by J B Holman
‘Where are you going? The car’s over there!’ she panted.
‘We’re not going home. We need to find out if it’s the assassin, and if it is, we need to take him out.’ Julie’s head went into a whirl. He’d said it would get dangerous. She had heard about Operations, about the blood and bullets, but she’d only ever sat at a desk. ‘I need you with me. Can you keep up?’
‘I’m with you Foxx. Just don’t get me killed!’
‘No promises,’ he said and ran down the path at the back of the hill. She guessed he wanted to get behind the assassin. She put more effort into running and kept him in sight for the full length of the hill. He stopped fifty yards ahead of her. ‘Come on! Over here!’ he shouted, unnecessarily loudly.
She caught him up, spent ten seconds catching her breath and stood straight to show she was ready. A bullet flew through the bushes and missed her by inches. Foxx took a single return shot, then silence. He signalled his intentions to her and they both ran further along the path, crouching below hedge height until the hedge ran out. Foxx stuck his head past the end of the hedge. Rapid fire broke out. Julie collapsed face down onto the path. Bullets bounced and ricocheted, leaves were ripped off their branches. She wanted to let fear rule her body, but her mind said no. Bursts of adrenalin turned into blind exhilaration. Her heart beat faster, her lungs dug deep for breath. She was frightened, but that just kept her sharper. She didn’t believe she would die. Not today, not yet.
Foxx indicated to retreat. They slid twenty paces back up the track. On one side of the track, looking up the hill, was the hedge, on the other, a steep wooded slope downwards. Julie had wanted to crawl higher up the hill from the path to gain the advantage of height, but her experienced operational tactician indicated to slide off the path and down the slope.
The trees and the incline gave them cover. They ran along the edge of the tree line, until Foxx indicated to stop. There, fifty yards across an open field, was a tall Victorian mill, being used as a barn. Two centuries ago, grain had been fed into hoppers high up in the roof line and ground by stones driven by a now defunct waterwheel. The faded brick had mellowed into the countryside, the weathered oak of the loading doors, thirty feet above the ground, matched the peeling eves of the sharply angled roof. The chain and pulley hung still from above the high loading door down to the ground, like it had for over a hundred years, still catching glinting reflections of sunlight. It had no windows.
‘Run directly at this angle,’ said Foxx, pointing. ‘You’ll be under the cover of trees until the last fifteen yards. Then run like hell, get round the corner of the building and you’ll be out of the firing line. There’s a door one the other side. It’s not locked.
‘How d’you know?’
‘I’ve been here before.’
‘Where will you be?’
‘Right behind you, so don’t slow me down. Now go!’
She ran, gently at first, keeping low. Twenty paces out, she heard him behind her and she sprinted, dived round the corner, flung open the door and ran inside. Foxx was with her. He shut the door. There was no gunfire, but had they been detected?
‘Now what?’ she asked.
‘Up that ladder,’ he said. It was the height of a house and led to a large platform, a mezzanine floor larger than her whole flat. They scaled the ladder and stepped onto the platform. She could see the sunlight through the crack between the old oak loading doors. There was a tarpaulin hanging up against the wall, hay bales at either end of the floor, a few farm implements leaning against the wall and a rope dangling down from the roof.
‘Hide here,’ said Foxx, holding the rope. ‘I’m going up there to get a better vantage point. As soon as he’s through the door, he’s a dead man. Here take this, just in case.’ He handed her a small pistol. She had not seen it before. Scarcely bigger than a Derringer, she thought. She examined it closely and read the word Derringer across the handle.
Her unformed questions were left unanswered. He shinned up the rope at speed and out of sight. Once in the rafters, he pulled the rope up after him. She felt suddenly alone. She stood, clicked off the safety and felt the pistol in her hand. She had never even held a gun before she met Foxx, let alone fire one. She thought, she planned, she hid.
She held her breath and listened to the silence. The breeze clinked through the chains that hung outside the loading doors. The wooden beam that supported the pulley creaked gently. The chains clinked louder. They clinked in rhythm. The clink got closer. It wasn’t the wind, it was a man; a man climbing the chains to avoid walking through a door - a door he knew would lead to his death. The assassin was here, now, outside the loading door, five feet from where Julie was hiding.
