THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  Coming Soon - "The Jonas Trust Deception"

  Other Books by the Author

  THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR

  by

  AFN CLARKE

  A THOMAS GUNN THRILLER

  © 2013 by AFN Clarke

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author and publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This eBook edition published by Clarke-Books LLC in 2013

  All characters appearing in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-938611-12-4

  www.afnclarke.com

  In Memory of my Brother-in-Arms

  Terry Forrestal

  ONE

  Mojave Desert – October 2012

  Flying a helicopter requires a clear mind, concentration, balance and a delicate touch.

  Flying a helicopter you are unfamiliar with, in the dark, with two nasty bullet wounds in a body that has not slept in thirty hours, is an exercise in surreal survival. I had ten hours flight time in this model MD 902 Explorer, so it wasn't total guesswork.

  I made sure Julie was strapped in tightly and flipped on the switches. There wouldn’t be enough time to sit and let the engines warm up completely. We needed to get airborne before the local police showed up. In the distance beyond the factory building, where the car exploded in the arroyo, a pall of smoke billowed into the moon lit night sky.

  Once I got the machine off the ground, stabilised and then flying on the heading Danny had given me, I asked Julie to call him and write down the co-ordinates of the destination, then talked her through entering the figures into the GPS navigation system while I concentrated on the instruments. All I had to do was make sure I didn't hit anything flying at an altitude of fifty feet across the desert, following the route on the EFIS from Mojave to Desert Rock airstrip, wherever the hell that was in the vast expanse of the Nevada desert.

  As we flew, the rising sun glimmered just below the horizon to our left. Dark sky turning light blue just before the sun appeared as an orange-white ball throwing shadows across the desert. The distant terrain rose in craggy rock mountains, rising ever higher to about five thousand feet, and I had to fly the aircraft through the narrow gorges maintaining the pretence of a special operations training flight at ultra-low level.

  “Can you see if there are any sunglasses in the side pocket,” I asked Julie, feeling my left arm begin to stiffen.

  “Here you go.” Her voice sounded strangely distorted in my headphones. Or perhaps it was just my mind beginning to shut down as my body leaked valuable blood onto the seat from the wound in my side.

  “Thanks.” I tightened the lock on the collective and flexed my left arm, ignoring the pain, just trying to get some feeling back into it. Estimated flight time was just under an hour and a half, and I wasn't confident of being able to last that long.

  “I'm sorry I got you into this,” I said stupidly, as if what I said would make any difference.

  “I could have said no.”

  “But you didn't.”

  “Nope. Don't ask me why, but I didn't.”

  “Did you get the bug into the computer before they ambushed us?”

  “I did.”

  “Well at least one of us accomplished something today. How's your head?”

  “Hurts like hell. How's your...?” she paused looking across at me. “Everything?” She laughed. A desperate sound hurled against a bleak outlook.

  We hurt more than either of us could describe.

  We didn't know what the future held for us, but we laughed anyway as the sun rose across the desert, and I banked the helicopter into the first of the rising mountain ravines.

  After an hour throwing the helicopter through the narrow canyons and rocky gorges, I could feel my strength and concentration ebbing slowly away. But that seemed inconsequential in the surreal experience that was the excuse for reality.

  Julie massaged her temples, and when she spoke her speech was slow and slurred. I knew she was concussed and slipping into shock.

  By 'red-lining' the helicopters engines I could force more speed, but as the sun came up the temperature would rise, and everything could go very wrong very quickly.

  But there was no choice.

  I inched up the collective, dropped the nose and advanced the throttle a touch, watching the gauges creep toward the danger zone.

  Waves of nausea blurred my vision, so I used the only tool I had to sharpen my mind.

  Pain.

  By wriggling in the seat I could press against the wound in my lower abdomen, not too much, but enough pain to sting my sagging consciousness into wakeful concentration. Now was not the time to sink into peaceful, blissful oblivion. I had a precious cargo to deliver, a woman I loved more than my own life.

  At any other time, flying low level through the desert canyons as the sun rose above the horizon, would have been an extraordinary experience. One of those almost vivid adventures that stays in the memory forever. But I wanted this experience to be over as soon as possible.

  Every part of my body and soul willed the airstrip into view.

  Flying is a slow inevitability.

  You know you're going to get there, and yet the more desperate you are to arrive, the more time drags.

  Another rising ridge after fifteen minutes of undulating desert, and the sweat dripped down my face, arms and back, seeping into the wounds and causing more pain as my body salts stung raw flesh. I glanced quickly at Julie who sagged forward against the seat harness, semi-conscious, head flopping as the helicopter rose, fell, and banked through the ravines. I just wanted to take her in my arms, hold her and tell her everything was going to be fine, but now was not the time to drift into sentimentality, there was still the task of getting this machine on the ground.

