‘Munitions?’
‘No. Totally inert cargo.’
‘Weight?’
‘Approximately two tons.’
‘Coke? Heroin?’
‘No. Nothing like that.’
‘Why us?’
‘Like I say. Salvage. Less people involved the better.’
‘Grand a day?’
‘Up front. Guaranteed. After that: partners. A cut of whatever we find.’
‘And how much is that likely to be?’
‘Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands.’
Lucy uncapped a pen and wrote her cellphone number across the cover of an old Stars and Stripes, digits scrawled across Saddam’s forehead.
‘I’ll give you guys some space to think it over. Call me, all right? Let’s make some money.’
Gaunt and Raphael watched them leave.
‘Fucking bitch.’
‘But three thousand bucks, Ese. We’re hurting. Everyone is getting rich but us.’
‘You can leave anytime you want,’ said Gaunt. ‘You don’t like the way I run things, you don’t like the calls, then walk out the door.’
Lucy headed for Baghdad. The city viewed through a spider web crack in the windshield.
Amanda killed country tunes from Freedom 107FM and slotted Cypress Hill into the dash. ‘Ain’t Going Out Like That’. She turned up the volume. Lucy turned it down.
Lucy checked the rear-view. Locals kept clear. They pulled back, swerved to let the GMC pass. Provisional Order Seventeen. Paul Bremner’s decree. Civilian security contractors were immune from prosecution. A licence to kill.
‘Who next?’ asked Amanda.
‘No one,’ said Lucy. ‘We take the Hueys.’
‘Did I miss something? Gaunt told us to fuck off.’
‘He’s desperate. I could smell it. Three thousand dollars. Sooner or later, he’ll swallow his pride and call.’
‘What’s the story with you and him?’
‘Fallujah. Couple of years back. Woman runs in front of our Warrior. Nearly got crushed flat. Babbling something about her family. Said a squad of US marines kicked down the door of her house, went berserk. I had to testify at the tribunal. They’re doing a long stretch at Miramar Brig.’
‘Gaunt?’
‘He had a good lawyer.’
Gaunt fetched food from the terminal commissary, last in the queue as the canteen closed for the night. Enchiladas boxed in styrofoam. He walked back along the service road. The moonlit airfield was silent and still. Curfew. No flights until sunrise.
He entered the hangar side door. Darkness.
‘Hey. Raph. Chow time.’
His voice echoed through the vaulted storeroom.
He walked to a pool of light. Stacked crates for a table. A bottle of bourbon and a checkers board.
‘Raph?’
One of Raphael’s shitty Balmoral cigars lay smouldering on the concrete floor.
Gaunt put the food on the table, drew his Colt and quickly backed into shadow.
He slid along the hangar wall. He took a Maglite from his pocket.
The guard dog was dead. Sasha. Head on a paw like she had fallen asleep. Right eye blown out. Someone threw jerky and shot her in the face as she chewed.
He slid back along the wall and found the side door. Closed and padlocked. Someone shut him in.
Gaunt crouched. An entire battalion quarter of a mile away in the terminal building. Must be some way to raise the alarm.
He fired four shots at the roof. Metallic roar. Muzzle-flash lit the hangar like lightning.
He stood panting in the dark. Let it be gangsters. Some militia come to rip-off his stock.
His old commanding officer always said: ‘Don’t let religious fucks take you hostage.’ He showed the platoon execution footage. An al-Qaeda video. Shitty jihadi music. Mujahideen council logo. Guys wearing bandoliers and hoods. They stood behind some poor bastard in an orange jumpsuit. He looked drugged, emaciated. ‘Allahu Akbar.’ One of the captors un-sheathed a knife, gripped the man’s head and sawed through his neck. The dying man squealed like a pig. ‘Fucking Abdul motherfuckers. Fucking savages. Go down fighting, gentlemen. Do not let this happen to you.’
Gaunt looked across the hangar. His desk. The lamp cast a small cone of light. His phone lay on top of a Playboy.
He crept towards the desk. He snatched the phone and ran into shadow. He crouched against crates. The laminate security pass round his neck had the guardhouse number printed on the reverse. He thumbed the keypad.
He held the phone to his ear. Dial tone. Someone jammed a stun baton in the small of his back and shocked him paralytic.
They tied him to folding chair with plastic tuff-ties. Two buzz-cut goons and a young guy in a blazer.
‘Where’s Raphael?’ asked Gaunt.
‘I believe one of my colleagues is keeping him company.’
The guy examined a pallet of boxes. He lifted a cardboard flap. A novelty alarm clock. A white plastic mosque. He pressed a minaret. A squeak of tinny Arabian music. He threw the clock aside without comment.
The guy sat on a crate. Preppy. Slicked hair, polished loafers. Thin, precise, reptilian. He read one of Gaunt’s pamphlets.
‘Falcon Logistics. A leading international logistics corporation with extensive experience assisting government and non-government agencies with the supply of defence matériel. Is this the scope of your ambition? Scratching a living, war zone to war zone, selling bullets by the handful to child soldiers, cartels, Shi’ite death squads?’
‘Building contacts.’
The guy held up Gaunt’s academy ring. Fourteen-carat gold. Fire agate.
‘You must be a little frustrated at your current situation.’
‘I wanted to work for myself.’
‘Fallujah. Operation Vigilante Resolve.’
‘I was innocent.’
‘You were acquitted of the rape charge. The summary court martial found you guilty of maltreatment towards detainees and dereliction of duty. You lost two ranks and four months’ pay. You received an administrative discharge soon after.’
Gaunt didn’t reply.
‘I understand. You dedicated your life to the Corps. You expected some kind of affirmation, some kind of reward. Instead, here you are, orphaned and alone.’
‘I’m doing okay.’
Gaunt’s parents thought he was still in the Marines. They sent letters. They watched for him on TV. Said they were proud of the way he and his boys were confronting America’s enemies overseas.
‘My name is Koell. Have you seen me before?’
‘Once. At the Rasheed.’
‘Then you know who I am.’
Gaunt and Raphael had been sipping umbrella drinks in the Scheherazade Bar.
‘Who’s the kid with the phone?’ asked Gaunt.
Koell was sitting alone by the pool, talking into a sat phone, shielding his mouth in case someone read his lips.
‘Black ops.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’ve seen his kind before. I was out in Liberia. This was years back. Good times. We had a workshop at the edge of Monrovia. Gangs would bring fucked up Landcruisers. We would weld a heavy weapons mount, turn them into battle-wagons. They paid us in uncut diamonds.
‘One day this kid from a missionary station drops by and tells me he has something to sell. Said it came down in a mangrove swamp one night. A falling star. Lit up the sky. Manmade. Some kind of engine pod. A spherical fuel tank with isolator valves. Thing was half melted. I told him I would swing by in a few days.
‘The station was in Grand Bassa. Rainforest. Shitty roads. I was delivering a truckload of .50 cal to some local warlord. You know the type. Mirror shades. Pimp jewellery. All swagger. Fucking idiot.
‘I drove to the missionary station on the way back. I liked the kid. I liked the nuns. I heard a bunch of them had fallen ill. I was going to take them cigarettes from the city. Good currency. They could use them to trade.