The Iscariot Agenda

CHAPTER FIVE

Cotabato City in Mindanao is a city of roughly a quarter-million people with a high Muslim population. It is also a city of growing insurgency where al-Qaeda and the Taliban were taking root — the area becoming the ‘New Afghanistan’ of the Pacific Rim.

Five years ago when The Blackmill Corporation became employed by the Philippine government as a freelance consulting firm from the United States, the government was really hiring high-tech mercenaries to help counteract the spread of revolutionary idealism that was becoming a blight to the small island nation. And Cotabato City, which bordered the guerilla strongholds thirty kilometers to the south, served as the company’s command post.

In a small, smoke-filled bar that smelled of sweat and cheap cigarettes that did little to mask that stench, War Consultants David Arruti and Sim Grenier sat at a table in the back of the establishment knocking back a few shots of whisky.

Although in their forties they remained in good shape, keeping their bodies regimentally fit. Of the two Arruti looked more like the aggressor with a handlebar mustache, shaved head, and powerhouse arms that were exposed from a sleeveless shirt. Sim Grenier, however, looked like the corporate thinker — a man of good dress, even though a huge Rorschach moth of perspiration spread out to meet the overflow from his armpits of a neatly pressed shirt — who always kept his hair nicely coiffed in such high humidity.

Whenever they banded together they spoke little of the past when they were a part of the Pieces of Eight. Instead, they spoke of the future and about guerilla insurgencies in Mindanao. They often spoke of strategies and counter offensives, as well as the beneficial possibilities their success may bring to the people of the Philippines.

But little did they speak of the past.

On the opposite side of the room a male wearing a camouflaged boonie cap sat alone at a table with a glass of water. He appeared to be focused on a Blackberry-type device, punching buttons with a stylus, his surroundings oblivious to him.

However, he did not go without notice.

Grenier kept a watchful eye on the man who appeared without concern.

“Yeah, I saw him too,” said Arruti. “He’s been here for about an hour and he hasn’t taken a sip of his water.”

“He’s not a part of our units?”

“No.”

“So tell me, what is a Caucasian male doing this close to the Mindanao territory knowing full well he could become a target for kidnappers?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know.”

“There’s government warnings posted everywhere, especially for travelers.”

Arruti kicked back a shot of whisky. “Not my problem if people want to be stupid.”

At a nearby table two Filipinos began to argue in earnest about the outcome of a card game and the pot, about thirty cigarettes. As the yelling subsided, Arruti and Grenier turned and immediately took note that the man was gone. The glass of water was still there, untouched. Beneath the glass was a photo, an 8x10 glossy.

They scanned the entire bar, necks craning, turning. The man was gone like a wraith, becoming a part of the cigarette smoke that was everywhere, thick and cloying.

“Curious,” Arruti murmured.

When the barmaid went to clean the table she picked up the photo, scrutinized it, looked at the two consultants, and then headed for their table.

With a beautiful smile, perfectly lined teeth and cocoa-tanned skin, she approached them holding the face of the photo in their direction. Even from a distance of ten feet they could see it was a picture of their old unit, the Pieces of Eight.

The Filipina, who was adorably cute and doubled as a bargirl who enticed the Blackmill employees for American dollars to screw on a stained mattress in the upstairs loft, handed the photo to Grenier. “Mr. Sim, on back it says to give to you.”

Grenier took it, and then passed it off to Arruti who examined it long and hard. He and Grenier were circled in red marker. Walker had been X’ed out.

The barmaid began to rotate her hips in sexual innuendo, and then ran a tongue over her luscious lips. “Maybe when I’m done, you can take me upstairs?”

Grenier feigned a smile. “Not tonight, my love. Maybe some other time.”

The barmaid offered a petulant pout, and then smiled. “OK, Mr. Sim. Some other time, then.” With an enticing swagger to her gait, she returned to the table and began to clean it with a filthy rag.

Grenier watched her movements from the waist down as Arruti continued to examine the photo.

And then from Arruti, in a voice sounding so definite and so evenly calm that there was no doubt of the certainly in his statement, said, “We’re being targeted.”

Grenier sighed. “We need to check on Walker.”

He flipped the photo to the tabletop. “He’s already dead.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Maybe you don’t, but I do.” Arruti got to his feet, all six foot four of him, and reached for a Glock that was situated in the back of his beltline and racked it. “He’s calling us out, Sim.”

Grenier stood and checked his weapon, a Smith and Wesson.40, then felt for the sheath of the KA-BAR knife straddled to his right thigh. “Then let’s not disappoint him.”

The streets of Cotabato City were well lit beneath the multiple coils of neon lighting. Yet there were recesses deeply shadowed, alleyways opening into complete and utter darkness.

It was also a place of opposites: light and dark, good and evil, life and death, all within a span of a few blocks.

Standing beneath a circular pool of light, Grenier and Arruti openly screwed suppressors onto their weapons.

“You take the left side and I’ll take the right,” said Arruti. “And don’t kill him. I want to question this guy.”

Without adding a word Grenier took the left side of the avenue, his weapon held firmly against his thigh.

Arruti did the same on the right side, his weapon ready for the quick draw.

