The Devil's Handshake (4 page)

“
Slowly,” the man ordered
this time.

Thomas’s mind, if not body, was fully alert
and answered in Arabic, “Thank you.”

“
You are welcome my dear,”
came a voice in fluent English.

“
I do not understand?”
replied Thomas in Arabic, in an attempt to convince his captor that
he was local tribesman.

The face smiled.

“
You are a British Solider.
Although I must say your Arabic is most excellent, my dear. Now
rest,” the man ordered. Being still too weak to fight, Thomas
obeyed.

Two hours later, Thomas awoke again. His head
was still throbbing. But he was alert.

This time it was the face of a boy of about
fourteen with the same eyes of the man who greeted him earlier.

Wearily, Thomas lifted his body. He took in
his surroundings. It appeared as though he was in a tent.

“
Baba,” cried the boy.
Immediately the entrance to the tent opened.

“
Good afternoon, my dear,”
said the man using the Arabic term of endearment. Thomas eyed him
with suspicion. His instincts told him he wasn’t a solider but more
likely a tribesman of the area allied to Hussein.

“
I am Brigadier-General
Hassan Karim Dulaym,” he said offering his hand in friendship. “And
like you, I am no friend of Hussein,” he said with narrowed
eyes.

“
Kismet is a funny thing my
dear,” said Hassan to Thomas, referring to the term that means that
events are as ordered or “inevitable” and unavoidable as the three
of them made their way to the border and the emergency pick up
point.

“
Just a year ago I would
have handed you over to Saddam without a second thought,” he said
before explaining why he too was on the run from the IIS and how he
had lost his two oldest sons a Major and a Captain, in an attempt
to overthrow Saddam just two months previously. After being
betrayed by one of his own men he was now trying to save the life
of his youngest son, the same boy who that had stumbled across the
near lifeless body of Thomas.

“
But today our journey finds
us on the same path,” he said. “So who am I to refuse the Qadar!”
he said, referring to the decree of Allah.

“
Hassan,” replied Thomas,
making the effort to bond with the man. “Classical and European
mythology features Kismet as three goddesses dispensing a fate,
known as Moirai in Greek mythology,” he said in Arabic. “They
determine the events of the world through the mystic spinning of
threads that represent individual human fates.” He continued as the
two men watched Saleem walk in front of them so he could act as
their spotter.

The man looked at Thomas for a second.

“
So that was the language
you were speaking in your torment,” he said as he
smiled.

In the three days since the General and his
son had found him close to death through a mixture of hypothermia
and, and while he recovered well enough to make the journey, both
men had learnt a lot about each other.

Hassan had even ventured to suggest that he
would be a suitable alternative to Saddam and that the United
States should support him in his Jihad, despite Thomas trying to
tell the General that he doubted the Americans would take him
seriously. He had insisted that at he had at least tried.

“
Consider it the price of my
Dakhala,” said Hassan referring to the law of protection that the
tribes of Iraq practiced. That translated meant “Once a person
passes the pegs that hold the tent ropes taut, then that person is
entitled to the protection of the owner of the tent.”

During this time Thomas had also come to
terms with the knowledge that Stevie and Tony had to be dead, a
conclusion he reached when the General had told him he had heard on
his shortwave radio he was carrying that a patrol had come across
the dead bodies of two soldiers, not more than twenty-five miles
from where he had been found. Although he had been saddened by the
news at the time, he didn’t dwell on it the time for mourning would
come later once he made it back to Hereford.

Instead, he focused his thoughts on the CIA
man the colonel had told him over the radio that had refused his
request to lift him and his team out. Whatever happened, swore
Thomas silently, the day would come when he would find and pay that
man back in full. “His honor code demanded it!”

Suddenly the movement of Saleem into a
crouching position quickly had both men alert and focused on what
lay ahead of them instead of their discussion.

At a trot both made their way to the boy.
Once reaching him they joined him in kneeling down in the thick
grassland so to hide their position. Then they removed their
binoculars.

