Garrett & Petrus- The Complete Series

by C Marten-Zerf

‘I know that it’s cold,’ observed Lindsey. ‘But why so many?’

  ‘It’s in case the mercs bring more of those thermal sights with them. Trust me, I have a plan, I haven’t simply developed a fetish for hand warmers.’

  Lindsey laughed. ‘Okay, I trust you.’ Then she held up the blue aerosol can. ‘Doggy-go-away,’ she read. ‘Dog repellent?’ She shook her head. ‘Actually, don’t bother explaining. I’m not even going to go there.’ She put the canister back in the bag.

  ‘Now let’s drive to Richmond Park,’ said Garrett. ‘We pick one of the entrances that stay open and we make ourselves visible. Before sundown we go inside and hope that we’ve been spotted. Lindsey, will the facial recognition thing still recognize us if we wear caps and sunglasses?’

  ‘Yep, it’s very sophisticated.’

  ‘Good, I’ll make another stop and we’ll pick up some baseball caps and some cheap shades, we’ll all wear them so it looks as if we’ve tried to disguise ourselves.’

  Petrus shook his head. ‘I’m not super happy about this,’ he said. ‘There is no ways that this can be construed as a sure fire plan, my friend. So, okay – they see that we’re at Richmond Park; they assume that we’ve gone inside in order to escape detection for a while. They come to the park...then what? How do they find us? How do we find them? In fact, why would they even bother?’

  ‘They’ll bother,’ said Garrett. ‘We offed six of them. They’ll come for us, however slim the chance. As to how they find us, simple – we scout the place out for a bit and then pick the

  most obvious place to hide. We stash Lindsey somewhere else...then we wait for them to track us down and we take care of them.’

  Petrus shrugged. ‘Okay then, I suppose that we can’t lose anything by trying.’

  ‘It’ll work,’ said Garrett with more conviction than he felt. ‘It’ll work.’

  And he pulled off into the traffic.

  Chapter 25

  Carlton Ambrose had emigrated from Jamaica in the early 1980’s. Within a week he had gotten a good job driving a London bus. Double Decker, red and gleaming. Bigger than the house that he had left back in the islands.

  But then his girlfriend had left him, and things had gone downhill from there. Social drinking had turned to something more serious and eventually he was both jobless and homeless. So the streets had become his home, and begging and low level grifting his means of income.

  And he had seen many things while on the streets of one of the world’s most vibrant capitals. He had seen IRA bombs, he had seen 7/7 and the London riots. Always in the background. A watcher from afar.

  But this was the first time that he had seen the dark Angel of Death himself.

  Carlton was bundled up in his sleeping bag, an old relic, bulked up using scraps of material he had collected over time. Wrapped in a sheet of black plastic and hidden under a thick bush to protect himself from the elements.

  He looked up and standing over him was a living shadow. Over six feet in height. Its eyes were lit by the moon and they were filled with both wisdom and madness. But the madness was controlled, like it had an intimate knowledge of lunacy, yet the actual insanity itself did not affect it.

  It was simply something that the shadow lived with. Something that it called on when needed.

  And Carlton knew that his time had come. It was his time to die. The only thing that puzzled him was the fact that the Angel of Death didn’t carry a scythe. Instead it carried a wicked short spear with a wide razor sharp blade, the edges of which gleamed in the moonlight like two slivers of a man’s soul.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Finally, after all these years, you have come for me.’

  The angel shook its head.

  ‘Then what are you doing here?’

  ‘I have come for others,’ it said. ‘You must stay here. Do not move until morning.’

  He nodded. ‘I will not move.’

  The angel nodded back and started to depart.

  Before it left Carlton asked. ‘Death. When will you come to take me?’

  The Angel smiled. Its mouth was covered but Carlton could see the smile in its eyes.

  ‘No one knows. Not even me. But you will not die before your time,’ it said.

  And then it disappeared, vanishing into the night.

  Carlton Ambrose, formerly of Kingston, Jamaica, and now of no fixed abode, pulled his sleeping bag over his head and lay still. Content that he had escaped Death for a while longer.

