Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

Byrne looked puzzled for a moment and then he laughed. ‘Oh, I get it. No, I didn’t, Bill. If I want a gun, they got them at the naval building.’

  The conference was due to begin at Shrivenham in Oxfordshire the following Monday. Byrne phoned Scotland Yard from his hotel room and arranged to go straight over. He took a taxi across London and was met by George Webb in the foyer. It was another hot day and Webb was dressed casually in jeans and a polo shirt. Byrne was tall and lean, hair cut high on his head—a throwback to his days in the Marines. After so long in the service, he had got used to not having to comb it.

  Webb pressed his card through the swipe and they went to the lifts. ‘Fifteenth floor,’ Webb told him, as they began to rise.

  Byrne nodded. ‘I guess you get pretty good views from up there.’

  ‘Not bad.’

  They looked at one another. ‘IRA been busy?’

  Webb made a face. ‘Last month was marching season.’

  Swann came out of the squad room. He wore his four-button, dogtooth-check suit and a yellow tie. He offered his hand to Byrne. ‘Jack Swann,’ he said.

  ‘Louis Byrne. FBI.’

  Swann nodded. ‘We’ve heard a bit about you?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s that?’

  ‘Lucky Louis.’

  Byrne pulled a face. ‘Who you been talking to, Jack?’

  ‘Leg-att. Drinks with us now and again over at the Foxhole.’

  ‘USAF Intel in Ruislip,’ Webb explained. ‘The Marines that guard your naval building have barracks there.’

  Swann looked at Byrne. ‘Bill Matheson told us you were blown up in Beirut in ’83.’

  Byrne nodded. ‘I was guarding the roof when the truck hit us. Went sixty metres up in the air and came down with the rubble.’

  ‘And you walked away?’

  Again Byrne nodded. ‘Just cuts and bruises.’

  ‘Lucky Louis indeed.’

  They went to the exhibits office and Colson came in with DI Clements and a handful of the other detectives. Byrne took off his jacket and sat behind Webb’s desk. ‘Can I see what you got?’ he asked.

  Webb went to the Holmes computer and printed off what they had on the investigation so far. Byrne narrowed his eyes as he read. ‘Who’re the guys with the tattoos?’ he asked.

  ‘We don’t know yet.’

  He read on. ‘Tal-Salem and Pier-Luigi Ramas.’ He looked at the E-fits from Paris and then at the descriptions given by the witnesses to the shooting of Jean-Marie Mace. When he was finished he sat back. ‘Motive?’

  Colson made a face. ‘We don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be one.’

  Byrne nodded his head slowly. ‘If this is Storm Crow—the motive will become apparent as time goes on. He’ll have more planned than just this.’

  Swann flicked his eyebrows. ‘Well, that’s wonderful news.’

  Colson glanced at him, then back at Byrne. ‘You think it’s one man?’

  ‘My theory, yes. I stress that, guys. It is only my theory. Nobody really knows for sure. The name Storm Crow first came about in Israel in ’89.I guess you all know that already. US Ambassador’s car.’

  ‘TATP grenade,’ Webb said.

  ‘Right.’ Byrne looked up at him. ‘Did you check with Dubin?’

  ‘He’s not there right now. But they said he’ll get back to me.’

  ‘OK. Ben’s a good man. I’ve worked with him on these incidents. I was assistant legal attaché in Athens in ’89. That’s the office that covers the Middle East. Went over to Israel that first time and I’ve had an interest ever since. We had one attack in the States, which I believe was down to him. Special kind of TPU was used.’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ Webb went through to the evidence cages and brought back one of the timing and power units they had recovered from the basement of Queen’s House Mews. He laid it on the desk. ‘Like this?’ he said.

  Byrne cocked his head to one side and then carefully lifted the grey-black box encased in the nylon bag. The swing lid was open and he studied the interior, the liquid-crystal clock, LED for circuit testing, dual green and red wiring on the circuit board. He set it down again. ‘I’ve never seen a complete one, but the components, the clock for example …’

  ‘Spanish,’ Webb told him. ‘Mass-produced.’

