Defender: Intrepid 1

by Chris Allen

  On the night of the funeral, Morgan had taken a room in a motel, away from the local pub where the others were gathering, but not far from the village church where Collins had been buried. After a quiet meal in his room, he took an unopened bottle of Glenfiddich from his suitcase and walked the three miles to the graveyard in the church grounds. It was about 8pm, all was quiet, and the graveyard was in total darkness. Most importantly, he was finally alone to farewell his friend properly. Stepping over the ancient stone wall surrounding the grounds, Morgan walked straight to Collins’s plot, fresh with dirt and flowers, sat down on the grass beside his friend and had a quiet drink, just him and Collins, occasionally pouring a splash or two upon the fresh soil.

  “I’ll find him, Sean,” Morgan had said. “And I’ll kill the bastard.”

  Distracted by his thoughts, Morgan was soon reversing his silver Range Rover Evoque from the driveway, out onto Truro Road and heading for the A31, bound for Intrepid headquarters in London, forcing his mind away from private matters. Today would be his first day back on full duty and he was scheduled for firearms training on the range. Finally, things were getting back to normal. Morgan’s ribs still ached, although they were as good as healed and his doctor was pretty happy with his progress. In fact, he’d been lucky that a combination of factors had served to minimize most of the damage. While dull pain pervaded much of his movement, Morgan was starting to feel like his old self again following the rehabilitation merry-go-round. He had to get back in the game and find Lundt – the sooner the better.

  He spent a few seconds thumbing through his iPod, searching for something to match his mood. His blood was up and he was starting to feel like his energy and thirst for action were returning to him. Perfect, he thought, selecting one of his favourites, State of Emergency by the Living End.

  As the opening bars of “’Til The End” kicked in, his final moments in Cullentown came back to him: the explosion and the building collapse; Lundt’s escape; the fire fight; blood, debris and then darkness.

  Consumed by his deliberations and mulling over every word from his encounter with Lundt, Morgan fell into autopilot, letting the car and music carry him north. It was not quite seven o’clock. With luck, and if the weather wasn’t playing havoc with the city traffic, he’d be parking underneath the office just after eight.

  His thoughts turned to Ari and their five unforgettable days in Spain. She had shown him around Barcelona, sightseeing and just soaking up the peace and freedom they’d found with each other. There’d been talk of the future, serious talk, and for the first time in his life, Morgan felt ready for it; although he’d sensed a reticence in Ari that he couldn’t, at the time, decipher. He’d chosen to ignore it, not wanting to ruin what was developing between them. That had been a mistake. In the six weeks that had passed, he’d heard nothing from her.

  God knows, he’d wanted to track her down, but that wasn’t possible. He was an Intrepid agent and no matter what may have been, it had happened on a mission and the chance of there being any future to it … well, he had to put that idea right out of his mind. The whole thing now felt surreal, almost as if it had never happened, and he had struggled ever since.

  “I feel as though I’ve known you forever,” she’d said. Yeah, right.

  Who was she? What was it she was hiding from him?

  CHAPTER 40

  CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

  The third, and top, floor was where all of the real living happened.

  The private rooms were situated on that level, including a bedroom, office and living room with a small bar. Valuable artworks adorned the walls, including ones by Matisse, Courbet and Lanceley, all sharing space with artefacts and souvenirs - a catalog of the owner’s world travels.

  Standing naked by a window, sipping an exquisite brandy, Maxwell Turner fingered a gap between the heavy curtains and gazed out upon the gardens that enclosed the villa in a cocoon of absolute privacy. Stars filled the sky, and a light breeze rustled through the Pride of de Kaap and Canary Creeper that flourished among the other shrubs and trees of the lush fortress. It was a perfect night; one to forget the hell of the past few months; to celebrate the fact that he would soon be rid of this God-awful continent; to celebrate a new life.

  Above all, it was a night for recreation.

