The Protector

by Duncan Falconer

  He stepped into the outer room and crossed to the front door to listen. The only sound was a distant rumble but the urge to get out of the building consumed him.

  Mallory hurried back into the small room, grabbed an empty sandbag, shoved several AK47 magazines - loaded and unloaded - into it, picked up the assault rifle he’d selected and his helmet and looked down at the box of money. It suggested to him more than anything else in the room that the owners could return any time. Nobody would leave that amount of money unattended for long, certainly not these people to whom it was worth ten times its western value. At the same time he found it impossible to simply walk away from that amount of cash.

  He had at least to satisfy a nagging curiosity. He put down his hardware booty, sat back down in front of the box, picked up a bundle of notes and riffled swiftly through it. A rough calculation put the bundle at ten thousand dollars and there were ten bundles per stack and eleven stacks. Mallory whistled softly to himself as he realised he was staring at over a million US dollars - worth well over five hundred thousand pounds, more than he could earn in the Marines if he stayed in for the next twenty years.

  Mallory got to his feet, his stare fixed on the treasure, and wondered how a person could have the worst and best luck in his life all in one day. That was so typical for him, though, he thought. In this case each sort of cancelled the other out, leaving him with a fat zero and the rest of the day still to go. Even if he were to take the money, and assuming that all went well with the rescue, the first thing he would be asked about would be the contents of the box. And once declared, there was no doubt about how much he would be allowed to take home with him: none of it, since it was war loot and hence illegal.

  But on the other hand he could take a little if he hid it on his person. So he stuffed one bundle into a thigh pocket, another into a breast pocket which was only barely big enough - and then he stopped himself. Greed simply increased the chance of discovery. After his rescue Mallory would be escorted to the hospital where he would have to discard his clothing. He could probably secure one bundle but more would be pushing it. It all depended on so many things: being left alone for even a few seconds before he was examined; his clothes being taken away once he was in hospital garb; finding somewhere in the examination room to hide the bundle so that he could retrieve it later. He knew he was probably being too paranoid but it worried him nevertheless.

  A noise outside startled him and he drew his pistol, grabbed up the bag, AK47 and helmet, carefully pushed the concealing sheet aside and moved stealthily across the room to the door. There was no follow-up to the sound, the source of which was unclear, but it was yet another warning to get out of there as soon as possible.

  As Mallory placed a hand on the door to open it he paused and looked back towards the storeroom. There was one possible low-risk solution to keeping the money that was admittedly a long shot but better than simply walking away and eternally regretting that he had not given it a go. He was already succumbing to peer pressure, imagining some of the names he would be called by the lads back home if he told them how he had found a cool million and then just walked away from it.

  Mallory reached into a pouch, pulled out his GPS and turned it on. A message window declared it was searching for satellites and he turned it off, satisfied that it was working. He weighed the pros and cons of his hastily thought-out plan and the pros came out on top, no doubt enhanced by thoughts of a fancy new house with a pool, a new car, et cetera. Enough, he told himself. He could daydream later, which was another positive aspect of the plan since it gave him something more to look forward to, not that the prospect of survival wasn’t encouraging enough.

  He pocketed the GPS, placed his helmet, AK47 and bag on the floor by the door and went back into the storeroom.

  He took the bundle poking out of his breast pocket, tossed it back into the box, leaving the one in his thigh pocket, closed the lid and picked it up to test its weight. It was heavy but manageable. The problem was that he would need his hands free to hold his gun. He scanned around the room, found a length of old nylon rope that appeared to have the strength for the job and threaded it through the handles at either end of the box, tying it off to form a loop. He bent forward, placed the line over his head, stood up, moved the box around so that it hung low across his back and tested it. It was not perfect and would annoy the hell out of him but it was worth a try.

  The urge to get out of the building was now overpowering. Mallory went back to the front door, took up his Kalashnikov and bag, elected not to wear his helmet at that moment since it impeded his hearing, clipped it around the nylon line by the chin strap, took his pistol from its holster and opened the door.

  He crossed the yard and checked inside the opposite building. There was a partially open door at the far side and he crossed the dirt floor towards it.

  The door led onto a street and Mallory carefully looked out and checked in both directions. A man was on the road in the distance but far enough away not to be an immediate threat. Otherwise it looked clear. Mallory focused on the entrance to an alleyway directly opposite and, holding the box in place with the same hand that was holding the bag and AK, his pistol in the other, he moved off.

  Mallory wasn’t far along the alleyway when the difficulties he had expected to have carrying his load became a reality. He paused long enough to undo the helmet, drop it to the ground, and kick some rubble over it. Then he moved on.

  Halfway along the alley he ducked through a gap between the houses, stepping around what looked like an old generator to arrive at a corner where he stopped. In front of him was a large expanse of open ground, marked with the rudimentary boundaries and goal-posts of a football pitch, whose perimeter was lined by brick buildings, many of them two-storey. A few metres away in a corner of the waste ground was a flimsy wooden shed that looked as if it had been built to keep animals. He needed somewhere to wait until dark; he didn’t fancy backtracking and since he couldn’t risk moving in the open any more it was the only option he felt he had.

