Fearless ; The Smoke Child

  Copyright © 2020 Lee Stone

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781692130930

  DEDICATION

  To the people who served at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan where I started writing this book, and to those along the Camino who helped me find the Way.

  More by Lee Stone

  Charlie Lockhart Thriller Series

  Fearless

  The Smoke Child

  Helter Skelter

  The Road North

  Prime Target (Coming Soon)

  Bookshots (with James Patterson)

  Break Point

  Dead Heat

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Darren Brophy, my unlikely tour guide.

  Chapter One

  Quetta, Pakistan. November 2009.

  “Hey kids, rock and roll, Nobody tells you where to go, baby.”

  – REM, Drive.

  The Tourist sat on a beaten up chesterfield in the shadows at the back of the tea shop. It was nearly time to make his decision. But not yet. It was best not to rush. The man who had offered to take him over the border into Afghanistan would not be back for an hour, so he had time to lean back and mull things over.

  His name was Charlie Lockhart. He imagined the old sofa he was sitting on had once gleamed in the corner of an important office, its unyielding leather buffed up by cheap labor and expensive polish. Now it was a wreck, with bits of its guts hanging out of long slashes in the leather skin. Its mahogany color had faded, and dust had blown in through the open front of the tea shop and settled in its buttoned indentations. As he ran his hands through his dark hair, Lockhart realized that the dust had begun to collect on him too. His hair felt thick and unruly and his fingers got caught up in it. He looked up at the cracked mirror on the wall to his left, and even in the subdued light he seemed to have turned slightly gray.

  The creaking fan above him circulated a smell of spiced lamb through the warm air in the shop, but it did little to cool him down. His skin felt salty, as if he had walked out of the sea and dried in the sun. He wore sturdy boots and good socks, but the rest of his clothes were cheap loose cotton. He hadn’t seen rain since Istanbul, weeks ago.

  He liked traveling light, and had nothing with him except his beige rucksack which was slouched against the side of the sofa, its sturdy buckles threatening to inflict another injury on the old chesterfield’s thin leather.

  The bag contained a few well-traveled shirts and a pair of shorts he wore for swimming. Beneath them was a book called The Hidden Words, a Tunisian jug and a few other trinkets from along the way. He had wrapped his clothes in plastic bags in case the rain had leaked into the rucksack during his winter weeks through Europe. Now, despite the dust and heat of Quetta he had kept them wrapped, because he knew that he would get drenched again before he got home.

  His other belongings were simple. A phone. A passport. Cash. A simple medical kit.

  None of the clothes in his bag had been there when he started his journey. He had swapped and traded as he went. Locals had swapped practical cotton shirts in return for things that were Western, expensive, and useless. So now the clothes Lockhart wore reminded him of the places he’d been. Which made him happy.

  Once, he had offered his quilted jacket to a motorbike salesman in Marrakech in return for a cheap NYC baseball cap. Lockhart had needed a hat, and it was far too hot to need the coat, even at night. He kept everything he owned in the pack on his back, and he didn’t want to be weighed down with anything unnecessary.

  Back on the sofa in the teashop, Lockhart smiled, remembering the motorbike salesman. The guy had been so pleased with the swap he’d thrown dinner into the deal. He closed his shop on a whim and gave Lockhart a hair-raising journey through the narrow streets of the old town on the back of his noisy dented scooter.

  The whole place had echoed of Ozymandias, hot red walls reduced to sun bleached pinks, and crumbling buildings that echoed of more splendid times. They had raced past Arabic and French road signs and narrowly missed the ornate Victorian street lights that protruded alarmingly into the narrow thoroughfares.

  The scooter had wound through tight alleys, flung around sharp blind corners and juddered over rough pavements. Mostly they rode in shadow, but occasionally they’d been bathed in the low-slung late evening sunlight. When they eventually arrived at the salesman’s house, his sister greeted them at the door. Lockhart had taken to her immediately. She had a healthy radiance which made it hard not to stare at her, but Lockhart had acted as politely as a good guest should.

  She was pretty, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three. She was a serene collision of worlds; European and African, traditional but liberated. Her hazel eyes were enquiring and knowing all at the same time.

  Likewise, in conversation Lockhart found that she was a deft and assured host, engaging without prying. She found common experiences and interests between the three of them, and as they ate Lockhart felt like all three of them could have been old friends.

  The salesman’s sister had cooked a traditional tagine of lamb and prunes, different to the Berber cuisine that Lockhart had become used to in Morocco. The lamb was flavored with onions garlic and ginger; it was warm and comforting. It was sweetened with cinnamon and honey, and there was a hint of orange blossom in the dish which was a touch of an Andalucían recipe that had been passed down from mother to daughter since their Moorish ancestors had retreated from Spain. Somewhere in their blood, and in their souls, the salesman and sister understood what it meant to travel, and to wander through the world and to sleep under the stars, and so they had welcomed Lockhart into their home.

  The trio sipped sweet mint tea and shared stories and easy laughter as they relaxed on plump patterned cushions on the terracotta-tiled floor. Slowly the sky had darkened above the open courtyard at the center of the salesman’s house. Candles flickered in alcoves in the walls.

