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.

…

At least the helicopter pilot hadn’t hit the fuel tanks or any of the control wires.

Because of the holes in the fuselage, we couldn’t fly any higher than between two and five thousand feet or go as fast as Davies would like, but the plane settled into a routine and got us where we wanted to go.

Just a few miles from the base, fuel almost exhausted, we got a fighter escort.

At first, I thought the base commander thought we were an unidentified flying object, mainly because something else had been hit, our communications. We couldn’t tell the base we were coming, and they only had the Colonel’s transmission of an approximate arrival time, much earlier than the actual time we were supposed to arrive.

On the ground, we were met with fire trucks, and a military escort, with weapons that could take out a mouse at one thousand yards. Just in case we were terrorists, I suppose.

We were parked in a bay away from the main terminal area and had to wait for a half-hour before we were met by Lallo. Monroe’s comment, that he was probably finishing his lunch which would be more important than meeting us, had kept us waiting.

The two abductees were the first to leave the aircraft, then Shurl’s body was removed after the doctor certified he was dead.

Then the rest of us were allowed to leave the aircraft. A bus was waiting, and everyone bar Monroe and I had boarded and been taken away. Under guard. Perhaps their service had not mitigated their prison sentences. I didn’t ask Lallo why; I’d probably not get the truth anyway.

“Good job,” he said, after watching the bus depart. “Pity, it wasn’t done right the first time.”

A compliment followed by disparagement.

“Next time you can do the job yourself,” Monroe said. “And until you’ve been in the field and actually got shot at, you’d do well to keep that trap of yours shut.”

“May I …”

“…remind me you’re my superior officer? No. I’m sure that status won’t last much longer. I’m applying for a transfer.”

He looked at me. “What about you?”

“Nothing to say, except I don’t blame her. Now, since all you’ve done is prove to me you’re an idiot, I’ll take my leave.”

In the distance I could see a large American car, the sort that proliferated in the 1950s and 1960s before petrol prices were a problem, cutting across the runway at speed. Was it the owner of the DC3 coming to see the damage?

No. When it got closer I could see Bamfield, cigar in mouth, beaming. I suppose no one felt they had the authority to tell him not to.

The car stopped behind Lallo’s jeep and Bamfield got out, then leaned against the driver’s side door and looked at us over the roof.

“James, Monroe. Still alive I see. Pity about the plane; I know the chap who owns it. He’s going to be pissed when he sees the cannon holes. What happened?”

“Bad guys,” Monroe said.

“Of course. Get in, I’ll give you a ride back to the terminal. We can talk on the way.”

Neither of us moved. If Monroe wasn’t going to suffer fools gladly, neither was I.

“Well…”

“I’d rather walk,” I said.

“We’d rather walk, sir.” With a heavy emphasis on the ‘sir’.

“Look, you did a great job, minimal losses, and we got two assets back. Everyone is happy. But, we have a small problem down in South America…”

…

© Charles Heath 2020

There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?

A retired spy, well not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a set up.

But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.

And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.

Susan is exactly the sort of woman the pique his interest.  Then, inexplicably, she disappears.  That might have been the end to it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum, find her or come back to work.

Nothing like an offer that’s a double edged sword!

A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.

When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.

I’ve been told there’s a sequel in the works.

Bring it on!

…

The book can be purchased here:  http://amzn.to/2Eryfth

…

It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.

John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.

So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?

That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.

What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.

The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.

…

Available on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…

I have reworked the first part of the story with a few new elements about the characters and changed a few of the details of how the characters finish up in the shop before the policewoman makes her entrance.

This is part of the new first section that involves Jack:

Jack was staring down the barrel of a gun.

He had gone down to the corner shop to get a pack of cigarettes.

He had to hustle because he knew the shopkeeper, Alphonse, liked to close at 11:00 pm sharp.  His momentum propelled him through the door, causing the customer warning bell to ring loudly as the door bashed into it, and before the sound had died away, he knew he was in trouble.

It took a second, perhaps three, to sum up the situation. 

A young girl, about 16 or 17, scared, looking sideways at a man on the ground, then Alphonse, and then Jack.  He recognized the gun, a Luger, German, relic of WW2, perhaps her father’s souvenir, or more likely a stolen weapon, now pointing at him then Alphonse, then back to him.

Jack took another second or two to consider if he could disarm her.  No, the distance was too great.  He put his hands out where she could see them.  No sudden movements, try to remain calm, his heart rate up to the point of cardiac arrest.  No point making a bad situation worse.

Pointing with the gun, she said, “Move closer to the counter where I can see you better.”

Everything but her hand steady as a rock.  Only telltale sign of stress, the bead of perspiration on her brow.  It was 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the shop.

Jack shivered and then did as he was told. 

A few seconds more for him to decide she was in an unpredictable category.

