Our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.

The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.

Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in, and because of it, he has now been roped into what might be called a suicide mission.

 

“That was far to bloody easy.”  I heard Monroe’s voice come over the radio, not long after we left the camp.

“It was a bit easier than I thought.  But I did make it quite clear if we didn’t all leave in one piece we’d reduce his camp to rubble with everyone in it.”

“He knows the territory.  Something’s waiting for us out here.”

Something indeed.

Back at the camp, not only had the commander’s men search for the hidden weapons, and, when everyone checked, were still there, they had also taken off the crates with the film equipment.  I was not sure what the commander was intending to do with the equipment, but what disappointed me was the fact we hadn’t taken the time to rescue the rocket launcher.

Now the commander had it.

If he bothered to search the crates properly.  I suspect he was yet to do so.  What we had rescued and successfully hidden were the C4 explosives and detonators.  They might come in useful at the airstrip.

Just before we reached the fork in the road, where we would be turning left to head towards the airfield, and surprisingly had not run into any of the commander’s men, we stopped and let Monroe and Shurl out to make a sweep towards the airstrip, not too far away.

I also called up Mobley to see how he was.

The Colonel answered.  “Everything is under control now.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.  “What happened?”

“The kidnappers send out a team to intercept us on the way to the airstrip.  It wasn’t a stretch to imagine they would know what we were planning because they’d know we would not be retracing out steps to Uganda.  Got them before they got a shot off.  I suspect there are Government troops at the airstrip, it’s too important to let anything happen to rich foreigners coming to see their wildlife reserve.  There are several troop carriers, and we’ve seen a few men on the outskirts patrolling.  There’s several at the gate if you could call it that.”

“Is there a plane there?”

“As it happens there is.  A grand old DC3.  It’s not a charter plane, so I’m guessing it belongs to an overentitled American big game hunter or the photographic variety.  At least I’m hoping that’s the case.”

“What do you recommend?”

“Not to storm the field.  You’re going to have to find another means of getting here, preferably without any fanfare.”

My first choice was to go in and get out, with as little firefight as possible, particularly in case they started shooting at the plane.  If I was reading between the lines properly, the Colonel was telling me there were more troops there than we could handle quickly and quietly.

“Very good.  Can you get sight on just how many troops are there, and if you can see who’s in charge?”

“Will try.”

Monroe had been standing next to me during the exchange.

“Three in place, two more on the perimeter, if we can cover as many as possible, you might be able to take the rest from the inside.”

Secreting the weapons again, maybe.  It was a possibility, but going in with hidden weapons, and then found by the guards at the gate, who would be more efficient and careful searchers than the kidnappers, it would create hostility and itchy trigger fingers.

“No.  We have to find some way of letting them feel as though they have complete control of the situation.  They know we’re coming; the commander would have told them.”  The only reason why he was still the cat who ate the canary.  He might even have told them he had some men waiting as the first line of defense.

The airstrip commander would then know we were armed and relatively dangerous.

It was time for yet another dangerous gambit.

I picked up the radio.  “Colonel?”

A second later, “Sergeant?”

“Whatever happens in the next twenty minutes or so, just ignore it.  It’s not much of a plan, but it will get us onto the field.”

“And then?”

“Hopefully some divine intervention.”

Monroe looked skeptical.  “You’re going to just drive up to the gate and surrender?”

“Not exactly.  It won’t be fait accompli until we reach the terminal, or hanger, or whatever the commander has set up as headquarters.  They’ll have most of our weapons, yes.  But they won’t have all of us.”

“No.  But they’ll know we have a sniper, so one of you are going to have to allow yourself to be captured, just to ease their minds.”

“Leaving one of us and Mobley and the Ugandans.  Can we trust them?”

“I hope so, otherwise this could go badly.  But, today, I’m an optimist.  We’ve got this far.”

Trying to show more confidence in the plan that I had.  It was always a worry when you had to trust people you didn’t know.  That had been the problem the last time.  At least this time we had managed to get the hostages.  It was always going to be a problem getting them out.

Monroe gave me one of her special, you’re a fool, looks.  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”  She then nodded in Shurl’s direction and they disappeared into the bush again.

I gestured to Davies to come over.

“Did you find out what sort of plane it is?”

“Hopefully.  The Colonel tells men there’s a DC3 off the airstrip.  I assume you can fly one.”

She smiled, the first time since this operation had started.  “Sure can.  I spent three summers putting one back together.  My dad has a sort of airplane museum.  A DC3, a DC4, and a Lancaster, a very sorry looking Lancaster at that.  Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Then try to not get shot.”

“Do my very best not to.”

Once again, it was time to go.  Going into the unknown was getting to be the norm, but hopefully, this would be the last time.  I didn’t consider it wise to advise the hostages, they had their own problems to worry about.

