Death in the Kingdom (36 page)

‘Chekhov!' I snarled, letting the button go. There was a pause of perhaps five or six seconds.

‘Mr Swann … So nice to talk … to you … at long last.' The voice was strange, very strange. ‘On our first meeting … you were very impolite … Mr Swann … You shot at me … from a great range … and you … killed my wife and my son … That was not … a nice thing … to do.' I couldn't place the voice as I tried to remember the sound references I'd heard but that had been, at best, very distorted surveillance recordings. On those recordings the voice had been big, a bear of a voice for a bear of a man. But this was different. This voice was high-pitched and stilted, broken by uneven pauses, and there was a light, almost breathless quality to it. Chekhov sounded like an asthmatic fighting for breath. ‘We never did … meet face to … face. I would … like to remedy that.' The talk button was released. It was my turn to talk but to say what?

‘What do you suggest?' I replied. ‘Come on up to my hill top, why don't you?'

I released the button and waited. The man was laughing when he came back on air. The thin wheezing sound was like that of a kiddy cartoon character.

‘You have … Mr Somsak and … some friends of … his … with you …' It wasn't a question. ‘I would prefer … just you and I … to meet. That … would be most … interesting.' The button at his end was released. I was fighting to suppress my anger, and I was failing, badly.

‘Stop fucking around Chekhov. You're down below somewhere, and you have a plan. What do you want to do?' I snarled.

‘Yes, Mr Swann … I have a … plan … You start … walking down … the road from the hill … I will start … from the bottom … village … and we will meet in the middle.' Chekhov clicked off the transmit button.

‘Fine,' I snapped. ‘Your choice of weapon?' I was prepared to give him that to ensure he did his part. I wanted him that badly.

‘Knives, Mr Swann … you might have … gathered that I like … knives … cane knives … You bring a … cane knife … I bring … a cane knife … and then … we see who is the … man who … walks away … You agree?'

‘I agree,' I snapped. ‘I'll start walking at 10:00. Just me and my knife.'

‘I will also start walking … at 10:00 … just me … and my knife,' Chekhov replied with a wheezing chuckle. ‘No one else … Mr Swann … just … you and me.'

‘Just you and me, Chekhov,' I released the transmit button and stood with the walkie-talkie in my hand. I looked down at it for a moment before lobbing it into the jungle below.

‘You going with a cane knife?' Alex asked.

‘Yes,' I replied. There was no alternative and I wanted him. I would have gone naked into hell for a chance at Chekhov.

‘You can't trust him,' Karl was saying.

‘I don't. I want cover, a bullet-proof vest and I'll be carrying a gun as well.'

‘Let's get back to the map,' Alex suggested. This was the game he knew best, I would concede that. Right at that moment in time I wasn't thinking as clearly as I might have been. Hate and fear combined were messing up my ability to think logically and rationally. Alex was a trained pro and he wasn't personally involved. Because his emotions weren't in play his perspective was a damned sight clearer than mine.

Karl and I fell in behind the Special Forces man and started back to our HQ. Alex looped us wide around the hut where Sami was still grieving over his lost child. I knew that when those sounds of grief stopped, my old friend would emerge ready for war.

Back inside the command post the satellite map was spread on a table. Alex spent ten seconds looking down at it, then his thick finger tapped a position on the map. ‘You stop here where the river comes closest to the track. We'll have four in the bush here in close support.' Alex indicated an arc in the jungle on the opposite side of the track to the river. You get into trouble, hit the water. Looks like its deep enough and there's a bank for cover.'

I glanced at my watch. It was 09:00. There wasn't a lot of time on our side. Alex was calling some of his men in. They arrived in a matter of minutes and grouped around the map. The Special Forces boss laid out the ambush. Then he turned to me. ‘Keep your headset on throughout. We need a go word,' he said as he started out to see to his squad.

‘Pizza,' I replied, thinking of Chekhov's ruined face. ‘I say that and it's all on.'

‘Okay,' he agreed, then he was gone. A couple of minutes later and the big boys were off to war. Four of The A Team started for the track off the plateau which had been stripped down for action. They were in pairs. One in each pair carried a modified M16, the other a silenced H&K MP5 in addition to his personal armament. There were canteens, a LAW each and loaded ammunition pouches. Jungle camouflage paint covered any naked flesh. They were gone in a minute.

