Fearless ; The Smoke Child

by Lee Stone

  “Sir, two of the A-10s are reporting that a Mastiff is being held up by a group of other vehicles on the Herat road.”

  There was some confusion. There was no record that any US vehicles were traveling along the Herat road, and the idea that a single Mastiff would travel unaccompanied so late in the afternoon seemed unlikely. One of the men asked whether the Mastiff could be civilian.

  “Well, we don’t know who is in the Mastiff,” Lang lied, “but we can be damn sure that the people in the jeeps are hostile, so let’s engage them first.”

  Nobody argued with the General. The Thunderbolts were sent back to destroy the jeeps, and Lang listened to the radio as the pilots reported that the jeeps had been destroyed.

  “It’s very smoky down there,” one of them called in. “We’re unsure about collateral.”

  So, Lang left the room knowing that the jeeps were destroyed, but unsure whether his money had been obliterated with them. He spent the day feeling clammy and restless, waiting for news from Tyler. At first the news was encouraging. It looked like the Mastiff and its cargo had survived the ambush. Tyler tracked it to the bone yard where the trail went cold.

  So, Lang’s best guess was that if the money had left Afghanistan, it would have been driven through Turkmenistan towards the Caspian Sea. Lang had set Tyler after the cash like a faithful bloodhound, but so far, he had come up with nothing.

  The mysterious driver that David Barr had conjured out of thin air seemed to have vanished as quickly as he’d appeared. He’d taken the money with him. Then there were hours of waiting. Occasional reports from Tyler with news of possible sightings, but nothing certain. The tracking device was proving to be muffled and useless.

  Then the phone call came. David Barr had booked a flight from Ashgabat. Lang had made the call to pull Tyler away from the bus he’d been following. He’d turned him one-eighty and sent him hurtling back to the airport. But it was all in vain. Six hours later Tyler had reported in with a text message. Two of the most miserable words Lang had ever read on his cell phone:

  WRONG BARR

  The General had made the call, and he had called it wrong. Tyler knew bitterly that he had been in the right place. If he’d sprung the yellow truck, he would have found the cash. Now he was tired, and he was twelve hours behind Fearless. He didn’t blame Lang. The General made a lot of calls, and he got most of them right.

  Back in Kandahar Lang began closing things down on the Airfield as Tyler plowed through Turkmenistan looking for the money. Tyler was a hard man to control, but he was ruthless and smart. He was an excellent soldier and a fine tracker, so if anyone could find the money, Tyler was the man for the job.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Turkmenbasy Highway

  “Smack, crack, bushwhacked,

  Tie another one to the racks, baby.”

  – REM, Drive

  Charlie Lockhart had driven the bus for about an hour after leaving Rosalina and Jeyhun before he passed a crumpled Jeep at the side of the road. It had come off the highway at some speed, and the scores in the earth leading up to it looked fresh. Lockhart couldn’t help wondering if it belonged to the person who had been sniffing around his bus the previous night. The front tires had blown out, and the airbag had deployed. There was no one inside, and no obvious signs of blood or trauma. Lockhart kept driving, resisting the urge to have a mooch around the broken car. Ultreya he thought, and kept moving forward.

  He was now only three hours from the coast, and the port town of Turkmenbasy. He had planned to drive there without stopping, but near the halfway point of his journey, he arrived at a temporary marketplace. A group of trucks had arched out from the road in a horseshoe, each facing their cabs outwards and selling goods from their trailers. Lockhart pulled his bus up next to one of the trucks, and got out. Locals were rummaging through the sacks of cotton, onions and potatoes, and the drivers were haggling over price. The place was loud and exciting. Lockhart felt like a tourist again.

  He approached two brothers who looked to be in their mid-twenties. They were trying to sell tomatoes to a group of skeptical looking middle-aged women. Lockhart jostled his way to the front of the crowd and beckoned one man over. The man didn’t speak English, but he called his brother to help.

