by Andy Maslen
7
Mission Parameters
“DON, tell Gabriel what we want him to do, would you? I’m gasping for this,” Barbara said, before blowing on the surface of her tea and eyeing both men in turn over the rim of her cup.
Don cleared his throat.
“Agambe’s background is as a leader of the Fifth Brigade. Know who they were?” Gabriel shook his head.
“Basically, a Special Forces unit trained by the North Koreans. Involved in a systematic programme of civilian massacres, torture and internment during the civil war in the eighties. Now he positions himself as a moderate within the party. But it’s a front. You know what politicians are.” He glanced at Barbara, his eyes creasing, brow grooved with worry-lines. “No offence, Barbara.”
“None taken,” she said, her eyes as dark as pooling blood. “Go on.”
“Because he was part of the gang who helped the current president, he can do no wrong. Keeps his seat at every general election, massively popular in the countryside, where his power base is.”
Don stopped for a moment and took a sip of his tea. His eyes flicked up to the ceiling, to the window, then back to Gabriel.
“I don’t understand, Don,” Gabriel said. “Do we really go after elected politicians? Especially ones with a popular mandate? I hear what you’re saying,” he glanced at Barbara, “about the nurses and the SAS boys, and that’s beyond bad, obviously, but it doesn’t seem like business for The Department.”
Barbara spoke again, clinking her teacup down into the saucer in front of her.
“Behind his bluster, the current President actually depends on the UK to keep him in power. Without the aid and international political support we give him, he’d be out on his ear the day after tomorrow. He’s also a rabid anti-communist and that’s strategically very helpful in keeping the Russians out. I . . . we . . . don’t want a bloody missile base or a client state in that part of Africa. Now, can we continue?”
“Yes, of course. Sorry, Don.”
Don smiled. Rubbed his palms on his trousers. Then across his face.
“Agambe’s funnelling aid money to equip his Islamist friends with all manner of tasty military hardware. Meanwhile, people starve. Children go unvaccinated and die of malaria. Schools rot away for lack of maintenance. Stopping him will give us the breathing space we need to pursue the next level down in his little organisation through more conventional means.”
“This is all solid intel?” Gabriel asked, ignoring the glare from Barbara Sutherland.
Don gave a small nod. “MI6 and CIA joint taskforce on southern African terrorism confirmed it all, Old Sport. I’ve seen the report myself.”
“And you want me to stop him?”
“Yes we do. You could make it look like a professional hit. Plenty of Afrikaners to the south would look good for it. Or a street attack. Then you can be on your way across the border to find Smudge.”
“What about that? We’ve not even talked about how I’m going to find him.”
“After this, we’re going across the river to MI6. I’ve got a full briefing assembled for you. We retrieved your last-known coordinates from the extract point, detailed maps, profiles of local warlords and the disposition of their forces. Plus a quartermaster. You two can have a nice little chat about what toys you want. You’ll be flying military so you can take it all with you – none of that diplomatic bag nonsense this time.”
“What about local support?”
“For Zim, you’re on your own, I’m afraid. For Mozambique, we can be a bit more helpful. Army, park rangers, intelligence – whatever you need, it’s all going to be laid on for you. All you need to do is focus on bringing Smudge back.”
Throughout this exchange, Barbara had sat silently, watching, and listening. Every now and then, Gabriel glanced over, expecting her to speak, but she just smiled, her trademark red lipstick a splash of colour as the sky turned darker and hailstones began clicking against the window.
“You know, there probably won’t be much left,” she said. Not unkindly, but there was no mistaking the calculation in her voice. “Not after, how long is it?”
Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyes up tight.
“Four years.”
“I don’t want to be too graphic, but it’s hot, and humid sometimes. Scavengers will have found the poor man. Maybe even treasure-hunters.”
“I know all of that. I know that even if I can find the exact tree where they . . .” Gabriel cleared his throat. “. . . where they left him, there might be nothing left, but at least then I’ll know. I promised his daughter I’d bring her Dad back and I need to be able to look her in the eye and say I tried.”
