The Woman in Silk
Page 1
R. J. Gadney was born in Cross Hills, Yorkshire. He lives in London.
THE WOMAN IN SILK
R. J. GADNEY
New York • London
© 2011 by R.J. Gadney
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.
Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use or anthology should send inquiries to Permissions c/o Quercus Publishing Inc., 31 West 57th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10019, or to permissions@quercus.com.
ISBN 978-1-62365-221-0
Distributed in the United States and Canada by Random House Publisher Services
c/o Random House, 1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.quercus.com
For Fay and my grandchildren Nell, Jago, Toby and Elliot (when they are older) with love.
CONTENTS
ONE
1
2
3
4
TWO
5
6
7
8
9
THREE
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
FOUR
17
18
19
FIVE
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
SIX
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
SEVEN
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
EIGHT
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
NINE
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
TEN
77
78
ELEVEN
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
TWELVE
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
THIRTEEN
96
FOURTEEN
97
98
99
100
When I breathe in
there is a sound in my body
sadder than the winter
wind.
ISHIKAWA TAKUBOKU
ONE
I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger,
except in its absolute effect—in terror.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
1
Someone once said: “One never knows what goes on in a brave man’s head.”
Hal Stirling often wondered when he’d heard the remark. Not for a minute, of course, thinking it might apply to him.
When he saw the lizard on the patch of desert shale pretending to be dead, he blinked.
The lizard flinched.
Then it sprang into a tangle of bamboo roots narrowly avoiding the dusty package. Wise move, trapelus agilis.
Covered with hardened insulating foam, the package was roughly the size of two ammunition boxes, large enough to contain two small steel cylinders of plastic explosive. He reckoned it must have been there for six months or more.
Also present among the visible and invisible usual suspects was another silent creature, member of a different tribe, Macrovipera lebetina, with a triangular head and blunt snout, a Levantine viper. Levantine vipers rarely go into action in daytime. Hazard Warning. They’re unpredictable.
Two more lovers of the desert were showing interest in the stranger. Motionless fellow-traveling scorpions from the Buthidae tribe. Long sleek butts ending in bulbous stingers. Eight legs excluding pincers. Smaller the scorps, more powerful the sting. These were small, very small and unpredictable.
Brave desert stranger kept his focus on his grip, hand-hold steady. He was staring at his fingers before he moved them, watching for any involuntary twitch, making certain no nerve was signaling fear, visualizing how he’d take the packaged bomb apart, what might need touching, where to move things, how to achieve the disconnection, exactly where he’d make the cut of the wire to disable it.
He was on the verge of Success + E = Euphoria or being taken by the big N: as in nada nil zero zippo Nothin’ = N = big 0e0. Nothing. And, to state the obvious, he wouldn’t know anything about N. His eyes were inches from the thing … if it goes up … it’s N. Oblivion.
Flat on his stomach, mindful of the sultry viper, he looked for a battery and a wire and the best place to break the circuit to the detonators. He could withdraw the detonators, unravel the wires, and disable the electronics. Be Warned: cutting into the hardened foam causes dangerous vibration.
Or he could retreat to a safe distance, relax and simply blow the whole thing up by remote control. But every bomb-maker leaves a signature and this was a bomb to collect intact and hand in to the forensic experts.
So he disabled the electrical circuit. Then he very slowly opened a plastic bag and stared at the viper. No doubt about it—definitely a Levantine viper.
He spent time calming himself. This was his Calmness Ritual: lie still. Think blue skies. Breathe sweet fresh air. Think ocean beach and ocean waves. Remind Myself I’m Nothing But A Nomad. He’d begun to resemble a nomadic kuchi: a Pashtun from east and south-west Afghanistan whose double-headed drums and lutes have been silenced by the foreigners. Like the kuchi, he too was constantly on the move through sand and dust, the shale and stones: like the lizard, the scorps and the viper, always in transit.
His scalp itched. His body felt thinner than it had ever been, his muscles harder. Now a size too large, his combat 95 multi-terrain-pattern camouflage uniform was stained and malodorous. His veined and bloodshot eyes ached.
He looked at his broken fingernails, at his raw knuckles. He hawked up phlegm, twisted his lips, and spat the glob to get rid of the flies exploring the desert scum that pitted his burned unshaven jaw. He looked at the beautiful viper. The beautiful viper looked at him. You’re half-asleep, beautiful. Goodnight, viper.
