Bolt Action (18 page)

Lamayette slowly works up a mouthful of saliva. Leans over the ear and, like a lover, lets his lips run softly over the sensitive skin. He clamps his hand tightly over the skull, like a vice, making it impossible for Pir Durbar to move. Then carefully spits into the ear canal. Fills it up nice and tidy. Not a drop wasted, nor a dribble in sight.

Billy Ray’s twitchy little nose picks up the scent. He starts hopping up and down inside the shiny jar, twittering madly. He knows what’s coming . . . and the Pakistani knows too.

‘So Operation Macchar. The clock’s running.’ And Billy Ray is lifted from the jar, held just over the holy man’s head such that the tiny pink forepaws can claw at his skin. ‘What’s it going to be . . . ?’

Gate 206

Terminal 2, Manchester Airport

0946 UK Time, 1446 Islamabad time

A
t last the three of them are on board. Just passing through the front passenger door and stepping inside the plane, Tristie feels the tension ease out of her shoulders. The same sweet, sweet relief as when you make it back from a particularly hairy mission.

‘You all right, boss?’ Whiffler looks at her anxiously.

‘Why?’

‘You just seem to be acting a bit . . . strange.’ Whiffler turns away to pack his carry-on in the overhead locker. ‘Never seen you smiling so much.’

‘I’ll remember to be more of a hard-arse.’ But he is right. An inane grin has been on Tristie’s face for the last ten minutes. Something of a record. In fact she’s getting cramp in her cheekbones. Her smile muscles are complaining. As Tristie has long since learnt to do, she’s tightly wrapped and packed away all the emotions, drawn down all her feelings into a little tight pellet and pinged it out into space.

There are two rows of first-class seats. Big and comfortable. Sixty-plus inches of pitch. Button has 1B, but there is nobody sitting in the 1A window seat. Whiffler and Tristie are next to each other in the central bloc of aisle seats, 1C and D. He’s already kicked off his shoes and is happily poking around with the in-flight entertainment panel. Apart from a uniformed pilot in 2F, snoozing against a window to their right, the rest of the front cabin is empty.

Looking down the two aisles that stretch almost two hundred feet to the rear, she sees that the economy-class section of the flight is full. A mix of the red-eyed and weary who’ve been on the flight since Islamabad, plus the fresh-faced and eager, who joined in Manchester.

The rest of the passengers are looking at the three members of Ward 13 as if they’re the reason the flight isn’t already dancing down the runway. Tristie’s mind logs their tired, strangely hostile glances. Mostly from the women. Though a number of the men flash a glancing grin. It tweaks a powerful memory that suddenly has hold of Tristie by the throat. That remembrance, that singular vision, of looking up the aisle. Hostile glances and leery grins. It always chills. Returns her to a past time . . . a train to North Wales . . . Holyhead . . . Tristie, aged six and Mother. The recurring nightmare . . .

Mother is wearing white knee socks and a brown cotton, striped dress with satin buttons, cap sleeves and a silk tie belt. The dress reaches down to her calves. She looks dazzling. Radiant.
One day this dress will be yours
, she had promised, holding it against herself as she swished from side to side in front of the mirror. A world of hope swimming in her eyes.

It is a lovely summery dress, and her blonde hair falls to her shoulders. Tristie imagines Mother wearing it and running through a meadow filled with flowers. She promises that, at last, she will find happiness in that dress. The only trouble . . . it’s the middle of winter. And everything feels cold. Frigid. Surely she must feel that cold too. The little tremor in the middle finger of Mother’s right hand somehow connects with the tremor in the pinkie finger of her left. Like an invisible current dancing across the long dark table that separates them in the railway carriage.

Tristie clutches her crayons. A tight, sweaty grip. A few pages are left in her colouring book.

Focus on the little farmyard scene, she tells herself. Just three crayons left. Purple, black and orange. She holds her tongue between her lips and teeth and works to get that apple tree just
the right shade of black. It takes a lot of imagination to see what she sees. Purple for the sun, which leaves orange for the chickens and pigs. Concentrate on colouring inside the lines. She bites the tip of her tongue. Still, the worry coils tight within her.

Let’s go to Dublin
, Mother had announced that morning with a fresh, ear-to-ear smile.
We’ll have fun. A train ride and your very first trip on a ferryboat. It will be exciting
.

Yes, Mother.

New beginnings, my sweet
, and she curled her hand around the side of Tristie’s head.
Life is all about do-overs, Tristie. New beginnings. Let’s have a new beginning.

Yes, Mother.

But what kind of a new beginning, she asks herself. She is something of an expert on new beginnings. They always seem to involve some uncharted fear. A realisation that each fresh terror is not the end-point in the journey of fears. Merely a way-stop. By that logic, there are many floors still to visit.

Anxiety never leaves her. Seems as reliable a feature of her existence as the sound of her voice, or the rise and fall of her chest. That sense of slow suffocation.

