Rogue

by James Swallow

‘Okay.’

  Malte stepped past Marc, granting him a nod, and went on his way. For him, that was the equivalent of a hearty handshake.

  ‘Nice bloke,’ said Farrier, ‘but does he ever shut up?’

  ‘You get used to it,’ Marc replied, and boarded the jet.

  Lucy let Farrier go next, and she hung back at the hatchway. Inside the aircraft cabin, it was cramped but well-appointed, and there were more hard-case containers piled up on the unoccupied seats.

  Marc waved forward the last member of the Rubicon team on the jet.

  ‘John, this is Assim, our cyber-ops guy.’

  ‘I thought that was your gig,’ said Farrier.

  ‘Marc’s the Alpha Geek,’ said Assim, with a nervous smile. ‘I’m in the rear with the gear. Assim Kader, delighted to meet you!’ The rangy young Arab was dressed similarly to Malte, but on him the outfit hung as if it was on a clothes horse. He took Farrier’s outstretched hand and pumped it. He had an open laptop computer in his other hand, the screen filled with panels of dense information. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I can’t really rest when I fly so I worked on the metadata Marc uncovered. I think I might have a time window for our target.’

  The SCD’s self-described ‘hacker without portfolio’ was Saudi-born and British-educated, and for Lucy, his perfectly enunciated English accent always seemed a little at odds with his manner. Assim was the product of expensive private schools and, if the stories she had heard were true, of ill-advised dalliances with the denizens of the dark net. He was smart as a whip, but not enough to get past his own hang-ups.

  Farrier got the measure of him immediately, and shot Marc a look.

  ‘Blimey. This guy is you ten years ago.’

  Marc shook his head. ‘Smarter than me.’

  ‘I didn’t like to say,’ Assim said sheepishly.

  ‘What else did you bring us?’ Lucy asked from the doorway, nodding at the gear cases.

  ‘Everything but a tactical kitchen sink,’ Assim told her. ‘Is there somewhere we can set up?’

  ‘Follow me,’ she said. ‘The Air Force gave us a whole hangar.’

  ‘Wait.’ Farrier held up a hand. ‘You said you have an idea of when Grace is going to be in the country?’

  The mood inside the cabin shifted, turning serious.

  ‘I think so.’ Assim tapped his laptop. ‘If I’m right, she’s already here.’

  ‘Then we need to move fast,’ said Marc, grabbing one of the cases.

  *

  The hangar was usually turned over to the maintenance of one of Akrotiri’s C-130 Hercules cargo planes, but for the duration of this mission the dusty, open interior had become a temporary base of operations for the combined MI6/SCD team.

  The HondaJet sat off to one side, next to a pop-up geodesic tent made of sensor-opaque nanomaterials from one of Rubicon’s hi-tech start-ups. Malte and Assim set up a satellite communications array and a workstation for cyber-ops, along with a rack of equipment and weapons, both non-lethal and deadly. The neighbouring MI6 ‘crib’ was olive-drab prefabricated modules containing the OpTeam’s equivalent gear.

  Paladin had lost their field technician in Oslo to Grace’s not so tender mercies, so it was quickly agreed that Assim would fill that role. But it didn’t take long for Marc to see the lines of clear demarcation between the two groups of operators. Consciously or unconsciously, Farrier and his MI6 unit kept to their side of the hangar and the members of the SCD hung around the parked jet. Only Marc found it hard to settle, caught in the middle ground between the agency he had once been loyal to and the people he currently worked with.

  ‘Boys and girls!’ called Farrier, attracting everyone’s attention. ‘Time to firm up our plans, so gather round.’

  Marc buried his hands in the pockets of his jacket and trailed after Pearce, the big guy he had encountered at the farm in Portugal. Marc pegged him as a former squaddie, all rugby full-back muscle and dogged focus. Pearce exchanged a nod with the two others who had been there that morning, the woman called Regis and the East Asian guy, Suresh.

  Suresh had heavy bruising on the face and throat where Marc had put him down during his escape, and the man’s right cheek was visibly swollen. Marc felt compelled to say something and fumbled an apology.

  ‘S’okay,’ Suresh said thickly. ‘I would’ve smacked you about if it was the other way round.’