  Between them, the two men realized that Lockhart was offering to buy the tomato truck from them. The truck was their livelihood, so they would not let it go easily; but eventually Lockhart offered an amount which was too good to turn down.

  While the men offloaded their tomatoes, Lockhart found another trader who was prepared to sell him a donkey. It was lively and looked healthy enough. Lockhart led it back to the tomato brothers and offered them his yellow bus in return for them driving the donkey to Rosalina and Jeyhun’s house. They agreed, and Lockhart gave them the address that Rosalina had written for him. He knew it would please them to see a replacement for the animal that he and Jeyhun had buried that morning.

  Finally, the two brothers helped Lockhart to transfer several heavy suitcases from the bus to the truck. They covered the cases with boxes of tomatoes and covered the tomatoes with a sheet of tarpaulin. Lockhart grabbed the open bale from under the driver’s seat, along with the beaten-up cap which he had grown fond of, before handing the keys to the elder of the brothers.

  He watched as the brothers disappeared over the horizon in the yellow bus, the donkey visible through the back window, and dust kicking up on either side. Then he started the engine of his new truck, settled into his new driver’s seat, and rolled back onto the road to Turkmenbasy.

  Within two hours, he reached the port. The ferry dock was hidden like a dirty secret in the back of beyond, but eventually Lockhart found the place and parked his truck.

  It was ramshackle, the sea air having gnarled away at anything metal, and the sun and the wind having bleached and sanded the remaining wooden shacks. Lockhart bought a ticket from a surly Russian-sounding woman in a small cabin. She took his money, pointed at the ship behind her, and wrote a time for him.

  The boat sailed once a day, and it was leaving in 40 minutes. Luck was on Lockhart’s side, and he felt the river of fate pulling him along once more. He got the truck through the maze of crates and boxes waiting to be loaded onto the boat, up the ramp and on-board. The ship would sail for two days to Azerbaijan.

  Lockhart parked the lorry deep inside the ship and wondered how the old handbrake would cope as the boat rolled around on the Caspian Sea. They walked round to secure the back of the vehicle. There were millions of dollars hidden under his tomatoes, and he didn’t want prying eyes spotting his cargo. Then he found a small sack amongst the produce and filled it with some vegetables. He hadn’t eaten all day, and now that he had made it to the coast he realized how hungry he was.

  He filled the sack to the brim - the stuff would only waste in the back of the truck, and there were sure to be other hungry travelers on the ship. As it turned out, there was nowhere to eat or drink on the boat so he was glad of his stash. The thought of eating nothing but tomatoes for the next two days did little to lift his spirits, but as the boat bobbed unsteadily out of Turkmenbasy harbor Lockhart felt glad to be on his way back towards Europe.

  As the sun started to fall from the sky, Lockhart felt cold for the first time in weeks. The horizon started to burn pinks and oranges, but the boat was exposed to the wind which had picked up across the flat sea, and the spray whipped into his face. Lockhart ducked back through the heavy rusty doors to fetch his only warm top from his rucksack. He headed down the stairs to the back of the boat where his truck was stored.

  As he arrived at the truck, he thought he spotted a shadow darting away from his vehicle. Immediately, he chastised himself. He was supposed to be a tourist, and he was supposed to be traveling through the world with an open heart. His journey had taught him to trust in the friendship of strangers, to give and receive gladly. He had learned that when he treated people well, they were kind in return.

  Since Afghanistan, he had
found himself more guarded. Perhaps the world is now teaching me about the laws of actions and consequences he thought.

  He felt hounded and unsafe. The money in the suitcases had helped him escape from Afghanistan. But now they were weighing heavy as he traveled. The money was his insurance for the future though. Once it was banked, only he would know the account codes, and whoever was chasing him would need to keep him alive.

  Since he had taken the money from the boneyard in Herat, he had not relaxed. Now he was jumping at shadows as he headed back to his truck. He looked up and down the deck of the boat, but he could see nobody. But when he turned back to his truck, he noticed that someone had tampered the side of the tarpaulin. Was he being paranoid? How could anyone on the boat know what he was carrying?

