by A P Bateman
“What about sidearms?” a Northerner asked. Rashid knew him to be a Geordie called Powell. He was knocking on the door of fifty, but that only made him the most experienced soldier in the room. He was as fit as most twenty-five-year-olds in the regiment and carried barely a trace of fat under his weathered mahogany skin.
“Beretta 92fs nine-millimetre pistols,” Rashid said. “Again, I will give you one magazine of rubber sub-sonic bullets and the rest will be live-ammo.”
“No choice, really,” said Yates quietly. He looked at the rest of the men. “Come on lads, do you really want to go up against Delta Force with rubber bullets? It’s bogus…”
“Let’s get out there on the range,” Rashid interrupted, ignoring Yates before the man could turn people’s persuasions. He thought back to Taff in his partially modified bungalow and wondered if he’d made a mistake in trusting his old Sergeant’s judgement.
Chapter Sixteen
Westfield, New Jersey
Two weeks later
“The timings are bang on,” Rashid said as he climbed into the passenger seat of the Yukon. He handed Ramsay the sandwich wrapped in paper. “It’s to the day, but there’s no telling how long King held out. Whether torture has broken him down, or whether he managed to keep a clear head.”
Ramsay looked at the sandwich. “What have I got?”
“Fried breaded chicken with balsamic vinegar glaze.”
“What, they didn’t have cheese and onion?”
“This is the United States,” Rashid replied. “They don’t do basic sandwiches over here. Besides, the place is called Feast Catering. They’re hardly going to do a floppy service station sarnie on thin white bread, are they?”
“I suppose not. What have you got?”
“The same as you, but with brie.”
“So, they did have cheese.”
“It’s brie. It’s not a safe guess. How was I meant to know you’d like brie? Half the time it tastes like ass.”
“I don’t even want to hear how you know that.”
“Or like ass smells,” Rashid clarified.
“You need a doctor if your backside smells like brie.”
“I mean, like roast lamb smells like farmyards.”
“It does?”
“Oh, forget it.”
“Do you want to swap?”
“If I wanted to swap, I would have got what you’ve got.”
“But I would have got your order,” Ramsay shook his head. “Look, I’m in charge, swap sandwiches with me.”
“You’re in charge of lunch, now?” Rashid smirked. “Like a lunch monitor, or something?” Rashid took a bite of his sandwich, looked at Ramsay as he licked around the open edge. “Whoops, too late.”
“Git.”
“There’s a car,” Rashid said, putting the sandwich down on the centre console. “Black Ford, basic trim with an aerial on the rear quarter. Definitely feds.”
“Are you sure?”
“Going by the movies, yeah. I haven’t been to the states before, much less worked here.”
Ramsay nodded as he scribbled in a notebook in his lap. “Looks viable, though.”
They watched the man get out. He was stocky yet moved freely. He looked like he did weights. He got out of the car and checked his jacket.
“Armed,” Rashid said.
“Everyone is out here.”
“Fair point.” Rashid glanced down at Ramsay’s notes. “What’s that?”
“My notepad.”
“I know that, but why have you written Afro-Caribbean?”
Ramsay looked up and watched the man walk between the two buildings which led to a courtyard, beyond which two buildings of apartments stood out of view. “But why not just write black?”
“It’s a bloody minefield,” Ramsay said. “Whatever you say ends up upsetting someone. You can’t say coloured…”
“What’s wrong with you? Of course, you can’t say coloured!”
“What difference does it make?”
“Loads.”
“So, what are you?”
“Human.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Oh, right,” Rashid said. “British.”
“But you’re coloured…”
“What? For fuck’s sake, Neil. Why don’t you just stick with IC-four. The Guy over the road is IC-three and you’re, I don’t know, a neo-Nazi…”
“Hey!”
Rashid watched a woman walk past the black Ford and drop her purse. She started to pick up spilled items and another woman bent down to help her. He looked back at Ramsay and asked, “Well, how many ethnic friends have you got?”
Ramsay took the monitor out of the footwell. He switched it on and frowned as the screen flickered. “Alright,” he said. “None.”
“Oh, thanks!”
“You know what I mean.”
Rashid tried not to smile. He enjoyed winding Ramsay up. “So, we’re just colleagues now, nothing more?”
“I didn’t mean that. We just live in a…”
“Decent area?” Rashid shrugged. “Well, I was going to invite you over for dinner when we’ve got some downtime. I’m not sure I’ll bother now. You and the rest of the team. Just for a curry and some ethnic dishes, like. You know, in my flat above my uncle’s corner shop…”
“Bloody hell, Rashid!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rashid said. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“You’re winding me up, aren’t you?”
Rashid nodded and smiled. “It’s my new hobby.”