  He had a soft Mancunian accent and his injuries made him look miserable. Was he the type to hold a grudge? Marc couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Won’t happen again,’ said Regis, staring daggers at a disinterested Lucy. ‘You got the drop on us, that’s all.’

  ‘Actually, you got the drop on us first,’ Lucy corrected. ‘But it’s good. No harm, no foul, right?’

  ‘Sure, yeah.’ Regis gave a nod, but not like she meant it.

  ‘Okay,’ began Farrier, halting the chatter with the tone of his voice. ‘We know why we’re here.’

  He held up a tablet computer, and on the screen was a long-lens photo of their objective.

  Regis’s ire immediately refocused itself on the picture of the woman in the hoodie, like a weapons system tracking a new target.

  ‘Echo-One,’ said Farrier, ‘also known as Grace, also known as . . . Well, to be confirmed.’ He frowned. ‘Make no mistake, we are dealing with a proper player here. Previous evaluations low-balled her skill level and lethality. Thank the higher-ups for that lack of salient data.’

  A low murmur of agreement passed through the MI6 team. People were dead because they had underestimated this woman, and as Regis had affirmed, they were not about to let that happen again.

  ‘Can we get a better look at her?’ said Pearce.

  ‘I can help, if you don’t mind?’ Assim put up his hand, like a kid in a classroom.

  ‘Go on.’

  Lane, Farrier’s second-in-command, had virtually ignored the existence of the SCD operatives since the conversation in Vauxhall Cross, but now she was interested.

  Assim brought an equipment case into the middle of the group, pulling from it a device the size of a beer can and what looked like a futuristic version of a conductor’s baton. He set up a tall collapsible tripod, clipping the ‘can’ to the top, and threading in wires for power.

  ‘We don’t have a big board we can work off in here, of course, so this is the next best thing.’

  He tapped a button and the device on the tripod projected a two-by two-metre square of white light onto the hangar floor.

  The team stepped back out of the pool of illumination, and Assim thumbed buttons on the slim baton. Images wirelessly transmitted from his workstation appeared in the white square, instantly turning it into a video screen. Movements of the baton worked like the motions of a mouse, as he clicked open files.

  ‘Bloody hell, he’s the boy wizard with his magic wand,’ said Regis, half-mocking, half-impressed.

  ‘I was more the Hunger Games type, actually,’ Assim corrected, weaving shapes in the air. ‘Here we are.’

  The image captures of Grace from the Oslo operation and elsewhere fanned out at their feet. Marc noted that there were a couple of shots from Samantha Green’s official military record in there too, but no one called attention to it.

  ‘What we have here is a dangerous individual,’ said Farrier, drawing back control of the conversation. ‘And as much as some of us would like to see her paid back in full for what she’s cost our service, that’s not why we’re here tonight.’ He paused to let that unpalatable truth bed in. ‘This is a high-value target, and confidence is strong she’s one of our own, gone off the reservation as our American colleague might say.’

  Farrier inclined his head in Lucy’s direction.

  ‘She’s out in the wild, agenda unknown,’ added Lane. ‘So our primary objective is the isolation and capture of target Echo-One for enhanced interrogation.’

  She nodded in the direction of the base proper. There were facilities in Akrotiri where enemy combatants could be held, if there
was a need.

  Marc guessed that if they did manage to bring her in alive, she would bounce from there right into some nameless black site and never be seen again. He didn’t like the way that thought made his gut twist.

  ‘Secondary objective,’ continued Lane. ‘Learn whatever we can about who she’s meeting here and what her endgame is.’

  ‘Dane knows this woman,’ said Farrier. ‘He crewed with her back in the day. He’s going to help us figure out which way she might jump, and his associates from Rubicon are going to back us up with tech and overwatch. Questions?’

  Regis spoke up first. ‘We know which side of the green line she’s on?’

  Everyone looked towards Assim, and he worked the baton again, bringing up a map of the island of Cyprus. A jagged, emerald-coloured band etched itself across the middle of the country, dividing it into the Greek-Cypriot south and the Turkish-Cypriot north.

