THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR

by AFN CLARKE

  I shrugged. She was right, but I was too edgy to sleep, watching hour after hour for any signs of movement from the Coltrane Buildings and seeing nothing. But that's what observation posts are all about.

  We finished stowing everything away, slung the packs over our shoulders and headed for the wire fence. Taking the compressed liquid nitrogen can from my backpack and the gardening gloves, I set to work on the fence. After spraying a horizontal line along the chain links, about three inches up from the ground, I pulled hard on the fence and the links broke at the spray line. All I had to do to create a hole big enough to crawl through, was to spray another two vertical lines two feet high from either end of the broken fence, then bend the fence up. It was quiet and once through, I bent the fence back and used a couple of the broken links to 'tie' together the hole I'd made. From six feet away it would be difficult to spot by a casual observer.

  Within ten minutes, Julie and I crossed the rough ground where the graders had been hard at work, and knelt against the concrete wall of the main factory building.

  Apart from foraging night animals, there seemed to be no signs of life.

  We waited for two minutes, just listening before we moved. Better to take time and be sure. I glanced up at the lightening sky and as I did so I caught sight of a small window open, high up on the wall near the roof.

  "An open window but no way to get to it," I whispered. Just above the window was the edge of the flat roof. “There must be some way to get to the roof. If I could do that then it would be a relatively simple process to swing down to the window ledge and in.”

  “Okay,” Julie replied doubtfully.

  We carried on cautiously round the building.

  Access onto the roof came in the form of one of the trucks that had been parked close up against the wall. The top of the cab was about seven feet below the overhanging edge of the roof. I hadn’t exerted myself so much since the Army, and despite the cool desert night, dripped with sweat. Once on the flat roof I lay still for a minute catching my breath, listening again for sounds of any movement.

  “Stay there, I'll open the office block door as soon as I've cleared the building.” I whispered down to Julie, who walked around the corner of the building toward the office block. I moved over to where I estimated the window was, flipped myself over the edge of the roof and through the open window. There was a stack of crates against the wall. They were stacked in steps so it was easy to get down to ground level.

  It seemed as if I was in the despatch area to judge from the markings on the crates. The address on each crate was to Venus Automotive, Dundonald Northern Ireland, which I knew did not exist. The only company in Dundonald to which De Costas had any affiliation, was Rathborne Micro-Electronics. All the crates were firmly sealed except for one at the end of the row. The lid came off easily and beneath a layer of packing material were rows of hollow rectangular aluminium beams about seven feet long by nine inches high and five inches wide. There was no time to examine these any closer, so I moved on and came to a door, that led to a small machine room. All the equipment was new and looked as if it had never been used. I carried on through the door at the end and found myself in what looked like the fabrication area for the aluminium beams. Empty crates were stacked against one wall, a jig for the fabrication of the beams and two other jigs for fabricating what looked like pressures pipes, valves and small odd-looking pressure vessels.

  Access to the offices was through unlocked double glass swing doors, into an open plan office with partitioned cubicles. There were new carpets on the floor, new typewriters on the desks; indeed the furniture was brand new, clean and shiny. The door I was looking for was off to the right, an exit that led out to the helipad and parking lot where Julie should be waiting for me.

  Just as I passed a venetian blind covered window, I saw the shadow of a man backlit by the moon. My heart stopped as I pictured Julie lying cold and broken outside the door.

  “That's just your imagination. Slow down,” I thought rapidly, steadying myself against the worst possible thought I could have. The shadow was moving toward the door just as I was, the door that opened outwards as every exit door should for fire safety reasons.

  The cool military part of me waited until I estimated that the man was just up to the door, and then I twisted the handle and slammed my shoulder against it at the same time.

