Liquid Gold

by James Phelan

  Duhamel looked out the window at the vast prison complex they were leaving behind them, no Fox or Gammaldi in sight. He wondered how anyone could live like this: in a country that went to war with its neighbour with disturbing regularity; in a country with a thirty-second nuclear warning—they wouldn’t even have time to double-check if India launched their missiles; it was a yes-or-no, die-alone-or-die-with-them nuclear policy. Who would want to live with that kind of threat looming over them? It made the old days of the Cold War seem civilised.

  64

  JAIL, PAKISTAN

  “What did these people do to deserve this life?”

  “Huh?” Gammaldi said, waking up.

  “Nothing, man, keep sleeping,” Fox replied. He gingerly rubbed his right hand, scared to flex it, all black and blue and swollen from catching the club yesterday.

  “I thought you just said, ‘Always look on the bright side of life’…”

  Fox laughed. “Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

  They were outside for their evening breather, and the moon was out amid clear skies. Gammaldi shifted slightly. Neither had slept during the night; most of the others in the yard were now sleeping in packs to keep warm, a well-practised routine.

  “I needed that nap,” Gammaldi said. He’d laid flat on his back on the ground, and hadn’t moved for half an hour.

  “Cool, keep sleeping, man, I’ll keep my eyes open,” Fox said. Greasy old spotlights stood at the corners of the yard, throwing enough light to cast shadows and little else.

  “Nah, I’m good now.”

  “Close your eyes,” Fox said. “Like you did when you banged that ugly chick in high school, Judy Glipnick?”

  “You thought Judy was ugly?”

  “Is that even debatable?”

  Gammaldi coughed.

  “How’re the ribs?”

  “Fine if I don’t move.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve got about ten more minutes,” Fox said.

  “What, you keeping a watch hidden up your arse?”

  The sounds of a vehicle convoy rang loud and clear in the crisp mountain air—someone was coming in hard and fast. The gate was out of sight, hidden behind the solid walls, but they could hear shouting in Urdu, then English.

  “What was that?”

  “Probably some fresh meat coming in.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Could be worse, you know.” Fox said.

  “So you keep saying.” Gammaldi tilted his head and faced Fox. “Okay, how do you figure that?”

  “Could be in Bruges.”

  Gammaldi smiled. Laughed. Then cringed. “Fucking Bruges.”

  Four guards emerged from the dark recessed door in the wall and headed over to their corner, wooden clubs out. Fox stood and took a few paces towards them, ready to tussle if it came to it.

  “You will come with us,” one of the guards said.

  Fox stared at him. The guard’s three mates weren’t taking an interest—it seemed they were there to keep watch on the other inmates as Fox and Gammaldi were rounded up.

  “What for?”

  “You will come, now,” he said. “Your friend can get up. Come.”

  He didn’t look like he was there to round them up for a beating, but then he didn’t look as if he was taking them in for a spa treatment, either. He waved his makeshift baton in the direction of the commandant’s office.

  Fox grabbed Gammaldi and helped him to his feet. Al was red in the face and at the point of tears with the pain of the effort. He walked next to Fox under his own power, though, gritting through the pain. The two men entered the commandant’s office.

  The prison commander was red-faced too, but for a different reason: blood ran from his battered eye and cut lip. A senior Pakistani Army officer—covered with brass and ribbons—stood over him.

  Standing rod-straight nearby were two Americans.

  “Special Agent Jake Duhamel; and this here is Brick,” Duhamel said, shaking Fox’s good hand. “Hutchinson sent us—we’re taking you boys out of here.”

  Fox nodded; he was too weary to really take it in but he felt a slight rush of adrenalin that came with freedom. Brick collected the backpacks of the two men from the commandant’s desk, and Fox and Gammaldi let themselves be ushered out, Fox half-carrying Gammaldi, leaving the Pakistanis to sort each other out.

