by Chris Thrall
“No, it’s past midnight. We go now.”
Ahmed got up off his mattress.
Every night for the past week they had crept over to the outbuilding where Naseem’s older hands pressed the hash powder into blocks of Golden Monkey, using their knives to scrape away the dirt at the base of a row of boards blocking an old animal entrance in the stonework. The boys had replaced the rubble to conceal their efforts, ready for the day they absconded with as much of Naseem’s prize product as could be carried between them.
The plan was not yet watertight. They still needed to figure a way to get down off the mountain and cover the thirty miles to the port in Tangier. Mohamed was all for drugging Naseem and then stealing the keys to his truck. They could use the small black berries from the Belladonna, which grew in abundance on the slopes. In ancient times Moroccan women would drip the poison juice into their eyes, its dilative effect deemed to enhance beauty, hence the plant’s name. Nowadays, along with cheap pharmaceuticals, the growers used the berries to fortify a low-grade form of hashish known as Soap Bar in the United Kingdom – its biggest importer – for its shape and taste, the latter a byproduct of the garbage bags and other waste plastic used as a bulking agent. Ahmed was not so sure. Getting the right dose and figuring a way to deliver it would be hit and miss, and despite their hatred of the Grower, they did not want to kill him and have the police on their tail.
Outside there was a light covering of cloud, just the sound of the odd clucking hen and the breeze rustling through the rows of marijuana. Mohamed lay in the long grass surrounding the hut, keeping a lookout as Ahmed crept across the courtyard and secreted himself in a slight depression at the side of the outbuilding. The farmhouse was directly across from him, at this time in darkness as the Grower slept soundly in his bed. Ahmed pulled out his knife and began raking the loosened dirt back out of the hole at the base of the boards.
Mohamed stifled a yawn and allowed his chin to rest on the back of his hands.
Up on the hillside Canis lupus lifted his nose and sniffed the air, detecting the scent of chickens in Naseem’s henhouse, along with the unusual odor given off by the two-legged beings. Years of evolution saw Canis lupus, the “wolf dog,” freeze and slowly lower to his haunches, straining his powerful neck and pricking his ears.
Instinctively, the younger wolves fell into a flanking formation around the alpha male and adopted the same posture. As the wolf dog began to creep forward, his mottled-gray fur camouflaged against the grass, the pack moved as one, the way their ancestors had done for millenniums.
“Pbuck-pbaaark!”
Damn bird! Ahmed finished excavating the last of the rubble and turned his attention to the rusting nails holding the wood in place.
Canis lupus went to ground just feet from the courtyard, his pack acting as one in an arc around him. With superior night vision, he viewed the strange creature lying in the grass with cold indifference, sensing gentle snores, as loud to him as if broadcast to humans from the loudspeakers atop the village minaret. He was wary. He did not know why. He did not need to. The prone figure’s scent and regular breathing told the born killer that this specimen was healthy and might put up a fight. But the wolves were hungry, the females weak and their body fat dangerously depleted from suckling cubs back in the den. All were desperate for a kill to ensure the survival of the pack.
Canis lupus rose, the tendons in his legs as taut as bowstrings.
“Pbuck-pbaaark! Pbuck-pbaaark!”
The rest of the wolves followed suit. Spread out like the horns of a bull, they would come at Mohamed from all angles to prevent any chance of escape, clamping down on his limbs with bone-crunching strength and ragging him about to expose his jugular and suffocate the life from body.
“Pbuck-pbaaark! Pbuck-pbaaark! Pbuck-pbaaark!”
By now the chickens were making such a racket that Ahmed, managing to loosen two of the three boards required to squeeze inside the outbuilding, decided to call it a night. He eased the wood back into place and reinserted the nails, using the hilt of his knife to press them home, replacing the dirt and patting it down to hide his efforts. Just as he was about to scamper back to the hut, the farmhouse door creaked open, and lamplight doused the courtyard.
Ahmed dropped onto his stomach, the light just catching his backside as he flattened in the gulley. He turned his head slightly to see the silhouette of Al Mohzerer projected onto the building’s wall, along with the unmistakable outline of a shotgun. He watched in horror, metallic spit in his mouth, the shadow growing smaller and the sound of the boss’s footsteps louder as he crossed the courtyard.