  The door flew open and caught the surprised figure with the force of a two hundred pound sledgehammer. I heard his wrist break, then his nose and jaw as the solid steel fire door met soft tissue and bone. He was flung backwards and I heard, with satisfaction, the crunch as the back of his head hit the edge of the unyielding concrete of the helipad walkway. It was all over in a second or two, and I stood listening for the sound of a partner. There must be one, but the only sounds I could hear was the cicadas and the bubbling sound of the man's blood filling his lungs.

  Slowly I slipped out of the building, looking for Julie.

  And then I saw her, lying crumpled at the corner. By the time I crossed the ten yards to where she lay, she stirred and pushed herself up into a sitting position.

  “Slowly. Let me see,” I said taking her in my arms, lifting her and carrying her into the office; laying her down on one the settees in the reception area. There was blood on the back of her head and a nasty looking four-inch wound that would need stitches.

  “Dear God, what hit me?”

  “One of De Costas' goons. There's bound to be another somewhere.”

  “We have to put the bug in the mainframe, just like Dad said.” She held up the flash drive.

  “We have to get out of here.”

  “The computer,” Julie said defiantly. “I'm not having my head cracked open for nothing.”

  “Okay. You deal with the computer stuff, I'll check to see if our friend has other friends,” I said quietly, pulling the Glock from my backpack and walking slowly back to the main manufacturing building. I turned to see Julie searching for the office server. Then I heard the sound of footsteps and melted into the shadow of a doorway. There was laboured breathing and I saw another man appear in the outer office. He could have been one of the brothers of the giants, and in his massive hand he clutched a very mean looking revolver. He was headed straight for the office.

  There was no time for heroics, so my plan was just to shoot the son-of-bitch, but there was a third gunman I hadn't noticed, who fired from about five feet away. The round caught me in the right side before I could spin out of the way. It tore straight through front to back, tearing a chunk of muscle out just above my hipbone, and knocking me over as the second round clipped my upper left bicep, again going straight through. He wasn't so lucky. I fired as I was falling, hitting him in the throat sending him over backwards, crashing in a heap on the floor.

  I looked for the other gunman, and instead stared straight into the barrel of his revolver, watching as the chamber rotated as he began to pull the trigger, and then saw his face explode as Julie shot him in the back of the head. She staggered over to me, helped me into a sitting position and looked at the wounds just as a radio crackled to life.

  “Unit one this is two we found the car.”

  “Jesus, there's an army out there,” Julie cried, tears of pain and fear coursing down her cheeks. She roughly brushed them aside. “We have to get you to a hospital.”

  “Get the radio, it's on his belt.”

  She unclipped it and handed it to me. “Unit Two, standby,” I said as indistinctly as I could.

  “Roger that. Standing by.”

  “Okay so now what?”

  “My phone, in my backpack.” I grunted in pain as she helped my off with the pack, then dialled Danny's burn number. It was a minute before he answered.

  “This better be good, Thomas.”

  “I need you to ask your pals to clear me a special operations helicopter flight plan, very low level from Mojave to somewhere in Nevada. Tell them it's a secret training flight, I don't want the guys from China Lake
air base lighting me up with Mavericks.”

  “What happened?”

  “I'm shot, Julie's got a crack on the head and there's a bunch of guys out to bury our arses in the desert.”

  “Give me five minutes.”

  “Unit one this is two, what's going on?” This time the voice on the radio was a woman's.

  “Wait unit two,” I whispered sounding pissed that somebody might have compromised my position.

  Julie had found a first aid kit, with snakebite anti serum amongst other things, hydrogen peroxide and sterile gauze pads with adhesive tape. She quickly staunched the bleeding and taped the gauze in place. Now that the initial shock had worn off, I was feeling the pain, which was good, because in five minutes I had to fly us out of this place.

  “Let me have a look at your head.”

  Julie turned around and I dabbed the wound with hydrogen peroxide, making her wince, but it at least would keep any infection at bay until she could get proper medical aid. Then I grabbed the radio again.

  “Unit two, this one, check out the car, we have the packages secured.”

  “Unit two roger that.”