He pushed the doors gently with kid gloves. They swung slowly open flooding the platform with morning sun. He took two steps in. He knew she was there and it was time for her to die. She gripped hold of her breath, froze her every muscle, silenced her heart. She did all she could to save herself.
He looked, saw the tarpaulin. It seemed to billow. He lowered his eyes to the floor. One tiny tell-tale tip of a small lady’s shoe ruffled the rugged folds of the hanging canvas. He said nothing. He raised his gun to her chest height and released three bullets in rapid succession. It took no more than two seconds. He waited for her body to fall.
Foxx peered down from his bolt hole in the roof. Had his plan succeeded or failed? He couldn’t see. He held the rope firmly in both hands.
Julie’s dead and mutilated body did not fall out from behind the tarpaulin. Instead, she stepped out from behind the hay bales, pointed the pistol at his head and felt her fingers fumble the trigger. He was tall, six foot four, with a large metal buckle on his belt. The steel toecaps on his shoes had clinked against the metal chains as he had climbed. He was dressed in black and no more than ten feet away from her. She pulled the trigger, the gun waved like a dandelion in a wind storm. She was so close, too close to miss - but she did.
She had pulled the trigger, missed the man, fumbled and dropped the gun. He smiled and slowly raised his pistol with intent to kill. Foxx flew into combat, swinging on the rope like a trapeze artist, smashing directly into the assassin. The man in black flew back onto the other set of hay bales. His pistol dropped from his hand, skidded along the hay-strewn floor, teetered on the edge of the platform and fell thirty feet onto the barn floor.
Foxx gained position. The man stood and faced him, standing a good four inches taller. Foxx looked at the him, stared at the long lurid scar that ran right across his face and said in surprise,
‘Dirk? Dirk, what the fuck are you doing here?’
‘Killing you!’
Foxx was off guard. Dirk punched hard. Foxx flew backwards, losing his gun. Dirk took a knife from a sheath on his belt, Julie ran towards him, broom in hand. The head of the broom resting square against her body, the pointed end of the handle was thrust like a lance into his abdomen. He fell backwards. She kept on pushing. He stumbled and made a grab for the bales. She kept on pushing. He lost his balance, he missed his grip, she kept on pushing. He fell backwards off the edge of the platform, thirty feet, taking the ladder with him. He landed harshly, smashing down on bales, pig troughs and an old chain that lay on the floor below. Foxx stood, lightly dazed. He had to shoot. Julie threw him his gun. He stood by the edge of the platform and fired at the assassin below.
The man in black with the steel-toe shoes and the heavy metal belt buckle was hobbling at speed out of the door and out of sight. The shot had just clipped him. Moments later, the sound of a motorbike starting, revving and disappearing into the distance said that the threat had gone and their target had escaped. It was a failsafe situation. They were safe, but they had failed. The assassin was free.
Foxx and Julie sat on the hay bales at opposite ends of the platform.
‘Sorry,’ they said in unison.
‘I missed him,’ said Julie in deep regret. ‘I won’t miss next time.’
‘I shouldn’t have put you in that situa
tion,’ said Foxx. ‘I hope there won’t be a next time.’ Julie wasn’t listening.
‘Now what?’ she asked, as she looked down thirty feet at the ladder lying on the barn floor. ‘Jump?’
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Foxx. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
Twenty minutes later they were in the car. Forty minutes later they were in a random rural hotel dunking a second-rate croissant into their morning beverage of choice. Foxx had coffee, Julie chose whisky. Then another whisky.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Foxx, ‘because you look like shit, to be honest.’
‘I feel better than if I’d been behind that tarpaulin.’ She was not in the mood for accepting sympathy and probably wouldn’t get any, so she leant forward and talked business. ‘I don’t get it. Why didn’t he shoot the PM? He was there, he had a gun, he had ample opportunity?’
‘Because we prevented it. We kept him from perching in his sniper’s nest.’
