The Hunt series Boxset 2

by Tim Heath

  O’Doherty’s parents had never known he’d been behind the hit––he’d played the role of the grieving brother well, his parents entirely naïve to the beast their son was becoming behind the mask of respectability he otherwise used around them. Now he was glad he still had them around. He was already thinking about what it would be like to one day introduce his girlfriend––the phrase still didn’t feel real––to them. His parents had long given up the hope of grandkids, a couple who would eternally mourn the loss of their second child all those years before, even if they shielded that from their son.

  “Make yourself at home,” she said, as O’Doherty walked into the lounge. Why hadn’t he used his real name with her? He felt terrified that he would mess up, and yet he’d used many an alias over the last decade, though these were most often German or Polish names. He knew he couldn’t have used any of those names with her, it wouldn’t make sense. She moved into the kitchen to switch on the kettle. O’Doherty took off his jacket and made himself comfortable on the two-seater sofa that was in the little, but tidy, lounge. He would spend the night with her that date, the first time he’d been with a girl––despite his reputation––and he knew he was falling in love with her. His world had done a one-eighty in the last three days, and he knew he needed out.

  Except he had no paperwork or documentation that proved who he was. However, his years of criminal underground connections had taught him these things could always be purchased, if you knew where to look. He made it his mission to establish those links before the week was out.

  13

  Rad touched down in Moscow one week after leaving for Hong Kong. He’d circumnavigated the world in the last seven days and knew it. An aircraft was waiting for him in Moscow, this time a regular Russian flight––he had to remain under the radar as much as possible––which would fly him on to Novosibirsk, from where a private plane would be hired to take him north.

  They handed Rad a bag before he boarded the Aeroflot flight to Russia’s third largest city; the bag cleared through diplomatic channels. It carried his weapons and ammunition. They would place it in a locked cabinet for the flight but handed to him as he departed at the other end. No questions were to be asked. The crew knew their place and had been paid off in advance.

  Four hours later he had touched down in the Siberian city, already walking clear of the plane with his equipment in hand––albeit in the bag they’d travelled in––before most passengers were even off the flight. A driver met Rad on the tarmac and took the Russian directly to a private terminal where a small two-seater plane awaited him. An airstrip in the wilderness would allow them to land though there was little else there. A motorbike would be waiting for Rad at the other end, it being by far the best mode of transport to traverse the rough and hilly terrain.

  As the small aircraft took off, Rad was getting a little tired of all the travel they had forced him to take recently, starting with that summons back from Syria nearly two weeks before. He was still no closer to his target.

  As darkness fell, having used the motorbike from the abandoned airstrip to where he felt he needed to be, Rad knew he was finally getting closer. In the middle of nowhere––and he’d seen barren in his time––there was a house. It had no business being there and wasn’t on any map he’d ever seen of the area. Filipov had not even listed its existence.

  Plus, there was security everywhere.

  Rad ducked out of sight. He was at least two kilometres from the house, having left his bike five kilometres further back. He couldn’t risk anyone hearing his approach. Given the isolation of the house, the sound of a motorcycle approaching would only raise alarm bells to those inside. Everything about the location and the house itself told Rad this was a group not wanting to be disturbed. Rad was sure Mark Orlov was inside, with whoever else ran the Machine. Rad was confident he’d found their headquarters.

  As total darkness covered the terrain––only a few lights visible in the house––Rad put on his night vision equipment. He counted at least twelve men patrolling the grounds in front of him, and using a handheld device, spotted the use of at least two electronic pieces of surveillance equipment.

  Going in on foot was not to be something he would contemplate, however. He wasn’t a fool. He had to think about a getaway. To fire a shot in such a place would not be hard, but to get away would be. He would soon be spotted once he started up the bike. He would have to think that one through a little more carefully.

  For now, he would dig in for the night. Getting a little closer would be ideal. A few hundred metres and he would be in range with his primary weapon of choice while being far enough away to avoid any return fire. A few hours before dawn, he would then retrace his steps and bring the bike somewhat closer. If he had to run for it, and if the men chasing him had a vehicle, he didn’t fancy outrunning them over five kilometres with them shooting in his direction.

  What his current spot offered him was a good line of sight, however. No one could leave the area without him seeing them. And from that range, if he could see them, then he could kill them. Shooting them all was an option before he made his escape though that was taking a risk. The longer he remained after that first bullet, the greater the danger he was putting himself in. In Syria, he had a team watching his back the whole time. Here, he was on his own. He could take out a few men on foot, for sure, but if there was a helicopter hidden that he didn’t know about, he was a dead man. Being dead wasn’t something he planned on happening anytime soon.

  Rad found a spot ideally positioned just three hundred metres further on. That distance was at the borderline of his weapon’s range but he reckoned it was still possible for a shot to reach the house. There were large windows, and empty land surrounded the house with no trees so Rad assumed that if the chance to shoot Orlov presented itself, he would have the whole body to aim at. That was more than enough to make sure that death was the only outcome. He knew he wouldn’t get a second chance.