  I took Julie hands and looked into her eyes. For two reasons: the first to make sure she wasn't concussed and the second because I wanted her to see that what I was about to do didn't please me one bit.

  “I have to do this,” I said, lifting the phone and dialling pre-programmed number.

  “I know,” she said simply.

  I pressed the talk button and a split second later, there was a distant explosion. Then my phone rang.

  “Danny?”

  “You have your clearance from Mojave to Desert Rock. Call me when you're airborne. Fly 033° and I'll give you the GPS coordinates in a minute, now get the hell out of there before the people in uniforms show up.”

  ELEVEN

  Baja Sud - Mexico - January 2013

  Head injuries are unpredictable, especially when the patient is unconscious or even in a coma. And the guessing game as to the seriousness of the injury is further exacerbated by a lack of high-tech equipment because the patient needs to be kept 'out-of-sight' in a secure remote location.

  Struggling back to consciousness seemed like running a marathon in mud. I was aware of something, but not enough to break through into full consciousness. I wanted to, but those ghostly images and muted sounds seemed so far away.

  Then it was as if the curtain fell away and immediately I knew I was alive, lying in bed in the semi-dark with only the faint light of a new moon shining in through the window. I felt rested, my mind surprisingly clear, as if I had enjoyed the best sleep of my life. It was so pleasant lying here with the soft sound of waves and the smell of the ocean. And it didn't matter that I had no idea where I was or what had happened, everything just seemed right. And that feeling was perhaps because short-term amnesia wipes away all the stress I would have felt if I remembered what happened.

  Perhaps I was still at the country club, but the room seemed different and Julie wasn't beside me in bed. Maybe she was preparing breakfast or swimming, and we were back in Gozo. Random thoughts drifting across my sterilised mind, as if my body was trying to paint colour back into my soul. Turning from the window, I saw the outline of somebody sitting in a chair across the room.

  “Julie?” I asked in what I thought was my normal voice, but it came out as a hoarse whisper.

  I felt fine, why was my voice so weak?

  Then I tried to lift myself up to a sitting position and found that difficult, as if I was trying to bench press five hundred pounds, and fell back exhausted with the effort.

  “Julie?” I said again, and again the voice sounded like the whisper of an old man on his deathbed. Perhaps that's where I was, but maybe I had transitioned from my earthly life to a halfway house between Heaven and Hell. Images burst into my consciousness.

  An explosion.

  A fire.

  Voices shouting, and Julie's face turned to me, eyes closed, blood dripping from her nose and ears.

  “No,” I screamed and struggled once again to get out of bed. This time I managed to swing my legs off the bed and onto the cool, smooth tiled floor. My head span and I felt nauseous. It would pass, I knew that from past experience, and slowly struggled to my feet but pain seared through my leg and I crumpled to the floor. I couldn't reach the figure sleeping in the chair unless I crawled. I ignored the pain as I only had one purpose in mind.

  Julie. My Julie.

  As I touched the figure in the chair, it stirred and the head turned. In the moonlight I saw a face, blond, beautiful, young, eyes trying to focus as sleep fell away.

  “Julie?”

  The figure moved quickly catching me as I slid onto the floor.

  “Not Julie,” I heard a voice say but I couldn't place the accent. The voice sounded foreign, and I wondered if it was my brain playing tricks on me. “Let's get you back to bed.”

  I didn't struggle, just let the woman help me into bed, and then the room was bathed in soft light as she turned on the bedside lamp.

  “Julie,” I said again not seemingly able to say anything else.

  “My name is Morgan Alvarez,” the woman said, again in that strange accent, a mixture of English and Spanish maybe.

  “Where am I? How long have I been here?”

  “My house near La Paz, Baja. I'm a friend of Danny's,” the voice said. “You've been here nearly two months. Lie back and sleep now.”

  “Okay,” I said unnecessarily. “Bah what?” I asked, my brain trying to keep up.

  “Baja Sud. Mexico.”