This must surely be it!
Ahmed tried in vain to calm his breathing and a heart pounding in his chest.
Years of cunning told Canis lupus to quit now and to skulk off into the dark, but his hunger and sense of duty to the cubs took over. Like a coiled spring, he leapt from the grass, growling and baring his teeth, ready to bite down on Mohamed’s neck.
The silhouette of the shotgun swung around.
Ahmed stifled a scream.
Bang!
His body jolted as the pellets hit home, Canis lupus yelping in pain and fleeing back up the mountain with the pack.
- 33 -
Hans, Jessica and Penny entered a large flagstoned plaza in the center of Lisbon. Surrounded by open-air bars and eateries, it was a popular venue for locals and tourists, the verdancy of the Portuguese oaks dotted about melding with the pleasant night air to create an atmosphere of tranquillity. All of the restaurants offered a similar cuisine, so they opted for Bar Mar, sitting down at a picnic-style bench to order food.
“So, shipmate.” Hans began debriefing the first officer. “What did you write in the log?”
“That” – Jessica’s brow furrowed – “the winds are light and aerial.”
“Don’t you mean light and variable?” Hans squeezed Penny’s leg.
“Yes!” Jessica gave a resolute nod and shake of her head.
They heard a commotion in the distance, looking up to see a large group of young men and women walking toward them. In high spirits, they were having a whale of a time and had drunk more than their fair share of alcohol.
“Os inglêses,” muttered the waitress taking their orders, hostility radiating from her gypsy brown eyes.
“São marinheiros?” Penny queried.
“São.” The woman nodded.
“British Royal Navy,” said Penny.
“I kinda figured,” said Hans. “Guess they’re not too popular around here.”
“The Portuguese are hospitable people, but there’s a line you shouldn’t cross.”
As Penny spoke, a noticeable tenseness replaced the easygoing comportment of the bar staff.
More groups of service personnel arrived, congregating at the watering holes lining the far side of the plaza, all tanked on happy juice and looking to imbibe more. Hans, Jessica and Penny continued their conversation, but the noise grew louder, the scene more animated, as sailors peeled away from the counters balancing trays loaded with drink.
“Mind if we sit here, mate?” inquired a piggy-faced matelot wearing Yoko Ono wraparounds.
“Be my guest,” Hans replied, clocking the irony of the slogan “Life’s Too Short to Dance with Fat Chicks!” emblazoned on the young man’s T-shirt.
“Wanna get away from the riffraff! Know what I’m saying?” He chuckled.
“What’s a riffraff?” Jessica asked.
“That lot over there, sweetheart.” He gave a clumsy wink and cocked his head at his shipmates. “Bleedin’ lunatics the lot of ’em! I’m Bonny, short for Bonington. You know, like the mountain climber.”
“Bonny’s a girl’s name!” Jessica put him in his place.
“Oh . . .” It dawned on Bonny that his well-rehearsed military patter wasn’t having the desired effect on this seven-year-old American. “Yeah, but I’m part of the woodwork on HMS Invincible,” he attempted to recover.
“Really?” Han
s looked at him askew. “I thought they built them out of steel nowadays.”
Bonny was baffled for a moment, unused to such interrogation, then broke into a smile. “That’s a joke, right? ’Cause ships ain’t made of wood anymore!”
“Who’s your friend?” Penny asked.
“This is Gibbo.” He slapped his buddy on the back. “But he don’t say much, do you, shippers?”
Gibbo, a hatchet-faced lad with eyes like a cartoon frog, stared at the label on his beer bottle.
“You’ve done a bit of time yourself, right?” Bonny gave Hans a mock-boisterous punch on the arm. “Come on, what were ya? Army, Marines . . . National bloomin’ Guard!”
“Navy,” Hans replied. “Like yourself.”
“Ahh!” Bonny viewed Hans with suspicion. “You strike me as the special forces type – you know, dagger in the teeth, take no prisoners, that sort of thing.”
“Radar operator,” said Hans, humoring the young lad. “USS Nimitz.”
“Aircraft carrier – like us! Bet you seen a bit of the world – least more than bleedin’ Portugal.”