“Yes you do. Promises mean a lot when you’re thirteen.”
Gabriel looked up sharply. How did Barbara know Nathalie’s age?
“Prime Minister, if there’s nothing else?” Don checked his watch.
“No. You go on, Don. And take my blessings with you, Gabriel. All the way to Mozambique. And back, hopefully.”
8
Tooling Up
ONCE outside, Gabriel turned to Don.
“Is everything OK? You seemed a little sub-par in there. And what’s happened to Barbara? She’s definitely not playing the kissy Yorkshire lass these days is she?”
“Did you bring your car?”
“Yes, it’s over there.”
“Let’s get going and I’ll fill you in on some domestic political issues you should know about.”
Once inside the Maserati, and being waved through the double iron gates by the police, Gabriel asked again.
“So, tell me. What’s going on?”
Don let out a sigh. It sounded as though he were trying to empty his lungs completely.
“There’s going to be a general election soon. Barbara wants another term. But she’s convinced there are people – ‘forces’ she calls them – who are out to get her. She’s on edge and it’s leaking into her relationships with people she ought to have a bit more time for. People like you, Old Sport.”
“And you?”
“Me?” He laughed. “I’m just an old war horse. Not even properly in harness any more. I know The Department sounds like fun, and from your point of view and that of your fellow operatives, it is. Wearing black and bursting in and shooting the bad guys, that has to be better than selling insurance or whatever Civvy Street dishes up to ex-service personnel. But for me? I’m basically an administrator. I have budget meetings, protocol meetings, inter-agency meetings, staff meetings, meetings with my oppo in Langley . . .”
“The CIA know about what you do?”
“Know about it? They helped us set it up. I know I told you it was Wilson, but once our remit went beyond providing a paranoid, lefty prime minister with intel on his cabinet colleagues, the Americans were really useful in developing our methods.”
Gabriel drove across the south side of Parliament Square, passing the House of Commons on his left. A blast on the horn shooed a couple of tourists from the middle of the road where they were attempting to frame a selfie with Big Ben in the background.
“Bloody tourists. Sorry, go on. The Americans?”
“Yes, I have a weekly catchup with a very senior executive in Langley. Usually on a scrambled video link, but occasionally we take turns to fly over and have what he calls ‘face time’.”
“But Christine must prefer you having a safer job? It’s like your driver was saying to me a while back. ‘Home in time for tea.’”
At the mention of his wife, Don’s face clouded over like the darkening sky above them.
“She does. Especially since her stroke.”
“How is she?”
“Doing OK, really. The doctors say she’s made amazing progress for a woman of her age. Still a bit droopy on the left side and using her wheelchair, but she can talk again, and feed herself, so God willing she’ll outlive me yet.”
“Send her my love, won’t you?”
“Of course. Sh
e thinks of you as a son, you know.”
Now it was Gabriel’s turn to sigh.
“She’s the only woman who does, now.”
“I know it’s been tough since your parents died. Christine and I, we really felt for you. Now look lively, we need to take a left for Vauxhall Bridge.”
Gabriel indicated left and pulled round a bus to make the left turn across Vauxhall Bridge from Millbank. Ahead of them, on the left side of the bridge, stood the sand and bottle-green building that housed Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service: MI6. Despite looking like a cross between a 1930s Hollywood mogul’s idea of ‘the factory of the future’ and an Aztec temple, it had withstood an attack from dissident Irish republicans in 2000.
“Where do we get in? I’m guessing there isn’t a big gate with a ‘way in’ sign on it.”
Don chuckled, the first sign that his mood was anything other than black since Gabriel and he had shaken hands inside Number Ten.
“Actually, there is, Old Sport. Just turn left at the lights onto Albert Embankment. It’s on the left just before the end of the building.”
Gabriel did as he was told and, yes, there it was. A forbidding steel gate in a matt green paint that matched the showier frontage facing the Thames. A blue and white ‘IN’ sign sat beside a ‘No cycling’ sign.
