Seconds ticked by before he surfaced.
“Here, take this.” He held up a sausage-shaped rubber fender, surprisingly heavy, and then hauled himself aboard. “Have a look in the side.”
Hans turned the fender in his lap until he spotted a long slit. Pulling it apart, he uncovered a nylon capsule the size of a spaghetti jar and a scuba weight to anchor the contraption on the seafloor.
“Well, I wonder what we have here.”
“Just a few pardy prescriptions.” Marcel wiped it with his towel. “I make this trip every year. Spend a month in the Netherlands seeing some old hippy friends and finish up in the Dam.”
“The Dam?”
“Amsterdam.” Marcel unscrewed the lid. “I pardy for a few days, stock up on some good ecstasy” – he waved a ziplock bag full of pink pills with Mickey Mouse’s face stamped on them – “then I head south for Morocco, pick up a load of top-grade hash real cheap and sail to the Canary Islands to sell it to the dealers. The tourists can’t get enough.”
He emptied out three fat rolls of banknotes bound in elastic bands.
“You don’t worry about getting caught?”
“When I pull into harbor, this thing sits under the boat. Nothing to do with me, right?”
“Right.”
“At sea, if the coastguard ever pulled me I’d throw it overboard. But it’s never happened.”
“The cash too?”
“It’s drug money. How could I explain it? Besides, I can always make more.”
“And other narcotics . . . Coke?”
“Nah!” Marcel shook his head. “Dat’s a fool’s game, man. I’m not greedy – just make enough to stay at sea. I don’t mind to sell cannabis. It’s less harmful than alcohol.”
“I guess you don’t see too many potheads crashing cars or smashing people over the head with pool cues.”
“That’s right, and the pills are for personal use.”
“And this pays for you to stay at sea.”
“Pays for me to stay away from reality – mortgages, cell phones, nine-to-five. Who wants the hassle?”
Understandable. Hans always spotted the plank in his own eye before pointing out the splinter in others’.
“But enough about me.” Marcel relit the joint. “Penny said you’re some kind of detective.”
“Private investigator.”
“Hell, now dat’s a job! Were you a policeman before?”
“Military. Navy SEALs.”
“I knew it! I knew there was something about you!”
Hans smiled.
“Those guys, they’re real tough, huh?”
“Well . . .”
“Ah, come on.” Marcel took a long pull on the spliff and held the smoke deep in his lungs before exhaling a silvery brown plume. “Huhph-huhph!” he coughed. “You’re being modest – huhph! Everyone knows you guys are born killers.”
“To be honest, Marcel, most of the guys I knew were pretty down to earth. Just normal kids who wanted a bit more excitement than the regular military offered.”
“But you must have been superfit. You don’t just fall into dat kinda job, huh?”
“Funnily enough, I did. Like I said, I spent most of my youth bunking off school in my boat or reading adventure books. Didn’t pass any exams. Joining the navy was pretty much on the cards. But manning a radar screen twelve hours a day became boring, so I applied for special forces.”
“You must have some stories to tell. You parachuted?”
“Yeah, an amazing experience.”
“So how was it – to jump out of an aircraft?”
“Insane. We did our basic training at the Army Airborne School in Fort Benning.”
“I’m listening.” Marcel began skinning up another joint.
“You’re throwing yourself out of mock-up planes and off this massive tower on a zip wire, rolling about the place, and all the time the instructors are stressing the importance of pulling your reserve if you have a malfunction.”
“Malfunction?”
“Yeah. Like they keep hollering, ‘What do you do if your chute don’t open?’”
“Pull your reserve!”
“What do you do if your lines are twisted and you can’t kick ’em out?”
“Pull your reserve!”
“What do you do if your chute rips apart?”
“Pull your reserve!”
“Ja, safety first, man.”
Marcel crumbled a generous amount of flat press onto a bed of toasted tobacco.
“So we got this one guy – funny dude, Zebrowski, from New York – never stopped talking! We’re in the bar one night and he starts telling us about this Action Man he had as a kid. You know Action Man, right?”
