ROCCO AND THE SNOW ANGEL

A Rocco novella

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Picardie, France. 1964.

 

The man was very dead.

A bullet hole in the centre of the forehead will do that, thought Inspector Lucas Rocco, although lying in a field in northern France in the dead of winter is hardly a recipe for a long life. The wind out here had a habit of slicing through you on its way south, taking your breath away and chilling you to the core like frozen salami. Not like his old stamping ground of Clichy, in Paris, where the buildings and bistros provided warm retreats even on the coldest of nights.

 ‘I said you wouldn’t believe it.’ Local garde champêtre Claude Lamotte waved at the open countryside before them, which was a small part of his patrol area. ‘I can hardly believe it myself, out here . I thought it was a dead sheep at first. Then… that.’

That, on closer inspection, had revealed a man lying on his back with arms and legs spread wide, eyes staring up at the grey early dawn.

Rocco sighed and pulled his long coat around him as he felt his face beginning to tighten under the relentless chill. At any other time the blanket of white would have been scenic, even welcome, covering all manner of blots on the rural Picardie landscape.

But not now.

‘Good job you checked. How long ago did you find it?’ It was too early in the day for murder, in his view, although long experience had taught him that death was no respecter of timetables.

‘About thirty minutes. I came and got you immediately. No idea how long he’d been here, but it can’t have been more than an hour or so, going by the snow covering.’

A line of depressions already being filled in by wind-blown snow told their own story: the dead man’s footprints led in a straight line from the gate. Then they had stopped. One moment he’d been standing there, then he wasn’t.

Rocco’s interest level increased. A puzzle.

Instinct told him there would be little or no evidence here, no vital clue to pinpoint precisely what had happened or why. That would have been too easy; a murder scene concocted for the theatre or the big screen, where clues were piled conveniently one on another waiting for the eager cop to make sense of it in no time at all. Out in the living world the reality was that the elements often conspired with wrong-doers to confuse and confound any investigation, leaving no-one the wiser, least of all the workaday cop.

 ‘It’s like he was playing snow angels,’ Claude murmured.

‘What?’

Claude pointed at the position of the limbs. ‘We played it as kids. You lie down in the snow and… ’ He flapped his arms and one leg wide, then stopped and crossed himself. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean any disrespect.’

Rocco said nothing, intent on trying to understand what could possibly bring a man to end his days lying here in the middle of a snow-covered field with a bullet hole in his head. Neat. Undramatic. Convenient.

Inexplicable.

Especially when, judging by the direction of the man’s footprints and the disturbance of snow by his feet, he had been walking into the field and had stopped for some reason, and turned to face the gate.

Why? Had he seen somebody? Changed his mind about venturing further into the open snow?

Or had he been following instructions?

Rocco tried telling himself he was being fanciful, that a gangland-style execution could have visited this peaceful backwater. But he’d seen it too many times before in other parts, where killings were carried out in a way that conveyed a very visible message to others. So why not here? And the truth was he’d seen violence not a few kilometres from here that in many ways outdid anything the street rats in Paris could conceive of.

He turned to study the field beyond the body, to check he wasn’t misreading the signs. Nothing. Just a blank space leading nowhere.

He squatted for a closer look at the body. The entry wound was small and neat, dead centre between the eyes. There was some blood, as one might expect, a small seepage around the hole and running into the hairline at the back of the head. He’d have to get Dr Rizzotti to check that later. The man was in his late sixties at a guess, with thinning hair gone grey and a neatly-trimmed goatee. He was dressed in a heavy coat and shoes, both of good quality – which Rocco knew something about – and looked well-fed; hardly common in a poor rural area where most inhabitants scratched a living from the soil, the men in traditional bleues and the women in black or sombre greys.

He’d looked healthy, too.

Until someone had decided he shouldn’t be.

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Rocco and the Snow Angel - https://www.canelo.co/books/rocco-and-the-snow-angel-adrian-magson

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DEATH AT THE CLOS DU LAC

Inspector Lucas Rocco #4

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Spring 1964 – Picardie – France

The man was standing on the bottom of the therapy pool in the Clos du Lac sanitarium, his white cotton shirt billowing out like gossamer in the clear, blue water. Staring up through the glass-panelled roof at a pale, three-quarter moon bathing the world in an eerie light, his expression was one of deep melancholy. But that may have been because his face was some way beneath the surface, and breathing was a thing of the past.

Garde Champêtre Claude Lamotte’s rubber-soled boots crunched with grit as he moved along the side of the pool for a closer look. Behind him a woman in a nurse’s uniform was sobbing quietly, reluctant to come closer. Somewhere in the distance a door creaked open and shut repeatedly, a lonely drumbeat in the night.

The combination of sounds and atmosphere, more than the sight of the body, caused the hairs on the back of Claude’s neck to stir uncomfortably. Responsible for policing the area around Poissons-les-Marais in rural Picardie, he was accustomed to moving around the lakes and rivers and marshes in the small hours, inured to the sometimes sinister mists and dark waters and sudden unexplained rushes of hidden movement in the night. But a death in this place, a supposedly secure haven of luxury and quiet, was something else entirely.

He propped his shotgun in the corner by the door and sniffed at the chlorinated air. It reminded him of his army days and the enforced swims with fellow conscripts every morning. The only difference then was they never had to contend with finding corpses in the water. Not real ones, anyway.

He shivered in spite of the clammy warmth, and gripped his flashlight for reassurance, irritated by the spider-touch of fear crawling up his back. Maybe this was what the training had been all about: finding stiffs in pools and remaining calm.