  Rad checked his watch. He’d been watching non-stop for three hours, and it was just before four in the morning. The sun would rise in about two hours, and Rad would lose his cover of darkness. If he wasn’t back in his new hideout before six, he would have to wait the entire day, watching but with no chance of acting. He didn’t like that prospect.

  Rad backed away carefully, though as far as he could tell, the security detail around the building didn’t have night vision goggles themselves. That seemed shortsighted given his current location, but maybe that was the point. They didn’t expect anyone to know they were there. Once over the hill, Rad picked up his pace, using a torch to shine a path back up the track he’d followed earlier, a small semi-circle made by trees and stumps telling Rad he was going in the right direction. He found the bike. Rad had been thirty minutes though he knew to wheel it back from where he had just been was going to be a lot slower. He wanted time to hide the bike well enough that it wouldn’t be spotted from the sky. Rad had no idea what type of drones or satellites they might have looking down on them. He wouldn’t put anything past them.

  Rad was back well before six, dawn still about twenty minutes away, the bike within a kilometre of where Rad was now camped out. It was as close as he could get it without risking being seen from the house. He covered it well in undergrowth beneath a clump of trees. It would be invisible from the air.

  Rad hadn’t eaten for nearly a day. With everything he’d been doing through the night, he hadn’t had the chance to set any traps. He felt hungry but had gone much longer in the past without food.

  Rad pulled out his weapon of choice. He could split a small coin directly through the middle from well over fifteen-hundred metres. A headshot from that distance was therefore not an issue. With the firepower he was using, that would easily be enough to kill his target almost instantly, unless they moved in the second or two the bullet would take to reach the spot. Rad screwed into place the scope, getting down onto the ground, lying at full length, the gun now in front of him. He pul
led branches and a clump of grass over himself, and as dawn came, the only thing visible was the tip of the rifle. At well over a kilometre from the edge of the property, nobody had any chance of seeing anything unusual watching them from the fields in the distance.

  Rad would watch and wait. His eye never left the scope, scanning back and forth, moving the weapon ever so slightly from side to side. At that range he could take in the entire building with only a few degrees of movement though his primary focus was the main windows of the property itself. As morning came around, lights appearing from multiple windows, Rad was homing in on his target, all the while taking in what he could about those inside. Rad had yet to spot Mark Orlov in person. He would know the moment he did.

  All he had to do in the meantime was to work out his escape plan.

  O’Doherty was handed his newly forged birth certificate and driving licence and a national insurance card. He would use all that to get a passport, but that would be later, when needed, and when he’d built up enough history to not raise any alarms. His back-story had to be carefully worked out.

  He’d never gone to university but was an intelligent guy. He could have been a chemist based on what he knew about compounds though he wondered if he had now left that side of himself behind forever. The forger had hacked into the Dublin University server and registered him as being in attendance five years earlier. That was mirrored with addresses in and around Dublin for the entire three-year degree, in case anyone was to poke around. He doubted anyone would question the certificate, and if they did, there was enough to suggest that he’d been studying in the Irish capital. The hacker even raised two small debts at the city’s library, for books returned late. It was his attention to detail that meant people highly regarded him. He also didn’t ask too many questions. Anyone coming to him for work was hardly doing so legally. Both knew they had to trust the other.

  O’Doherty moved in with his girlfriend after just three months of dating. She had no parents––she was an only child and had lost her parents at eighteen to cancer and a freak boating accident––and life settled into a natural rhythm. O’Doherty had forgotten what it felt like to be around someone else. He knew he wanted a family of his own, and this with the woman he’d fallen madly in love with, a feeling mutually shared, as she’d told him more than once.

  O’Doherty left his old identity behind as the year ended and the final twelve months of that century started. He now had the paperwork for his new name and needed to build up some history. Over two years, he worked a few jobs, opening bank accounts, taking credit cards, all before applying for a passport. The passport was the final checkpoint that he was a new man and that his identity he’d used all the time with Amanda had been fully accepted. Shaun O’Doherty was no more. He had moved on. Now he had his own passport, he could freely travel again––not that he would let on that he had done so before. As far as anyone knew, he’d never travelled much previously, Amanda, the girl he was now living with, was happy to help him explore the world. How little she knew.

  As the millennium approached, tragedy struck. In a motor accident, Amanda was killed instantly. It was three days before New Year.

  Phelan cried himself into the new millennium. Alone and broken-hearted, he had a life with a clean slate and yet no one to spend it with. He was the only one at her funeral. They had no other friends, needed no one; they had each other. He kept the house, having been living there, paying the bills for a few months already. No one seemed to ask anything about it.