Would you like a Coke, Tristie?

Thank you, Mother. Across the table Mother smiles, and Tristie offers to share her crayons. Something like uncertainty passes quickly across Mother’s brow and those pale blue eyes. She glances quickly at her watch.
Let me go and get you a drink, Tristie.
She speaks over burbled annnouncements from the tannoy
. Then, I’d love to help with your colouring.

Tristie leans out and watches her move down the aisle, swaying as the train shudders across points. It seems that the gaze of several people is also following her as she walks. Men. Looking at her in a hungry way . . . but why would they be interested in her mother?

Tristie does not leave her seat because Mother is coming back. It might take a while but, eventually, she will return. And her heart will lift, and that cold blade of fear that ices the bones in her body will be banished for a little time longer.

The train reaches Holyhead, in North Wales. It is almost midnight by the time they find her. She hasn’t moved. Not once. Because she knows Mother is coming for her. Like she has in the past. That is what mothers do.

The chubby, red-faced man shakes his head.
But no one’s left on the train, little one.
Baffled.
Everybody’s got off. And you’ll have to get off too, my pet.

She never sees Mother again. It is a month and three days before her seventh birthday. Twice she had wet herself. Simply too fearful to move.

The airline’s airport manager, Majid Ali Khan, is flapping in the galley in front of first class, the other side of the bulkhead, explaining himself to one of the cabin crew. He is arguing the case for accepting the late first-class passengers even though there are no meals on board.
How dare you?
The conversation switches from English to Urdu, and starts to get shrill.

Somebody else’s problem, Tristie thinks to herself. Settles against the soft pillow, trying to shake free of the last memory fragments of that wretched train journey . . .

There’s a
too-wwoi-ing, too-wwoi-ing
of sitar background music drifting through the cabin. For a second she’s overcome with hunger and her stomach knots tight. Pavlov and his dog would be proud: Sitar music equals curry house, equals
panch rangia
and
murgh jalpuri.

Button comes over, crouches and smirks impishly. ‘You’re going to think I’ve gone all Village People here, but I think we deserve a group hug. Good bloody work everybody. Especially you, boss.’

‘Seconded.’ This from Whiffler. And before Tristie can say a thing, such as that their cover story is that they don’t actually know each other, she’s smothered by the thick, strong arms of her colleagues.

It’s enough to put her on the edge of tearful. Something she really tries not ever to be . . . and she is saved from her errant moment of high emotion when Button complains that Whiffler is perving. Sniffing his hair.

Forward of Tristie Merritt and the three other members of Ward 13, the heated exchange between Majid Ali Khan and the purser in charge of first class runs its course. An explosion of anger that fizzles. The two of them have removed their argument into the recessed area of the forward galley for greater privacy.

‘Get over yourself!’ Khan had hissed in Urdu. ‘I’m sorry you thought you’d have no work to do today. But the last time I checked, this airline was in the business of taking money from people who want to fly. Understand?’

‘Arsehole British monkey boy.’ And the purser turns away. Conversation over.

The large galley work area takes up the centre and right side of the forward section, so that the cockpit door, unusually, is set to the left of the plane’s centreline. The galley is surrounded on three sides by all the stowed equipment: airline carts at floor level, and above this, what are called galley inserts, aluminium boxes that hold soft drinks, bottles of water, games for kiddies and so on. One wall of the galley has heat elements. Rows of steam and convection ovens for food preparation, and taps for hot and cold potable water.

Inside the galley the purser is trying to calm himself down.
La illah ha illallah.
Muttering quietly under his breath.
La illah ha illallah.
Prissily wiping down the work surface as if he hadn’t already wiped it down a hundred times before.
La illah ha illallah.
No God but God.

It’s OK, he says to himself. It
must
be OK. He breathes deeply. These extra passengers must surely be in God’s plan.
La illah ha illallah.

He runs his hand nervously down the side of his trousers, his heart throbbing with anxiety, until he touches a small round vial. He fingers it eagerly. Dushuqiang. Extra-strength rat poison. Odourless, tasteless and water soluble, the purser reminds himself again and again.

Just as he had earlier that morning, when he woke up in Room 703 of Manchester’s Ramada Piccadilly Hotel.

Swat Valley

Pakistan

Monday – 0952 UK time, 1452 Islamabad time

J
ust as a Boeing 777-340,
City of Risalpur
, is being pushed back from parking stand 206 at Manchester Airport, on the other side of the world, a man called Ahmad is having a long, splashy piss. He holds his dishdasha high on his chest, waggling himself at the thorny bush in front. Hands-free.

One of the madrasa’s security guards.

Fifty yards beyond the bushes is what is known locally as Satan’s Gourd, Lamayette’s immense, dark rocky outcrop. Sterile of soil and plant life, and the subject of much local superstition. If Ahmad leans back he can just make out the crown of Satan’s Gourd but it means looking directly into the afternoon sun. And that dazzles him, making little red spangles dance in front of his eyes.

