Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 3
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
He pushed open the door to the office.
She looked up from a desk piled high with paperwork. He almost smiled. Even in the SAS the paper war had become intolerable.
She motioned to a seat in front of her. Even sleeping rough – bunks the gorilla had said – she looked better groomed than the others. Maybe she thought looking good came with taking command. Maybe she was just particular about her appearance.
They looked at each other for a moment. She seemed to be sizing him up. Damned if her eyes didn’t look almost soulful. He made a more detailed guess at her nationality. Italian. Northern Italy perhaps, where the influences of other countries gave a more cosmopolitan look to the features.
She picked up some handwritten notes in front of her.
“Ljudevit Maric, Captain, SAS, 39, honorable discharge,” she said. She even managed a reasonable pronunciation of his first name. It was Croatian, and his grandmother had saddled him with it. He usually shaped it into ‘Lewis’ for friends, and he was damned if she was one of those.
Maric was furious. There wasn’t supposed to be any way she could know that. He closed down all indication of his emotions. Damned if he’d give her any satisfaction.
“Decorated officially, twice, considered a first-rate project specialist unofficially.”
Where was she getting this stuff? This was wrong. If the identity of special force operatives could be passed around like the weather, their families and friends would never be safe.
She screwed up her notes, and tossed them into a hopper on a nearby shredder. Seeing his look she sighed, got up, and pressed a button on the side. The machine burst into life, and his identity disappeared in a blur of confetti.
“Just needed to be sure,” she said. “Spoke to my opposite number in your SIS. He owes me a favor. Several actually. He recognized my description of you immediately.”
That would be right, thought Maric irritably. She’d only do her share of horizontal folk dancing with someone her rank or above. He didn’t much care for the Security Intelligence Service. They were desk jockeys, hopeless in the field. He looked at her trim figure, and hoped the lucky bastard appreciated her favors.
She glanced up from under neatly edged black eyebrows. “That thought doesn’t do you justice,” she said mildly.
Maric looked stunned. Godammn’t woman was a mind reader.
She smiled. “I’m a psychologist, as well as being an agent for a Eurozone organization you don't want to know about.”
He had to admit he was normally more positive in his assessment of women. This one was too intelligent for him to so easily typecast her. Perhaps finding himself back in action the previous night had rattled him more than he thought.
“Wouldn’t know about that,” he said carefully. “I’m just a dumb country boy.”
She seemed amused. “We both know that isn’t true, Captain Maric.”
He carefully kept his face blank.
She hesitated.
“Name’s Jacquette Russo, normally Jackie, and I think perhaps this makes us the even, yes?”
Maric maintained his rigid composure. Her pronunciation of English was excellent, but her everyday sayings gave her away.
“Fine, have it your way,” she sighed. “Just so you know it, code name is Tiny Dancer.”
She got up and walked around Maric to the door. She opened it.
“You’re free to go.”
Maric looked a little startled. He had expected it to be more difficult to gain his freedom.
“And Ljudevit?”
He stopped in the middle of getting up.
“Yes?”
“Stop trying to save the world. Go home and settle down.”
Maric raised an eyebrow to indicate he had no idea what she was talking about.
“Your people said you were still traveling, six years after your last tour of duty. That’s a problem, soldier.”
“Stop trying to save me from myself,” growled Maric. “You’re not the only shrink in the room. Take your salvation complex somewhere else.”
She looked hurt, and Maric felt guilty. But he wasn’t going to let a stranger get anywhere near this close.
Her face closed over.
“Settle down or get back on the horse,” she snapped, and Maric noticed the same steel in her voice he had heard when she’d pressed a gun against his neck.
“But don’t sit on the fence. In the end this fence is too dammit high for you to get off!”
Maric left the room without saying a word.
Back in the living room the gorilla looked apologetic. He’d heard the sound of his boss’ raised voice. He didn’t say anything though.
“Got clearance?” he said quietly, and Maric nodded. The gorilla led him out the front door to a car on the street. They drove in companionable silence, and an hour later the car was at the bottom of the Bombay Hills.
Maric turned east along national highway two, heading for the Hauraki Plains and the turn-off to Matamata. The gorilla had shaken his hand when he’d dropped him off, and seemed genuinely pleased to have met him. Maric had favored him with a heartfelt smile. It was a thank you for being more human than he could have been – and for making breakfast.
Then he put his thumb out and started walking. And thinking.
It was all very odd, he decided, his mind wandering back to the safe house. A weird set of coincidences. Still, with any luck he’d forget about it in a few days and go back to being a bum. Pity about the woman though.
He shook his head, and managed to clear it of several enticing images of her.
CHAPTER 3
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Maric’s first lift was a sturdy flat-decked truck with a double axle at the back. A stack of rough-sawn planks on the tray told him it had something to do with saw milling. The truck pulled up beside him, stopping in a gentle cascade of sawdust.
“Where you headed?” inquired the driver, an older man in overalls. It was the universal greeting of the lift giver.
“Anything that gets me closer to Ngatea,” said Maric, hauling himself up the wing step and into the cab.
