The Protocols of Carstairs
Copyright© 2021 by Ron Dudderie
Chapter 23: The Spy Who Came in From the Heat
I drove back up the ramp, stopped next to the Nissan and retrieved the ice pick. If I was going to do this, I might as well have some fun. Amina spoke in my ear.
“Are you still here?”
“I’m leaving now.”
“LEAVING?”
“No, going to the fort, I mean. Set the explosives. I just forgot something. How is Jerry?”
“Not your problem. GO!”
A few minutes later I stood at the foot of the slope. It was some time between three and four in the afternoon. Probably closer to three, because it hadn’t been Dhurh yet. Not that it mattered much. Lunch would not go amiss at this point, though. Or indeed two hours ago. A lovely, chilled hamburger to rub all over my head, hmmm...
The guard looked at me again and pointed at his watch. I shrugged and zigzagged my way up the plateau. To my left was the barrack, in front of me the fort. I saw someone looking at me through one of the slits in the left tower.
There was some shade to the right of the fort, and several tyre tracks led there. I calmly ... no SLOWLY, not calmly at all, not by a long shot, drove to the right hand side of the fort. From my left handlebar dangled the plastic bag o’ mayhem. My Ruger was concealed in my trouser waist band, at the back. I only had one magazine and the caliber was laughable. The last bullet would be for me, if need be. The ice pick had already punctured the bag, there being a distinct lack of corks in that cave. I parked the bike and got off. I removed the harness with the nylon patches and the gloves. Now I was just wearing the oversized jersey, no longer quite so white. I heard the buzz of air conditioning units and smelled the somewhat familiar scents of muddy earth and roach repellent. Those AC units just drain away to the open air, usually via a small pipe protruding from the wall. The resulting puddle becomes a putrid mud hole, which attracts all sorts of bugs. The smells were far from overpowering, but still very much present.
A guard dressed in drab olive green, perhaps the same one who shook his fist at me when I was on the other side of the plateau, came from around the corner. He signalled me to come over to him, in a way you’d normally tell a naughty toddler to come get a clip round the earhole. (I’m kidding, Mel and I don’t believe in punishing Edwin physically.)
I didn’t have much of a choice, so I walked up to him, holding my plastic bag. This guy was about my size in height, but about two-thirds in overall mass. He began to tell me off as soon as I was within earshot. My Arabic might be weak, but I could tell from the tone it had something to do with me riding my bike while there was global terror to be getting on with. I still had my helmet on, and he ordered me to take it off. We were standing behind the fort now, less than two metres from the edge of the plateau. Presumably this was very sturdy rock, or the engineers would probably have built the fort further away from the edge.
I pretended to struggle with the strap, because I only had one hand free. With an angry glare he pushed my hand away and reached up to undo the clasp for me. I used my free hand to reach into the bag, pulled out the ice pick and rammed it into his stomach. He seemed stunned, which is not entirely unreasonable. I dropped the bag, hoping the explosive charges would be able to take a gentle thirty centimetre drop (they couldn’t, I’m dead now and Israel is wiped off the map ... or IS it!?) and pushed his head down by placing my hand and wrist behind his neck.
Now, having an icepick shoved up your gut is not recommended by 9 out of 10 dentists (the tenth one will sign pretty much anything for a fee, so we can safely disregard his medical opinions going forward) but it is not in and of itself immediately lethal. It just stings, I imagine. But what WILL kill you, and I urge you all to take notes because it will be on the test, is being dropped off a 20 meter high cliff. Which can totally happen when you’re clutching your stomach because someone shoved an ice pick in there. He did yell, but it sounded more like disappointment than the Wilhelm scream.
“Shit. Should have grabbed his outfit and his rifle,” I mumbled to myself. I didn’t want to go too near the edge to admire my work, because there was no safety rail of any kind and I was quite exhausted from the heat and the tension.
“Hello, what?” asked Amina, a few seconds later, as I was already following the wall to the other corner, where the second fuel truck would be. I passed a wooden bench. It was tempting to have a seat, but there wasn’t much shade.
“Sorry. Disregard. Oh, how is Jerry?”
“Not your problem. Where are you?”
“Near the truck.”
“Blow it up, come back.”
“Will do.”
Near the corner I pressed myself against the wall and looked around it. Given that I was wearing a rather large, white-and-fluorescent-green motorcycle helmet with a yellowish metallic visor that sort of behaviour would have looked suspicious as fuck to anyone who saw me, but hindsight is 20/20. Even though I was wildly uncomfortable, sweating so much it was hampering my vision, I wasn’t prepared to take it off yet.
The truck was every bit as large as I remembered and smelled vaguely of sulphur, or rotten eggs as most people would call it. A pressure gauge stood at zero and it was no longer connected to the fill-up point.
“Of course. Hydrogen.”