  The gauges swam in front of my eyes as I struggled to pick out the speed dial. That and the vertical speed indicator were my guides as we crested the ridge and Desert Rock airstrip lay in front of us just beyond a dry lake bed.

  Was it a lakebed or a mirage?

  I dropped the collective and pulled back slowly on the cyclic, slowing the aircraft down, establishing an approach to the runway. The speed bled off and I nosed down a little to keep the aircraft's forward speed at forty knots, but my eyes refused to focus properly, and darkness appeared at the corners of my vision as if I was looking through a telescope at an image that kept getting smaller. No matter what my mind was telling my body it wasn't responding, running out of blood and slowly shutting down.

  But not before I got this machine on the ground.

  Only a few more feet.

  Maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty-five, maybe....

  I didn't know anymore.

  Then I saw the FIM-92 Stinger ground-to-air missile spearing up toward us from a far ridge.

  My reactions were slow and for a fatal moment I watched the white smoky trail from the rocket motor arc its way through the sky. I pulled on the collective and kicked the anti-torque pedals to port, almost escaping the oncoming death, but
the rocket slammed into the tail boom.

  The earth spun in a lazy arc as the helicopter arched over backwards at fifty feet above the rocky desert as I lost control, spiralling to the ground, pieces flying in all directions, the only section remaining relatively intact being the forward cockpit, saved because the main rotor head deflected the impact.

  There was no pain, just a smashing, grinding, splintering sound. I felt a violent lurch as my head slammed into the side door, then silence. Almost lying on top of me, held by her seat harness, Julie stared into my eyes, blood dripping from her nose and ears, trying to speak.

  “Julie,” I gasped trying to reach up and touch her face, but my arm wouldn't move.

  Car engine noises.

  Voices.

  I was struggling with consciousness.

  With reality.

  Where was I? What had happened? I didn't know.

  Images from the past flashed through my mind.

  My father's dead face.

  Julie naked on the catamaran.

  Julie. My Julie.

  Then nothing.

  TWO

  Belfast – Six Weeks Earlier

  It was an odd experience to look down on the dead face of the man who had once been my father. Not that I was unfamiliar with seeing dead bodies, I'd seen too many in my previous job, it's just that I never expected I would be staring at him.

  A single shot to the forehead had killed him instantly. The hole small and dark, not marring the rugged good looks of the man, but I knew that the back of his head would be non-existent. A round fired at close range from a powerful modern 9mm semi-automatic doesn't leave much behind. I felt neither revulsion nor sorrow, somehow those emotions didn't seem to fit with the sterile scrubbed surroundings, and perhaps he would have smiled and approved of my stoicism, or maybe just shaken his head and wondered what had happened to me over the years we hadn't spoken. I knew the lack of emotion I felt meant I had not lost my edge, that I was still a soldier with all the instincts that had been honed in combat. But this wasn't combat. This was murder.

  "If you would please sign for these, sir." The white-coated official stood with my father's belongings in an incongruously cheap plastic bag. I duly signed. The formalities over, it wasn't long before I was loading the body bag into my Cessna Citation Mustang 510 jet at Aldergrove Airport. An undertaker had been instructed to meet me at Norwich airport with an appropriate coffin, and until we landed it was just myself and the black rubberised bag lying on the cabin floor. Yet another reminder of my past, and images of dead soldiers insinuated themselves into my thoughts.

  As the jet burst through the top of the clouds into bright sunlight, climbing to a cruising altitude of 31,000ft, my mind drifted back to what I thought was an ideal life in paradise.

  Lying in the cabin on my catamaran, a lone fifty-seven foot Fountaine Pajot anchored in the crystal clear blue waters off the north western tip of the Mediterranean island of Gozo, waking from a disturbed sleep with one of those unsettling disconnected thoughts that the shit was going to hit the fan in a big way, was not the best way to start the day.

  You know the feeling, that odd clawing at the pit of your stomach. A slight headache even though you'd stayed off the booze the night before. I hadn't slept well, but that was nothing new, and it wasn't the reason I felt like crap. What disturbed me was that the odd, undefined, premonition had no logical reason to be in my head.

  Cold water and the sight of Julie standing naked on the aft deck washed away the uncomfortable feeling that crowded across my mind. She showered with fresh water from the transom faucet, head back eyes closed, then stood letting the sun dry her bronzed skin as the water ran in rivulets between her perfect breasts.

  “I can feel you staring, Thomas,” she laughed and squeezed the water from her long blonde hair, her light New England accent drifting gently on the slight breeze.

  “Can't think of a better way to wake up,” I said, as the last images of the bloodied bodies of my colleagues faded from my ongoing nightmare. Eighteen months and it still seemed like yesterday. “Coffee?”

  “Juice please. Pineapple and orange.”

  I took the jug of freshly prepared juice from the fridge, and popped an ice cube into a tall glass as the coffee percolator started bubbling on the stove.

