I moved her hand and tapped on a tree symbol. ‘I swing round west and come in through the woods, ending up at this point below the front of the house.’
Ringo leaned over the map. ‘Maybe I should play sniper.’
I shook my head. ‘You might be a better skier than me, but you’re a shit shot.’
‘If you smash into a tree it won’t matter how good your eye is,’ he smirked at Lennon, ‘no offence.’ He looked back at me. ‘I think you’re scared of getting your hands dirty.’
Lennon looked livid. ‘He may be a lot of things, but scared is not one of them.’
I gave her a little nod of thanks, sat back, picked up my cup of tea. ‘Besides, if I do hit a tree you can all walk away.’
‘And miss out on the rest of the money?’ McCartney sparked up a cigarette and looked at the others. ‘It’s Tyler’s show, let him try it.’
Ringo shook his head. ‘They’re risks we don’t need to take, man.’
‘Like he said, it’s my show.’ I picked up a Sharpie and drew a cross through a photograph of their head of security smoking on the decking outside the chalet. ‘Once Bono is down you move in.’
‘Via the front door,’ Ringo said, ‘where the real action is.’
McCartney blew smoke up into the beams. ‘Then I’m through the roof window, incapacitate the target, hold the bedroom until the cavalry arrives.’
‘This is the point the shit hits the fan,’ said Ringo, looking at me. ‘So you better be damn quick on the trigger.’
‘You just worry about the entry, let me take care of the rest.’
Lennon cleared her throat. ‘At the signal I drive from the layby here,’ she said, tracing a finger along the road, ‘up to the house, waiting on the driveway on the east side.’
I nodded. ‘McCartney and Ringo get the target in the boot, you guys drive down and meet me outside the village. Then it’s west in the Porsche, La Rochelle or bust.’
‘Shame we can’t head to my place near Geneva,’ Ringo said.
He hadn’t shut up bragging about his house on the bloody lake. ‘We can’t afford to stop moving,’ I said. ‘We run straight for the coast.’
Lennon smiled. ‘Tomorrow night, then.’
I stood and walked to the window, looking down towards the target chalet. ‘Easy money.’
Chapter Eighteen
Tiburon
Miller was unhappy, ranting that I’d brought a murderer on board. Never mind that his crew were the flotsam found drifting in French ports, and that the murderer was more likely to be one of them – especially with a million euros on the table. He did have a point, the three I’d brought along were killers for hire – but they’d be shooting themselves in the foot pulling this.
‘Who has a key to this cabin?’ I asked, stopping his rant mid-flow.
He didn’t even need to think about it, eyes flicking to the shelf by the door. ‘There’s only one key.’
I’d locked the door and taken the key with me when I’d been called to the saloon. Fields and King had been on guard outside until I’d returned.
‘It’s your fella,’ said Miller, his train of thought mirroring mine. ‘The big guy.’
‘Fields?’
‘Him or King.’ He saw my expression and added, ‘A million euros, man. Wicked tempting. When did you leave the room?’
‘Only when you called me to the saloon. Been in here the rest of the time.’
‘There you go, then. Doc, go fetch Sébastien and Vincent, make sure they’re tooled up.’ He looked at me. ‘We need to detain your people. All three of them.’
‘Wait, Doc,’ I grabbed his arm. ‘I’m sure King’s not involved, he must have left Fields alone. Let’s ask him when he gets back, before stirring any hornets’ nests.’
‘When he gets back?’ Miller looked puzzled, looking round as if noticing for the first time there were only three of us in the room. Alive, anyway. ‘Where is he?’
‘He went to fetch you after rousing me,’ said Doc, looking at Miller.
‘Yeah, he came up to bridge to get me. Said he was making his way back to his room while I waited for Katanga to relieve me.’
‘Shit,’ I said simply. The implication was not good; despite not wanting to believe he was to blame, King was on the shortlist of suspects – and now he’d taken the opportunity to disappear.
Miller’s thinking was along the same lines. ‘There’s a killer loose on my boat,’ he said. ‘I need to warn my crew, tell them what’s happened.’
