The Protector (3 page)

The first thing he had to do was set up communications to let his people know he was alive and where he was. He removed his standard-issue SARBE emergency search-and-rescue radio and beacon from its pouch on his belt. It was a waterproof and robust device no bigger than a cigarette pack, and he checked it for damage. He turned it to the radio function long enough for a light to flicker - indicating sufficient power - before turning it off and putting it back in its pouch. This was not the place to send his emergency signal. Mallory needed to be in a secure open area for any rescue craft to land.

He checked his watch.The ideal location for a pick-up was outside the town and that meant waiting until dark.The Tornado pilot had initiated his beacon immediately because he was in dire straits but Mallory had a responsibility to ensure the rescue team’s safety as well as his own. That meant he had to find a safe landing site.

Mallory was parched, his mouth dry as a bone, but he had no water. Adding a bottle to his belt kit was something he had considered but decided against, limiting the amount of equipment he carried to enhance his mobility.

Mallory’s eyes gradually became accustomed to the dim light and he noticed a dirty sheet that was hanging on a couple of nails on the opposite wall and that appeared to cover a hole. He got to his feet, ignoring a stab of pain from his stiff foot, limped over to the sheet and moved it aside.The roughly hammered hole was an entrance to a smaller, darker room that seemed to be filled with more junk. He removed a small pencil light from a pouch and switched it on. The light revealed a weapons store, an Aladdin’s Cave of armaments: dozens of AK47 assault rifles, RPG7 hand-held rocket launchers and an assortment of metal ammunition boxes. Mallory’s first thought was to get out of there, imagining that the owners of such an important storage facility might not be far away. But on the other hand a high-velocity rifle would be more useful in a fight than his pistol.

He stepped inside, allowing the sheet to drop back across the opening, and took a closer look at the cache. There were hundreds of AK47 magazines, many of them filled with bullets, and inside an open ammunition box were several pistols. On closer inspection much of the ordnance turned out to be old and rusty, while the wooden stocks and butts on some of the AK47 rifles were badly damaged. Mallory holstered his pistol to inspect an AK47 that looked in better condition than the others and carefully drew back the working parts to check the breech and ejection mechanisms. It didn’t look too bad - a touch of oil would do it the world of good.The AK47 was a cheaply manufactured weapon but that was also its advantage. Its low-tolerance moving parts could function even when poorly maintained, one reason why it was the most popular weapon with poorly trained ragtag armies.

Mallory sorted through the ready-filled magazines, all of which were in bad condition. A couple of empty ones were in reasonable shape but he needed some loose ammunition to fill them with. The next ammunition box he inspected contained pistol rounds and the one beneath that was empty. Another ammunition box was filled with spare parts for an 82mm mortar: a rusty tube and base-plate lay on the floor beside it.

A clean, relatively new-looking metal ammunition box sitting alone in a corner under a stack of empty sandbags caught his eye. Mallory squatted on a bundle of dirty Iraqi army uniforms in front of it to take the weight off his throbbing leg. He removed the sandbags and pulled on one of the box’s catches but it was tight. He put the end of the flashlight in his mouth, allowing him to use both of his hands, and after a struggle the catch sprang open. He gripped the sides of the lid and raised it. The light bathed the inside of the box and Mallory almost dropped the small torch from his mouth when he saw what was inside.

He pushed the lid back fully and removed the pencil light from his mouth - which stayed open in disbelief. The box was filled with neatly packed rectangular bundles of green-grey printed paper, each sheet of which had the image of Benjamin Franklin in its centre and the figures ‘100’ in each corner.

Mallory took out one of the bundles to examine it more closely, turning it on its side and flicking through the crisp notes with his thumb to find every one identical apart from its serial number. He took out a couple more bundles to reveal that the ones beneath were also all made up of United States of America hundred-dollar bills. Suddenly worried that the owners might appear at any moment he went back to the opening to peer through it.