“Take you most of the way there,” said the driver, putting the truck into gear.
Maric smiled. He liked trucks. He was further off the ground. It gave him a better view of the countryside.
“Whatya got, portable rig?” he said, looking at the driver more closely. The man looked like life had been hard on him, but he’d managed to climb above the hardship. Maric was experienced enough in the ways of the world to know that was a major achievement.
The driver smiled, and Maric knew he was right about the portable rig. The two men discussed the merits of different ways of milling until they descended onto the Hauraki Plains.
The truck stopped at the turn off to Ngatea, and the driver shook Maric’s hand.
“Any time you want a job, ask for McCreadies at Kaihere,” he said. “Further down the road,” he added, pointing in the direction he was heading.
Maric didn’t commit himself on the job offer. He waved the driver off and turned down State Highway 2. Despite his natural reserve the offer had touched him. The saw miller had sized him up in little more than an hour, and thought him worth taking a chance on. That was some people skills.
For the first hour he didn’t get a lift, then a farm ute picked him up. It dropped him in the middle of Ngatea about noon. He checked his watch. Deciding to forego lunch in the township he headed for the Heremaia place. Half an hour later he was there.
“Maric!” called a figure from the front garden, and a young woman rose from where she’d been weeding among the camellias. “Good to see you. George had a feeling you were coming.”
They met just inside the gate. Wendy kissed him on the cheek and stood back to look at him.
“You’re fading away. It’s time you had some proper home-cooked food!” she exclaimed. Maric hid a smile. Ninety percent of the time that was exactly what he got. His natural leanness seemed to worry the women in his life. It was a good thing he worked off the extravagant meals.
George was putting on a pound or two, but then he was less mobile now. To give him credit, George had adapted well to his new limb. It didn’t seem to bother him, and the least Maric could do was act the same way about it.
“Where are the turkey twins?” he asked Wendy. She turned her head and called out.
“Hemi, Rahiri, someone here to see you!”
For a moment there was silence, then the sound of something crashing through bushes, followed by the pounding of running feet.
“Uncle Lew, uncle Lew, uncle Lew!” bleated from the back of the house. Two four-year olds surged around the corner, banging into each other and holding on as they attempted to be first to the gate. Rahiri, the girl, was hard to tell from her brother. If she was a little skinnier, she’d learned to be just as tough to keep up.
They’d guessed who it was. George must have told them ‘uncle Lew’ would be arriving soon. Maric wasn’t surprised. He knew of families that could sense each other’s movements, and feel each other’s illnesses. This was what he and George were, after all. Part of an SAS family. If that was the case the link they shared must be a matter of emotional closeness, not similar DNA.
The twins arrived in a rush, leaping at Maric. He caught them up, twisting to get one under each arm, and lifted them off the ground.
“Throw them in the bull paddock!” he cried, stomping round in circles, while they screamed for help. “Down the well with them!” came next. Then, “Bury them under the pyramids with the mummies and the terrifying clicking beetles!” Each destination more extreme than the last.
Wendy pushed the wriggling mass up the steps to the front door. It opened before they got there, and George came out to stand with his hands on his hips.
“The turkey twins giving you trouble, Maric?” he asked gravely.
“Aw, something terrible, Captain Heremaia,” complained Maric.
“Well, we can’t have that!” said George. He spread his legs wider, and put his hands behind his back. The movement was almost completely natural. Anyone looking at him wouldn’t know he’d lost a leg above the knee during an ambush in Afghanistan, and had to fight hard to keep the other.
Maric was impressed. George had continued to improve over the months since he’d been invalided out of the SAS.
“Company, fall in!” he bellowed, and the twins scrambled out of Maric’s grasp. One went left and the other right, before they headed to the other’s position in an attempt to line up in one place. They realized their mistake and finally fell in on Maric’s left. He had a hard job keeping a straight face.
“Much better,” said George, ruffling each unkempt mop in turn. “Now go back to what you were doing. You can talk to uncle Lew later.”
“Really, uncle Lew?” inquired one little face. “You staying?” inquired the other.
“Yes to both questions,” said Maric. “Now away you go and I’ll see you later.”
Mollified, if not entirely happy, the twins ran off around the side of the house.
“Where’s little George?” asked Maric.
“At school,” said Wendy. “He’s five now, remember?”
Maric nodded. There was so much to keep track of about the people he knew. He needed a secretary to remind him.
George sat on one side of the kitchen table while Maric tucked in to an impromptu lunch on the other. George tended to follow Maric’s lead in the conversation, which reflected their old roles in the SAS. Maric had trained George as part of an SAS intake between his first tour of duty in Kuwait, and his second tour in Afghanistan. He’d asked for George when he was promoted to captain during his second tour, and soon recommended him for his own squad. They were both captains, but George tended to defer to Maric’s seniority.
“How are them phantom pains?” Maric was asking, between mouthfuls.
George was having some success with a new technique that re-trained parts of the brain next to motor areas. It seemed to lessen the random firing of neurons that caused ‘phantom’ pains in his missing legs.