Signalling to the nurse to stay back, he forced his breathing to settle and knelt with a grunt by the edge of the water. A residue of cold moisture from the ribbed tiles soaked through his heavy cord trousers. At this level he could see every detail of the pool and its grisly contents, lit by a number of underwater lights spaced along one side. A faint mist was lifting off the surface as the colder air from outside met the warmer temperature inside. He debated shedding his jacket and boots and going in. Maybe there was a trace of life left in those staring eyes, a remote chance that he could keep that thread going.

Then a glance at the man’s feet decided him against it. He felt a cold tremor go through him. ‘Merde!’ The word slipped out unbidden, and he glanced guiltily at the nurse. ‘Sorry.’

A large metal milk churn was resting on its side on the tiled bottom of the pool. It was attached to the dead man’s ankles by a heavy chain, the links bright and glistening against the dark of his trousers. Holding the chain in place was a padlock.

According to the nurse, from the time she’d noticed the lights on and had come to investigate, to when she had finally rushed out of the pool house to seek help, the man must have been in there for at least twenty minutes, probably longer. Even if Claude could get the chain off, it would take a kiss of life of which only God himself would be capable to bring the man back from whatever dark and distant place he’d gone to.

‘A telephone. I need to call this in.’ He had to get Lucas Rocco here. He’d make sense of it. He was an experienced investigator, accustomed to this kind of stuff.

He stood and followed the nurse as she hurried away to a desk near the entrance to the pool house. The movement made his stomach lurch, and he fought against the urge to let it all go. He’d seen his share of fights, stabbings, shootings and the gut-churning results of car crashes and agricultural accidents over the years. But nothing like this. It seemed worse, somehow, in a setting associated with health, to see death standing here so casually, so cavalier and blatant.

There was no answer from Rocco’s house in the village of Poissons les Marais a kilometre away, so he rang the office in Amiens and left a message. The duty officer recognised Claude’s voice.

‘The inspector’s been called in to an unexplained death in the town centre,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a message to him. Is it urgent?’

‘Very,’ Claude breathed. ‘Tell him I’ve got another dead one for him, even more unexplained. And he’ll need Doctor Rizzotti and his swimsuit for this one.’ Rizzotti was the Amiens area’s forensic representative, a self-confessed amateur seconded from his role as a GP to fill a post vacant now for two years. But the doctor was good, and Rocco had faith in his abilities.

Claude had no wish to return to the pool, but he felt bad leaving the dead man alone. Not that the poor soul would notice, of course, but it just felt wrong. Besides, as first man on the scene, Rocco would want his opinions, so he walked back across the tiled floor and knelt once more by the edge of the water.

He focused on the knuckles of the man’s right hand, just breaking the surface. The fingers, with a sprouting of coarse, dark hairs, were locked into a fist, gripping a thin, helical steel wire running up to a boxed wheel device sitting on an overhead cable stretched across the pool. He followed its length, wondering at its purpose. The cable was held at each end of the pool house by steel plates bolted to the walls, with a wire running out to the box. The down-wire was taut, he noted, and the only thing keeping the body upright.

He heard a scuff of footsteps and found the nurse standing nearby. Her face was a pale oval, the expression unchanged since he’d seen her running out of the building earlier[f1] . He didn’t know her name, although he’d seen her in the village once or twice, at the co-op store. A handsome woman with a nice figure. Or maybe it was the uniform. She was lucky he’d been passing, otherwise she would have had to call for help and wait for a team to arrive from Amiens. She had clammed up now, though, he noted. Probably shock.

‘I’d put some coffee on, if I were you,’ he suggested kindly. The activity would keep her occupied until Rocco and the others got here. ‘And if you haven’t done it already, wake your boss because this place is going to be invaded.’

‘My boss?’ Her eyes flickered uncomprehendingly, edging towards the body in the water with reluctant fascination, then away again.

Claude let it slide. ‘Coffee,’ he said again. ‘Make it a big pot.’

Less than half a kilometre away, a dark figure waited for the moon to slip behind a cloud, before emerging from the cover of a hedgerow and walking with a confident stride along the edge of the lane leading away from the Clos du Lac. The narrow route was little used in daytime, even less at night, but the man believed in taking simple precautions.

He was dressed all in black, from flexible, rubber-soled boots to the woollen cap covering his head, practically invisible to anyone unless they took him by surprise. But that wasn’t likely to happen. Even so, he stopped periodically to test the air around him, using skills gained over many years to seek out the presence of others. All he heard was the faint, mournful shriek of a fox drifting on the night air, and a flap of wings in the trees nearby. Satisfied he was unobserved – by humans, at least – he moved on.

He reached a small, dilapidated barn at the side of the lane and stepped inside. He moved easily in the dark, having scouted the place in daylight two days earlier to study the layout and memorise any obstacles. The air was thick with the smell of old straw and mould, and he felt his nostrils react to the dust in the atmosphere.

He reached out and located the moped parked against the wall of the barn. From a pannier on the back he took a slim flask and opened the cap. The aroma of coffee with a lacing of cognac took over from the smell of straw. He poured a measure and drank it quickly, savouring the warmth spreading through his gut. He wanted a cigarette, too, another craving, but it was a risk too far. He would save it for later.

The moped held a second pannier, this one containing a collapsible net and rod, and a box of bait. But he was no fisherman; they were props, simple distractions in the unlikely event that he was stopped by a patrolling policeman or spotted by a farmer with insomnia. Fishing without a permit was easily excused, given the right amount of reasoning and charm and a willingness to apologise. As he knew all too well, the success of a mission was in the preparation, not simply the execution.

He smiled at the play on words. Tonight’s job had been just that – an execution. And it had gone as planned, if a little convoluted at the end. But he didn’t mind that; it added to the frisson he still gained from a task done well. Tomorrow was the next phase, and undoubtedly the most important part of the plan. However, that was for others to deal with. His skills lay more in the role of a troubleshooter – a fixer of problems.

