THE CONTRACTOR

  THE CONTRACTOR

  Death Spiral

  R. SAINT HILAIRE

  Copyright © 2021 R. SAINT HILAIRE

  All rights reserved

  THE

  CONTRACTOR II

  Death Spiral

  By

  R. SAINT HILAIRE

  Book 2 of The Contractor Series

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  CHAPTER ONE - EP

  TURKEY 2009

  I’m an idiot sometimes. After my little Iraq adventure, I thought an EP assignment would be a well-deserved break from my usual duck-and-cover missions. Man, what was I smoking? I should have known that all the job descriptors like “cushy” and “executive presence” and “light duty” were a crock of crap. There is no “cushy” in this job—it’s either locked and loaded and ready to lay down lead in some sand covered, camel-jockey-ridden wasteland, or locked and loaded and ready to lay down lead in a business suit. Either way, I don’t know what I was expecting because I usually didn’t take assignments like this; I rather preferred having massive firepower slung across my chest and roaring down some empty Mid-Eastern highway at 100 miles per hour. But with a year gone by since Iraq, and most of the bullet holes healed up, I thought I’d get back in there, just on something a little less strenuous. Riiiight!

  “Go! Go!” I yelled to the driver as I shoved my principal into the backseat of the armored Lincoln Town Car.

  The principal slammed into the driver’s side rear door with a groan. I dove onto his back, using my own body as cover against the attacker’s bullets, as the driver mashed the accelerator to the floor. The black sedan lurched forward and accelerated down the airport tarmac toward safety.

  Gravel thrown up by the spinning tires pelted the two protective agents still standing at the scene of the attack. They were now completely in the open, fighting for their lives on the helipad. Multiple shots rang out, causing the two agents to jump into prone positions, still firing their weapons in the general direction of their assailants. The fourth agent laid dead or dying, arms and legs sprawled apart on the broiling concrete pad. I felt bad for the bastards—really, I did.

  I never drew my sidearm. That wasn’t my job. Not that day, anyhow. If the shit was going to hit the proverbial fan, my one and only job was to put myself into harm’s way by becoming a human shield for the principal. It was my job to try to keep him calm, an almost impossible task with bullets flying, and to keep his head down as I evacuated him to the follow car.

  Struggling to keep my balance in the back seat of the speeding black vehicle, one hand keeping the middle-aged business executive flat on the leather seat, the other reaching for the open door that was swinging back and forth at every turn of the car, I tried to calmly ask the gentleman whom I had just crushed with my two-hundred-pound body plus armored vest, radio, Leatherman, sidearm and holster, whether he was okay. My client groaned.

  “Get the fuck off me,” he whined as he attempted to push me off.

  I wasn’t having any of that—not until we were out of the airport and back on the highway. “Merlin,” I called to my driver using my sarcastic nickname for him, “keep it straight, for Christ’s sake.” Finally, I had been able to reach the door handle, but Merlin’s excessive evasive maneuvers were making the door feel like it weighed five hundred pounds. I just needed to close the damned thing before we were tossed out of the car. Merlin kept it steady for the five seconds I needed to slam the thing shut, then he pushed the universal lock button, and all the doors were secured with a metallic “clunk.” The bastard only gave us enough time to sit ourselves upright before he began swerving all over the airport runway. I knew he was fucking with us.

  As our dweeb principal adjusted his suit jacket and tie—and, by the way, nice pink shirt—I fastened my seatbelt like a good law-abiding citizen. Actually, at that point in the day, I really didn’t give a shit, but I knew Merlin was about to take us down the entrance ramp to the highway at speeds significantly over the recommended sixty kilometers an hour posted prominently on a large yellow sign.

