The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman Read Free Page A

firing, explosives, the works.’
            ‘Parachuting?’
            ‘Some.’
            ‘Freefall?’
            ‘No, but I made four static line jumps.’
            ‘That’ll be a problem, the job I’m setting up requires a HALO from twenty thousand feet with full kit, at night. And there could be enemy fire.’
            ‘Jesus, what are you planning?’
            ‘I’m not planning anything, the planning has already been done. I’m just handling the recruitment. Two hundred men, hand-picked, for the Sultan of a small but very rich country out in the Middle East. Or more accurately the brother of the Sultan who wants to take over. There’s a lot of money at stake because the country is swimming in oil. Our team will be freefalling in from a couple of Hercules and splitting into three sections, taking out the palace, the oil fields and the communication systems.
            ‘The whole mission should take less than twelve hours, and we’ll be taking no prisoners, on either side. In fact that’s one of the stipulations of the job. A suicide pill will be placed inside a fake tooth. The Sultan’s brother can’t afford to have anything go wrong with the attack, and if it does he wants to make sure there’s nobody around to tell tales. And the sort of money he’s paying he’s entitled to expect that.’
            By now the young ‘SAS expert’ was sweating and his cheeks were flushed. It was difficult to tell if it was the thought of having a dentist’s drill in his mouth or swallowing poison or the Savoy’s chair which was causing him the most distress. Hell, if he swallowed this story he’d swallow anything, the tooth, the poison, even the chair.
            ‘We’re going in with bazookas, mobile missile launchers, grenades, the works. It should be one hell of a war. And if, I mean when, we take over there’s a good chance we’ll be kept on as the new Sultan’s bodyguard, unless the cunning old bastard tries some sort of double cross.
            ‘He’ll also be looking for help on the interrogation side afterwards. It seems the present Sultan has been tucking away hundreds of millions of dollars in bank accounts all around the world and our employer would obviously like to know where the money is. I hope you’ve got a strong stomach, it’s liable to get a bit messy.’
            I don’t know what the guy was looking for, cheap thrills, hard experience to beef up his part-time toy soldiering or what, but my Arabian tales had put the wind up him and no mistake. He’d stopped chewing on the stuffed olives and most of his pint was untouched.
            ‘Well, I’m your man,’ he said, and neither of us believed him for a moment. I took a few details from him, told him I’d be in touch and off he went into the wide blue yonder, a first-class prat and a second-class time-waster. I wanted a killer and I’d turned up a pussycat.
    *
    I never did hear from the Have gun, will travel vet. Maybe it was a joke, maybe he was lying bleeding to death on some far-off battlefield I couldn’t pronounce in a month of Remembrance Sundays, or crouching in ambush high in the hills of Afghanistan, maybe I’ve just got an overactive imagination, who knows? I never found out, anyway.
            The ex-para got in touch two days after the headbanger. Quiet, confident, no messing about. His name was Jim Iwanek, he’d left the Paras eighteen months ago and had been working as a bodyguard for a casino operator until recently. Where could we meet? I wasn’t superstitious so the Savoy seemed as good a place as any. He agreed. ‘I’m about five-eleven, short black curly hair and I’ll have on a brown check sports jacket,’ he said, like a policeman giving evidence from his notebook. ‘I look forward to meeting you.’
            He was bang on time and just as he’d described. OK, he missed out the brown cord trousers, the brown brogues, the crisp white shirt