He replaced the flask and checked his watch using a flick of a flashlight. The glass over the face showed a tracery of fine scratches. Plenty of time to get clear. He had to be back on his way to Paris before sunrise. Seconds later he was wheeling the moped out of the barn and along the lane, heading for a route deep into the countryside that connected eventually with a back road out of the area, and his car.

Once he was certain he was well beyond earshot of the Clos du Lac, he jumped on and pedalled at a steady pace, travelling a full half-kilometre before engaging the engine.

He smiled to himself and placed his feet together on the central rest, enjoying the quirky feeling of using such a bizarre mode of transport away from a killing.

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Death at the Clos du Lac - Rocco #4 of 8 - https://geni.us/AuYxvTt

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DEATH ON THE PONT NOIR

Inspector Lucas Rocco #3

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December 1963 – Picardie, France

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The gleaming black Citroën DS with the curtained rear windows ghosted along the deserted country road at a steady 70kph, its hydropneumatic suspension making light of the undulating, pitted surface. Inside the car, its two occupants were as shielded from the cold tarmac underneath as they were from the frost-glazed mud of the fields on either side, warmed by the controlled whisper of heated air wafting gently around them.

‘Belt up tight,’ said the driver. His name was Calloway. ‘This could hurt, otherwise.’ He checked his double shoulder harness with its quick-release button and, for luck, tapped the padding on the roll cage, an ugly non-factory addition to the otherwise plush, stylish interior.

‘Just get on with it,’ muttered Tasker, his passenger. ‘You talk too bloody much.’ But he checked his harness and settled lower in his seat, bracing himself with both hands.

Calloway flicked a glance across the field to his right, to where the stubby shape of a truck was moving away from a strand of pine trees. It accelerated quickly, bouncing along a rough track on heavy-duty tyres, bits of mud and vegetation flicking up in its wake. Olive green in colour, it had the low, front-heavy bulk of a bulldog, made uglier by a large, black oblong strapped across the grill.

And it was aiming towards the road in front of them on an intercept path.

‘Two hundred yards,’ Calloway murmured, watching the truck’s progress. He was calculating its trajectory, his foot steady on the accelerator. A quick glance at the road, keeping to the centre line, then back to the truck, the eye movement and speed of the two vehicles bringing them closer together in sharp bursts like the stuttering frames of an old film reel.

‘Hundred yards.’

‘He’s gonna miss.’

‘No, he’s not. Seventy.’ Eyes to the road and back. Surface clear, no other traffic, just as they’d been assured. Something on the grass verge but no time to look now. Concentrate.

‘He’s bloody shifting a bit, isn’t he?’

‘Fifty yards.’ The truck was suddenly bigger, solid. Brutish.

‘Go.’

‘Thirty.’

‘Go, for God’s sake!’ Tasker pounded the dashboard in panic as the Renault tore out of the end of the track and loomed all over them, its grill grotesquely dwarfed by a railway sleeper held in place by steel hawsers.

Calloway calmly flicked the wheel and stamped on the accelerator. It was too late for a complete miss, but limiting the damage was as instinctive to him as breathing. The Citroën’s rear end drifted sideways on the slippery surface, an elegant shuffle of its aerodynamic lines like a lady performing a two-step. The movement absorbed some of the impact, but the wooden sleeper still slammed into the car just aft of the passenger seat, punching the panel hard against the reinforcing struts welded into the interior. The car spun violently on its axis, jerking both men hard against their harnesses, and the scream of tortured metal and rubber echoed across the cold acres on either side of the road.

‘What’s he trying to do – bloody kill us?’ Tasker turned to glare at the truck driver, who was grinning down at them as he slammed the truck into reverse and pulled back several yards along the road.

‘Isn’t that the general idea?’ Calloway coolly spun the wheel and stamped on the accelerator, taking the car back up the road, its rear end sinking under the extra power being transmitted to the wheels.

‘Idea! I’ll bloody give him an idea,’ Tasker raged. ‘Let me out! Now!’

Calloway stood obediently on the brakes. Stopping the car altogether took a while due to the extra weight of steel reinforcements. But he compensated by spinning the wheel again and bringing the Citroën to a wallowing halt side-on to the truck, now stationary on the grass verge. The sleeper, he noticed, was hanging drunkenly from the front where it had become dislodged by the impact.

Throwing off the harness, Tasker struggled into the rear seats and kicked at the door on the undamaged side, moving with difficulty in the confined space. His breathing whistled harshly through his ex-boxer’s smashed nose and his face was flushed with anger.

Before he could clamber out fully, however, two shapes rose up like wraiths from a nearby ditch and ran towards the damaged car. Dressed in camouflage smocks, each man carried two bottles with rags stuffed in the necks. They paused a short distance away, breath puffing white in the cold air, and hurled the bottles against the side of the vehicle. As the glass smashed on impact, the two men stepped closer, drew handguns and opened fire at point-blank range.

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Death on the Pont Noir - Rocco #3 of 8 - https://geni.us/d84ucB7

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DEATH ON THE RIVE NORD

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Inspector Lucas Rocco #2

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October 1963 – the Somme Valley

 

Armand Maurat was in the presence of death. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it… but it was there, sticking to him as relentlessly as the tail-lights of the Berliet truck he was driving.

His stomach lurched as the narrow road dipped unexpectedly, catching him off-guard. Outside the cab, a cold spray was being blasted across his windscreen by a solid, vengeful easterly, reducing visibility to a blur of trees and hedgerows and an occasional sign pointing to a remote village tucked away in the darkness.

He reached out and banged the radio perched on the dashboard. It responded with a hiss of static, but even that drifted and ebbed as the sound waves became blocked by a nearby hill. Cheap crap, he thought savagely. Bought under the counter at a transit warehouse outside Paris, the packaging had guaranteed high quality music but delivered mostly mush – or worse, what passed for singing these days. Give him Aznavour any day, even Brel. Depressing son of a bitch, Brel; enough to make a weak man jump off a bridge. On a lonely drive in the dark, though, it suited his mood of isolation.