“I’ve seen some. So has Penny. She’s a—”
Gibbo stood up, mumbled something about finding a toilet and wandered toward the bar.
“Is he okay?” Penny asked. “He looks a little . . . distracted.”
“Gibbo’s all right.” Bonny checked his friend was out of sight before continuing. “He’s a devil worshipper, you know.”
“Someone has to be,” said Hans.
“I’m serious.” Bonny lowered his voice, as if fearing reprisal from the Dark Side. “He don’t say much about it, but one of the lads on our ship lives in the same town as him – Penzance, down the arse end of Cornwall.”
“Pirates!” Jessica piped up.
“Yeah.” Bonny looked surprised. “How do you know that?”
“Because we saw some,” she replied firmly. “They sail on the sea, and if they catch a ship with orphans on board, then they let it go.”
As Hans and Penny smiled at Jessica’s recollection of the opera they had watched in Plymouth, Bonny continued to look bemused.
The waitress arrived with their drinks. Super Bock, a strong pale lager brewed locally, and a Coca-Cola for Jessica. Penny accepted a glass, but Hans always sipped from the bottle.
“Any chance of another beer, me darlin’?” Bonny attempted to lay on the charm.
“Momento.” Her lack of eye contact signaled he’d failed.
Oblivious to the put-down, Bonny gulped his dregs and continued. “Yeah, so this Cornish lad tells us how Gibbo got in a fight in the pub – local heroes trying to act tough and picking on a little sailor. Gibbo was having none of it. Comes out with all this kung fu stuff and puts four of ’em in hospital.”
“Really?” said Penny. “He’s smaller than I am.”
“Yeah, he don’t look much.”
“You don’t need to when the devil’s on your side.” Hans grinned.
“But get this!” Bonny leant forward, building the suspense. “The coppers turn up and arrest Gibbo and chuck him in the back of a police van. So Gibbo sums up this . . . esotelic power—”
“Esoteric?” Penny fought back a smile as she unfolded her napkin.
“Yeah, that’s it. Breaks the handcuffs apart, kicks the door open and dives right out.”
“Of a police car?” Jessica stared at Bonny, eyebrows raised.
“At full speed! The Penzance Gazette reported he ran off into the night howling like a werewolf.”
“Are you serious . . . about the handcuffs?” asked Hans.
“Dead serious. When the coppers caught up with him the next day, he was still wearin’ ’em – except they weren’t handcuffs anymore. More like bangles.”
As they all laughed aloud, Hans wondered if Bonny meant to be hilarious or whether it was a byproduct of his naivety.
Gibbo returned, and their merriment ceased. He looked agitated.
“You all right, Able Seaman Gibson?” Bonny threw a drunken arm around his mate.
“Just a hole in the ground,” Gibbo muttered, staring into space, shaking his head.
One of life’s characters, Hans mused, noting Gibbo wore well-pressed chinos, schoolteacher shoes and a yellow check shirt like grandpa has in his closet. Folks who go through life oblivious or unconcerned at others’ pretentiousness always humbled Hans. He suddenly felt uncomfortable in his Ralph Lauren shirt and Armani jeans.
The waitress arrived with their food. “Açorda de marisco.” She placed steaming bowls in front of them, along with a basket of chunky brown bread.
“Beer?” Bonny flashed a moronic smile, holding up his empty bottle and pointing a finger at it in case she didn’t understand what “beer” meant.
She scowled and brushed him off once more.
“Don’t know how you can eat that foreign muck.” Bonny eyed their food with disdain.
“Shellfish and coriander stew,” said Penny. “Classic dish. You should try some.”
“Nah, I’ll stick with Macky D’s, babe.” He attempted to wink at Penny, who had a good ten years on him, but couldn’t shut one eye at a time and looked as though he had an affliction.
“Go! Go! Go! Go!”
The ship’s company chanted as a chap with high-and-tight hair inched his way up a flagpole in the center of the square.
“That’s gotta be a Royal Marine.” Hans chuckled, noting desert boots on the guy’s feet and a bulldog tattoo on his bicep.
“That’s Pin Head – mad dude!” A look of pride washed over Bonny’s chubby features. “Them marines, they’re all bloomin’ mad!”
