Secret Skin

by Frank Coles

  'You be safer with me,' Viktor said, long sentences a struggle for the Eastern European.

  'Just relax,' Savage said, 'It's Ramadan is all.

  'Too quiet.'

  'They've broken fast. After twelve hours famine everyone's feasting, that's why the streets are empty. Didn't you hear the call?'

  'Course, yes.'

  'Then what's the problem?'

  Viktor loomed over Savage, almost shouted, 'You trust local, you have rock in head.'

  'What d'you know new boy?' Savage thrust his face into the big man's. 'Sit back and shut the fuck up. We are way off reservation here.'

  Andre gave Savage a look from the driver's seat, then lowered his voice. 'Sheeeitt, more likely stop and give him lessons if they hear his English. Seriously, why him?'

  'If we need extra rounds down one shooter's much the same as any other, present company excluded of course.'

  'No doubt, but there's plenty of solid operators back on base.'

  'Not my call. Consider it a proof of concept.'

  'Like he's the fucked up concept, now we need the fucked up proof?'

  'Nothing's going to happen. We check the intel, then we're out, minimal shaking it about. Keep him in the car, stay on the wheel, I'll do the rest.'

  'Understood.'

  Out of habit the two men slipped into a comfortable silence. Operational and alert. Eyes on the street.

  'I like to fight,' Viktor slammed a fist into his chest, 'Why you here?'

  'Oh, please lord,' Andre prayed, 'can you hook me up? We're going to need maximum insha'allah today.'

  The two men chuckled quietly.

  'What is joke?'

  'Your turn,' Savage said.

  'Son,' Andre leaned into the back of the battered old Nissan Patrol. 'That's great about the fighting and all, but you jump in every battle here then sooner, not later, you die. We're outnumbered, out-gunned and we don't have back up, ever. You understand?'

  'You black fucker,' he said, 'I understand, you are coward.'

  Andre turned to Savage. 'Does he even realize what he just said?'

  Savage shook his head. 'You want to kill him or shall I?'

  'I got a window in my schedule.'

  'Hell, do it back at base, no sense wasting ammo and having him stink up the place.'

  'Maybe someone'll do it for us.'

  Savage felt Viktor's grip on his shoulder. 'Ignore Kunta Kinte,' Viktor said. 'We are brothers, we go together.'

  'Touch me again,' Savage said, 'I'll break your fucking fingers.'

  The hand pulled away. Savage saw Viktor lean back and pretend he meant to look out the window all along.

  'I was ordered to bring you,' Savage said. 'Nobody said anything about bringing you back.' A sting in the man's eyes was all Savage needed to see. They went back to watching.

  Seconds trickled by, the sand in the mythical hourglass turned to molasses.

  'So, come on, why are you here?' Andre said, eyes scanning the street. 'You're not ex-mil', ex-cop. You ever going to tell me?'

  'I don't tell,' Savage said. 'You know that. Too much bragging and bullshit in the pit.'

  'Hey, I trust you with my life every day. You can't tell me, then who?' Savage raised an eyebrow. Andre jerked his chin to the street. 'We might die today.'

  'Fine.' Savage inhaled. 'I messed up, lost everything, some bad shit. Someone died. I had to leave.'

  A knowing smile. 'That it?'

  A nod. 'You?'

  'The pay is better than a corner boy, life expectancy higher.'

  'Seriously? Safer here than the states?'

  'On your side of the tracks maybe not. At least here there's usually a reason someone punches your ticket, back home, forget it.'

  Savage nodded. 'I hear you, this is reconstruction, not war.'

  Andre slapped Savage's knee. 'That him?'

  Fifty yards up the street, Savage saw a man out for a casual stroll after filling his belly. His sandals flip-flopped across the rubble from the shattered buildings. In this town, a stronghold for a variety of insurgent factions, the international relief effort stayed well away.

  'Nice threads,' Andre said. 'You pay well?'

  Savage shook his head.

  'What d'you use then? Religion?'

  Another shake.

  'Blackmail?'