He’d been on the road for over fifteen hours straight so far; first heading from his home in St Quentin, where he lived with his mother, to a transit depot beyond Dijon to pick up a load of car parts for an assembly plant near Amiens; then dropping further south to an isolated depot near Chalon-sur-Saone to pick up his second consignment. This part of his trip wasn’t going to be mentioned anywhere; no paperwork, no names, no records. Staying clear of major towns and by-passing areas of known police activity had put dozens of kilometres on the journey but he was now curving westward towards Amiens and hadn’t much further to go. Then he could be shot of his special load and whatever misfortune they might have brought with them, and get back home.

His lips moved silently, subconsciously mouthing the instructions he’d been given. His face looked unhealthily drawn in the light from the instrument panel, and he shook his head periodically to counter the deadly, hypnotic beat of the wipers. Not that falling asleep at the wheel would be his worst problem; if he missed his mark, the reaction waiting for him when he didn’t make the delivery would make hurtling off this God-forsaken stretch of tarmac the least of his worries.

He checked the time. Gone three. He was on schedule. There should have been a clear sky, according to the weather reports, heralding a mild frost and a clear day to follow. Good driving weather. A trucker’s weather if you didn’t mind concentrating for long stretches. But if there were any stars out there, they were hidden behind a dense layer of low cloud. He might as well have been in a dead landscape, with only the occasional farmhouse light showing through the gloom to indicate any signs of life beyond his cab.

He shivered and hit the demister switch. Thoughts of life or death served no purpose right now, and reminders of his own mortality were the last thing he needed. Welcome as the cash was, he knew he was ultimately playing with fire. The kind of people he was dealing with, if anything happened beyond his control, shit would follow as surely as Sundays.

He turned his head and spat the soggy remains of a Disque Bleu through a gap in the side window and longed for a raw Marc - brandy - to wet his throat. A nice Calvados would be even better, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

The road dipped again past a narrow turning on his right. The sign said Vailly, a tiny hamlet too small to appear on his road maps, but one he’d been told to watch out for. Not long now. He began to ease off the accelerator, the engine noise diminishing from its clattering roar to a more subdued rumble, like it had sounded when he’d first bought it three years ago. A lot of oil had gone into it since then, and a lot of kilometres on the clock.

The ghostly sides of a barn loomed close on his left hand side, a brief glimpse of posters advertising a moto-cross event plastered across the boards. Then a bend came up, and across the road the dark emptiness of a field caught momentarily in the headlights. He tapped the brakes and hauled on the wheel, the tyres skittering slightly on the wet, rippled surface. Too fast; he should have been down to forty kph and reading the road, not fantasising. He corrected the beginnings of a skid by increasing power slightly, then eased off as the road straightened. Felt a wash of relief overtake the hot and cold sweats that had broken out between his shoulder blades.

Behind him came a brief rumble and what sounded like a thin squeal, cut off abruptly. He ignored it.

Another sign flashed by, rough and homemade. Pêche Privée 1 Km. Just past this, he’d been told. Eyes open and don’t be seen. Not that anybody sane would be fishing at this time of year in the middle of the night. Look out for the marker. Miss it and you might as well continue driving until nobody can find you again.

Ever.

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Death on the Rive Nord - Rocco #2 of 8 - https://geni.us/AujmPx

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DEATH ON THE MARAIS

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Inspector Lucas Rocco #1

 

Picardie, France - 1963

 

She was going to die. She could feel it, her life ebbing away as surely as fine sand through fingers. The thought caused her more sadness than fear; less a sense of foreboding than a cause to wonder what lay ahead.

Maybe it was the drugs. She didn’t know much about the effects of what a doctor at one of the parties had called hallucinosis, but she’d sensed this odd disconnection before. It wasn’t usually this bad. And never in water.

The water. Seconds ago it had been over her chest and soaking into the heavy uniform jacket with the hated decorations. Now it was lapping at her chin, the waterlogged material dragging her down like lead weights. A splash, and she tasted it, cold and oddly chalky on the palate. She clamped her lips shut, fighting to breath through her nose, eyes tight shut. But the bruised tissue around her septum hurt too much. In desperation, she inhaled…and choked. It could only have been a drop, but it felt like a bucketful, instantly blocking her airways and inducing panic.

God, how her chest hurt! She wondered if she had a broken rib. She could only recall one punch, but that was last night and seemed to be an age away. There must have been others.

She pushed back the pain, managing to thrust her head above the surface. She tried to shout, but her throat was constricted by fear. Besides, she was too far from any source of help and her cries would go unheeded, lost among the trees and in the shrill dawn calls of the marshland birds.

The water was intensely cold, especially around her feet. She kicked out, fearful at what she could not see, too terrified to look. She had never liked swimming; her imagination always too colourful to dismiss as benign the depths beneath her or whatever creatures might be lurking there. Yet oddly, seeing her hands floating before her, this water seemed as clear as day. And there was an unnatural brightness around her. It reminded her of when she was a child, pretending to swim as her mother filled the bath. Back then when her mother was alive, swimming was always safe.

She reached out desperately for the bank, and felt a slimy texture beneath her hands. Her fingers sank into a chill, paste-like substance with no solidity, offering nothing onto which she could hold. She felt like a spider she’d once seen trapped in a soup bowl, tiny feet scrabbling for purchase until it had stopped, too exhausted to go on.

She began to slide further down, the water a rising blanket around her face and now tinged red by the blood from her broken nose. She kicked harder, bubbles bursting in a thin trail from where air had been trapped in her clothing. Another brief respite. She took a deep breath, felt the urge to cough. If only she could take off the jacket that was weighing her down, then she might have a chance. But the uniform buttons had been hard to do up in the first place; they would be even harder to undo.

