A Covert War

by Michael Parker

  He slipped quietly out of the room and closed the door behind him, then tip-toed carefully down to the corner of the short passage. Peering round the corner he saw the figure closing the front door. From his body language, he was closing it like a thief would when entering somebody’s house and didn’t want to be heard.

  As the figure disappeared from view, Marcus walked quickly up to the door and edged it open. He looked through the narrow gap and could see the front yard bathed in the half-light between night and dawn. He could see one of Abdul’s men. Habib, apparently asleep on a log, judging from his crumpled shape.

  What followed next, Marcus could hardly believe. The figure he had watched leaving the house was Kareem. He suddenly thrust something into Habib’s neck. Then he wrapped his arm around the man’s head and stabbed him again. He let him slump to the ground.

  Marcus knew then that they were all in terrible danger and his earlier misgivings about Abdul had taken on a new twist; although he doubted that Abdul had anything to do with what he had just witnessed.

  Marcus kept the door open just a little and saw Kareem drag Habib’s body into the sparse undergrowth that struggled for survival alongside the track. As soon as he had disappeared, Marcus stepped out of the house and sprinted across the yard, into the undergrowth and threw himself at Kareem.

  It was over within seconds; Marcus had achieved the element of total surprise and knocked Kareem senseless with a chopping blow to the jaw line beneath the ear. Kareem slumped on to the bloody body of Habib in a gruesome parody of endearing friendship.

  Marcus stripped the Kareem of his clothes and tied him to the body of his comrade in arms, shoving the tails of the man’s shirt in his mouth and gagging him securely. All the while Marcus was doing this, he kept asking himself the same question; why did he kill Habib?

  Marcus could only make guesses and ponder on the imponderable, but that would not get him any further. His next problem was how to tackle Abdul and secure David’s and their own freedom. He had no idea where Abdul was sleeping. Nor did he have any idea where David was, but he intended finding him.

  He went back into the house, holding the AK47 that he had picked up from the dead man across his chest, finger across the trigger guard and went back to his room. Once he was in there he knelt beside Susan’s bed, kept the AK47 out of sight and shook Susan awake. As she sat up he put his fingers to his own lips and one hand on hers.

  ‘Get dressed,’ he whispered. ‘We’re leaving and we’re taking David with us.’

  Susan caught on very quickly. She too had realised that they had been taken into a situation which was beyond them, and she guessed that Marcus was taking matters into his own hands. She nodded at him and scrambled out from under the single blanket that covered her.

  Marcus took a little time to admire Susan’s delightful curves before leaning over towards her and planting a big kiss on her lips. Then he went over to the door before she could say anything in protest.

  Marcus reasoned that Abdul would have put David in the room furthest away from the front door. And he also believed that Abdul would probably sleep in the adjacent room. So he walked to the far end of the passageway and tried the door at the end.

  It was locked.

  He tried the door opposite. That too was locked.

  It left him with no alternative. He crashed his foot against the first door, bringing it hard against the lock. The door was old and weak; it gave instantly, opening with a resounding crash as it swung back and hit the wall.

  Marcus ran into the room. It was empty.

  He turned and lashed out at the other door which gave in too. As he rushed into that room he saw Abdul reaching across to the chair beside his bed. Marcus could see his AK47 hanging across the back.

  He kicked the chair away and shoved the barrel of his own weapon into Abdul’s face.

  ‘Don’t move!’

  Abdul froze. ‘You’re going to die,’ he muttered through gritted teeth.

  Marcus slugged him. Abdul slumped back on the bed, not quite unconscious but certainly dazed. Marcus then knelt on top of Abdul with one knee and held him like that until he had regained some of his senses.

  ‘Now listen. I am going to stand up. You are going to tell me where the key is to David’s chains. Then David, Susan and I are going to leave.’

  Abdul shook his head. ‘No, you are going to die.’

  Marcus hit him again. ‘Don’t keep saying that. Where’s the key?’

