Chapter 2

After cleaning up any residual traces of our existences, we went our separate ways. Myself, I went to Italy, to a tiny nameless hamlet in the central Apennine Mountains, almost completely abandoned by anyone under seventy years of age. There was one road in and the same road out. If there was a stranger anywhere in the vicinity, every one of the fifteen residents would know.

I view it as ultimately defendable by minimal defenders against maximum attackers. I long term leased a one room villa. It had been built out of the local granite, a couple of hundred years ago. The only two improvements made since the last tenant died sixty odd years ago, were: the glass installed in the single-pane windows (by me); and electricity (via a mains to the access road), made available to, although not used, inside the cabin. Oh yes, and there was a disguised hole, under one wall.

It's very hard to call a one room cabin ... made of rock, wattle and daub, with a very steep slate roof and a compacted clay floor ... a villa; but then, it wasn't my description.

I had made a few security improvements immediately after taking up residence three years ago. I have an innate distrust of some of the people I work with, and of those who employ us. I have a bent. I really do not like or trust people, and I am completely self-reliant in all things physical and emotional. The cabin was my hermitage ... my cave, if you will. I do not get emotional or gain emotional attachments ... except possibly to my closest family, whom I rarely see. I have not been home for the ten years I've been in government service.

There was one exception to this (isn't there always?), but it was my cross, which I have to bear. I have not informed anyone else, in order to prevent being taken advantage by anyone, including by the subject of my affection.

In this hamlet, I was accepted by the locals and known as 'the foreigner, ' as my fluent Italiano had a Napoli accent. When I was in Napoli, my Italiano had a Central Mountain, crude peasant accent. It was a little hard to pinpoint its origin. To give a little further insight, my English in Britain was 'west of Devon' and in the US of A, it was 'Philadelphian snotty blue-blood.' I chose that because it gives other US citizens, the shits. My army file once said I only spoke Australian English and I never gave them cause to think otherwise, although in my previous posting I told them I was learning French. My French was intelligible but detested by the Parisians; but that is their opinion of any and all French spoken in any accent other than their own.

I knew I was in trouble when I lost my earlobe. I was doing my morning two hundred press-ups when a hole appeared in the window near me. My left earlobe was torn away and I bled like a stuck pig. The pain was unpleasant, so I remained on the ground and watched as the red claret drip, dripped onto the clay in front of my face. The windows are one hundred mil square panes of ten mil thick Venetian handmade glass. They tended to warp the vision quite a lot, so the sniper should feel quite proud that he came as close to me as he did ... or ashamed of himself for aiming so far away from the visual target as his spotter saw it.

I rolled across the compacted clay floor until I felt safe to stand, immediately packed my few belongings into my haversack, and then removed my silenced Glock from the hidden pocket underneath. The cabin does not have a ceiling but I had built a false interior facade, attached to the exterior roof eave above the sole door. I hopped up and slid straight into place over that door.

They should be in a team of three after someone of my calibre. The number three man would have been fairly close to the cabin, probably only a few cautious minutes away. He had done well, as my 'tells' didn't give any warning. I didn't want to kill him, he's only the cats-paw, but he would also be my warning to all that would follow these amateurs: 'don't fuck with me, as the results will be unpleasant'. I only need to know where he came from to know who my opposition were.

Ten minutes later, he entered the only door as if he was in one of those SWAT teams in the Yank movies, which instantly told me a lot; no wonder the Yanks employ our team. I immediately dropped on him from above, extending my legs hard, aiming for, and successfully breaking both his collar bones. To compound his agony I bent his arms back to remove his snow gear and searched for his communications. He passed out. I would have too, after all, if it had been done to me.

He had a plug looped over and in his ear and a throat mic which I immediately purloined. He came to swearing in Mid-Western Yank. That told me all I wanted to know so I gave him a nasty concussion, emasculated him, then hamstrung both his legs and shortened both tendons to make them irreparable. My message - be warned; there are worse things than dying!