  Garrett looked up as Petrus arrived ‘Did I hear you talking to someone?’

  ‘Yep,’ acknowledged the Zulu. ‘Some old tramp. Thought that I was the Grim Reaper or something. Reckoned that I’d come to take him away.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Said that I’d come for someone else and that he’d better stay put tonight’.

  ‘Good one.’

  Lindsey shook her head. ‘You two are weird.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Garrett. ‘Talking about weird, can you go back to the old bum and give him a new command, you know, from the Angel of Death to his ears type of thing?’

  Petrus grinned, ‘Sure. What?’

  Garrett told him.

  Petrus ghosted back into the night.

  A minute later Carlton heard a whisper of sound and he peeked out of his sleeping bag. The angel was there again, staring at him.

  ‘Hey, no fair,’ the old man said. ‘You done say that you were gone and I just need to stay here and mind my own. You promised.’

  ‘I have a task for you.’

  ‘Oh. What?’

  ‘Soon some men will come. You will know them when you see them. There will be many. Probably between ten and twenty. They will have modern weapons and will be wearing black. You will approach them. Do so openly and they will not harm you. You will tell them that they must go back. Tell them that this is not their fight. There is no need for them to die. Tell them that the Angel of Death has spoken. Do you understand?’

  Carlton nodded. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good. If they persist and they want to know where I am,’ Petrus raised his spear and pointed. ‘Tell them – I wait for them there.’

  And once again Petrus disappeared into the dark.

  Carlton sat and waited. Eager to do his task well, so as not to offend the death angel.

  Petrus materialized out of the shadows and nodded to Garrett. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘What exactly was that all about?’

  ‘Three things,’ said Garrett. ‘Firstly, I hate killing mercenaries. They’re just doing their job. Secondly, a bit of psychological warfare never hurt. Finally, it should bring them to us.’

  Petrus sniffed. ‘I don’t mind killing mercs. They might only be doing their jobs but when their job is killing me I take offence. You do realize that they’ll know it’s a trap? We’ve lost our element of surprise.’

  ‘True, but we don’t need it,’ answered Garrett, in a disinterested fashion. ‘I think that we should hide Lindsey up here,’ he continued indicating the thick copse of sweet chestnut trees that surrounded them. Devoid of much of their foliage but still surprisingly leafy.

  Garrett laid out the tarpaulin and used his machete to slice it into two pieces. One length about three feet wide. Then he shinned up one of the largest trees, carrying the taup and the rope with him, moving easily from branch to branch until he was about twenty feet up. Then he took the smaller piece of tarpaulin and tied it between two parallel branches, like a tight hammock or a canvas floor. He then looped the remaining canvas over the top in an A-frame. He tied the roof down and started to pull various branches around the tarpaulin and tie them down as well, creating a camouflage.

  By the time he was finished, Lindsey couldn’t see the hide at all.

  Garrett called her up and she clambered up the broad boughed tree with ease.

  ‘This is it,’ he told her. ‘You sit in here and wait for us.’ He took a bottle of water and two chocolate bars out of his coat pocket. Then he stripped the wrapping off the
bars so that, if Lindsey wanted any, there would be no sound of paper crumpling. After that, he pulled another small package from his pocket and opened it. ‘Here, this is a space blanket. Well, actually it’s the military version. Doesn’t make noise like the civvie one. When I get down you wrap this around yourself. Right around, pull it over your head as well. It will ensure that they can’t pick you up with their thermo goggles. Now don’t come out until one of us tells you to. Okay?’

  Lindsey nodded, her face grave.

  ‘I’m serious,’ stressed Garrett. ‘I don’t want one of those stupid movie situations where you don’t listen and come to help us and fuck everything up, you hear me?’

  ‘I won’t move.’

  ‘Hey,’ called Petrus, ‘If she says that she won’t move then she won’t.’

  Garrett squeezed Lindsey’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her. ‘This is what we do. We’ll sort this and after that we will find your dad.’

  Then he climbed down, jumping the last ten feet.