  They walked out to the convoy—a big Chevy Suburban guarded by two other FBI-types, and four Pakistani military vehicles. All had their engines running, lights on, exhaust steaming in the air.

  “He’s got a couple of busted ribs,” Fox explained. “Got some bandages?”

  “You can walk okay, though?” Brick asked, evaluating Gammaldi.

  “Yeah, it’s bearable,” Gammaldi said. “Need food, though.”

  “Breathing all right?” Brick asked, opening the Chevy’s tailgate and reaching for a medical kit. He passed over a few aspirin, which Gammaldi chomped down.

  “Yeah,” Gammaldi said, spying something in the back seat of the Suburban. “Is that Gatorade?”

  “Yeah,” Brick said, taking a couple of bottles from the stack of drinks. Gammaldi took both.

  “Lach will want some too,” he said, already halfway through his first bottle.

  They piled into the vehicle, Fox and Duhamel last in.

  “Where are we headed?” Fox asked as Duhamel closed his door.

  “Amritsar,” he replied. “We’ve got a flight ready, can take you back Stateside.”

  “We’ve got a company jet back in—”

  “Make some calls on the way,” Duhamel said, passing over a satellite phone. “Get another pilot in to fly it out—we’re staying with you, and we’ve got a Justice Department bird and flight crew in Amritsar.”

  “Can we bump the flight to the morning?” Fox asked. “Recoup in a hotel overnight, make a few final calls while we’re here?”

  Duhamel didn’t look convinced, but then Fox saw him glance at Gammaldi, who had closed his eyes and was trying not to move the top half of his body.

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll call in to Hutchinson and sort it out.”

  65

  GORI, GEORGIA (EASTERN EUROPE)

  “She sure is sweet,” Top said as they watched a Georgian girl, maybe twenty, with long dark tresses, big brown eyes and pale skin, walk past them, guided through the busy room full of uniforms by a female US soldier.

  “She could be your daughter,” Nix said, helping himself to a cup of hot coffee from the mess table. He made one for Top too, adding plenty of sugar.

  Most of his men were still working construction outside on the abandoned school’s oval, but the area inside had been set up to record human rights abuse by soldiers on both sides of the war, and it doubled as a press room. Technically, all US personnel had first been deployed as a training force for Georgian troops, but then their mission changed to include the protection of senior diplomatic staff after the Gori Town Hall bombing. Today, the NATO Personal Protection Specialists were arriving, high-risk protectees travelling with serious steel, which was welcome news for Nix’s outfit.

  The school, now swarming with US military and UN personnel as well as reporters, was cordoned off outside by Spanish armoured vehicles. Most of the building’s windows were boarded up because they’d been shelled and bombed out by Russian artillery and air strikes, and the danger was still apparent—just yesterday a soldier almost blew himself to Mars after taking a piss on top of an unexploded cluster bomb in the overgrown and weed-infested perimeter. When the Russians went through in late 2008 they stripped the place of anything of value or use—clothes, bedding, food; they even pulled out the copper piping and wiring to re-sell. They certainly were thorough—it was like locusts had swept through a wheat field.

  “The Colonel’s moving real quick on Mac’s clearance,” Nix said as he handed over Top’s coffee. “A few things to fill out and sign off.”

  “I
’m right tired of paperwork,” Top said.

  The two men looked out the window at the sports field, at the big heated tents housing media and UN personnel.

  “See those birds?” Top asked, pointing to a flock flying in formation over the yard. “Just like they fly at home. Everywhere’s the same these days.”

  Nix clapped him on the back.

  “Come on, we’ve got to go pick up our embedded reporter for the week,” Nix said. “I got the Colonel to assign her specially, after you couldn’t get it organised right.”

  “I told you before,” Top said, following his CO. “I only done what you told me.”