  Moments like these were gifts saved for strangers who had traveled as far as Lockhart. They were a just reward for the miles he had journeyed. It had pleased the motorbike salesman that his guest understood the encounter for what it was; a simple gift on the long road.

  Lockhart had slept well that night, resting under the stars without moving from where they had eaten. Feeling comfortable on the cushions under a huge potted palm tree in the middle of the courtyard, he had covered himself with his jacket and fallen into a peaceful sleep. The wide leaves had swayed and lullabied as the Mediterranean and Atlantic winds had jostled for position above him.

  The next morning, neither the salesman nor his sister had been anywhere to be seen. The courtyard was empty except for a skinny black cat which had taken to sunbathing on a square of terracotta which was already warming in the sun.

  The calm air was broken by the sound of a small fountain away in the shadows, and the distant rumble of civilization on the other side of the thick wooden courtyard door. His coat, which had been folded under the tree, was gone.

  As Lockhart stretched, his arm had knocked the peak of the NYC cap, which the salesman had evidently perched on top of his head while he had been sleeping. Lockhart had laughed out loud, imagining the salesman and his sister swapping the hat and the coat without waking him. The deal was done.

  Alone in the courtyard, his heart had felt light, but even so he spent five minutes in the courtyard unpicking the stitching on the embroidery until he could remove the New York logo from his new cap. It had seemed like a prudent thing to do. Then he had stepped out of the heavy wooden door back into the labyrinthine streets to see what the new day would bring.

  *

  Back on the old sofa in the tea shop in Quetta, Lockhart smiled as he remembered the motorbike salesman and his sister. He drew strength
from those memories, and the miles he had already walked, and he wondered what encounters lay ahead.

  He loved the feeling of evolution and change. Swapping his clothes was like shedding his old skin and blending into his ever-changing surroundings. The day he set out on his adventure he had felt like a stone dislodged from a riverbed, and even now he sensed that he was at the mercy of the current which pushed him along and buffeted him from side to side.

  He knew that if he sat on the sofa for long enough, the current would decide for him.

  The mint tea on the low wooden table in front of him had cooled; droplets of condensed steam were rolling down the inside of the glass back towards the vivid green leaves, failed in their attempts to escape.

  Lockhart's stomach was beginning to growl because of the constant smell of roasting Sajji wafting through the teashop from the street sellers outside. He had developed a taste for the delicately spiced lamb when he first arrived in Quetta along the long road from Kan Mehtarzai.

  North Pakistan was hot and poor and political and wise and backwards all at once. Quetta itself was full of danger and mystery. A border town just a few miles from Afghanistan, it sat in the dust like a magnet for travelers and smugglers and zealots and drop outs alike.

  The light from outside the tea shop was glowing orange, and the shadows cast from the tables at the front were lengthening. They grew towards Lockhart, like the legs of a giant spider trying to reach inside and hook him out from his comfortable seat at the back of the shop. Even the shadows could tell that he had been sitting there for too long. Even the shadows were growing restless.

  Lockhart needed to make a simple decision which direction to take. North, South, East or West. Except that the decision wasn’t simple at all once he started to think about it. The four different compass points held four different destinies. When he stood up from the beaten sofa, he would have to choose between those different directions and different futures. He reminded himself that this was why he was here. To search for his destiny. To change his future.

  Lockhart had arrived in Quetta on his journey to New Delhi. It was not the most direct route, but he decided that going directly through Afghanistan would have been foolhardy. He was looking for adventure, not spoiling for a fight.

  But sometimes when you are looking for one thing, another thing comes along to find you instead. And so it was that opportunity had found Charlie Lockhart, sheltering at the back of the tea shop in Quetta, away from the prying eyes of the afternoon sun.

  Chapter Two

  Santa Barbara, California. Early December 2010.

  “Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you”

  - Nirvana, Territorial Pissings.

  The war veteran looked out of place on State Street. The purple Jacaranda blossom which carpeted the sun-bleached sidewalk in summer had long gone, but the air was still warm and fragrant.

  Santa Barbara was a gentle wash of warm terracotta and manicured streets; the kind of hushed place where you can hear your shoes scuffing on the jet-washed sidewalk as you make your way along.

  The name on the veteran’s tags was David Barr. He wore them under a khaki shirt and combats, although he was no longer in official uniform. His right trouser leg was rolled up to show that it was only partly occupied. Barr didn’t have much below his right knee.

  His wheelchair was cheap and rickety but he was agile in it when he needed to be. He had fallen on hard times but he still had a warrior’s soul. Over the months, his hair had grown long and his heart had grown bitter. His wiry body held still, but from behind lank unkempt locks, his cornflower eyes darted about wildly. He looked like he was spoiling for a fight, as though he might spring up from his chair and lunge at a passer-by at any moment.

  Mostly, local people kept out of his way. Every ointment had its fly, they figured, and David Barr was theirs. He was noisy and unsightly in their pretty town, but they were liberal and compassionate folk. They pitied him. Which he despised.

  Most people in the town assumed he was a Vietnam vet, but David Barr hadn’t been out of the Army more than twelve months. He looked much older than his 32 years, mostly because of the nagging fear which hung about him all the time.

