Licensed to Spy

by Barbara Davies

  Vito was the last to climb aboard, and his door was still half-open when the driver gunned the engine. Tyres complaining, the minibus shot forward. Reaching past the boy, Ash yanked the door closed. With a startled squawk Vito toppled into his seat.

  The driver, whose beer belly only just fit behind the steering wheel, aimed the minibus at a suspiciously fresh gap in the airport’s perimeter fence. “Where to?” he asked.

  Ignacio shrugged and gestured at Ash.

  “The Cumbre Vieja,” she said. “As near to the summit as you can get.”

  They headed predominantly west, along a winding road that climbed past lush vegetable gardens, banana plots, and vineyards. Ash noticed that all the traffic they passed was heading in the opposite direction, away from danger. She chuckled.

  “Blade?” Vito’s eyes were fixed on her.

  “I was just thinking.” She shrugged. “We must be crazy.”

  “Of course. We are heroes.” His eyes sparkled. “This is a great adventure.”

  “Right.” Ash gave him a crooked smile.

  The tools and containers inside her haversack were digging into her hip, so she shifted it into a more comfortable position. For something to do, she stripped down the Super Star automatic Ignacio had lent her and cleaned and oiled it. As she reassembled the Spanish gun and shoved it back into the borrowed shoulder holster she became aware of Vito’s gaze.

  “Hopefully I won’t have to use it,” she told him. To her amusement, he seemed more disappointed than relieved.

  A pleasing fragrance wafted through the half-open window beside Ash, drawing her attention to her surroundings, and she saw that they had left the vineyards behind and were surrounded by Canary pine forest.

  “Road block,” called the driver, braking so suddenly it threw them all forward in their seats. Ash followed his gaze to the barrier manned by two men in the pea green uniforms of the Civil Guard.

  “Is there another way?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Shit! Ash chewed her lip and decided to risk it. A police escort could get her to the summit faster. “Keep going, but take it slowly. Despacio.”

  He nodded and put the minibus in gear. As they approached the makeshift barrier, the two policemen behind it stepped forward. The one on the right was holding up his hand in the universal stop sign when his colleague’s eyes widened, and he shouted something and reached for the holster at his belt.

  “Floor it,” yelled Ash.

  The driver gaped at her. “¿Qué?”

  “Put your foot down … NOW.” Looks like I’m still on that damned terrorist watch list.

  He stamped on the accelerator and, like a rocket, the minibus headed for the barrier. Disbelief written all over their faces, the policemen froze then dived for cover. With a loud splintering crack, the wooden barrier gave way, and they were through and climbing.

  In the wing mirror Ash saw one of the policemen talking into his radio while the other raised his pistol and … The mirror shattered.

  “Hey!” yelled Vito. “They’re shooting at us.”

  The half-open window beside her vanished in a shower of glass, and she flinched as a splinter nicked her cheek. At me, you mean. Then the winding road curved, and they were out of range. She breathed a sigh of relief. It was one thing risking her own life, another that of a twelve-year-old boy.

  “That was close,” said Ignacio.

  “And it’s going to get worse,” said Ash. “They’ve radioed ahead.”

  “But if they do not allow you through in time …” Ignacio’s voice trailed off, and, just audible above the labouring engine, Ash heard the faint rhythmic drone of rotors.

  Leaning out of the missing window, she craned her head round and tried to spot the helicopter. That faint speck to the east? She pulled her head back inside. “They may not need me after all. That helicopter could be a bomb squad coming in now.” Maybe this is going to work out okay.

  “I thought you said there weren’t any local disposal experts,” said Vito.

  “I did.” Ash shrugged. “And until I’m sure my services aren’t required, I’m going in as planned.”

  The driver changed down a gear. “Not far to the summit.”

  The pines were thinning as the slopes changed to outcroppings of basalt sprinkled with a black layer of ash and pebbles. There wasn’t going to be much cover from here on.

  “Stop here,” ordered Ash.

