Red Wolves

by Adam Hamdy

  I’ve done terrible things, Ziad. I can’t even bring myself to write about the most recent, and it doesn’t matter because it was deserved. But the thing that hurts me most is that I didn’t come to find you. I should have gone to Cairo. I should have been with you for your trial. But I was lied to. I was told you didn’t want me. I should have known that wasn’t true. When you found me at that restaurant, I knew you still loved me. The look in your eyes hadn’t changed. I should have known what we have will last forever. And I treated you so poorly. I’m ashamed that I said you were a homeless stranger. I should have gone with you, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know the truth and for that I’m sorry, but I hope there’s still a chance for us to fix things. I hope you can forgive me, because the only thing I want is for us to be together.

  Jack confessed to having set you up. He was the one who sent you to Cairo knowing you’d be arrested. He says he was instructed by a man called Elroy Lang. I don’t know him, and neither do my father or brother, and I can’t understand why a total stranger would want to hurt us, but this is the name of the man who tore us apart, who betrayed us. He told Jack to tell you we’d abandoned you. He told Jack to tell us you’d cut yourself off from us.

  I hope everything that’s passed since we were parted can be laid at this man’s feet and we can shed the burdens of blame and guilt. I hope and pray you still love me and that we can pick up our old lives as though none of this happened.

  I miss you. I miss all the laughs. I miss your loving touch. Come back to me.

  With all my love,

  Essi

  Pearce folded the letter Essi had given him and put it back in the envelope. Ziad had been set up and manipulated by the very people he was now working with, people who didn’t care about the suffering they inflicted in pursuit of their goals. Pearce felt his anger rise as he pocketed the envelope and left the quiet galley area to join the others.

  Chapter 107

  ‘The Elite Voyager is a two-hundred-and-eighty-metre Panamax cargo vessel registered in Hong Kong. She runs between Qingdao and Seattle six times a year and is owned by Yellow Rose Shipping,’ Leila said. ‘The owners look clean from what I can see and there’s no connection to Qingdao Consumer Products, so the cargo could be on the ship without the captain or crew knowing.’ She indicated a satellite image that displayed a beacon off the Washington State Coastline. ‘Her current GPS position shows her approximately two hundred and forty miles out, in the Cascadia Basin.’

  Wollerton leaned against Leila’s desk and peered at the screen. ‘Deep water,’ he said.

  Pearce turned to Clifton and Brigitte, who sat alongside him. They were clustered around Leila’s desk in the large fifteenth-floor space that had become their base of operations.

  ‘Yes,’ Leila agreed. ‘It is deep out there.’

  ‘The ship is double hulled,’ Brigitte said. ‘Without access to a torpedo, our best hope of sinking her is to plant bombs in these compartments.’

  Leila brought up a schematic of the ship.

  ‘Our calculations are that thirty kilograms of CL-20 will be more than sufficient to breach the hull and cause irreparable damage.’

  ‘We sound the alarm and evacuate the ship before we blow it though,’ Clifton confirmed.

  Pearce nodded. ‘How do we get out there? Boat? Chopper?’

  ‘We were concerned about a boat being spotted,’ Clifton said. ‘And if the crew are hostile there would be pilot risk with a chopper. We don’t know how long it’s going to take you to set the charges and if a bird needed to circle, the range could test the fuel supply, so we have another method.’

  Pearce waited expectantly.

  ‘What I’m about to show you doesn’t leave this room,’ Clifton said, and he was greeted with nods of reassurance. He reached into a satchel beside his chair and produced a tablet computer. ‘These are modelled on the drone UAV’s being developed for city transit.’ He brought the computer to life and showed them an image of a single-person aircraft. A central egg-shaped pod was joined to six rotors. Attached to the underside of the pod was an M61 Vulcan cannon. ‘We’ve been adapting the basic design for the Defence Department. Each aircraft is equipped with an M61 with a three-sixty-degree field of fire. The drones are currently going through proofing, but we have two prototypes that were supposed to have been destroyed in early flight testing.’

  ‘I’m not a pilot,’ Pearce remarked.