  Merlin had earned his nickname because whenever he wanted to explain something in detail or point out something of significance, he would gesture with his hands as if he were performing a magic spell. His fingers would roll one at a time, starting with his little finger, toward his palm in a cascading manner, and you would expect to hear the magical strum of a harp, or see sparks and smoke and the like. He had never even recognized his habit until one of his buddies pointed it out. So, when I saw his right hand make its magical movements in the direction of the large yellow “you-better-hold-the-fuck-on” sign, I strapped myself in for the ride. Accidentally on purpose I had neglected to mention the significance of Merlin’s gesture to my client. As we skidded precariously close to death onto the curved ramp, our bodies pushed hard against the nylon three-point restraints. There were, rather comically, no restraints keeping Mr. Clueless from first slamming his head against the darkly tinted window, then falling into my lap as the car careened in the opposite direction and roared onto the highway. I could see Merlin smiling in the rear-view mirror.

  “You done down there?” I asked my client as he lay face down in my rather sweaty lap.

  Embarrassed, or just feeling stupid, my client sat himself upright, rubbing his now bumpy head with his hand.

  “Was it good for you? ’Cause it was great for me,” I said, at the time not contemplating any ramifications that could come from our harsh treatment of the principal.

  Our client didn’t respond, but simply looked disgusted by the whole scenario, or maybe just by us. Apparently, aside from us assholes in the getaway car, the rest of the AOP (attack on principal) exercise went off as planned. And our IAD (immediate action drill—the acronyms are never-ending) also seemed to go off without a hitch, as long as you don’t consider one man down a “hitch”.

  “Can we just get back to the base?” our whining and slightly bruised test dummy—I mean, instructor—begged us.

  Merlin must have read my nasty little mind, because no sooner did the principal’s trap shut did Merlin’s magic fingers wave; he yanked on the emergency brake and cranked the wheel a quarter-turn to the left, causing the big black car to skid until it faced the opposite direction, at which point he gunned it again and raced back toward the base. Again, Mr. Clueless lost his battle with centrifugal force and slid across the leather back seat directly into me. I did everything I could to not laugh out loud—I figured he was pissed enough already.

  Our little BO (base of operations) was an abandoned Turkish Air Force base several hundred kilometers outside of Ankara. The luxury accommodations included cinderblock barracks, two huge empty hangers (one with a collapsed roof), and a crisscross of concrete runways complete with potholes and emerging clumps of grass.

  I had decided to take a little refresher course in Executive Protection, which was a far cry from my forte: High Risk Protection. I knew that in order to carry out my EP mission without being seen as a Neanderthal, I was going to have to sharpen my image, control my temper, and polish my political skills. So my company hooked me up with an international training group that runs EP courses in every smelly backwater place on the planet. This particular course happened to be in Middle-of-Nowhere, Turkey. My actual principal was going to be doing business between Ankara, Istanbul, and Iran, so the training location was perfect.

  Moving right from the Navy SEALs into the High-Risk Protection profession had been relatively easy. There were some advanced driving skills to learn and a few other incidentals, but it had basically been a smooth transition from driving fast vehicles across the Afghan countryside while shooting BG’
s (bad guys) under the roasting sun for forty thousand a year to driving fast vehicles through Iraqi cities while shooting BGs for a hundred-forty-thousand a year. I had essentially traded in my Colt for a Rockriver, changed my baseball cap, and fattened my wallet. It worked for me.

  It wasn’t going to work that way this time, however. This customer was a high-level cabinet member, and I would be working with a protection team, and we wouldn’t be shooting at anything if we did our jobs perfectly. More than that, we were expected to present a professional image. Me in a suit—now that was a laugh. You do what you have to do, I guess. Anyhow, your basic corporate type EP training was kind of boring for me, so I took every opportunity to spice things up, like neglecting to remind our instructor about his seatbelt.

  The principal we had in the car was one of our chief instructors, and he was pissed that Merlin and I were screwing around. He didn’t say anything all the way back to the hanger, which is never a good sign from an instructor. But I wasn’t worried; I had already been hired for my next assignment. I was doing this refresher on my own and had twice the experience of the dick sitting next to me, so the outcome of the course didn’t really matter. I didn’t need a graduation certificate, badge, or pin to prove I knew what I needed to know. Several years in DEVGRU, more clearances than I even knew about, and high-level HR missions in both Afghanistan and Iraq scrawled across my resume were all I needed to keep the paychecks rolling in. So, I figured, what the hell—let’s have a little fun.