  He braked, and the minibus came to a halt in the middle of the road.

  “I’m going the rest of the way on foot.” She opened the door and got out. Vito made to follow her but she stopped him and made him get back inside. She shifted the strap of the haversack so it didn’t cut into her shoulder. “They’ll be expecting me to be on a minibus.”

  Ignacio grinned at her. “You wish us to play innocent tourists forced to drive here at gunpoint by the bad English terrorist?”

  Ash snorted. “It might be more convincing if you claim to be lost and deny all knowledge of me.”

  Vito sat forward in his seat. “But what about the bullet holes?”

  “What bullet holes?” She gestured at the missing wing mirror and window. “You drove too far over and caught them on an overhanging branch.”

  Ignacio gave her a shrewd look. “Will their questioning of us provide enough of a diversion, Señorita Blade?”

  “I don’t know. But at least it’ll tie up some of the manpower they’ve got looking for me.”

  He nodded his understanding and stuck out his meaty hand. “Go with God, señorita.”

  She shook it. “Thanks for all your help, Ignacio. And be careful. They’ll shoot first, ask questions later.”

  The droning noisewas louder now, and through the trees they could see the helicopter approaching.

  “De nada.” Ignacio gestured to the driver. “Drive.”

  While the minibus chugged up the road and disappeared from sight, Ash took a deep breath and scanned her surroundings. That looks like the most direct route to the summit.

  She set off at a fast clip, feeling her calf muscles start to pull before she settled into a more comfortable stride. At first a carpet of pine needles cushioned her sneakers, but as she climbed, and the trees thinned, she found herself more and more pounding over crumbly earth, pebbles, and bare, black rock that demanded her full attention if she wasn’t to slip and break an ankle.

  She wondered what the time was but decided not to look at her watch. She would either get to the summit in time or she wouldn’t. And if she didn’t, well, there was nothing she could do about that now.

  Chapter 14

  JEMMA PEERED DOWN at the boulder-strewn ridge. The Cumbre Vieja looked as it had on the satellite photos, but with men crawling all over it. Blue, brown, and pea green uniforms indicated the presence of all three branches of the Canarian police force, and faces scowled up at her as the downdraft from the rotor blades threatened to blow off peaked caps.

  Informed of the threat, the Provincial Governor had commandeered a helicopter for an impromptu inspection of the area and, following Weatherby’s intervention, he grudgingly allowed Jemma to hitch a ride. He was more interested in primping in a small mirror and rehearsing responses to the Press with his aide than talking to her. So she spoke to the pilot over her head set.

  “What are all these policemen doing here? They can’t all be part of the reception committee.”

  “A precaution,” replied the pilot. “A terrorist may be lying in wait.”

  “A suicide bomber?” Jemma shuddered. “God, I hope not.”

  It gave her a perverse satisfaction to see all this activity, due in no small part to her and Blade’s efforts. Not that it had been easy to set things in motion. Remington believed Blade’s information was a decoy, intended to distract from events unfolding in the USA. In the end, Jemma had gone over his head. She would pay for it later, she supposed. A black mark on her file? Transfer to a different department?

  She had tracked the Organisation’s
Chief himself to his club in Whitehall. Weatherby was in the middle of dinner when he took her phone call and tore her off a strip. Didn’t she know there were channels for this sort of thing? But when she managed to get a word in edgeways, he grasped the situation’s urgency at once. She sensed him listening hard to her every word and intonation as she outlined what she and Blade had found out.

  “You have data to back this up?” he had asked, and then requested a look at it. She had gone to Ramirez and with his startled help sent the information through to London. Ten minutes later, a phone call from Weatherby informed her that the data was on its way to the White House. He had congratulated her on her decision to interrupt him, and a little later, Blade’s Section Head had rung to express his gratitude.

  The helicopter settled onto a flattish patch of ground, and as the motor whine died, the Provincial Governor and his aide disembarked. Jemma unbuckled her safety belt and prepared to follow them.