A crackle of vegetation sounded from nearby, and she looked up, desperate for a helping hand, a friendly face. Maybe a villager out hunting early. Or maybe not. Scared out of the copse where she had been hiding since last night by the sound of a car arriving, she had tripped and plunged headfirst down a steep bank, the flash of cold water replacing one panic into another.

‘Help… help me!’

A familiar shadow framed by the thin dawn light, loomed over the water’s edge. She felt pathetically grateful, reaching up to take the helping hand.

But grasped only empty space.

Then string fingers clamped down on her scalp, and suddenly she had no buoyancy left. Her kicks were futile. Instead, she watched through the clear water as the bank, brilliant white, slid past her face, and below her the bottom of the pool, like a funnel leading into blackness, approached all too quickly.

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Death on the Marais - Rocco #1 of 8 - https://geni.us/v3hSPb

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THE LOST PATROL

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A standalone YA novel

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France – the Battle of the Somme – March 21st - 1917

 

The heavy guns began their relentless pounding at dawn. The dull, crumping sounds came from several miles away, leaving smudges of dirty smoke on the horizon, like soft, deadly flowers opening with the arrival of daybreak.

The line of men trudging across the slope of what had once been a pleasant, tree-filled valley hardly noticed. They were intent on keeping their footing on the treacherous frozen mud, their breath blowing white puffs into the cold air. No trees around them now, only twisted stumps and dead, blackened branches, long devoid of life or colour.

If they had any thoughts at all, it was to pity whoever was on the receiving end of the barrage. Some other poor devils getting a pasting, instead of them. Made a change not to be them cowering in their trenches and feeling the ground shake around them. They had orders to follow and couldn’t be worrying about every burst of gunfire that broke out. It was what the Somme had become known for.

Gunfire and the awful shortness of life.

A lone pigeon clattered up in fright from the ground yards in front of the lead man. The soldier hesitated, surprised to see any sign of wildlife in this desolate landscape. A quiet oath burst forth as the man behind him, head down with exhaustion, collided with him, helmet jarring against his backpack.

‘Sorry,’ the leader muttered. He lifted his gaunt face and watched the bird jink erratically across the heavy sky, envying its freedom. A few hours, he thought, and with a tail wind that bird could be... well, anywhere it wanted. Over untouched fields and soft, rolling hills where men weren’t trying to blow each other to pieces in the name of king or country. That’s if any such place existed anymore.

The thought made him uneasy, and he wondered if the enemy had noticed the pigeon’s sudden flight. All it needed was a sharp-eyed observer and the heavens would open. We’ll soon find out, he guessed, and turned to look at the men behind him, motioning them on with an urgent signal. As they came abreast of him, they each looked up in silent hope of a brief moment’s rest, eyes showing the results of having been on the march for nearly three hours. He set his jaw. Time enough for rest later.

For now they had their orders.

The men’s uniforms were stiff with fresh mud and old sweat, shoulders dusted with the white of morning frost. Their faces were drawn with exhaustion, eyes deep holes in unshaven pudding skins, devoid of expression or light, intent only on putting one weary foot in front of the other.

He nodded as they passed, an encouragement as much as a greeting. His men, he thought wryly. His charges.

Millgate C. Private. Rail worker. A sour grumbler, but a good man.

Sommerfield G. Private. Lied about his age, only seventeen. Not even shaving yet. Hid his fear by being cheeky. Deserved better but probably wouldn’t get it.

Christopher H. Lance-Corporal. Drayman. Fat when he joined up, but not now. Battle has a way of making a man thin. Quiet, solid. Good with a rifle.

Hendry R. Captain. Landowner. Family man. No longer aware even of the time of day. Better officer than most - or had been once.

And himself. Stone N. Sergeant. Less said the better, really.

All in all a sorry lot, he thought grimly. Oh to be a pigeon...

 

As Stone turned to follow his men, a whistling sound pierced the atmosphere, followed by a rush of air above his head. Before he could react there was a deafening explosion tearing at his ears, followed by a giant column of frozen mud rearing up right in front of the new lead man, Millgate. It hung there for an instant, a dirty brown curtain blocking out the light, before raining back down to earth all around them, a torrent of cold mud and stones.

Stone’s voice was lost as he shouted at his men to take cover. Millgate, he noted sadly, had dropped much too quickly; the man had never been that fast at reacting to anything.

Stone flung himself on top of the Captain, an arm across his shoulders, holding him down and preventing the poor, demented man’s instinctive reaction to scramble to his feet and run for a cover which no longer existed.

Another whistling sound heralded the arrival of another shell. The ground shook violently as if pounded by a giant hammer. Another volley of cold mud hit Stone’s back, lumps of hard chalk in its midst stinging briefly and clattering on his tin helmet and his unprotected hands. Someone screamed, a high-pitched sound like a girl’s, and was cut off as if by a knife. Another man sobbed and swore.

Then total, utter silence.

Stone stared at the ground in close-up, concentrating on the colour and texture and trying to block out the hideous sounds and fury that had just happened all around him. Strange, he thought dreamily, how he had never noticed the colour of the soil here; a mixture of white chalk, brown earth and bright red tints.

Red? But that’s not right-

He felt desperately tired, as if he had run a mad, frantic dash up a long, steep hill. With enormous effort he lifted his head and glimpsed Captain Hendry’s dead eyes inches away from his. They were staring into that bottomless pit from which there was no return. Beyond the captain he saw Sommerfield’s smooth, unshaven cheeks turned up towards the sky, eyes unseeing. At peace.

He tried to lift himself further. But then another rush of air bore down on him. This time there was no whistling sound. No noise at all. It meant further movement was pointless. In his final remaining second, Stone rolled over in weary resignation, staring one more time up at the cold, flinty sky. What good their special orders now?