  Lindsey watched them vanish like some sort of magic trick. One moment they were there and then they were gone, no sound, no movement.

  Simply gone.

  As soon as they were undercover, Garrett grabbed Petrus by the shoulder. ‘First thing,’ he said as he opened the box of hand warmers. ‘This is how they work.’ Garrett grasped the top right hand corner of the pack and pulled a tab. ‘They heat up immediately and stay hot for about eight hours. After you activate them you lay them out on the ground. Ten of them in a six foot line. When a guy sees it through thermo-vision goggles, it looks like a person lying down and hiding. We’ve got enough to do about twenty fakes. Let’s get to it. All around this area, it’ll confuse them as well as lead them to us.’

  Garrett held up a handful of six inch steel nails and the roll of fishing line. ‘Then of course, we’ve got these.’

  ‘Wondered about those,’ said Petrus. ‘What are they for?’

  ‘Simple spring trap,’ answered Garrett. ‘You cut down a sapling, inch or so diameter and three to four foot long. Knock a nail through the end so it sticks out at right angles. Then use another nail to attach the other end to a tree, parallel to the ground at thigh height. Tie a length of line to the end, pull it right back and then make a simple trip line so that when someone walks past they trigger the sapling and, whack, six inches of sharpened steel in the thigh. Hurts like buggery and really difficult to pull out by yourself. In my experience most people that run into these tend to scream like a little girl and lose interest in pretty much anything else.’

  Petrus grinned. ‘I like it. Now, give me some of those warmers and you set those nail traps.’

  The Zulu took a double handful of warmers and jogged off into the park, wrapping his bandana over his mouth before he went so as to ensure that no moisture clouds gave away his position.

  Chapter 26

  There were twelve Watchmen left out of the original twenty four. The Curator had called up all of them. However, one, a female Watchman of American origin, refused to take part. She claimed that the hit was way out of her area of expertise. Her refusal was totally acceptable and there would be no retribution. Watchmen were always at liberty to turn down a contract.

  So now Daisy Van Staden sat in a VW Transporter with a driver and eleven Watchmen.

  They carried either the Skorpion sub machine guns in a .32 caliber with a suppressor, or the HK MP5 silenced in 9mm.

  Daisy had opted for a Russian Val silenced assault rifle. A relatively obscure weapon that he had gotten used to in the late 1990’s. Accurate and silent and favored by the Russian Spetsnaz.

  Three of the team had drawn the latest thermal vision night goggles that picked up body heat as well as light, giving a clear black and white image as opposed to the usual older green scifi image.

  Daisy and the rest of the team had turned them down, they were bulky and awkward and tended to narrow one’s vision. Sometimes in night ops it was better not to enhance one sense so far that it nullified the others. Night hunting was a game that needed sound and smell, as well as mere vision.

  They all wore black cargo pants, black t-shirts and black three quarter length wool jackets. No one wore body armor.

  Happy had put Daisy in charge of the team. It was the first thing that he had said in the meeting and, if he had not, the huge Afrikaner would have probably turned the contract down. Because he alone knew what they were going up against.

  And then Happy had told them where the hit was to take place. Richmond Park. Over two thousand acres of bush. In the deep, frigid darkness of the English winter.

  And Kobus ‘Daisy’ Van Staden had smiled to himself and shaken his head ruefully.

  Happy had snapped at him. ‘We’ve got him, Van Staden,’ he had gloated. ‘Caught on CCTV camera. Tried to disguise himself by wearing a baseball cap and shades but we got him. It’ll be a complete surprise, he’s radically outnumbered. It will be a slaughter.’

  And Daisy had nodded his agreement. The Curator was correct – it would be a slaughter.

  But fighting was what Daisy did. It was all that he had ever known since he had been conscripted into the South African defense force at sixteen years of age. He had never done anything else.

  Ever.

  And he was too old to start now.

  The VW pulled over in front of the gates to the park.

  He took a deep breath and while everyone else climbed out he sat still for a while and said a silent prayer.