  David was sitting up by this time. ‘It’s on the table over there,’ he told Marcus pointing to the table at the far side of the room.

  Marcus picked up Abdul’s weapon from the back of the fallen chair and passed it to David. ‘I hope you know how to use this,’ he said. He then went across to the table and picked the key up. Within two minutes, David was standing beside Marcus. Both men were looking at Abdul.

  ‘Well,’ David said, a little breathlessly. ‘You seem to have control of the situation. What do we do now?’

  Marcus glanced quickly at David. ‘What we do now is tie him up, and then we leave with Susan.’

  ‘What about Abdul’s men. Where are they?’

  ‘One is dead and the other is tied up.’

  ‘You?’ David said without finishing.

  Marcus shook his head. ‘No, one of Abdul’s faithful minders killed the other one. I watched him do it.’

  Abdul’s expression clouded over when he heard what Marcus had said. He began to sit up but Marcus shoved him down again. ‘Stay there!’

  ‘Why are you lying about my men?’ he asked.

  Marcus shook his head. ‘I’m not, believe me. One of your men is a traitor to you. He killed his friend.’

  He handed David his AK 47.

  ‘Watch him while I tie him up.’

  Marcus spent a couple of minutes making sure Abdul could not move. Then he took the AK47 back from David. He was about to say something to David when suddenly there was a crash and a scream. Marcus spun round and made a quick sprint for the door.

  He got out into the passageway and stopped. At the far end, now reasonably light because of the dawn beginning to seep into the sky, he could see Susan. She was struggling fiercely trying to free herself from the man who was holding her.

  In the man’s other hand was a gun. He lifted it and pointed at Susan’s head. Then he called down the corridor to Marcus.

  ‘Put your gun down, or I will shoot her.’

  Marcus felt his whole body slump in despair and disbelief. He knew the voice of the man who had just spoken to him.

  It was Maggot.

  TWENTY TWO

  Cavendish was standing in McCain’s office. It was just after four thirty in the morning and McCain had woken him by phone to tell him there was a signal waiting for him. Cavendish had asked that he be told the moment his signal came in, no matter what time of day or night it was. He apologised to McCain for inconveniencing him. McCain simply shrugged.

  Cavendish read the coded transmission from MI6 in London. He thanked the Security Officer for his help and took his leave, hurrying back to his sparse accommodation where he could decode the message safely.

  What Cavendish had asked his office in London for was a list of all the suspects, dead or alive that he had on the file marked ‘Mission’. The list was not extensive but it included Grebo, Faulkner and James Purdy, the British Cabinet Minister. It also included the names of Rafiq Shah and Lieutenant Dale Berry.

  Cavendish knew the last name as Chuck Berry, now on the Reaper flight, and the other as Maggot, long- time friend of Marcus.

  He thought seriously about the association between Marcus and Shah, wondering if Marcus had indeed been pulling the wool over his eyes and was in fact working for The Chapter.

  If that was the case, Cavendish believed his master plan was in tatters. All he had wanted was David Ellis’s release because Ellis carried in his head an enormous amount of human intelligence, so vital to the security forces in Afghanistan and their battle aga
inst Al Qaeda and the Taliban, that to lose it would seriously jeopardise the outcome of the war.

  Ellis had worked undercover in Afghanistan for two years before coming to the Mission where he believed his remit would end. What the young man could not have known then was that he had been compromised, and almost certainly by the CIA, which meant Hudson. And it was this that had led to his attempted murder, and the murder of Shakira, Cavendish’s other agent.

  All this confirmed to Cavendish something he had suspected for a long time: that the CIA were eavesdropping on British Intelligence Security Traffic for their own, duplicitous reasons. It meant that Hudson would almost certainly have known the names of his deeply embedded operators, and it was this that led to the attack on Shakira and David. But not for American security reasons but simply to protect the massive smuggling operation run by The Chapter.

