Defender (21 page)

"You've been supplying them all along?" Morgan accused Lundt through gritted teeth, pain unabated.
It
was now so clear. Collins' suspicions, Lundt's unexplained disappearance and Morgan's earlier speculation that the rebel tactics wreaked a British influence, all made more and more sense. "Oh, come on. You don't think I was in it for the pathetic pension
Her Gracious Britannic bloody Majesty would expect me to survive on, do you?" Lundt replied. "She's been more than happy to send me off to all these nice little wars that nobody from the outside world's ever given a toss about. All this time, I've had a nice little earner on the side. Hell, I've made a fortune already. That bag over there." He waved a careless hand towards the front of the Jeep. "That's just a bonus, a pat on the back for a job well done. Now, if you can keep your trap shut and forget about what's happened, I'll split it with you."

'I'm not for sale..." Morgan's eyes were glazing. Swirling clusters of brilliant white stars cascaded across his failing vision like the crepuscular dance of a thousand fireflies. The room was distorting. He was losing too much blood, he knew the signs. "Where have you been getting the weapons? The money?" Morgan demanded clumsily, staving off unconsciousness, barely upright, but finally making sense of Lundt's involvement. "Is that what this is all about, Lundt? Your retirement plan?''

"My new masters aren't the least bit concerned with my politics. I get paid. I do my job. That's all they require of me and it's all I need. No fanciful notions of Queen and Country for me anymore, Morgan. You'd be surprised just how easy it is. There's always someone prepared to put up the cash, and I didn't have to look far, I can tell you."

Victor Lundt was calculating. He could see Morgan struggling. At first he thought Morgan had been shot, but watching closely, Lundt guessed his ribs were cracked. He inched closer towards Morgan, keeping the conversation flowing, keeping hirr.. distracted with the even timbre of his voice.

"All these crazy fundamentalist bastards want to get their hands on anything they can. And like I said, there are plenty of people only too happy to help them. Me? I simply facilitate the exchange."

Alex Morgan slumped against the]eep, scarcely able to support himself.

Lundt kept talking, moving closer and closer.

"Here, in this shithole, it's all about rocks. Titanium. Diamonds. The chance to take control of billions of pounds a year from a struggling country with no leadership is a serious motivator. Some people will do anything to get their hands on money like that: corporations, governments."

"There are people out there, women and children, getting slaughtered by weapons you've supplied," Morgan hissed. "They're getting butchered just so poor old Victor Lundt can line his pockets because he's got a chip on his shoulder about his service pension. Get out there and take a look at your legacy!"

"Don't waste the 'Officer and a Gentleman' lecture on me, sonny. I've heard it before." Lundt was close now, just a couple of feet away. Circling. "People die anyway.
If
it wasn't me getting the guns, someone else would. So why shouldn't I get myself a nest egg? But you wouldn't see it that way."

"You're finished," Morgan said, fighting to stay alert. He was in real pain, but still lucid enough not to blow his cover. "I should have known better. I didn't believe that a man with your background would serve a colleague up to these bastards, the way that you delivered Collins to them. How wrong I was." He paused to catch his breath. "But it's over."

Lundt made his move, sidestepping swiftly past Morgan, snatching the moneybag with the diamonds, and the AKM from the hood of the jeep. Morgan made a grab for him but stumbled awkwardly back against the vehicle.

"You should thank me, Morgan," said Lundt. "I was the one who got these savage bastards to put your mate out of his bloody misery. Watched 'em cut his throat and feed him to the dogs. But you won't be around long enough to tell anybody."

With that, Lundt exploded: holding the AKM by the barrel, he swung it like a baseball bat in a vicious lateral strike straight for Morgan's flank. The heavy wooden butt smashed into Morgan, battering his ribs.

At that moment, the deafening roar of an explosion crashed upon them. The front wall of the building vapourised and they were enveloped in a cloud of thick, grey dust. With the support structure ripped away, bricks, beams and plaster fell upon them both. Morgan bore the brunt of the collapse and was smothered by debris. Lundt kicked his way out, crawling over Morgan and clambering through the mess, up into the Jeep.

"Lie there and die like a good boy, Morgan," Lundt coughed, as
the J
eep sprang to life. "Pray that you do before the rebels find you. I hear they're on the lookout for some fresh white meat to celebrate tonight."

Lundt wrenched at the gearshift and reversed fast out into the alleyway, well clear of the fighting.

Alex Morgan pulled himself from the wreckage just in time to see the vehicle disappear from view.

Then he slipped headlong into infinite blackness.

From: Sagittarius To: Capricorn

"What a bloody fiasco!"
the instant message began on the screen.

Victor Lundt, 'Capricorn', could almost see the man at the other end of their exchange, 'Sagittarius', frothing at the mouth while hammering the keys. Pompous git, Lundt thought. He's in London abusing me, while I'm buried like a tick out here in the arsehole of the world.

"How could this have fallen apart so, so... categorically?"
Sagittarius continued. "
You've had every means at your disposal. Millions of pounds wasted and we're no closer to securing the mining concessions than we were twelve months ago. Then there's your London operation
-
another debacle.'"

My operation? Now Lundt was angry. How typical of the man to deflect responsibility.

