Minefield Read online

  Minefield

  A Gabriel Wolfe Novella

  Andy Maslen

  Contents

  1.

  The First Mine

  2.

  God is my Oath

  3.

  161 Rounds

  4.

  Infected

  5.

  Two Outfits

  6.

  The Second Mine

  7.

  Pretty Pussy-Cat

  8.

  Half a Hindquarter

  9.

  The Making of a Killer

  10.

  Hypervigilance

  11.

  Everyone’s Frightened of Something

  12.

  Jump or Die

  13.

  Tunnel Rat

  14.

  M203

  15.

  P226

  16.

  The Temple Leopard

  17.

  Fire in the Hole

  18.

  The Third Mine

  19.

  Pretty as a Fallen Mango

  20.

  Leadership

  21.

  The Road Home

  22.

  Checkpoint

  23.

  Iced

  24.

  Army Man

  25.

  Two Sugars, One Cyanide

  26.

  National Carrier

  27.

  Departure Lounge

  28.

  Aircrew Only

  29.

  28,000 Feet

  30.

  HALO

  31.

  Two Compounds

  32.

  M67

  33.

  M16

  34.

  The Fourth Mine

  35.

  M60

  36.

  Honour is Mine

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Also By Andy Maslen

  About the Author

  You’re helping give kids in Cambodia a future.

  Afterword

  This book is dedicated to all the children given education, and hope, by the Ponheary Ly Foundation.

  And to Ponheary Ly and Lori Carlson.

  “Should a seeker not find a companion who is better or equal, let them resolutely pursue a solitary course.”

  Siddhārtha Gautama, The Buddha

  1

  The First Mine

  The grunting cough was too deep to be human. Eli Schochat looked around, trying to ignore the pain in her right leg. At first, she saw nothing. Just the tumbled piles of mossy stone blocks, as if a giant had tired of his construction set and swept the half-finished temple aside. Then she saw it.

  Moving with sinuous grace, its spotted flanks rippling, a leopard was creeping towards her, picking its way daintily between the blocks, fixing her with its golden eyes. One forepaw raised, it stilled itself mid-stride, as if turned to the same stone of which the temple had been built so many centuries before. It opened its mouth and cough-grunted again. A distant echo bounced back off the temple walls.

  Sunlight filtered onto the forest floor in narrow beams, dappling the low vegetation with paler and darker spots of vivid green. During the night, Eli’s ears had become attuned to the many different sounds of the forest: the croaks, chirrups, buzzes and whines; the cries, screams and howls; the soughing of the wind as it disturbed the high canopy. But the leopard must have been hunting elsewhere in the temple complex, because its reverberating call was new to her .

  The ex-Khmer Rouge warlord she’d been sent to assassinate had avoided her bullet by sheer fluke. Having waited for him for over a week, living in a hide she’d built on the outskirts of his compound in the far north of Cambodia, the perfect moment had presented itself. She’d lined up the shot, tucking her head in against the stock of her olive-green Accuracy International AW Covert sniper rifle.

  But in the fleeting moment between squeezing the trigger and the 7.62mm subsonic round leaving the muzzle, a wild pig had scampered across the flattened red earth of the compound. Win Yah, the warlord, leaned forward to throw something at the creature and the round flew through empty air before burying itself in the fat trunk of a coconut palm.

  She’d had no time for a second shot. Picking her way back to her bike through thick and thorny brush, she’d stumbled and trodden on a landmine. One of the millions laid and never mapped by the Americans, the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese.

  The charge must have been decayed or damaged in some way, because the mine only partially exploded. Her right leg was burnt by the blast and part of the casing tore open the skin of her knee. By the time she came to, she was trussed up like one of the scrawny chickens she’d seen in Siem Reap market. Someone had inexpertly dressed her wound while she was out. Her satellite phone was encrypted, so no use to her captors, but they’d taken it anyway.

  Nobody in the compound spoke English. After beating her for a day or so – she’d passed out once or twice – Win Yah made a call on a battered smartphone. Eli found time, and space, to be amused that the case was a vivid metallic pink, like something a Cambodian girl would carry tucked into her jeans pocket. He spoke Russian. He nodded vigorously every few seconds, barking out a high-pitched “Da! Da!” and occasionally giggling.

  When the call ended, he looked at her and uttered a short speech in Khmer. He was smiling, revealing a full double row of gold teeth. Speech over, he turned to one of his men, who couldn’t have been older than sixteen, and barked out an order. Eli had no Khmer, but she didn’t need a translator for the final part of the order. Emitting another of the freakishly high giggles, Win Yah mimed putting a pistol to his head and pulling the trigger. Without speaking another word, he turned on his heel and left.

  The soldier, if that’s what he was, pulled Eli to her feet and dragged her to a dusty, dented Jeep. Squinting at the sun, she estimated the time to be about 3.00 p.m. She noticed he had her satphone tucked into a pocket on the side of his trousers. He jerked his chin up. Get in! Her hands were tied behind her back with rope, but her feet were free, so she clambered aboard and sat heavily on the rear bench seat. He climbed into the driver’s seat, started the Jeep and swung out of the compound, throwing up a cloud of red dust. He had a pistol on his hip, an ageing, Russian-made Makarov. He steered with his left hand and rested his right on the pistol’s butt, driving Eli to her place of execution.