  Mallory moved towards it at the crouch, eyes checking in every direction while the box swung awkwardly behind him. He ducked inside the rickety construction.

  The dirt floor was covered in old palm leaves and the ceiling was not high enough for him to stand upright. He dropped to his knees, quickly removed the line from around his neck and moved to the back of the hut to watch the direction he had come from in case he had been followed.The smell and the absence of any man-made implements suggested that animals had probably been the hut’s last occupants. Mallory remained still for several minutes, listening intently to the local sounds, until his breathing returned to normal.

  A glance at his wristwatch told him he had at least another hour before the sun began to set and probably an hour more until it was really dark. He couldn’t remember if there was a moon or not that night but it didn’t matter. He was moving out whatever happened.

  Mallory quickly set about his next task and emptied the contents of the sandbag onto the floor. He quietly unloaded two old AK47 magazines and one by one pushed the bullets into the ones that were in better condition. Once they were loaded he firmly pressed a magazine into its housing on the weapon until it clicked home. Then, pulling the working parts to the rear, he controlled the return spring, letting the breech-block slide forward to push a bullet out of the magazine and into the breech. He could not allow the return spring to fly forward as normal because of the noise it would make and so the breech had not seated properly and he spent a couple of minutes working it into place. Once he had the AK47 properly loaded he left the safety catch off and rested the gun across his lap - not normal safe practice as he was taught but this wasn’t a normal situation, alone and unsupported.

  His ears gradually tuned to the noises that surrounded him, far and near, and he leaned back against the wall that moved a little under his weight but held firm. He stretched out his legs. The pain in his foot had eased and Mallory’s thoughts drifted home to Plymou
th and to the apartment he had shared with Jenny, his girlfriend, until she’d dumped him for a policeman two days before Mallory left for Iraq. Her reason for leaving after two and a half years together was that she did not want to live with someone who was not home every night. He knew the real reason was that she didn’t fancy him any more. If she had loved him she wouldn’t have left. But then, the truth was that he didn’t love her. He couldn’t have or it would have been more painful than it had been. It made him wonder why he had lived with Jenny in the first place. But there had been some good times - in fact, it had all been quite good for him. Clearly not for her, though. But at that moment she would have been nice to come home to.

  Mallory exhaled heavily as he checked his watch, calculating that it was three p.m. back in England. It was also Sunday and the lads would be watching football down the pub. What he wouldn’t give to be with them at that moment, having a pint and a fish-and-chip lunch covered in tomato sauce and salt and vinegar. His mouth was dry as paper and thoughts like that only made it worse. He forced himself to think of something else.

  A sudden noise took care of that. He pointed the Kalashnikov at the hut opening and his ears focused on the sound. It came again, like a tapping noise but not in any kind of rhythm. It seemed to be coming from the direction he had arrived from and was getting closer.

  Mallory placed the butt of the weapon against his shoulder as the noise stopped. When it started again Mallory leaned forward onto one knee, both of his eyes open and looking down the length of the rifle, the pad of his index finger resting lightly on the trigger.

  Something came into view below the end of the barrel and he dropped the front sight enough to see the shadowy outline of a goat. The animal continued out of the alley, oblivious to Mallory’s presence, and ambled towards the hut where it stopped in the entrance.

  Mallory and the goat stared at each other as if each of them was waiting to see who would make the first move. Mallory exhaled slowly in relief and as he lowered the rifle the goat turned on its hooves and trotted away, flustered that its planned rest in the cover of the shed had been thwarted.

  Mallory felt suddenly exhausted by yet another shot of adrenalin and he realised that his hands were shaking. The fear of being stuck in a place where anyone who saw him would kill him or alert others who could was getting to him.The million dollars and the comforts it could buy gave him no pleasure at that moment and he wished the damned Tornado pilot had not been shot down.

  He leaned back as Mac’s last words in the chopper popped into his head - something about a rendezvous with death - and wondered why the man had brought it up at such a moment.

  Mallory closed his eyes, let his ears monitor the outside and waited in silence as darkness fell. Eventually he could hardly see the spot where the goat had first appeared.

  He crept outside quietly, carrying the box, leaving the empty magazines and the sandbag behind. There were no street lights and only a handful of the houses had lights inside, faint orangey-yellow glows from kerosene lamps. The southern sky was a dull orange, silhouetting the rooftops as if a large fire was burning, but it could also have been the lights of the US military base around Baghdad airport. Mallory considered walking in that direction. It was not more than thirty kilometres away and he could cover the ground by the morning. But that would mean heading through the middle of Fallujah - or going around its perimeter, since he was near the northern edge of the town. Either way, it was not a good idea. He could end up a victim of either side.

  Mallory looped the line attached to the box over his head, got to his feet and headed across the waste ground, keeping his distance from the dark, silent, dried-mud dwellings.