He stepped into the outer room and crossed to the front door to listen. The only sound was a distant rumble but the urge to get out of the building consumed him.

Mallory hurried back into the small room, grabbed an empty sandbag, shoved several AK47 magazines - loaded and unloaded - into it, picked up the assault rifle he’d selected and his helmet and looked down at the box of money. It suggested to him more than anything else in the room that the owners could return any time. Nobody would leave that amount of money unattended for long, certainly not these people to whom it was worth ten times its western value. At the same time he found it impossible to simply walk away from that amount of cash.

He had at least to satisfy a nagging curiosity. He put down his hardware booty, sat back down in front of the box, picked up a bundle of notes and riffled swiftly through it. A rough calculation put the bundle at ten thousand dollars and there were ten bundles per stack and eleven stacks. Mallory whistled softly to himself as he realised he was staring at over a million US dollars - worth well over five hundred thousand pounds, more than he could earn in the Marines if he stayed in for the next twenty years.

Mallory got to his feet, his stare fixed on the treasure, and wondered how a person could have the worst and best luck in his life all in one day. That was so typical for him, though, he thought. In this case each sort of cancelled the other out, leaving him with a fat zero and the rest of the day still to go. Even if he were to take the money, and assuming that all went well with the rescue, the first thing he would be asked about would be the contents of the box. And once declared, there was no doubt about how much he would be allowed to take home with him: none of it, since it was war loot and hence illegal.

But on the other hand he
could
take a little if he hid it on his person. So he stuffed one bundle into a thigh pocket, another into a breast pocket which was only barely big enough - and then he stopped himself. Greed simply increased the chance of discovery. After his rescue Mallory would be escorted to the hospital where he would have to discard his clothing. He could probably secure one bundle but more would be pushing it. It all depended on so many things: being left alone for even a few seconds before he was examined; his clothes being taken away once he was in hospital garb; finding somewhere in the examination room to hide the bundle so that he could retrieve it later. He knew he was probably being too paranoid but it worried him nevertheless.

A noise outside startled him and he drew his pistol, grabbed up the bag, AK47 and helmet, carefully pushed the concealing sheet aside and moved stealthily across the room to the door. There was no follow-up to the sound, the source of which was unclear, but it was yet another warning to get out of there as soon as possible.

As Mallory placed a hand on the door to open it he paused and looked back towards the storeroom. There was one possible low-risk solution to keeping the money that was admittedly a long shot but better than simply walking away and eternally regretting that he had not given it a go. He was already succumbing to peer pressure, imagining some of the names he would be called by the lads back home if he told them how he had found a cool million and then just walked away from it.

Mallory reached into a pouch, pulled out his GPS and turned it on. A message window declared it was searching for satellites and he turned it off, satisfied that it was working. He weighed the pros and cons of his hastily thought-out plan and the pros came out on top, no doubt enhanced by thoughts of a fancy new house with a pool, a new car, et cetera. Enough, he told himself. He could daydream later, which was another positive aspect of the plan since it gave him something more to look forward to, not that the prospect of survival wasn’t encouraging enough.

He pocketed the GPS, placed his helmet, AK47 and bag on the floor by the door and went back into the storeroom.

He took the bundle poking out of his breast pocket, tossed it back into the box, leaving the one in his thigh pocket, closed the lid and picked it up to test its weight. It was heavy but manageable. The problem was that he would need his hands free to hold his gun. He scanned around the room, found a length of old nylon rope that appeared to have the strength for the job and threaded it through the handles at either end of the box, tying it off to form a loop. He bent forward, placed the line over his head, stood up, moved the box around so that it hung low across his back and tested it. It was not perfect and would annoy the hell out of him but it was worth a try.

The urge to get out of the building was now overpowering. Mallory went back to the front door, took up his Kalashnikov and bag, elected not to wear his helmet at that moment since it impeded his hearing, clipped it around the nylon line by the chin strap, took his pistol from its holster and opened the door.

