Chapter 1

"I don't know what you want with that pile of rocks out on Leonard Road, but if you want it I am sure Avery will sell it to you. Course ain't nobody in their right mind gonna finance it." My older brother was his usual supportive self that day.

"Well Fred, you know I am something of a history buff. The place was an old ore house for a Spanish gold mine."

"That is just the BS that the old men around here tell. I expect it was some kind of church or something. Might have been the main house in a fort."

"Well don't matter none it is old as hell and I like that, and I already bought it from Avery. With the mill closed, he was happy to be rid of it I expect."

"Well Jake, it is good to have you home even if you did buy a white elephant. You been gone way too long."

"I know Fred, I missed a lot these last fifteen years but I am home now."

"So what you gonna do now?" Fred looked concerned. The fact that I might not need to do anything but vegetate never occurred to him. It had to do with the way we were all raised. In our neighborhood you worked or you were a bum period. I never quite figured that out because over the years I am told several people made a lot of money but none retired early at least not to our part of town.

"Oh hell I don't know. I might just take a long vacation."

"From what? I mean we don't have any idea what you have been doing over the last ten years."

"Oh working here and there. Mostly security work for foreign nationals." I saw his curious look. "Most of them didn't know all the things that were available to protect them. I helped them figure it out." What I didn't tell him was that they figured it out because of me all right but it was after I had a pretty good size chunk of their illegal cash.

That was later of course. I started out all full of honesty and courage. Protect the weak kind of thing. You know that youthful zeal. In the end it got to be, do what was best for me and the devil take the rest of them.

"It must have paid well for you to buy that pile of stones. I know you couldn't get a loan on it. At least not much of one."

"It paid okay, but the pile of stones is mortgaged to the hilt." In spite of what you think I found an off shore bank to loan me the money." I did too, of course it was my money that secured the loan. It was kind of a hand washing thing, not to mention money laundering thing.

"Why in hell would they do that?" Fred was pretty well versed in investments. At least that is what I had been told by him.

"I had a good business plan?" I smiled at him to let him know there was no answer required.

"What business do you have in mind?"

"I'm going to turn it into a tourist attraction. You know one of those medieval castles, complete with serving wenches and all." I smiled again. It was beginning to be fun watching him think about it.

"That is a pretty big gamble." I could see that he was secretly hoping I would fail.

"I suppose so, but I have to live somewhere anyway."

"The renovations on that place are going to kill you. It hasn't been anything since the mill stopped using it to store raw cotton." I was surprised that he knew so much about the old place.

"That's been almost twenty years now they tell me. The roof leaked all that time and has pretty much taken the floors down. Nothing much left but the walls. Those looked to be in pretty good shape. The mortar is in good shape and the pockets are there for the floor joists. It shouldn't be much trouble to fix it. The damn walls are over a foot thick so I am not expecting all that much trouble."

"No, it just going to cost you a fortune." Fred seemed almost pleased at the image of me going broke. It wasn't likely to happen but he did look smug.

"Don't matter much now Fred, I am committed to it. Matter of fact Uncle Slocum is coming over tomorrow to do the estimate."

"Slocum is a thief and furthermore not related to us at all. I think he knew dad from his drinking days. They both quit at the same time I think."

"It doesn't matter he and his son Ernest are coming first think in the morning. I have a bid from the real estate people to do the work so I will see how his bid is."

"You picked the two worst people to bid. A realtor who thinks you don't know anyone, and a bigger thief than Willie Sutton."

"Willie Sutton, god Fred you just dated us both. You for using that name and me for knowing who it is." I smiled at him so he would know that it was a joke. "Well I need to move from the motel and I need to do it today. So are you gonna loan me the tent or not?"

"Hell Jake, you can have the damn tent. I haven't used it in years, it is too heavy to back pack and the wife gave up camping. You can have all that gear."

"In that case let me buy it. I would feel better if I paid for it."

