Текст книги "The Warrior"
Автор книги: Ty Patterson
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The Warrior
by
Ty Patterson
Copyright © 2012 by Ty Patterson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Books by Ty Patterson
Warriors Series
The Warrior, Warriors series, Book 1
The Reluctant Warrior, Warriors series, Book 2
Coming soon: The Warrior Code, Warriors series, Book 3
Praise for The Warrior
What a ride – Christine Terrell, Goodreads
What a great book! It has been a long time since I have had a book keep me on the edge!
I believe Ty Patterson is the next up and coming thriller writer
The Warrior Rocks
Ty Patterson is now added to my favorites list
A must read!
Intense – No Better Way of Saying It
Zeb Is My Hero! If Only He Were Real
What an awesome book!
A real page turner!
Gripping Read
A must read for anyone who enjoys a well told story
Acknowledgements
Donna Rich for her proofreading, Pauline Nolet for her proofreading and editing,(http://www.paulinenolet.com/),Jason & Marina Anderson of Polgarus Studio (http://www.polgarusstudio.com), for formatting.
Dedications
To my wife who challenged me, and my son who inspired me.
Chapter 1
He lies in the moonless night, waiting.
He came to the village just as dusk settled in, and has become one with the rainforest. The mud huts with thatched roofs are just about a hundred yards away, so close that he can hear conversations in the huts, families eating, children crying, and women cooking. The village is split by a road going through it, with huts almost evenly scattered on either side of it, about two hundred of them in all. He knows from his reconnaissance file that there is a concrete structure in the middle of the village that serves as a communal school and youth center.
He observes the arrival of the soldiers close to midnight, about forty of them in two trucks and an open-topped Jeep, a few white-skinned among them. He hears them banging through huts, the screams of women and children, sounds of violence, and the occasional shots.
He calls Andrews on his satellite phone.
‘Shit has happened. Forty-odd soldiers drove in half an hour back. I can’t see what’s happening, but I can hear women and children screaming, and shooting. I’m going in.’
‘No!’ Andrews shouts across continents. He pauses for a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘Don’t engage. Observe, record, and report was your remit, and still is. Are those FDLR soldiers?’
‘Wearing those uniforms. A few white-skinned in them as well. Haven’t a clue if they’re the real deal or not,’ he replies. ‘I can get up close and personal and find out if I go in.’
Andrews laughs harshly. ‘I know what that means. You are not going in whatever happens. I’ll call their embassy in Washington as well as our embassy over there and alert them. BUT YOU ARE STAYING PUT.’ His voice rises with each word.
He lets Andrews stew in the ensuing silence for a long while till Andrews breaks.
‘I know what you want to do, but trust me on this. You are a more valuable asset outside than inside despite whatever shit is raining down there.’
He hangs up on Andrews and continues observing, blackness coiling deep inside him.
He starts the tabla in his head to drown out the anguish of the women and children, and forces his mind to play various taals. He is on the teentaal when the trucks finally roar off filled with the soldiers; the voices of the women and children mute a little, but not by much.
The Jeep is still there, its front just peeping out from the shadow of a hut. He silences his mental tabla and listens. Ghostly shadows move between the huts occasionally. If sound could be blotted, it would be a lazy evening in the Congo.
* * *
Zeb is a specialist, a troubleshooter – a private military contractor if you want to be nit-picky.
In an earlier life, he was with the US Special Forces. Some would say he is a mercenary. He is hired around the world for his skills in finding things. Things such as stolen nuclear warheads or terrorists. He is also hired for finding people: hostages kidnapped for ransom, soldiers held prisoner in enemy territory, civilians held hostage by wackos – finding anyone, really.
He has often acted as a bodyguard, security consultant, or protector. Sometimes he is hired to make people disappear. Bad people, roaches. Some call him an assassin. He knows he isn’t one, but can do that job better than the best assassins in the world. Labels don’t bother him. His job is a violent, high-risk one. He wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.
Armed forces across the world hire him, as do police forces, national governments, Hollywood stars, and billionaires.
* * *
His last assignment had been to retrieve a stolen Russian nuclear warhead.