  'Nah, protection,' Savage said. 'Worst case scenario, Kareem there brings his family to base, uses my name.'

  Kareem's next move took them all by surprise when, for someone so refined, he stuck a finger up his nose. A really good gouge, halfway to the knuckle.

  'That is disgusting.' Andre turned away, Viktor groaned, but the man had Savage's full attention.

  Kareem crossed to the other side of the quiet street where his sandal dropped off. He stopped and, with an exaggerated wobble, slipped the sandal back on, then walked away up the road.

  'You see that?' Savage said. Two head shakes. 'Pays not to be squeamish gents. Where he dropped his sandal, the doorway, that's the building.'

  'There's nothing left of it,' Andre said.

  'Let's just hope she's hiding out.'

  Savage opened the car door and stepped into the humid dusk air.

  The rubble scrunched underfoot when he left the side street where they'd parked and headed out onto the exposed T-junction. Even though Savage had always blended right in, and Kareem was the only other soul out there, he picked up the pace.

  A mid-Atlantic heritage gave Savage an easy-tan complexion. The full beard he'd grown added wisdom and maturity in local eyes. In more fundamentalist areas a clean shave and form-fitting western clothing simply meant gay. There you could find yourself dead in a ditch, mutilated, and with your arsehole glued shut. Local militias and cops liked to make a point.

  His every step echoed in the silent streets. He heard the happy sounds of focused mastication and small-talk from inside the houses, the start of the evening's various sittings for dinner. A dog howled nearby - one of the unclean, it would be dead by dawn.

  *

  The black man had eyes on Savage. Viktor scanned the streets of the dead town. Nobody in sight. He pulled out his phone, no signal, but he still had the files. He auto-logged-in to the offline system and opened them.

  A long list of names all in translucent green scrolled down the screen.

  The nominated and their best time for departure.

  The woman's name was in red. A success of a kind. But, like Savage and Andre, Viktor was here to pick up the pieces.

  'What are you doing?'

  Viktor looked up and met Andre's impassive stare.

  'Niggers should be seen, not heard,' Viktor said.

  Andre's eyes flared, every muscle in his face tensed.

  Viktor smiled at Andre. Any other time, he knew there'd be blood.

  'Later on,' Andre pointed his finger at Viktor, 'you and me.'

  Then Andre turned back to the job.

  Viktor smiled. He didn't even believe any of that name-calling race nonsense. But it was always too easy to find the right button to push.

  *

  Savage ducked in through the open doorway, the hinges still hung in the door frame. The darkness inside a relief from the sticky humidity.

  He saw little more than a single room, rubble blocked the opening to the upper floor. He stepped further in. His eyes adjusted to the light, but there was nothing obvious. Unsure what to look for, he knew that working the room end to end, then side to side, would give him everything there was. He took his time.

  It had once been a family room. The remnants of floor-level cushions lay in tattered pieces amongst smashed crockery and the torn, trampled, pages of a Koran. The toe of a shoe stuck out of the rubble in the corner. He headed straight for it when he glimpsed the pale white skin inside.

  A tatty shawl loaded with wood and rubble covered the rest of the body. He moved the larger pieces and then pulled the shawl back. The body was clean, untampered with, and seemingly at ease. But he couldn't see her face.
r />   He moved deeper into the quickening gloom. Dusk is never a slow process near the equator, the sun races for the horizon and drags the darkness behind it.

  In the shadows he picked out matted fair hair beneath more rubble. He grabbed it and pulled up the decapitated head, shook it off, then turned it round. A familiar face from the idiot box looked back. The kind of make up only news anchors could get away with. The hair was thick and tacky with blood, eyes windows to nothing, the lips slurred.

  He reached under his baggy Souhayl shirt for the satellite phone in his waist band. Loose-fitting Muslim modesty provided plenty of room for concealment. He compared the mug shot he had on the phone. The dimples, the cute mole below her left eye.

  He opened a text message and wrote:

  Contact Alpha-1 confirmed.

  Alpha down, 2-pieces.