"No hell, I will not help send you to the poor house. You save your money or credit for the Castle."

"Okay, so when do I come back for it?"

"Come on pull around to the gray storage building and I will load up your little Jap Jeep."

We did just that, I drove around and we both loaded up the little Tracker. When my bother finished the jeep was stuffed to the canvas top. "Fred, I didn't plan on all this."

"You are going to need it all, but let me tell you, this is all summer gear. If you don't have that place ready by winter you are gonna freeze your ass off out there."

"I have to admit I have become used to the heat, but I have been cold a few times in the last ten years. I can make do."

"Well if you need a hot meal and a warm bed you can come visit."

"Visit being the operative word." Fred's wife didn't exactly love me like a brother. Hell maybe she did at that.

"Trust me Jake you wouldn't be happy here more than a day or two." I nodded my understanding then drove the Tracker away.

When I bought the older tracker, it had been abused badly. It smoked, the rust and paint spots held the body together, the interior carpet and pads were all gone. It had pretty much been stripped back to what the real jeeps must have been like in World War Two. I owned it for exactly one day when I decided that it was crap and not worth spending money on.

I did change the oil and added a can of oil treatment. Then I bought a pack of sandpaper, some rust remover and five spray cans of olive drab green enamel paint. On the second day it smoked less, and the rust was hidden by the old style paint job. The top was a leaky rag, so I worked on it during day two. I removed the harp which held it up and built a frame from PVC pipes. Once I had a frame that was reasonably solid, I had some particle board cut to use as a roof under the canvas. With that in place I painted the roof with a black sealer paint. it looked like crap but it didn't leak, well not more than was bearable anyway. That was the condition of the Tracker when Fred and I filled it with camping gear.

After I pitched the tent I was too exhausted to do anything else. I was covered in sweat when I sat side saddle in the baby jeep's front seat. It wasn't the sick sweat I had been feeling recently it was just a sweat from overdoing it.

I looked back and found that the red tent looked pretty good to me. It sagged in only the right places so I was satisfied. When my breath stopped ripping in my chest, I moved to put the bedding inside the tent. All the cook gear was inside a large plastic storage box which I was told could double for a table, but only if I sat on the floor of the tent.

With the tent full, I went looking for ice and something to keep cool. The closest convenience store had the ice and about enough food for a night and day. I figured real quick that I needed a better system. The almost ten bucks that I paid was the determining factor. I put those thoughts on hold awaiting the contractor's estimates.

"Well Mr Burke, the place needs a lot of work. I came by to look at it when you called last week. We have been working on a rough estimate ever since. Best we can figure it is gonna run about two hundred thousand to fix up."

"You did understand I wanted a rough repair." I asked it because I couldn't believe the cost.

"Of course a really classy finish would be twice that. Let me detail what we have in mind." In spite of myself I let the builder walk me through it. The work sounded pretty good but the price sure as hell didn't. The builder recommended by the realtor disappeared about two hours after he arrived. He should have felt pretty sure that I wasn't going to be using him. If he didn't he was a fool because my heart wasn't in the tour.

Uncle Simon and Ernie showed up after lunch. Instead of the fancy new pick up of the first builder, they came in a one ton flatbed with wooden sides.

"Jake, I thought you was dead," Ernie declared.

"I was Ernie." I took his hand while his dad looked on. "Howdy Slocum."

"Jake, I was sorry to hear about your dad. He was a fine man." He looked down at the ground when he added, "We missed you at the funeral."

"I was overseas Slocum, I just couldn't get back." I was actually in a small African country trying to rescue some Dutch Missionaries. Before anyone gets the idea I was still a do gooder, the church paid me well. Me and a small band of other idiots managed to slip them over the border into a still friendly country. Snatched them from the jaws of death, the church representative said as he paid me my fee. The praise was nice but the money was what inspired me.

"So Slocum you been here to look it over?" He didn't answer instead he took a legal pad and began walking around making notes. He obviously hadn't bothered to do a real estimate.