‘Chekhov's probably got people already in position,' I said to Alex.

‘We're counting on it,' a voice replied in my earpiece. It wasn't Alex who spoke. I hadn't realised the unit was in full send-and-receive mode. I flicked it back a notch. I didn't want to hear this show take place.

‘X-Ray, the guys on the thermal imager are already registering hits. Chekhov maybe didn't count on that,' Karl explained. ‘This is the latest technology and far, far better than anything the Soviets had or have. So even if Chekhov has imagers, which I doubt, they're shit compared to this puppy. X-Ray will direct our recon teams in on them. If all of Chekhov's guys are above ground without thermal shielding or not hidden in folds in the terrain, we've got them cold. We just need time to get onto them.'

‘Great,' I said with feeling. That was good news. I thanked God for Uncle Sam's technocrats.

‘The rest of the squad will stay here and hold the hill,' Karl said. ‘I still don't trust Chekhov to do what he says he'll do.'

‘Neither do I,' I replied with more than a little conviction in my voice. Chekhov's word wasn't even a consideration in my book. ‘Let's set me up so I can do exactly the opposite to what I said,' I added.

‘You going to shoot him if you get close enough?'

‘You fucking bet on it,' I promised. ‘You've seen what this bastard can do with a knife.' It was focused now. A razor sharp, heavy-bladed cane knife could take out bone and muscle with ease. That was obviously what Chekhov had used on all of his victims. I knew without a doubt he'd killed them all simply because, as I'd defined days before, this whole thing was totally personal as far as he was concerned. As it was for me then, for that matter! It couldn't get any more personal.

Then I remembered something that made me chuckle. Karl was looking at me as if I'd tossed my last marble out of the crib. Once again in a moment of stress my mind had wandered, seeking something, anything to take off some of the heat and keep me sane. ‘Recall a scene in an Indiana Jones movie,' I asked Karl, ‘where this dervish comes at Harrison Ford waving a sword in each hand?'

‘Yeah,' replied Karl. ‘Old Indy pops him.'

‘That's me, buddy. I get close enough, he gets it in the head.' I promised.

‘Someone once said never take a knife to a gunfight, and I couldn't have agreed more.'

‘I've got an idea,' Karl was saying. ‘There's a Kevlar vest in my kit. You get that on, I want a word with Alex.' Karl ran off. He'd come up with a plan! Whatever it was I wasn't about to find out. I retrieved the vest. It was lightweight, of the expensive variety and definitely not standard issue. I stripped off my T-shirt and slipped the armour on, adjusting the Velcro fasteners to get it sitting as comfortably as it was going to get. When I said it was a lightweight, I was talking ten pounds as opposed to twenty. Nevertheless, it would stop a small calibre round or a knife for that matter. I found a cotton shirt in my pack and put that over the top. The loose fit of the shirt would hide the vest and whatever I decided to stuff down the back of my trousers. I figured a Minimi would be just the thing but I'd need to be the size of King Kong to hide that. I settled on the Walther.

Sami suddenly appeared in the doorway. He was minus his grisly burden of half an hour before, but the bloodstains on the side of his face and his shirt bore mute witness to Kim's death. Sami's face was expressionless, except for his eyes. The eyes wore a look that I had never seen in my old friend. It was like looking into the window of a furnace. If I didn't get Chekhov, then Sami was prepared to go into hell after him. We were both of the same mind.

Sami didn't say anything and neither did I. We just embraced and hung together for a long moment before he drew away. ‘Later,' he said. ‘When this is over! For now we get Chekhov, Daniel. I should go.'

‘No,' I replied. ‘I saw him first,' I said and Sami almost smiled. ‘I need a cane knife, a very sharp cane knife.'

‘I will organise that.' Sami turned and was gone, leaving me to finish what preparations I still had to make. I needed a shit, badly. My stomach was churning and it had nothing to do with the food. I went to the stinking latrine set as far away from everything on the plateau as it was possible to get. It wasn't a place to linger.

