THE CONTRACTOR Read online

  This was only the second time I had taken a sky ride in a bird while wearing a suit. The first was on the way out to the training site. I felt weird as hell. There was no gear stowed, no rifle between my legs with the barrel pointed at the floor, no trying to stretch the seatbelt all the way around my overloaded magazine pouch vest. I felt like some executive. I guess the suit does give you that demeanor; I wasn’t sure, but it felt unnatural.

  The countryside was sweeping, and the towns we soared over like Kirsehir and Karakecili looked idyllic, all chimneys and slate roofs, barns and fields. Cows looked up from grazing, people rode bicycles through narrow streets. Soon the pastures gave way to industrial parks, with sprawling flat roofs and huge parking lots filled with cars, many of them white, strangely. We flew just north of the city to our LZ located at a private airport. Soon we all did the duffle bag drag to our hotels—did the shit, shower and shave and got ready to party like it was 1989.

  Yeah, I know the phrase is “party like it’s 1999”, but some areas of “Kiss & Lay” (our smart-ass name for Kizilay) looked like something from the late eighties. Boho or faux-American was the standard fashion, and one of my favorite little bars, Brothers, really brought me back. The low light, occasional whiffs of hash, a brick bar with a three-inch-thick wood top, red vinyl stools, and old couches tucked into dark corners all remind me of places I “accidentally” ended up in during my various world wanderings.

  My teammates and I just wanted to quaff a couple gallons of Efes pilsner, enjoy the young scenery and cool our jets for a couple days before we had to get our shit together for real.

  The drive from the hotel was magical. We were pretty sure our taxi driver was drunk because all three of us actually understood what he was trying to say. That was because we were all schnockered, too. I hadn’t planned on being smashed already, but Merlin raided the courtesy bar in his room, grabbed an armful of nips and candy bars, and came a’ knocking at our doors. Well, about thirty or so little bottles later, we hailed a taxi, and then enjoyed what seemed to be a rollercoaster of a ride through the ancient capital.

  The Kaopectate (my fond name for the Kocatepe mosque) was brilliantly lit, a gleaming dome and four minarets, the icon of the power of Islam in this city. In my humble and extremely drunk opinion, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was more amazing, and was built as a Christian church first. I was about to start spouting historical facts to my compadres when, luckily for them, we arrived at Brothers.

  The music was blasting, there was a pall of cigarette smoke, and the crowd somehow seemed younger than us, but there were four glorious beer taps straight ahead that were going to receive a beating. We took seats at the bar and Merlin immediately started jawing at the young male bartender.

  “So, let me ask you,” the thirty-five-year-old former Homeland Security agent said to the young bartender, “what do you think about the U.S. being in Iraq?”

  I gave him an inquisitive look as if to ask with my eyes, “WTF? Do you want to start a fight?” It was obvious he was seeing how many buttons he could press on that guy, for what reason remains a mystery to me till this day.

  Merlin, whose name was really Jim, was a master bullshitter. He wound his way through arguments and obscure points of political opinion like a downhill slalom skier. Our bartender got red faced and voices got louder than necessary. Just when I was pretty sure that a fist or a bottle was going to fly over that bar, Merlin slid the bartender a wad of Lira and thanked him for the intellectual stimuli. A master, I tell you. You just have to love the expression of a guy who has absolutely no idea what to do. He wants to smash your face in, but you just gave him a present.

  That night we ploughed through at least two pitchers without even talking. We watched the lovely young Turkish women dance, we enjoyed the haze of exotic eastern cigarettes, we laughed a bit at sad imitations of American music and clothing, and simply enjoyed the stress-free environment.