  Back at the hanger, voices echoed through the vast empty space as our team members welcomed us back from our well-planned escape. Of the current team of five, only three were going to work together on the next assignment: myself, Merlin, and Saadi.

  Saadi was our in-country TL (team leader—c’mon, keep up). Now, I wasn’t completely happy having a local as a TL because they take a lot of knowledge for granted and tend to under-communicate important tidbits of info, which can make you look unprofessional or put your ass in a sling. Some do it as an ego trip, while others simply overlook what they consider to be common knowledge. It would be like someone from bum fuck Oklahoma going to NYC (I am not translating that acronym!) and thinking you can’t cross the street until the walk sign tells you to do so. You’d be standing there all day. But I digress. Anyway, I was a bit skeptical about Saadi at the beginning.

  Thankfully, Saadi turned out to be one of the coolest guys I have ever worked with. His teamwork and timing were impeccable. He was affable, an expert marksman, had street smarts, and most importantly carried lots of extra ammo and cigars! C’mon, you know it doesn’t get any better than that. While other PSAs (protective service agents) filled their pockets with the newest and hottest electronic gadgetry available, good ol’ Saadi filled his pockets with frangibles and Fuentes. That’s the kind of guy I want on my team!

  So, we rolled into the hanger and exited the vehicle like Julius Caesar making a triumphal entry into Rome after conquering Gaul, complete with cheers from the rest of the team and staff—that is, until they saw the reddened face of Mr. Clueless. Actually, his name was Doug, and we didn’t call him Mr. Clueless to his face, although I certainly would have if necessary. Doug, bumpy head and all, stepped out of the back of the sedan, his heightened blood pressure causing one vein on his forehead to bulge. His crew cut did little to hide the swelling from where his head had smacked into the window, just as the Wiley-X ballistic sunglasses did little to hide the wry expression on Merlin’s face. I chose to ignore Dougie’s dissatisfaction with our less-than-serious attitudes and put my arm around his shoulder in mock affection.

  “Instructor Dougie forgot his seatbelt,” I announced sarcastically to the students and other instructors. Hey, I figured I’d put the truth of the matter out there before someone started pointing fingers. If Clueless had put his belt on, it wouldn’t have mattered what we did, short of rolling the car. He would have come through it unscathed. “A lesson to all of you—click it or…get a big lumpy head.”

  Everyone had to laugh, including the other instructors. Pre-emptive strike on possible disciplinary action? Successful.

  In an attempt to appear more professional than us losers, our head instructor— whom we called “X” due to the huge scar in the shape of an “x” that crossed his entire chest, the result of his torture in some past Angolan civil war—told everyone to sit the fuck down.

  “God damn it, Branson, take this shit seriously!” the gargantuan X bellowed from behind a folding table, which sat in front of two large map boards, one of Ankara and environs and the other of Istanbul and Van. The levity stopped, because although we thought Dougie was a panty waste, everyone respected X. Why? First of all, because you physically had to or he would crush you with his twenty-inch biceps with veins the size of bungee cords, and secondly, because that man had frankly been through the shit. So, everyone took a seat on the folding metal chairs.

  “Okay,” X started, the remnants of an African accent still barely noticeable, “the IAD went well. You guys are looking pretty sharp. Timing was good.”

  One of the boys from Team Two (whom I didn’t like for no more of a valid reason than that he reminded me of Joe Corrino) stood up. “What about a dead agent? Wouldn’t that be considered an issue?”

  I was about to jump up and bop the boy up the side of the head with the first empty folding chair I could find, but X promptly put the young inexperienced pup in his place.