  He reassured himself that some petty thief had probably been rummaging through all the vehicles, and just happened to have been messing with his truck at the exact moment that Lockhart returned to the hold. All the same, he decided to spent a few hours sleeping in the back of the truck.

  So, he grabbed his rucksack from the cab and then clambered into the back. He nestled down in the aisle, concealed by vegetable crates either side of him. The smell of tomatoes hung in the air, wholesome and earthy. Lockhart didn’t sleep, but with his head resting on his rucksack, the Caspian Sea gently rocked him from side to side until he felt reassured and calm.

  His mind drifted back to the tea shop in Quetta in Pakistan, and the time he had spent sipping mint tea on the old chesterfield. He had been at a fork in the river of fate, and he wondered whether he had made the wrong choice. Had the Chaman Road into Afghanistan been the wrong way to go? He wondered where he would be now if he had chosen the less dangerous road.

  It was about an hour later that Lockhart first heard someone scuffling around outside the truck. The tarpaulin was thin, and Lockhart could make out the stranger walking right around the truck. He sat up silently, immediately tense and alert. There was a sound of tearing fabric and a thin line of light began to appear in the tarpaulin at the back of the truck.

  Lockhart slowly transferred his weight to his feet and stealthily moved towards the tear in the truck’s wall. He could make out a small blade slowly sawing through tough material. Whoever was outside was cutting their way in. Lockhart hadn’t been paranoid after all, but that was scant comfort now.

  There was nothing for it; he would to have to fight. In with the crates of vegetables were a few wooden stakes which the tomato sellers had used to secure their market stand. Lockhart took one in his hand. It was about two feet long and heavy. He steeled himself, ready to smash at whatever came at him through the rip in the side of the tarpaulin.

  The tear was about a foot across when the man withdrew his blade. Lockhart realized at once that the thief would stick his head through to have a look at what was inside the truck. The tarpaulin started to bulge as the stranger’s head came through.

  Lockhart began to swing the heavy wood towards the target, as the thief’s eyes came into view through the slit. He recognized them at once. They were exactly as he had seen them through the burka when the journalist was sitting on the back of the bus in Ashgabat. In an instant, there was enough of the man’s head through the hole for his peppered beard to come into sight. Lockhart was struggling with a decision; he recognized the journalist at once, but couldn’t decide if that meant he should hit him or not.

  It didn’t matter either way, because his swing was already in motion and it was too late to stop. Without thinking about it, Lockhart eventually swung harder, like he was swatting an irksome fly.

  The journalist did not know what had happened. He fell back out of the truck and hit the cold metal floor of the car deck on the ship. For a moment he tried to struggle against it, to scramble to his feet, but then the injury sunk in, and his body collapsed back onto the floor. A thin cut had opened above his eyebrow and it wouldn’t be long before the swelling started.

  Lockhart opened the tail of the truck and jumped down. On the floor at the side of the truck, the journalist was out cold, with the small knife still grasped in his hand. Before he could work out what to do, Lockhart heard a commotion at the far end of the deck. A group of three men emerged from between the wooden pallets at the far end, each wearing something which looked vaguely like the ship’s uniform.

  Lockhart wondered how he could explain what had happened as he stood over the unmoving body of the journalist. He had been trouble ever since Ashgabat, and now he was a problem without even being conscious. Lockhart raised his hands in the air, just in case.

  However, as the three sailors approached, the tallest pointed to a camera on the side of the metal hull. There was evidently surveillance on the boat, and they had seen what had happened. Without waiting for him to come around, two of the men grabbed the journalist and half dragged and half carried him away.

  “It’s your truck?” asked the remaining sailor.

  Lockhart nodded and held up the keys.

  “My truck, my tomatoes,” he replied as he reached into the truck and handed the sailor one.

  The sailor took it and bit into the fruit and took a moment to savor its taste. Then he looked back at Lockhart.