Immediately behind him, the ledge of soil he’s standing on drops down sharply to the riverbank, and waiting at the water’s edge are the other four members of the downstream search party. They are perhaps a hundred yards away, squatting on their haunches, also avoiding the sun’s glare.

Ahmad’s ablutions are interrupted by the most awful scream – of apocalyptic proportions – coming from the heavens. Surely not . . .

‘
Audhu billahi min ash shaytan ar rajim
.’ Ahmad mumbles the supplication quickly, hoping to wrap himself in Allah’s protection.

Shading his eyes, he looks up towards the top of Satan’s Gourd. Sees nothing.

Someone shouts. Words he could understand if he spoke English, but he can’t:
Tell me what fucking flight. You MOTHER-FUCKING piece of shit
. Bellowed so loudly his first instinct is to look around him. Who said that?

Then, again. One pure note of agony,
AAAAhhhhhhhhh
. Floating on the wind. Longer and even more desperate. Surely a man in the jaws of death . . . perhaps a virgin giving birth to a large ox . . .

A thought flashes through Ahmad’s mind . . .
Pir Durbar?

He drops his dishdasha and spins around. ‘Did you hear that?’ he bellows in Pashto. But there’s no movement from the water’s edge. They’ve heard nothing. Looking in the other direction. ‘Hey . . .’ Still no reaction.

He grabs up his Kalashnikov. To loose off a burst of five rounds. Just to startle them awake.

But it doesn’t quite happen that way. A little channel of his urine had zigzagged sideways and soaked around the wooden butt of his semi-automatic rifle.

With a volley of swear words, Ahmad fumbles to wipe it off with the hem of his clothing, and fires off the shots . . .

The gunfire registers in Bill Lamayette’s mind, but barely. Acoustics up on this craggy rock are made haphazard by the wind and the wide-open space of the valley below.

Anyway, Lamayette is too deep into the urgency of his situation to notice. Trying to break down this shit of a man. Watching Billy Ray going to town. Blood streams out of the ear, splashing down, flecking the solid black rock with fat shiny globules as the holy man listens to his very own audio canal being gourmandised.

When all you’ve got is a hungry rat and an oversized jam jar, it doesn’t work out like the shows on TV. No time for big productions, good cops and bad cops. Making them sweat, leaving the room, fiddling with the thermostat. Lamayette hasn’t
once broken eye contact or loosened the grip he’s got on the back knot of the holy man’s greasy hair. He’s got just the one go at this. And Pir Durbar needs to know that Lamayette has nothing to fear. Will happily follow him over the edge of the cliff if that’s what it takes.

‘You’re making this too hard on yourself . . . it doesn’t have to be this way.’

The Pakistani’s eyes bulge as though a great boot is pushing through from the back of his skull. A hideous sight, not totally unexpected. Slowly the mouth opens but the tongue doesn’t move. Stays perfectly still.

‘What are you seeing? Can you see Billy Ray, his little sharp teeth? Gnashing his way inside your head. Can you . . .
can you see
?’

No change. Pir Durbar’s expression is locked in place, frozen. Lamayette feels a professional sense of disappointment about what is happening, running almost to shame. The guy is shutting down. And
you
weren’t able to finish the job . . .

Billy Ray snouts about in his glass cage, his busy little feet and fur slicked with dark red, puzzled by all this blood, trying to clear a way through. Still obsessed with that taste of meat.

Screw ‘im. Lamayette throws down the old man’s head and it thuds against the rock like a rolled-up wet towel. That awkward look of mortal terror is stitched on to his features. Eyes open, mouth agape. Dead from the neck up.

Lamayette backs away. Lowers the glass jar so that Billy Ray can make his escape. The rat looks up, blinks a couple of times, and shimmers away over the pitted rock surface.

There’s only one person that Lamayette thinks to call and he retreats to his
shemagh
headdress, where the two parts of his mobile are hidden. Still time to stop this thing. His big, thick fingers are trembling as he clicks the battery into place. It’s hard to hit the keys. Must hurry. He starts to punch in the numbers. In the United Kingdom. For Pir Durbar had given up some things before collapsing on him, but would it be enough? The information related to a flight. Today . . .

We can still stop this thing . . .

Lamayette’s just about to put the phone to his ear when . . .
Shit.
His chest tightens, a freezing shiver runs through his veins. Only twenty yards away . . . the crown of someone’s head.

A traditional headdress, a
shemagh
, bobbing its way uphill. Towards him. Then another. Three, four in fact. Heads still down, watching their feet as they clamber up the steep incline. He sees rifles and bandoliers, and all manner of stuff he hasn’t got.

Shit.

Lamayette turns. Runs. And the last thing on his mind is making the call.