  ‘These are the United Nations buffer zones,’ said the young man. ‘Still in place since the coup and the invasion in the 1970s. Technically, the whole country is part of the European Union now, but in reality, the Greeks and the Turks do their own thing while quietly hating each other.’

  ‘Old animosity runs deep here,’ noted Lane. ‘The division underscores everything on the island, so keep that in mind if you’re dealing with the locals.’

  Marc’s knowledge of the situation was sparse, but he knew enough to be wary. Forty years earlier, a Greek-backed military takeover of the government had encouraged Turkey to invade, to defend their interests and their people living on the island. The fact that it also gave them a pretext to secure the territory was a bonus.

  When the dust settled and a ceasefire was signed, Cyprus had been broken into the two parts shown on the projected map. Decades of UN-led attempts to heal the rift had made scant progress beyond easing freedom of movement across the border, and there were still no-man’s-land regions edged with barbed wire, gun towers and armed soldiers along the green zones.

  ‘Best guess is that Echo-One is on the Turkish side,’ said Assim, answering the previous question. ‘Comms traffic led to an IP address in Kyrenia, on the northern coast.’

  ‘We can’t count on the Turks for help here,’ added Farrier. ‘Their national intelligence organisation doesn’t play nice with anyone except the Yanks and the Ivans, so that’s out. Ideally, we want to do this thing without drawing their attention. Same with the Greeks. We know they’re monitoring the British bases in Cyprus, so they’ll have wind of us being here already, but they won’t know why. We have to do this quick and clean, then get out before anyone starts asking difficult questions.’

  Ari had found a folding chair and sat there, nursing a bottle of water. He slipped into the gap in the conversation.

  ‘Perhaps it is worth mentioning that Rubicon Group has some connections here in the Republic?’

  Lane gave him a sharp look. ‘Do tell.’

  ‘I don’t like to talk out of school,’ said the pilot. ‘But the company has construction interests in both the north and the south. People on the ground, in an unofficial context, you know? Perhaps we could use them to—’

  ‘No.’ Lane cut him off before he could finish. ‘Amateurs start asking questions and Grace will get wind of it and bolt. We cannot afford to lose this shot at her.’

  ‘Just a thought.’ Ari shrugged and fell silent again, letting the insult about ‘amateurs’ go unremarked.

  Marc gave Lucy a sideways look, but her expression gave nothing away.

  ‘Rules of engagement,’ Farrier added. ‘Defensive fire only, light small arms. We don’t want anyone thinking the invasion is on again.’

  ‘We know why she’s here?’ Suresh leaned in over the map.

  ‘Speaking of difficult questions,’ added Regis.

  ‘Marc?’ Assim glanced in his direction. ‘Would you like to field that one?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ He swallowed hard. He hadn’t expected to be called on so soon. ‘So, OpTeam Nomad did a job in 2015 involving a Turkish organised crime gang with contacts here on the island. It’s likely the . . . uh . . . target is following up a connection with that.’

  ‘I see a lot of opportunity for trouble.’ Pearce offered up the thought to nobody in particular. ‘Turks, Greeks, UN, crooks and whoever else is hiding under rocks here. Whatever we do, we are going to end up pissing off somebody.’

  ‘As usual, Colin here has summed it up succinctly,’ said Farrier, tipping a nod to the man. ‘So, once again for the cheap seats. Fast in, fast out, light footprint.’

  ‘Assuming the target is meeting someone,’ said Lucy, ‘we gonna bring them in as well?’

  ‘We’ll stay fluid,’ Lane snapped. ‘React to the situation as it unfolds. You don’t have to worry about those kind of details.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I do,’ Lucy insisted. ‘Most of my job comes down to who I shoot at, and who I don’t.’

  ‘Well, let me take a load off your mind right now.’ Lane stepped around the projected map to meet the other woman head-on. ‘When we go mobile, you’re not coming with us.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Lucy’s expression hardened.

  Marc couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘The whole point of us being here is to—’

  Lane talked over him. ‘Civilian advisors remain on base during field ops, that’s the regs.’

  ‘Are you capable of letting someone finish a sentence without interrupting?’ Marc snarled. ‘Rubicon is a private military contractor, and we’re all experienced in the field.’ He shot Farrier a look, hoping for some kind of support from his former colleague, but it didn’t materialise. ‘Why the hell else are we here?’