"You know Jake, I had forgotten this place was out here. We used to fish in that pond. God it is smaller than I remember. It must had been twice that big."

"Always been that size son, you just got bigger." Slocum said that as he wrote a note on the pad.

The old man was right of course the building didn't look nearly as imposing as it had when I was twelve sneaking over the fence to catch the yellow bellied bream that hid under the muddy water.

"Damn building has really been gutted. Old man Avery never did know how to take care of nothing." Slocum mumbled that as he moved about. "See that Jake, they added those posts so they could turn this high ceiling room into two rooms for storage. You don't see no timber pockets in the stone just them old posts there. Now back here you see the floor joists. This part was always two stories. That big room out there was just one high ceiling ed mother. Must have been a chapel or something once."

"They say this was an ore house for an old Spanish mill."

"Bullshit, it was a mill of some kind. See the floor joist pockets. the are over a wet basement. That basement had a hole in the stone foundation once. See the blocks there in the foundation those are crap. That little stream went under this place and turned a wheel of some kind. Now I ain't saying that it didn't grind ore but it wasn't no storage building. This high ceiling room was some kind of chapel or maybe meeting room. Back there was the grinder."

"So what is the easiest and cheapest thing to do with it. I want to keep the price down and I want it to look like a castle."

"Jake how much money you got son?"

"Why Slocum?"

"Cause ain't no sense startin' this less you can get your hands on a hundred grand at least. And that is just to put the structure back."

"How about just to do the roof and floors."

"Don't you want no wiring, plumbing, or interior walls?"

"Frankly Slocum I am not sure that I can afford them. What I want first is to make the place livable, sort of anyway."

"Well Jake your timing is good anyway. Old man Griffin is demolishing several of the mills. There are some timbers around that will come close to matching the pockets. I can fill in any voids with some of the stones from the slag heap in back."

"Is that what that mound is back there? I thought it was just a hill of some kind."

"It is, it is a dirt covered hill of stones from this place. there is probably an inch of dirt over the stones but that is all. I am not going to need much to fill those voids anyway. the beams should be close."

"So how much for the roof?"

"Got to do the floor so I can do the roof. That wet basement is too low for the scaffolds."

"Okay how much?"

"Fifty but that is just the floor beams and the cover and the roof beams and deck. You gonna have to get your own roofer." He paused a minute before he continued. "Jake, you gonna need to get the plumbing and heating done at the same time before they pour the roof. You don't want to be cutting no vent holes in after it is poured. If you do it will leak sure as hell."

"Okay Slocum, I am gonna trust you and Earnie not to get over on me. When can you start?"

"Within ten days from the date you hand me a check for half." He looked like a man not expecting it to happen.

Maybe to impress him, or to just get the thing started I wrote him a check for all the money. When I handed it to him, he asked, "When will it be good."

"It is good now." I said it not bothering to explain about my letter of credit from the off shore account.

"That your tent out there?" Ernie asked that one.

"Yeah, borrowed it from Fred."

"Okay, I am gonna have a crew out measuring the place, so don't go shootin none of my men." Slocum smiled letting me know dad had told him some about me.

"Tell them, if they aren't working in ten days, they might need to get a new boss. Otherwise everything is fine." Slocum lost his good humor. Slocum that check is for the full amount. I don't need to hold any back because I trust you, and you obviously know me.

"We will be here."

When the electric company's representative arrived to put in what he called a saw service, I had him add enough for a refrig and small heater against the night chill. While uncle Slocum worked on the castle I planned to read and maybe even get drunk a few times. I should have learned form fifteen years on the sword's edge not to make silly plans.