  2

  God is my Oath

  Something Win Yah and his young recruit should have known is that if you want to take away and execute an IDF-trained, former Mossad operator, don’t leave their legs untied and then sit in front of them.

  After an hour’s driving, the temple was in sight. Now! Eli thought. When there’s somewhere to hole up and call Gabriel . She braced herself against the seat back, lifted her legs, and scissored them around the driver’ neck.

  “Stop!” she shouted.

  He clearly daren’t remove his hands from the steering wheel, as the rutted track was throwing the Jeep around like it was a toy. He stamped on the brake, bringing the Jeep to a sharp stop and stalling the engine, maybe hoping Eli would be thrown forward. Instead she slumped further down and increased the pressure on his throat. His hands were scrabbling at her ankles, trying to break the iron grip that was gradually choking the life out of him. With a sharp twist, Eli saved him the trouble. His neck broke with a loud snap.

  Eli jumped down. She backed into the dead man’s body and took the knife from his belt. The rope binding her wrists parted easily; the blade was razor-sharp. She dragged the body out of the Jeep, took the Makarov and the satphone, then climbed in behind the wheel. Smiling, she turned the key fully off in the ignition and then cranked it round again. The engine whe
ezed as the starter motor struggled to turn it over. Then, nothing. Just a rapid clicking from under the bonnet. Swearing, she repeated the sequence with the key. Now the only sound from the Jeep was the occasional tink as the exhaust and engine cooled.

  “Fuck it!”

  The passenger footwell held a plastic jerrycan of water. Enough for a few days if she was careful. She lifted it out, wincing as the movement put pressure on her wounded leg. Turning away, she limped towards the entrance to the temple.

  Since then, she’d been repeatedly attempting to make contact with Gabriel Wolfe, her mission partner. At around noon the following day, she got through.

  “Eli! Where are you? What happened?”

  “I fucked up, that’s what happened. I had his evil head in the crosshairs, the air was still: a clear shot. Then this fucking pig distracted him and I missed. They captured me and gave me a beating, then took me off to this fucking remote temple to execute me.”

  “Clearly, they failed.”

  “Yup. They’re down a man. Just a kid, but you know my feelings on that subject.”

  “If a kid’s got a gun, he’s an enemy combatant.”

  “In one. So, are we going to natter ,” Eli adopted a stagey British accent for this last word, “all fucking day or are you going to come and find me.”

  “Sure. I’ll grab your location from the GPS in the phone. Are you OK for supplies?”

  “I have water, but no food. One Makarov with five rounds in the mag. ”

  “OK, I’ll get there as fast as I can. Shouldn’t be more than an hour. Hold tight.”

  While she waited for Gabriel, she drifted into a light sleep, despite an insistent throbbing in her right leg that told her infection had set in. Most likely a result of, rather than despite, the rudimentary field dressing the warlord’s people had applied. And she’d dreamt. Of home. Not the poky little Victorian terrace house in Shoreditch that The Department had assigned her. Home , home. Israel. Jerusalem.

  She’d been a little girl again, playing with a toy soldier. It had once been an air hostess Barbie, but she’d cut up one of her father’s old uniform shirts and sewn Barbie a set of fatigues. Her father walked into the courtyard at the back of the house with its geraniums and lemon balm plants in wide-bellied, unglazed, terracotta pots. When he saw the remnants of his shirt, he’d shouted at her, then melted as tears dripped from her eyes. He knelt by her side and asked her about the doll.

  “And who is this, Eliya?” he asked, using the family’s nickname for their only child, Elisheva, God is my oath .

  “She’s Samal rishon Barbie, Papa. She’s going to fight our enemies.”

  “A staff sergeant, eh? Well maybe you could teach her an important lesson for all soldiers.”

  “What’s that, Papa?”

  “Make sure you truly know who your enemies are, before you go to war with them.”

  Then he’d tousled her hair, straightened with a volley of pops from his knees and gone inside to find his wife.

  When Eli looked back at Samal rishon Barbie, she wailed. The doll was missing her left arm and right leg below the knee. Blood was pouring from the snapped-off plastic limbs and the doll’s baby-blue eyes and its lipsticked mouth were stretched wide in a soundless scream of agony.

  3

  161 Rounds

  Gabriel put the satphone down on the rattan table. The guest house was ten miles from the warlord’s complex. They’d chosen it as a base because the proprietors were used to western guests. The fan above his head was spinning fast enough to create a decent downdraught, but even so, the crushing heat outside was making its presence felt. Sweat dripped steadily from his nose and chin however many times he wiped it away.

  He looked up at a spot on the wall to his left. The cobalt-blue gecko who’d been there when he arrived was eyeing him. The same length as his hand, the lizard was so still it seemed it might have been painted onto the bare plaster, though he had come back to the room from time to time to find it had changed position.

  “OK, Eric,” he said, “looks like we need to prep for an extraction.”