  Action?

  He pressed send. The message used encryption, the receiver would read it with a shared pass-key and respond immediately. Out of habit he used the military shorthand for radio contact that his mentor had taught him. Not code as such, just generic and simple enough that without context nobody would really know what he said.

  Savage forced himself to relax, then shivered. Told himself it was the night air, not the prospect of how he could end up if he ever let his cover slip.

  She still wore a desert side-bag, remainder army kit the hacks liked so much. Made them look like Indiana Jones. Whoever had killed her hadn't shown any interest in it. They also hadn't asked for a ransom. And she hadn't been molested.

  So why did they kill her?

  He should wait for a response before acting, stick to the mission brief. But, what the hell, it was his job to be nosey. He unclipped the bag-strap and pulled it from her body.

  It contained tampons, an empty water bottle, pens, pen-drive, a voice recorder and a notebook. He flipped open the book and went to the marker on the last page. He saw the name of a company he knew all too well. Then the light to read by disappeared.

  He heard the rack of an AK47's bolt.

  'Stand up,' an Arabic dialect. 'What are you doing here?'

  'Please, I was walking past, I saw the body-' Savage said, in a scared, clipped imitation of the local accent.

  'Turn around.'

  He held his head down in submission, avoided eye contact, bag still in hand.

  'What is this?' The speaker jabbed the gun barrel in Savage's chest as a second man pushed past him into the room 'Give me the bag,' the speaker said.

  The second man moved to Savage's left, his AK pointing away. The speaker grabbed the bag, turned it over and dropped the contents on the floor.

  'You killed her for this?'

  'No', Savage said.

  'You killed her, then you robbed her.'

  He dropped the bag and took aim at Savage.

  'No. Look again. Do I have a sword?'

  Both men saw the head. Their guns drifted away for a moment.

  Savage recognized their clothing, not a uniform as such, local militia. The second man sighed and heaved his shoulders, tired, he probably just wanted to go home to a family and a feast.

  'You could still have killed her.' The speaker's eyes scanned the room. 'Where are your accomplices?'

  'I have none,' Savage said. 'Please, there is not even any blood, she wasn't killed here.'

  'So you dumped the body. Who are you?'

  A question Savage didn't want to answer.

  The satellite phone on his waist chirped once then vibrated. Both men glanced down, then shoved their guns in his face.

  Looking down the barrel of two AKs Savage remembered how their vicious rounds would burst inside then ricochet until they caused more damage than you could treat, rupturing organs, splintering bones, gouging cavities.

  The first time he'd used one in training he'd dropped the magazine. The banana shaped load-technique had eluded him then. It seemed so long ago.

  The phone chirped and vibrated a second time.

  'Give it to me,' the speaker said.

  Savage pulled the shirt up with his left hand, then reached into the pocket where he'd stashed it with his right. He pulled it out a little way.

  'A sat phone,' the speaker said.

  'I'm a trader.' Savage waited for permission to continue. 'Please?'

  The speaker nodded. Savage threw the phone to him. The speaker took his right hand off the trigger to catch it.

  Savage grabbed the barrel of the second man's AK and pushed it away from his own face.

  His other hand went to the covert holster in his waistband. Cortisol and adrenalin fired into his bloodstream, compressing time.

  Savage watched his right hand come up and double-tap the speaker in the face.

  The second man squeezed the trigger of the AK. Savage held on. The noise in the closed room like a hammer to the head. Savage pulled his right arm back, punched out to the left. Two more rounds shuddered through flesh and bone and the second man jerked back.

  Savage yanked the weapon away, the barrel searing his hand. Only then did the noise stop.

  Still alive, Savage breathed in and savored the feeling.

  The ringing in his ears peaked, the burr of white noise cascaded down into normal sound. His senses still heightened he heard Andre read his mind and start the car.

  Noise travels on empty streets.

  Savage looked around, picked up the bag and stuffed the contents back in. Then remembered that wasn't why he was there. He pulled the sat phone from the speaker's twitching hand - the man's good catch had cost him his life.

