by A P Bateman
Caroline tossed the pistol off the cliff and into the lake, then hobbled the last few feet to the helicopter, the rotor wash billowing up her headscarf and her mousey blonde hair across her face. She opened the door and slid onto the seat, removing the headscarf completely and smoothing her hair back before putting on the headset and shutting out the terrific noise of the spinning rotor blades.
“Your taxi to Switzerland awaits, Miss Darby,” Flymo joked playfully. The helicopter lifted and set forward before she got the harness on, dropping down off the edge of the cliff, where he settled it at fifty feet and powered out across the water.
“I’m certainly pleased to see you,” she commented with relief. The gunshot had alerted Big Dave and he had made the call to Flymo, who had been flying a lazy circle a couple of miles to the south. She had spent most of her savings on hiring the helicopter in Switzerland, but Flymo had been glad to travel out and provide his services free of charge. He had fastened some white tape over part of the registration to corrupt the numbers and would land and remove it once they were out of Italy. She would not meet back with the team, her flight from Geneva to London was scheduled to leave in just over three hours and she already had a connecting flight booked for Poole in Dorset. Giuseppe Fortez had been a killer. From the moment Ramsay had told her about the contract on King, she knew there was only one way it could be settled. She imagined the team in disarray. Big Dave had known her intention from the start and had collaborated with her throughout, and right now he would be heading south in a hired Fiat where he had a flight booked from Pisa to Dusseldorf and planned to lie low for a week or so. Caroline had asked him what was waiting for him in Dusseldorf, and he had simply told her that he had never tried curried bratwurst, fast becoming the national dish. He hadn’t decided whether he would return to London and continue to work with MI5, although he had doubted that would be an option after her handiwork at the villa.
Caroline was sure that Neil Ramsay would come around. They had been through a lot together. Captain Durand would be on the same page and likely help concoct a story with Ramsay when they got clear and had time to revaluate. Milo Noventa would be the link between them, and it wouldn’t be a stretch for the investigating officers to think that whoever killed Noventa had killed Fortez, and that it concerned dark web dealings or payback for a mafia boss’ earlier life. Ramsay would be capable of leaving the relevant traces for an investigating team to discover. Which just left Sally-Anne Thorpe. Caroline knew that Thorpe would not condone what she had done. There was too much police officer in her for that. Part of her imagined the woman on a personal vendetta, blowing the whistle on MI5 and outing rogue agents such as Caroline. But it wouldn’t be that easy for her. And Caroline was damned if she would make it so. She glanced at the pair of crutches beside her. “Did you bring the box?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s in the back. I’ve got the parcel tape and bag you asked for as well,” Flymo replied as he gained height and headed for the alpine range of snow-capped mountains ahead of them.
Caroline smiled. Big Dave had met with Flymo further south on the lake and handed him the original box the crutch had been sent in. Thorpe’s DNA and fingerprints were on the crutch as well as the box, and especially the tape she had used her nail on to cut a slit in whilst opening the box. The woman had thought in helping Caroline unpack it, she had taken up the offering of an olive branch, but Caroline had been in the game long enough to remain a step or two ahead. She’d give Thorpe a call when she landed and let her know that the weapon used in an assassination had her prints and DNA all over it, and that the box had her prints on, too. CCTV at the post office would show Thorpe collecting the parcel, while the CCTV at Fortez’ villa would show a woman of athletic build - the same height, weight and build as Thorpe - the colour of her hair hidden by a headscarf. Pertinent to these facts, Caroline had not handled either the weapon or the box without the thin pair of linen gloves she now wore. Once they landed at Geneva, she would slip the box in a parcel bag and seal it, and then Flymo would take it to the storage facility just outside the airport and store it in the locker she had paid for and would continue to pay for monthly on her credit card. Just twenty euros a month for complete peace of mind.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Barents Sea
The feeling was slowly coming back to him, his limbs burning as they warmed and his lungs feeling as though he’d been hung up and turned into a punchbag. He looked at Rashid, resting in the same manner as himself, sitting in the hull of the boat with his back propped up against the bolster of the seat.
“I bloody hate swimming at the best of times,” said Rashid.
“I’m going off it a bit as well…” King replied. “Thanks, by the way. That felt a bit too close…” He twisted around, caught hold of the seat and pulled himself up. It seemed to take all of his strength and energy. He took two of the chemical handwarmers that he had bought back in Longyearbyen out of his pocket, snapped them sharply to start the chemical reaction and handed them to Rashid. They were already hot in his hand by the time Rashid gratefully took them from him. “It’s come to me, now.”
“What has?” Rashid shrugged it off and pulled himself up as well. He tucked the handwarmers inside his jacket and watched as King snapped two more and tucked them into his inside pockets. He then turned his attention to the case beside him and carefully lifted out the charges and underwater detonation cord. He was warming quickly, the marvellous devices feeling like two hot water bottles inside his jacket.
“That man Newman.”
“You know him for sure?”
King nodded. “Last year, the whole Cole thing, the fallout from the Willard Standing affair. That guy was with Rachel Beam in the CCTV taken from the service station. He slotted Cole and then he killed her, too. A nice tidy end for the CIA to get us all back on side again.”