He had to work with the agency as well as various covert government organizations in Europe, the USA, and Russia, infiltrate a few terrorist cells, and negotiate with the world’s most wanted arms dealers before locating the warhead in a mosque in Detroit. He had then called in the agency, who in turn had called a few WDE (We Don’t Exist) organizations to conduct a dawn raid on the mosque. He was part of the team that went in; it was his finger that pulled the trigger splattering the brains of two members of the cell.
He had flown to New York for his debrief at one of the several anonymous offices maintained or temporarily occupied by various federal agencies.
Andrews was waiting for him in the colorless office. ‘We have something else for you, if you’re interested.’
That was Andrews. Good at small talk.
‘But first things first,’ continued Andrews. ‘Report?’
He wordlessly handed it across. He had worked with Andrews for a long time, could easily read him, and he knew Andrews wasn’t really interested in his report. He would have been thoroughly debriefed by the WDE agents. Andrews was here to stoke his interest in the next assignment, whatever it was. Andrews was a first-rate handler who gave him interesting assignments, and for that he could tolerate his boring games. For a short while.
Andrews finally put the report down, drummed his fingers on the desk, looked at him, then away and then back at him. ‘We might have a problem.’ He paused. ‘In the Congo.’
Andrews waited for his response. Realizing it could be a long wait, he continued. ‘As you know, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has a UN Peace Keeping Force (UNPKF), which has not been particularly effective in keeping the peace. In fact, the UNPKF has been accused of not doing enough to keep out rebel troops and of being involved themselves in drug and gold smuggling.’
Andrews waited for a response, got none, and forged ahead. ‘But the UN Force is not what’s troubling us. There are a bunch of military contractors out there, gone to train the DRC’s army. Six of them. The agency has used them in the past but stopped dealing with them. Too brutal. Don’t play by the unwritten rules in our game. They deal with multiple paymasters at the same time, and some of those paymasters are the bad guys. That’s bad with a B. Folks we would terminate. Hence the agency blacklisted them. Now over the past few months there have been whispers of military contractors actively working with the other side, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.’
Andrews snorted. ‘Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, aka FDLR. That’s the French name for them. And don’t even ask me why a force for the liberation of Rwanda is active in the DRC, but they are, and are fighting the DRC government troops, who we are backing.’
‘So?’ Zeb prompted.
‘The chatter is that these contractors are not just working with the FDLR, but have gone rogue. Now the fucking thing is we haven’t a clue if these rogue contractors are the ones who went to train the DRC troops. The intel is not the most reliable out there. The agency blacklisted those six, but it would be a political minefield if the rogue contractors turned out to be the six the agency used in the past. China is expanding its presence in Africa, and we want to be seen as the good guys. We want you to go to the DRC, find out who those guys are and what the fuck they’re up to. No action. Just investigate and report.’
‘Nope.’
Andrews waited for an explanation, got none, and did his routine of looking away and back, and drumming his fingers. ‘Yes, I thought you’d say that. Not challenging enough for you, I expect. Hang on a second – I want you to meet someone,’ he said and slipped out of the room. He came back with the Director.
And then it became personal; Andrews knew Zeb couldn’t refuse the Director. The Director and Zeb’s sister went back a long way, and the Director never hesitated to draw on Zeb’s goodwill bank if she had to.
* * *
Zeb has been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for a couple of months now under the guise of a charity worker. He has worked in remote villages and steadily moved his way from Kinshasa in the west, to North and South Kivu in the east.
He has travelled by train, boat, and ridden carts and donkeys. He has gone drinking with the Congolese, helped thatch huts and build schools, all the while keeping his ears open for gossip on foreign contractors. Information has been surprisingly easy to come by. The aid workers and the Congolese are all too happy to have a sympathetic ear after all the years of inhuman brutality.
The history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been one of civil war and corruption right from its independence in 1960. It has witnessed army mutiny, armed rebels backed by Rwanda and other neighboring countries, turning the country into a vast battleground, all fuelled by a thirst for the country’s rich natural resources.
There are numerous mercenaries in the Congo. Some of them South African, some Belgian, a few British and American, and many other nationalities. He has met a few of them. Most of them have been hired for the protection of villages, as bodyguards of businessmen or politicians, or for protection of business assets. Some offer security consultancy to various government bodies and businesses.
It’s in Kindu – almost in the center of the DRC – that he first hears of a group of contractors who have gone to the other side. The Congolese who mention them are fearful and whisper about mass rape and these contractors in the same breath.