‘No, keep it between us.’
‘Why would I do that? The man’s dangerous.’
‘Firstly, we don’t want panic. Could make relations between the crew and my team even frostier.’
‘I rather suspect they couldn’t be much frostier, but I agree with your general point,’ said Doc.
‘I gotta warn them, Blofeld.’
‘Secondly, you tell your crew, they’ll get jumpy and put a bullet in his head before we can talk to him. Or more likely they’ll end up on the receiving end, either way it’s not good. Give me a chance to find him first.’
‘I’m warning you…’ Miller inhaled slowly, giving me that same look I always ended up getting from him. ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes before we lock down this ship.’
Chapter Nineteen
Tiburon
I checked my HK again, sliding out the magazine, checking the brass, sliding it home. Like checking your passport in your pocket every five minutes as you walk through the airport, except here if that magazine wasn’t loaded it could mean a very different trip, one way. I laid it on the bed, picked up King’s paperback and grabbed a pen off the shelf, turning to the blank title page to scribble a timeline while it was fresh in my mind.
03:45 – called to the saloon, the last time I’d seen my prisoner alive. I knew the time as I’d checked my watch, knew he’d been alive and well as I’d secured the bag on his head and locked him in.
03:55 – I’d returned to the room. Again, I’d checked my watch to see how long until we regrouped – five hours’ rest, I’d given them, until 9 a.m.
Since then I’d been lying in bed right on top of the hatch.
06:00 – I’d got out of bed and found him dead.
I drew a big circle around the ten-minute window, 03:45 to 03:55, the only time I’d been away from the room.
Locks are easy to pick, and on a boat carrying only mercenaries and drug smugglers a locked door meant nothing. I just couldn’t see King doing it, so I scribbled a list of everyone’s locations.
Me and Marty, Captain Miller, Doc, Seb, Vincent, Nic.
We’d all been together in the saloon during that time. So who did that leave?
I came straight back round to Fields and King, wrote their names first, followed by Katanga, who’d apparently been at the helm but since that hadn’t been in my eyeline, in my book it made him a potential suspect. That left one crew member unaccounted for; Poubelle.
Four suspects, but realistically it had to be Fields or King, or both of them, unless maybe Poubelle had lured them away from the room long enough to get inside and stab my captive.
And where the hell is King?
Time to find out.
I pushed my pistol into the holster, locking the door behind me. The corridor was almost pitch black, not only were the lights off but the red emergency lighting had knocked off, too.
Fields and Marty were directly opposite, I looked forward along the passageway that led down the centre of the ship, towards the dim shaft of light falling down the stairwell, illuminating the huge waterproof access door to the engine room. Nothing moving there. I held an arm against the opposite side of the corridor and tried the handle, it was locked but something moved inside.
I knocked. ‘It’s Tyler.’
After a few seconds’ shuffling inside, Fields opened the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
I looked around again, the corridor was empty. ‘Where’s K
ing?’ I watched Fields carefully but he didn’t react.
‘It’s not even dawn, isn’t he with you?’ he said.
I gestured for him to open the door, stepped inside and closed it behind me.
Fields yawned and sat back down on his bed. ‘Nine, you said.’
In the bed on the other side of the room Marty was watching me, I could see her pistol peeking out of the covers.
I leaned against the door and looked back at Fields. ‘Earlier, when we went to the saloon, you and King were on guard outside my cabin.’
He looked at me blankly like he was waiting for me to carry on, after a moment he nodded. ‘So?’
‘What happened?’
His face didn’t suggest anything amiss, it was set at the right level of puzzled without looking like he was trying to look puzzled.
I pressed him. ‘Did you guys leave the room?’
He shook his head. ‘We were outside the door the whole time. Well, I went for a quick piss, but King was there the whole time.’
I didn’t like it, but there was my answer. He must have known he’d be found out, so where had he gone? Where do you hide on a boat no bigger than a few buses?
‘Tell me if you see King. And lock your door.’