Rashid nodded. “What are you going to do?”
King shrugged. “I set Beam up good and proper to get to Standing, but she shouldn’t have been killed over it. Newman must have fooled her into helping him get to me, but in fact he was hunting Cole all along to draw a line under the tit-for-tat between us and the CIA.”
“He doesn’t have an engine, he’s not going anywhere.” Rashid shrugged. “The ocean is a dangerous place, especially at these temperatures.”
“We’ll see. I don’t particularly want to spark another thing between us and the CIA again, but I don’t like the way that man Newman works.”
“Some would say the same about you, my friend,” Rashid paused. “You aren’t exactly subtle.”
“We have a clear signal,” Madeleine announced. “One-hundred and fifty metres depth, twenty-knots and heading North-East.”
Grainger looked at the depth finder on the console. “We have an undulated seabed and two-hundred metres of depth in total. That’s why the sub’s kept to that depth. I know that three miles north-east of here, the depth goes way down. There’s a deep channel that funnels various currents, including the Gulfstream into a tremendous current through the Northern Sea Route.”
“How deep does it get?” asked King pensively.
“Beyond the scope of that tracking device,” Grainger replied glibly. “Whatever you’re going to do, you’ve got less than three miles to do it in…”
Rashid picked up a charge and studied it. It was heavy, five kilogrammes and the size of a family-sized cereal box. “These are not standard,” he commented.
“They have been prepared by Royal Ordnance. The wrapping is waterproof and the det cord is for underwater demolition use,” King informed him. “The charges have a non-return rubber seal through which to feed an RDX detonator and cord.”
“Initiation?”
“Electronic timers. They have a waterproof housing but unless we get the calculations right, then we could miss by a hundred metres or more.”
“The anchors are approximately five kilos in weight,” said Madeleine. “Grainger and I have worked out sink rate of those, addi
ng five kilos will be relatively simple to calculate. It’s more to do with mass than weight when calculating how something sinks.” She took out her smartphone and opened the calculator app. “The charge should reach one hundred and fifty metres depth in thirty-seven seconds. So, if you want to hit the sub travelling at twenty knots, we need to get approximately three-hundred and twelve metres ahead of it. But if we can be sure of reaching it at a speed of thirty knots, then we need to be in the ballpark of five hundred metres, which allows for the submarine’s speed of travel.”
“Approximately and ballpark?” King asked incredulously, as he attached the detonator cord to the RDX detonator and pushed it through the rubber seal.
“Give or take,” she replied. But it’s a large vessel, longer than a jumbo jet, and the variables are better for a shorter distance as it will still land on top of it, whereas if you drop too early, it will miss, and the submarine will sail over the charge.” Madeleine paused. “Is the underside of a submarine softer or harder than the top of the hull?”
“I wish I knew,” King replied lamely. “I was briefed to attach the charges to the side as there is a seam and it’s the weakest spot. The idea being that it split open like a peeled banana.”
“You were always going to blow it up?” she asked. “Why?”
King shrugged. “Not this one, another… It’s complicated…”
“Hardly,” she retorted. “You were sent to blow up your own submarine? Jesus, this is why I steer clear of politics.”
“It would be better for you if you could forget you heard anything and don’t ask anything else,” Rashid replied, giving her a wink.
“Great…” she sighed, exasperated.
King taped each charge to an anchor with the lengths of Velcro from his kit, then wrapped the chain around and tucked the loose end of chain through itself to make a knot. Rashid followed suit, and they attached the electronic timers, setting the first three to thirty-three, thirty-five and thirty-seven seconds, respectively.
“The only problem I can see is that after the first explosion, they’ll change their course,” said King.
“Really? That’s the only problem you envisage?” Rashid countered in good humour. “They could zig-zag, adjust their depth or speed.” He paused. “Or of course, just send a bloody torpedo or two up to us to round off a pretty shitty day…”
“Okay, well all of that, then,” King shrugged. “It sounded better in my head.”
“What if the nuclear reactor is damaged?” Madeleine asked.
“It’s a diesel submarine,” King replied. “It works by a diesel generator system charging an electric motor. Even if it was a nuclear-powered sub, it would still only meltdown, it would never explode.”
“Tell that to the crew of the Kursk,” Madeleine replied.
“Perhaps our subs are better than the Russian’s subs.”
“But the warheads, then?” she protested.
“They wouldn’t explode either, not even in the event of them being blown up directly. The thermonuclear detonation can only initiate in a three-stage process.”
“Well, as a committed marine biologist, I’m not comfortable with blowing up a submarine in a UNESCO World Heritage environmental zone.” She paused. “But I’m guessing from all of this, there isn’t much choice?”
“The Iranians have stolen some British cruise missiles, or at the very least, the warheads inside. Those missiles are armed with illegally installed dial-a-yield nuclear warheads. Believe it or not, treaties and conventions dictate the way in which nuclear weapons can be used. The Iranian threat with those warheads in their possession is bad enough, but they’re about to drop a few off to North Korea when they get the chance, so no. Nothing else is springing to mind.” King picked up the first charge and said to Grainger, “Okay, so to get us approximately three hundred and twelve metres ahead of the submarine when we drop the charges, we need to get five-hundred metres ahead of a blip on Madeleine’s laptop.”