  The gecko sat motionless, apart from the faintest of vibrations from its ribcage.

  Gabriel went to the wardrobe and pulled out a canvas holdall, held closed with a brown leather strap. He hoisted it onto the bed, where it settled with a bounce and a series of squeaks from the springs. When he unzipped it, the contents emitted a sharp whiff of metal, cordite and gun oil. He brought out the items within and laid them out in rows on the counterpane.

  A Colt M16 assault rifle, fitted with a canvas webbing sling, an underslung M203 40mm grenade launcher and, mounted on the other picatinny rails, a high-power torch and a telescopic scope.

  Two spare NATO STANAG 30-round capacity magazines for the M16, which he’d previously loaded.

  Six M203 high-explosive grenades.

  A Sig Sauer P226 semi-automatic pistol chambered in .357, fitted with a suppressor and a 15-round magazine. Plus a box of 50 rounds and a black nylon holster.

  A Böker tactical knife in a black nylon sheath.

  A field first-aid kit including trauma scissors, three syringes of morphine and one containing a wide-spectrum intravenous antibiotic, a tourniquet and a QuikClot sponge.

  Two 12-hour operational ration packs.

  Water purification tablets.

  He took each item in turn and inspected it, physically and visually. He field-stripped the firearms, oiled them and reassembled them.

  “A hundred and sixty-one rounds, Eric,” he said, glancing at the gecko. “It’ll have to do.”

  4

  Infected

  Eli woke and brushed at her cheeks, which were wet. And then she heard the deep rasp of the leopard’s hunting call. She picked up the Makarov and racked the slide. At the metallic snap as the slide returned to the battery position, the leopard hissed at her like a domestic cat, its lips fully drawn back, exposing long, yellow fangs. Then it turned away and sprang twelve feet straight up onto a stone ledge carved with hundreds of dancing gods and goddesses.

  She reached down to her other side and grabbed a stone from a small stockpile she’d prised from the hard-packed red earth. She threw the stone up at the leopard, prompting it to take a few more steps further from her.

  “Scat, you overgrown tabby cat!” she shouted.

  It hissed at her in return and disappeared over the trunk of a tree whose roots twined through gaps between the stones like blood vessels between muscles.

  The effort of scaring off the leopard had tired her. The heat of the early afternoon sun was fierce, and enclosed by the stone walls as she was, any breeze that was taking the edge of the heat out in the open wasn’t reaching her. Her leg was pulsing with a dull throb of pain as if her heart were sending small packets of poison into her thigh with each beat.

  She took a swig of water. Thanked God that at least the warlord kept his men well supplied with that, if not food. She felt lightheaded. She raised her head to the heavens, praying for a swift rescue. As she returned her gaze to the carvings on the green-dressed stones, a wave of dizziness passed over her, threatening to turn the lights out. Nothing to do now but wait, Samal rishon Barbie , she told herself.

  5

  Two Outfits

  Gabriel stripped off the tropical kit he’d been wearing – a red-and-white, hibiscus-print Hawaiian shirt and red shorts. Eli had shrieked with laughter the first morning he’d appeared at breakfast in his “tourist camo” as they called it.

  “Fuck me, Wolfe! What happened? Did you go shopping with your eyes shut?”

  Gabriel had pirouetted in front of her, glancing over his right shoulder in a parody of a catwalk model’s pout.

  “What’s the matter, my lady. Don’t you like it?”

  “You look like a dick. A handsome dick. But still a dick.”

  Gabriel sat down at the table. Eli was more soberly dressed in a sage-green linen dress.

  “OK then, Miss Fashionista,” he said. “What would you
suggest?”

  Eli stuck her lower lip out and touched her fingertip to it.

  “Aw, is Gabriel upset ‘cos the nasty lady criticised his dress sense?”

  He held up his hands in mock surrender.

  “No, no, it’s fine. You just carry on with the name calling. I’ll just sit here pretending to be Barry from Wimbledon enjoying the Cambodian countryside. You go off and have fun shooting the bad guy.”

  His over the top acting of a wounded ego was too much for Eli and she’d resumed her giggles before finally subsiding with a huge sigh.

  “Oh, God, you make me laugh.”

  Smiling despite the seriousness of his mission, Gabriel redressed in more suitable clothing. Jungle camouflage trousers and shirt, camo cap and sand-coloured boots. He threaded the webbing belt through the slots of the Sig’s holster and the Böker’s sheath and cinched it tight. Finally he packed the rest of the gear into a camo-pattern daysack.

  He left the guest house in his rented Ford Ranger pickup with the M16 and the daysack in the passenger footwell.

  Heading for Eli’s GPS coordinates using Google maps on his own smartphone it took him twenty minutes to get to within a mile of the site. As Eli had told him, her location was a ruined Buddhist temple named Jayon Peah.

  Down south, in and around Siem Reap, the temples, centred on Angkor Wat, were a honeypot for the hundreds of thousands of tourists who flocked to Cambodia every year. But up here, tucked away on rural land still heavily mined and littered with unexploded cluster munitions left over from the American carpet-bombing, the temples were closed to the public and left to moulder away on their own.