“Much better,” said George. “The main problem now is aching in both legs at night. Especially if it’s cold. Physio says I just have to keep stretching them to get rid of the scar tissue. Micro-tearing she calls it. The pain of the cure is worse than the aching sometimes!”
They both laughed.
Wendy put a cup of tea on the table for each of the men, and excused herself.
“There’s a mothers’ group meeting down the church,” she said. “They’re talking about extending the hall. I’ve put your name down as a chippie and general dogsbody, George.”
George groaned, and rolled his eyes.
Maric laughed. His first instinct was to volunteer to help. But his lifestyle lent itself too readily to broken promises. He had enough self-respect to avoid that happening.
Wendy cleaned the bench and headed for the garage. Maric had gone with her to church a couple of times in the past. He tended to fit in with the people around him.
He wasn’t a religious man, but he could see there was a part of people that was bigger than they were. His SAS mentor Cal had helped him regain the jungle instincts that modern man had lost. And there were other areas deep in the human unconscious that were never accessed by most people.
Maric thought it a pity more people didn’t go there. Let them draw their own conclusions afterwards, but at least they’d have some experience of the matter before they shot their mouths off.
The two men moved to the back porch, and took to discussing plans for the future. Rather loose plans though they were. Occasionally something from the past would enter the conversation. But they’d pretty much made their peace with the adrenaline-charged, knife-edge, unpredictable nature of their previous life.
There was a thud as something dropped to the ground, and a yelp of pain from one of the twins. It confirmed they were playing behind the hedge in George’s wood lot.
“Tell the kids a story?” said Maric at last, and George nodded. Maric indicated for him to call them in.
“You do it,” said George, but Maric shook his head.
“You’re the best damn mimic I’ve ever heard, George. I like to hear you. Go for it.”
George obliged with a turkey impersonation that would have fooled man or turkey. There was a moment’s silence, and the twins burst through a gap in the hedge.
“Gate,” said George loudly, and the twins skidded to a stop, before going back through the hedge to go round the proper way.
“Just like sheep dogs,” whispered George. “They love to work for you. Want to be part of the team. They get unhappy if they don’t know what the rules are.
“The only parents who have problems, far as I can work it out, are those who don’t put the time in.”
Maric thought George was probably right. On the other hand not everyone got to grow up in the slower pace of life in the country. Or with parents who weren’t far too busy every day of the week. He figured it was all in the type of life people chose.
The twins settled down at their feet, leaning back against the chair legs. George and Maric told them sanitized stories of the hard, dry mountains and little villages of the far, far away country of Afghanistan. When Wendy arrived back from the church, they were still at it.
“Better get those nets out if you want to go fishing tomorrow,” she reminded George.
The rest of the day passed in checking over the nets, and thinning trees in the back half of the wood lot. The men worked steadily, while the twins tried to help and generally got underfoot. Wendy had a huge dinner ready for them when she called them in.
“Most of it’s our own,” she told Maric proudly, indicating the food on the table. He nodded his thanks. There were few satisfactions more abiding than working with your hands. When it included growing things, the feeling was about as good as it got.
The next day dawned beautifully fine, and Maric joined George’s fishing expedition. Luck wasn’t with them. They moved the nets to new spots along the beach a number of times, but always with limited results.
By the time they got back it was already after noon. Maric found himself leaving for Matamata later than he’d intended.
The loop through Te Aroha and back to the road south was slow for hitching. When he came into the tiny settlement of Waihou it was already getting dark. He thanked the nice older couple who’d given him a lift – quite a surprise considering he was a bit scruffy from his days on the road – and considered his options.
There was a hay barn on the way out of town, and he figured that would have to do. Sleeping in a hay barn sounded romantic, but the bugs that lived in and around the hay were a whole set of problems on their own.
He could find the money for a motel – just – but he found them soulless places. He would usually stay with friends, or live off the land. Those two options suited him fine.
The only activity he could see in Waihoa was a car pulling out of a petrol station. It looked like the only one in town. He figured it would be closing soon.
As he drew closer to the welcoming haven of bright lights, he saw a faint glow to one side illuminate a parked car. He figured it was someone dragging on a cigarette. Whoever they were they’d chosen a spot on a side street where the lights didn’t reach. Something in Maric found that suspicious.
He ignored the vehicle as he crossed the road and bought himself food and drink at the petrol station.
“What time do y’close?” he asked the attendant as he paid his money.
“Around nine,” said the man. Maric could see he was the only attendant.
“Ever get trouble round here?” he asked in a conversational, just passing the time, way.
“Not really,” said the attendant, quick to uphold the good name of his little town. “Not locals anyway. Get some of those Auckland hoons down this way now and then. Bit of yahooing and tire squealing. Gets scary at times. But we’ve had nothing serious so far.”
Maric had a gut feeling that was about to change. He stood behind a display stand for a while, elevating a bottle of water in a way that said he was extremely thirsty. It gave him an opportunity to take in the lay of the land on the main street.