Why hadn’t I realised? These trucks were larger not because they held more fuel, but because they were reinforced. A tanker truck filled with liquid, cooled hydrogen is a bomb, and not a small one. It all needs to be much thicker and stronger than a regular fuel truck and those are no laughing matter, either. But rockets don’t run on your run of the mill Euro 98, do they? Regular petrol doesn’t have the required energy density. I’m hardly a rocket scientist, but I do know serious rockets use a combination of solid fuel in the first stage and liquid fuel for the second and third stages (the third being course corrections and manoeuvring). Not that I have any idea what solid fuel is supposed to be: presumably a hell of a lot of match stick heads.
“Are you talking to me?” asked Amina, sounding somewhat annoyed.
“I found the truck. It’s not generator fuel, it’s liquid hydrogen.”
“Yes. We knew that,” said Amina, sounding a little agitated. “That’s what missiles use.”
“Did we? Oh. Good. Anyway, this truck is built like a brick shit house. I’m not sure my charges are going to do anything.”
“Martin, do you mind figuring this out on your own? And maybe stop talking to yourself? I am really busy here.”
“Sorry.”
I guess she was right. She was dealing with a seriously injured man and a prisoner, in a cave that was as hot as a Foreman grill but slightly less spacious. Why was I asking her for instructions?
While I was standing there, dressed like The Styg on acid, another guard dressed in black appeared from the other side of the truck. He too had a rifle slung over his back. And wouldn’t you know it: he was my size...
“AMUN! AMUUUUN!”
He spotted me, standing around with my helmet and my plastic bag.
“You see Amun?” he asked, clearly aware that the guy in the bikers’ outfit was a Korean. Well, most of the time.
I nodded enthusiastically and pointed towards the back of the fort.
“There?” he asked, surprised. I mimed smoking by making the V-sign near my mouth, even though the visor was still down.
“Hal yadkhn!?” (Is he smoking?!) said the guard, and strode off to stop his colleague from lighting a cigarette near a couple of missiles filled with hydrogen. I followed him. I didn’t recognize the rifle, but then again I don’t recognize any kind of rifle. Strangling him from the back seemed inconvenient and also a lot of work in this heat, so I picked up a stray rock, caught up with him at the bench and just as he stopped I walloped him across the back of the head, making sure not to swipe him straight across the ledge but striking towards the rear wall of the fort. He went down like a sack of potatoes. This felt like a great time to take off the helmet...
I wasn’t sure how many people ever came back here, but given there was a bench I imagined it was not uncommon. I removed the rifle and placed it on the bench, next to my helmet. My white shirt was dripping wet around the neck. I only wore a white wife beater underneath the cooling vest, as my buttoned shirt was back at the cave, neatly folded on the rear seat of the car.
The guard hadn’t been killed by the blow (I’m not THAT strong), so he started to move again. I kneeled behind him, placed my right arm around his neck and my left arm against the back of his neck and applied pressure for about ten seconds. Thank you, CIA-instructors.
He flailed a bit, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. When he passed out again I unbuttoned his olive jacket and took it off. My heart was racing. Anyone turning a corner now would not hesitate to raise the alarm and start shooting at me, or worse: shoot first. But in for a halala, in for a riyal! I figured gravity might as well help me with his pants, so I took off his brown sneakers, pushed him to the edge of the plateau and held on to his trouser legs. His heels, in white sports socks, got caught behind the bottom hems of his trouser legs, but once I sorted that out he slid out of them quite easily, head first and in his underwear. I do wish I hadn’t heard what I presumed to be the sound of his head splitting open on the rocks below, though. Eeuw.
Great, now I had to take off those biker boots and stand around here, in my underpants, putting on a stranger’s clothes. What a way to die. Then it turned out my feet were at least two sizes smaller than his, so I had to put on those boots again.
I was still sweating buckets, by the way, but at least all that sweat now had a chance to evaporate. And I was still wearing my magic, wonderful, rather restrictive but life saving cooling vest, which unfortunately made it a lot harder to pick stuff up from the ground. Still, fear is a great motivator and two minutes later I was fully dressed and donning the black beret. I’d be the only guard with an ear piece and microphone, but also the only one who didn’t speak Arabic, and I imagined that would be the bigger problem of the two.
At first I decided to keep the helmet here, along with my formerly white shirt, blue jeans and the explosives, as I could store them underneath the bench. Not exactly invisible, but only to those who actually sat down on it or walked past. I imagined this bench was a lot more popular around dusk. The pants were a reasonable fit, if a bit too short. Still, my (stolen) biker boots were rather tall, so that worked out well enough. I shouldered the rifle and found a pair or dark sunglasses in the breast pocket of my vest. Now desperate for some shade, I returned to the side of the fort where my bike was parked. In that case I might as well keep the brightly decorated helmet near the bike, which made the explosives (wrapped in my shirt and covered by my blue jeans) a lot less conspicuous to boot.