When I emerged I could see Sami talking to one of his men up by the dope kitchen. The guy was sitting in the shade of a tree by the side of the shed using an old-fashioned foot-operated grinding wheel attached to a machete. I joined my friend and we stood and watched.

The method of sharpening might have been old-fashioned but, by the time the man at the wheel had finished, the machete blade was like a damned razor. ‘Very sharp,' he said as he handed the cane knife to me with a big grin.

‘Just the way I like it,' I replied, taking a practice swing at nothing. The handle wasn't that great as far as the grip was concerned, but the blade whistled through the air like a scythe. Old man Time—or was it the Spectre of Death?—was waving his big curved blade behind my shoulder. If all else failed and I had to take Chekhov on in a hand-to-hand rumble, this damned thing would be a real asset.

Sami and I started walking back to the command hut without talking. As I walked I swung the blade, trying to get some sort of feel for it. Karl was beckoning to us. Sami pulled me up. ‘I will say goodbye and good luck now, Daniel. There is something I must do.' Sami grabbed me in a bear hug and said words I didn't understand. I didn't understand Japanese. Then he was moving away rapidly. Confused, I turned and went to where Karl was waiting on the porch of our HQ.

‘Okay,' the CIA man was saying as he led us back to the map table. ‘Alex has delegated himself as extra cover. He's getting ready now.' I went to Karl's shoulder. He ran a forefinger down the course of the river on the map. ‘He's going into the stream and he's going to go past the meet point to about here.' Karl tapped the map. The point he indicated was maybe a hundred yards beyond the place where I would stop and wait for Chekhov.

‘Chekhov might try and draw you further down the track towards him,' Karl continued, ‘or he might have a team following him in addition to the ones he's already positioned. If Alex is between them and Chekhov, he can cut Chekhov off from his cover or take him out if he puts you down.'

Alex came back into the war room about then. Gone were the battle fatigues. In their place he had on some sort of skin-tight body suit. It was like a wetsuit but made of some light fabric that was a mottled broken pattern of dark greens. There was a small rucksack of the same material on his back. He had a sheathed knife attached to one thigh and a handgun in a tactical holster attached to the other. There were goggles and a snorkel hanging around his neck and he wore a communicator under his hood. I guessed the damned things were waterproof. ‘I'm getting into the river fifteen minutes before you hit the track,' he said. ‘I'll get into position beyond you. If the shit hits the fan, you get in the water fast. I'll have Claymores positioned to sweep the track and the jungle fringe in my zone. You stay in the river until you get the all clear.'

‘Pizza and I'm in the water,' I confirmed.

‘Luck,' said the Special Forces man. He turned to Karl. ‘Is our friend coming in?' he asked.

‘Be here in ten,' Karl confirmed. Alex nodded and was gone.

I was going to ask what they were talking about but didn't. I had enough going on in my mind and I needed another shit. My gut was turning somersaults and kicking the hell out of my heart with every gyration. I went back to the stinking latrine and delivered up virtually nothing. Maybe it was all in my head.

I came back to our hut, lit a cigarette and opened the half-empty bottle of Mekong the previous occupants had left behind. I didn't care what anyone might say. I was about to do the traditional ‘Tombstone Shuffle' down Main Street, and nicotine and a belt of something containing a lot of alcohol were probably the only things in the world that were going to settle my nerves and still allow me to function. Damned shame I didn't have a bottle of bourbon in my kit. That had been a major oversight. I settled on a hefty shot of the embalming fluid. It was way better than nothing.

I had the Walther in the small of my back and two spare magazines in my hip pocket. I doubted I would need them. Either Chekhov would be dead by the time I'd emptied magazine one or I would be. End of story.

My watch was telling me it was time to start my walk. Karl accompanied me to the top of the track. The mist was gone now, and the day had cleared, despite the fact storms still hovered grey and heavy on the far horizon. A good day to die, I thought, remembering an old American Indian saying. Karl shook my hand.

‘Go get him, Dan,' he said. ‘Remember, I'll be talking to you. The guys on the imager will be talking to the scouts on a closed channel. You won't hear them unless they want you to. Anyone above ground and not hidden behind a fold in the ridge is visible to them. They'll already be calling our teams in on Chekhov's guys. There'll be a lot happening. Just remember, you won't be alone. Just don't get distracted.'