  Saadi finally broke the code of silence and began to relay to Merlin and me stories of his last assignment. His gaunt features, leathery skin, dark Saddam Hussein mustache and cigarette dangling from his lips, which danced every time he talked, added visual poetry to his tales. He was a security driver in his last job, tasked with ferrying security personnel between Lebanon and certain undisclosed locations in Iraq. What he found most interesting was that he was charged with protecting the protectors. He told us how his passengers rarely spoke a word on trips that were sometimes several hours through barren desert. He would offer them a cigarette, and he never attempted to communicate with those who wished to remain anonymous. Although Turkish by birth, his look allowed him to fit into the local Iraqi population as long as he kept his mouth shut. He had been stopped several times, both by Coalition forces and by Iraqi insurgents, and had always worked his way out of those hairy situations, which is why he was so valued in his position.

  Merlin and I listened intently. It is always important to learn as much as you can about people on your team. Your team members are highly trained operatives, heavily armed, and will cover your ass if the need arises. You have to know what you are dealing with, and just how far out there you can stick your ass before it is no longer covered.

  When Saadi finished his life story, there was an awkward pause, and then we both turned our heads to Merlin.

  “Okay, spill your guts,” I told him.

  He kept it short and sweet, which to me has always been the sign of a real operator. Those who have been there and done that rarely go on and on about what a Rambo they are. Merlin scratched his blonde crew cut and told us he started life in the National Guard, got sucked into Iraqi Freedom, did his active-duty stint, moved onto a quasi-military job for Homeland Security for a year, and then promptly quit. He tried his hand at the civilian world and got bored as shit. Sitting in his “training coffin”, as he called his office cubicle, simply wasn’t for him. He spent more time crumpling and tossing paper than pushing it. He also had issues containing his inner monologue during business meetings. Luckily for him, he met some guys at the local gun club who got him thinking about doing some PSD work. Before he had time to dump the sand from his OD Army skivvies, he was back in the sandbox with a protective team for some unnamed officials in Baghdad. He skipped around companies a couple of times, always ending up back where the business was until he finally hit on this EP job. He was a weapons specialist and a judo black belt.

  That part sparked my interest, having had a little hand-to-hand combat training in my life. I told him we may need to test each other out someday. Merlin told me there was probably a judo club in Istanbul where we could play. Sounded great to me. I had a couple tricks up my sleeve that my old mentor Erik Olsen had taught me back in his makeshift training facility in New Hampshire.

  Then all eyes peeled my way. Damn! I hate to talk about myself, basically because most of what I have done I can’t talk about. I didn’t want to sound like a stammering idiot, trying to carefully choose my words and stories, so I just figured I’d talk fast and skate over most of the details. It went something like this:

  “I was a Navy SEAL, did a bunch of stuff all over the world, got sick of being shot at without having decent pay, so I moved into the high-risk security profession. Roamed around Iraq with my clients doing this and that, exchanged a little fire here and there, and then landed the EP job.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the other two burst into laughter.

  “What?” I implored them.

  “Nick, you couldn’t get any more vague than that,” Merlin said, cracking up.

  “Oooo, you sound like a secret agent man,” Saadi said with his Turkish accent.

  Well, I flipped them both off, dumped the rest of my beer down the old gullet, belched heartily at both of them, and then joined them in the chuckle. Like them, I had glossed over most of the details, not giving a hint about all the shit that went down with Iskander and Corrino.

  Corrino. Damn, that was a name I hadn’t thought of in quite a while, and it bro
ught a chill to my spine. There is simply nothing more unexpected than finding out your principal is secretly a traitor and is also trying to kill you. The wounds he had inflicted upon my body were mainly healed, but the scars he left in my head were still fresh and sore. I looked at the other two men at the table. Either one of them could be the enemy, even though we all sat together gulping beer and telling war stories. Anyhow, I didn’t let that little flight of paranoid fantasy last long. The chance of that happening was almost nil. These guys had been in the same crap I had for the last couple of years, and we were all in the same boat now.

  In our drunken state, we probably shouldn’t have gotten into a conversation about our mission, but we did. I don’t think we divulged any national secrets to the crowd of dancing twenty-year-olds. It was loud and we were drunk, but I deciphered that we were going to be part of a five-man team, the perfect number to walk the diamond around our principal. Saadi, our HMFIC (head muthah-fuckah in charge), filled us in.

