Rogue

by James Swallow

  He drove the long way around, making expansive movements with his hand, telling her he knew the best route even as he overcharged her. He said that some taxi drivers – not men like him, of course – would pick up foreign women and do terrible things to them. He mashed the brakes to show how easy it would be to stop the car and have his way, anywhere he chose to, in this town she knew nothing of. He talked about other women he had met, of how he had helped them and how they had rewarded him.

  All the time, he was smiling. Because he was a good man, as he kept insisting, not like those others. He wanted to help her. He wanted her to enjoy her trip, and to that end, she could call him up any time if she needed a ride.

  When they finally reached the address she had given him, on a dusty four-lane highway well away from the hotels and seafront favoured by visitors, he refused to unlock the doors.

  ‘This is no place for you,’ he told her, looking around at the handful of crumbling apartment blocks and sparsely populated storefronts. ‘Let me take you somewhere lovely.’

  But at length, she was able to pay him and get out, but not before he forced a business card into her palm and deliberately pawed her as the money changed hands.

  Behind a diffident and vapid mask, she thought about using the steel-shelled pen in her purse to stab him through the hand so he would never be able to hold his cock again. But as amusing as that would have been, her goal today was to draw as little attention to herself as possible, and leaving this doughy pig screaming and bleeding would do the exact opposite. So she reluctantly decided to let him go on his way, wondering if he would ever understand how lucky he had been.

  She gave him a last blank smile as he finally drove off. When the taxi was out of sight, she walked in the opposite direction until she found the building she was looking for.

  A six-storey box of grimy glass windows and cracked plaster, the fascia of the nameless apartments was the yellow of nicotine-stained teeth. Abandoned balconies held drifts of grit and long-dead palm leaves, and the block’s one attempt to show some architectural flair, with a decorative fin in a faux-futuristic Jet Age style, was falling apart to reveal the crumbling brickwork beneath.

  Spaces for a cafe or shops on the lower levels of the building were shuttered behind rusted roller doors, and she had to walk around to the back to find a way inside. In the weed-choked alley, out of sight of the road, a gleaming white four-door Nissan Navara pickup was parked close to a breeze block wall. The truck was brand new and seemed out of place.

  There was a combination lock on the back door, which she opened and secured behind her, taking care to make a noise when she did so. Coming quietly could lead to violence.

  The airless hallway beyond ended in a staircase, and on a nearby wall someone had used a fat plug of quick-setting glue to affix a wireless security camera.

  She made sure the camera had a few seconds to look at her, and then she climbed to the third floor. Each level had four apartments, but on the third there were holes in the walls, knocked through to give the current residents more space.

  They were waiting for her, in one of the torn-open kitchens. Two men, cautious around her but respectful with it, the polar opposites of the taxi driver with his wandering hands and constant smirk. The difference was that they knew who she was, and what she was capable of.

  The first man stood near a makeshift monitor screen, set up to take feeds from the stairwell camera and a few others dotted around the building perimeter. He was of average height and narrow build, swarthy enough to pass for Turkish, sporting a dark, close-cut beard.

  ‘You’re Grace,’ he said, as if establishing the fact. ‘Any problems getting in?’

  His accent was deliberately hard to place, and she didn’t waste time on it.

  ‘No. What do I call you?’

  She was already altering her posture, her tone of voice, doing it automatically to become the woman they expected her to be. Gone was the tourist girl who had ridden in the taxi, and here was the cold-eyed killer.

  ‘Cord,’ he told her, and she knew it was as much an alias as her own name. He nodded towards his companion. ‘That’s Vine.’

  ‘Hey.’

  Vine was shorter than the other man, and his face was pinkish, like it was wind-burned. He had a pistol in his hand, a Glock 17 semi-automatic distorted by the shape of a shell-catcher bag dangling off the gun’s frame. Self-consciously, he put the gun down.

  ‘Just being careful,’ he explained.