He reached out for it with his pliers and nipped its wrinkly throat.
The viper hissed. Its teeth sank into the ball of his right thumb. It used its jaws to pump venom into him. He used the pliers to crush its snout—
Plunged his knife straight into its arching head.
A moment later a radio signal told him there were more IEDs up the riverbed, about ninety meters distant.
He thought of reporting to his team that the viper had got him. Imagine the sniggers. “Now what’s he gone and bloody done … sat on a bloody snake—ha-ha-bloody-ha!”
He decided to collect the dead viper once he’d dealt with the other IEDs. He might. Might not.
He began to crawl further up the riverbed. The dry mud stank of fly-ridden shit. It stank because the locals shit in the open. The pain in his hand increased. Cold sweat stung his eyes, dung flies flicked against his exposed skin. He couldn’t stop his hands shaking.
The sun was dazzling him. The heat was taunting him. Every shape he saw harbored danger. A blackened thorn became another slithering viper; a knot of dried grass, a scorp, then turned into a wire; a wire connected to another IED.
It was becoming difficult to distinguish what was real from what was imaginary.
He could ignore the real or phony snake. He could cut the telltale wire. If it is a wire. Might be a come-on. Could be others buried beneath connected to yet another IED. Wires that had most probably degraded rendering the bombs unstable. Moving in the lightest breeze, the wires might produce an electrical short and trigger an explosion.
He found made-up batteries, more wires; blasting caps inserted into stable explosive charges, perhaps a mixture of fertilizer mixed with aluminum-based paint or military explosive from unexploded ordnance or conventional land mines and pressure plates. They acted as switches. When a foot or a hand or vehicle pressed them down, the circuits closed, the battery current activated the blasting caps, ignited them and the bomb exploded.
Next bombs he found were encased in large plastic containers; one an ice cooler; another a cooking-oil container.
They appeared to be attached to pressure pads on either side of the riverbed. Clever that. The patrol wouldn’t go up the shallow V of the riverbed. It would keep to the sides.
The threat of the unexpected forced him to lie still and breathe in slowly. Dust he inhaled made him wheeze like he’d wheezed as a child when asthma worked its black magic. A whistling sounded in his throat; then deeper in his chest.
Struggling to control his shaking fingers, he probed the shale; fissile rocks of fine-grain clay sediment and shit. The combination of probing, edging forward along the riverbed, telling himself to take control of the situation: dust, extreme nervous tension: all of this made him retch.
He paused to look at his fingers. Fingers that had felt gently around the countless IEDs he’d disabled. Now, even in the colossal heat, his fingertips felt cold. He couldn’t keep them still.
Maybe it was fear that induced the adrenalin rush. He craved fear like the gambler or the mountaineer climbing some Alpine rock face without a safety harness.
His radio came to life again and he heard his No. 2 asking about progress.
“Taking stock.”
“Say again.”
He tasted acidic saliva scum on his cracked lips. The taste of fear.
“Taking stock.”
Then he saw the flash. Heard the thunder. Felt the shockwave. The desert erupted.
He saw the carnage through binoculars and went back to help.
2
Vehicle parts lay across the ground with equipment in flames, severed limbs and at least one detached head. Soldiers caught in the storm of shrapnel staggered about in the gray and yellow smoke. One man was choking on his vomit. Arms and hands were drenched in blood. Men were preparing to self-inject morphine. The screaming was terrible. He’d heard it more times than he cared to remember.
Among the dead and dying was a soldier who’d lost a hand and most of his leg. Someone was trying to apply a tourniquet but the soldier was protesting. The pressure would cause his leg to die.
Blood poured from the Patrol Commander’s shattered arm. The lower arm dangled from a twisted sinew like meat on a slaughterhouse hook. He could smell the heated blood.
Fingers pinched the artery trying to stem the flow.
Helping the Patrol Commander to his Land Rover, there seemed to be three of them. The Patrol Commander, his pants soaked in blood; the dangling arm; and his own throbbing hand.
He did his best to calm the general panic and made sure the wounded and shocked survivors were safe.
He heaved the Patrol Commander into the passenger seat and settled the semi-detached arm in the man’s bloodied lap. He was ashen, his forehead cold. Droplets of sweat were collecting in his furrowed brow. “Water. Water,” he begged. Signs of very serious shock.