‘Slim chance of seeing him then.’
I left them wondering, jogging forward to the stairs.
I’d known King for twenty years, been with him through all kinds of shit. This job was nothing, not even a walk in the park. To him, this was sitting on the settee thinking about walking in the park. I refused to believe he’d fuck me over, but what other answer could there be? Why would he kill someone he didn’t know? Just money? More importantly, where the hell was he now?
I looked up the stairwell. Low voices tumbled down, impossible to tell whose or even what language, competing as they were against the booming waves. I climbed up, the deck swayed more with every step until I reached the top, pitch black save for a dim glow spilling from the crack in a door, the radio room. I paused outside, peering in at Nic seated at a desk with his back to me, headphones on. The wire snaked across to the huge set built into the wall; he reached up and adjusted a dial.
I crept onward, past closed doors, following the voices up the stairs to the bridge. Miller and Katanga were arguing. I gripped the handrail, pausing at the top to look out of the window over the stern, watching the flag flapping wildly in the gale.
Through the window set into the bridge door I watched Miller and Katanga staring intently at the console.
‘Again?’ asked Katanga on the other side of the door.
‘Pays to be sure. Make another turn, ten degrees to port,’ said Miller.
They were changing direction.
I opened the door, Katanga and Miller looked round.
‘What are you doing up here?’ Miller asked. ‘I told you to stay below.’
Katanga shifted on the seat and looked back out of the window, holding the wheel.
‘Don’t you dare take us off course, Katanga,’ I said.
‘Tyler, get below. This is my ship.’
‘I’m paying to get to England in one piece, Miller.’
Katanga steered, a moment later I could feel the rhythm change under my feet as the waves assaulted us from a few degrees further round. I pulled my pistol out of my waistband and held it down low. ‘Keep this ship on course or I’ll steer the bloody thing myself.’ I glanced at the instruments, looking for a compass or nav unit.
Miller shook his head. ‘A hard man you may be, Tyler, but a sailor you are not.’ He pointed through the windows. ‘How far do you think we’ll get if we start taking those waves on the beam?’
I crossed to the windows and looked out, up ahead the boot lid of my car was just about visible but beyond it the bow was in darkness, only the white crests of the waves blowing across the ship were visible.
‘The storm hasn’t changed direction,’ I said, backing away and sitting on the desk against the wall. ‘Why have we?’
Katanga turned. Miller nodded at him.
Katanga pointed at a control unit on the left, a screen and buttons. All I could see was a green glow. I walked over to look, Miller leaned in, I gave him evils, he backed away with a sigh, folding his arms. It was the radar, though it didn’t look anywhere near as old as anything else on the ship. Made sense, given her occupation.
‘All right, other than what looks like my old Speccy 48k, what am I looking at?’
The screen was awash with fuzzy snow, the effects of the storm, I presumed.
‘Spotted him a couple of hours ago, about sixty kilometres out,’ said Katanga.
Miller jabbed a chewed nail at the screen, at a small green blob at the bottom right. ‘We turned north, he turned north. We turned west, he turned west.’
‘You think we’re being followed?’
‘More like hunted down. They’ve made up five kilometres in the last two hours.’
‘Coincidence?’ I asked, knowing that was optimistic.
‘Always a possibility,’ said Miller. ‘But a remote one. You see any other ships out there?’
There were a couple, but the trails showed they were headed either away across the Atlantic, or south towards Spain. We watched the screen intently, after a minute or so the green dot at the bottom right flickered and showed a course change, now heading north.
‘West again, Kat,’ said Miller. He slapped a pad of paper on the dash, full of scrawled data and calculations. ‘It’s not exact, with the storm, heading, speed, but…’
I ran a finger down the pad, he’d circled seven p.m.
‘What happens then?’
He arched his eyebrows. ‘One of two things. Either we hit the Cornish coast, or…’ He shrugged.
‘Or maybe they hit us,’ Katanga finished, spinning the wheel.