  She nodded. On the worktop there were three M4 carbines and neatly ordered lines of spare magazines, and Cord had apparently been in the process of filling more. Cord was wearing thin latex gloves as he transferred each 5.56 mm round into the spring-loaded mags, thumbing them into the slot one by one.

  The M4s had bags on their ejector ports in line with Vine’s handgun, black fabric shapes that resembled a sock, there to catch any spent brass before it spun away into the air. It was vital to control the amount of physical evidence they were going to leave at the target site, and policing the shell cases was just one element of that. Each of the firearms had been selected to be the correct make and model, one set of specifications in a long list that had to be adhered to, if the operation was to go as planned.

  Satisfied with the weapons, she looked around the gutted apartment. Sheet plastic covered the floor in the areas where the two men had rested and prepared for the operation, and bright blue strips of duct tape marked off lines they had not crossed. It was designed to be a ‘collapsible’ location, where as much of their temporary presence could be erased with as few traces as possible.

  Inside an open container, she found pairs of used tactical boots, worn enough to be comfortable and not obviously brand new. These were lined up next to over-suits made of black rip-proof material that could be worn under the armour vests and tactical webbing rigs that dangled from coat hangers on the walls. Like the guns, the other kit matched the specifications they had been provided. Another case held a pair of microlight quad-rotor drones.

  She looked around. ‘Where’s the plastique?’

  Vine pointed at a portable refrigerator in the corner of the kitchen.

  ‘Keeping it cool.’

  The bricks of plastic explosive could sweat in the wrong conditions, and she gave an approving nod.

  The last items she checked were a trio of thin, skintight outfits that resembled gymnasts’ leotards. When worn, they would cover around 70 per cent of a human body, drastically minimising the possibility of unwitting DNA transfer through lost strands of hair or skin cells.

  Judging by their preparations, Cord and Vine seemed to be good at this, as the Japanese man she’d met in Athens had promised. That was fine with her. Working with professionals meant she could concentrate on her own part of the operation without having to micromanage theirs.

  ‘Satisfied?’ said Vine.

  She nodded and glanced at her watch, aware of the time. It would be sunset in a couple of hours, and they had to be in place before full dark.

  ‘Anything I need to be aware of?’

  The two men exchanged a wary look, and she saw that there was something bothering both of them.

  ‘While you were in transit, there was a development,’ began Cord. ‘Rubicon deployed one of their aircraft from France. It landed at a Royal Air Force base in the south, and it’s likely they met with a British black ops unit.’

  ‘They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t know something,’ said Vine.

  She cut straight to the question that hadn’t yet been asked.

  ‘We’re not compromised, so don’t be concerned about that. In fact, the appearance of MI6 and Rubicon here is an integral part of the operation. Without them, it doesn’t work.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Cord.

  ‘You don’t need to,’ she told him. ‘Just do what I tell you, when I tell you to do it.’ Her tone became steely, and the two men showed no signs of questioning it. ‘This is what we want to happen,’ she added, givin
g them a little more.

  ‘The truck out back is ready,’ Cord went on. ‘Got the decals for when we get close.’

  ‘Good.’ She looked out of the dirty windows. Inside here, with the plastic sheeting and everything else, the air was close and warm. Vine seemed to sense that, and offered her an ice-cold bottle of water from a cooler crate. ‘How long will it take to fold this up?’

  ‘Full works?’ Vine didn’t wait for her to confirm. ‘Thirty minutes. Fifteen if we cut corners.’

  ‘Take an hour,’ she told him. ‘Be sure.’

  ‘It’s what we do,’ Cord replied. ‘From now?’

  She nodded again, watching Vine closely.

  He indicated the rifles. ‘With this much firepower, I’m guessing this won’t be a quiet job.’

  ‘Correct.’ She allowed a chilly smile to cross her lips. ‘It’s a kill mission. Get in, terminate the targets with extreme prejudice, then extract. There are some other elements that need to be addressed, but those are my concern, not yours.’

  She heard the whip-snap of her own voice, and let the smile fade.

