Jack picked up his laser pointer. ‘I’m afraid there is one more bit of bad news Sir Justin.’
‘Christ Jack, you haven’t told me the good news yet. Go on.’
‘Our primary agent, CHIMERA, has gone quiet and may well have been compromised. He’s located here, in the middle of the Kuwaiti Desert. We have a tracker on him and we’ll look to rescue him if needs be. He’s deniable and has been dealing with our main adversary, this woman here codenamed NIGHTOWL. She’s Iran’s top female agent, who masquerades as an international model.’
‘Bloody hell Jack, this is insane.’
‘As is she. We’ll take her down at the right time but our best avenue right now is to monitor the bomb-making equipment and strike at the right time.’
Jack was careful to avoid explaining that the dot on the screen showed a transmission from inside the casing of the nuclear artillery shell.
‘Anything else you need from me?’ Sir Justin asked Laura, as he inspected the red-labelled file in front of him. ‘I get the political picture and Jack has just passed me what appears to be the Kompromat.’
‘No, nothing from me Sir Justin. Jack and I are a good team with good operators on the ground. I have a NEST team available for Europe as and when they might be required.’
‘NEST?’
‘Our Nuclear Emergency Support Teams. If we lose control of this operation and can’t interdict the terrorists, we can deploy them into Europe to search for and disable any nuclear device.’
Laura bade farewell and Jack turned the screen off.
‘Seems we now have leverage for as long as Redman remains the NSA for this Republican administration Jack,’ said Sir Justin. ‘Good work as ever. D would have been as astonished as I am at how you’ve played this one.’
‘Thank you, but there’s a long way to go yet. I assume you’ll coach ministers to work with the Americans now on the diplomatic channels and to be prepared for any attacks?
‘They’re a funny bunch this lot Jack. MPs of today have none of the guile needed to govern these days but, fear not, my team of civil servants is pretty good at this stuff, as you know. Now, this dossier. I’m not going to read it. Whatever you uncovered is yours. Get rid of it and hide the trails. You remember what happened with the Steele dossier a couple of years back? Don’t let that happen here.’
‘It’s all attributable to the Russians, so we’re good. Any evidence of that conversation with Laura is being destroyed as we speak too.’
Jack placed the dossier back in his briefcase, having predicted that the Cabinet Secretary would not want to view it. He tapped the touch pad on the console which triggered the screen to zoom in on the Kuwait map.
‘Where CHIMERA has been taken is likely to be the bomb-making factory. We’ll get him out at some point but the one thing you do need to know is that he is linked to the dossier.’
Jack touched his control pad, which prompted the screen to flash up a picture of the ex-CIA chief. ‘This is the man who led us to the Kompromat on John Redman. His name is Fletcher Barrington. This guy and our FCO diplomat, Duff, were both involved in some pretty gruesome stuff many years back in 1995. Barrington is also the killer of CHIMERA’s mother back in 1986. A bizarre coincidence.’
‘Good God Jack. Does he know?’
‘Yes. It was one of D’s last investigations and he wrote to CHIMERA himself. A last act of loyalty to one of his foot soldiers. Fletcher Barrington was a CIA operator who worked with CHIMERA’s mother in East Berlin during the cold war. She was one of MI6’s best female agents.’
‘I expect your man is fuming and looking for revenge Jack?’
‘He is,’ Jack said quietly, imagining Sean’s pain. ‘But I’ll manage CHIMERA. We need Barrington alive for a number of years to come to keep our political Kompromat in play.’
‘Splendid Jack. Now, as you know, I said I had something for you too.’
Jack looked at his boss, somewhat bemused and wondering what was coming next.
‘There’s every chance you’ll become the permanent Deputy Director of MI5 now. No bad thing at all. We’ll also run all the normal application processes for the Director General’s job. But I want you to apply for that instead.’
‘The Director General’s job?’
‘Yes. D’s job.’