  ‘Who needs to know anything nowadays?’ Clifton scoffed. ‘They operate point and click flight systems, or they can be piloted manually or by remote operators. Their size means you can land them in a parking space, so you can put these down on the ship, do whatever you need to do and they’ll be waiting to bring you home. No need to worry about a chopper running out of fuel as it circles.’

  ‘And the armament?’ Brigitte asked.

  ‘Fully automated,’ Clifton replied. ‘Select your targets and the drone’s artificial intelligence system will track and destroy. Everything in the aircraft is intuitive. Like a video game. Just point and click.’

  Pearce was impressed. A drone like this would have been a dream when he’d been in the service. It would have made incursions into enemy territory much less risky. ‘Noise?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve invested a lot of money in making it run silent,’ Clifton replied. ‘You get some noise coming off the rotors, but nothing that will be heard above a ship’s engine.’

  ‘Or an ocean storm,’ Wollerton observed. ‘How do they handle bad weather?’ He signalled the torrential rain that was still lashing the windows. The storm hung low over Seattle.

  ‘Better than a kite,’ Clifton joked. ‘The drone’s servos and gyros will take pretty much anything the sky can throw at them.’

  ‘And you have two of them?’ Wollerton asked. ‘One for me and one for the boss?’

  ‘I’m going,’ Brigitte said flatly.

  ‘Now hold on—’ Wollerton began.

  ‘I’m going,’ Brigitte cut him off.

  Pearce knew what was at stake for her. That ship was full of patches that could keep her alive, and when Wollerton shot him a questioning look, Pearce shrugged. ‘Sorry, Kyle,’ he said. ‘She’s coming. Leila’s going to be running support.’

  ‘And me?’ Wollerton asked. ‘Should I just twiddle my thumbs?’

  ‘I need you to keep eyes on a couple of targets,’ Pearce replied. ‘Eddie and Kirsty Fletcher. Ben Cresci said he’s going to make sure the Red Wolves pay for what they’ve done. He promised he’ll keep the leaders alive for us to question, but we all know how it is in the heat of action. We need whatever they can tell us about this Elroy Lang and the people he works for. So I want you to head out to RPM, the Red Wolves hangout, and see if you can get to Eddie and Kirsty. If there’s a safe way to bring in one or both of them, I want you to take it, otherwise just keep eyes on them and try to stop Cresci from killing them if he makes a move.’

  Wollerton nodded.

  ‘You only engage if it’s safe,’ Pearce pressed. ‘You hear me?’

  ‘Yes, sir, roger that, sir,’ Wollerton replied sarcastically.

  One of the burner phones on Leila’s desk rang, and she picked it up and identified it by the sticker on the back. ‘This is yours,’ she said to Pearce. ‘Or Amr’s, more accurately.’

  ‘I gave the number to the Salamovs,’ Pearce said. He’d left Deni and Rasul shortly after their meeting with Ben Cresci.

  Leila tossed Pearce the phone and he answered. ‘Hello.’

  There was nothing but silence, then the sound of a heavy choking breath.

  ‘She’s dead,’ Deni Salamov said finally. ‘Essi. My little girl,’ he sobbed. ‘They killed her. They killed everyone.’

  Chapter 108

  Pearce didn’t know what to say to the man, so he simply listened to Deni Salamov pour out his heart. The old gangster lamented every dollar he’d ever made, every deal he’d ever done, every luxury he’d ever purchased. He would have traded his whole life for his daughter
, he said between increasingly violent sobs. Pearce had expressed his condolences and heard Rasul enter the room at the other end of the call, raging. Pearce pleaded with Deni not to do anything rash, but the Chechen hung up and hadn’t responded to Pearce’s attempts to call him back.

  One question loomed above all: had Ziad been involved in Essi’s death? Had he been part of whatever had happened? If he’d seen Essi’s letter, if he’d known the truth . . .

  Pearce shook such thoughts from his mind. They weren’t helpful, particularly given his lack of resources. A bigger team would have meant he had the slack to deal with the unexpected, and Essi’s death wasn’t just a terrible tragedy for the Salamov family, it was almost certain to provoke a reaction, and there was no telling how the men would lash out. If Pearce had more resources, he might have been able to prevent Essi’s death. At the very least, he could have tried to steer the Salamovs away from doing anything stupid in retaliation, but as it was, he had to make a choice, and the shipment had to be his priority. The Elite Voyager had to be sunk somewhere deep to minimize the chance of the patches being salvaged before they were neutralized by seawater.