  “You have more?” he asked.

  “I have a truckful.”

  The sailor offered Lockhart a place at their dinner table for a bag of tomatoes. Lockhart thought it was a good deal, mostly because it would break up the monotony of the long trip.

  “Your tomatoes will be safe here” said the sailor, chuckling and pointing to the camera on the wall. Besides, we have thrown your friend in the prison.”

  *

  It was true. When the journalist came around from his bang on the head, he found himself in pitch darkness. It was so black that he blinked several times, unable to be certain whether his eyes were open or closed. He wondered if he had gone blind. He could hear the sound of the engines roaring, and the floor that he was sitting on was vibrating. He remembered that he was on the boat.

  He had been making his way back from reporting in Iran, and he had jumped the border into Turkmenistan. Just like in Iran, his orthodox widow’s dress had disguised his European features. He remembered noticing a stash of money under the driver’s seat as he had caught the yellow bus in Ashgabat.

  As a shrewd journalist, it hadn’t taken him long to piece together the story. A man driving a makeshift transport from East to West through Turkmenistan would probably have started out in Afghanistan. There must have been at least a million dollars under the driver’s seat, and that kind of money would only have come from theft or smuggling. If it was stolen, it was probably government money. A hard-working contractor wouldn’t have been careless enough to lose that sort of cash.

  So, the money wasn’t legit, and the man was on the run. At first, the journalist had thought about writing a story about him. He’d offer the guy anonymity, but he probably wouldn’t cooperate. Smugglers didn’t like publicity. So, he had considered turning him in for a bounty, but he didn’t know who was chasing him.

  The journalist heard a scrabbling noise in the corner of the dark room. He wasn’t alone in his prison. The ship’s rats were running along the skirting. He was still too dazed to stand up, so he waited to see how brave the rats were and how close they’d get.

  He had followed the driver after they parted ways at the hospital in Ashgabat. The man had tried to buy him off with five hundred dollars, but it had only made the journalist more curious. He had sat in a cafe near the hospital for a few minutes typing up his notes and staring absently out of the window.

  Eventually he focused on the view outside the window and saw a car hire shop opposite the café. Maybe it was a sign he had thought. It was certainly an opportunity, so he had hired an SUV for a few of the dollars the bus driver had given him and waited further down the street, keeping the coach visible in his rear-view mirror.

  He had tailed the bus for most of the afternoon until just before sunset, when it had driven off the road aft
er almost running down some kid. The journalist has driven on through the cloud of dust and parked up a mile further on.

  The truth was, he wanted the money for himself. He had never stolen a cent in his life, but at the moment he was in desperate trouble. Serious people were chasing him. Serious people wanted him dead. It would blow over eventually, but for now he needed to hide. With the millions under the driver’s seat, the journalist could hide away easily. He could even change his face if he needed to.

  So, he had come back after dark, long after the coast should have been clear. The bus was still there, parked up behind a house across the field. He had tried to break in, but someone had shot at him. Then, as he made his escape in his SUV, another car had chased him and eventually run him off the road. His car rolled several times, but landed back on its tires, ruined. It wouldn’t be the first deposit he’d lost with a hire company.

  He had walked on slowly through the night towards Turkmenbasy until eventually a lorry driver had taken pity on him and offered him a lift.

  He had given up on the money; he had no idea who had shot at him, or who had tried to run him off the road, but it had been enough to warn him off. Then this evening, as he hung around the port in Turkmenbasy he watched the last truck load onto the ferry, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He recognized the driver. It was the guy from the bus. The guy with the money.

  His hunch about the man heading for Europe had been right, and so he had thrown a few dollars at the gruff woman in the kiosk and got on board as the last foot passenger. Once the boat had set sail, he had had a look through the tomato truck to see if the smuggler still had the cash.

  Then, as he had poked his head through the tarpaulin, he had felt an almighty smash. He thought he had been shot as he fell back onto the deck. And now he was here, in the dark.