“Ja, we have dat in Holland, Hans.”
“So he’s got this Action Man, and he loves his Action Man. Takes him everywhere, puts him through all kinda crazy stuff. Then one day they bring out Action Man Sky Diver – but Zebrowski can’t afford one. Besides, he loves the one he’s got. So he makes a parachute for him out of a plastic bag – you know, with strings taped to it an’ all?”
Marcel chuckled and passed Hans another beer.
“Well, Zebrowski lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment block in Queens. He launches Action Man outta the window, then takes the elevator down to see if his experiment worked.”
“Did it?”
“Hell no! Action Man’s laying there, his parachute’s come apart, his head’s missing, and he’s flat as a pancake ’cause he’s gotten run over by a car. So us rough, tough SEALs are all listening like schoolboys, and Monroe, this real gentle guy from Muskogee, leans forward and asks, ‘What happened?’ Zebrowski just shrugs and says, ‘Forgot to pull his reserve’!”
“Haaaa-ha-ha-haaah!”
“But there’s more.” Hans took a toke of the doobie. “We’re doing our first jump – from a C-130.”
“The Hercules?”
“Right. And I’m the guy in the door, and I’m all hooked up, parachute on, kinda revved up but nervous. The ground’s whizzing by a thousand feet below, and all the roads and fields and houses looks so damn small. The engine’s deafening, and all you can smell is hot avgas, and I’m putting a brave face on it – my first jump an’ all. But just as the green light comes on I feel this tap on my shoulder, and Zebrowski shouts, ‘Remember my Action Man!’”
- 28 -
The crow of Kekee the Rooster woke Ahmed. He stretched and nudged Mohamed and then went to the well to splash water on his face and fill up a pan for their morning coffee. Rather than return to the hut immediately, he hopped up onto the well’s brickwork surround and sat awhile, taking in the fresh air and watching the sun sparkle life into the landscape.
Upon his return to the hut, the pong of burning marijuana met him at the door. Scowling, he stormed inside to find Mohamed sitting in a cloud of smoke, puffing away on a soda can pipe.
“What the hell are you doing!” He smacked the contraption out of his friend’s hand, a shower of burning embers flying through the air as it clattered across the floor.
“Just a little awakener,” Mohamed replied indignantly.
“Awakener?” Ahmed grasped the little fella’s shoulders. “Your eyes are bloodshot, you fool, and the smell!”
The consequences of Mohamed’s actions did not bear thinking about. Al Mohzerer had strangled workers to death for smoking the product.
Ahmed opened the shutters. “I’m going to the village to get bread. This stink better be gone when I get back.”
Mohamed sat staring at his feet, unable to meet Ahmed’s fiery gaze, bottom lip thrust out like a petulant child. When the door slammed, he leant forward and picked up the Coca-Cola can, knowing he should hide it in the trash pile but feeling reluctant to do so. They worked with the damn stuff every day, so what was the harm in sampling the goods? Still in his underpants, he mulled over Ahmed’s rebuke and was in the process of formulating a comeback when the door flew open.
“Look, Ahmed,?
?? he snapped, turning to face his brother. ‘You—”
Al Mohzerer stood there, silhouetted in the morning sunshine. Mohamed shoved the pipe behind his back, as if hiding the paraphernalia would discredit the telltale cloud.
“I need you to . . .” the Grower began as the scene registered.
Mohamed’s eyes bulged like those of a rabbit caught in car headlights. His legs went weak. In what seemed slow motion, Naseem took a pace across the room, nostrils flared and face darker than hell. He grabbed Mohamed by the hair and dragged him off the mattress, then threw him facedown on the floor and began stomping on his head and torso. Mohamed was too frightened to take in what was happening, though vaguely aware of a warm, wet sensation in his groin.
Instead of calming, Naseem’s rage grew worse with each kick and blow rained down of the terrified boy.
Please let it stop, was all Mohamed could think, tasting of blood and dust as he lost consciousness.
