to her to come on over. But she went to the Rover instead, and after scraping open the damaged door, she got in behind the wheel. CJ looked back at Kowalski. He really didn’t want an audience for what he was about to do. But it looked like he was going to have one. Leila started the Range Rover and drove over, and CJ left Kowalski in his bunker and went to meet her. The Tratfors vehicles were still there where he’d ambushed them at the entrance of the clearing, the SUV studded with bullet holes and leaking gas in a steady drip. Undriveable. And the truck had fared no better. It had gotten the worst of the grenade blast and had one wheel buckled and a tire in shreds. CJ stood between the vehicles at the trailhead, waiting for Leila, who switched on the headlights as she approached, her face disappearing in a wall of glare. She was gunning the engine. He waved his hand to slow her down and was dumbfounded when she sped up. He went to shout. To stop her. But it was too late. He dived to the side, his feet close enough to feel the draft of tires churning gravel and spitting stones as she tore past. He scrambled to his feet. But she was gone. He looked down the trail, more numb than betrayed.
Leila?
His mind reeled in speculation, but the smell of gas brought him back. The drip from the Tratfors SUV had become a rivulet streaming at his feet. He thought back to the ambush. He hadn’t shot up that tank. His shots were targeted. It was Leila’s distraction fire. She had to keep Kowalski pinned down while he was sneaking out of the arroyo and coming up behind him. But her shots had strayed wide and hit that tank. It might have been inadvertent. But after sending him sprawling in the dirt, it looked more like part of a plan to make a clean getaway.
But why? Panic? Some hidden agenda?
He went back to Kowalski.
“Shit,” Kowalski said, looking up at him with rheumy, bloodshot eyes. “You’re one dumb lucky bastard, Brink. I thought you’d gone with her.” He started to laugh, his round belly pumping breathless snickers between sniffles of pain.
CJ whirled back towards the trail.
C is for contingency.
Tratfors had the same playbook.
So what if Brink or one of the women got to their vehicle and tried to escape?
They had it covered.
The explosion cracked open the night with a lick of flame and a thunderous roar, its echo punctuated by the crashing and tinkling of metal and glass. So that was Leila. Now the hard drive was gone. And so was the person who could take that data and do the most damage with it. Questions were stacking up in CJ’s head, and all of them started with the word why. But now wasn’t the time for answers, so he let them all roll on by. She’d made the choice. There was just one regret. He hadn’t seen it coming. Kowalski was right. He might have been in that Range Rover. He might have been up there with Leila and those other bits and pieces tumbling out of the sky. He turned back to Kowalski, and the Tratfors man read his fate on CJ’s face.
No more snickers.
CJ picked up Kowalski’s Bowie blade and crouched over him, his whisper-soft voice as sharp-edged as the blade in his hand.
“I held Alex’s head by the hair like this.” He grabbed a handful of Kowalski’s hair and jerked his head back, exposing his throat. “I ran with it through the streets of Baghdad. And when they found me, I was holding it against my chest.” He edged closer. “The reason I spent years in hell and Alex and Declan were murdered is because Enya O’Brien was a good person. She had a conscience. But she was also a bit of a fumbler.”
Kowalski’s face lit up. “We thought it was him. We didn’t know the dumb asshole was sharing ops with his sister. I was told to get rid of him. But not you guys. Not you and Alex. That’s why I worked it out like I did. The militia rounds you up. Nobody gets hurt. They separate you guys and we rescue you. O’Brien gets worked on till we know who he shared the data with. Then he gets killed accidentally. The leak gets plugged and everyone’s a hero.”
“I get it. And if I was a generous man, I’d blame Enya and let you go. If she hadn’t blown the whistle, Declan and Alex would still be alive. And I’d be normal. More or less. But I’m not a generous man. I’m a steel-souled bastard. Or so I’ve been told. And I’m thoughtful too. And so are those guys in the militia. They’d never agree to a bullshit plan like that. Staging a bungled rescue mission where only one captive gets killed. It’s too complicated. They like simple. Beat the crap out of O’Brien till he talks, then stage a bungled rescue mission where they kill all the hostages. That’d work. You guys roll up and fire a couple of shots. They shoot us all and bugger off down a tunnel. Simple.”
“No, no…”
CJ shut him up, cracking him on the forehead with the butt of the knife. “Enya is innocent because she had nothing but good in her heart. You’re guilty because you had nothing but evil in yours. That country club. What’s the membership? Two hundred thousand, three hundred?”
“What?”
“I was in a hospice. Guys with no legs. No arms. One guy had no balls. I watched him one night in the cafeteria. Sitting with his wife, holding hands across the table. So they get that. And you get the country club.” Kowalski was shaking, his eyes swiveling around looking for rescuers that were never going to show. CJ jerked his head back to arch up his throat towards the blade. “I’m holding you to account for the death of Alex Solo. For Enya. For all of them. I’m going to saw your head off with your own blade. I’m going to carry it up there onto that road and stick it on a post where you can watch the passing traffic.”
Kowalski screamed as CJ dropped the knife to his throat and cut.
But he stopped.
A voice.
Alex?
No. A memory. A feeling. A splinter of steel jammed in a synapse.
He bit the knife deeper into Kowalski’s throat. But something was wrong. He rocked on his heels. Dizzy. Confused. Kowalski’s face was rippling like it was underwater. CJ steadied himself. Fighting it. Blood was spilling from Kowalski’s throat, but all his main cables were still intact.
Just cut him.
He was pushing himself to do it.
But no. That voice. It was stopping him. That wasn’t a splinter of steel. CJ jerked himself up on his feet and tossed the knife aside, staring down at Kowalski.