Oh, to be a pigeon....

​

The Lost Patrol - a YA  novel - http://geni.us/1TYI

​

*********

​

TERMINAL BLACK

Harry Tate #6

​

‘Target on the move. Repeat, target on the move.’ The voice came from a phone on the van’s dashboard, startling the driver.

As he reached for the gear lever the woman in the passenger seat said, ‘Not yet. She’s on the sixth floor. We go when she leaves the hotel.’

‘Whatever you say. But I really do not like this.’ The driver’s accent was, like the woman’s, Russian, with a faint American twang. He checked his mirrors repeatedly and scratched at a recent tattoo on the side of his neck where the skin was red and puffy. It was meant to be a phoenix but bore only a faint resemblance.

He had good reason to be concerned. At a mere spit away from the Houses of Parliament in central London, one wrong move would bring a firearms team to the area within minutes. If they managed to get away, their actions would be captured by the extensive array of cameras on every street and they’d be tracked through the capital like watching a bug on a table top.  

‘What you like is not important.’ The woman, whose name was Irina, was stocky, with wild, curly hair, and the way it bounced when she was agitated gave her the appearance of a caged animal. Dark clothing and black jump boots rendered her almost invisible in the gloom of the van.

‘Why do we have to speak English?’ the driver queried.

‘Because English with accents is common here – you know that. If anybody hears us, we’re just a couple of dumb foreigners working crazy hours.’

He shrugged. ‘Dumb and crazy is right.’

Her voice took on a hard edge. ‘Don’t let Kraush hear you talking like that.’

He shook his head and turned up the radio. A news announcer was talking, the mellow tones flowing around the interior of the van like treacle.

‘Amid shifting reports of the on-off relationship between Minsk and Moscow, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has voiced characteristically blunt concerns about the supposed union between the two countries, telling a press gathering that the reality was of a proposed take-over by Moscow, undermining and destroying Belarus sovereignty. Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov reacted—’  

Irina reached out and hit the off button. ‘More lies,’ she said briefly. ‘We don’t listen to that—’

She was interrupted by the voice from the phone. ‘Target approaching exit. Repeat, target approaching.’

‘Once only!’ she snapped. ‘You think we’re in a freaking movie?’

Silence. When the voice came back on it was deliberately and dryly British. ‘Target to exit . . . five, four, three, two . . . one and out . . . and turning left. Over to you.’

Irina nodded. They had checked out the area around the hotel after hacking the target’s phone. They knew where she was going. All they had to do was choose their moment.

‘Now,’ she said, grabbing the door latch. ‘Go!’

The driver The driver stamped on the accelerator, jumping the boxy delivery van away from the kerb. The sudden movement rattled the boxes in the back and pitched the phone on the dashboard into the woman’s lap.

‘Slower,’ she muttered, flat-handing a signal for him to ease off the pedal. Getting spotted by a keen-eyed cop wasn’t part of the plan. In the meantime, the watcher on the hotel would follow the target to ensure they didn’t lose her.

The plan of attack had been decided as soon as they had learned their target’s location. They had been down here three times the previous day, the first on foot and twice in the van. On the last two occasions they had stopped at the kerb feigning delivery drops, scoping the buildings and streets around them, then checked the intersections and alleyways, the routes in and out and the likely presence of police and traffic wardens. Nobody had given them a second look. And why should they? Delivery vans were a common sight in these streets, part of the patchwork of city life.

The driver, who knew the area a little, had pointed out that a fast exit wasn’t going to be easy. But Irina had accepted no argument, saying time was against them. With luck they’d be gone and far away before anybody could react.

‘Target turning left.’

The disposition of street lights cast patches of heavy shadow, while light refraction from elsewhere combined to create the false impression of movement.

‘We need a description!’ Up against the windscreen, Irina was searching for a sight of the target. ‘Clothing, bags – anything.’

‘Short hair, medium height, knee-length coat, collar up, black boots, a bag on the left shoulder. Padded laptop bag in her right hand. The street is clear. No traffic or pedestrians. Am now pulling back.’

‘Good. Go back in and clear out her room.’

‘Got it. Over and out.’

The driver increased speed towards the corner, which he knew would take them into a narrow street with double yellows either side. A movement in the shadows showed the watcher making his way in the opposite direction, his task complete.

Once round the corner they would have a clear pavement on a darkened street, with no obstacles save for an occasional rubbish bag or wheelie bin. Two of the street lights had been deactivated in readiness by the watcher less than an hour ago.

‘Slow as you turn,’ said Irina. ‘We don’t want her spooked.’

‘Got it.’ The driver hauled on the wheel, the headlights flaring off glass on each side, illuminating the rich gloss-painted iron railings and the polished brass of door furniture.

Irina jabbed at the windscreen. A solitary figure was walking away from them on the left-hand side of the street. ‘There!’

She released the door latch. They had rehearsed the manoeuvre many times, tracking, spotting and moving in. The vehicle type had been similar and the tactics transferable. Only the scout in the hotel was different, a local contractor with no connections to them and no knowledge of what was about to take place.

Stop. Snatch. Go.

The driver was humming again, working the simple mantra in his head, seeing it unfold just as they’d practiced. He waited until they were thirty metres behind the target before lifting his foot a fraction, ready for a quick stop.

Then the mantra was ripped apart. Without warning Irina grabbed the wheel, yanking it downwards and out of his hands.

 

Terminal Black - Book 6 of 6

https://geni.us/UTix9

​

EXECUTION

Harry Tate #5

​

She awoke to the scuff of leather shoes in the corridor. Eyes dragged open, gummy with sleep, then closed again, a reflex action.

Easy does it. Relax. You’re safe.