Chapter Twenty
Château des Aigles
Five days previously
The wind’s attitude had taken a turn for the worse, whipping the day’s snow off the fields and hurling it at us angrily as we stood in a line outside the chalet. Below us, the village twinkled cheerily between sheets of white, oblivious to the three armed, camouflaged figures looking down on it.
McCartney stood on my right in his Russian gear, baggy white smock and overtrousers covered in dirty-looking splodges. Ringo stuck to US stuff for some reason, he was on my left dressed all in white with patches of blue-grey digi camo. I get my gear from everywhere, tonight crisp white Royal Marine Arctic overclothes covered my civvy snowboarding gear. The scientific process by which different countries come up with entirely different concepts for what constitutes the best in camouflage never fails to astound me.
The three of us were wearing military webbing and straps securing weapons, gear, and ammo pouches to our bodies, ready for the ride down the mountain. I looked between McCartney and Ringo, faces set into the blizzard, no jokes, no beer, no weed, all professional now that the job was on. My hands shook, I felt my own surge of adrenaline as I looked down the couple of miles of rock-strewn pasture. The unmarked, unlit, ungraded off-piste mountainside had been impossible to chart, too close to the target chalet to recce or practice. Google Earth had shown us a summer view, which right now didn’t mean shit. On this cloudy night, we were truly alone.
The red lights of Lennon’s Porsche SUV glowed away as she drove to the staging point on the road below to wait for the signal. The target chalet’s windows gave uninterrupted views over the roads and all routes in from the front. We’d stick to the mountain’s shadows and close in from the blind spots before they knew we were there.
McCartney reached round to his back and ripped off the Velcro strap securing his PP-19 Vityaz submachine gun to his webbing, holding it out to me. I took the strap and pulled it tighter, patting it down on his back. Ringo adjusted his leg holster then, for the tenth time, checked the suppressor on the Heckler & Koch MP5 strapped across his chest.
I pulled my glove back and looked at my scratched Bremont. The illuminated
hands ticked round to eleven p.m. I reached out and patted McCartney on the back. ‘Go.’
He jumped up, spinning round to point his board down the hill, hissing away across the ice-crested powder.
Ringo turned to me. ‘Good luck.’
I nodded, he dug his poles in and shot forward, his skis slashing away at an angle. Within moments they were both lost to the darkness.
I tightened the straps on the G28 Marksman rifle slung across my back, tapped the leg holster holding my trusty VP70 pistol, pulled up my fleece snood. I rocked down, clicking into the bindings on my snowboard, shuffling forward to the edge, turning side-on to the steep slope. I’d moved the bindings on my freeride board back and adjusted the angle into a slightly forward-facing stance, ready for the deep powder.
I pulled my mask down and jumped forward, following into the same darkness.
Chapter Twenty-one
Tiburon
I looked at the ominous pulsing dot on the radar screen, thought about that Beemer in La Rochelle that’d tailed me from the Alps. ‘Can we pour on more speed?’
‘No suh, not in this!’ said Miller. ‘We’re pushing as it is, and only making fourteen knots now. I’d say they’re making closer to seventeen, eighteen.’
‘You said our top speed’s thirty, why have we slowed?’
‘Look, we’ll be turnin’ north soon, runnin’ with the sea. We’ll increase speed then.’
‘Problem is, so can they.’
‘Kat, get Blofeld a drink, he’s finally catching on.’
A flash of lightning briefly lit up the churning evil. The lights and gauges flickered, Miller thumped the console to coax them back into health.
‘Looks to me they’ve charted an intercept,’ said Kat, turning from the wheel.
‘Faster than us, wonder what it is?’ I said. ‘Law enforcement? Military?’
‘Not out here, not in a storm like this. Only things out now are the hardcore trawlers and the big freighters. They can’t stop for storms, they lose money. The law – not so much, they don’t get paid to go out in this. Besides, we know what she is.’ Miller tapped a screen next to the radar set. ‘She’s a hundred-thirty-foot superyacht outta La Rochelle, which means they’re not too smart.’
Black Run Page 11