He was close enough to my size so I put on his genuine US Army snow camouflage cold weather gear, the Russian Spetsnaz supplied stuff was better insulated, and his rather cute bullet proof vest which was about as good as you can get. I recommend that you should wear one around most US cities as standard-use garb. They're dangerous places to be a civilian. Mind you, I come from a nation which frowns on firearms and shooting deaths are like hens teeth outside the underworld. After I donned the protective gear, I slid out through the hole I had previously dug and reinforced under the blind side stone wall, closing it behind me as if it, and I, had never been there.

By this time the blood from my ear had congealed. The ear hurt, but I was just being a sook.

The cabin was surrounded by a small level field, probably originally meant to herd small flocks of sheep or goats. There was an independent, natural, raised stone plinth about five hundred metres to the west towards the village. Five metres to the rear of the cabin was a cliff of unknown drop, straight down. It was otherwise unprotected and that especially included the standard wind-tunnel effect in the valleys between the mountains. The local mountains surrounded me on two sides with sheer granite walls, the closest foothold in such would be two or so thousand metres straight up.

There were only two practical ways the cabin could be attacked. The most unlikely, was a mass attack by helicopter (as that would require about twenty armed personnel and an extremely foolhardy and/or brave pilot), or a two or three man sniper team. I couldn't imagine anyone being so pissed off with me that they would mount a full armed attack, but I had placed a small toy in case a helicopter had the luck and temerity to land. I even had trouble imagining why anyone would want me dead, anyway, so I had deemed unlikely even a sniper team.

After my initial basic training, I had been trained as a sniper, not that the army ever employed me as such. Due to that training I had a fair idea from where a sniper would target me. I pressed the button on a tiny box in my pocket then tossed it over the cliff beside me. A rather large explosive device of my own creation removed the stone plinth from existence. There were bits and pieces of two bodies, and a very nice sniper rifle of German design, capable of absolute accuracy within a thousand metre range. It had remained in one piece. Regretfully, I left it as after that bang, the barrel would almost certainly have been warped. I was left wondering why they would use a German weapon, Yanks being so xenophobic and chauvinistic by training from birth.

I should be able to give myself a leeway of about four hours until someone looks for a body. The locals would not come out to see what the problem was for an hour or so after the last bang. Hopefully they would put the disturbance down to Mafioso, myself being foreign. After all, 'You know what those southerners are like'. There was only one phone in the village. It was owned by the most recent person to come home to retire in the hamlet. Her children had insisted.

My reliable thirty year old 2 cylinder Fiat was parked at the bottom of the cliff. It was a twenty minute walk, using the secure footing down an old shepherds trail ... ten, if you're running like the devil was after you, as I was. But it was sixty minutes from the nearest village by vehicle along the circuitous road up here. The nearest Polizia Provinciale was a single man three villages away. He sure as hell wasn't coming up here after a Mafioso hit. He would wait to call in the big guns: the Carabinieri, stationed in Firenze who were paid the big euros. The US marines actually arrived first, and in force by helicopter. They landed in the only practical place for a helicopter to land but they dropped onto my largish landmine causing mayhem and multiple deaths. By then I was long gone.

With the local roads the way they were and the size of the D model Fiat's engine, it took me four hours to get out of the mountains. As soon as I had mobile reception after the foothills I made one unanswered phone call, then deep sixed that phone. If she was still alive, the Colonel would meet me at the Sydney dock in four months. It took another eight hours to the coast using the Bologna bypass. I arranged a ride on a fishing smack over to Venezia, and another to Trieste. I acted like a French tourist (Parisienne accent as someone seems to know more about me that I like) via local bus routes to Zagreb, and a Cook's Tour bus to Athinai, Elás (Athens, Greece, ignoramuses). I eventually entered Sydney Harbour on a luxury cruise liner, originating in Athens, after a four month 'relaxing' cruise.

The Colonel and I had long ago made contingency plans, once we had an understanding that this outcome was a possibility. She would be in full uniform as the major in artillery that she officially was, but dressed as a male ... which she generally did, anyway, outside working hours.Her young, effeminate appearing male adjutant, would be by her side, both with heads shorn into military cut.