Slocum was a week into the restoration when the call came on my cell phone. It was from the man who would have been my agent, if I had been a rock star. His company was called the International Security Company. ISC sold, installed, maintained, and tested security systems mostly as a cover. The less profitable but more interesting business was in guarding foreign nationals when they traveled about. They provided some very hard men who spoke the language and knew the customs of countries around the world... I joined his little band of cut throats after all the profitable wars ended. In exchange for the boring work, I got a lot of intel. Some of it had even led to profitable, off the books, ventures for my own little band of merry men. ISC knew enough about me and the others to leave us pretty much alone as long as we didn't turn on any of their clients. Besides, having a handle on the men who could kill just might be an edge one day in keeping their clients alive.

"Jake, how is retirement?" The voice belonged to Simon Goldburg. As the name implied, Simon was a Jew from Israel. The company had its offices in New York but it had strong ties to the Mosad. I never questioned their roots since they worked for Israelis and Arabs alike. My only requirements were that they pay me and treat me with respect.

"How would I know? If you are calling me, I guess I am not retired."

"Not sure you are going to be interested. It is a rush job and not clean or simple. The one is a smash and grab."

"Simon, if you want somebody grabbed to change a government, you know we don't have the firepower for that kind of thing. You need somebody's special forces for that."

"Well this one is not that easy. Do you know what Doctor's without borders is?"

"Never heard of it," I admitted.

"I'm not surprised. I never heard of them till an hour ago. I got this call from a European ministry official. The UN has a team of Doctors in a so called civilized member country. Some kind of Militia made up of religious zealots has grabbed them. The country is on the verge of civil war anyway so they don't want US Ranger or even so called UN Commandos in there. Those guys have to have all this prep work which just might cause the pot to boil over. They want a quick snatch and grab not a military incursion.

"Simon, this smacks of another of your high risk low pay jobs."

"High risk no doubt but you are going to have lots of intel. That might make a big difference. The pay this time isn't all that bad, the Doctors are way over funded. They have been tweaking the collective consciences of their rich med school classmates for years. The medical profession raised three quarters of a mil in two days. So, you want a half mil for you band of merry men?"

"No but I will take six hundred K and give it a shot."

"Done," he replied much too easily.

"And Simon, if that intel is crap, you are a dead man."

"Of course, I wouldn't have it any other way." He knew the score. If any of us survived an ambush, he wouldn't.

He gave me twenty four hours to assemble the merry men at an air base outside London. I burned up the phone lines. I contacted all five other members of the group, then made a flight reservation for an evening flight.

"Slocum," I said to my 'sort of' uncle. "If I'm not back when you finished the work I already paid for, you might want to rethink working for me."

Tossing clothes into a bag was easy since I couldn't carry anything really useful onto a plane. Simon should have everything we needed waiting at the abandoned airfield. The Merry Men had used that particular field before, so there wasn't going to be any excuse for anyone or anything getting lost.

Simon had me met at the airport south of London by a woman. It was pretty much standard for us to be met by one of his under secretaries, or whatever he called them. I guessed that she was more a coordinator than anything else. I expected that she had the stored equipment loaded onto a truck, the sent along for us while we winged our way onto the island country. Looking at the air field, last officially used during world war two, I again realized how much England had been an anchored air craft carrier during the big war. I had it on good authority, there are abandoned fields just like ours all over England. Most had been converted to housing developments but some still remained usable.

I knew that there would be two small cube vans parked beside the landing strip when we arrived. The one outfitted with a door which resembled a camper or mobile home would be used as a staging area. How many of those vans ISC had around the world I had no idea. Hell that one might be the only one. I suppose it could be flown all over the world on a moment's notice.

"Jake," the woman said as I approached her inside the terminal of the civilian airport. ""Nice to see you again."

"Always good to see you Rebecca," We all called her Rebecca because we couldn't pronounce her real name. Rebecca was from Egypt which led me to believe that the country to be infiltrated might be located somewhere in the middle east.

On the drive to the airfield, she colored in the outline Simon had given me. According to Becca, if the medical team was being held in an urban area, a different team would have been called in. The terrain was rugged and the compound was hard to reach. On the up side, it was lightly defended because it was almost impossible to reach.

