Brute Force

by Andy McNab

  I reached a junction and glanced to the left. Mansour was seventy-five metres away by a wrought-iron gate set into a high wall. He stood in a pool of bright sunlight, busy with a set of keys.

  I slipped behind a tree and pored over my map until I heard the clang of the gate behind him. I stepped back onto the pavement and did a walk-past.

  The wall was three metres high with broken glass set into the cement along its top. I glanced through the gate. The house – an old villa – stood in a lush, well-watered garden about six metres back from the street. It looked like a wedding cake, with white walls and pink window surrounds. I couldn't see the lower floor, but the windows on the upper two levels were securely barred.

  A large satellite dish was mounted between a couple of balconies on the first floor. There was no immediate sign of motion sensors, alarms, CCTV or proximity lighting, but I didn't really expect any. Mansour had carried clout in military intelligence, and the locals knew it. The mob at the bath house had parted like the Red Sea for Moses. Everyone for miles around would know not to fuck with him. The lack of electronic defences could mean there were dogs roaming the grounds, or men in black leather jackets in the basement – but if he had bodyguards, they hadn't accompanied him to the hammam.

  We didn't have a phone number for him and we couldn't risk just ringing the bell at the gate: if he wasn't in the mood to repay the debt he owed Lynn, we'd be fucked. The only plan I could come up with was to break in and grip him; there was no other way.

  Palm trees circled the front and the side of the house. A creeper ran rampant up the right-hand wall. It would all provide valuable cover. I didn't have a clue how we were going to get in. I wouldn't be able to recce the locks on the gate until after last light.

  I carried on walking. The house next door was a building site, another three-storey villa being pulled apart before being put back together again.

  87

  2212 hrs

  'How are we going to do it?'

  There was an edge to Lynn's voice. He almost sounded excited.

  We were looking into the garden of Mansour's house from a second-floor window in the building site. The windows had been stripped of their frames, all the wiring had been pulled out of the walls, light switches and power sockets had been removed. The place was a shell.

  The front of Mansour's house was shielded by pull-down blinds, but there were plenty of lights on at the back: in the hallway on the ground floor, in what was probably a sitting room off the hallway on our side of the house, and in what was clearly a kitchen.

  'Don't know yet. Wait.'

  There was movement behind the kitchen window, and I could see that Mansour wasn't alone. Through the bug-screen on the kitchen window, in the glare of an unprotected strip-light, disembodied hands were preparing food.

  I nudged Lynn. 'Is Mansour married?'

  'He was married. We knew she was receiving treatment for cancer in Riyadh when Mansour was in London. She died around the time of the Lockerbie settlement.'

  Staring out across Mansour's lush garden, looking at his big fuck-off house, remembering the cut of his suit, hearing that his wife had received expensive cancer treatment in Riyadh . . . none of this seemed to gel with the profile of a public servant living out his retirement.

  Lynn's take on this had been that Mansour had either skimmed off a few quid from the arms deals he negotiated with the Soviets, or he'd been given an unofficial thank-you present by Gaddafi after Lockerbie for making things sweet with the Brits and Americans.

  Lynn watched through the binos as the owner of the hands revealed himself to be a boy in a gelabaya. He busied himself with some drying up.

  'I'd say that the house-boy is Pakistani – Indian or Sri Lankan maybe. No Libyan I met here ever employed another Libyan, for fear they'd kiss and tell.'

  I had other concerns. 'Will he have weapons?'

  'Expect handguns – one in the bedroom and at least one elsewhere. They love cash. Mansour will have a bag of dollars hidden away, in case he has to make himself scarce.'

  There was no street lighting so the garden remained largely in shadow. The light from the sitting room fell across a welltended lawn, maintained by a sprinkler, which was switched off but visible in the middle of the garden. There was plenty of barking from around the neighbourhood, but none from down below, and I didn't see any turds on the grass. Things were looking up.

  The only other sounds were distant traffic, the odd car on the street and an occasional aircraft taking off from Tripoli International a few Ks away.

  A shadow moved behind the blinds at the front of the house. The kid was still in and out of the kitchen – worked off his feet. It was close to midnight by the time the light was switched off.

  I waited. The boy didn't exit via the front door, as I expected. Instead, there was a creak from the back and a second later an outside light went on, spilling down a set of steps and some bins between the back of the house and the wall. There was a shriek of metal-on-metal, the tell-tale protest of a rusty hinge, as the boy paused to lift the lid on one of the bins, dropped a sack of rubbish into it, then turned and headed towards the gate.