  An area of the summit had been cordoned off with flapping red-and-white tape. Much to everyone’s horror, the plastic explosives had proved to be where Blade had suggested—packed inside one of the fault lines that had opened up during the summit’s previous eruption in 1949. Jemma scanned the area inside the cordon but could see no sign of Blade. She should be here by now.

  It was at a meeting of the Canarian emergency services, which Jemma had attended, that the police chief admitted a bomb squad would have to be flown in from the Spanish mainland. (There was a squad with the US fleet in the Med., but it would take too long for them to get here.) So as Blade had instructed, Jemma got to her feet and told those present that Blade was skilled in bomb disposal and was already on her way. Relieved expressions and exclamations greeted her news, until she reminded them of the fly in the ointment—Blade was on the wanted terrorist list. The police chief had gone red in the face at that and promised to rectify the matter.

  When Blade arrived, she would need all the help she could get. Not that I can offer much, thought Jemma. Thank God she knows what to do!

  Though the helicopter blades were stationary by now, instinct made her duck as she climbed down. Everyone’s attention was on the Governor and his aide, so Jemma headed towards the cordon. As she passed the policemen constructing banks from earth and boulders—for protection against a blast, they told her (the rocky terrain meant foxholes were out of the question)—she resisted the urged to tell them not to bother. If the western flank of the ridge slid into the sea they would all go with it.

  At the fluttering tape, Jemma paused and craned her neck. From here she could just make out the crevice that must be the fault line.

  “Señorita?” A civil guard police sergeant was regarding her with suspicion.

  She dug out her ID and authorisation and showed them to him.

  He grunted. “Even so. It is not safe here, señorita. Though the timer is not yet activated, it is more than likely booby-trapped. The smallest movement could—”

  A gunshot interrupted him, and he spun round. “Qué?” He ran towards the guard who had fired and was now shouting to his colleagues. Jemma hurried after him.

  The sergeant bellowed a question, and the guard flushed before replying. With a frown, the sergeant turned and rattled out orders like a machine gun. Seconds later five of his guards were scrambling down the boulder-strewn slope towards a clump of pines. He watched them go, a predatory gleam in his eyes.

  “What is it?” asked Jemma.

  “A hostile,” said the sergeant, glancing at her. “And it can be no coincidence that a checkpoint has just reported a minibus claiming to be lost.” He gave a grim smile. “It is clearly a diversion.”

  The guards vanished among the pines and, simultaneously, a tall, dark-haired figure, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and carrying a haversack, emerged into the open.

  “They’ve flushed her out,” said the sergeant.

  Blade’s gun was holstered, and she was holding her hands well away from her body to show she was no threat. Even so, a jittery guard raised his pistol and fired. Powdered rock puffed up in front of Blade’s right foot. She checked, before continuing with apparent unconcern.

  “Don’t shoot,” yelled Jemma, as gun barrels tracked Blade’s progress up the slope, and fingers tightened on triggers. “She’s one of ours.”

  The sergeant’s head jerked round, his expression a mixture of disbelief and irritation. “What?”

  “It’s true.” Jemma shoved a hand in her pocket. “Here. Look at this—” She pulled out the crumpled piece of paper she had grabbed before leaving Tenerife and shoved it at him.

  Something in her expression must have convinced him, or maybe it was the Canarian Police Force logo. “Hold your fire,” he shouted, as he read the photocopy of the police chief’s orders concerning Blade. His men muttered and looked confused, but to Jemma’s relief lowered their guns.

  By the time Blade was close enough for Jemma to see her blue eyes and hear her panting, the sergeant had finished speaking angrily into his radio.

  “A mix-up at HQ,” he told Jemma. “The Policía Nacional received new instructions but forgot to pass them on to the Guardia Civil. They are rectifying that oversight.” His lip curled on the word.

  Blade drew to a halt in front of them and bent to ease a stitch in her side. Sweat beaded her upper lip. “Fancy seeing you here,” she told Jemma.