She froze as a random thought wormed slowly through her befuddled mind. The nurses don’t wear leather shoes. She was familiar enough with the hurried tread of the consultants, or the heavier, measured stroll of the security guards. So who?

Outsiders. Not good.

She willed her breathing to remain steady. Not easy with a hole in her side. She focussed instead on the air around her, going over the small details to get her brain working. She’d been shot. She was in a hospital. King’s College, south London – the Major Trauma Centre, they had told her. She kept forgetting that bit. Stuff seemed to leak out of her head all the time like water from a holed bucket.

She concentrated. It was night, she was certain; at a guess, two a.m. There wasn’t the hum of daytime activity, the rush of feet, the voices; nor the beep of electronics signifying seconds to someone’s total blackness and a bed left empty. Wakefulness brought a throb in her temples and a woozy feeling from the drugs, and the stickiness between her shoulder blades from lying in the overheated, cloying atmosphere for too long. There was a tightness across her middle and the tug of plaster against skin, still tender and sore.

So who was out there? And why now?

The door to her room whispered open. Soft footsteps approached the bed, accompanied by a man’s nasal breathing. Her body shrieked with a sense of vulnerability but she remained still. It wasn’t hard – she’d had a lot of practice in this place; using it to distance herself as much from the probing of questions as of fingers, of their barely-restrained curiosity about what had brought a civilian woman here with a gunshot wound.

A ghost of warm peppermint fanned her cheek. Along with it came the tangy smell of damp clothing. It made a change from the sickly aroma of anaesthetics and cleaning fluids. Must be raining outside. God, what she wouldn’t give for a walk in the rain and a lungful of fresh air. And a Starbucks to go. With a double shot.

Some hope.

She tensed as the man leaned further over her. She didn’t need to open her eyes to see him. Normal times, she’d have reacted by kicking back the covers and planting her foot in his face for invading her space. Watched him fall and lie still, before stepping over him and kicking him in the balls for good measure.

But these weren’t normal times.

‘She awake?’ A whisper from over by the door. A second man, the accent rough.

The peppermint smell receded. ‘I don’t think so.’ The air around her shifted and she sensed the man move to the foot of the bed, heard the clank of the clipboard being lifted.

‘What’s her problem?’

‘She has a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Not pleasant.’ This man sounded more educated.

‘So she’s army.’

The clank of the clipboard being replaced. ‘It doesn’t say. Most of them are, here. Who cares? She’s out of it, so not our problem.’

Footsteps moving away. The door closed and she once more felt the emptiness of space. They had gone.

She continued to remain still, fighting against the temptation to open her eyes. A minute ticked by in silence. Two. Three. Then the door huffed, as she knew it would.

Heavy breathing. They were back.

‘Well?’ The one with the rough accent.

A long pause, then: ‘She hasn’t moved. Come on, let’s get this done.’

‘What if she hears us?’

‘Then we’ll have to finish what the bullet started, won’t we?’

‘We could save the bother – do it now.’

‘No. There’s no time. The guard might come back.’ A pause, then a whisper, very close:

‘You’re lucky, Miss Jardine, whoever you are.’

​

Execution - book 5 of 6 - http://geni.us/3V64

 

 

RETRIBUTION

Harry Tate #4

​

 Kosovo, Autumn 1999

 

The girl slithered over the wire like a silver fish, her thin cotton dress plastered to her body by the driving rain. Globules of water shook loose from the mesh as she climbed, plummeting to the earth around her, a contrasting flicker of tiny jewels against the mud, gravel and coarse grass.

Thirty metres behind her lay a dense treeline of spiky conifers. Beyond that, high in the hills, her brother was in hiding, close to death after a severe beating by a drunken Serb militiaman. She didn’t dare approach the hospital for help, didn’t trust the international military mission called KFOR that was supposed to be keeping the peace, or any of the local residents.

All she could do was come down here and climb the fence, to see what she could find to help make his last few days bearable.

She crouched, scanning the compound. It was lit by a tall gantry mounted with six floodlights, the glare pushing back the encircling gloom and highlighting the curtain of solid rain that had been falling relentlessly for over an hour. To one side stood a clump of low, interconnected huts, dimly lit. Across the way a clutch of shipping containers formed a tall barrier against the cold, barren hills half a mile away. Mitrovica, the nearest town, was out of sight, a forbidding place of whispers and certain danger.

A flicker of movement made her freeze. A stocky figure stepped out from one of the huts and paced across the yard, footsteps echoing on the puddled tarmac. The girl noted the waterproof cape, camouflage uniform, jump boots and assault rifle. American, she thought automatically.

She knew about soldiers and their weapons; she had seen too many in her young years not to have learned something about them, the main thing being that they represented danger and death, no matter whose side they were on.

As the soldier disappeared among the shadows thrown by the containers, the girl moved quickly towards the huts. This was where the Kosovo Force (KFOR) troopers ate and slept. There was always something lying around.

Food was her priority: powdered milk, sugar, tea, tins of meat, army rations – especially chocolate if she was lucky. It was never going to be enough, but it might keep her and her brother going for another day or two in their hiding place. Anything was better than falling victim to the Serb killer squads roaming the villages.

A brief flare of a match showed from between the containers. It was the chance she had been waiting for. The guard’s night-vision would be gone for a few moments. She ran for the nearest hut, light-footed, almost ephemeral in the glitter of rainfall against the lights.

She slipped inside. It smelled of coffee and stale food, making her stomach lurch. She listened. No sounds of snoring here; so this wasn’t a sleeping area, which was good. Ghosting along a narrow corridor, she entered a small space on her right. A security lamp threw a dull glow over cupboards, chairs and tables, and sideboards with a kettle and a portable gas stove.

She checked the cupboards, found a tin of coffee and some powdered milk. No sugar but better than nothing. A packet of biscuits lay opened on a bottom shelf, and she took one, the temptation too much. The packet rustled loudly in the silence. She froze. Then she took a bite of the biscuit, followed by another, wolfing down the crumbly sweetness in a moment.