“You really can be an idiot sometimes,” Ramsay steadied the monitor. “He’s going in, look…”
Rashid watched as the man hesitated by the door, the thumb-tack camera he had installed a week before catching him clearly in the fish-eye lens above him. The man knocked, waited then knocked again. He glanced around him, then took out a leather pouch and removed a set of lock-picks. He worked quickly, unlocking the door in just a couple of minutes. The man put the lock-picks back in his pocket and drew a tiny automatic pistol with a large, bulbous suppressor.
Rashid looked up at Ramsay and said, “This guy’s a pro.”
Ramsay switched the monitor onto multi-screen. The man worked his way from room to room. They only had four cameras installed, so he disappeared a few times, then came back into view.
“King’s in deep,” said Ramsay. “This guy would have killed anyone in there.”
“But King is alive. And his timing is still good. He’s only a day off. I was worried when nobody showed yesterday.”
“Me too.”
“Do we follow this guy?”
Ramsay watched the man’s car across the street. Caroline was getting back up from pretending to search for her credit card. Marnie appeared to hand her something and they parted, Caroline thanking her. They had the tracker in position, held firmly in place by a magnetic pad. They walked past the sandwich, salad and soup bar where Rashid had bought the sandwiches, Marnie stopped inside for something while Caroline headed back to the Yukon further up the street. By the time the man had got back on the street, Adams had pulled up outside the restaurant and picked up Marnie, while Caroline drove past in the third Yukon ready to take the lead. It looked clean, but Ramsay reflected that the area had been a bit Yukon heavy. Perhaps different vehicles would have been more desirable, but the other two cars had gone now, and only the one Rashid and Ramsay were in remained.
The man got in his car and drove away, unaware he was being followed by three vehicles at a safe distance, each following the tracker on an identical monitor.
Rashid drove, eating his sandwich and glancing at the red dot on the screen of the monitor, which had now been synced with the transponder that was receiving a pulse signal from the tracker, or transponder underneath the target vehicle’s wheel arch. Ramsay sipped from a Big-Gulp of Mountain Dew that he’d gotten a taste for.
“You really like that shit?”
“Wouldn’t drink it if I didn’t like i
t.”
Rashid pulled in behind a truck and waited at the lights. The red dot of the tracking device was making its way down the 28 towards Roselle. They caught every light on red and the distance increased. The dot took the 613 Garden State Parkway and the speed increased. Rashid took the on ramp and accelerated. He looked across at Ramsay as his mobile phone rang.
“Hello?” Ramsay said. The international numbers replaced the names in his address book. It was annoying not knowing who was calling.
“Neil, Caroline. Are we happy to follow the tracker, or do you want a visual?”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”
“I’ll slide in behind you, while you take a look see.”
Ramsay said, “Okay,” and put the phone back in his pocket. He looked at Rashid and said, “Get out in front and I’ll check as we pass him. Caroline is taking our place.”
Rashid nodded, quietly pleased to do something more pro-active. He stepped down on the accelerator and the massive truck lurched forward, its big V8 engine bellowing as they gained speed rapidly. He frowned as he watched the monitor, looked up as he closed in on an old Ford Bronco pickup truck. “Where’s the bloody car?” He pulled in behind the truck, glancing back to the monitor. “Oh, shit…”
“He’s played us,” Ramsay said. “He’s planted the tracker on that old banger!”
Rashid nodded. “And that means we’ve got some serious competition.”
Chapter Seventeen
King couldn’t decide whether it had gone to plan or not. Tommy-Lee came back in and studied a file for a while without talking. The cheeseburger and shake never materialised, but he hadn’t been beaten. Not in the interrogation room or his cell, at least.
Tommy-Lee had eventually closed the file and looked at King. “Your second tip-off was bogus. Our operative discovered he was under surveillance.”
“Another law enforcement agency,” King offered.
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Tommy-Lee replied, studying the file. “But no sign of a terrorist cell.”
“They must have bugged out.”
“Or were never there.”
“Whatever.” King shrugged. “My last tip-off panned-out. I can’t promise anything as a certainty locked up in here.”
“What are you up to?”
“I told you,” King said. “I was hired to take a shot.”
“We heard back from MI6,” he said. “Not a lot of detail, but what we got told a story.”
“I like a good story.”
“No doubt. But we are interested in what you know.”
“About what?”
Tommy-Lee shrugged. “Everything. But not now,” he said. “With someone like you, we could have it on tap.”
“Someone like me?”
“Yeah. Someone on the wrong side of the law. Someone that MI6 doesn’t care for, nor apparently want back,” he paused. “I suspect when they realise what we have, they may pay handsomely for your silence. Not numerically, of course. More quid-pro-quo.”
King shrugged. “Am I not getting my burger, then?”
Tommy-Lee smiled. “There’s a great deal you will not be getting anymore, Mister King, but a burger and a shake is the least of your concerns.”