  He then thought about Abdul Khaliq’s fortuitous kidnapping of Ellis from the hospital. Was it good fortune, luck or did Abdul know the real value of someone like Ellis? If that was the case then Cavendish owed Abdul Khaliq something and could afford to cut him some slack; to listen carefully to his demands and find a way of accommodating some, if not all of them.

  But rather than think of him as a very clever conspirator, he preferred to think of Marcus as a loose cannon, rather than a skilful agent working for Hudson’s CIA. He had to because his reputation and possibly other people’s lives depended on it.

  He didn’t need the list now; there were only two people he needed to watch very carefully, and he would need to take McCain into his confidence. So before tearing the list up and flushing it down the toilet, Cavendish knew he would have to show it to the lieutenant.

  He picked up the phone and dialled Lieutenant McCain’s private quarters.

  ***

  Randy Hudson, the CIA chief received a call at the same time. Once again the CIA liaison officer had something for him. Hudson dressed and hurried across the domestic compound to the CIA office on the technical site. He had no vehicle so had to put up with a fairly lengthy walk. It was very early in the morning and, thankfully for Hudson the air was just cool rather than freezing as it often was during the winter months.

  He reached the CIA office and showed his pass to the MP at the door. There was a turnstile entrance which the security man opened electronically from within his pigeon-hole office.

  Hudson hurried through and found the liaison officer waiting for him.

  ‘I have these co-ordinates for you,’ he told Hudson.

  The CIA man took them from him, read them and nodded his head in obvious satisfaction.

  ‘Are they there now?’ he asked.

  The liaison officer said they were. ‘We picked them up on the Reaper. My guess is they’ll be there a few hours yet.’

  Hudson thanked him and folded the note on which had been written the co-ordinates to the farmhouse where Abdul had taken Marcus and Susan. He checked his watch; it was a little after five o’clock. He smiled ruefully; once the figures had been passed on to Chuck Berry the farmhouse would be utterly destroyed on the next Reaper pass. He only wanted to take out Abdul Khaliq, but the collateral damage, meaning whoever was with him, would be perfectly acceptable to a man like Hudson.

  He stepped out of the building, a light spring in his step. The dawn light was bright enough now to pick out the silhouettes of the F15E Strike aircraft and the Apache gunships lined up on the pan. Ground crews were out early preparing the aircraft for the coming day’s operations. Tractors towed generating sets out to each airplane, and ammunition trolleys were on their way to fill the jets and the gunships with their deadly loads.

  None of this attracted Hudson’s attention as he hurried over to Reaper flight, intent on a strike of his own. Within one hour he reasoned to himself, Abdul Khaliq would be dead.

  ***

  Cavendish apologised to Lieutenant McCain for the second time that early morning and asked to see him again. McCain agreed, telling Cavendish that he hadn’t bothered going back to bed. Cavendish grinned as he put the phone back in its cradle.

  He came out of the accommodation block in which he was housed and once again hurried across to the Base Headquarters. McCain was there before him, which pleased Cavendish. He wasted no time in showing McCain the list with the two names on it that he had highlighted. One of them was Lieutenant Dale Berry.

  ‘Is there any way in which you can put Lieutenant Berry out of action?’ Cavendish asked the security officer.

  McCain shook his head. ‘We need every damn last sonofabitch here, fully fit and working, Sir Giles. Unless you can give me a cast iron reason for excluding Lieutenant Berry from his work, I’ll have to say no. Besides which the Base Commander would expect me to give a damn good reason.’

  Cavendish acknowledged that; he didn’t expect anything less but it had been worth a try. He did realise that McCain had no authority, other than his police authority to prevent people from working, so it was a lame effort on Cavendish’s part.

  ‘You think Lieutenant Berry may be up to something over here?’ McCain asked him.

  Cavendish had no reason to think so. ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘but I have an uneasy feeling now, knowing that Hudson has turned up here unexpectedly. Seeing the two of them on my list, and knowing that they are here gives me a gut feeling that it’s no accident; no chance thing.’