‘La mal personnes’ and ‘atrocities’ are the words they use to describe the contractors. After many Ngok and Primus beers over several days, he hears that the contractors and the FDLR soldiers they are associated with, are now based near Lake Kivu, near the border with Rwanda.
He isn’t surprised at the ease of gathering this intel – it’s not easy for six white men to blend in with black soldiers. They would be easily noticed.
The Congolese say these men capture and loot mines, often killing mine workers in the process. Small-scale mining is widespread in the DRC, and because of their size, it’s very easy for armed bands of men to hijack the mines.
The FDLR soldiers and the white-skinned contractors take the mines over and trade in gold, minerals, diamonds, and ivory – anything that has value. They prey on the local villages for food and women. The DRC’s army and police are either incapable or unwilling to deal with the problem or, more likely, are in collusion with the criminals. The UN Peace Keeping Force is usually too late to the scene and stretched too thin.
On a few occasions, he meets victims who have suffered at the hands of this renegade band of thugs. They all speak of the ruthlessness of the soldiers, both black and white. He records his conversations with the Congolese victims and pretty soon has a dossier of atrocity. A few victims have even identified the mercenaries from their agency photographs he carries. He has decided to visit a few villages in North and South Kivu before making his way back to Kinshasa and then back to the US.
* * *
And this was how he came to be lying in wait on the outskirts of Luvungi, one of the villages in the vicinity of Lake Kivu. This is the third village near Lake Kivu that he has surveilled. It’s been a couple of hours since the trucks left, the jeep is still there, and nothing has changed. He doesn’t know how many soldiers have gone in the trucks or how many have been left behind.
He’s going in.
It isn’t in him to be a passive spectator. Andrews can go fuck himself.
The rainforest comes almost to the edges of the village, with plenty of foliage to give him cover. He decides to start with the hut on the extreme right and make his way to those on his left where the Jeep is parked.
He centers himself and drifts from shadow to shadow towards the perimeter of the village. Some of the huts are dark; some are lit from within by lamps, candles, or burning ovens, throwing a mosaic of light and shadows on the ground outside the huts. No movement that he can see. He sidles around the side of the first hut and peers through the door, his body masked by the wall.
Nothing.
Something cooking in the oven, but the hut is empty. The next hut is empty too, and so are the next ten. He goes to the next row of huts closer to the road. He can hear a woman wailing inside, another voice murmuring something. He peers inside. A woman, barely clothed, is lying on the mud floor, her mouth and forehead bleeding, a wash of blood down her thighs. Another woman is pressing a wet cloth to her head.
He stills even more, his pulse slowing, his mind going into the familiar grey fog, preparing the body for wreaking violence. Extreme violence. The next hut is empty, and after a quick glance, he moves on. Something tugs at the edge of his vision, making him return to the hut and look again, more carefully this time.
There, just near the oven, something familiar and yet not. He steps inside and sees a baby, maybe six months old, lying close to the fire, her hand outstretched towards the coals. He hunches down and puts his ear to her chest. Her heart is beating. He moves her farther from the fire, puts it out, and ghosts out.
The next hut, a young girl raped, alone and unconscious; another hut, an old woman beaten and bleeding, lying on the ground, her clothes barely covering her body, moaning softly. She sees him with blank eyes, but does not register his presence.
He crosses the road to the huts on the other side, figuring to search the huts on both sides of the road, behind the Jeep. The first hut he looks into shelters a young girl, maybe seven years old, lying on her side facing the door. The stench of blood and burning hair fills the hut. Her long hair trails behind her and ends in the oven. He scoops the remaining hair out of harm’s way, kills the fire, and kneels beside her. Her dark, empty eyes regard him with weariness as she rolls on her back, thighs spread.
Looking down at her, Zeb allows the rage to blossom, unfurling from its controlled core within, reaching out across his body to his extremities, making him the most efficient killing machine on earth. The little girl’s vacant eyes follow him as he leaves the hut.
Next hut, scuffling and grunting from within. White male, nearly six feet tall, pinning a young girl to the floor, simultaneously raping and strangling her.
The blackness in him is lightning fast as he grabs the man by his collar, flings him back against the wall, and holds him there.