Pin Head neared the top of the forty-foot mast, his shipmates egging him on with wolf whistles and screams of encouragement. Clinging to the pole’s truck with one hand, he plucked a bottle of beer from his waistband and began sipping nonchalantly while surveying the scene all around.
As the crowd clapped and cheered, one of the ship’s stokers, “Knocker” White – too intoxicated to calculate his money in sterling, let alone euros – accused a bartender in Castelo de Cartas of shortchanging him, something easily resolved had he not grabbed the Portuguese’s apron with his banana fingers. With Latino pride at stake and in a well-rehearsed routine, the barmen pulled batons, chains and knuckledusters out of nowhere, leaping over the counter and raining them down on the dumb Yorkshireman without mercy. His messmates came to his aid, only to receive the same serving of pent-up frustration.
Within seconds violence erupted at the far side of the square. Chairs crashed into optics and glasses and punches flew, the barmen rallying and fighting back as sailors and marines attempted to pummel them to the ground. Chaos ruled the moment and gave no indication of stopping.
The distant sound of sirens grew louder, and before long a stream of police vehicles and ambulances entered the plaza, deafening the drinkers and diners and bathing the area in flashing blue light. The cops also adopted a no-nonsense approach to dealing with disorderly foreigners, particularly the Royal Navy, who didn’t do themselves any favors in these parts.
Like a Mexican wave, calm rippled through the seething mass, the sailors realizing the stakes had upped and liberty and careers were on the line. This did nothing to curb the enthusiasm of the law. Chests thrust out and chins high, they leapt into action, dragging anyone with a pasty complexion from the fold and throwing them into the back of a police van.
“No!”
Bonny sat openmouthed, as if personally involved with each person arrested.
“That’s Brown . . . and Smudge . . . Bailey and Marchy . . . and . . . oh, that’s the padre!”
Every time the officers slammed the van’s doors, the faces of his shipmates pressed against the meshed rear window.
“Padre?” asked Hans.
“Father Michael,” Bonny replied, fixated on the scene. “Ship’s padre. This is the second time.”
“Second time?”
“Yeah, he got arrested in GUZ last week trying to spli
t up a fight on Union Street. The rozzers threw him in the Paddy wagon, and he turns round to ’em and says, ‘But I’m a Roman Catholic priest!’ and the sergeant says, ‘I’m the bleedin’ pope, so pull the other one.’”
Gibbo, who had a pathological hatred of police and everything they stood for, got up and began walking toward the commotion, the same blank look on his face that was his default.
“Oh, oh, oh! ’Ere he goes, watch!”
Bonny seemed as excited as a Steven Seagal fan when their hero’s about to kick ass in Chinatown.
In hubris and ignorance of British Forces’ mentality, the cops had left the keys in the wagon’s ignition and the engine running. Gibbo hopped into the driver’s seat, shoved the gear stick forward and, wheels spinning like The Dukes of Hazzard, sped out of the square, taking his incarcerated shipmates with him.
The police stopped beating people up, in freeze-frame as they attempted to make sense of what just happened. The ship’s company roared like Spartans on the battlefield, seizing the opportunity to get one over on the locals. Chaos reignited, and glasses and fists flew. More vans arrived on the scene, and black-clad riot squad officers began pumping gas pellets into the crowd.
“Time to leave.”
Hans grabbed Jessica around the waist, bid Bonny a hasty good-bye and ducked off down a side street with Penny. Just as Penny breathed a sigh of relief, a patrol car screeched to a halt in their path and two officers sprung from the vehicle, truncheons raised and adrenaline-fueled confusion in their eyes.
“Filho da puta!” the first one proffered, so hyped up he failed to register they were tourists with a child in tow.
Hans set Jessica down. The police officer swung his baton. Hans blocked it with his forearm and chopped a hand into the man’s throat. The cop reeled over backwards, landing in a gagging heap on the sidewalk. A kick to the second officer’s groin hit the mark, followed by a crunching head butt and a fist to the solar plexus.
“Amateurs,” Hans muttered, and went to grab his girls.
Jessica broke away and ran over to the police officer who lay on his back clutching a broken nose and kicked him in the shin.