“Alex had the best of this country beating inside him,” he said. “He loved it. He loved his family, his buddies. He was a hero and he died like one.” CJ stopped, choking up, his eyes lifting up to the sky. “But you’re just a dog.” He pulled the pistol from his belt and shot Kowalski through the head in a single motion.
He stood awhile after that, not so much thinking as collecting, all the bits of himself strewn around the mine and the trails he’d traveled since arriving in America. There was only one thing left to do. Something that stuck in his head as he ranged over the day’s events. Enya. He couldn’t leave her like that. Not in a tunnel with rats. He climbed the slope to the upper adit and carried her down. Her locket was gone. No surprise. He’d left it there as a test for Leila. Now it was a mushed nugget scattered with her remains, a little gold returned to hills that had yielded so much of it. He dragged the driver from the Tratfors SUV and tossed his body aside, putting Enya’s body in his place. He jammed dry timbers underneath it to catch the dripping gas, then searched the pockets of the dead men and found a smoker. He used his lighter to fire the dribbling gas before stepping clear and watching it flame, floodlighting the arena and dancing shadows on the slopes all around it. And as its light faded, so did the stars, bleached out of the sky by the hint of the new day. The dawn was sure to bring a Tratfors cleanup crew. There’d be a chopper zooming in over the ridge within the hour. CJ considered the arsenal littering the site. He had the pistol tucked in his belt and an extra magazine, not that a 9mm would help much in that situation. But the Remington was another proposition. He slung it over his shoulder and headed back down the trail.
Leila Rose had made it halfway back to the road. The Rover’s twisted frame and chassis was tossed up on the slope, its aluminum engine dumped in the dirt, pieces of bodywork scattered on the hills. There was no sign of Leila, and no sign of the laptop or the hard drive. He walked up the hill to the north, sat down and surveyed the blast scene below. He looked back over the interlocking spurs of the trail to the arena where Enya’s pyre was still glowing in the half-light of dawn.
She’d never trusted Leila. She’d seen the upside in having her on the team, but there was always something holding her back. He’d dismissed it as rivalry, two strong women thrown together in a crisis both reaching for the controls. But something at the end had made him wonder. He pulled the memory card from his pocket. He’d popped it out of the locket when Leila had gone looking for kindling for their smoke bomb. He held it up to his face, staring at it like it was a photograph, something worth looking at, not just black plastic. This was the future, the new weapon for the postnuclear world. Truth and lies coded in zeros and ones. He put it back in his pocket and stood up, and he was heading back down the trail when he heard that voice again.
“Alex?”
He whipped around, eyes scouring the spurs back towards the mine, but there was nobody there. No Alex. Just a sense of him lingering. His warrior’s heart. He turned and strode off, then stopped.
For sure he’d heard that voice.
And not just with his ears. Every cell in his body was tingling with it, the hairs on his neck standing to attention like proud Marines. He looked back at the clearing. The wind was kicking up, squeezing more life out of Enya’s pyre, its flames lighting anew, its heat swirling curlicues of dust and smoke skyward. He watched them as they traced patterns in the light of the fire. Then something big caught. Flammable. Not an explosion but getting there. The air cracked with it, and flame reached up into the last of the darkness and the first of the light. And there was Alex. Not Alex the victim, his severed head sedately carried at his chest. This was Alex whole, Alex as CJ remembered him when they’d first met. He was in combat gear. Desert camouflage. Locked and loaded. And as the dust and smoke swirled, Alex grew larger than life, towering over the flames at his feet, his spectral flesh coming alive and glowing with a strength that stretched beyond this world.
“Hey, buddy…”
He was towering above the clearing. Fearsome. Invincible. He pointed down at CJ, arm and finger like a gun, voice booming.
“I’ve still got your back.”
About the Author
Michael Woodman was a thriller-writing sensation in his teens, signing a multi-book deal with publishers on both sides of the Atlantic straight out of high school. His iconic 70s anti-hero was a hit, but something didn’t feel right. He’d never been anywhere or done anything, and he wanted a thriller-writer’s bio like the big boys. So he quit writing wild adventures set in far-off places and he lived them instead. His resume complete, Michael is now back at the typewriter computer, hiding out in Spain with his wife Elizabeth, and working on his next novel. You can visit with him at michaelwoodman.com
Acknowledgments
The Saint of Baghdad is the story of three men who come back from the dead, each in his own way. In the narrative, CJ emerges from a coma, and Alex’s spirit echoes from the grave, while in the parallel world we call real life, their creator wakes up after the longest authorial hibernation of all times.
My publishing renaissance is long overdue, and it would never have happened without helping hands. From my reading and editing team, I want to thank Marcus and Shalini, and US editor Eliza Dee. Fiona Jayde is due thanks too and not just for designing my cover and marketing assets, but for her patience in reading my impossibly detailed emails. Invaluable too was the advice of many authors from way down the indie-publishing road who generously share their experience and knowledge with us all through podcasts and blogs, notably Mark Dawson and Joanna Penn.
Fiction writing is a creative art. The deliverable, after all, is a book. But just as an actor must create a performance, an author must perform daily or his creation will never exist. For many, that’s the rub—those endless shows performed at a keyboard in front of a silent audience. I could never have written this without the drive and passion of my wife, Elizabeth, whose confidence in me never falters. So for that, and so much more, I thank her most of all.
Copyright
First published in 2019 by Connlaswell Publishing.
Copyright © Michael Woodman 2019
The right of Michael Woodman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All the characters in this book, with the exception of those already in the public domai
n, are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Woodman, Michael. The Saint of Baghdad. Connlaswell Publishing. Kindle Edition.
ISBN 978-1-9160095-0-9.
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