  This was the part she liked the most. The moment when she became something different. The woman she had been in Oslo, in Athens, in the taxi – those personas were outfits she slipped into, then discarded when they were no longer needed. Everything about her was malleable and formless.

  She was garbing herself in a new self, her body language, her expression and diction becoming what was needed for the job.

  ‘What’s the objective?’

  Vine came closer as she removed a folded plastic-laminated document from an inner pocket.

  ‘This.’

  It was a satellite image of an airfield and a cluster of buildings. The resolution was high enough to pick out military vehicles and even individual soldiers walking patrol routes.

  Vine studied the image and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘That’s going to make a lot of people very mad.’

  ‘And then some,’ she agreed.

  SEVEN

  From where she stood by the wing of the parked jet, Lucy could look right into the geo-tent where Assim had set up his gear, and watch the hacker working. The young Saudi bent over his keyboard, his nose up against a monitor filled with strings of computer code that were, at least to her, incomprehensible.

  Marc was in there with him, and he stalked back and forth like a tiger in a too-small cage, shoulder-surfing and second-guessing everything Assim did. She had rarely seen the Brit wound so tight, not even when they had been jumping out of planes or running into firefights.

  Lucy tried to see the situation through his eyes. Here was a guy whose entire life had been turned inside out by a catastrophic mission failure, an event that saw him branded a traitor to his own side. Marc Dane had been carrying around the guilt and the anger over that for as long as she had known him, and he had finally started moving beyond that, letting the scars heal.

  But his past wasn’t done with him.

  In what kind of fucked-up world does this happen?

  Lucy asked the question of herself. The woman Marc thought dead and gone was apparently alive and kicking, and worse than that, she was killing her way through British agents like it was going out of style.

  ‘So I’m guessing there’s no word yet?’ Ari stood on the lip of the HondaJet’s open hatch, nodding in the direction of the geo-tent.

  ‘When they know, we’ll know.’

  Marc and Assim had been at it for hours, attacking the data recovered from Grace’s encrypted communications, tearing it apart for some inkling as to where exactly her meet was going to take place.

  ‘You speak to him?’

  Lucy frowned. ‘Dane made it clear he’s too busy for small talk right now.’ She turned away and climbed into the jet, pushing past Ari and into the cabin. ‘I need a drink,’ she added, finding the fold-down minibar on the far bulkhead.

  The pilot gave her a sideways glance. ‘How is that a good idea before a mission?’

  ‘Don’t mother me just because you’re Jewish,’ she shot back, pouring a shot of Maker’s Mark bourbon. ‘You don’t need to play the stereotype on my account.’

  ‘What can I say? It’s how I was raised,’ Ari replied, with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. He refocused on her. ‘So have you told anyone?’

  ‘Told them what?’ She savoured the drink’s sultry burn on her tongue.

  ‘That you’re struggling.’ His affable manner faded away, to be replaced by genuine concern. ‘I know you, girl. Longer than anyone else. I know what you look like when you’re wounded.’

  ‘I’m good,’ she said firmly.

  Ari raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Good enough,’ she clarified.

  Maybe it was true that she could have used another week or two back in the Delphi Clinic, but she wasn’t about to admit it. She could fight past the tightness in her chest, like any other obstacle.

  ‘He was there for you. You have to be there for him.’

  There wasn’t any judgement in Ari’s words. He was too smart for that. He let Lucy find it on her own.

  ‘I’m worried about Marc,’ she said, finishing the bourbon. ‘I’ve never seen him this . . . this driven before. He’s way too close.’

  ‘He’s not an operator, Lucy,’ Ari noted. ‘Dane doesn’t have that training for compartmentalisation or whatever they call it, not like you do.’

  ‘My point,’ she said.

  At length, Ari sat down on the arm of one of the big leather chairs in the cabin and ran a hand through his greying hair. He indicated the minibar and in turn Lucy plucked out and tossed him a miniature bottle of Tanqueray gin.