  ‘Been asking that since Portugal,’ muttered Suresh.

  Lane nodded towards the HondaJet and the geo-tent.

  ‘Your toys are nice, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that’s going to buy you onto the mission. You lot are just—’

  ‘I’m just the pilot,’ said Ari, with deceptive lightness.

  ‘Just a driver,’ added Malte, briefly breaking his silence.

  ‘I’m just the . . . ah . . . tech guy,’ said Assim, adding to the chorus.

  Farrier let out a weary breath, and Marc saw right through him, catching up too late. This had always been the plan, he realised – to keep any Rubicon assets bottled up while the MI6 team undertook the mission proper.

  ‘You can run tech and comms from here,’ said the other man. ‘Give us remote support during the shout.’

  ‘I don’t do that job any more,’ Marc told him.

  ‘No, we know what you do,’ said Lane, finding the pace of her argument. ‘You break the law wherever you go. Rubicon is a civilian corporation running military and espionage operations without oversight or legal governance. Now, we’ll let you get away with that when it doesn’t cause us any hassle, but that’s not happening here.’ She indicated the rest of the OpTeam. ‘We have governmental permission to operate here. You don’t. So back off and leave it to us, all right? We can handle this.’

  ‘Like you did in Oslo?’ Lucy sucked her teeth as her temper flared. ‘We didn’t come to this party to stand back and do nothing.’

  ‘You’re not doing nothing,’ said Suresh. ‘And with all due respect, you sort of invited yourself, didn’t you?’

  ‘Bollocks to that,’ Marc retorted. ‘If you’re going in after Sam Green, I will be right there with you.’ He pointed towards Lane and the others. ‘Because let me tell you, none of you know how she thinks. I do. And trust me, you don’t want me miles away, seeing everything second-hand through a bodycam. You want to bring her in? You’re going to need my help.’

  ‘And I’m his goddamn shadow,’ added Lucy.

  There would have been a time when Marc would never have argued the toss over something like this, but he wasn’t that man any more. Somewhere along the line, he had stopped being the guy who looked for the easy way out, the safe path. It wasn’t that he had changed, not really. It was more that old hab
its and old fears had fallen away. What remained was who he really was. And that man was not someone who would sit on the sidelines.

  Farrier studied him, long and quiet, measuring his determination. Unspoken was a threat between them: that if the other man forced the issue and benched the Rubicon team, they would pack up and leave the MI6 officers to go on alone.

  In the end, it would come down to two factors: could the Paladin team do this without the help of the SCD, having already failed once? And did John Farrier still trust the man he had recruited and trained?

  At length, Farrier gave that wary nod again.

  ‘All right, we make room for Dane and Keyes in the assault group.’

  ‘I know you didn’t miss what I said,’ Lane began, giving Farrier a hard look.

  ‘I appreciate your input, Tracey,’ Farrier replied, ‘but this is my call. Is that going to be a problem?’

  To her credit, Lane was a good enough soldier that she swallowed her own feelings on the subject and gave a tight nod.

  ‘No, boss. No problem.’

  Suresh frowned. ‘Welles isn’t going to like it.’

  ‘Welles doesn’t have to know about it,’ said Pearce.

  *

  The taxi driver was an older guy, deeply tanned, tubby and greying, and even his taste in strong cologne had not done much to cut down the odour of his sweat. He explained in broken English that a woman like her should not be travelling alone in a town like Girne, even if it was the tourist capital of the north. He repeatedly told her that she was pretty, in spite of her scars.

  ‘You need protecting,’ he said benevolently.

  She couldn’t miss how his free hand kept drifting to his crotch each time he leered at her.

  She’d annoyed the man by using the Greek name for the place, and he corrected her sternly.

  ‘Don’t call it Kyrenia,’ he told her. ‘You will upset people.’

  Then he laughed that off and asked her name, for what had to be the tenth time. She told him it was Natasha, and he made a strange face, momentarily uncertain if she was playing him for a fool. ‘Natasha’ was a nickname the locals used for Eastern European girls who came in off the mainland to service tourists looking for pleasures of the more illicit kind.