Jack didn’t quite know what to say. He sat back and took a moment. Never in his own mind had he ever thought about doing such a thing. He’d spent many years as the counterterrorist operations director and took great heart in running The Court. It was an immense privilege to run global operations with retired operators from across all the intelligence agencies, sprinkled with military veterans across the world. Operations was his world, not the cut and thrust of political brinkmanship, although he was a devious hand at that on occasion.
‘I’m not cut out for that Sir Justin. I’m an operational guy.’
‘Nonsense Jack. The world is changing and, as D always said, we need to get sharper at hybrid warfare and shape our agencies to fight a new world order. You’re the brightest spark we have in the box to take us there and, believe me, everyone will follow you. You’re seen as a doer who makes the right things happen.’
Sir Justin leant forward. ‘Have a think on it. Take your time. You’ll have my backing to develop The Court‘s operations, although not on the mammoth scale of the CIA you understand. But we need to get bigger, better and sharper.’
Jack had a thought about his family and his ill daughter. She had battled MS for nearly five years of her young life. Maybe now was the time to either retire or take a bigger jump. He didn’t quite know which way was for the best. He didn’t know what would happen over the course of the next couple of weeks, never mind thinking about his lifetime’s dream of becoming Director General of MI5. It was a move he had been mentored for throughout almost all of his career by D. It made his ambitious side begin to tantalise him.
‘Of course, the following days and weeks will make or break my offer Jack. We’ll also need to deal with the Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Hugo Campey thinks the job is his already, so we’ll need a plan to scupper that. Any ideas?’
‘One or two,’ Jack said, still somewhat shocked.
‘Good. We need to put him out of the game permanently. Then you will become the youngest Director General of MI5 ever - if you make all this mess go away, deal with Hugo and succeed on this operation, it will be you.’
Chapter 38
Kuwait
The motto of the CIA Special Activities Division is Tertia Optio, which means ‘The Third Option’. In the UK, intelligence agencies have an option of legal amnesty for agents needing to commit crimes for the greater good, known as ‘The Third Direction’. Together, Jack and Laura had brought together all options through what they both called ‘The Third Avenue’ – an amalgamation of The Court’s activity and the sheer might of the SAD to form the most potent covert partnership in the world.
Jack and Laura thought they had every option available to track and trace the nuclear shell, follow the terrorists and, when the time was right, kill them. These were seasoned intelligence officers comfortable with taking huge risks and who rarely made the wrong call. But this time their judgement was wrong.
More often than not, covert operations using the highest-grade intelligence apparatus and paramilitary forces will not go strictly to plan – and this was one such occasion. It all began to go wrong shortly after the helicopter transporting the nuclear shell with a tracking beacon inside it started to fly due south into Iran. That was not expected at all. That was not the interdiction plan. Their plan had been to use surveillance teams within Turkey and Europe, working on a hypothesis that the nuclear material would be destined for Europe.
The operational teams of The Court and the CIA were sat in a small Portakabin at Incirlik Air Base, with a Hercules airframe and two Black Hawk helicopters ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Samantha had been watching satellite images of Nadège’s helicopter and stared in aston
ishment as it entered Iranian airspace. ‘Bloody hell. That’s not what we expected. What the hell do we do now?’ she asked Swartz, who would lead the interdiction operation to kill the Iranian terrorists and the rogue bomb-maker.
‘You better ask Jack quickly, he’ll be shitting it by now if he’s watching back home.’
‘Make sure you’re ready to fly in case it diverts into Iraq – everyone’s set to go right?’
‘Yep. Aircrew in their seats, all the kit’s on-board, including Jugsy and his airframes. All we’re missing is ground surveillance wherever they land. Ram it home to Jack that I need that if we want to make this op work. Otherwise it will all go wrong from the get-go.’
Samantha mumbled a few words to herself and picked up the secure phone to call Jack. ‘We’ve got three satellites on this operation courtesy of the CIA, so we should be able to steer you to the target. I just don’t know how long Jack wants to play this out before we hit them.’