  Pearce and Brigitte changed into tactical battle gear, complete with body armour, and loaded equipment bags. They each took an HK416 assault rifle, a Glock 19, stun and flash grenades and night-vision scopes. When they were ready, Wollerton sidled over.

  ‘Be careful,’ he said.

  Pearce nodded and grabbed his bike keys from Leila’s desk. ‘Here,’ he said, handing them to Wollerton. ‘Look after her until I get back.’

  ‘Nice timing,’ Wollerton said, indicating the violent storm outside. ‘Perfect weather for two wheels.’

  ‘You’ll manage,’ Pearce said, heaving his gear bag onto his shoulder. ‘I have faith in you.’

  ‘Be careful out there,’ Wollerton replied.

  Pearce joined Leila, Clifton and Brigitte in the elevator and they rode down to the parking lot. The former NSA director drove them south in the surveillance van he’d brought back with him.

  The storm showed no signs of abating, and the rain obscured everything as they made slow progress through the city. Pearce had the familiar pre-mission nerves and would have been grateful for some banter to distract him from what was to come, but he sensed similar anxiety in everyone else, and they drove in silence. After a while, Clifton put on the radio, but the music and inane chatter felt out of place and he soon switched it off. They’d been on the road forty minutes when Clifton made a call and said, ‘ETA twenty’, before hanging up.

  Ten minutes later, they turned off Ambaum Boulevard and followed a winding service road through a dense forest. After another ten minutes, Pearce saw open water and they cleared the treeline and came to a parking lot that lay in front of a large cabin. The lights of distant houses twinkled high in the surrounding hills, but there were no other signs of civilization nearby and the storm meant they were unlikely to be disturbed by hikers. Clifton’s call had been made to give a couple of technicians the chance to make final preparations, and Pearce saw them now; a man and a woman, both in their early thirties, both wearing raincoats. They were shepherding a robot transporter out of a huge eighteen-wheel truck. The robot moved on caterpillar tracks and was supporting a drone. A second drone was already beside the truck, its rotors extended, its cabin lights on. The aircraft was protected from the weather by an awning that extended from the side of the truck.

  The robot followed a device held by the woman, and needed no further control. It automatically tailed her to the desired spot.

  ‘Pretty slick, huh?’ Clifton remarked as he pulled up behind the truck.

  Inside the trailer, beyond the space where the two drones had been stored, was a command centre, complete with screens and a bank of computers.

  ‘Hux has access to toys I could only have dreamed of at the NSA,’ Clifton observed.

  They got out and ducked in the heavy rain as they headed over to the two roadies, who were getting the second drone off the robot.

  ‘Marty, Ellen – this is the ops team,’ Clifton said.

  ‘We’re kind of busy right now,’ Marty replied angrily, before breaking into a broad smile. ‘Just kidding. The machine does it all.’

  He indicated the robot transporter, which tilted slightly and lowered the drone onto the ground using a conveyor belt.

  An ergonomic chair took up most of the drone’s egg-shaped carbon fibre cabin. Trimmed in matt-black leather, it looked more like the interior of a luxury car than a military transport. Four retractable legs held the cabin off the ground, and provided clearance for the M61 Vulcan mounted to the bottom of the chassis. The drone’s six rotors were folded in a vertical position to reduce the craft’s footprint.

  ‘Sorry, we’re running behind,’ Marty said. ‘It’s usually twenty minutes from truck to air, but this one,’ he indicated Ellen, ‘wanted to run full diagnostics, since this is our first live mission.’

  ‘Better to be safe,’ Ellen remarked.

  ‘How long before they can fly?’ Clifton asked.

  ‘We need to get her air ready. Gonna take a while,’ Ellen said. She pressed a touch-sensitive panel on the hull and the cockpit opened. As the canopy rose, Ellen leaned inside and pressed something. There was a quiet hum when a power supply came on, and the cockpit illuminated. The rotors started dropping into a horizontal position. ‘She’s good to go.’