  Byrne looked from one face to the next. ‘We found parts of one of these on the Texas/Mexico border. We’ve had troops down there helping the border patrol with the Mexican drug problem since 1989—peace dividend from the cold war. Marines are used to do recon’ work along the Rio Grande. A law was passed in the United States in 1878, the Posse Comitatus Act. Basically it forbids soldiers from doing police work, but they’re allowed to carry out non-combative surveillance. In 1981, Congress passed legislation that allowed them to share equipment with law-enforcement officers, which is useful because they have stuff like NVGs which the border agents don’t. The US/Mexico border is nineteen hundred and fifty-two miles long and we’ve only got sixty-two hundred border agents. Since the Marines have been down there, we’ve had a pretty good detection rate.

  ‘Anyway, the point I’m making is that the Mexican drug barons have been losing a lot to us in recent years. Don’t get me wrong, they still get the stuff through—heroin, cocaine, marijuana—but we’ve stopped a lot. In May 1995, a bunch of mortars hit the joint task force barracks at Fort Bliss. It was only a couple of weeks after Oklahoma. They were set up in the sage brush, back of a small hill, half a mile away. It was a good place to set the launch vehicle, not overly patrolled by Marines. This fourteen-year-old kid used to let his family’s goats graze there. The mortars were timed to go off right about the point he arrived. Trouble was, only five of the six made their target, the other one blew up inside the pipe barrel. Kid got torn to pieces by shrapnel.

  ‘Anyway, the fort suddenly found themselves in a war zone. A platoon working the river came under fire from what were perceived to be bandits the other side. Another explosion happened a hundred and fifty miles away at Fort Davis. That’s where we found the parts to this.’ He held up the TPU again. ‘Initially, we thought it was militia activity. Back in March of ’95, there was all manner of lunacy going back and forth on their Internet bulletin boards. They thought that we and the ATF were training for a nationwide assault on their weapons. They’re paranoid that the government’s going to take them away. I wasn’t working the investigation at first, but it wasn’t very long before it came to light that this was nothing to do with the militia. Somebody was using their paranoia as a front. The DEA Intel Center in El Paso discovered that in that one day twenty million dollars worth of cocaine entered the United States from Mexico.’

  Colson rubbed his lip with a thumbnail. ‘So these explosions were just a decoy, then.’

  Byrne nodded slowly. ‘Three Marines were killed and two civilians. The bandits held the river platoon down for three hours until back-up got there, then they just melted away.’ He lifted the TPU and turned it over in his hands. ‘As I said, the component parts we recovered from Fort Davis were like these. Plastia watches and clocks can be bought in any general store in Mexico. This type of wiring is standard in the United States.’

  ‘What was the explosive at Fort Davis?’ Webb asked him.

  ‘High grade. Government C-4, two and a half pounds. The IED was in the trunk of a car.’

  ‘Parked outside the fort?’

  Byrne shook his head. ‘Inside, I’m afraid.’

  Swann smiled grimly. ‘Listen, it happens.’ He looked at his colleagues. ‘Lisburn. Remember?’

  Nobody spoke for a moment, all eyes seemed to be on the timing and power unit lying between Byrne’s hands on the table. ‘And you believe that was Storm Crow?’ Swann said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Codeword?’

  ‘No. Interestingly enough, my only knowledge of him using codewords has been in Europe. I understand that groups like ETA or Action Directe have never used them.’

  ‘Only PIRA,’ Colson said.

  B
yrne bent to the briefcase on the floor by his feet. ‘A few days after the explosions we received this. It was sent to our field office in El Paso. I kept it as a souvenir.’ He took out a clear plastic envelope: inside was a black feather. ‘Crow,’ he said. ‘A day or so later, they received a photograph of me with a bullet hole in my head.’

  Colson glanced at Swann. ‘That sounds familiar,’ he said.

  Byrne gestured with an open palm. ‘That’s his style, always the one for drama. But that’s why I talk about motive in the manner I do. Gentlemen, it’s my belief, and again I can’t prove it, although street-level intel’ in Mexico City kinda bears me out, that Storm Crow looked at the problems the Mexican barons were having and offered up his services. He had a pedigree, didn’t he. Israel, 1989.’ He took out a file from his briefcase. ‘You’ve probably got all this stuff, but you may not’ve been able to relate it to Storm Crow. Israel again—1991 and ’92. In 1993—the headquarters of the Guardia Civil in San Sebastian. A covert DEA helicopter in Colombia. That chopper was undercover as a short-distance freight carrier, but somehow their surveillance got compromised. They were hit by anti-aircraft weapons.’ He paused. ‘May ’95, it was us. Suppose the Mexicans paid him a million dollars for hitting Fort Bliss. Wouldn’t it be worth it?’