  He turned back into the room and rubbed a hand lazily across the coarse brown hair on his fat pale stomach. The meal had been good. Excellent in fact, and he felt satisfied, relaxed, smug. The hand dropped. He fondled himself unashamedly, still cradling the brandy in the other hand, urging on his stimulation, anticipation building. He was trembling slightly, excited, greedy in the knowledge that he could afford to indulge his fantasies. His guests, giggling eagerly, had run off together to change into the things he’d chosen for them to wear. He wandered among the remnants of the clothes they had discarded before they ran naked to his bedroom, their toned and tanned bodies in stark contrast to the glaring white of the austere décor. Turner walked to a switch on the wall and dimmed the lights, then bent down, clenched a podgy fist around a handful of underwear and held it up to his face, breathing in deeply. His eyes closed, savoring the raw scent of the lithe young bodies.

  Moments later, the two escorts emerged. Slinking provocatively back into the dimly lit room, they moved toward him, groping and kissing each other along the way.

  A satisfied grin broke across his round, porcine features.

  CHAPTER 41

  THE PIT

  INTREPID HQ, LONDON

  “Now remember, major,” Tom Rodgers began in his easy Detroit accent, “accuracy takes precedence over speed during these drills. Speed only comes with constant practice, which, let’s face it, you don’t have time for. So, keep your firing stroke smooth like I showed you. Don’t punch the pistol out. Use the pushing motion I’ve shown you to reduce bounce. When all else fails, align the sights and squeeze the trigger. Works every time.”

  Morgan shook his head and smiled. Rodgers couldn’t help himself. No matter how many times Morgan had invited the former FBI special agent to just call him Alex rather than major, Rodgers remained stoic in his resolve to maintain protocol. A veteran of the Bureau’s elite Hostage Rescue Team and recipient of the FBI Medal of Valor, he was a consummate professional of the old school. Built like a middleweight prizefighter, he had close-cropped graying hair and a wry smile that gave the impression he knew something about you that you didn’t. “I’ve trained enough of you military officer types, from SEALS to SAS, to last me a lifetime,” he would say with quasi-defiance. “And I’ve always observed military etiquette when dealing with you crazy sons of bitches. It’s just the way I’m wired.”

  And so, when Morgan’s permanent appointment to Intrepid had been confirmed and he began his regular one-on-one training sessions with Intrepid’s close-quarter-combat chief instructor, it had become the way of things. When it came to shooting and unarmed combat – despite Morgan’s acknowledged standing as one of Intrepid’s best shots, and despite the fact that they were the only two on the range – Rodgers naturally fell into his other old custom and assumed the role of master; and Morgan, comfortable with the familiarity of it all, accepted the subordinate position of apprentice.

  Morgan, in shirt and tie, and Rodgers, in navy blue combat pants and a T-shirt bearing the HRT eagle above the team’s motto Servare Vitas – To Save Lives – stood shoulder to shoulder, facing targets depicting armed offenders seven yards back from the firing line. They had been shooting for an hour in the purpose-designed state-of-the-art indoor range, buried deep below the streets of London. The range sat at the eastern end of a long-abandoned section of London’s Victorian sewer network. Built in the 1860s as a consequence of the infamous Great Stink of London in 1858, the area had been intended as a junction and overflow adjunct of engineer Joseph Bazalgette’s modern sewer system. However – as Rodgers reminded his charges – it had thankfully never been commissioned.

  Of course, that salient point was lost on the ag
ents, all of whom customarily referred to Intrepid’s half mile of pristine sewer as the Pit, and, in a less than charitable reference to those pitiable nineteenth-century souls whose job it was to keep the sewers clear, Rodgers was tagged the Mudlark, although no one would ever dare consider calling him that to his face, not even jokingly. When news of the scurrilous moniker had inevitably filtered down to the Pit, Rodgers embraced the irreverence of it, hung a picture of a mudlark over the entrance to the range and, with the help of his close-quarter-combat assistant chief instructor, Sophie Tavernier – formerly of the French Groupes d’Intervention de la Police Nationale – the French National Police SWAT teams – added the phrase “une fois charognard, toujours charognard”, which loosely translated as “Once a mudlark, always a mudlark.”