  “Oh. Right. ‘The Log of the Sea of Cortez’. Steinbeck. Read it once. Long time ago.” I muttered inanely. “Where’s Julie?”

  “Lie back and sleep.”

  “Where is she?” I looked at the woman who was a stranger to me. And her face betrayed what subconsciously I already knew. “No,” I screamed. “She can’t be. She’s not dead. Tell me she’s not dead.”

  “I’m sorry….”

  I collapsed back onto the bed, tears streaming down my face, pain wracking every part of my body, but it was not as much as the pain in my soul with the knowledge that I’d never see the love of my life ever again enveloped me. Darkness closed over my mind and once more I slipped into comforting unconsciousness.

  Nightmares crowded my sleep and I woke in a sweat, some twelve hours later, gasping for air and thought that Julie’s death was just a nightmare, a figment of my imagination. But I knew it wasn’t.

  I needed air and crawled to the door that led out onto the patio that overlooked the beach and the Sea of Cortez. It felt similar to Gozo but it was subtly different; the smell of dry sage tinged the slight breeze and somewhere close by, lingering smoke from a mesquite barbecue blew lazily across the beach. Bile rose in my mouth and I dry retched onto the sand as the image of Julie bloodied and broken in the helicopter, blasted into my mind.

  The moment passed and I sat at the water's edge as small wavelets ran up the beach and sank into the sand.

  Julie's death killed something in me. Something I thought I had recovered from after my last tour in Afghanistan. She gave my life a soul that had been destroyed, and now with her death, my soul was as dark as it had ever been.

  De Costas would pay for her death.

  All that was left in me was the instinct for survival and revenge; the only emotion, pure hatred for the man that had caused all this. It was this that had kept me alive when I should have been dead. It was this that created the desire to fight back to full health.

  An hour later I hobbled slowly back to the bedroom, lay down and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  I stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom and looked at the stranger who stared back. Shaved head, broken nose, and cold blue, strangely expressionless eyes sunk in deep hollows. What I didn't have was the scar from my wound in Afghanistan. Instead there was redness where a very skilled plastic surgeon had all but erased the evidence with careful skin grafts. My right leg was
encased in a cast up to the knee, the pain still excruciating every time I put weight on it. I barely recognised the skeletal creature, turned away from the sight and hobbled out of the house onto the rear veranda that overlooked the yard bordering the beach.

  "Good to see you up and about."

  I turned to see Morgan walking across from the paddock where two Arabian horses whinnied softly, wearing jeans and a tee shirt, cowboy boots and battered Stetson. "How are you feeling today," she continued in her comfortingly soft accent.

  "I've been better." My voice surprised me. I knew it was me that had spoken, but the harshness of my tone startled me.

  "I can't say your temper has improved," she said sitting down in one of the wicker chairs. I shrugged and gazed out over the desert. Images of Julie and Gozo flickered through my mind, replaced by the sight of the burning helicopter and her face. I felt myself tense and break out in a sweat.

  "Are you O.K? Here sit down." I sat down on the offered chair and let out a long slow sigh.

  "Its O.K. Sometimes the pain is a little strong."

  "Of course, your leg was smashed pretty badly. The Doc says the cast will come off next week.” She paused looking at me carefully.

  “Julie's dead,” I said quietly.

  She nodded and her eyes softened as she leaned over to touch my hand. "Yes she is. I've been there too. I lost my husband in Iraq. I know what you must be feeling. Don't be ashamed of it."

  I couldn't hold her eyes and turned back to the view of the desert.

  “We were shot down. I was set up. Danny has a lot to answer for.”

  “It wasn’t Danny. Somebody else knew your destination.” Morgan leaned over and laid her hand on mine. “We arrived when it was all over, so I can’t tell you who it was. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Lucky? Julie’s dead and I survived. It should have been the other way around.”

  “She wouldn’t have wanted it that way.”

  I shook her hand loose and stared at her, angrier than I had been for a long time. “How would you know?”