‘No, baby, no.’ she said softly, but firmly. ‘I’m no expert, but it was a deserted country spot. He could’ve shot from the end of the graveyard, in the graveyard, by the front door or over-looking the car park. I want to think we saved the PM, but you know we didn’t. We just stood there and watched. So why didn’t he shoot?’ It was a question that was not going to be answered, so she asked another. ‘Who was he?’
‘His name is Dirk Swengen, South African. Calls himself Blackheart. Worked in Operations, is freelance now, Black Ops, anything dirty. He’s a friend of mine.’
‘A friend?’
‘Kind of. I think he’s a bit sore with me. You saw that scar?’ She nodded. ‘He blames me.’
‘You did that?’
‘Not exactly. It was in Azerbaijan, in that prison. He’s the guy that killed all those prison guards.’
‘So it wasn’t you?’
‘No, but I couldn’t tell people that, because officially he doesn’t exist, so people thought it was me, and I never disabused them of the idea. And my reputation built from there. It’s useful: intimidation through reputation. If people think you can gut a live bear, they leave you alone. When we went to my flat, the copper on stake-out could have arrested us, but he didn’t. He called SWAT because of my reputation. Roosevelt said, It is better to negotiate with soft words and a big stick than negotiate with soft words alone. My reputation is my big stick.’
‘So you’re not a hero, then?’
‘I just saved your life,’ he retorted indignantly.
‘Well I just saved yours and I’m no hero. Did you gut that bear in Norway?’
‘Never been to Norway.’ Julie shook her head and said quietly to herself,
‘Just when you think you know someone!’
In Julie’s head, a little bit of her hero had died. ‘I had you down as a mean-minded, indestructible, fast-fighting bad ass. But you’re just a knob jockey.’
‘Don’t you mean desk jockey?’
‘Whichever! Were you even in Azerbaijan?’
‘Yes. I had to get arrested to speak to a source who was in prison and then kill him. Dirk came in to wreak black death on everyone else and get us out.’
‘And?’
‘I got the information, saw a chance to get out, so I did.’
‘And left Dirk?’
‘This is espionage, not the US Marines. You get the information and you get the hell out. He would’ve done the same. He knew the risks, he knew the rules. And anyway, he got out . . . with a scar to prove it. And for some reason, he blames me.’
‘Is that what this is about?’
‘Hell no. This is about killing the PM. Killing me is just a bonus.’
‘So why didn’t he finish us off?’
‘He was injured. I saw him limping as he left the barn. No point in him taking unnecessary risks.’
‘So why didn’t he kill the PM?’
‘If we find that out, Ms Connor, we will have cracked this case. Maybe it’s about theatre. The PM is making a speech later today in Basingstoke. It was going to be in Barrow-in-Furness, but was changed to somewhere easier to protect.’ Julie cast her mind back to the revised schedule that Foxx had found in Storrington’s flat. ‘That was scheduled to be the next hit. There’ll be an audience, journalists from around the world, TV cameras: a much better arena for his theatre of blood. If the PM is going to die today, he will die in front of the Press.’
22
Call Out
‘I’ve got a lead on Julie Connor’s present location,’ called out Hoy, his voice laced with excitement.
‘Have you found her car?’ asked Storrington.
‘Yes.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In her garage.’
‘So, what’s the lead?’
‘She was in a motorbike accident.’
‘And she’s in hospital?’
‘No, it was two years ago.’ Storrington’s face showed mounting frustration. Patience was not his strong suit. ‘She had cuts and bruises, but her boyfriend was killed.’
‘So?’
‘So, his car is still registered in his name. She never sold it. It came up on an ANPR camera entering London on Sunday, just after we raided her flat. I’ve circulated the plate and set up an alert on all ANPRs. If it comes up on any Automatic Number Plate Recognition, we’ll know about it within thirty seconds.’
‘Well done, Hoy. Good work.’
Hoy tried not to smile, but praise was his life blood. His boss continued. ‘The PM is speaking today in Barrow-in-Furness . . .’
‘I thought it was Basingstoke.’
