The Operative (9 page)

It sounded to Stratton she was talking about more than just a short break.

Sally took a moment to put her thoughts in order while filling the mugs with tea, placing one in front of Stratton. ‘I want to get away. I mean, really away.’

‘Sounds like a good idea,’ he said, saying it for the sake of talking but not sure.

‘I’m going to sell the house,’ she said. ‘My dad’ll take care of everything.’

Stratton sipped his tea. Sally was not one for making idle statements and he did not doubt her sincerity.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘Josh won’t be able to see you.’

‘I’ll always visit.’

She looked at him and smiled. A part of her wanted Stratton to remain in their lives but she could never begin to tell him her fears about that. It was counter to what Jack would have wanted and although that made her feel guilty she believed she was doing the right thing. Anyway. Much as Stratton might want to visit as often as he could she doubted he would make it to somewhere as far away as California very often. They saw him little enough as it was, even living in Poole.

‘When are you leaving?’ Stratton asked.

‘Soon as I can pack everything into boxes, pile them in the hallway for my dad and pack a couple of suitcases … Will you keep that to yourself ? I couldn’t take fifty service wives beating on my door … I’ll call our close friends when I get to my dad’s.’

‘Sure … I’ll give you a hand.’

‘I’d rather do it alone. There’re a lot of things in this house that are going to be tough to say goodbye to.’

Stratton understood and got to his feet. ‘Can I go to see Josh?’

‘Sure. I need to make him something to eat,’ Sally said, standing up and going to the fridge. ‘Can I get you anything?’

‘No, thanks.’

Stratton left the kitchen and walked along the corridor and down the stairs lined with framed family photographs, one of which included him. He stepped quietly into the living room.

Josh was seated on a couch, watching a cartoon show, and did not look at Stratton as he sat down beside him.

‘Hi, Josh’

Josh moved closer to Stratton without looking away from the television and leaned against him. Stratton put an arm around him and they sat for a while, watching the TV.

Stratton eventually moved forward to face the little boy. ‘I have something for you, Josh. It’s a present from your dad,’ he said as he opened his hand to reveal the little camel.

Josh took it and examined it, instantly appreciating the strange smirk. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Is there a story with it?’ he asked.

The irony of the question struck Stratton. So many of the gifts he had brought back for Josh over the years were accompanied by fictitious tales of derring-do but he could not tell the boy the truth behind this one.

Stratton made a move to get up but Josh took hold of him. Stratton held him close and kissed his head. ‘I’m going to go and see your mum,’ he said, pulling away and getting to his feet. ‘I’ll see you later. Okay?’

Josh slouched forward as if to study the camel but he was actually hiding his disappointment.

‘You look after that, Josh. It’s a very special little camel.’

Stratton left the room.

As he walked back into the kitchen Sally was busy cutting up vegetables into a saucepan. He picked up his tea and took a sip, unsure what to say to her, then saw her mobile phone on the counter and picked it up.

‘You can use it in the States.’

‘I know. I’ll take it with me in case of emergencies until I can sort something out over there,’ she said.

Stratton punched in his name starting with three ‘A’s and followed by his number. ‘My number’s at the top of your phone list. You call me if you need anything. Any time of the day or night. Okay?’

‘I will.’

He stared at her, unable to hide his sadness. ‘I’m gonna go, then … I’ll call round tomorrow.’

‘I want to leave first thing in the morning,’ Sally said, wiping her hands and coming over to him. ‘Dawn if I can get Josh to wake up that early.’

Stratton looked into her tired, reddened eyes, the pain clearly etched in them. He placed his arms around her and they held on to each other in silence for a moment before he released her and stepped back.

‘Let me know when you get there,’ he said.

‘I will.’

‘Promise?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she replied, unable to hold his gaze as firmly as she would have liked.

Stratton walked out of the room and a few seconds later the front door closed.

Sally watched him through the kitchen window as he headed down the gravel path and wondered when or even if she would ever see him again. ‘If ’ seemed like a strange notion but she could not help thinking it.

Stratton drove directly to the sergeants’ mess in Poole Camp, which was crowded with practically every current member of the service who was not on operational duty and even more retired hands who, although many of the old and bold did not personally know Jack, had turned up to pay their respects. He spent an hour chatting to various people and before slipping out cornered his Squadron Commander to ask for two weeks’ leave, effective immediately. Under normal circumstances the operations officer would have had to be consulted in case there was anything that had come up on the boards. But considering that the request came from Stratton – bearing in mind, too, the circumstances, and the fact that he was owed several weeks’ leave from his previous two operations – the OC granted it.

Stratton returned to his cottage in Lytchett Matravers on the outskirts of Poole and the following morning packed a bag and drove his Jeep to the ferry terminal in Poole Harbour where he caught a boat to Cherbourg. He had planned nothing more than a drive across Europe. Where, he cared not. East sounded appealing, across France, Germany, perhaps the Czech Republic, then down into Austria, and perhaps further still.

But he would reach as far as Salzburg in Austria when a cry for help would send him tearing six thousand miles west to face a conflict he could never have imagined.

Sally stepped out of the Bradley Terminal at LAX, Los Angeles International Airport, pushing a trolley loaded with baggage, Josh holding on to the side, and headed for the shuttle stop where transport would take them to the car-hire depot. Half an hour later she was sitting behind the wheel of a Cherokee 4x4, acquainting herself with the controls.