I noticed a door near my bike, painted roughly the same shade as the dried-mud brown of the fort. And so I figured I’d try it. It opened easily and almost noiselessly and gave way to a concrete corridor. Now I learned that the outer wall of the fort wasn’t nearly as thick as it looked, at least in this spot. The corridor was nice and cool, which I sorely needed. I slowly breathed in and out, allowing my breath to dissipate as much body heat as possible. I took off the beret and let my head dry up. I’d be in a heap of trouble if another guard came by, but I’d be unconscious if I kept on going in this heat. The tiny fan at the back of my vest finally had some cooler air to work with and brought down the coolant at least five degrees in as many minutes. I messed around with the two way radio and found a switch that would stop me from broadcasting every groan and cough to Amina. Now I’d need to press a tiny blister-like switch on my earpiece to broadcast. I was keen to try it out, but there was a bit of an echo here and I was afraid my voice would carry. I moved the radio to my breast pocket, where it looked completely normal and might pass for a phone.
After about five minutes I felt as if I was caked in dry salt, but I knew from experience I’d look normal enough. I had three doors to choose from: one to my left, one to my right and one that undoubtedly led to the courtyard. Using that one felt like pushing my luck, so I turned left. That door led to a staircase on the inside of the front right tower (as seen from our cave), but at the base of the staircase was some sort of utility room, round walls obviously, and one narrow window with bars on the outside. I could see the guard tower from here.
The floor was tiled, but not with expensive marble. There were cleaning supplies such as a mop in a bucket on wheels and some of those ‘wet floor’ signs (in Arabic), a big, wheeled trash container with a yellow lid, two clothes lockers and a cabinet filled with some tools, electrical tape and two of those large toilet rolls for businesses and restaurants. Of particular interest to me: a screwdriver and a wrench. I also tore a thick, blue plastic bag from a roll, which I then folded into squares and put in a pocket. Bags are good to have in this line of work. Well, hobby. Work has days off.
The tools went into one of the thigh-pockets of my trousers, which were probably not so much intended for security personnel as they were designed with tradesmen in mind. Then I went up the stairs, hoping to get a good look at the courtyard.
On the first floor, which to me is one up from the ground floor, the circular staircase continued. One door to my right probably led to a corridor similar to the one I’d used to cool down in, but the other one, which looked to be from reinforced metal, had light coming in through a square window. I looked through it and saw the underside of the vast, square tarp that covered the courtyard. It was pulled quite taut. I opened the door and found myself on a fairly narrow, metal walkway, much like you’d see in the rafters of a warehouse or a large theatre. It was painted brown, which is generally an odd choice but in this case was probably done to be reminiscent of the wooden walkways you’d expect in a fort such as this. I’d been in two others on my trips with Asim, but those had been much, much older and were built from limestone. This place seemed to have taken advantage of modern materials and building techniques.
Once fully on the walkway I remembered I was wearing a guard uniform and so instead of traipsing around like a hummingbird on a hotplate, I tried to exude an air of weary indifference as I took a few steps and leaned in over the railing to have a good look. Below me I saw two ... Uhm ... launch bay doors? Would that be a good description? When do you ever see launch bay doors, except in science fiction movies or episodes of Thunderbirds.
They sort of looked like picnic areas: thick, concrete beams formed the edges. Those beams were just low enough for an adult to step on and then step off again on the other side, and if you were to have a campfire in the middle they provided excellent (if perhaps somewhat uncomfortable) seating. But in the middle I saw two large metal ... doors? I know I generally complain that I don’t have the words available in English to express myself as I would in Dutch, but even in my native language I’d have struggled to describe these. They appeared to be metal panels, painted light brown, with a fairly pronounced seam in the middle. Both had heaps of sand and a number of burned logs on one side of them. I also saw a broom and a shovel. I guess these doors had been disguised as places for large, communal campfires, but now that launch was imminent they had been swept clean. You don’t want to open the launch bay doors and have your lovely missiles covered in sand, do you?
The rest of the courtyard was a bit empty: no windows looked out onto it and even though the other forts I’d visited with Asim were not exactly on par with Disneyland, there’d usually be something there. An old canon, a well, a display card with historical information, maybe a few swords or an amateurish drawing of similar forts or nearby landmarks. I’ll remind you that Islam is fine with decorative pictures of people, animals and places. Just not inside mosques, but this wasn’t one.
It was at this point I realised I should have brought my phone, if only because it was also a camera. But I didn’t have it with me: just my two way radio and my earpiece, which no other guard here had. I wanted to contact Amina, but this wasn’t the place to be having a conversation in English. Should I continue along the walkway? It led to another door, of the North-West tower. What would I find there? More cleaning supplies? Or a bunch of guards watching television?
And so I decided I’d pushed my luck far enough and turned around. Now I noticed cables along the walls, secured in steel pipes. An orange, domed flashing light was mounted over the door I was headed to. And worse: a security camera in white metal overlooked the courtyard. Shit, I hadn’t even considered the presence of cameras so far! But then, if anyone had seen me killing two guards and kicking them over the edge, that would probably have aroused at least mild curiosity in other guards.
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