  The Pit had become a cluster of large rooms, host to those activities undertaken by Intrepid agents requiring secrecy. The availability and suitability of the old sewer had been one of the deciding factors in General Davenport’s decision to take the office building five floors above them. Training sessions were, according to Davenport’s edict, a routine occurrence for those agents not deployed on ops. And Rodgers saw to it that all field agents attended their sessions, particularly the unarmed combat sessions. The agents joked that they weren’t sure what was worse about the unarmed combat sessions: the wrath of General Davenport if they failed to attend, or the hiding they would invariably cop from Rodgers when they did.

  “Right, last serial. A single string of six and then we’ll bin it.”

  “Okay, Tom. But with stoppages. I need the practice.”

  Rodgers smiled. “You got it.”

  Both prepared a magazine with six live rounds and one dummy round, placing the dummy randomly among the six live. They exchanged the magazines, so they were unaware when the dummy round would appear, cause a stoppage and force them to clear it.

  “Keep a steady rhythm. Evenly spaced shots to the head and chest. Reassess the target between each shot. The shot clock is set for four-point-two-five seconds,” Rodgers announced.

  “Yes, master,” replied Morgan.

  Without warning, the shot clock uttered its shrill warning. Both men drew SIG Sauer P226 9mm automatics from their concealed holsters. Rodgers was faster on the draw, but Morgan was smooth, both of them firing a series of shots in a fluid rhythmic action. Two blindingly white strobe lights flashed the range, and two deafening explosions echoed from the range’s digital sound system. These programmed mechanical actions were designed to distract them in the same way flash-bang grenades would during an actual assault. At Rodgers’s insistence, the range contained all manner of such devices, designed to invoke an adrenal response from participants so they would become inoculated to such effects in readiness for combat situations.

  After the cry of the shot clock, the sustained crash of a dozen consecutive shots hammered the walls. With smoking barrels trained dead ahead, both men stood facing the targets as the shot clock sounded the end of the timed period. They individually cleared their weapons, then inspected each other’s pistol for added safety before reholstering.

  “Not bad. Not bad at all,” Rodgers said as he examined Morgan’s target. “Three to the head and three to the chest. All in the zone. Although I think you dropped your third shot. It cut the line. Any lower and he would have only ended up with a shaving cut!” The bullet hole to which Rodgers was referring was slightly below the terrorist’s left eye, but well within the allowed six-inch square.

  “Well, you threw in the stoppage on my third shot!” Morgan smiled. He eyed Rodgers’s target, with its three bullet holes grouped neatly in the forehead and two almost superimposed in the center of the chest where the heart of the target would be. A sixth hole appeared above and slightly left of the heart. “Good shooting. Great session, Tom. Thanks.”

  “You needed the practice and I know the general’s keen to get you back in the field. What’d you think of the flash-bang sim? Thought I’d keep you on your toes.”

  “Yeah, it worked.”

  “Excellent. Can’t beat the real thing, but the boss won’t let me throw real grenades down here.”

  The phone on the wall behind them rang loudly. “Rodgers,” he answered. “WILCO.” He turned to Morgan. “Boss wants you.”

  “I’d better get moving, then.” Morgan felt that Rodgers had something more he wanted to say.

  “Major.” Rodgers’s eyes locked onto Morgan’s. “I know what happened to your pal Collins, and I can tell by the way you’re shooting exactly what’s going through your mind.”

  Morgan remained silent.

  “Catch this bastard. Kill him if you can. But do it with a clear head, man. Don’t get yourself killed because you’ve got a head full of revenge.”