  Our principal was one Fahri Magyar, the Turkish Ambassador to Iran. He was currently charged with supplying a team of weapons inspectors to work with a U.S. team searching for military usage of nuclear materials in Iran, while maintaining Turkey’s friendly relationship with its eastern neighbor.

  Very cool, I thought at the time. He was high profile, and a principal like that would look very good on my resume. The Iran border was kinda out there, so at least I might get a little adventure fix out of the deal. Pay was high, almost a thousand bucks a day. Happy me.

  Saadi also told us that he was going to be the OC with me as his backup if necessary. When we walked the box, I’d be at one o’clock; when we walked the diamond, I would be at three o’clock and he would be the body agent. In either formation, Merlin was the tail gunner. He was responsible for watching our six. Saadi had read our personalities perfectly in the short amount of time he spent with us in the EP refresher course. The only unknown variables at that point were the other two team members whom we would meet up with in Istanbul.

  One of the best parts of this job was being in Istanbul, the gateway to the East. It’s an ancient city, founded around 657 BC, destroyed a bit later and then rebuilt in 330 AD when it was renamed Constantinople by the Roman emperor, Constantine. It straddles the Bosphorus, a waterway that links the Black sea with the Sea of Marmara, part of the Mediterranean. Half the city sits on the European continent and the other on the Asian. It was at first the Christian center of Eurasia but was conquered in 1543 by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II. Pretty much from that day forward, the city was a center of Islam. Now a thriving metropolis of thirteen million, it is an eclectic mix of ancient culture and modern clubs, malls, architecture and cuisine. That was me being a fucking encyclopedia just now.

  Having been there several times, I already had a tentative itinerary in mind for my down time. Definitely hit the pubs and clubs in Beyoglu, wander the bazaar called Kapali Carsi (a wonderful place to find that perfect little knife or gadget you may need in an emergency) and get myself steamed, scrubbed and nearly beaten to death under the expert hands of some three-hundred-pound muscled and bearded masseur at one of the baths at Cemberlitas Hamami.

  My head was tingling from drinking and my vision was a little blurred, but not enough to miss the strange expression on Merlin’s face. Either he spotted some super freaky looking chick, or something more sinister was on his mind. With a magical wave of his fingers, he pointed unobtrusively toward two men who had just come in the door.

  I slowly turned my head to the right, looked down at the floor and then raised my eyes without moving my head. You know, there was nothing specific about the two men that made my hand reach for my HK UDP .40; it was more like a feeling. They didn’t seem to fit somehow, I don’t know if it was their clothes, or the fact that they didn’t look happy to be in the beer joint. They weren’t scoping the women, and they weren’t headed toward the bar. It was unusual behavior, the type you are trained to notice in this business. They spoke to the doorman for a moment and then just stood there scanning the room. PKK was the first thing that entered my head.

  The PKK, meaning Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan, is a quasi-worker’s union, socio-political, leftist semi-military, mafia sorta thing. It has been and continues to be many things to many people. It was started by an Ankara University student named Abdullah Ocalan in the 1970’s. Apo, as he was called, was an ultra-Kurdish nationalist who got involved in Kurdish clan warfare, which would seem insignificant in a country the size of Turkey, but there were many clan leaders in political power during those days. Turkish security forces were often funded by drug money, which in turn was controlled by clan leaders. When Apo became the leader of the PKK, he went on a search-and-destroy mission for the other clan leaders and systematically wiped them out. During the 80s, the organization continued to sow terror and gain political power in the region. Though ultra-Kurdish, the PKK was known to wipe out entire villages of Kurds simply because they would not join the party. This sent a very clear message to other Kurds in the region.

  In the 1990s, other nations began to recognize the considerable power of the PKK and saw them as a vehicle to control the strategically placed country of Turkey. Iran, Iraq and Syria supported the PKK, as did Greece. Soon, the Turkish Army was instructed to change its tactics and deal with the PKK as terrorists, not by going after Kurds in general, as they had in the past, but by targeting known PKK cells while helping the non-PKK Kurds. Eventually the PKK lost the support of the local tribes and villages and moved most of its operations and training camps into Northern Iraq and Iran. Still, to this day, they are a well-known and feared politically oriented terrorist group in the region. Aaannd…there I go with my Professor know-it-all shit again. Sorry. Back to what was going on right the fuck in front of me.

