by Mark Aitken
‘Wanted to talk,’ said Gallen.
‘Coulda called, Gerry,’ said Ern, relaxed but with presence.
‘He was starting a gig with me this week. He cancelled, I wanted to talk.’
‘What’s the gig?’
‘Corporate bodyguard,’ said Gallen. ‘He’s here, working with you, right?’
‘Nope.’
Gallen didn’t buy it. ‘That’s his office.’
‘You see him, Gerry?’
Gallen thought about it, going over exactly what Bren had said on the phone. ‘Thought you’d talked him into a career in cars, didn’t want him hanging round with his old Marines buddies. I wanted him to say that to my face, not make excuses.’
‘I hate war and I don’t want him in no army,’ said Ern. ‘But if I knowed it was you, I’da been fine. You taught Brenny good.’
‘I did?’ said Gallen.
‘You told ‘im that what happened yesterday happened. Now it’s time to make tomorrow happen.’
‘I said that?’
‘What Bren said. Quotes it like the Bible, and I got no fight with that. When the war is over, man needs a creed.’
‘Is he okay?’ said Gallen.
‘Been a bit touchy,’ said Ern. ‘And now he hardly here. Can’t have it like that. Can’t be the boss’s son just doing what he wants, right?’
‘Can you tell him Gerry Gallen wants to talk?’ Gallen pulled a clasp of his Oasis business cards from his windbreaker and handed one to Ern.
‘I’ll tell ‘im,’ said Ern, standing and shaking his hand. ‘And how’re you, Gerry? You okay?’
Gallen paused too long.
‘Like that, huh?’ Ern smiled as they walked to the office door. ‘Same as it ever was.’
Turning, Gallen was thinking about Durville again: his next move, back to the airport, his arrival in LA, the route to his house in Malibu.
‘You ever want to talk,’ said Ern, ‘you know where to find me.’
‘Thanks, Mr Dale.’
‘Besides, might find you a nice new Chev. What you driving?’
Gallen smiled. ‘F-350.’
‘I can change that, son,’ said Ern Dale with a wink. ‘I can surely change that.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Gallen.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 14
Gallen keyed the mic as he looked at the Pacific sunset from the upstairs balcony of Durville’s Malibu mansion. It was eight o’clock and he wanted Winter and Ford in the house for the night shift so he could make some calls.
Breathing the ocean air, Gallen worried about Bren Dale and thought back to a time before Afghanistan, to the early years of the War on Terror, when Gallen’s unit was posted in Zamboanga City and the enemy was the Moro separatist Abu Sayyaf Group. In those days, Gallen was a reserved but ambitious first lieutenant, looking for his second bar; Bren Dale was a sergeant with the lack of ambition that comes from having a wealthy father. What Dale did have was a hankering to see combat.
Mindanao was a very different experience to Afghanistan or Iraq. It was a war in the islands of the Sulu chain, off the southern end of the Philippines. It was about jungle combat in Moro strongholds like Basilan and Jolo, in rainforest environments which had been closed to the world by the pirate clans for centuries. One of the big problems in Mindanao was the closeness of the collaboration between US special forces and the Philippines military, a coalition formed largely at a cocktail and conference level, but not entirely successful on the ground. Gallen and other Recon Marines had never liked the fact that the Joint Special Operations Task Force between the US and Philippines was housed inside the Navarro base in Zamboanga City. It was a Filipino facility.
After Jolo—a bitterly fought battle lasting three weeks in which a contingent of US Army Green Berets were hammered—the word had passed around Gallen’s outfit that some of the intel briefings at Navarro had been leaked to the ASG insurgents in the Sulu islands. Gallen had heard the tittle-tattle on the docks in Zam, before they’d set off for Basilan Island and he’d tried to stop the talk.
Bren Dale had collared Gallen during the submarine insertion to Basilan and tried to add up the coincidences that had seen the Green Berets ambushed on Jolo, almost as if the ASG knew the Americans were arriving.
When Gallen had mentioned it to his boss—Captain James Duncan—Duncan had retold it so it sounded as though Gallen wasn’t doing his job. Gallen had backed off and led his team on the flanking run into the village on Basilan. His route called for a northern support-fire approach, through a secondary forest footpad, while Joyce’s unit led the primary assault from the south-east.
On their flanking run, Bren Dale had begged him to break with orders and take a western approach.
Sitting in the dark, in that ominous jungle, where even the kids knew how to wire claymore mines to trees and run trip wires attached to frag grenades, Gallen had listened to Bren Dale’s plea: ‘Tell me you weren’t briefed on this northern approach back at Navarro?’
‘That’s for me to know, Marine,’ said Gallen, putting the noncommissioned officer in his place.
‘I don’t like that northern approach, Lieutenant,’ Dale had told him, a pain in the ass when he thought he was right about something.
‘You out-thinking the intel boys, are you, Sergeant? That’s a lot of thinking.’
‘No, sir,’ said Dale. ‘Just that here we are on the ground, being steered towards a specific footpad by a bunch of intel dudes who right now are watching the Bears play the Packers.’