  The same one that he and so many other soldiers had prayed since he had first entered the bloody fields of battle -

  Do not forsake me, my Lord. For, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me and your rod and your staff will comfort me and protect me – amen.

  Then he climbed from the car, keeping his weapon concealed under his open jacket and his fear concealed in his broken soul.

  The Watchmen followed him into the park.

  Into the darkness.

  Into the shadow of death.

  And in the distance Kobus was sure that he heard a wolf like howl.

  And he knew - His Lord had forsaken him.

  With Daisy on point, the eleven Watchmen moved through the park, heading away from the gate and getting off the road as soon as they could. The place was empty. No one wanted to stroll around in the pitch black freezing darkness of an English winter night. Well, no sane person, at any rate.

  The big man stopped and beckoned all to him, dropping to one knee so that they had to huddle up. ‘Right, guys,’ he said. ‘We’ve got two thousand acres of ground that the target could be hiding in. We’ve got to narrow that down. We’ll start by checking out the best areas close to this gate. The targets have a similar background to most of us, so start by looking for the first place that you would choose. Right?’

  There was a general mumble of agreement.

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  As Daisy stood up and walked forward, a figure rose out of the bushes. The Afrikaner whipped his rifle up but as he did so it was obvious that this was not their target.

  ‘Whoa,’ he called out to his troops. ‘Hold.’

  Daisy looked closer and, by the feeble light of the moon he could see that the apparition was an old man, on his head a ragged watch cap, a sleeping bag wrapped around his shoulders. The whites of his eyes gleamed out in the darkness, two pools of ice-white in which floated two black pebbles.

  ‘Step aside, old man,’ said Daisy. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  ‘I have a message for you,’ the old man said, his voice harsh. Scratchy. Like it was seldom used.

  ‘No time, old man,’ continued Daisy. ‘Move.’

  ‘You will have time for this,’ said the old man. ‘For it is a message from the Dark Angel himself. The angel who carries the spear of death.’

  Daisy stopped in his tracks, as did the other Watchmen. All attention was turned to the tramp.

  ‘Go on,’ prompted D
aisy.

  ‘He has entrusted me to give you a message. He says, go home. To continue on your quest is death. He has no quarrel with you. This is not your fight and there is no shame in turning back. But if you continue, you will surely die.’

  ‘Who said this to you?’ Blurted out Cornelius, another South African Watchman.

  The old man stared at Cornelius. ‘I already told you, man. The Angel of Death. He appeared to me. He let me live.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ Asked Cornelius.

  ‘He was tall. He was black. He carried a spear. He had no eyes and when he finished speaking he disappeared into the night like that,’ the old man snapped his fingers and Cornelius jumped. ‘But before he left he said that, if you persisted then he would be waiting for you.’ He pointed in the direction that Petrus had shown him. ‘Over there.’ Then the old man retreated back into the bush, going to ground like a cornered fox.

  ‘Fuck this,’ said Cornelius.

  ‘What’s the problem, Cornelius?’Asked Daisy. ‘Scared or something?’

  Cornelius nodded. ‘I don’t like this. It’s a trap. He’ll be waiting for us.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, fuck this,’ repeated Cornelius. ‘These guys have taken out two of our kill teams without raising a sweat, and now they lure us here and tell us that they’re waiting for us. Also, what’s with this whole Angel of Death thing? I’m not happy.’

  ‘Well then go,’ said Daisy. ‘If you’re too scared, then leave,’ continued the big man, hoping to shame Cornelius into action.

  But Cornelius simply nodded and shouldered his weapon. ‘Ja, you’re right. I’m out of here.’ He turned to the rest of the team. ‘Trust me, guys. I’ve fought all over the world…these guys, they’re something else. It doesn’t matter how much we’re being paid. You can’t spend money when you’re six feet under.’ He walked back towards the gate, concealing his Skorpion under his coat as he did so.

  There was an awkward silence and then Beatrice, the only other female Watchman, turned and followed him without a word.

  Daisy shook his head. ‘Anyone else?’ he sneered in a voice that dripped with disgust.