  Finally, my brain figured what was wrong with the whole scene. It was the long coats. They were too heavy for the beginning of June, always a bad sign. I tapped Saadi with my shoe and made a slight nod toward the men near the door. We all understood that we may just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone slowly reached for their concealed firearms, which had been strapped on or tucked away at the hotel.

  Nobody in this profession wandered around any foreign city without packing some sort of firepower. It isn’t because you were afraid someone might attack you, which of course can happen, but more that you were aware that you could get caught up in some local situation and may need to blast your way out.

  Saadi didn’t hesitate. He slammed his beer, laid a pile of Lira on the bar, and motioned for us to leave. Always avoid the violence if you can. So, we said thanks to the bartender, and proceeded to engage in some light banter as we headed for the door, pretending that we had not noticed the trench coat crew. We slid past them without much attention and meandered out onto the street as if nothing was awry. Seconds later, gunshots erupted behind us.

  Simultaneously, the three of us tucked our tails and skedaddled across the street to take cover behind a car. There were screams from inside the bar as the gunshots continued.

  “Damn it!” Merlin yelled, after which he proceeded to draw his Glock-19 9mm, roll from behind the car, take a look at the bar from a prone position, and then get to his feet and sprint across the street. I looked over at Saadi, and we decided we had better cover his ass pronto! So off we went, bounding across the street like a couple of gazelles, firearms drawn and ready to blaze the BGs happily on their way to Allah.

  “Salaam alaikum!” Saadi yelled to me as we ran.

  “What-the-fuck-ever,” I responded.

  I hadn’t been in the city for more than a few hours, and already the shit had hit—and I was knee deep in it. I don’t know what it is about the sound of gunfire, the smell of cordite, or the feel of hot lead whizzing past your head that makes all senses acute. It’s probably some primal instinctive reaction, but it can be euphoric. Euphoria was what we needed at that moment, because all hell had broken loose, and a full-fledged gunfight at the O.K. Corral had ensued
.

  Merlin had bashed his way through the door and forward rolled into a position of cover behind the bar and was taking occasional potshots at the BGs. Saadi immediately turned his attention to two wounded kids. He tipped a table on its side and did his best to shield them, then took a kneeling combat pistol position and readied himself to fire. I entered a mere second later, my eyes trained on the gunfire. Within a split second, I realized the firefight was between the trench coats and someone at the far end of the room who had taken cover behind a small band stage.

  I was thinking, hey—whatever—I’m not in your fight, so feel free to blow each other’s brains out, but your fight isn’t with these innocent kids either, soooo—sorry, trench coat dudes. That’s right—they broke the rule: no killing the innocents. Maybe that was just my own rule, but in my mind, non-combatants are off limits. If you want to fight another warrior—fine! But in my book, it was against the rules to use your skills and power against the unarmed innocents.

  So, I stood there like a superhero in the middle of the floor, Merlin yellin’ at me to “get the fuck down” and took clear beads on the BGs. “Pop! Pop!” Two shots, two men down. I was in a happy, beer-induced mood, and all the mayhem was just entertainment for me.

  Both of the trench coats screamed, dropped their weapons, reached for their left knees, and collapsed on the dance floor. The shooting stopped. Knee shots are awesome! So much pain, so little mortal damage, and just the reaction you are looking for.

  The slight ringing in my ears had subsided, as had my beer high. There was a moment of silence before the crying and screaming started again. Merlin popped out from behind the bar and headed directly to the BGs who both lay in fetal positions, blood pouring from holes blown through their left lateral collateral ligaments, heads of their femurs and tibias shattered. Unfortunately for them, they would need significant surgery in order to walk correctly again, but that was the price they paid for screwing with the innocents.