Gallen had kept his voice low, lest the men hear it. ‘So?’
‘That sort of detail is something maybe you and Duncan should’ve cooked up once we were here. Why’s some Filipino dude making that call on us?’
They’d looked into each other’s whites, breath shallow, tropical sweat running down their faces in the night.
‘You think the Filipinos are leaking? You really think that?’
Dale had shrugged. ‘Just saying, I don’t like coincidences, especially coincidences that end in ambushes.’
Finally Gallen had let Dale run. ‘So what you got, Sergeant?’
Bren Dale had crouched and asked for Gallen’s map, a no-no in the conventional forces but not disallowed in special forces.
‘This area in here.’ Dale pointed to a zone west of the village. ‘They tell you what that is?’
‘It’s their garbage pile and shit dump,’ said Gallen. ‘It’s a gully, and when the monsoon comes it turns into a river and it’s washed down to the ocean.’
‘Any reason we can’t stealth up to the village through that gully, come in from the west?’
‘Only that the Blue Team is getting our support from the north,’ said Gallen.
‘Watts and Zibic just got back from a recon,’ said Dale. ‘Say there’s boogies all along that northern footpad.’
Gallen had made a decision that night about what kind of leader he was. They’d stealthed through the rat-infested gully where months of night bins and tons of rotting garbage had brought vermin from miles around. They’d sat in the stinking darkness, in the choking humidity, waiting for the 3.15 am attack to come from Duncan’s men. When the first shots sounded, they watched from their hide as a cadre of black-clad terrorists rose out of the dirt and made straight for the northern footpad where Gallen’s team was supposed to be hiding, opening fire as they moved. Gallen’s team was able to take out that cadre with surprise flanking fire before moving to get Duncan’s team out of trouble.
It had taken the Marines Force Recon teams almost three days to get off Basilan Island as the JSOTF had thrown as many reinforcements as they could onto the terrorist stronghold. An intel debriefer had later referred to the Basilan ambush and botched exfil as ‘Dunkirk without the dignity’.
It was a turning point in Gallen’s life: he’d learned that simply holding a higher rank didn’t make you a better Marine and that the mistakes of the political classes were always paid for by the men in the field.
<
br /> Gallen took a lingering glance at the Pacific sunset and moved away from Durville’s balcony into the security room where Donny McCann was reviewing a bank of security cameras. Winter and Ford joined them.
‘He’s downstairs, in his office,’ said Gallen. ‘He’s with company, and he’s drinking.’
Ford laughed. ‘Okay.’
‘It’s not okay if he wants to go nightclubbing with these ladies, maybe go for a midnight skinny dip,’ said McCann.
‘If he leaves the perimeter or he wants more company, let me know,’ said Gallen, handing over the master keys to Winter. ‘When those whores are picked up, you escort the cab into and out of the compound, okay?’
‘Got it, boss,’ said Winter.
Lying in his bed in the staff quarters, Gallen went through his step-list of all the things that needed doing and whether he’d done them. It had been his ritual in the Marines and it was a habit he couldn’t shake.
Before he drifted off he thought back to Bren Dale, Basilan Island and Captain Duncan. Duncan was wounded in that action, three of his men were killed. He left the Marines shortly after, his sponsors no longer interested in mentoring his upward ride. Dale and the men had backed Gallen’s actions, giving eyewitness accounts of the boogies on the footpad; Gallen had claimed radio silence as reason for his unilateral action, and in the Marines it was hard to be criticised by a review board if what you did had ensured the welfare of your men. Which Gallen’s actions had. The total injury count in his report had been a single shot to Zibic’s calf muscle, which had left him able to continue unaided.
Chuckling softly, Gallen remembered how his slightly unprofessional conduct had been rewarded: two weeks after the Basilan snafu he’d earned his second silver bar. Thanks to Bren Dale’s rich-boy lack of respect for fools, Gerry Gallen of Clearmont, Wyoming had made captain in the US Marines.
As he fell asleep, he realised that as much as Bren Dale could annoy him, he owed the man. Owed him a career.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 15
The Escalades stopped on the tarmac in front of the Oasis corporate jet, a white Challenger 850 with two large engines mounted on the fuselage below the tail section.
Gallen was the first out, squinting slightly in the brightness of the dawn light poking over the mountains behind Burbank Airport. He keyed the radio. ‘Kenny, I want you and Ford searching that luggage hold and supervising every piece loaded into it, okay?’
Winter growled his assent. Gallen could see that the Canadian had already emerged from the rear Escalade and was marching down beside Durville’s town car in the centre of the convoy.
Donny McCann joined Winter on the tarmac and then Harry Durville emerged too, his jeans and boots making him look like a paunchy rodeo rider, but one who couldn’t stay off the Black-Berry.
Ushering Durville up the stairs into the air-conditioned cabin, Gallen did a quick search of the Challenger and its toilet/shower area, making sure no one was in the plane. As he came back to the front cabin door, Durville was pouring his first whisky of the morning and, facing the oil man, Florita had the satellite phone cradled on her shoulder.