Jason Boulder, ex-Delta, ex-Iraq, Somalia, and now here. Zeb recognizes him from Andrews’ dossier. Boulder looks at him in disbelief and is about to yell out when Zeb’s blade severs his carotid. Zeb rolls the body on its belly to lie on its spurting blood and spreads a tattered blanket over it. All this in just a few seconds, with the girl not fully comprehending what has happened.
He slips out of the hut and pauses in the shadows to take stock. Still the same: women wailing, others consoling them, no one running in his direction, and no bullets fired at him. No male villagers visible.
He quickly checks all the other huts in that row and discovers more carnage, more blank eyes, but no other soldiers or mercenaries. It takes him another hour to go through all the huts on that side of the road before he heads toward the huts where the Jeep is parked. He figures there must be about two hundred women beaten and raped – many of those young girls. His iPhone memory is nearly full from the pictures he has taken, and he makes a mental note to transfer those to Andrews when he has a good connection.
He doesn’t know how many soldiers have stayed behind or whether the mercenaries he is seeking are here. The only clue he has is Boulder’s presence.
The Jeep might have some answers.
The Jeep is parked on the central road in the village, with four huts on either side of the road in front of it. All those huts are lit from within, throwing the vehicle into sharp focus. He moves along the far row of huts, towards the driver’s side, keeping an eye on the Jeep and at the same time checking out the huts. In some of these huts he sees some men shot and dead. They account for the shots he has heard. Still, for a village of this size there should be more men about, and their absence bothers him. Maybe they weren’t in the village when the trucks arrived, or they were carted off in the trucks by the soldiers.
He tucks this mystery at the back of his mind and concentrates on the Jeep and the huts in its immediate vicinity. After clearing the huts in his row, he lies prone in the deepest shadow and looks at the Jeep from the corners of his eyes to see if he can detect any movement. He takes a risk and runs at a half crouch toward the Jeep, keeping out of its windshield’s sight line. The Jeep is a standard FDLR vehicle, battered but serviceable, with its keys still in it. He is tempted to pocket the keys but squelches the thought. Not knowing the strength of the soldiers left in the village, he doesn’t want to give his presence away.
He looks across the driver’s seat towards the other row. He thinks he hears some murmuring above the women’s anguish, but he isn’t sure.
He crouches and runs towards the row of huts. The first of the four is empty. The next one has a woman facing the door, and when he peeks around the opening, her eyes widen and her mouth opens. All she can feel is a rush of air as he flows across the hut, clamps his hand over her mouth, squeezes a pressure point on her carotid, and renders her unconscious. He gently lowers her into a shadowed corner and moves on to the next hut.
This is where he can hear the murmuring louder. He goes around the rectangular hut to see if he can peer through a crack in the wall, but there is none. The hut has two windows on the two opposite walls, and peering through them would illuminate his face.
Over the years of working as a PMC with the agency, he has amassed exotic gadgets, from shoe-heel cameras to bug-sized remote-controlled robots. He unsheathes a meter-long slender cable from the leg of his fatigues. One end of the cable has a USB plug and the other end a self-focusing twenty-megapixel camera. The iPhone is its power source. He plugs the cable into his iPhone, loops the camera through a corner of the window, and watches its feed on his phone.
Two white males, one with his back to the door, the other sideways, are squatting beside an almost naked woman. She is still, and he can’t tell if she is unconscious, dead, or too frightened to move. The men are counting something. One of them is stuffing what looks to be gravel and large pebbles into pouches, and then packing those away into a duffel bag. The other is making notes in a dirty folder.
He turns the camera 360 degrees to get a full view of the hut.
No one else. Good.
He slips the camera out, disconnects it, and puts it away. He makes tracks to the back of the hut and slips across to check the last one. It’s empty, though shows signs of having been ransacked, with clothing and utensils strewn across the floor.
He goes back to the hut with the men. No camouflage, no way to get in stealthily, so he just slips inside the door, moves to its side, and stands with his back to the wall.
* * *
Sideways is still counting when he feels the weight of Zeb’s stare and looks up. His face goes slack with astonishment, and then he blurts out, ‘Who the fuck are you, dude?’
Zeb is impassive. He recognizes Sideways. Conley Stark, thirty-five, ex-Rangers, served twice in Iraq, likes knives, dishonorable discharge for raping a woman.