As they moved slowly through the dense Filipino crowd, Arruti came upon the mouth of the alleyway.

Approximately twenty feet in, where the light of visibility ends and a wall of darkness began, someone stood at the fringe of illumination, watching.

“Simon Grenier.” It was a man’s voice — no doubt the Caucasian’s. “Or would you prefer I call you Sim?”

Grenier took a step forward, the Shape a step back, deeper into darkness.

“What are you afraid of, mate?”

“Hardly a fair fight when you’re carrying a firearm.”

“You mean the same kind of fairness you showed Walker?”

“Walker’s fate was written the moment the IED took his legs.”

“That’s your justification for taking out an invalid?”

Grenier took another step forward, his hand working to better his grip on the Smith and Wesson. The Shape retreated another step.

“So tell me something,” said Grenier. “Whose little boy are you?”

The Caucasian remained silent, and then he gracefully fell back into the shadows until he was totally eclipsed.

Grenier felt uneasy knowing he was completely exposed, the Smith and Wesson having little value when his target went unseen — a target Arruti wanted alive. In feline motion he went for the nearest point of salvation, a recess steeped in gloom, and hunkered down. He was now in his element, he thought — that of Stygian darkness. And because of this he felt the advantage now belonged to him.

He waited and listened.

And then he began to level his weapon, the point coming up slowly.

And then something ripped through the darkness.

A three-bladed star slice through the air, point over point, like a wheel rolling, the edges so sharp they could be heard cutting a swath through the air as it made its way towards the target point. With marked precision the star hit the barrel of Grenier’s weapon and knocked it from his hand, the weapon skating off into darkness.

Grenier looked at his open hand in astonishment, fingers flexing, undamaged. And then he turned toward the darkness, the absolute darkness, his one-time friend and ally now holding something far more dangerous.

From its depth something came forward, a figure that was blacker than black.

“Not so tough without your gun, are you?” The Caucasian’s voice was mild.

“Tough enough,” he answered, and then he withdrew a long-bladed knife from his sheath and drew back toward the mouth of the alleyway, toward the light.

The Caucasian moved closer, his features marginally visible in the feeble lighting.

Grenier held the knife tight. “Who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“You think you can take me?”

“What I’m going to take, Mr. Grenier, is your life.” The Caucasian removed the silver cylinder from his pocket, held it up in display, and then depressed the button, the pick shooting upward.

“You’re kidding, right? You plan to take me out with an ice pick?”

“What I plan to do, Mr. Grenier, is to kill you with this. And then I’m going to use it to leave a message for the remaining members of the Pieces of Eight.”

Grenier nodded as the sudden enlightenment of the assassin’s presence became all too clear. “So that’s what this is all about, the Pieces of Eight. You’re here as the mop-up man for the government to cover up past political transgressions, is that it? After all this time?”

The Caucasian began to spin the cylinder skilfully between his fingers as easily as a majorette spins a baton, the motion truly aesthetic in its performance. “Mr. Grenier, this will be a quick kill. I promise.”

The corners of Grenier’s lips curled slightly into the beginnings of malicious amusement. “You’re cocky, kid. I’ll give you that much. Maybe even a little overconfident thinking you can take me down.” The former assassin began to move his blade in circular motions. “You have no clue as to what I can do to you with this KA-BAR, do you?”

“Your skills, Mr. Grenier, don’t even begin to parallel mine.”

“You are cocky. But I like that in a soldier, even if you are a green-ear compared to me.”

“Please, Mr. Grenier, I will make this quick and painless.”

“Yeah, well, unlike you, kid, I’m going to make this quite painful for you… But not before you tell me what I want to know.”

Both men began to circle one other, both grossly intent as they drew a bead on the other while waiting for the opportune moment to make the kill strike.

“So tell me, whose little boy are you?”

The Caucasian did not answer.

Talk was over.

And the time to kill was now.

In a move so deft, so swift and so clean, the Shape advanced on Grenier with the speed of a wraith, the point of the pick zeroing in.

And as promised, the former assassin’s death was quick and painless as the pick found its mark with a single piercing.

At the mouth of the alleyway a crowd gathered.

Filipinos spoke in agitated tones, pointing, Arruti cutting his way through the crowd while stuffing his firearm in his waistband, then pulling out the tail of his shirt to conceal the weapon.

When he forced his way to the front of the crowd his stomach clinched into a slick fist, a feeling he hadn’t felt since he was a newbie drawing blood from the throats of his enemies while conducting his first mission.

Laying face down on the pavement was Grenier in prone position. The blood from a hidden wound spread outward around his head in a perfect halo, slowly, the fluid as black as tar and as thick as molasses in the quasi-shadows. His shirt was torn and parted. And carved into the flesh of his back was a poorly scribed S, something that looked like the insignia lightning bolt drawn from Himmler’s SS, the Schutzstaffel. The single engraved bolt was cut into the skin from the scapula to the small of his back. But this mark was not engraved by a Neo-Nazi.

This was just a crudely drawn S created in haste.

Pulling back into the crowd with his head on a swivel, Arruti waded through the masses and raced back to the comfort of his safe-house.

At least there he would have the advantage over the assassin, should the assassin decide to follow.