Ducking into the cockpit, Gallen greeted Captain Barry Martin, whom he’d met on the run down from Denver. He didn’t know the co-pilot. Asking for the man’s ID, Gallen tried to make chit-chat but it was obvious he wasn’t joking.
‘Okay, Jeff,’ he said, handing back the FAA licence and the Oasis Energy employee pass.
The captain gave Gallen a wink as he left. They’d talked about contingencies when they’d met in Denver and Martin had agreed that if he ever had reservations about anything, he’d let Gallen know about it.
On the tarmac, Winter and Ford checked the Durville luggage, looking for listening devices more than bombs. Gallen could see Winter using the wand he’d asked Chase Lang to throw into the pile at the PX. It wasn’t a metal detector of the kind found in airport security; instead, it picked up live circuitry, anything that could transmit a signal.
‘How we doing?’ said Gallen, standing beside Winter as the wand beeped.
‘Something in Senorita’s bag,’ said Winter, unzipping the large Targus business case. Inside was a stack of spare legal pads, cell batteries, pens and what looked like an entire back-up system for the laptop she carried. Pulling out a large Ziploc bag, Winter touched it with the wand and confirmed the signal: inside were two spare BlackBerry handsets with batteries and chargers. The woman was thorough.
Resealing the Ziploc, Winter shrugged. ‘Were looking okay.’
‘Let’s get our gear loaded,’ said Gallen, scoping the tarmac, looking for aimless men in coveralls, people looking too interested in a magazine, people talking into a phone but looking at the Challenger.
Gallen took the air stairs two at a time and took a seat at the front of the cabin. He began sorting his notes. The Kugaaruk airport was a tiny strip, closed most of the year due to its location inside the Arctic Circle. A local cab company had contracted to pick up the Oasis team and deliver them to an address where Harry Durville was meeting a local council.
Flipping through the notes provided by Florita, Gallen saw a reference to a group named as the Transarctic Tribal Council, the TTC. Durville was talking with seven of them at a one o’clock meeting.
Florita fetched coffee at the small drinks station and Gallen moved after her.
‘Florita, we got any names of these guys?’ he asked, holding up the notes.
‘Coffee?’ said Florita.
‘Thanks,’ said Gallen. ‘I got mention of a “Reggie” but that’s it. Who are these TTC people?’
‘Eskimos,’ said Florita, pouring. ‘Reggie’s his contact. I don’t have last names. I can ask?’
‘Thanks,’ said Gallen as the earpiece crackled; Winter asking him to look at something.
On the tarmac, Ford, McCann and Winter stood at the loading door for the hold.
‘What’s up?’ Gallen pushed forward to where Winter ran the beeping wand over an opened kit bag.
‘Some kind of tracking device,’ said McCann, inspecting the remote video set from the PX. ‘Lookit.’ He held out a tiny stainless-steel capsule on the tip of his index finger.
‘Got more, boss,’ said Winter, getting a beep from an assault rifle. ‘Looks like someone wants to track us.’
‘Or hone us,’ said the Aussie, which made all eyes turn to him. ‘Just saying, fellers. I mean, we’ve slapped hundreds of those things on building and ships so the fly boys know where to fire their missiles.’
Looking at his G-Shock, Gallen made a decision. ‘Kenny, you and the boys find them, but don’t destroy them, okay? ‘
‘Can do, boss.’
Slipping back into his seat in the cabin, Gallen made a call. ‘Aaron,’ he said, cheerful, as the other end picked up.
‘Gerry. It’s early.’
‘Just a question, Aaron. When did you decide to put collars on us?’
‘Sorry?’ said the American.
‘Tracking transmitters, Aaron. They’re all through the new stuff from the PX.’
‘They’re not tracking transmitters, Gerry,’ said Aaron with a sigh. ‘They’re RFDs.’
‘What?’
‘They’re small electronic tags like the ones that stop you stealing from a shop, or the ones that mean you can’t pass off your company’s computer as your own and try to sell it.’
‘You think we’re gonna sell this stuff?’
‘It’s standard procedure, puts an ownership stamp on Oasis equipment,’ said Aaron. ‘It’s not even my policy, buddy. That would be the accountants.’
‘Maybe,’ said Gallen. ‘But this kind of technology can be used for other things, and I don’t like finding it just before I get on a flight.’
‘Where you off to?’ said Aaron.
‘Hawaii. Where are you?’
‘In transit,’ said Aaron. ‘To somewhere else.’
~ * ~
The plane dipped slightly and Captain Martin’s voice told the c
abin that they would be landing at Edmonton International for a quick refuelling. Opposite Gallen, Donny McCann inserted a bookmark and closed his novel.
‘That’s longer than I expected,’ he said, stretching.
Gallen smiled. ‘We’re not even halfway there.’
‘How far is this place?’
‘Twenty-six hundred miles,’ said Gallen. ‘It’s almost longer than crossing the Atlantic.’
Mike Ford alighted from the seat across the aisle and went forward to use the employees’ toilet.