  “The agent doesn’t matter. The sooner you get that into your thick skull, the better. The principal is what matters, and Team One got the principal “off the x” and brought him to safety uninjured. Well, sorta uninjured...”

  I looked over at Merlin. He was looking down at the dirty concrete floor of the hanger, hand over his face in an attempt to hide his semi-suppressed laughter. The young pup sat back down without further comment.

  “That was your final exercise, Team One. Congratulations. You have successfully passed this course,” X announced to the men. There was some applause and a few “whoop whoops” that reverberated in the vast structure of aluminum and concrete.

  He was letting us know that birds would be arriving within the hour to hop us back over to Ankara, where we would be met by representatives from our various organizations, when gunfire suddenly cracked from a dark corner of the hanger. The repeated rapports of an AK slammed into eardrums and caused several agents to sprawl onto the floor. What followed let me know that Merlin, Saadi and I would work perfectly together.

  I grabbed Dougie by the suit jacket lapel and dragged him toward the hanger entrance, then proceeded to shove him into the back seat of the Lincoln. Saadi had already taken position behind a huge stack of concrete slabs, at one time probably used to repair the airport runways and was firing the blanks in his Glock in the general direction of the AK flashes. By the time I closed the door of the car, Merlin had jumped in and cranked the engine. He jammed the gear into reverse and put the pedal to the metal. The sedan launched itself backward out of the hanger as it threw me and Dougie forward onto the rear floor of the car. I was laying on top of him. I guess we just couldn’t keep away from each other.

  By the time Merlin had squealed through his “J” turn, one of the instructors ran out behind the car and waved us down. Merlin jammed on the brakes.

  Let me assure you, I knew what was going on. The sound of an AK throwing hot lead downrange has a distinct sound—and the sound I had heard in the hanger was not that sound. There was the slightest sound of decompression when the weapon was fired, but as there was no bullet, the loud “crack” typical of an AK was missing. Immediately I knew it was a rifle firing blanks. I also knew we were in the middle of nowhere in a friendly country, so there was no reason for us to be randomly attacked. Although it could have been the PKK, a group of Kurdish rebels disguised as a labor union, that was doubtful. I also noticed that no round had hit any mark in the room, again leading me to believe blanks were being fired. This had been another test of our natural response. I had no idea wh
ether Merlin knew it was a ruse, but I chuckled at the thought of Saadi taking a knee behind that stack of concrete and blasting away with blanks. He had definitely known this was a test.

  We rolled back into the hanger again, I stopped rump-riding Clueless, and all three of us coolly headed back to our seats. I swear to you, I saw Saadi blowing on the end of his pistol like he was in a scene from an old western.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please retake your seats,” X commanded the crew. “Team One, that was your final test.”

  Of course, Saadi and I had known it, and from the repeated raising of his eyebrows, I understood that Merlin had been on top of things, too. The rest of the pussies, meanwhile, were still brushing concrete dust from their sleek black suits. They had cowered like beaten dogs. Okay, maybe that’s a harsh judgment, but one thing was for sure—these men had never been in combat. I sorta felt bad for them in a way. Experience was coming their way soon, and some of them would certainly not survive.

  I remember hearing the first real bullet zing past my head in Afghanistan. I almost retracted my head inside my body like a paranoid turtle. My crew chief made an exaggerated surprised face at me from behind an oil drum as if to say, “Oooh boy—that was close, son, wasn’t it?” Since that time, many rounds have flown past my head. Some of those rounds didn’t fly by but found their mark. I was still recovering from my last assignment. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you get hit.

  A pair of old UH-1H helicopters appeared over the trees in the west. Our rides had arrived on time. I stood with my team and the other very tired and very thirsty men; all of us ready to hop back to Ankara, where we would pack up and get ready to head back to Istanbul in the morning. My team was not starting their assignment until Monday, so we were pretty anxious to get packed up and hit Kizilay, where we could slam some beers and eat some hot and spicy Turkish grub.