Gabriel pointed. “What’s that for? To deter bicycle bombers?”
“Hadn’t you heard? We’re under attack by militant cyclists.”
As the two men bantered, Don pulled out his phone and sent a short text. A second or two later, the railing-topped gates slid sideways from the centre. They were in.
“Now what?” Gabriel said.
“Security like you wouldn’t believe, then we’ll go and see Sam about your toys.”
Twenty minutes later, having been photographed, fingerprinted, retina-scanned and subject to a body cavity search that made him long for the gentle hands of the police officers at Downing Street, Gabriel found himself walking along a bland, white-painted corridor. It was devoid of all visual interruptions, barring regular swipe-card locks, fire alarms, and notices reminding personnel to carry SIS ID at all times and never to let IT software or hardware out of their sight.
“Here we are,” Don said, stopping front of a pair of stainless steel lift doors. Above them was a sign that read, simply, “QM only”.
“Quartermaster?” Gabriel asked.
“In one.”
There was no floor indicator above the doors, but they opened a few moments later with a whisper of changing air pressure.
Inside, the lift was as devoid of decoration as the corridor it opened onto. Observing the behaviour code of lift occupants everywhere, neither man spoke until the doors opened again onto an identical white-painted corridor.
“Come on then,” Don said. “Let’s introduce you to Sam.”
They stopped outside a white-painted door marked with a square of aluminium etched with the letters QM. To the right was a button, which Don pressed for a second.
The door was opened by a person Gabriel took to be an assistant of some kind. She was slightly built, with straight black hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a brown button-through cotton overall of the kind worn by school woodwork teachers. It reached to just above her knees, revealing slender calves that disappeared into a pair of lilac and white Converse baseball boots, their laces replaced with dark purple ribbons. Her face was an almost-perfect heart shape with a sharp chin and a broad, high forehead that was utterly free of wrinkles. And yet, behind her wet-slate-coloured eyes was a wisdom that belied her apparent youth. She smiled at Don, revealing small, even teeth, the canines crossing slightly in front of the incisors.
“Hello Don, brought your boy to see me, have you?” she said, stretching up to plant a light kiss on Don’s cheek.
Don smiled back. “Hello, Sam. This is Gabriel Wolfe. Best soldier I ever had under my command.”
She turned to Gabriel, appraising him with a single look that swept up from his feet to the top of his head, lingering for a moment on the scar on his left cheek.
“Doctor Samantha Flack. But you can call me Sam.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, shooting Don a look. “Sam”.
Her eyes twinkled. “Don been playing games again, has he?”
“He always did like to test me. See what assumptions I’d leap to. Got me again, I’m afraid.”
“You’re not the first, and I dare say you won’t be the last. Now, come in to my domain and let’s see about kitting you out, shall we?”
Sam led the two men over to a steel-topped bench. Dominating the scratched surface was a selection of handguns: Berettas, Glocks and SIGs. Then there were the edged weapons: everything from tactical blades to flick-knives. There were coils of wire; steel cylinders six inches long and half an inch in diameter; and dull, charcoal-grey plastic boxes the size of cigarette packets. At one end was a weapon Gabriel had last used on active service in Northern Ireland: a Heckler & Koch MP5K sub-machine gun, little more than a foot long, its stock removed and its barrel shortened to make it a practical option for concealing inside a jacket.
“Nice,” was all Gabriel said.
“Indeed,” Sam replied. “I know how much you boys – and increasingly, girls – like your toys. If you want anything extra – assault rifle, maybe – do say, won’t you?”
Gabriel looked at the woman again, embarrassed at his initial assumption that somebody else, probably a grizzled ex-Army weapons instructor, or bearded scientist-type would be the boss. Her hair, which he had at first taken to be as solidly black as his own, carried threads of silver. And there were fans of fine lines radiating out from the corners of her eyes. Yet she didn’t look older than thirty or thirty-five, despite the remote possibility anybody that young could have risen to such a key position within the Service.