  “You had another nightmare last night. Scared the hell out of me,” her voice drifted through from the cockpit. “Thrashing about and shouting.”

  “Really? I don't remember.” I did but there was no sense in talking about it. I carried a mug of coffee and the juice into the cockpit.

  “Thanks.” She took the glass and drank a third quickly, and tossed her head back savouring the morning. “I'd like to go to the festival in the village tonight. Maybe we can eat at Lorenzo's.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “And before that I thought we might take the horses out for a trot, have lunch at Godwin's cafe...” she paused and reached her hand to my face, smiling wickedly, “...and then make love in our favourite grotto.”

  “Got it all worked out, don't you?”

  “Of course.”

  I slid from her grasp before she started something I couldn't stop, and fled to the safety of the galley to prepare breakfast.

  “Coward,” she shouted happily, wrapped a powder blue sarong around her slim tanned body, stretched out on the starboard cockpit settee, and sipped her juice.

  “Want some melon with prosciutto?” I said, preparing two plates in anticipation. I leaned over and turned on the stereo, already tuned into the BBC World Service. It was my morning fix, that and the coffee.

  “Yes please.”

  “….and now at the top of the hour, the news headlines from the BBC World Service read by Jonathan Davis.” The familiar music played for a moment or two before the newscaster began talking, and for a few minutes I forgot about my self-imposed, albeit luxurious, exile.

  “On his recent trip to the United States, the leader of the new British National Independent Party, Nicholas Hansard, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, that the Governments of both countries 'have skewered National Defence' with their failure to increase military spending, and left the door open for increased terrorist activity....”

  'Yet another extremist group leaping to the forefront. Left wing, right wing, they're all the same,' I thought cynically wondering why I listened to the news at all, but the BBC World Service was a comforting connection with home.

  “Republican Tea Party leader, Wesley Bradford, welcomed his remarks. The recent elections in Israel have seen the Prime Minister and the Likud Party retain control but with a much reduced majority, and the extreme Zionist Ysrael Party led by American born software billionaire Elias Stevens claimed eleven seats in the Knesset....”

  “Great. More Middle East problems,” I said, aloud this time, thinking of my friends and former colleagues who were still serving in Afghanistan.

  “I can hear you muttering, Thomas,” Julie called from the aft sun-bed.

  “Just bringing your breakfast, milady,” I answered in a mock English butler accent, walking through to the cockpit.

  “...Sir Ivan Gunn, the billionaire chief of Gunn Group Industries, has been kidnapped in Belfast. Details are not available and a spokesman for the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) has stated that no ransom demands have yet been received. Sir Ivan, a leading and-influential industrialist..."

  I didn't hear the rest; just felt a numbing sensation between my ears and let the plates crash to the deck.

  To me funerals are a morbid display of egoistic emotion, but that's probably my own denial having had to attend too many of them. The experience was uncomfortable, and I was glad to be back in the car headed home. My stepmother Mary had recovered somewhat from the initial shock but tired easily. She lay back in the soft deep leather seat with her eyes closed. Heavily applied make-up did little to hide the lines around her eyes, and when she spoke her voice was thin, brittle.

  “You are th
e head of Gunn Group Industries now Thomas. Control of the company should remain in the family. I know you don't like the idea, but you are just going to have to get used to it.”

  “This is not the time to discuss it, Mary.”

  “This is the right time.” Her eyes became bright, burning, feverish. “You are going to do it. Tell me you'll do it. Tell me now.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “No. There is no discussion. No debate. You will do it just as your father wanted. What you or I want is immaterial. You'll do it because it is the right thing to do.” Her voice rose to a shout, loud enough for Henderson to glance in the rear view mirror.

  Julie sat quietly listening to the exchange. “Mary's right. It is the Gunn family company and you are the only one left.” Her remark surprised me and I looked angrily at her. I knew they were both right, but I just didn't want the job. I wanted to go back to Gozo and resume my life with Julie. Laze around in the sun, make love, and forget everything. For years I had lived off the family fortune without contributing anything. Now it was time to assume responsibility and I felt the shackles closing around me.

  “OK, I'll do it,” I said gently, thinking that at least being on the inside I'd have a better chance of discovering why my father had been murdered.

  Mary visibly relaxed and closed her eyes again.

  The wake that followed the funeral was like a subdued cocktail party. Everyone making meaningless small talk, knocking back as much free booze as possible and pretending all was right with the world. However, it did give me a chance to corner Adrian Newell and tell him the news.

  “Don't worry, Thomas, you will pick up the reins in no time.” Sarcasm rested easily with Adrian Newell. “If you need to know anything just ask. Your father left a lot of the running of the business in my hands. He didn't like to meddle too much in the mundane day-to-day dealings.” I could see what he was angling for. If he could keep me under tight control and out of the running of things, then he would be the man in charge. I must say the idea did have its attractions, a thought he must have known had obviously crossed my mind otherwise he would not have been so open in his suggestion.