Moments later her stomach rebelled, and she sank to the floor, pain ripping through her. She’d been too long without decent food. She took deep breaths until the pain subsided. She clutched the tins of coffee and powdered milk close to her, trophies too valuable to leave behind, and a panacea. She blinked hard, feeling her eyelids beginning to droop, betraying her. She had to get out. Selim was waiting.

But, warmed by the residual heat in the hut, it was a losing battle.

 

Retribution - book 4 0f 6 - http://geni.us/1hFB

​

DECEPTION
Harry Tate #3
 

‘Three minutes to landing.’ The pilot’s Texan accent sounded terse through the comms unit. ‘Three minutes.’

‘Roger that. Three,’ echoed the crewman on the port side M60 door gun. He lifted his chin at former MI5 officer Harry Tate, who nodded to show he’d got the message. The crewman on the opposite gun flicked a hand in acknowledgement, busy scanning the gathering gloom below as the MH-60L Black Hawk, a sinister, sand-blasted war machine stripped of markings, clattered across the vast, darkening sprawl of Baghdad city.

Harry peered through the open doorway to where the snake’s-head outline of an Apache AH64 attack helicopter was running parallel some 300 yards away and slightly to the rear. Another AH64 held the same position on their starboard side. None of the aircraft showed running lights.

It had been the same since he’d come aboard; no smiles, no welcome. If they had any curiosity about what Harry was doing here, or the man with him who was now handcuffed to his seat, they kept it in check. Just a few terse words of safety from the crew chief, and an agreement about what they were to do when they reached their destination. There was more chatter, this time between their pilot, Postal One, and the escorts – referred to as Shotgun One and Two – confirming direction and co-ordinates, the talk stripped to its essentials, almost unintelligible to an outsider.

Subhi Rafa’i, the reluctant cargo, showed no interest. The former Iraqi cleric was dressed in plain tan pants and a white shirt beneath a flak jacket. He looked listless and withdrawn, staring at the rooftops flashing by below and occasionally shaking his head. If ever a man looked like one going to meet his doom, Rafa’i was it.

Forty minutes earlier, two military policemen had hustled him out of a covered truck parked in the corner of a secure section of the US operations base – where they had been driven immediately on leaving the main airport – and straight up into the belly of the Black Hawk. Rafa’i had been in the open for no more than twelve seconds, watched by several armed guards.

It had been the longest twelve seconds of Harry’s life.

‘He’d better be worth it,’ US Army Colonel Seymour White, the Assistant Operations Officer, had muttered. He watched the transfer, the skin around his eyes pale with tension. ‘These guys got better things to be doing than playing cab driver.’ He didn’t add ‘for British spooks and their rag-head prisoners’, but the meaning was there.

Harry ignored it. The colonel was flexing some psychological muscle, showing that he didn’t have to like what he was being asked to risk men and equipment for, but he had his orders and would do whatever was required. In this case it was the unusual job of delivering an insurgent back to his people.

The two crewmen reached down and grabbed Rafa’i and hauled him aboard with little ceremony. They were in their late thirties, lean and tanned, forearms covered in exotic tattoos. Although dressed in combat fatigues, Kevlar helmets and flak jackets, and wearing side arms, little about them echoed regular US forces. They wore no badges or insignia, had shown no reaction to Colonel White’s arrival, given none of the normal snappy US military response to an officer being within shouting range. It was as if White didn’t exist.

‘Who are they?’ Harry queried. He wasn’t expecting an answer, but Colonel White surprised him.

‘PMCs,’ the American replied. ‘Private military contractors. We use them when we can’t spare our own crews or …’ He left the sentence hanging and tilted his head slightly.

‘You don’t want to?’

‘You said it, not me.’ White shifted his weight and tugged at his waistband, eyes flicking around the base perimeter. ‘We use whoever we can get. And these boys are good and willing.’ He glanced at Harry. ‘And they’re expensive, so don’t go getting them busted.’

‘I’ll try not.’

White nodded. ‘This is the best time to fly. They’ll take you in low once you’re near the coordinates, then go down fast. You’d better hold on to your lunch.’

‘I understand.’

‘Hope so. You’ll off-load your cargo and get straight back out of there. No chit-chat, no fond goodbyes and try not to start a fire-fight. Just in case of trouble, they’re sending over two Apache six-fours to run interference; they’ll join you as soon as you leave here. Do exactly what the crew tell you and you’ll be back in time for dinner.’ He nodded once and walked away, stiff-backed; the mention of dinner clearly not an invitation.

Now they were approaching the Al-Jamia district west of Baghdad, where Rafa’i had once had his heavily fortified base and centre of operations. Until he had blown it up, anyway. Part of a failed plot to gather support against the Western Coalition Forces, he had sacrificed a number of his closest followers in a bid to disappear, believed killed by the Coalition. Tonight he was being returned home to face those he had left behind. Nobody expected the outcome to be a good one.

But it solved a tricky problem the UK government had faced only a few days ago: what should they do with a former cleric-turned-insurgent who had tried to gather sufficient financial and terrorist support to throw out every westerner still in Iraq? Having him die on UK soil was unthinkable – although that had been the plan if a group of shadowy Coalition businessmen and others had had their way. Equally, imprisonment in a UK jail on terrorist charges would have turned any establishment holding him into a tinderbox. The solution was brutally simple: send him back home.

Harry felt the seat shift beneath him as the Black Hawk changed direction. The gunners focussed their attention on the ground. The escorting Apaches kept station with them and the houses below suddenly sprang into view as the nose dipped. They were coming in fast. Colonel White hadn’t been joking.

Deception - Book #3 of 6 - http://geni.us/4kT