  Outside, a cloud had momentarily shrouded the sun and the room dulled about them.

  Webb cocked an eyebrow. ‘And you believe it’s one man?’

  Byrne nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  Byrne drew breath audibly through his nose. ‘Because it’s for profit. Groups surround causes—Hizbollah, Hamas, PIRA. They have political or religious ends. That deal in Texas was for profit. It was drug money, nothing more. The shooting down of the DEA chopper, the same.’

  ‘What about the others—Madrid, the shooting of Alessandro Peroni in Paris?’

  ‘Markers, maybe? He’ll be watching for other clients. Maybe he knows something about them that we don’t.’

  Swann frowned at him.

  ‘Keeping his hand in, Jack. Keeping his profile high. Name in the papers. That way he’s marketable, isn’t he. Basic economics.’

  Colson stared at him. ‘So, you’re telling us we’re dealing with a businessman?’

  ‘Pure and simple. He plies a trade and gets paid for it. No different to a hit man, only the stakes are a lot higher, and so—I imagine—is the pay-off.’

  Swann showed him a surveillance photograph of Ibrahim Huella. ‘The man we’re looking at,’ he said. ‘So far he’s had three aliases—Huella, which is on a Syrian passport, James Morton, one he picked up over here, and—’

  ‘Ramon Jimenez,’ Byrne finished for him. ‘The Spanish connection. He’s also used Raoul Mendez.’

  Swann nodded. ‘Could this be him—the Storm Crow?’

  Byrne looked at the photograph and scratched his head at the temple. ‘It could be, I guess. Nobody ever ID’d him.’

  ‘We’ve got a clean set of prints from the house we raided,’ Webb told him.

  ‘That might be useful. I could run them through CJIS in Clarksburg.’

  ‘CJIS?’

  ‘Criminal Justice Information Services. Fingerprint boys. They might be able to come up with something, but don’t hold your breath.’ Byrne stood up. ‘Gentlemen, I have to go. I’ll be at Shrivenham from Monday, and my wife wants me to show her the Tower of London. Any of you guys going, by the way?’

  ‘To the Tower?’ Swann winked at him. ‘We’d never get out again.’

  13

  THE MAN IN THE 4x4 drove from Blanchland towards Hexham. Passing through Slaley, he headed over the moorland towards Healey. The farm was signposted a mile and a half to the east of Healey itself, which was no more than a clutch of stone cottages. The road in was a dirt track beyond a five-bar gate which stood open. The driver cut his headlights, dead slow now, pitch darkness, with no moon piercing the weight of the cloud that pressed against the moor. The track broadened into a farmyard with a sprawl of L-shaped buildings to one side. Across the concreted yard, more buildings lifted against the gloom in a flat, narrow line. The driver cut the engine and reached over the seat for his bag. Outside, he paused to listen, lifting his head like a hunting wolf. The wind coursed through the eaves of the buildings, rustling at loose tiles. He could smell the rain in the air.

  He made his way across the courtyard until he got to the last building, rubber-soled shoes making no sound on the concrete. The door was solid oak and fixed in place with a heavy padlock. He took a pencil-light torch from his pocket and twisted it on; then he played the light around the bottom of the bag until he found the set of picks he carried. Standing again, he checked his position, listening; then shone the light on to the flat face of the padlock. It was old and had one of those little shutters that ran across the keyhole. He looked carefully, gauged the little spike which the key fitted over and selected a pick from the metal ring. He worked one pick round at a time, making sure that none slipped against another. The lock was old and stiff and it did not want to give. The man cursed under his breath, checked behind him and worked at the lock once more. Two more minutes, three, then the pin clicked and turned and the lock broke free in his grip.

  The barn smelled of damp and he heard the scuttle of rats on flagstones. He shivered; the one thing he hated more than anything else was rats. Again he shone the torch, not for long, just enough to take in where the workbench was and the shelving beneath it. He gauged the distance in paces, flicked off the torch and crossed. A grimy window, directly in front of his face, allowed a trickle of grey light to filter in from outside. Again he allowed the use of the torch, but again just for a moment. He crouched, set the bag on the floor beside him and looked at the shelving. There were a number of rusty paint tins, some boxes of nails and a half-size metal bucket. He shone his torch; the bucket was both empty and dry. Now he opened his bag and reached for a length of copper tube. Holding it very carefully, he slid it out of the bag and laid it on the floor. Then he took the strip of oil cloth he had brought and wound it round the copper. Two hands again, he placed the oil-cloth package inside the metal bucket and slid it under the bench.