Personally, I thought Ferguson looked like the most effeminate male I'd ever seen. She carried it off with great aplomb as I had trained her in the appropriate mannerisms, military buzz cut notwithstanding. The Colonel looked no different; then again, maybe I'm biased, as she was ugly, male or female. I walked straight past them towards customs, and then did a recce circuit until I was satisfied. On my third pass I whistled the first bars of Colonel Bogey ... well, I thought it was appropriate!

The two of them led me through Customs, without the need for inspection.

It was fortunate that the customs officer ignored my existence. I was holding enough military ordinance in my personal luggage to start a small war ... and that was with the explosives, alone. Sink the ship I had just disembarked? Hell, in one bang I could have taken out almost the entire Sydney CBD, as well as my one spare pair of underpants. I'd miss those underpants.

They got into an official army staff car and took off for our assigned base: Holsworthy on the southern outskirts of Sydney.

I took a suburban electric train from Circular Quay to Revesby, changing trains at Central and again at Tempe, my concentrated mind forever on surveillance. I made one detour to a storage company at Picnic Point, to drop off my armaments and pick up a suitcase containing some clothing that went out of date ten years ago. A fashion plate I have never been, with practicality my priority. It also carried some camouflage wear (British Armed Forces), which never goes out of date.

I felt odd. The Heinlein novel, Stranger in a Strange Land comes to mind as fairly descriptive of my emotions. I felt more at home in Zagreb than I did in my home city. No passport checks, no visa checks except at the wharf, no armed military types protecting delicate sites frisking me to make me feel at home. Here, you have to do something really stupid to get the cops to recognise you even exist. It's civilised. I wondered if this was my motivation to go through all this shit.

Public lavatories are harder to find nowadays, what with the modern fear of dirty old men who have made public lavatories politically incorrect. Eventually I found one and I donned an appropriate disguise of the unfamiliar uniform of a British Warrant Officer Class I and a 'west of Devon' accent to go with the uniform. (I know that, even with the uniform, I was still a sergeant but why shouldn't I fudge a bit?)

I swapped my current passport, for my official orders from Whitehall created during the trip through the Panama Canal. I then rode a taxi to the main gate of the base from Holsworthy train station. It took me the normal half an hour of fucking around, and the usual Pommy jokes, until I was escorted through to a Major Wotherspoon's adjutant. He saluted me in the perfect manner and bade me enter.

The Colonel was cranky with me, as usual.

"You pulled that rather close, Third. They took out my complete hotel, ten minutes after your warning. They killed eight civilians to get at us. Durban authorities have called it poor building methods or concrete cancer or anything other than what it was. My sources think it was the French but my source was CIA. There were three other attempts after I put in my official enquiry so I'm taking it for granted it was the Yanks. It was clumsy enough to be them. Any comments?"

We may not like each other, but we do respect one another. We hadn't spoken since London, yet she knew me well enough to know what knowledge I would have dredged up, and that I would not have left any footprints behind.

Replying in my Australian accent made me feel odder than if I was speaking Italian with a Napoli accent: "The Yanks would have paid for it. God knows who would have performed your hit, though it does have that borsch taint. The three I put down were Navy Seal idiots. I'd love to get my hands on their training staff and give them the facts of life. The Seals were off the carrier USS Hopetown, which was in Roma for R & R and refitting. Someone spent a lot of money to get me, as well, as it wasn't due for refitting for another six months. Even then a refitting would normally have been done in their home port. You know the 'whys' and the 'wherefores' of our targets, have you decided whose nose we put out of joint?"

"I think it was London, the Berthold hit. His real name was Vernon Bernhalter, Austrian and a supplier of military armaments to a half-a-dozen African states and with direct access to the Chinese, CIA, Russian and British Intelligences. He was two-timing or even treble-timing to pass classified computer technical information, both military and commercial, to the Chinese. The powers that be couldn't allow that to happen so decided to take him out. If the Chinese had learned who took out the contract, there would be all-out war within the intelligence communities.

"We were the cut out between the target and our employer which makes us the weak link as far as they could see. We still are, so we may have to be a little cautious for the foreseeable future. That's what I believe. Interestingly, immediately before the attempt to take us out, we were requested through our direct superiors to do another operation within US provinces. My opinion was then, that anyone who goes in there is not coming back out again. Know anyone you don't like?"