  After three months, Phelan knew he needed to change his situation. He applied to Oxford University, and his credentials checked out. He started the September of that year. Having loved and lost––a sad history of which he kept from everyone, as much as the man he’d once been––Phelan graduated, not before meeting Debbie, a woman in the year below, and someone with whom he was soon to be madly in love, the couple planning their wedding for just after he finished. She still had one year left to study.

  He’d got to know her parents a little during their dating days, and he was once again around a family for the first time since his youth, and this time he knew he was different. The man he had once been was gone. The history he once had all but forgotten. He was a new man, a few months away from marriage, getting to know his future in-laws. His own parents had travelled over. They’d already met the future bride and her parents once.

  After both graduating, they set off on something they planned to be a one-year world tour, but after ten months on the road, Debbie fell pregnant, and as she wasn’t doing too well with it, they cut the trip short. They’d tired from the constant moving around by that point anyhow. Having sold the house he owned in London before they left, the couple settled back into life in Oxford, now married, and with a baby on the way.

  It was time to put his education––university wise, not what he had learned on the streets of Dublin––to proper use at last, much to the delight particularly of his in-laws, who were growing a little concerned about their freely moving daughter and her new husband. He’d taken a postdoc position in Oxford, doing a few lectures, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d been around the university too long and wanted a change.

  They offered Phelan several interviews, but one firm took his interest. He’d decided a switch from the academic was needed, and business called. With his brain, education and deep connections––not that he dwelt on the latter anymore––he knew he could make it work in that sector, and he soon found himself fast-tracked through one firm’s recruitment process. It was a choice between him and one other candidate.

  And this was the point at which his life unravelled once more.

  Unknown to Phelan as he sailed through each interview stage, the business group was owned by a Russian. The owner was a man who dug deep into everything and everyone he was ever to work with, and this latest position was to be no different. And there were gaps and anomalies in this potential recruit’s back-story which were inconsistent. For some, that might have thrown out the candidate altogether, but not for Matvey Filipov. Finding something out about someone who worked for him, particularly if it turned out to be hidden, gave Filipov enormous power. He relished such information, to be in such a position.

  What Filipov was about to find out was of a level he’d never come across before. It was almost too much for him but the story checked out and there was the link to Russia, Filipov’s native land even if he had left it as soon as he could. Filipov became fascinated by the young Irishman who’d fallen right into his lap.

  Filipov allowed the interview process to proceed, as usual, with those in the know ordered not to let out the information about Phelan’s past to anybody else. The final interview was to be with Filipov himself. Both candidates were equally strong on paper. However, Filipov had far less on the other candidate. In his eyes, therefore, she was the weaker applicant. Filipov was all for Phelan, this man with a dark history.

  “Tell me why you want to work for my company?” he’d asked Phelan at the beginning of the interview. The Irishman took ten minutes over what was apparently a well-rehearsed and painstakingly researched response, though Filipov let him finish. He needed a man who could think on his feet even if most of what Phelan was saying was probably something he’d memorised just for that discussion. Filipov asked him about his past and marvelled at the story behind the story, something he could have readily believed if he did not know better.

  “Tell me about home life,” Filipov said, bringing Phelan to the present. Filipov had learned all about Amanda, and her death from five years before though he had picked up no reference to her in anything Phelan had discussed regarding his life and experience from the previous half-decade.

  “Home life is perfect. I married my university sweetheart a little over two years ago, and we have a little boy. We just celebrated his first birthday. She turned my world upside down.”

  “I’m sure she did,” Filipov said. He’d looked into Debbie, who was a bright girl and an attractive one.
Filipov knew a thing about attractive women, though for his part was married himself, and happily so. “Did she know Amanda, or did you meet Debbie after that awful accident?”

  There was total and immediate silence for a few seconds, Phelan caught out cold, staring the Russian in the eyes for a while before trying his best to withhold his shock. A million things were racing through Phelan’s mind at that moment, as Filipov could well imagine.

  “Sorry?” Phelan asked, though even that came out weak. Phelan could fool nobody that he knew precisely who Amanda was.

  “One thing you must know about me before you work here is that I always do my homework.” There was another chilling pause in the conversation. Filipov could read right across Phelan’s pained expression as clear as day: how much do you really know about me?

  “Okay, and?” Phelan offered, terrified about what might be about to come out. He was a new man now. Phelan had a stunning wife and son whom he adored. He was an Oxford graduate, legitimately so, got through years of hard study. He now had a family he couldn’t face losing.

  “Everything, Shaun. I know everything about you,” Filipov said, smiling. The mention of Phelan’s former name––as if a shadow from the depths of hell, which to so many, it was––hit Phelan hard in the gut. He physically sank into his seat if that were possible. Yet Filipov was smiling. Phelan had almost missed that. This Russian claimed to know everything about the Irishman sitting in front of him––if Filipov really knew about him, and Phelan’s once-feared reputation, then he should be worried––and yet the Russian seemed pleased with himself.