He crossed the yard and checked inside the opposite building. There was a partially open door at the far side and he crossed the dirt floor towards it.

The door led onto a street and Mallory carefully looked out and checked in both directions. A man was on the road in the distance but far enough away not to be an immediate threat. Otherwise it looked clear. Mallory focused on the entrance to an alleyway directly opposite and, holding the box in place with the same hand that was holding the bag and AK, his pistol in the other, he moved off.

Mallory wasn’t far along the alleyway when the difficulties he had expected to have carrying his load became a reality. He paused long enough to undo the helmet, drop it to the ground, and kick some rubble over it. Then he moved on.

Halfway along the alley he ducked through a gap between the houses, stepping around what looked like an old generator to arrive at a corner where he stopped. In front of him was a large expanse of open ground, marked with the rudimentary boundaries and goal-posts of a football pitch, whose perimeter was lined by brick buildings, many of them two-storey. A few metres away in a corner of the waste ground was a flimsy wooden shed that looked as if it had been built to keep animals. He needed somewhere to wait until dark; he didn’t fancy backtracking and since he couldn’t risk moving in the open any more it was the only option he felt he had.

Mallory moved towards it at the crouch, eyes checking in every direction while the box swung awkwardly behind him. He ducked inside the rickety construction.

The dirt floor was covered in old palm leaves and the ceiling was not high enough for him to stand upright. He dropped to his knees, quickly removed the line from around his neck and moved to the back of the hut to watch the direction he had come from in case he had been followed.The smell and the absence of any man-made implements suggested that animals had probably been the hut’s last occupants. Mallory remained still for several minutes, listening intently to the local sounds, until his breathing returned to normal.

A glance at his wristwatch told him he had at least another hour before the sun began to set and probably an hour more until it was really dark. He couldn’t remember if there was a moon or not that night but it didn’t matter. He was moving out whatever happened.

Mallory quickly set about his next task and emptied the contents of the sandbag onto the floor. He quietly unloaded two old AK47 magazines and one by one pushed the bullets into the ones that were in better condition. Once they were loaded he firmly pressed a magazine into its housing on the weapon until it clicked home. Then, pulling the working parts to the rear, he controlled the return spring, letting the breech-block slide forward to push a bullet out of the magazine and into the breech. He could not allow the return spring to fly forward as normal because of the noise it would make and so the breech had not seated properly and he spent a couple of minutes working it into place. Once he had the AK47 properly loaded he left the safety catch off and rested the gun across his lap - not normal safe practice as he was taught but this wasn’t a normal situation, alone and unsupported.

His ears gradually tuned to the noises that surrounded him, far and near, and he leaned back against the wall that moved a little under his weight but held firm. He stretched out his legs. The pain in his foot had eased and Mallory’s thoughts drifted home to Plymouth and to the apartment he had shared with Jenny, his girlfriend, until she’d dumped him for a policeman two days before Mallory left for Iraq. Her reason for leaving after two and a half years together was that she did not want to live with someone who was not home every night. He knew the real reason was that she didn’t fancy him any more. If she had loved him she wouldn’t have left. But then, the truth was that
he
didn’t love
her
. He couldn’t have or it would have been more painful than it had been. It made him wonder why he had lived with Jenny in the first place. But there had been some good times - in fact, it had all been quite good for him. Clearly not for her, though. But at that moment she would have been nice to come home to.

Mallory exhaled heavily as he checked his watch, calculating that it was three p.m. back in England. It was also Sunday and the lads would be watching football down the pub. What he wouldn’t give to be with them at that moment, having a pint and a fish-and-chip lunch covered in tomato sauce and salt and vinegar. His mouth was dry as paper and thoughts like that only made it worse. He forced himself to think of something else.

A sudden noise took care of that. He pointed the Kalashnikov at the hut opening and his ears focused on the sound. It came again, like a tapping noise but not in any kind of rhythm. It seemed to be coming from the direction he had arrived from and was getting closer.