  Jemma didn’t know whether to hug or hit her, so she settled for putting her hands on her hips. “What the hell did you think you were doing? You could have been shot!”

  “Oh, that.” Blade’s tone was dismissive. “I saw you up here. Knew you’d talk them round. Good flight?” She accepted a canteen of water from the sergeant and took a long and clearly welcome drink.

  “If you’d come to the Field Office in person, instead of phoning, then going all cloak-and-dagger on me, you could have come by helicopter too.”

  Blade raised an eyebrow. “Think so?” With a smile of thanks, she returned the canteen to its owner.

  “We … ell.” Jemma chewed her lip. Before things were cleared up, Ramirez might have shot Blade on sight. But what did it matter now?

  Already Blade had got her breath back, and with a businesslike air turned to address the sergeant. “So. Want to show me this bomb of yours?”

  He shrugged and beckoned. “This way.” It seemed Blade was to be given carte blanche.

  Chapter 15

  ASH EASED HERSELF into the crevice. Never thought I’d see a fault line quite this up-close-and-personal.

  Though it was two meters wide at the top, it narrowed rapidly at its base, meaning the slabs of Semtex could not be piled in a single heap. The terrorists had deposited smaller piles at intervals, each connected to the next by fuse wire. The plastic explosives were sweating in the heat. I know the feeling.

  “How’s it looking?” came Jemma’s shout from ten metres away, next to the emergency landline they’d rigged up.

  Afraid a stray signal from a radio or mobile phone might trigger the timer, Ash had extended the cordon’s diameter and banned all mobile phone use within it and all flights overhead. In so doing, she had stranded the Provincial Governor, but she was immune to his bleats of outrage. When last seen, he’d been careering down the slope, his aide in hot pursuit, looking for a police car to commandeer. If the bomb went off, the two men had no intention on being anywhere near it. Jemma was a different matter. She wanted to help, had insisted on it, in fact—even if it consisted of merely relaying information over the shielded landline. Stubborn is her middle name.

  Ash straightened up and stood on tiptoe so that her eyes cleared the crevice rim.

  “Too early to say,” she shouted. She had expected the kneeling Jemma to be alone, but a pea green clad policeman was crouching next to her. He was braver than his colleagues, who had fallen back to the safety of the earth-and-boulder banks, or perhaps he simply fancied Jemma. Dismissing him from her thoughts, Ash stooped once more.

  There was no sign of a timer at this end of
the crevice, so she worked her way methodically along the piles of Semtex, careful not to turn an ankle on the uneven floor. At last she found it and squatted. Keeping her movements controlled and her breathing shallow, she studied the timer. It was bog-standard technology, she was relieved to see, and the display remained encouragingly dark. By sight she followed each wire to its destination and deduced its purpose, until she was satisfied there was only one booby trap—a motion sensor attached to one of the slabs of Semtex.

  Bomb disposal experts usually had hi-tech machinery at their beck and call, and were encased in protective body suits. Ash had neither. With a rueful smile, she reached for her haversack, then hesitated.

  “How long ’til the Spanish bomb squad gets here?” she shouted.

  There was a pause while Jemma presumably asked for a status report. “Half an hour,” came the reply.

  “Any word from Washington?”

  Another pause. “The Americans are still talking and the Libyans are still listening.”

  For how long?

  Ash opened the haversack and pulled out the wire cutters, reel of wire, and can of quick-setting epoxy resin Ignacio had purchased at her request before they left Tenerife. The bomb squad would have a fit, but they weren’t here, and sometimes you just had to improvise.

  Muttering a brief prayer to any divinities who might be listening (Ash wasn’t religious but had no qualms about hedging her bets), she aimed the can’s nozzle and pumped the lever. White foam billowed as she directed it to and fro, building up a latticework of strands which gradually encased the motion sensor and the slab of Semtex it was nestling against. There was one thing to be said for the heat, she thought as she worked—it was helping the mesh of resin to set almost instantly. At last, satisfied the sensor was as immobile as she could make it, she set aside the can.