  His disability embarrassed people and the people of the town hated catching his eye. They squirmed to look at a man who had lost his leg for his country. They knew they had it better than him, with their comfortable small-town lives. Most of them felt sorry for David Barr. Some of them felt grateful for his service. None of them wanted to swap places with him anytime soon.

  So, they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear as he berated them from the other side of the street. Occasionally a cop would move him along, but always in an apologetic and conciliatory fashion, feeling guiltiest of the lot.

  Even with the pity, Barr liked it better in Santa Barbara than Los Angeles. When he had first gone into hiding, after things went sour in Kandahar, he’d slept for two weeks crammed between the concrete blocks under a bridge near the wide basin of the Los Angeles River. Despite the dry weather, the concrete wept a greenish slime that bled from a joint in the corner of his hole.

  Barr had no problem sleeping rough. During his infantry days he had dealt with far worse. He had survived the South African bush for three weeks, learning bushcraft from a bunch of Zulus. The command chain had decided that soldiers were too reliant on technology, so they had stripped Barr of everything except his canteen and his knife and the clothes he stood up in, and sent him out into the wilderness. He had loved every minute.

  The Zulus taught him to appreciate nature. He learned to trap and kill snakes and to use the ribs from the snake to make a fishing hook. When he got it right, the Zulus would nod and smile. They showed him how to navigate using the stars. They showed him how to watch and listen to animals to find out where there was water. They taught him which plants would feed him, which would heal him, and which would kill him.

  Los Angeles was a different world though. Here in the sprawling metropolis, nature had been tamed and broken. The once beautiful Río de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Ángeles de Porciúncula had been encased by man in concrete walls and trenches. As if to wound her more, gangs had scrawled all over the concrete. Threats and warnings; turf wars for a putrid, God-forsaken place. Every surface was a violent clash of aerosol signatures suffocating one another.

  Life’s wreckage flowed and rolled down into the man-made basin; pram wheels, smashed orange boxes, food wrappings, misery, and broken people. Barr knew it was a place where nobody would come looking for him.

  Unlike the Zulus, nobody under the bridge wanted to befriend him. Sure, all the hobos checked him out, but they were all on the make. Until he finally hit rock bottom, while he still had more than them, they would covert the few things he had left. Which didn’t amount to much.

  Barr had fallen a long way already. A year ago, he had been sitting in a truck with three hundred million dollars in the back of it. The keys had been in his hand. The tank had been full of fuel. He could have driven that damn truck anywhere, but he didn’t. He gave the keys to a stranger who had appeared out of the desert and disappeared just as quickly, leaving Barr in a lot of trouble. Barr knew that the guy must be rich or dead by now.

  During the day, Barr’s missing leg helped to earn him enough loose change to eat. He didn’t have a drug habit, and he didn’t drink, so the money he made went on food and Pepsi. The begging kept him occupied. Stopped him from thinking about the places he would rather be. The people he would rather be with.

  His self-imposed exile was tough, but the alternative was worse. If the people who were hunting him found him, so be it. But the men who had followed him back from Afghanistan wouldn’t think twice about hurting his family. Barr refused to take the danger home to his wife and daughter, so he stayed away from his family, his home, his bank account, and his friends. Even if they found him, they wouldn’t touch his family. Barr would make sure of that.

  At night, he was tough enou
gh to cope with the trouble that street life brought. He kept to himself mostly, but when that didn’t work, the fact he could unexpectedly spring out of his wheelchair was enough to scare the shit out of most people.

  The first two months in L.A. passed with little incident. He got used to the cold at night, the constant moving around, and the slow degeneration of his clothes. No hardship for a soldier. But just like in combat, things can change quickly on the streets. One night under the concrete bridge, Barr had been settling back into his slimy concrete hole. A gnarly old guy had been drinking cheap vodka nearby and had stumbled over to Barr, determined to talk. Barr had sat and listened. He threw in the odd non-committal phrase here and there, never questioning too deeply and never giving away too much of himself.

  The other rough sleepers had a small fire going in an old oil drum, and as its embers slowly died, the old drunk stopped talking and Barr eventually fell asleep. Under the bridge he dreamed that he was chasing a woman and a girl across a dusty desert. He thought he knew them, and he called their names, but the wind was against him and they couldn’t hear. He chased them over the sand until his legs ached and his lungs burned. Their faces were covered except for their eyes; but he knew them. Eventually he caught up with them and held them both close to him. He felt the satisfaction of having them near, remembering their smell and the warmth of their skin.

  When he could resist no longer, he lifted the veil from the woman’s face, but saw straight away that her hair was too short to belong to the woman he remembered. Much too short in fact. Suddenly she was growing; growing so fast that her billowing black dress engulfed the young girl beside her. She grew bigger until she towered over him and her facial features transformed from soft and feminine to hard and angry and masculine.

  Barr woke up in a sweat to find the gnarly old man in front of him. The old guy whipped out a handgun and pointed it straight at Barr, muttering some indecipherable demand. A stupid thing to do to a man with Barr's training.