‘Might not have a chance if the helicopter stays in Iran – we might never see the thing again and then we’re properly fucked.’
The orders from Jack were explicit. ‘We watch and wait,’ he said over the phone. ‘Just be poised and ready to go when I give the order.’
Jack and Laura had been sat in the operations room at RAF Bentwaters, monitoring the movement of Nadège’s helicopter and listening to every radio transmission from the assault teams at Incirlik Air Base. They knew that the risk of losing the nuclear shell was immense and Laura had guaranteed that American military assets within EUCOM would be ready to be tasked to support the operation. She had the NEST teams at the ready, backed up by surveillance teams ready to fly out of Germany, one strategic drone and a high-priority tasking for imagery intelligence using US satellites. The problem was she hadn’t placed anyone on standby in CENTCOM – the exact area of US operations where the helicopter was now flying to.
The small yellow dot on the screen showed the tracking beacon move southwards through Iran before it finally flew over the coastline and into the Persian Gulf. It then made a right turn and flew straight into Kuwaiti airspace, before finally landing in the middle of the Al Anbar Desert. The imagery-intelligence operator zoomed in to the desert complex where the helicopter had landed. The high-resolution imagery provided clear images of a large villa completely surrounded by a perimeter wall, with two smaller annex buildings and four vehicles neatly parked next to the entrance gate.
‘Right, get moving Swartz,’ Samantha barked. ‘Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait. It’s all good to go. There’s a ground team being assembled now to watch the place. Go well.’
‘I’m gone. Get me some more int before we strike for fuck’s sake.’
Five hours later, the surveillance operation began to fall apart. A white Land Cruiser had exited the gates of the complex and was tracked by imagery-intelligence operators, who monitored its direction of travel from satellites situated 140 kilometres above the earth. The operations teams at Ali Al Salem airbase had cued three mobile surveillance teams onto the vehicle as it entered Kuwait City.
The satellite was locked onto the Land Cruiser, with Samantha watching it enter Kuwait City, where it stopped at numerous traffic lights before heading east towards the port and its final destination. It stopped at a set of barriers before entering a heavily protected Kuwaiti army base. Samantha watched it drive along the main barracks road before it disappeared into a huge military hangar.
‘Shit,’ she said, falling back in her chair. She was flabbergasted that the nuclear package had simply vanished into a military base. ‘If they transfer the bomb to another vehicle, we’ll never see the bloody thing again.’
Chapter 39
Kuwait
Swartz adjusted his ear defence as the helicopter rotors increased their speed ready for take-off into the cool Arabian air. He checked his seat belt, pulled it a little tighter, as he did religiously for all take-offs, and then checked that his Glock pistol was tightly locked into his thigh harness and safe. He placed his right hand on the grip of his MP5 automatic assault weapon and glanced across to his three teammates, who were looking primed and evil – ready to unleash hell on the target building and anyone who tried to stop them killing the bomber and any terrorists left inside the compound.
The last-known transmission from the tracking device had come from the villa complex in the middle of the Kuwaiti Desert and Swartz had been ordered to assault the compound by Jack. The assumption was that the site would provide vital intelligence to continue the operation, but there was also the possibility that Sean, the bomber and Nadège might be there too. No one knew who had driven the vehicle out of the compound, no one knew if the fissile material had been moved and no one knew if a bomb had been built and moved out of the complex. Jack knew only one thing. The deliberate plan had turned into a fiasco and he needed his team to assault the desert complex to find out more.
Swartz watched Phil ‘The Nose’ Calhoun give him a big thumbs up as the helicopter lifted off into the darkness of the desert night, followed by a beaming smile as they revelled in their adventure into the unknown. Phil was the team’s bomb-disposal officer and would deal with any explosive booby traps they came across during the assault on the buildings and the subsequent search of its interior and grounds.