  So the kitchen quarters at the back of the house had their own separate entrance – and an outside light with a motion sensor.

  I heard the click of the lock and saw the gate swing inwards.

  If Mansour had ever rigged a light-sensor to the gate it was broken, or the bulb was, because it never triggered as the boy moved through it. The lights over the front door never picked him up either, which meant the sensors were angled inwards, specifically to cover the entrance. The ground from the side of the house to the gate was unmonitored by any kind of surveillance. Even better, the gate was fitted with a lever-lock: opened by a key from the outside, a latch on the inside.

  I turned to Lynn. 'Here's the plan. You're going to help me over the wall and then come back here. I'm going to lie low in the garden for a bit and see what else I can pick up inside the house. When Mansour heads for bed, I'll open the gate and let you in. Keep watching me and I'll signal you. As soon as you see it, make your move. OK? Once I let you in, sit tight, watch what I do and do what I say. Got it?'

  His eyes gleamed. His jaw tightened and jutted. The fucker really was enjoying this. Maybe he relished being back in the world of spookery. Maybe it helped keep his mind off Caroline, and the life he thought he should have given her. It must surely have beaten the hell out of mushroom farming.

  The lights in the front of the house were still burning brightly. I couldn't be sure, because I'd seen no movement behind the blinds for at least forty minutes, but I was almost positive Mansour was still on the ground floor. I'd been monitoring the window on the stairs, and no one had moved past it. It was conceivable that he had guests or bodyguards, but I'd been watching the boy prepare the food and, from the quantity, I was pretty sure he was on his own.

  It was coming up to 12.30. I needed to get moving. The best moment to enter the house was within an hour and a half of lights-out – the time when Mansour, like the rest of us, entered the deepest period of his night's sleep.

  I picked up a plastic carrier bag and part-filled it with builder's sand. 'OK, let's roll.'

  88

  Lynn and I moved downstairs and took up position by the wall.

  I checked my pockets and handed Lynn my day sack. I put my mouth to his ear. 'Brace yourself against the wall. I need to stand on your shoulders.'

  I climbed up, wobbling as Lynn found his balance. I edged my head slowly over the top.

  The sounds of the city filled the night air. Everything was as I'd last seen it from the building site – the lights blazing from the front rooms, the rest of it quiet.

  I pulled the knife from the side pocket of my cargoes and got to work, chipping away carefully at the cement on top of the wall. As I'd hoped, it was old, dry and loose. As each piece of glass came free, I placed it in the sand-filled carrier bag to deaden the sound.

  It took me no mor
e than ten minutes to clear enough space for my knees and feet. I hauled myself onto the wall, handed Lynn the bag and then lowered myself down the other side. The earth was still soft from the sprinkler.

  Crouching low, I stopped and listened. A dog was barking further down the street – too far away to have heard me, but I stayed still until it stopped. Then I ran half-crouching to the cover of a palm tree and a group of immaculately sculpted bushes at the centre of the lawn.

  I waited. Ten minutes later, the lights went out in the sitting room.

  I checked my luminous dial. It was coming up for one o'clock. I glanced up as a shadow moved past the window on the stairs. At long last, the target was heading for bed. I waited another couple of minutes, then, keeping low, retraced the lad's route down the path along the side of the house until I was beside the kitchen window.

  Two aircraft flew over in quick succession and I tracked their winking navigation lights against the stars as they headed out over the Mediterranean.

  Eventually, at 1.45, Mansour must have grown tired of his bedtime reading and flicked off the light.

  I gave it another forty minutes, then moved back out to a point on the lawn where Lynn could see me. I gestured for him to make his way to the gate.

  Making sure that I stuck to the same line as the house-boy, I crept along the path, pressed myself into the shadows, and waited till I heard breathing on the other side of the gate. I double-checked it was Lynn then eased back the bolt of the lever-lock until it was clear of the restraining catch. Having heard the creak as the boy went out, I didn't rush the business of opening it.

  Two minutes later Lynn was standing next to me, the gate firmly closed behind us.

  At 2.37 by my watch, we were both standing in front of the kitchen window. I moved my mouth to his ear again. 'Hands and knees this time.'

  I pulled the knife from my cargoes. Standing on Lynn's back, I started to remove the four screws holding the bug-screen in place. They took me less than a minute each. As soon as I'd finished, I hid the screen in the bushes and dragged us both into the shadows.

  I put my finger to my lips and pointed to the front left-hand corner of the house, where, by now, Mansour was hopefully asleep.

  I caught the sound I was hoping to hear – distant, but unmistakable and growing in intensity.