"Need I remind you," Lundt typed, "that you didn't get the information to me until very late in the game, indeed."

Victor Lundt's hands were stretching and clenching, forming fists above the filthy keyboard as he collected his thoughts. There was no appeasing his frustration. He was enraged by the mess he knew he would have to clean up if he wanted to stay in the big game. He hated to admit it, especially to himself, but he needed Sagittarius; needed his connections and money. But that didn't mean that he had to lick the bastard's boots. Clumsily, and with two fingers, Lundt thumped out his response.

"All the time and effort that's been spent distancing you from me would have been better spent just dealing direct like this and accepting the risk. Those two pancakes you supposedly hand-picked as your go-betweens were less than fucking useless right from the start. I risked exposure a hundred fucking times to sort out the things that they should've had sorted before it got anywhere near me. And when I'm exposed, you're exposed. Remember that."

There was a long pause before Sagittarius responded.

"Now hang on, sunshine," Lundt said out loud, glowering at the local faces in the internet cafe who turned to see who the angry foreigner was talking to.

Lundt wasn't going to take the fall, not for anybody.

"It's obviously some time since you pulled a uniform on," he wrote, "or have you forgotten the old soldier's adage: the best laid plans never survive first contact?"

"And how do you suggest I do that?" Lundt knew what had to be done, but it gave him some sadistic pleasure to see how the smug bastard would word it via an insecure network.
It
was common enough practice to use email or instant messaging for these types of conversations.
It
meant that suitably innocuous addresses would be chosen at random, used once, twice at most, and then discarded in the same way as pre-paid SIM cards in mobile phones. Fire and forget, Lundt called it.

There was another long pause. Come on, you bastard. Lundt was grinning at his own steely reflection in the computer screen, knowing that the man would now be squirming in his seat back in London. Put your money where your big mouth is.

* *
*

The exchange concluded, the man at the other end of the conversation, with absolute composure, gently closed the lid of the pink laptop in his daughter's room at the family's city house
in
Belgravia, and let out a long, slow breath. He stood, absently fiddled with a number of magazines nearby, then walked back out to rejoin his wife and her blasted needlepoint in the drawing room.

"Too many loose ends," he whispered.

"Are you sure you're going to be OK?"

"Of course I am," he replied. "You'll have to be gentle with me, that's all."

"Gentle! With you?" With just the hint of a dazzling smile, Arena conjured a playful, yet reproachful, look. 'I'm surprised you even know what the word means, Morgan."

"Maybe we'll find out," he said cryptically, looking out into the distance as their taxi rolled away from the sentry post at the entrance to US Naval Station Rota. "I've sure got a lot of people I need to thank," Morgan said. He returned his gaze to her. "You most of all."

"It's not me you !leed to be thanking," Arena replied. "It's those medics aboard the
Kearsarge.
If
not for them, I think you'd be in a full body cast, getting your meals through a straw for the next month."

Morgan knew she was right. Equipped with emergency operating theatres and an intensive care unit, the facilities on-board were world class. When Morgan eventually came to in the ward, Arena's beautiful face beaming over him, he was convinced that he'd finally expired. While the
Kearsarge
steamed all the way to Spain, she remained at his side, arranging to stay on the base as he, and a number of other patients, had been transferred for aftercare to the US Naval Hospital at Rota. She was truly an angel. He told her so.

"Shut up," she chided. "You're rambling again. I still can't believe you were able to talk your way out of that hospital. The doctors were adamant that they wanted you under observation for another week, at least."

"Well, let's just say that my boss can be very persuasive," he answered cautiously. "As soon as I got my chance to call him, I had him working overtime to get me the hell out of there so we could have a real chance to ... recuperate."

"He certainly can pull some strings," she said, ignoring the play. "I mean, you know, for a man running a - what do you call it - a private military company?" She watched him carefully, looking for a reaction. She didn't get one.

"Well, he's been involved with governments for a long time. He still knows the right people. So, here we are. I'm out of hospital, you've wrangled time off and we have five days to ourselves."

"Couldn't be better," she said, meaning it.

"So, where are you taking me?" he asked, still in the dark over Arena's plans for their break.

"Just try and put that out of your mind and rest while we head to the airport. I'm in charge now, remember. I'm not telling you anything until we get there. It's all arranged."

Morgan pulled a USS Kearsarge baseball cap that he'd been given by the ship's Captain, down over his eyes and fell easily into a light sleep.

Ari was left to reflect on her own negotiations with her boss, Abraham Johnson, to secure the time away. For the few days that Morgan remained confined to a hospital bed, Arena had been required to maintain constant contact with Johnson as he'd pressed her for every detail of her deployment and, notably, her discussions with Morgan. When she inquired whether or not she should make her real purpose known to Morgan, now that it was all over, she received a very emphatic 'No!' Johnson had been unhappy with her request to take leave at first, but eventually conceded that, in view of the fact that she was there to surreptitiously support the man from INTREPID, it was smart that she remain at Morgan's side as he convalesced.

The uneasiness came over her again. There was something not quite right about all this.

*
* *

The following morning Alex Morgan was looking out across Barcelona from the balcony of the holiday house Ari had arranged for them.