‘No. That was a red herring. We circulated a phoney updated schedule just to confuse any terrorists, moles or assassins. He’ll be in Barrow. Do we have ANPR cameras on the M1 and M40?’
‘Yes, but they’re notoriously unreliable.’
‘OK. Is that all?’ Hoy nodded and left. Storrington picked up his mobile and made a call.
‘Maria, get the boys up to Barrow-in-Furness. Foxx might be there or he might be in London, but your first priority is to keep the PM safe.’
‘On it, Commander. We’ll be wheels-up in five.’
He hung up and allowed himself ten seconds staring out of the window, thinking about her, Captain Maria de la Casa. She was good at her job. He liked that.
He liked her.
Nickolas Morgan-Tenby stood by his PA’s desk. There were half a dozen administrators and assistants within earshot.
‘Lesley, call a meeting of the Joint Chiefs. I want to re-evaluate contingency plans for civil unrest. We’ve seen it get out of hand in France and Germany; we need to be ready for it here.’
‘Yes, right away. Do you want all of them there?’ She knew the answer before she asked.
‘Of course I’d like them all there, but I know that the Air Chief Marshall is travelling a lot at present. If he’s not available, you could ask his Second-in-Command to attend.’
‘Understood,’ she said, covert message received.
‘Also, ask them each to nominate four senior officers to bring with them,’ he added.
‘Shall I pick them off this list?’ she said knowingly, pulling out a sheet of names from her top drawer.
‘Yes, good idea. Make it for as soon as I get back from France. Keep it confidential. Oh yes, and Charlie will call in later.’ Lesley rolled her eyes. Her boss lent forward and mouthed, ‘Be nice.’
‘Really?’ she mouthed back.
‘Nah, not really,’ he said with a humourless smile, walked back into his office and closed the door.
It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon. The remnants of an early alcoholic al fresco lunch lay on the wooden topped table in front of them, but it was not the wine that had numbed Julie’s feelings, nor the whiskey breakfast. She didn’t know how she felt about anything. She’d been scared, very scared, but unable to believe that she might die. She had almost been shot and had saved Foxx’s life through instinct, not intelligence. She had tried to shoot another human being and to her regret she’d missed. She had
wanted to kill a man. That was bad. And then there was Foxx - she had not wanted to be attracted to Foxx, and was; but now wasn’t and wanted to be.
The morning in the hotel room had involved a few disguised and unwanted tears, a shower and then anticipated intimacy . . . but when it came to it, she didn’t fancy it. It had been awkward and she’d declined. She sat drinking the last of her wine and pictured the scenes of the morning. None of it made sense, none of it felt real.
But it was.
‘Why didn’t he shoot the PM?’ she asked again. ‘Why be there if he wasn’t going to take the shot. And why did he try to kill us?’
‘You’ve answered your own question. He was there to kill us. He’s not working for Storrington, I’m sure of that. He is the hit man; and we were the target. The PM was the bait.’ Julie waited for fear to settle in her heart at the thought of being pursued by a ruthless assassin, but it didn’t come.
‘How good is he, this Dirk Blackheart?’
‘The best. Bond times ten.’
‘Then why did he miss? On the first attempt at the back of the hotel, why did he miss?’
The waiter came over, cleared the plates and asked if they wanted anything else. They asked for the bill.
‘We have to get to Basingstoke,’ said Foxx, looking at his watch. I doubt Dirk will be there, because I didn’t know it would be Basingstoke when I wrote the plan - unless he’s improvising. But I want to be sure.’
She wondered about the wisdom of being in an area of high police population, but said nothing.
‘D’you think there was a video of it, the hotel shooting?’ asked Foxx, thinking aloud.
‘D’you want me to find out?’
‘No. I’m on it.’ He wandered off and made a call.
Julie made one too. She knew it was bad idea, but a better alternative eluded her. She phoned the mother of her four-year-old godson. They chatted, laughed and then came to the crux of the call. ‘I want you to do something for me, but if it goes wrong it will land you in so much trouble you probably won’t see Rupert until he celebrates his 21st birthday.’