When he had finally succumbed to sleep after being returned to his cell, he had been rudely interrupted, shackled and hooded. He had been unceremoniously dragged down echoing corridors and bundled down hard concrete steps. Two vehicle rides followed. The first had felt like a utility van. Echoing, metallic. The ride had taken over an hour. There had been two guards. One had decided it would be fun to take out his gun and press it into the back of King’s head. He had heard the click of the hammer striking the empty chamber, but he hadn’t flinched. He had pointed out that only a moron would shoot someone in the back of a van. That DNA, fibres and general transference of particles would make the killer easily detectable. That cleaning out a van full of blood and brain splatter was almost impossible. He had received a beating for his troubles, but as he suspected, there had been no further gun-play.
The next mode of transport was the rear seat of a quiet and powerful car. What the Americans would call a sedan. He could feel that the seats were made from soft leather. King suspected it had been a domestic brand, with a luxury package and a powerful engine. The gear changes were clearly automatic, but not as refined or with as many ratios as a German marque, and the size of the interior was substantial. King had been seated between two new guards, and he wasn’t rubbing up against either of them.
Time had become immeasurable. The men inside the car did not speak. King could tell there was a passenger up front, a brief mumbled conversation regarding the route, but nothing more. The car had eventually swung into what King suspected to be a multi-storey or underground car park. The wheels squealed at the low-speed turn, highlighting the probability of the car being a domestic make. Americans had power and luxury down, price and value as well, but not handling. Not in their sedans, at least. The turn built up enough inertia for King to lean into the man on his right, and a quick jab of the man’s elbow pushed King back upright. He had started to feel motion sickness, the hood delaying his senses and making him reactionary to the vehicle’s manoeuvres.
The car drew to a halt and before the engine switched off King could tell they were at an airport. A jet, its engines straining on take-off, roared somewhere in the distance and a light aircraft with propellers taxied past what King now suspected to be a hangar keeping them from view.
King was pulled out of the car and dragged across the hangar, where he was guided onto the first step. He was pushed forwards, but without knowing how many steps there were, he sprawled at the top and fell into the aircraft. Somebody laughed as he struggled to get up with his hands shackled behind his back. Nobody helped, and he got back to his feet, his ribs aching and making him wince, his expression thankfully hidden from his captives.
He was pulled backwards and dropped into a seat. He could already tell it was soft, sumptuous leather. Like nothing he had previously experienced on any aircraft. His hands stopped him from sitting properly in the seat, and as if to accommodate this, he was pushed forwards and two pairs of heavy hands unlocked his cuffs and reattached them around his front, but he felt them threaded through a loop in his seatbelt. His hood was removed, and he blinked in the light of the aircraft. He exaggerated his discomfort for long enough to take in his surroundings. The window shutters were down. They knew how to play the game. A bottle of water was thrust in front of him and he had just enough slack in his wrists to take the bottle and drain it in one go. He asked for another and to his surprise a young man in a dark grey suit uncapped another bottle and he drank that one down, too.
King looked at the two men sitting down ahead of him, across the aisle. They looked tough and quiet, ex-military would be his guess. They would be the muscle. The younger guy would be the junior agent. Further up the aisle Tommy-Lee Jones looked through what appeared to be a log-book and conferred with the pilot. He never once looked at King. The agent went through the notes, nodded at something the pilot said. King knew that in the world of deception and secrets, this could be a ruse. They could simply take off, fly some circuits or a generous loop and land back at the airport. Deception complete. But King hoped – would go so far as to pray – that they took off and flew due West for four hours. That would be his favourite scenario. He figured they were in a private jet, most likely a Learjet registered to a company that was a front for the NSA. He knew the CIA operated a private fleet, so there was no reason why the more secretive and often more powerful intelligence service should have their own, too. And he guessed that the aircraft would cruise at somewhere around four-hundred and fifty miles per hour. So now it was time to pray. King had never been religious, but he was willing to hedge his bets. Because if he was somewhere around Washington DC then a four-hour flight due West would land him at Rapid City, South Dakota. And if the intelligence MI5 were working from was correct, the plan was working. If they lande
d elsewhere, then he would have to resign himself to fate. And if that was the case, then he was as good as dead.
Chapter Eighteen
“I don’t know how he suspected,” said Caroline. “We were subtle, weren’t we?”
“We were, weren’t we?” Marnie asked, looking at Rashid. She wasn’t a field agent, and this had knocked her confidence in her abilities. Her work in the field to date had been reactionary. Borne from necessity and the situation of their assignments escalating.
“Silky smooth, babe,” Rashid reassured her.
“Well, he cottoned on,” Ramsay said. “And he found the transmitter, got it off and planted it on another car while we waited at the first set of lights. The guy was fast.”
“Unless…” Rashid sat back in his chair and smiled knowingly. “He was being watched. By a third party that was aligned with our target. Somebody out there had his back. And we were so focused on him, that we didn’t notice anybody else watching him.”