Grainger shook his head. “The GPS doesn’t make such small calculations,” he said. “I won’t know if we’re four-hundred or approaching five-hundred metres ahead.”
“Shit…” King frowned, looking at the screen.
“What about these buoys?” Rashid suggested. “They’re about the size of a man’s head. Drop them out one at a time, and I’ll tell you if we’re five hundred metres away.” He shrugged and looked confidently at King. “I can do it.”
“You’ll barely be able to see them without a scope.”
“They’re brightly coloured and the sea and sky are grey. I can do it.”
King looked at the buoys, then back at his friend. He knew that if anyone could judge that sort of distance, then it would be Rashid. “Do it…” He looked at Grainger. “Are we over them now?”
“Yes.”
King turned to Rashid. “Drop the buoy!” He then looked to Grainger. “Hit it! Thirty knots!”
Madeleine kept her eyes on the screen. “Keep on that course,” she said. “No change…”
King readied the first charge. It seemed like an age for the boat to get a five-hundred metre advantage, but Rashid raised his arm and lowered it quickly as if starting a race.
“Five-hundred!” Rashid shouted.
King tossed out the first charge. He bent down and picked up another, then dropped it as he had the first. “Keep on this heading but slow to fifteen knots,” he told Grainger.
“Why not drop another?” asked Madeleine, not taking her eyes off the screen.
“We might be wrong. We only have four more and it’s going to take at least two to damage that hull, and they’re going to have to get pretty damned close.”
The explosions came one after another. Even at a depth of one-hundred and fifty metres, two large plumes of water cascaded high into the air, spraying them with a fine, icy cold mist.
“Bang on!” Madeleine exclaimed. “Right on top of the beacon!”
“It’s impossible to know if it has been damaged!” Rashid shouted. “We need to hit them again!”
“Only a mile until they enter the channel and then they can dive!” Grainger exclaimed.
“And they’ll know that,” said King. “But they need to escape, and they need to use the Northern Sea Route. They won’t risk deviating. Once they hit the channel they’ll go deep. But they will stay on course.” He paused. “So, we do it again, with everything we’ve got!”
“But if we miss…” Rashid started.
“Then we bloody well miss!” King snapped. “We need to stop that sub, and we can only do it if we unload on them.” He paused, glancing at Madeleine. “What’s the beacon telling us?”
“They’re on the same course, speed is increasing to twenty-five knots,” Madeleine replied.
“Grainger, get to thirty-five knots, continue on the same heading. Rashid launch a buoy and you’d better pray you’ve got your eye in…” King readied the other charges. He still had the one set for thirty-seven seconds, and he shrugged as he set the next two for the same time and the other three for thirty-five, thirty and twenty-six seconds, respectively. Like spreading bets on a roulette table. The science of blind luck. “Madeleine, how’s the course?”
“The same.”
“The channel is fast approaching…” Grainger informed them.
“I reckon we’re four hundred metres from the buoy.” Rashid paused. “Four-twenty…”
“Course?” King asked.
“Steady,” replied Madeleine.
“Four-forty…”
“Let’s give them five-fifty to account for their increase in speed,” King looked at Rashid and shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Approaching five hundred…” Rashid said, squinting at the buoy. He raised his hand. “Five-fifty!” He dropped his hand as if launching two drag racers off the line, then threw himself across the boat to help lift the charges for King.
King armed the first charge and tossed it over the side. He took the rest of the charges from Rashid
, repeated the process three more times then stood up, breathless from the cold, the exertion and adrenalin. “Slow down to ten knots and keep the course steady…” he said to Grainger.
“We need to,” Grainger replied. “We’ve barely got enough fuel to get back to the rigs…”
Grainger was cut off by the first explosion, which was quickly followed by the second. Plumes of water spewed into the air like geysers. But the third charge sounded hollow and rumbled, the surface bubbling rather than sending up a plume of spray. The fourth charge exploded, again sounding hollow and was followed by a muffled ‘thud’, which reverberated through them and strangely, without rocking the boat.
King said, “Kill the revs…” He paused. “Explosions take the path of least resistance, no plumes would indicate two direct hits…” He stared at the ocean’s surface, where large pockets of air bubbled up and popped on the surface, each one the size of a beachball. He turned his eyes to Madeleine’s laptop, but there was no ‘blip’ displaying the submarine. Which could merely have meant the tracker had been destroyed. He looked at the GPS and made a note of the coordinates. When he looked back at the surface there were a few lifejackets floating, empty plastic bottles and strangely, a metal teapot with its lid still fastened in place.
“We got it!” Madeleine exclaimed. “I can’t believe we got it!”
“So, it would seem,” Grainger said somewhat subduedly.
“Forgive me if I don’t cheer,” Rashid commented, his voice seeming to echo in the stillness.
King watched the jetsam rolling in the gentle swell. The lifejackets afloat, while their loose straps drifted lazily beneath the surface like the tendrils of a shoal of yellow jellyfish. Calming and serene. “Hollowest victory I’ve ever had…” he said quietly.