  He paused to listen once more and then went back out to the yard. The first spots of rain had begun to slap the concrete. He closed the oak door and reset the padlock. Back in the 4 X 4, he sat a moment with the window half-down to listen. Nothing save the wind rising and the faint splash of the raindrops. He started the engine, turned round and crawled back up the track in darkness. At the junction with the road he paused and looked for traffic; seeing none he pulled out, then drove for fifty yards before switching on the headlights.

  Harrison was working in the Passover Lumber Yard, shifting tree trunks with the big crane, when Jesse Tate drove past in his pick-up truck. Below him, Chief was standing on the partially assembled wall of the house they were building, while Harrison swung the boom. Chief had finished his paintings and was doing a bit of spot work. The log dangled above him and he eased it into place with gloved hands. Harrison set it down. Chief unbuckled the nylon strap and he swung the boom away again. He looked at the sky, saw nothing, but then a few minutes later he heard the familiar roar of the Lear engine and Omega 2 swung in across the valley. That would be Willy Johnson piloting, he always flew Omega 2. Harrison did not know where he had been, but he flew out three days ago. Below him, Margarito and Ezequiel fetched another hunk of timber for the house. The jet banked east over the town, mottled against the rise of the mountains, and then descended into Westlake Airport. Ten minutes later Jesse drove by, heading back towards the ranch with a man in a cowboy hat and sunglasses sitting next to him. Harrison did not recognize him.

  ‘Hey, Harrison.’ He didn’t hear Margarito calling up to him. ‘Home, boy!’ He looked down then. ‘We’re all set.’

  Harrison lifted the boom.

  Colson chaired the meeting in the wake of the visit from Louis Byrne. He went through all the information they had gathered so far and added Byrne’s file notes
for the benefit of those who had not seen him. ‘From what we’ve seen already and from what we’ve learned from the FBI, we are almost certainly dealing with Storm Crow,’ he finished. He lifted his hands, palm upwards. ‘Unfortunately, it makes sense, particularly when you consider the tactics employed at Queen’s House Mews.’

  Swann stared across the room at him. ‘Talking of Queen’s House Mews, how did he know we were coming?’

  Colson rubbed the flat of his palms together. ‘You think somebody told him, Jack?’

  ‘Yes, Guv. I do. We’ve never had a leak in this department. I think it’s a serious question and nobody’s even mentioned it.’

  Colson glanced at DI Clements. ‘We agree with you, Jack. But short of a witch-hunt—what d’you suggest we do?’

  Swann had no answer. He looked between his feet, compressing his lips into a line.

  ‘It isn’t actually that simple,’ Julian Moore spoke quietly. ‘He knew we were watching him, because he wanted us to watch him. He made sure we did. Nobody had to tell him anything. I remember at an earlier briefing, Jack, you raised the point yourself, about giving the real address on a false driving licence? Why use the term PIRA? Why the passport as proof of ID?’

  ‘That doesn’t change the precision, Julian. The exact time of the SO19 attack.’

  There was silence for a moment, then Webb said: ‘What’s more disturbing than any question of a possible leak is how he knows what we do. He knew at some point we would do those bins, Jack. He knew that a fast SO19 entry is through the front door, so he took up the floorboards and rigged up all those movement sensors.’

  ‘The Storm Crow is good, Webby. According to Byrne, the best.’ Swann moved his shoulders. ‘SO19 use basic military strategies; they’re not difficult to work out. But the exact day and time of the attack? He was out before the Ninjas even got plotted up.’

  ‘If he wanted us to know he was there,’ Colson said, ‘he would’ve been watching everything we did. He would’ve spotted the SFOs coming along as BT men and then he would’ve checked. He’s a professional. Maybe he’s been in the job somewhere, the military, perhaps. As soon as he knew they weren’t authorized, he would have been alerted. He left right away. But he came back to watch, didn’t he, to see if he was right. The hotel, remember. Why do that if he knew the exact time of our attack?’