  The message said:

  Secure.

  Mobile Return.

  Damn. Retrieve the body? With all the attention the shooting would bring?

  He unconsciously reloaded his pistol and stashed the phone, then grabbed the head by the hair and walked to the car when it pulled up outside.

  *

  People were already on the streets. One or two on mobile phones, children running. Any one of them lookouts, giving advance notice of their route.

  They kept their pace even and heads down through the back streets. Savage watched Andre on the wheel - a first suicide battalion original. It had been their job to advance the front in Operation Iraqi Freedom. They drove at high speed into Iraqi towns cannons blazing, killed as many shooters as possible, then drove out the other side and onto the next town. The child of Generation Kill now a man, he had a subtle sheen of sweat on his brow, could have been driving to the mall any hot Saturday afternoon.

  Movement in the back seat. 'Hurry the fuck up, nigg-'

  Savage twisted back, drilled his eyes into Viktor's baby blues, and resisted the urge to use his gun again. Viktor leered. Savage held the man's eyes for a beat then turned away.

  Neither man spoke up front. They didn't need to, they'd planned the route out beforehand, Savage scanned left and right, checked mirrors. Nobody followed. A good sign.

  In the small town, rife with militias and in-fighting, going from one block to another could be like straying onto the wrong gang turf, and, despite what the maps said, road layouts changed overnight. But taking the main drag would have meant a gauntlet of families, firearms and five times a day prayer.

  Savage wondered if the torturers and prison guards got some of their ideas from religion. What is a stress position if not controlling when worshippers eat or starve and interrupting their sleep patterns? He knew there were as many contradictions back home. Good people came in all sizes, shapes, colors and creeds - so did the bad.

  The buildings started to thin out near the edge of the town. The only road in or out crossed what had been the town's main bridge. Now, just a raised bank across a dry wadi liable to wash away come the rains.

  They turned onto the last stretch of main road. Andre pulled the car over at a haphazard angle - a local just deciding which way to go.

  On the bridge two cars blocked the near end and two more on the far side, six armed men visible.

  'What d'you think?' Andre said
.

  'If I didn't still have this,' Savage pulled the woman's decapitated head out from between his legs 'we could have bluffed our way through. Add our glow-white friend in the back seat and we are way out of luck.

  'That's what we're here for?' Andre grimaced at their prize.

  'Yup.'

  'Shit.' Andre tilted his head towards the bridge. 'You up for this?'

  Savage pulled his Bulgarian AK74SU out from the side well and racked the bolt.

  'Viktor?' Savage said.

  The sound of Viktor's long being racked was all Savage needed to hear. Andre did the same, and jammed his AK74 beside him.

  Andre set off at a steady pace. A man behind the first line of cars stepped out and waved them down. Savage and Andre controlled their breathing, slow and steady. Viktor made noises like a bull.

  Andre glanced at Savage.

  'Get in,' he said.

  Andre floored the accelerator. A frozen moment later the car gained traction and shot forward.

  The man raised his weapon. Savage aimed through the windscreen. Controlled bursts of three.

  A pock-pock of blood and the man lifted off his feet.

  Viktor leant out of the window and blasted away on full-auto, emptied a mag into the car ahead. Savage's second target went down with another controlled burst.

  Savage took a third man, then couldn't see through the wind-shield for bullet holes as they smashed into the front line of cars, momentum crunched them through.

  The car bounced around, Andre brought it under control and revved the low gears. The Nissan groaned with the effort.

  Bullets strafed the car missing each of them by fractions.

  'Brace,' Andre said. Savage grabbed the handrail. They smashed into the next line of cars and the impact slowed them to a dead stop.

  Empty desert beckoned ahead.

  Three men left Savage calculated, one behind, one either side. He aimed past Viktor's head and shot through each window in turn.

  Andre changed down and scraped a path between the bonnets.

  A burst of fire, the car lurched down to the left.

  'Tire,' Andre said.

  'Keep moving.'

  The car crept forward. So did the men behind them for a better line of sight.