He retrieved a strip of plastic normally used to tie up detainees’ wrists and tightened it around the stump of the upper arm to stem the flow of blood.
Someone must have already called the Medical Emergency Response Team so the four airborne medics and their protection squad would be on the way to the emergency in a Chinook.
The Patrol Commander was thinking the same thing. “The MERT,” he croaked. “Take charge—make sure …”
“Say again.”
“… make sure—make sure my men are safe.” He was trying to make the sign of the cross and his throat went into spasm. He looked like a frightened child.
Several of the howling blood-drenched survivors had shit themselves. The scene reeked of diarrhea, burning human flesh and plastic. Others, choking on the fumes, poured water over their heads.
Soldiers who’d escaped the blast formed a protective screen of snipers and heavy machine guns. A voice said the MERT was finally on its way in the Chinook.
The chaos and panic lessened. He tried to turn his mind to the collection of forensic evidence from the blood-soaked clothing, body parts and crushed equipment, to establish the trail of evidence to lead to the bomb-makers, the owners of the clandestine workshops and the explosives smugglers.
Then his No. 2 told him more about those IEDs up the riverbed. He’d spotted what looked to be a waterproofed command wire. “There are tripwires all over the fucking shop,” he said.
A soldier, eyes wide open, pupils dilated, was shouting: “Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.”
Fear-fuck’s contagious, so he looked away.
The IEDs had to be disabled. The longer they detained the patrol the more likely the soldiers would be sitting sniper targets. To say nothing of the bomb disposal experts who were priority targets. Another reason for not wearing his telltale protective bomb suit.
He told his team to stay with what was left of the patrol. He was going back up the riverbed alone.
No matter he’d honed his skills during eight years of intensive training. An asset to counterterrorist operations back home, he’d passed the Parachute Regiment’s Pegasus Company course at Catterick with distinction. He was far from the sort of soldier his peers would expect to fall apart. Like him, they too were on permanent ten-minute stand-by at the base under unimaginable strain. But his hand was aching and his fingers twitching.
Keeping in touch with his team by radio, he set off.
He dragged himself back up the stinking riverbed. The noise of the screaming and the Fuck-Fuck faded.
The rocks and stones were jagged, the thorns vicious, the stench nauseating. Looking left, looking right, peering close ahead; he crawled with a sort of wild care.
His arms stiffened. The sweat in his eyes was sometimes hot, sometimes cold.
A question nagged him. What’s the name for what happens to your fingertips when you hyperventilate, when too little blood and too few nutrients jam the nerve cell signals to your brain?
What’s it called?
No answer.
Horse flies a
nd wasps bombarded him, defeating his usually effective Ultrathon insect repellent. The idea death’s sting was waiting around the corner didn’t occur to him.
Got it. Paresthesia.
Pins and needles.
*
For the second time he saw the apocalyptic flash. Heard the thunder. Felt the shockwave. The desert erupted in yellow clouds.
The world turned upside-down-inside-out.
Could’ve been the other way about.
The sun was screaming—BURN!
Drifting in and out of consciousness, he saw the rise of blinding suns, veils of blood, felt the constant throbbing pain, the blows hammering inside his skull.
3
“Two-Two Alpha, Two-Two Alpha, this is Two-Zero Charlie, Two-Zero Charlie. I have six times T One casualties. My location—I need immediate CASEVAC. Immediate. Over—”
Another voice said:
“He’s going to die.” Another: “You’re going to be okay, Sir. You’re going to be okay …”
The noise of the Chinook’s howling engines, beating rotors, thwack-thwack-thwacking front-and-back deafened him. Its downdraughts forced up giant veils of sand and dust. At any second the vibrations in the ground might trigger metal plates and blow the aircraft to smithereens. Someone on a radio was losing his cool, yelling advice to base that the Chinook should get the hell away.
He saw the Royal Air Force Sergeant, the helicopter’s loadmaster, give a thumbs-up, then wait a moment for the cable to be dropped allowing the injured to be winched up.
For some reason, the Chinook flew away. It turned, kept on turning, and lowered to make its landing. Can’t believe it. Can’t believe the pilot would be so dozy to attempt to land in what any fart could see was a minefield.
He saw the ramp lowering and someone signaling in semaphore with his arms to the loadmaster. The loadmaster had his eyes elsewhere.
He realized he was being ferried hurriedly on a stretcher born by a quad bike and trailer and lifted into the helicopter.