  Through the hall they entered the gymnasium. The room was the size of eight basketball courts and hummed with activity. The immediate vicinity had been taken over by security contractors protection for the building of an upgraded local runway and police station, as well as a semi-permanent US base about a hundred clicks east. This building was to be converted to a military police academy run by trainers of the EU’s new fandangled European Gendarmerie Force—ostensibly part of the long-term payback that came with Georgia being an active member of the Coalition of the Willing. It would mean that pointy-end specialists like Nix’s squad could bug out, and none too soon.

  “Listen to this guy talking up the six-eight round,” Top said out the corner of his mouth. They paused by a group of moneyed-up gunslingers.

  “Six-eight round is the future,” said the guy, who sat on a table in front of a bunch of Nix’s 10th Mountain boys. “Stopping power of an AK; velocity of the five-six. Enough weight behind this baby that a single shot will force the target down.”

  He had a Barrett M468 assault rifle across his chest, with a big chunky suppressor screwed onto the barrel. The guy’s right hand never left the buttstock; he probably didn’t even have the safety on.

  “Six-eight can shoot through car windscreens, the works, and still pack a lethal punch. It’s all about kinetic energy. When I hit a terrorist, I want him to stay down—learned that the hard way.”

  Top turned to Nix, spoke under his breath: “Terrorist my ass.”

  “You want to neutralise a threat with a minimal amount of shots, and 556 struggles to do this—I’ve seen guys shot and then turn around and start shooting back at us. It’s not like the movies. AK rounds fall out of the sky after about four hundred yards, but the six-eight, man, it’s the only assault rifle round big enough to stop a bad guy and accurate enough to ensure a kill with just one shot.”

  “One shot my ass,” Top said, this time loud enough to be heard.

  He and Nix left the conversation and joined a group of Army media liaison troops who were in the process of allocating the embedded reporters, who were starting to stream in.

  “Ah, if it isn’t the popular bunch,” the Colonel said to Nix and Top. “We’ve got every news agency begging to field with you guys.”

  “What can I say, Colonel?” Nix said. “We’re good at what we do.”

  The Colonel grunted. He looked down his list and then up to the crowd of journalists in the adjoining room, most of whom were interviewing local civilians.

  “There’s your reporter,” the Colonel said, pointing to a middle-aged woman sitting at a plastic table conducting an interview. “With GSR, as requested. Make sure you bring her back in one piece. There’s some Ruskies out there deliberately targeting reporters near the South Ossetian line.”

  “Hooah.”

  “Yeah, we got it, sir,” Nix said, signing the form. “What’s with all the air traffic coming in tonight?”

  “EU Battlegroup pouring in; French Force Headquarters assume operational command in a week, got some Irish outfit of bomb-disposal experts among them.”

  “I thought the European Council were dragging their feet?”

  “Sounds like you’ve been reading too many newspapers,” the Colonel replied. “Russia was firm they didn’t want a NATO force here; we’re bad enough. Go get your reporter, lie low for a few days. I just got some more heat from up high about your sniper kills. I really don’t want to hear any more.”

  “Thanks, sir,” Top said to the Colonel, saluting as he went through.

  “You believe that gun for hire?” Top asked.

  “About the six-eight round?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I like the sound of it,” Nix admitted.

  “I am all for lethality,” Top said, nodding. “Diameter, weight, kinetic energy—I was starting to get turned on.”

  Nix was laughing as he extended his hand to meet the reporter. As she shook it he saw the person sitting opposite her: the young Georgian girl Top had admired earlier. His mood sank as he saw the look on the young woman’s face.

  66

  ON THE ROAD, PAKISTAN

  Fox took a deep breath of the fresh air streaming in the open window. The fields of dirt were endless, and rocks and mountains rose up as bare, jagged totems of loneliness. A single gravel road wound its way north and south. Remnants of a few mud-brick or stone buildings sat about a click north. It was the middle of nowhere. Perfect killing fields. Fox thought about the inmates back at the walled prison compound. Sure, some of them were likely to be criminals, had likely done something worthy of incarceration, but still … The landscape flashed by. Birds were the only life he saw, far off specks riding the thermal flows off the mountains, soaring and floating in their own space—even animals were smart enough to keep away from this place.