“What’s wrong with your friend?”  Jack tried the friendly approach after he’d taken the three steps sideways necessary to reach the counter.

The shopkeeper, Alphonse, who, Jack noted seemed to have aged another ten years in the last few months, spoke instead; “I suspect he’s an addict, looking for a score.  At the end of his tether, my guess, and her to get some money.”

A simple hold up that had gone wrong.  Wrong time, wrong place, in more ways than one Jack thought, now realizing he had walked into a very dangerous situation.  She didn’t look like a user.  The boy on the ground, he did, and he looked like he was going through the beginnings of withdrawal.

Oddly, though, Jack had noticed a look pass between the shopkeeper and the girl.

 “All you had to go was give us the money, and we wouldn’t be here, now.”  She was glaring back at Alphonse.  “You can still make this right.”

A flicker of memory jumped out of the depths on Jack’s mind, something discussed at the dinner table with their neighbors, something about the shop as a pick-up point for drugs.

The boy on the floor, he was not here for the money.

Jack thought he’d try another approach.  “Look, I don’t want trouble, and you don’t want trouble.  I’ll go, forget this ever happened.  You might want to do the same.”

The girl looked like she was thinking.  The gun, though, still moved between him and the shopkeeper.

Another assessment of the girl; this was not her real home.  She was from a better class of people, a different part of town.  Caught up in a downward spiral because of her friend on the floor.

Caught in a situation she was not equipped to deal with.

That didn’t bode well for his, or anyone else in that shop right then, health.

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination in what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

 

Wallace was furious, and despite his attempts to stay clear of his commanding officer, Thompson discovered he couldn’t hide forever.

“Where is Atherton?”  Wallace asked the moment Johannsson walked into the room.

It was a question he couldn’t answer and had been equally as furious as Wallace when he learned of what had happened.  It was not supposed to go the way it did.  Atherton was to lead them to the remnants of the Resistance, and then Burke and Richardson had orders to kill them all.

The first part of the plan had worked as Burke had said it would.  It was his idea to ‘break’ Atherton out and then he would lead them to the resistance.  London would know where they were, and Atherton would also know, nay not exactly where they were, but how to contact them.  There were only about six left, according to Leonardo.

But he had been wrong before.  He’d labelled the remnants of the resistance as useless but to his chagrin discovered they were anything but.  He had three dead men to prove it.  And given the restraints on his current mission, he couldn’t go into the village and execute a like number of villagers for those men.

That would give away the fact they were not British, but Germans in disguise.  Best, he had been told, to let the matter be until their current mission was completed.  Then, Wallace told him, he could do what he liked with the villagers.

But like all plans, this one had gone awry.  Burke had lost Atherton approaching the village, and a thorough search of every building hadn’t found him.  Atherton, according to Burke, had completely disappeared.

Now Wallace was on the warpath because he didn’t like loose ends and not one as dangerous as Atherton.

“My men lost him by the time they reached the village.  They did a thorough search but he wasn’t there.”

“And you believe that?”

“I trust my men.  Atherton is a fully trained soldier with a few extra tricks up his sleeve, otherwise, London would not have sent him out.  There is a positive in this if he’s out of the way he can’t stir up any trouble.”

“But those so

Called remnants of the resistance can, and I assure you, will.  And more so now they know that we’re not exactly the British liberators they were hoping for.”

“You can’t believe that he found them.  We’ve seen none of them since Leonardo defected.  He told us he killed them all.”

“Well, he’s a liar.  Here’s an idea, get him and tell him to take his men down the hill and find them.  Promise him anything, as long he brings back Atherton and the rest of them dead or alive, preferably dead.  Unless you think you can do a better job.”

“Sir…”

A soldier came running in, then stood to attention until Wallace addressed him.  “What is it?”

“Carmichael hasn’t returned.”

“What do you mean, hasn’t returned.  I thought everyone was confined to the castle?’  He turned around to look at Johannsson.  “What the devil is going on?”

“Some men don’t exactly respond well to curfews.  Carmichael was one of them.”

“Carmichael?  Isn’t he the one who knows the Reich Marshall by sight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now he’s missing.  You still don’t think there is resistance out there, and making us look like monkeys?  This has Atherton written all over it.  How much did he find out?  I thought you had that situation covered.”

“I couldn’t exactly put him under house arrest, could I, not unless you wanted to hand out a sign that said German outpost.”

“Don’t get snippy with me Johannsson. Just get a team of five or six and find the bastard.  And while you’re at it, find this Carmichael.  Take those two fools that lost him, and if you accidentally shoot them, we’ll call them casualties of war.”

“Yes, sir.”  And how long before I share their fate, he thought.  Blame was transferable, so he’d kick it down the line.  “Jackerby,” he yelled out.  I’ve got a job for you.”

© Charles Heath 2019