Stark makes another attempt. ‘Qui vous est?’
Zeb has never believed in pleasantries.
Backside turns around to see what the fuss is about. Brink Schulte, ex-Rangers, served with Conley in Iraq.
‘Who the hell is this dumb fuck, Con?’
‘Whoever he is, and he’s certainly dumb, he’ll be dead in a second.’
Zeb remains calm, allowing his presence to fill the room. This will end in only one way.
Stark rises smoothly, and a Gerber Mark II knife appears in his right hand.
Brink pauses from his bookkeeping to watch Con take out the intruder. He loves a good fight, and Con is the best he has seen with a knife. The bookkeeping can wait for a few minutes.
Or maybe not…
The intruder moves from still to attack in a nanosecond, a silent high leap from a standing position. His left leg takes out Con’s knife arm. Brink can hear the bone snap, even as Zeb’s right leg collapses Con’s throat. Zero to dead in less than a second, Brink thinks dimly as the intruder lands smoothly and faces him.
Not even a glance to Con, who is in his death throes.
* * *
Even as Zeb launched his Kalaripayattu strike on Con, he was aware that a third person entered the room, uttered something, grabbed the duffel bag lying near Brink, and made good his escape.
Zeb gazes impassively at Schulte. Answers. Schulte will give them. He has no choice.
An hour later Zeb comes out of the hut.
The Jeep is gone, presumably taken by Holt. It was he who had come into the room during the fight.
Carsten Holt. Unofficial leader of the Rogue Six. Now Rogue Three, he corrects himself. Ex-Seal, used by the agency for wet work, expert in close protection work and explosives. Quit the army to go freelance and isn’t particular how he earns his money. Now running a mine-hijacking and mineral-trading racket in the Congo. The agency had him on a watch list for some time and had blacklisted him and his closest associates when the Congo happened. The surviving two with Holt are Quink Jones and Pieter Mendes. Both of them ex-Rangers.
He powers up his satellite phone and wakes up Andrews.
Over two hundred women raped – some of them young girls – some children and infants killed. The perpetrators – about forty FDLR soldiers and six ex-agency mercenaries. Many of the villagers in the DRC who worked in the mines had a private stash of ore, which they used to trade, and it was such homes that brought Holt and his band to Luvungi.
The men in the village had been out working in the mines when Holt and the soldiers arrived. Cobalt ore and pebbles were what Stark and Schulte were weighing and recording when Zeb sent them to their Maker. Rape and killing was part of instilling fear and cooperation. Schulte knew that Holt was working with someone in the States for capturing mines and selling the minerals but didn’t know who that was.
Andrews goes Chernobyl, his tirade lasting a good few minutes, burning the air. Andrews calms down a long while later.
‘You have to come back immediately. We need you to meet the UN and depose. You’re the first eyewitness account to this horrific…this atrocious…this sickening…whatever one calls it.’
Zeb is silent.
‘I guess Schulte, Stark, and Boulder are in no position to embarrass the agency?’ Andrews asks, knowing full well what the answer is.
Zeb keeps his counsel.
‘I want you back here immediately. Once the news breaks that FDLR soldiers and some mercenaries who seem to be American were involved in mass murders and multiple rapes in the Congo, the shit will not just hit the fan, it will create a mushroom cloud over Washington. The White House will be brown. I need you back with your photographs and your record of the events to prevent collateral damage here. Your being there, we could spin it that you helped stopped the most horrific abuse in Africa in history. I can see the headlines now.’
Collateral damage.
Andrews-speak for covering his and the Director’s ass and playing the D.C. game.
‘This’s more important than those three. I’ll put them on an international blacklist and get international warrants issued on them. In any case, Holt and the other two will likely disappear now that you located them.
‘And there’s another reason for you to get the hell out of there. The villagers won’t be able to distinguish you from the rogue soldiers. Tempers are no doubt going to be high there for some time. I also don’t want to explain your presence to the authorities there right now, even if you are listed as a charity worker. You aren’t exactly unknown to some intelligence agencies around the world. It’s best you get out and come home.’
Zeb looks back at the hut where the girl with the vacant eyes lies, and makes his mind up.
Holt’s lifespan can be measured in hours.
He just doesn’t know it yet.