Inside the van I was told that the compound held not only the terrorist team, but also a spy who had given the information to his CIA handler the day before. I agreed that the intel should be good since it was fresh. I was also informed that a predator had kept the mountain top under watch ever since and there had been no trucks leaving the compound though there had been a couple entering.

Again, according to the spy the camp had almost no defense at night. They counted on enough warning for the half dozen sentries to wake the others in time. The compound was too small for a halo jump. Just a few inches of error to the east would put us in a very famous river which ran below the mountain. Those same inches to the west, would send up into a very unfriendly town.

"What would you suggest?" the briefer asked. I had met him a dozen times and no one ever used his name. He was simply the briefer. I expected that he was CIA but I never asked.

"Ultra lights from the desert, then cut the engines and glide into the compound. Kill everybody, then go out in a truck. Get to the desert by sunup and you pick us up." It was the best I could do on short notice.

"Jake, you always amaze me. I think you have a spy in my office."

"No Briefer, it is the only way to get enough supplies in there accurately and quietly." I smiled knowing he had spent hours on the plan only to have me outline it in a couple of minutes. It was the reason they hired me. I could plan and re plan in minutes. When the first man hit the ground, the plan would change from details to broad strokes as things began to happen. Modifying the plan would be crucial and doing it without radios. All communications with the mountain top would be jammed before we arrived. It had to do with their ability to get help up the mountain. There was little if any need to jam the radar. We were pretty much invisible to it, there was very little real metal in one of their ultra lights. The rifles might send back a tiny bounce, so they were inside duffle bags until the last possible minute. With just the tiniest amount of luck, first thing the guards would know of their impending death would be the dull thud of the slug hitting them.

The Briefer didn't like it, but he gave the same briefing to each man. On the second hearing someone would ask questions overlooked on the first hearing of it. By the time it had been told six times, we had the plan pretty well set.

Two hours after the last man arrived on the metal mats used as a runway, the cargo plane touched down. The plane bore the markings of the flying tiger freight line. I thought they were defunct but then what do I know. We were sitting in the belly of the plane with boxes of supplies in the spaces between the canvas seats, when I appraised the group.

We had been tagged the Merry men because of our ragtag looks, and the several different characters who made up the group. The second in command, if you called what we had a command structure, was Jonathan Eaves AKA little John. His name came not from any resemblance to the legendary figure, but because he was indeed small of statue. Eaves could not have gone more than a hundred and fifty pounds in full battle dress. He was so small that on a forced march we tried to keep his pack lightened down. Jon never knew that, or he might have shot one of us. He was only small in body, his heart was as big as any one of us. He was also the most remorseless killer in a band of professional killers. The British Royal Marine Sargent major retired was the most soldier like of us all.

If you have a little John then you have to assemble the whole band of Sherwood Forest band of Ruffians. Will the Scarlet was a gypsy from somewhere in middle Europe. When the need to blend into the night ended, a red scarf would appear from somewhere and he would be himself again. The good Friar was our own concept of a Jesuit priest turned killer. Friar Edgar was the only name I knew him by. I had no idea what his real name or his real background was and no one else did either. We picked him up on a snatch and grab in South America. Someone wanted ISC to convince a certain drug lord that he was not impervious to assassination. The snatch and grab was one of those changes to the plan I mentioned earlier. We voted ourselves a little bonus for the terrorizing of the drug lord. The large amount of money in his den, turned vault, was just a bonus we felt we deserved for our assistance in the war on drugs.

The good Friar had helped us move the money from the jungle to an abandoned church. It sat there till we could get back to it a few months later. In exchange we took the Friar with us before we left the country. Hell, it was either that or kill him. He became part of the band of merry men because he was a first rate user of edged instruments. In other words he could cut a man's throat and not get a drop of blood on himself. If you don't think that is important, ask O. J. Simpson. On second thought don't bother, he wouldn't know.