  I nudged Lynn and gestured for him to get over to the window and assume the position.

  While the aircraft was still some distance away, I got to work with the knife, slipping it between the gap in the sash window and jiggling it until the tip pressed against the latch. I then waited until the plane was almost overhead before I exerted any pressure.

  I pushed, gradually increasing the weight behind the hilt, until the spring-loaded mechanism gave.

  I hoped that the click had been muffled by the sound of the airliner's four turbofans as they powered it up towards cruise altitude.

  When the sound of the plane built to a crescendo, I raised the lower window. As soon as I'd got eighteen inches of clearance I slid part-way across the sill so that my upper body was balanced on the tiled work surface the other side.

  Half in, half out, I moved quickly to clear a space. Just to my right were a sink and a draining board with some pots and pans on it. There was some kind of tea urn on my left, which I eased out of the way. Then, with the sound of the plane's engines still crackling in the distance, I swung my legs across the sill and dropped onto the floor of Mansour's kitchen.

  89

  I stayed perfectly still, letting the aircraft vanish over the Med, until all I could hear was the ticking of the battery-powered wall-clock and the soft hum of the fridge.

  The white walls and ceiling picked up the little available light from outside. As my eyes adjusted, I was able to make out the more obvious details of the room. It was large, about six metres by ten, and entirely functional. Apart from the fridge, there was a cooker, a small table and some wall-mounted cupboards. The air was tinged with the smell of drains, grease and stale cooking. A handful of cockroaches scurried across the floor.

  I edged towards the door, grasped the handle and twisted. Through the gap, I saw a passage leading into a large, open hall. Beyond it was the front door, flanked on either side by a tall strip of window. There was no carpet. Good; no pressure-pad. I knelt and touched the floor. It was tiled. Good; it wouldn't creak.

  I stepped through. I made out tables with large objects sitting on them, and a series of less distinct shapes low down where the floor met the wall. I bent and touched one of them. It was a stone pillar around a metre high.

  To my left, door open, was the sitting room. The dining room was on my right.

  I was soon facing a wide, sweeping staircase. As my eyes adjusted to the ambient light I could see it split at mezzanine level – one half going right, the other left. I knelt and let my hand brush the bottom step. Tiled again.

  I moved to the sitting-room door. No LEDs blinked on the walls or in the corners.

  I moved inside. A large flatscreen TV was mounted on the opposite wall. And between the two windows was another stone pillar, several feet taller than the ones I'd just seen in the hallway. On top of it I could make out a life-sized bust. It was eerie in the half-light – like somebody was watching my every move.

  As I turned back towards the hall I caught a glint from a table next to one of the large armchairs. I moved closer. A bottle. And next to it a tall glass. I gave it a sniff. Scotch. More good news: the target would be sleeping a little heavier tonight.

  I crept up to the front entrance and ran my fingers down the crack between the jamb and the edge of the door. There was a chain, which I removed, and two bolts, top and bottom, which I undid. If everything went to rat shit, I now had a choice of exits.

  90

  I climbed the stairs slowly, following the right-hand sweep. A couple of steps below the top, I stopped.

  I had heard a mumble. I stopped breathing, moving.

  The background noise was still there – but what I had heard had come from inside the house.

  Light streamed in through a window at the top of the stairs – starlight topped up by the thin sickle of the new moon: enough to reveal another window at the end of the long corridor and the two doors leading off the top of the stairs, left and right.

  I moved into the shadows by the wall and listened, the fingers of my right hand wrapped hard around the knife.

  I heard it again: the rasp of a whispered order. It had been close, but wasn't getting closer. I had to go forward and find out, or we'd be standing off all night.

  When I reached the top of the stairs I allowed myself to start breathing again. Through a crack in the door to my left – the door that opened onto Mansour's bedroom – I could see the flicker of a TV.

  I knelt and let my hand brush the floor. It wasn't stone or marble, but at least it was parquet; better than floorboards.

  I straightened and took stock. Mansour's bedroom door was to my left, a couple of metres from the top of the stairs.

  The sound of his laboured breathing punctuated the waffle on the TV. Whatever he'd been watching, it was in English, because I could make out the odd word.

  I stepped out onto the parquet and put my ear to the crack between the door and the frame. Mansour's breathing hadn't altered. I eased the door open. It swung soundlessly on its hinges.

  Mansour's bed was against the wall to my left. Directly ahead of it, to my right, was a built-in wardrobe. One door was open to expose the screen of the TV. Mansour had been watching some eighties American cop show.