  Fox had called Faith at GSR, Gammaldi had called Emma. The driver and Duhamel were up front in the Surburban; Fox, Gammaldi and Brick were in the middle row, and two others—introduced by Duhamel only as Ivan and Luigi—were up back. The guys in the rear had the back window popped open and M4 assault rifles ready to rock.

  Gammaldi’s shirt was off. Brick cut four long strips of two-inch adhesive tape, each long enough to stretch from Gammaldi’s sternum around to his spine, to go directly over each fractured rib.

  “I was our HRT team’s deputy medic,” Brick said. “Done this plenty of times. Hold still.”

  “Oh man…” Gammaldi cringed in pain as Brick applied the tape.

  “Strappings should lessen the pain,” Brick said, placing a few additional pieces of tape on either side of the broken ribs, running parallel to one another. “It restricts movement of the area, which, believe me, is a good thing.”

  Gammaldi nodded. Fox smiled at his mate’s appearance.

  “How’s it feel?” Brick said. “Too tight?”

  “No, it’s not that,” he replied, “I’m just so fucking hungry!”

  They all laughed, and Gammaldi started coughing, tensing up with the pain of it.

  “If you feel like coughing, good,” Brick said. “Do it frequently. It’s going to hurt like a bitch, but it’ll prevent anything pooling in your lungs, which might cause pneumonia.”

  “Great…”

  67

  GORI, GEORGIA (EASTERN EUROPE)

  “I met Lachlan Fox about six months back,” Nix said to the GSR reporter. “He’s a good man.”

  “Yes, the best,” said Sara, a reporter from Russia who usually freelanced for the radio station, Echo of Moscow. “He’s helped out many of my friends in getting good journalism work outside Russia. Fox is probably the bravest reporter I’ve met, as smart as anyone out there and always wanting to know more.”

  “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” Nix said with a small smile. “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

  She looked at him, impressed.

  “What, you thought us soldiers were all dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy?”

  She smiled.

  “I’m sorry,” Nix said, squatting down next to the two women at the table. “You two were talking when I came over here…”

  Sara nodded and motioned to the young woman. “This is Anna. She has something to tell you. Go ahead, tell them what you just told me.”

 
“My brother,” said Anna. “He saw the men who shot at your people.”

  Nix glanced at Top; the Sergeant looked as if a breeze could blow him over.

  “Where is your brother?” Nix asked.

  “He won’t talk to you. He doesn’t trust you, and my mother—she fears reprisals. If she knew I was here…” Anna looked desperately from Nix to Sara, and back again.

  “And where is your mother?”

  “Our home is over the river.”

  “In South Ossetia?” Top asked.

  Anna nodded.

  Nix put a hand on the edge of the card table, spoke softly: “You’re sure he saw them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would he give you a description?”

  “My brother—he has a photo … a film.”

  “A photo?”

  “Video, I meant video,” she said. “He was taking a video of me to send for audition. He heard shooting and went out and filmed them—it’s at home. He is—he’s not like me, he thinks Russia will be better for our people. He’s too young to remember what they were like.”

  “Could you get me that video?”

  Anna shook her head. “They check me, us, at checkpoints—they’ll take it from me, they take everything that might have value … and I don’t want to go back there and then here again so soon.”

  Nix instinctively looked over at the Colonel who’d assigned him this reporter, but the senior officer was busy with a group of UN and French brass. He turned his attention back to the girl.

  “Anna, you’re an actress?”

  “Yes,” Anna said, smiling a little. “I am trying to be.” Her face hardened and she looked into Nix’s eyes. “They … they took my friend, the Russians, they took her on the first day. She’s my age, and we don’t know where she is. I don’t want them to get away with that, or this.”