Ahmed entered the hut clutching two flatbreads and a bag of oily black olives.
“Here you go, fool—”
His blood ran cold. Mohamed sat on the floor, ankles crossed and knees locked together, rocking back and forward, his hideously smashed-up face buried in his arms. Too confused to speak, he prayed Ahmed would make everything right, as he always did.
“Oh, brother. What has he done to you?” Ahmed burst into tears.
“I’m sorry.” The emotion in his friend’s voice set Mohamed off, a mixture of shock and humiliation leaving him sobbing like a baby.
“No, nothing to be sorry about,” Ahmed whispered, kissing Mohamed’s blood-and-dirt-matted hair.
They hugged for several minutes, Ahmed fighting intense rage to put Mohamed’s needs first. He stripped off his T-shirt, dipped a corner into the pan of water and began wiping the congealing maroon mess off Mohamed’s distorted features.
“How is it?” Mohamed croaked.
“Acht, nothing too bad, soldier,” he lied, horrified by deep cuts and swelling worse than a wannabe prizefighter’s after ten rounds with Ali. He kept quiet about Mohamed’s broken nose and missing teeth. “How’s the ribs?”
“Hurting, but not broken, I think.”
“Okay, I’ll get you some freshwater and then I will kill Al Mohzerer.”
“No!” Mohamed clutched Ahmed’s arm. “I can’t leave the mountain like this. We must wait – and then take the swine for everything he has.”
- 29 -
A fat moon shone down through the warm night air, stars exploding across the sky to put life into perspective. Penny cuddled with Hans in Future’s cockpit, Jessica tucked in her bunk by a woman that could do no wrong.
“I’m glad they didn’t shave my hair.”
“The hospital?”
“Yeah. They were impressed with your improvised surgery.”
“Not really improvised. It’s what superglue was invented for – in Vietnam.”
Hans was about to add something but instead stared into his mug of coffee.
Penny let the silence hang awhile, sipping her drink as unanswered questions ricocheted around her mind.
“Hans, can you tell me about Jessie’s mum?”
“Her mom?”
“It’s just that she’s so confused by what happened. I feel I ought to know more.”
“Sure, sure. Of course. Do you want it long or short?”
“We’ve got all night.” She stroked his cheek.
“I met Kerry back in 2000. My SEAL team had been unofficially attached to your Royal Marines’ Special Boat Service – you know, the SBS?”
“The Cockleshell Heroes – who doesn’t?”
“We’d been tasked with a mission in Sierra Leone – the civil war there?”
“Something about rebels wearing women’s wigs . . . and always drunk.”
“Yeah, the West Side Boys – the group we were after. Real head cases, always high on drugs and the local hooch. Modeled themselves on Tupac Shakur, the gangster rapper. Most of them were former child soldiers, or still were. Our intel was they’d taken a group of American and European medical workers hostage in an old hospital on the coast and were using the building as their headquarters. We were on standby on an aircraft carrier out in the Atlantic, and our orders came through to drop into the sea from choppers and swim ashore under the cover of darkness. The marines would then go forward and carry out reconnaissance, find out where the nurses were, then scout an LZ for an SAS strike force to land in the morning. My team’s instructions were to go to ground in the jungle to give covering fire should the marines get compromised.”
“Scary stuff.”
“It would have been a big result, especially if the leader of the West Side Boys, Fodim Kassay, and his lieutenants were present. But it didn’t go to plan. The birds were delayed getting us off the carrier, waiting for clearance from the Pentagon for us Yanks. By the time we’d gotten a green light, the sea conditions had changed. What should have been an easy swim turned into a battle for survival. The tide was on the move, a swell kicked up, the one mile we had to cover became the equivalent of three. Waves were smashing down on us like apartment blocks. Thirty-two went into the water . . . only six got out.”
“No!”
“Thirteen of my closest buddies gone, and most of the marines. You don’t wanna know what they did to the bodies that washed ashore. Those of us left regrouped and continued the mission.”