“
Looks like we have
squatters on our family well,” replied the General in Arabic as
both men focused on what looked a troop detail guarding the water
well. The last place they planned to stop before the last
twenty-five miles to the extraction point.

“
They know this is one of my
family’s wells,” said the General in disgust. “So I fear, my dear,
they are looking for me and not you,” he continued.

“
Maybe we can use that to
our advantage?” offered Thomas, referring to the fact that he
didn’t think Hassan would have a highly trained soldier with
him.

The General looked at him for a moment. “What
is your idea?”

“
There are five of
them.”

“
What do you suggest?” he
asked.

As the first rays of morning light
illuminated, Hassan and Thomas moved covertly towards the two
sleeping men guarding the tent that contained three remaining
guards, while Saleem remained under cover in the thick brush.

In readiness, both men pulled their knives
from their belts. In Thomas’s case, his weapon of choice was the
fearsome gift he had once received from the men of his platoon
known by the Gurkhas as a Khurki.

When the General had asked him why he carried
such an unusual weapon earlier, Thomas had responded with the
Ghurkha’s motto, “Better to die than live a coward,” and the
circumstances behind the gift.

The General with acknowledgement of respect
had replied, “I have heard of these fearsome warriors. This
explains why the desert didn’t take you.” He had handed it back to
him with a smile.

Creeping towards the two sleeping guards,
Thomas could smell the breath of his sleeping target, he was that
close.

The plan of using their knives to kill the
two guards was a last resort and not without risk. Without the
luxury of silencers on their weapons, they had to be sure at the
very least that they could kill the two guards before the others
realized. If they used their weapons then there was a good chance
the remaining three would be able to escape and out gun them.
Thomas was still weak. So physically he was in no shape for long
drawn out gunfight. Unfortunately before Thomas could kill the
guard, disaster struck. The guard that Hassan was about to kill
stirred, mayhem arrived in full force.

“
Ali!” The guard shouted
just as Hassan was in the process of trying to slice his vocal
cords from behind.

Knife combat is one of the most terrifying
and primal ways to kill. The rules are simple. Expect to get cut,
time is of the essence, and finally, the most important imperative,
“Survival is everything.” Don’t hesitate. Lose control of those
three rules and you are dead.

Although Thomas had been trained for it,
nothing prepares you for the look of a man’s eyes in that
situation. Resting his weight on the balls of his feet, Thomas
slightly bent his front knee and made sure his elbows were in at
the sides, his left hand was up for protection and leading, so to
support his cutting hand by controlling the enemy’s weapon. In this
case, the young Iraqi’s AK-47.

The young guard suddenly awake and alert to
the screams of his fellow guards panicked as he tried to gather his
bearings. He tried to pull the trigger to kill Thomas but hadn’t
realized he still had his safety on. As he scrambled to find the
catch on the weapon, the last thing he saw was Thomas’s Khurki
taking his head off all in one movement.

Turning towards Hassan, Thomas dropped the
Khurki, then pulled and removed the pin on the M67 grenade
containing 6.5 ounces of composition B explosive from his jacket
and lobbed the device into the tent just as one of the men
attempted to exit it quickly to help the two soldiers outside.
Designed to explode just four seconds after release and kill
anything within five meters, Thomas threw the device underarm into
the tent knowing that the explosive force of the weapon could
disburse steel fragments fifteen yards from the center of the
explosion.

Aware that Hassan and he were inside that
radius, Thomas shouted, “Grenade!” Just as he ducked for cover, a
loud and savage bang followed a wall of heat and wind ripped
through the air. Hassan and the guard he was fighting with were
both thrown into the air while the two remaining guards in the tent
and the one who had been trying to exit it were torn to pieces by
the blast and wall of flames.

“
Hassan!” cried Thomas
fearing the worst as he got up and made his way to his new friend
who was now lying on the ground on the top of the soldier he had
killed just as the blast erupted.