  ‘Don’t mention this to the boss,’ he said, and swigged from it. ‘I ever tell you about Mosche? A flyer in my squadron.’

  Lucy shook her head and he went on.

  ‘Mosche was a lot like our English friend. A hell of an instinctive pilot. Really bad at cards. A little reckless but good enough to pull it off, most of the time. Anyway, so there’s this training mission we are on near the border. Long story short, the Syrians come up and goad us. Mosche lost his father in the Golan Heights, so he had an axe to grind, you know?’ Ari’s hands came up to mimic the shapes of aircraft in flight as the memory replayed for him. ‘Mosche was fixated on a target and he flew himself right into the side of a hill. Killed instantly. I tried to talk him back, but by the time I saw what was happening, it was too late.’ His usually bright manner briefly darkened. ‘You do this for your friends. You stick with them, even when they put themselves at risk, because you believe you can talk them out of it. Don’t wait too long to do it, though.’

  Lucy tried to frame the right reply, but out through the cabin’s oval window she saw Farrier and his people moving with sudden urgency. By the time she reached the hatch, Marc was already there, an unreadable look in his eyes. He handed her a lightweight plate carrier as she stepped down.

  ‘All hands on deck,’ he told her, shrugging on an armour vest of his own. ‘We managed to decode a fragment of the email traffic Grace was sending. We have co-ordinates for the meet, but we’re on the clock. It’s going down an hour from now.’

  ‘Get your kit and move!’ Farrier called out across the hangar. ‘Quick as you can, boys and girls.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Lucy, as she jogged after him, towards an unmarked vehicle in the shadows at the rear of the hangar.

  ‘I’ll explain on the way,’ said Marc, without looking back.

  Lucy turned and saw Ari watching her go.

  ‘Be careful,’ mouthed the pilot.

  *

  The white Nissan pickup turned off the main highway and slowed briefly as it bounced onto the airport road.

  Grace dropped the window on the passenger side and leaned out, finding the edge of an adhesive plastic sheet plastered over the side door. She pulled hard and the whole thing came away, a layer of white ripping free to reveal the letters ‘UN’ in heavy black lines concealed beneath.
Cord did the same on his side, and they both balled up the coverings and tossed them into the undergrowth.

  In the evening light, the pickup was now a dead ringer for the same vehicles driven by the military patrols from the nearby UNFICYP garrison – the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus.

  Cord accelerated again, while Grace checked her pistol. Behind her, in the rear of the pickup’s cab, Vine pulled the T-shaped charging handle on his M4, readying the carbine that lay across his lap.

  ‘Masks,’ she told them, as the guard post and barrier at the end of the road came into sight. A single soldier in a blue beret was walking out of the hut, a rifle over his shoulder and a flashlight in his hand.

  Vine and Cord pulled thin fabric hoods up over their faces. Each one was made from a pale green material, and they had no holes for mouth or eyes. The breathable fabric was thin enough to see through, but opaque enough to hide their identities.

  Cord shot her a look. ‘What about you?’

  ‘No need.’

  Grace smiled, and tied her hair back so her scars were visible.

  Up ahead, a sign in various languages declared that beyond the lowered gate lay Nicosia Airport, an area off-limits to civilians and unauthorised visitors.

  Once, the airport had been the central hub for travel into and out of Cyprus, but that had changed after the Turkish invasion and the partitioning of the island. The site of heavy fighting in those days, the UN had been forced to make it a protected zone, and that declaration had never been revoked.

  Now, while the majority of the airport buildings lay derelict and abandoned, a part of the old grounds on the far side of the runways had become the ‘Blue Beret Camp’ where UN troops remained to this day, maintaining a token force to watch over the buffer zone.

  Soldiers stationed at Nicosia joked that the ghost town posting was like patrolling some abandoned movie set, but no one had fired shots in anger there for over forty years. Tonight, that silence would end.

  The gate guard shone his torch at the pickup as Cord halted a few metres shy of the candy-striped barrier, and called out to them. No traffic was due this evening.