“Tune out for a moment, did you, Old Sport?” Don said, with a grin. “Checking out the good Doctor, were we?”
“It’s OK, Gabriel,” Sam said. “It’s a little game we play. To reassure you, I’m well past my fortieth birthday and I know my API-blowback from my roller-delayed weapons.”
Gabriel swept a hand over his scalp. “Sorry, Sam. Residual sexism, I’m afraid. What’s your doctorate in?”
“Effects of meditation and other eastern mindfulness techniques on resistance to torture,” she whispered, leaning closer. “The practicals were huge fun.”
She stared into his eyes.
He blinked first.
Sam broke the spell with a burst of laughter. “Oh, dear, not really in our comfort zone are we? Come on, let’s have some fun with your new toys before we ship them out to your departure point. Grab a couple of the pistols, would you, Gabriel? You too, Don.”
With each of them carrying two pistols apiece, like desperadoes ready to rob a train, Gabriel, Sam and Don walked to the far end of the room where a door led to a shooting range.
A bench ran along the complete width of the narrow range, except for a gap at the far end. Unlike the police and army ranges Gabriel had practised in, this bench had no partitions to separate shooters from one another.
At the far end of the room, perhaps forty feet away and mounted on thin metal frames, was a series of paper targets printed with imaginary assailants. These were not simple black silhouettes, or even cartoonish bad guys with sunglasses, brandishing improbably large handguns. Instead, they depicted a human frame from head to mid-thigh rendered in a bright yellow, with the skeleton superimposed in blue as if X-rayed. Picked out in orange were areas over the heart, the brain and the two wings of the pelvis.
“We call him Pablo,” Sam said. “After Pablo Escobar. The Medellin cartel boss? Much more efficient as a training aid than the older-style targets. Depending on the mission parameters, body armour, concealment, bodyguards and so on, you can opt for different shots from kill to disablement. I’m partial to a pelvic put-down myself. Hit the ball-and-socket joint at the top of the femur and flop, down goes your man like a
rag doll.”
They lined up at the bench. Two pistols in front of each them. Sam left briefly, reappeared with several boxes of ammunition, and started scooping rounds out and piling them in front of Don and Gabriel.
“Standard ball, hollow-point, and my little babies on the right,” she said.
Gabriel felt sure he should ask about Sam’s little babies. “And they would be?”
“Depleted uranium; DU in the trade. You need to aim high because the weight pulls the trajectory down. But they’ll go through steel plate half an inch thick. We’ve modified the propellant and the cartridge cases to deliver the extra oomph they need, so the recoil’s a little cheeky, but if you’re holding it properly, you should be fine. Only had one broken wrist since we developed them.”
Gabriel frowned. He wasn’t sure if she was joking and was beginning to realise that people underestimated Sam at their peril. Particularly if they were one of the bad guys.
“Standard ball first, gentlemen. In your Glocks, I’d suggest. Load and fire at will. Ear defenders on the wall behind you.”
They each loaded the pistols, pulled the red plastic ear defenders down over their heads and levelled their weapons.
9
DU Rounds
GABRIEL stilled his breathing, and let his pulse drop to around fifty. Focused on the highlighted brain on his target.
Waited for a gap between heartbeats and squeezed off two rounds.
To his left and right, Sam and Don had begun shooting too, and even through the foam-insulated cans, the noise of three semi-automatic, 9 mm pistols firing in such a confined space was deafening.
Next, Gabriel aimed for the heart and sent three more rounds down the range, adjusting his aim as the Glock 17 bucked in his hands.
The hips next, three rounds apiece.
They carried on firing until each magazine was emptied. The air reeked of burnt cordite and the hot brass of the ejected cartridge cases that plinked and rattled as they hit the steel bench and the concrete floor. Then Sam pressed a button on the wall behind her to bring the targets, or what was left of them, swinging up towards them on ceiling-mounted wires.