Reaching him within seconds, Thomas ignored
the screams of the wounded Iraqi soldier who had exited the
tent.

“
Hassan,” Thomas whispered
knowing that instantly his friend was wounded badly.

“
Baba!” came the repeated
cry of Saleem running from the high brush outside the
camp.

The General looked up at Thomas as he checked
him over.

“
Fuck!” Thomas said. A piece
of fragment was lodged deeply into his gut, and blood was pouring
out at an alarming rate. Thomas knew instantly there was no way he
could make the twenty-five miles to the extraction
point.

“
I know it’s bad, Thomas,”
whispered the old solider, seeing the guilt on Thomas’s
face.

He murmured weakly, “It was the only way, my
dear.”

“
Do not blame yourself,” he
ordered taking Thomas’s arm. “It is my Qadar,” he smiled in an
attempt to soothe. “Take Saleem and deliver him to his mother in
Syria,” he ordered Thomas just as Saleem arrived at their
sides.

“
No, Baba,” replied Saleem
with tears in his eyes. “I want to stay with you,” cried the son as
he cradled his father’s head in his arms.

“
Your mother and sisters
need you,” said Hassan weakly. “You’re the head of our family now,”
he said with fatalistic understanding of his future.

Thomas looked at Saleem then Hassan.

“
From this day forward, I
promise you that your family is my responsibility,” Thomas
said.

When Thomas arrived and stepped on to the
back of the Chinook just ten days after the still secret mission,
he looked like a modern version of T. E. Lawrence with the smock of
an Arabian Sheikh of from the nineteenth century around his head
and full beard and child at his side.

Legend goes within Hereford that Thomas had
replied somewhat flippantly to the RSM who had picked him up had
asked how he had managed to walk out of the desert accompanied by a
boy of no more than fourteen at his side and to survive, had killed
over a hundred Iraqis along the way.

“
Train Hard, Fight easy.”
Yet that wasn’t what that the old timers of regiment still to this
day talk about long after the young officer had Returned to Unit
(RTU) and left the Army. Nor did they talk about the Military Cross
he had been awarded when they described his escape to new recruits
after their selection. That honor instead always belonged to the
look Thomas had on his face when he walked into the Forward
Operating Base (FOB) in Saudi, asking to see the
Colonel.

“
So what was it like?”
Troopers would often ask.

“
He had the eyes of the
fucking devil,” came the reply of the NCOs with just a hint of
admiration.

1

London

It was not a typical spring morning as
residents and visitors of central London alike scurried through
Mayfair’s famous Berkeley Square trying hard to avoid the icy
spring rain that lashed at them.

At the window of one of the many townhouses
located around the Square that act as private offices for wealthy
men and women of the world using the London as a base, stood a
distinguished man of forty-eight and lost in thought.

Sir Thomas Litchfield, or simply “Tommy,” to
his friends or lovers was dressed in an expensively tailored
double-breasted cashmere and silk suit, cut in a Prince of Wales
style. He stood 6’2” in height, had a mop of black hair with flecks
of white scattered through it, a pair of deeply set eyes that could
look as if they could penetrate one’s soul, a strong clean-shaven
jaw and muscular physique.

The digital phone on top of the antique
walnut writing desk buzzed and interrupted his thoughts and brought
him back to the world.

Leaving the window, the proud looking man
took a short walk to the high desk in the center of the room and
pressed the speakerphone option on it.

“
Sir Thomas, I have Miss.
Gurbanammedowova on line, shall I put her through?” asked the crisp
upper class English voice of his personal assistant.

He answered with polite affirmative.

“
Nara,” he said letting the
recipient know they were connected.

The lady in question, or to be more precise
“Gunara,” to quote the world’s newspapers and gossip magazines when
the woman was often followed and photographed by them, was his
thirty six years old Muslim Turkman, his companion and mother to
his twelve year-old daughter, Victoria Emilia Litchfield.