  CHAPTER 42

  CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

  Lundt looked upon his target with such intensity that Turner should have felt it scorch the flesh of his exposed back. Lundt’s hand closed tightly around the haft of a US Marine Corps K-Bar fighting knife. The blade, razor sharp, sat flush inside a well-worn leather sheath clipped to his belt. He could barely contain the urge to stride across the plush white carpet and slit the smug bastard’s throat in full view of the whores.

  His gaze fell upon the girls. He eased his grip on the K-Bar and indulged for a few moments. They were stunning, one blonde, one brunette, barely into their twenties. Poured into tiny outfits two sizes too small for them, they were playing up to Turner’s pathetic fantasies. They must be well compensated, Lundt thought. As he watched, Turner got rough, forcing them to respond. He tore at their hair and at their skintight lingerie, clawing at their perfect bodies. Their full breasts heaved beneath bursting satin and lace as Turner hungrily buried his sweaty, fat face into the youthful valleys of flesh.

  Secreted behind a long, heavy oak bar, Lundt allowed Turner to continue uninterrupted. But judging by the growing intensity of Turner’s wheezing, there was no time like the present to pull the plug.

  Lundt picked up a bottle of Chivas Regal from the shelf at his side and hurled it hard against the slate floor at the far end of the bar. There was a sustained crash. Shards of glass broke into angry, threatening prisms amid lustrous pools of the wasted spirit.

  “What the bloody hell?” squealed Turner, pushing the girls away in naked panic. The prostitutes screeched in unison and huddled together protectively against the far wall. Shaking, Turner moved tentatively toward the sound. “Who’s there?” He reached the dimly lit corner where the bar jutted into the room, and one bare foot fell heavily upon a large wedge of broken glass, ripping a long gash in his soft flesh. Blood erupted.

  “Oh, Christ!” he cried, lunging sideways to take weight on his other leg, stumbling against the bar. He grabbed the injured foot, and cursing, tried to pull the jutting shard from the wound. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Blood was everywhere. Turner winced as he inspected the injury, the piece of glass just visible in the poor light – his glasses were on the table.

  There came a barely audible chuckle from the darkness at the opposite end of the bar. Squinting into the gloom, Turner’s beady eyes fell upon the single deadly eye of a .40 caliber Glock 20 leveled directly at his face. Naked and vulnerable, he straightened his flabby frame, his pained face sagging into a mask of humiliated surrender. The intruder remained seated on the floor behind the bar, shielded from the view of the girls. He leant forward just enough for a blade of light to slice his features into Turner’s straining focus.

  Turner went gray.

  “Say goodnight to the bookends, Turner. You and I need to talk.” Victor Lundt gestured with the gun for Turner to get on with it, and moved into a closer position where he could still observe them all without being seen.

  Turner hesitated for a moment, frozen in shock at Lundt’s unexpected appearance. With blood gushing from his foot, pain stabbing at him with every step, he shuffled clumsily to the girls, his big white ass hanging out for all to see. He looked pathetic, like some kid who’s been told to stop p
laying and come inside, knowing he was about to be scolded. Lundt relished each humiliating moment.

  “You have to go,” said Turner to the girls in a croaking whisper, not even looking at them.

  “What’s going on? We were just getting started,” said the blonde in a squeaky but well-heeled Afrikaans-accented voice. “Is someone there?”

  “We usually stay longer. We better get paid the full amount!” said the brunette.

  “Just go!” Turner said impatiently, his voice high pitched. “Your money’s on the table. Take it and get out!”

  In a flurry of lingerie, exposed flesh and long limbs, the two girls gathered their earnings and clothes. They fled in obvious relief, leaving Turner naked in the center of the room. He clearly didn’t know which way to look, when, after waiting a few moments to be sure that the girls had left the house, Lundt emerged from hiding.

  “Get some clothes on, porky,” said Lundt. “You’re making me sick.”

  “To hell with you,” Turner spat the words as he fumbled around, pulling on trousers and a shirt. He winced as the glass burrowed deeper into his foot. “I must see to this.”