“You must have been exhausted. I . . . can’t imagine.”
“Exhausted, in shock real bad, running on autopilot. But to stop and think about it would have ruined us. At first light we heard the choppers and crawled into position to give support.”
“What happened?”
“It was unbelievable. I thought the SEALs were a force to be reckoned with, but these SAS guys” – Hans shook his head – “they were something else.”
“In what way?”
“Like totally calm. I mean, real calm, as if they were arriving at a ball game. And so professional – yet complete nutjobs! Forget all this military discipline you see in movies. Half of them went into battle wearing jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. Later, when I asked why, they started laughing, and one of them said his mom shrunk his uniform in the wash. That’s British humor, right?”
Penny smiled.
“Us Yanks took everything so damn serious, like a high school football team. The Brits got the job done and managed to laugh their way through it. One team roped onto the hospital roof – near blew the damn thing off – pouring so many rounds down it was like they were hosing the lawn on a Sunday morning. The second team surrounded the building and threw in stun grenades. Hell, half the guys followed them in before they’d even exploded!
“The West Side Boys were sleeping off hangovers, and most didn’t stand a chance, but a handful came out fighting, high on some drug and wearing these magic amulets they believed made ’em invincible. They made a break for the jungle and . . .” Hans stared into his coffee again, then got up to fetch a bottle of rum from the galley.
“Are you okay?” Penny held out her mug and accepted a slug.
“I only ever signed up because I loved the sea and wanted a challenge, yet here I was laying down fire and chucking grenades at kids.”
“Whoa!”
Hans bit his lip and nodded.
“And the medical workers?”
“Huddling in a room, terrified.”
“And one of them was Kerry?”
“Yeah, one of ’em was a nurse called Kerry. We flew them out to the carrier and sailed for Dakar. Got pretty close during those days at sea.”
“Enough to get married?”
“No. We saw each other off and on for a few years, but I left the military after a couple of Middle East deployments and – well, my life fell apart.”
“How come?”
“I was angry – at losing friends, at the navy, the enemy. Hell, I was angry at everyone. I’d get menial jobs working for peanuts, ordered about by some little Hitler who’
d never been out of the States in his life. I couldn’t believe what the workers put up with, just accepted, like it was all there was to live for.”
“And what happened?”
“What happened was I started drinking, fighting and getting depressed.”
“Do you think it was PTSD?”
“That’s what the docs said, but I couldn’t see it at the time. Thought I was normal, that everyone else had issues.”
“And Kerry?”
“I woke up in a hospital in Cleveland. Like an idiot I’d gotten in my car drunk to go and see her and totaled it on the freeway. Luckily, no one else was hurt, but I was pretty busted up – in a coma for twelve days. When I woke, she was there holding my hand.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! Working in the same hospital. They say there’s no such thing as coincidence. I kinda started believing it that day. She nursed me back to health. Said God sent her an angel down there in Africa and she wasn’t about to let him have me back.”
- 30 -
On the next trip to Tangier, Mohamed pulled his cinema trick while Ahmed went on the hashish round, striking it lucky with two Australian backpackers, who paid top whack for all the squidgy lumps in his pocket and would have bought every other drug known to man had they been available. Ahmed briefly considered rekindling some old acquaintances but thought better of it, knowing the cheating scumbags would only rip him off. Besides, he had to meet Mohamed to go clothes shopping for Europe.
“What do you reckon?”
Mohamed held up an imitation number 10 shirt in the national team’s colors.
“Very nice – but you need an Amsterdam one. To blend in, you know?”
“Don’t you mean a Dutch one?”
“Yes, a Dutch-Amsterdam one.”
For the first time in their lives, the two of them had money to buy clothes rather than having to rely on cast-off goods donated to the missions. Shoplifting them had always been out of the question, for wearing new attire as a street kid only invited trouble. They decided against stealing outfits for Europe, as the last thing they wanted was a shop owner catching them in the act and thwarting their plan at this late stage.