  McCain sighed deeply. He had the sense of Cavendish’s worries, having often experienced them himself; that same, gut feeling; a policeman’s ‘nose’ for something untoward. He could only see one way to settle the Englishman’s nerves.

  ‘What would you say if I arrange for you to speak to Berry, would that help?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cavendish replied demonstrably. ‘I think that would be a great help.’

  ‘You realise that the lieutenant has every right to refuse? Cavendish nodded. ‘And I can only ask, not demand?’ Cavendish nodded again.

  McCain picked up the phone. ‘Reaper Flight please.’

  He waited. Cavendish looked on. Eventually McCain’s body language altered.

  ‘Lieutenant McCain here, Military Police. Could you let me know when Lieutenant Berry will be on duty next?’

  Cavendish felt confident about McCain’s way in dealing with things, and believed that he had found an excellent contact that he could use in the future. He wasn’t about to tell McCain that though.

  McCain was nodding his head, his eyebrows lifting in a show of surprise. He thanked whoever he was speaking to and put the phone down.

  ‘Berry has been asked to cover for a sick officer. He’s going on duty in five minutes.’

  Cavendish felt a sliver of tension run through his body and he suddenly felt helpless. He had a feeling something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it, and he couldn’t expect McCain to understand.

  But he was wrong.

  ‘You want to speak to Berry.’ It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. McCain had sensed the dilemma affecting Cavendish. ‘But you don’t know how you’re gonna do it because this is our patch and not yours, correct?’

  ‘I could not have put it better myself,’ Cavendish admitted.

  McCain stood up. ‘In that case we’ll go over to the Reaper Flight and have a chat with the man. We can say that you want to make an appointment to see him; something like that. OK?’

  Cavendish knew now that he and McCain were on the same wavelength, and McCain was going along with Cavendish’s fears. The last thing McCain wanted was trouble on his patch.

  He came round from behind the desk, business-like.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and talk with Lieutenant Berry.’

  TWENTY THREE

  Marcus stood still in the passageway. He put his AK47 on the floor and held his arms out to show his empty hands. He could feel his heart beating solidly in his chest, but it was not through fear; it was the adrenalin beginning to course through his veins.

  Maggot took the pistol away from Susan’s head and pointed it at Ma
rcus. He was about to pull the trigger when he had to do a double take.

  ‘Marcus?’ He lowered the gun and peered along the length of the corridor. He let Susan go. As soon as she was released, she ran towards Marcus who grabbed her and pulled her in close. Then he made a kissing motion on the side of Susan’s face, but he didn’t kiss her, instead he whispered.

  ‘I don’t think he knows that David is here. Don’t say anything.’

  ‘Marcus?’ Maggot called out to him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Abdul is going to take us to see Susan’s brother.’ He hoped that might persuade Maggot to think that they were on their way somewhere else. ‘What are you doing here, Maggot?’

  ‘You don’t want to know, Marcus. But I’m going to search all these rooms, including those down there, so you had better move away.’

  Marcus said nothing and didn’t move.

  ‘Move out of the way, Marcus!’ Maggot ordered.

  ‘I’m going nowhere, Maggot,’ Marcus insisted. ‘Nowhere.’

  Maggot smiled, his teeth showing white beneath his parted lips. ‘Marcus, you don’t want to do this.’ He pushed his gun into his waist belt. ‘You never could beat me, Marcus. And you are not going to this time.’

  Marcus tensed and pushed Susan to one side. It was true what Maggot had said; all the time the two of them had fought in the gym. Marcus had never got the better of Maggot. Never.

  Maggot came towards him, walking slowly on the balls of his feet, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. Marcus wriggled his fingers in a crab like motion, trying to get the tension out of his hands.

  Maggot came closer.

  Marcus pushed Susan away, towards the empty room.

  Maggot stopped a few feet from him.

  ‘Make up your mind, Marcus. Concede now or you’ll never leave this building alive.’

  Susan gasped. ‘You’re supposed to be friends.’