 

© Charles Heath 2020

50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.

They all start with –

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

And the story:

It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.

The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.

He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.

The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent.  We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.

There was nowhere for him to go.

The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on.  Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.

Where was he going?

“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter.  He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.

“What?”

“I think he’s made us.”

“How?”

“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing.  Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain.  He’s just sped up.”

“How far away?”

“A half-mile.  We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”

It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”

“Step on it.  Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”

Easy to say, not so easy to do.  The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.

Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.

Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster.  We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.

Or so we thought.

Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.

“What the hell…” Aland muttered.

I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility.  The car was empty, and no indication where he went.

Certainly not up the road.  It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit.  Up the mountainside from here, or down.

I looked up.  Nothing.

Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”

Then where did he go?

Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.

“Sorry,” he said quite calmly.  “Had to go if you know what I mean.”

I’d lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

© Charles Heath 2019-2021

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”  available soon.

…

The editor looked up from his seat at me, frowning.

“Who are you again?”

He was a busy man, he kept telling us all, and didn’t have time to remember everyone on staff, particularly the reporters whom, to him, seem to come and go as they please.

“Jenkins, sir.  New last week.”

“And you’re here because?”

“You said to come and see you about an assignment, sir.”

“An assignment?”

“Yes, sir.  An assignment, sir.”

He’d come past my desk and stopped, asking that same question, “Who are you again?” Before pretending to recognize the name and tell me to come to his office in an hour for an assignment.

“Jenkins, you say.  Not related to Elmer Jenkins by any chance.”

“He was my father, sit.”

“Damned fine reporter.  Assignment you say.”  He shuffled through the pile of folders on his desk, then plucked one seeming at random, and handed it to me.

“Odd goings-on at St Peter’s cathedral.  Go and see what it’s all about, will you?”

“Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir.”

…

Perhaps the better story here was how come the church seemed to get the best real estate in every city, and the bigger the church, the better the spot.

St Peters was where I would have expected the city center to be, on a few acres of perfectly manicured gardens surrounding an exquisite cathedral built in the mid-1500s.

I was not a Catholic, so I had not ventured inside, not realizing that it had always been open during the day, church services or not.

There was also a parish office, a school of sorts, and a priory for visiting priests, as well as those who worked around the cathedral, so it was not unusual to see one or more priests wandering about.

But the most interesting thing about this cathedral was the fact it had an exact replica if the statue of St Mary Magdalene by the Italian sculptor Donatello, considered to be an earlier attempt before creating the real one now housed in the Museo dell ‘opera del Duomo in Florence.

It was not an advertised tourist attraction, but it could be seen by special appointment only with very restrictive visiting hours because of its rarity and delicate condition.

But the report I’d been given was that a cleaner, working in the room where it was housed had seen something very odd involving the statue.  It had what she had described as tears coming from the statue’s eyes.

Of course, the editorial staff had rung the church to ascertain whether the reports they have received were true, and were immediately and emphatically denied, thus putting it into the category of “thou protest too much”, indicating, meaning there had to be something going on.

A second report, which was interesting in itself, had said there was an increased flurry of activity in the church, with several notable arrivals, particularly of the bishop, and a Cardinal from the Vatican, who was by coincidence in the country.

To the inquisitive reporter, that was embers in the grate about to create a much bigger fire.

…

“You heard?”  Jaimie was another of the ‘going to be famous one-day’ group, I was also a member of.

I arrived breathlessly at the entrance to the cathedral grounds, to find several other reporters already there, conversing.

They were my former classmates at university, working as junior reporters for various media outlets.

“The editor tossed me a sparse file with very little to go on.”

“They’re not taking it seriously, are they?”  Joey, never the one to take his profession seriously, was here just to meet and greet.

The three of us were juniors.  There was not any of the ‘serious’ reporting staff there, perhaps waiting to see what we came up with.

“No.  I mean, a cleaning lady and a statue with tears.  My guess, sap leaking out of the wood, though waiting four or five hundred years to do so is a bit farfetched.”

“Then it’s true that it might be a replica of the real thing.”  Joey seemed surprised, and it was him, never studying up on background before turning up.

“I’ve seen the real one in Florence,” Jaimie said.

“You’ve been everywhere, done everything, and seen everything.  Why am I not surprised?”

Joey never liked her because of her family’s wealth and privilege which granted her access to much more than either Joey or I ever had.  Including traveling the world twice.

“Can’t help drawing the parents I got, but that’s beside the point.  You should have done some research.”

Joey held up his cell phone.  “All the research I need is right here.  Where and when I need it?”

“Why are you waiting here?” I asked.  I would have expected them to be chasing up the relevant parish office person, if not the bishop himself.