We had our own wandering minstrel of sorts. We dubbed him Allen but his real name was Vladimir. How the hell he could have wound up with us was a mystery. Allen, when he was Vlad, was a PHD guest lecturer at a couple of different Universities in Russia. He wasn't really a singer, He was a poet, a classical Russian poet no less. Which meant he was a drunk, he had to be watched before and after a job. When bullets flew, if he was sober, he could carry and fire just about any heavy weapon found on the battleground. A very useful man to have when you can't carry all that much fire power into a battle. Allen would take it away from the bad guys and shove it up their asses.

The strangest, of a truly strange lot, was Maid Marian of course. Maid Marian was a woman from God only knew where. She was one of Simon's finds. Whenever we returned from a job, she disappeared. None of us was ever told where she went. Little John asked once and she told him to mind his own business. She was a Eurasian for sure or maybe even an Amerasian, I couldn't tell nor could anyone else.

Since I was the sort of strategist, I got to play Robin. I thought it made me sound faggy, but it was decided by the group. So I became code named Robin. It is what the group wanted and that is what happened. From the moment the plane took off till it landed, and we were back in our respective real lives, I would be Robin. I really didn't mind much. I was amazed how, to a man or woman, they all fell asleep as soon as the plane was airborne. Yes, I let the sound of the props on the turbo jet lull me to sleep as well, but it took longer.

Marian awoke me as we began our decent into the desert. The plane had flown all night just to get us to a particular flat spot on the desert floor just after noon of the second day. The Load Master pushed our pallet of supplies out the rear door of the plane. The plane immediately taxied off leaving us stranded. We should have rested but instead we began work. The assembling of the ultra light aircraft, complete with their lawn mower engines, was a job that required us to work more carefully than quickly.

The Friar cleaned and packed the weapons while the rest of us pitched in to assemble the aircraft such as they were. The three aircraft were made of nylon covered composition frames were tested and retested before Marian, who had the final approval for some reason, deemed them ready. The two slings under the wings allowed for a pilot and gunner, though we all hoped to get down without the need of one.

Everybody did a complete weapons check at least three times before ten p.m. The night was bright and we all cursed, but knew there was nothing we could do about the timing. The dark of the moon was the best for us. The rescue just couldn't be put off.

At ten we slipped into the black jump suits, then fired up the motors on our fragile aircraft. After a very short warm up we began to run down sand that we jokingly called a runway. When there was enough lift, we swung our feet into the harness and began a forty-five minute flight. It was a good thing we had studied our plan as often as possible before we left. The wind and the small engine made it impossible to speak.

We cut the engines high above the mountain top, then drifted in circles down to the compound. The compound was some old fortification or maybe a walled house of some kind. It made no difference since the courtyard was barely large enough to land. It was going to be 'sail low over it' then spill the air from the para wing. The final few feet were going to be a dead drop of five feet or more. It was a dangerous move,. I supposed even then that it was why we were being paid so well.

The guards were way to easy to take. It was so easy that it worried the hell out of me, as I am sure it did the others. The black birds swooped down on the compound and found the guards standing in the two guard stations on top of the walls. The walls were never designed for defense from the air. Instead they were there for siege protection or maybe to prevent a disgruntled peasant from tossing a rock over. The towers which were obviously an after thought allowed only a unrestricted view of the road and of the fields approaching the compound. I suppose, if a guard raised an alarm the others planned to go out to meet the threat. I never was sure what their plan was, but it never got a chance to be implemented. The guards in the towers died in a hail of silenced gunfire.

When the ultra lights turned gliders landed, the one with Friar and Maid Marian crashed into a wall with them still attached. Even they had no idea what had happened. Then Allen stopped to help while little John and I secured the courtyard. He and I waited to see if anyone would come from the building. The vicious attack outside had hardly made a sound. A sleeping enemy might have missed it entirely, which appeared to be the case.