The intelligence was shit. It was meagre to say the least, making the assault a huge, but necessary, gamble. The entire surveillance operation was conducted by satellite with only two surveillance operators on the ground watching the gates of the complex. Swartz had no confirmation of the terrorist numbers inside the several buildings of the villa complex, no one was sure if Sean was there and he’d been told that Nadège and the bomber had not been seen leaving the complex. Only the Land Cruiser had left the complex in the last eight hours. If this was the best that Jack’s deniable operations could throw up on such a vital mission he was bloody worried. The truth was that Jack couldn’t wait forever to find out where the nuclear material had gone. Was it still inside? Or had it been moved in the Land Cruiser?
Had Swartz known at the time that the improvised nuclear device had indeed been moved in the Land Cruiser, he would have been horrified. Despite having persistent surveillance on the Kuwaiti Army barracks, there were so many vehicles leaving the site that it was impossible to know which ones to follow. Was the bomb still inside? How could he get operators into such a heavily defended barracks? Despite having the best of the American intelligence apparatus, they were now blind to where the nuclear device had gone. Was Nadège with it? What exactly was the link with the Kuwaiti Army? Swartz smelt a full-scale fuck-up coming on.
What Swartz had was inadequate for a fully planned assault, but he did have the best possible advantage – the act of surprise. He had studied the plans of the building, conducted rehearsals on makeshift layouts of the main villa and now had live imagery in place from Jugsy’s UAV, which was currently loitering above the mansion relaying video pictures to Swartz’s teams. The images were being beamed across the desert using encrypted line-of-sight technology to provide him with high-definition infrared imagery direct onto a ruggedised tablet. The daytime reconnaissance using two of the C-Astral drones had provided intelligence that there were at least five heavily armed guards patrolling the perimeter and the grounds, with two other Arab men occasionally leaving the main house to smoke shisha in the ornate courtyard. Swartz had two dogs in the second helicopter that would be launched into the stronghold, giving him the added aggression needed for his plan of using overwhelming force to take down the terrorists and conduct a forensic search of the complex.
Phil was not only the bomb-disposal expert, he was also the leader for the sensitive-site exploitation that would take place once the situation was benign and the terrorists were all dead. Phil’s forensic and search expertise would allow the team to extract valuable forensic evidence from the site, which might lead to knowing what type of devices the bomber had built or at least provide some insight into the targets they were destined for.
Swartz remained pensive and pushed out a few breathing exercises as the chopper glided across the Kuwaiti Desert at low altitude, with less than ten minutes to its target site.
On too many occasions in his life Sean had felt the searing pain that comes from the shock of capture. It never got easier and, each time it occurred in his career, the anxiety levels forced him to scratch his skin until he ended up with open sores.
This time he had been drugged and flown by helicopter to the bomb-making factory in the Kuwaiti Desert – he remembered nothing from the moment when Nadège had inserted the needle into his thigh. He had been carried by four burly Iranian guards to the deep basement level of the mansion, chained by his wrists to the wall and left to fester until he regained consciousness in the tiny cell. He awoke with a stinking hangover, dizziness and a moment of pain that told him his right cheek was broken. Within minutes he was throwing his guts up, the incessant pain of stomach cramps causing him to retch in convulsions before the next batch of vomit was ejected from his body. The soiling of his pants told him his body had been violated by the drug and a deep feeling of helplessness returned, raging in his body as he grappled to retain his mind. The shock of capture had again hit him hard.
Everyone deals with stress in different ways, and the shock of being captured initiates severe strain in the body. For most, and certainly for those without the relevant training, the stress reactions are shock, numbness, anxiety, guilt, depression, anger and a sense of helplessness. For Sean the emotional anxiety always resulted in physical scratching and being nauseous. Surges of chemical imbalances had manifested into physical symptoms for Sean, who felt unable to breathe and had blurred vision when Nadège entered the cell.
‘I didn’t want it this way,’ she murmured.
Sean had propped himself against the cell wall, his chains dangling over his shoulders. He looked up at her as she continued.
The Kompromat Kill Page 27