“The doors are closed, which is highly unusual for a church during the day, and the sigh refers everyone to the parish office, who are telling everyone, and reporters, in particular, there will be a statement soon.  We have a line of sight to the office and one of the staff will call us.  Why wait over there when this area is so much more peaceful “

“So, you’re just going to quit?” I asked.

“What else can we do?” Jaimie was not the adventurous sort.

Neither was I, but this story could be something more, and getting the scoop might improve my standing with the editor.

“Do a little investigating of our own.”

“We might miss the statement.”

“You know what it will say, you could probably write it yourself.  Nothing to see here, move along.  I’m going to see if there’s a back door.”

“Churches don’t have back doors, Colin.”  Joey would not be coming, his preferred modus operandi was to do as little as possible.

“Then I’ll soon find out.”  I looked at Jaimie.  “Coming?”

She shook her head.  She liked to play by the rules, but it is getting a good story, there were no rules.

“Then no doubt I’ll see you later.”

…

I walked slowly towards the main entrance, but my intention was to do a circuit of the cathedral and see how many entrances there were, and if I  could gain entrance by one of them, acting like a routine might so as not to arouse suspicion.

After a few minutes, I realized just how large the cathedral was, having only been inside once; to attend the wedding ceremony for one of my uncles and then it had seemed small when compared to Westminster Abbey.

In the end, I found an unexpected obstruction, a fence between the walkway from the church, most likely the cloisters, to where the clergy lived, and the gardens alongside the cathedral.

There was a gate. I walked across the grass, and by the time I reached it, it swung open, and Jaimie popped her head out. 

“Come on, before anyone sees you?”

“How did you get in there?”

“Simple.  Did you try the front door?”

“I assumed it would be locked.”

“It wasn’t.  Then I guessed you’d been right here, after watching you leave “

She closed the gate. “Quick, before someone comes.”

She walked quickly back to, and into the church through what might literally be the back door, but more likely how the priests came and went.

Once inside, she led the way through the back room where a variety of vestments were hanging, out into the church, across the front of the altar to the other side where there was an archway, and steps leading down to a lower level, presumably where the statue was located.

“And you know this is the way to the statue because…”  The moment I asked, I knew the answer.  It was a dumb question.

“My parents had a viewing and brought us, kids, along.  At the time I thought it was a funny-looking wood statue.”  She spoke quietly because the acoustics for sound at this end of the cathedral was amazing.

You could probably hear a pin drop on the other side.

Then, she added, “It’s down in the basement.  They build a special room with all the environmental procedures built-in.  Been here for a long time.”

I followed her down to the bottom of the stairs, considerably more steps than the usual floor to floor level in a modern building, and the moment we came through the arch, the temperature dropped ten or more degrees, and I shuddered.

I had a strange feeling of unease, that something bad had happened here.

The light was very poor, perhaps because of the environment, but across the room I could see a glass-fronted space with a statue in the middle on a base, with lights shining upwards, giving it a strange hue.  To one side there seemed to be someone kneeling, as if in prayer.

Jaimie started walking towards the statue, slowly, as if she had been mesmerized by it.

I followed, but headed towards the kneeling figure, stopping just short.

Jaimie had stopped in front of the statue, staring at it.

The next second the kneeling figure jumped up and grabbed Jaimie and dragged her away, telling me, “get away from here, back to the stairs, and don’t look at the statue under any circumstances.”

By the time we reached the archway, he had sufficiently shaken Jaimie back to life, although she sounded confused, and dazed.

“What just happened?”

“You looked at the statue.  How did you get down here, past the guards?”

“There are no guards upstairs,” I said.  “Though we did come around the back way.”

“You two get out of here now, and I’ll overlook this transgression.  Do not mention anything you’ve just seen or heard, or God will, quite literally, smite you down.”

“Through the statue?”  I thought it a bit far-fetched.

“The cleaner prayed for a miracle.  She got one.  That statue now has some sort of power.  Now, you never heard that, and you cannot use it in a story or it will create panic.  I can tell you are reporters.  Just stick to the official handout.”

“What about the cleaner, she’s already told a lot of people.”

“She’s dead.  Her story has already been refuted.  Go, now.  I’m relying on your common sense.”

…

Outside back in the sunshine, we stopped before going back to Joey, who was still standing by the gate.

“What just happened?” Jaimie asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean why are we standing here.  I don’t remember coming here.”

“We were in the church?”

“No.  Who are you, by the way.  I haven’t seen you before.”

I looked at the alternating blank, inquisitive face trying to see if she was playing a joke on me.

“Do you know your name?”

“Of course, I do.  Mary.  Mary Magdalene.”

---

© Charles Heath 2022