  His foot throbbed but Mallory ignored it. This was the final phase of his operation, with luck, and he hoped sincerely that the next time he fell asleep would be in the safety of his camp. His basic plan was to make his way out of the town and find a deserted patch of ground large enough for a helicopter to land on and where he could establish communications and activate his beacon. From what he could remember of the terrain, a mile or so should see him well north of the town and in farmland. The moon had not yet shown itself and there was a slight breeze.The temperature had dropped, making conditions as good as he could expect, for which he was thankful. If he needed to run he would have to dump the money but that was part of the deal he had made with himself.

  Ten minutes later, moving carefully and then only after frequent pauses to look and listen, Mallory came to a low wall and went to ground as much to rest as to check the route ahead. An inspection over the wall revealed that he was at the boundary of a cemetery. It was difficult to tell how large it was: the awkward, tilted headstones and ragged flags moving gently on poles filled the view.

  Mallory lifted the box over the wall and crouched on the other side. The box was a complete pain, not just its weight and awkwardness but the metallic noise it made every time it touched something solid, a sound that carried a long way on the night air.

  The cemetery seemed an ideal place to cross as the odds on meeting anyone there at such a late hour were slim. However, there was a risk of being silhouetted due to the lack of background and tall structures: the majority of the graves were bordered by low concrete rectangular frames, and he would have to keep low.

  Mallory set off among the graves at a crouch but after several metres he lost his footing and the box scraped loudly against a gravestone. He lay flat and took a moment to listen, worried not only that he had been heard but also that the accident had every chance of being repeated. The graves were close together and it was so dark that stumbling as he walked in such an awkward way was unavoidable.

  Then Mallory had a thought. The cemetery could be the ideal location to hide his booty. He had originally planned to bury the box somewhere near his pick-up point simply because if it was quiet enough to serve that purpose it would also be an ideal spot to dig a hole. But the bigger problem at the moment was getting to that location undetected.

  He put down the box and sat on the edge of a grave to give the matter some serious thought. Burying the money inside a grave might work - but then, there was a chance that it could be visited in the near future and the freshly turned earth would attract suspicion. Mallory looked down at the narrow path he had been following between the graves and it struck him as actually a highly unlikely place to dig a new grave. Therefore it just might be the perfect place to bury something so that it would not be discovered.

  Mallory pushed a finger into the earth. It wasn’t too firm. He placed the ammunition box on a grave, set his rifle against it, removed his penknife from its pouch, opened it and shoved the blade into the soil. It sank in easily. He carved out a rectangle slightly larger than the box and began to scrape away the topsoil, placing it in a pile to one side.

  Mallory was soon frustrated with the small amount of earth he was shifting and he searched around for a better digging implement. A can with a couple of plastic flowers in it was resting on a nearby headstone. He put the flowers to one side and used the tin as a shovel. Several minutes later he’d dug a substantial hole. He compared its depth with the height of the box. Ideally the top needed to be at least a foot below the surface. After a pause to look around and listen he pressed on.

  A minute later Mallory had dug a considerably deeper hole, although now stones began to obstruct his efforts. He discarded the can and pulled the stones out by hand, decided he’d gone deep enough, picked up the box and lowered it inside. It lay at a slant, its highest point nine inches from the top, which Mallory reckoned was good enough. He dragged the loose soil back into the hole with his hands.When he had created a slight mound he got to his feet and, stamping as hard as he dared, used his weight to level it off. Then he spread the remaining soil around, depositing the stones further away.

  As a final touch he shuffled up and down the path, trying to obscure any traces of his efforts on the surface for several metres in both directions. It was difficult to tell in the darkness how suc
cessful this operation had been and he would never know until the day he came back to retrieve the box. And God only knew when - or if - that day would come.

  Mallory put the plastic flowers back in the can, placed it back on the headstone, wiped his hands on his thighs and removed his GPS from its pouch on his belt. As he turned it on he covered the small glowing screen and scanned around while he waited for the device to acquire the local satellites. A screen message eventually indicated this had been achieved and was followed by a display showing his position in latitude and longitude. He hit the ‘man overboard’ button and went through the menu to select the ‘save’ option. It asked him to provide a name and he paused to consider the request. He wanted something memorable but not obvious to anyone who might come across it and as he considered several possible names the word rendezvous popped into his head. He counted the letters on his fingers, ten being the maximum number of characters he could use, and since the word fitted perfectly he punched them in and saved it to the memory chip before turning off the instrument. He placed it back in its pouch, picked up his weapon and, after a final check around, headed between the graves towards the northern boundary wall, feeling relieved at having rid himself of his main burden.

  Mallory saw a tarmac road on the other side of some waste ground beyond the low wall that marked the northern edge of the cemetery and took a moment to watch and listen. The only sounds were distant booms from the direction of Baghdad accompanied by flashes of light but ahead was total blackness. He climbed over the wall and moved down a slight incline and onto the waste ground, looking left and right as he dodged across the narrow road before picking up speed on reaching the other side. He carried on without slowing down and covered several hundred metres before he stopped and lay down near what appeared to be a motorway running across his way ahead. He remembered a major artery north of the town, a road that ran from Baghdad to the Jordanian border, and then the sound of a distant vehicle reached his ears and he looked east to see a pair of flickering headlights in the distance.