It was late in the afternoon. Because of the distance from LAX to her cousin’s house near Sacramento – according to the lady at the car-hire place, a good six to eight hours’ drive north, depending on whether she took the scenic coastal route or the freeway – she decided to spend the night in LA. An early start the following morning would also avoid the heavy late-afternoon freeway crush of traffic heading out of the city. Sally had been recommended to find a hotel in Marina Del Rey which was only a few miles from the airport and a safe area, or Santa Monica a few miles further up the coast where there was a large British population and an English pub. Sally found no attraction in an English connection but she decided to head in that direction anyway since the map indicated that the freeway north to Sacramento started near Santa Monica: she could hop right on it and avoid getting entangled in the traffic hassles of the city.

Unfortunately, a combination of heavy traffic and her un -familiarity with left-hand driving caused Sally to miss several turns. Fifteen minutes later she was lost. However, she was confident that Santa Monica was not far away. A street sign indicated that
she was on Sepulveda Boulevard which was marked on the map as a major road. But although it passed close to Santa Monica after it became Lincoln Boulevard it appeared to run north and south for miles and she was unclear about precisely where she was on it. She could calculate west by using the sun, having had Jack explain it often enough when they’d been on camping trips, so she decided to head that way until she hit the ocean. It seemed straightforward enough.

She waited for a gap in the traffic, pulled across the road and headed down a side street.

The houses immediately became shoddy, the streets dirty and the population predomin-antly Latino and black. As Sally passed a group of youths one of them shouted something and ran into the street, waving for her to stop. She accelerated past and watched him in her rear-view mirror as he made what appeared to be an obscene gesture. An uncomfortable feeling washed through her but there was nothing for it but to press on to the beach, which she hoped was not far away. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed Josh playing with some toys on the back seat.

‘You tired, Josh?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded while assisting one of his Action Men to wrestle with a small tiger.

‘We’ll be at a hotel soon,’ she said, although as she drove on there was no sign of the neighbourhood improving. She assured herself that the beach would be a completely different kettle of fish once she found it. No doubt it would be developed and bustling, just as in the television programmes on LA she had seen.

Sally crossed an intersection and passed a block of predominantly wooden bungalows with cracked paintwork and old shingle roofs. The buildings were even more dilapidated than those on the previous street. The number of tramps or homeless-looking people also seemed to increase and as she came to the end of the street she passed a long row of what could only be described as
makeshift kennels on the sidewalk. Built of debris, driftwood and plastic sheets, they were inhabited by humans, not animals. It was as if she had travelled back in time to the Depression.

A boy suddenly ran out onto the road up ahead, followed by others, forcing Sally to brake suddenly. But she didn’t stop completely and steered around them as they banged on her window and shouted in guttural Spanish. Josh looked up, suddenly uneasy.

She came to a T-junction and stopped to look both ways. Neither direction showed much promise so she turned north, looking for the next road heading west. Every block was penetrated by dirty, rubbish-filled alleyways. As she arrived at a small intersection she took the left turn, hoping that the sea would soon come into view. But the ground rose sharply as the road headed uphill. The quality of the houses improved slightly but they all had security gates, as well as bars on the lower windows. Some had barbed wire along the tops of their outer walls. It seemed as though every person she passed, none of them white, looked at her suspiciously. This made Sally conscious of the fact that she was a lone white woman in a nice car and obviously in the wrong place.

Cars were parked on both sides of the street, most of them in a run-down condition. This was not the LA that she had seen on TV – it was closer to a shanty town in a Johannesburg suburb.

As Sally came to the crest of the hill she could see that several cars were double-parked, making the street barely wide enough for one vehicle to pass along. She slowed to navigate between the cars when suddenly a sedan shot backwards out of an alleyway and reversed along the street towards her. She braked hard.

The sedan screeched to a stop yards in front of her and a large man in a leather jacket jumped out of the passenger side, ran over to a shorter man walking along the pavement and started to beat the living daylights out of him.

Sally could not believe what she was seeing.

‘Where’s the fuckin’ money, asshole?’ the big man yelled as he kicked the other who had dropped to the ground to protect himself from the vicious blows of the thug’s fists.

Sally looked around at the road behind. She considered reversing back down the hill but did not trust her driving skills with a left-hand-drive vehicle. Her anguish increased and, feeling helpless and scared, she pushed the centre of her steering wheel and gave a blast of her horn.

The man doing the beating paused while holding on to the collar of his near-unconscious victim whose face was by now bleeding badly. He looked at Sally with a murderous glint in his eyes. ‘Leka! Take care a’ that bitch,’ he shouted.

The sedan’s reversing lights were still on. To Sally’s shock it suddenly accelerated backwards and hit her car hard enough to make her fly forward and bang her chin on the steering wheel, stalling her vehicle.

Josh started to cry and call out for her, increasing her anxiety. Then the driver’s door opened and Leka climbed out. He was a large man, dark-skinned though not Latino. His features were more Slavic or Eastern European.

As Leka reached her car, Sally quickly hit the central locking system, securing the doors. She watched the man as he moved with relaxed ease, wearing a malicious expression that she found immediately frightening. As he reached her door he slammed the side of her vehicle with his hand and then ripped off a wing mirror.

‘Move the fucking car, bitch!’ he shouted.

Sally’s panic rocketed and she tried to start the car as Josh cried behind her. ‘It’s okay, Josh,’ she said. She turned the key in the ignition and the starter motor turned over. But the engine failed to come to life.

Leka banged on her window as if he was trying to break in. ‘I said move it, bitch!’ he shouted.

Sally’s efforts to start the car became desperate as she turned the key repeatedly without luck.

The man yanked hard on the door handle and then violently kicked the car, incensed at being denied entry. ‘Move the fucken’ car, bitch!’ he yelled again as though her efforts were not enough.