  ‘So this is all hush-hush, no names,’ Marty observed, ‘but we’re going to need a destination.’

  ‘I’ve got that,’ Leila said, patting her rain-covered laptop case.

  ‘And the payload?’ Brigitte asked.

  ‘Three sets of demolition charges in the cargo holds,’ Ellen replied, indicating compartments at the rear of the drones. ‘If you get in, I’ll set the aircraft to respond only to your biometrics.’

  ‘Which one do you want?’ Pearce asked.

  Brigitte shrugged. ‘One’s as good as another.’ She pointed to the one Ellen had just opened. ‘You have it.’

  Brigitte moved to the other drone and opened the cargo hold. She checked a rectangular case that held the explosive payload and detonator. Satisfied with what she saw, she put her gear bag beside it and closed the cargo hold.

  Pearce did likewise and saw two rectangular cases inside his cargo hold. He stowed his gear back, closed the cargo hold and climbed into the cockpit. It looked like the interior of a Tesla. There was a single screen and black leather trim, but no obvious controls.

  Ellen leaned in and tapped a pocket computer she held in her hand. The screen in the cockpit came to life and displayed a digital palm.

  ‘Put your hand on it,’ Ellen said.

  Pearce complied and his print was scanned by the machine. He looked over at Brigitte and saw Marty was guiding her through the same process.

  ‘Scan complete,’ a synthetic voice said. ‘Please count back from ten.’

  Pearce started from ten and counted down. When he got to six, the synthetic voice said, ‘Voice identification complete.’

  ‘We’ll be piloting the aircraft remotely,’ Ellen said, ‘but if for any reason you need to take control, just say “manual pilot”.’ She nodded at Pearce.

  ‘Manual pilot,’ he said.

  The cockpit sprang to life. A projected heads-up display materialized on the open canopy, a joystick rose from a concealed compartment on Pearce’s right and a lever came up from one on his left.

  ‘You ever play any flying computer games?’ Ellen asked.

  Pearce nodded.

  ‘This is just like them,’ she said. ‘Throttle –’ she tapped the lever forward – ‘brake –’ she pulled it back. ‘Dive –’ she pushed the joystick – ‘climb –’ she pulled it back – ‘and left and right. The drone’s AI will compensate for anything stupid or dangerous and it is equipped with anti-stall, anti-collision programming, so if you want to fly into a cliff, you’re in the wrong bird.’

  ‘What about landing?’ Pearce asked.

&nb
sp; ‘We’ll take care of that,’ Ellen replied. ‘But if anything goes wrong, in manual mode, you can lock onto a position. Doesn’t matter if it’s moving or not. You can select the roof of a train, a boat or whatever and the AI will model and lock that target through whatever aspect changes you experience and put you down on that point.’

  Pearce was bewildered.

  Ellen rolled her eyes. ‘Just touch the place you want to land on the canopy. It will give you two options, “open fire” and “land”. Just press “land” and the drone will do the rest.’

  ‘And if I press fire?’

  ‘There won’t be much of anything left for you to land on.’ Ellen smiled. ‘Got it?’

  ‘Am I a pilot now?’ Pearce asked.

  ‘Top gun,’ she laughed. ‘He’s good to go,’ she said to Clifton.

  ‘Same here,’ Marty announced.

  ‘Then let’s get them airborne,’ Clifton replied.

  Chapter 109

  Wollerton hadn’t ridden a motorbike for years. Esther had always considered them a shortcut to the grave and, in her usual passive-aggressive way, had done everything possible to discourage him from replacing his Ducati Monster. But she was gone now, and the kids too, and there was no longer anyone he’d selfishly be leaving behind if he got squashed by a truck. He was free to indulge his teenage self, and even though he was riding through some of the most treacherous conditions he’d ever experienced, his journey east on Pearce’s bike had reawakened his love of two wheels. There was nothing like the roar of the engine filling his helmet. The propulsive acceleration that almost took his breath away, the widescreen perspective, and freedom of being on a vehicle rather than in one. As exhilarating as it was, it didn’t compare to the briefest moment spent with his kids, and the joy he felt being on a bike was lost to a maudlin cloud of self-pity. He missed his family.