The Henchmen's Book Club Read Free

reading?” he asked.
“Anything good?”

 
 
    2.
FROM THE PACIFIC WITH EMPTY POCKETS
    The extraction team arrive three hours later. A big Beriev Be-200 swooped low
over the island dropping dinghies and life jackets into the water and landing a
quarter of a mile out to sea. Most of us swam out to the dinghies, but Captain
Campbell had to take charge of one of them and go back for the guys who were either
too wounded to make it on their own or bleeding too heavily to swim in these
infested waters.
    Captain Takahashi was at the door to help
us on board, meaning it was station Japan that had been dispatched to pick us
up.
    “Hey boys, no joy?” he guessed as he
helped each of us on board. “Never mind, we got hot drinks and cold beer for
you on the plane. Just make yourselves comfortable and leave everything to my
crew.”
    Captain Takahashi had picked me up before
and he remembered me when he ran my Agency ID card through the scanner.
    “Ah, I get you before, in Siberia wasn’t
it?”
    “Yes, I remember. Thank you for picking
us up Captain,” I replied, as it never hurt to kiss the arse of someone who had
the power to kick you out over the middle of the Pacific.
    “You not having a good run, no?” Captain
Takahashi deduced.
    “It seems not Captain,” I sighed,
accepting his hand and climbing aboard.
    “Well we take good care of you today, you
hear? Captain Takahashi number one friend to boys in trouble,” Captain
Takahashi reassured me, handing me back my card and pointing me in the
direction of one of his saucy oriental attendants. “You go with her and just
take it easy my friend, okay?”
    “Okay,” I agreed, receiving a little bow
from the beautiful porcelain girl in front of me. I made to head back to the
seats but the girl stood her ground in front of me.
    “Excuse me, but I will take that now
please,” she said, dropping her eyes to the AUG 9 slung over my back to remind
me this job was over.
    “Oh
yes, sorry,” I said, slipping the gun off my shoulder and handing it to her.
She removed the clip, ejected the chambered round and stowed the rifle in a
locker at the front with the rest of the boys’ weapons. I handed over my Glock
21, Taser, Mace, field knife and brass knuckles too before I was passed back to
another equally beautiful attendant and shown to my seat.
    “We
hope you enjoy your flight. If there is anything you require today, please let
us know,” she said, handing me a complimentary packet of peanuts and a
miniature bottle of Japanese whisky, before returning to the front of the
aircraft.
    Oh
yes, Captain Takahashi and his famously sexy flight attendants. He was well
known for them the business over, which is probably why he got so many jobs now
that I come to think of it. But I wouldn’t have dared try it on with any of his
girls, not without a parachute. Takahashi’s attendants were strictly for show
only.
    Well,
not quite.
    You see, not all of the people who’d been
employed by Doctor Thalassocrat were on The Agency’s books. Some of them came
from other outfits, some were long time associates known to Thalassocrat
personally, while others worked freelance – like the lab technicians for
example.
    These were the guys who really came a
cropper on this job.
    Three
lab technicians survived the inferno and swam out to the plane with the rest of
us. One of them was stupid enough to try using a dead Agency guy’s ID to get on
board the plane and the same pretty girl who’d taken and stored my weapon a
moment earlier now drew her own and shot him straight between the eyes without
so much as a bow. There was always one, wasn’t there? On every pick-up, there
was always one.
    The attendant slipped her weapon out of
sight again and carried on disarming the boys as they came aboard with a smile
and a bow as if she’d done no more than have a quiet word with an unruly
passenger, but no one was left in any doubt as to the perils of trying it on
with Captain Takahashi. The other