by Chris Ryan
‘You stay here,’ the guy said, spitting on the ground. ‘I call you when time is come.’
18
2113 hours.
Three hours later Gardner and Aimée were summoned by the Chinese guy banging on the door. They were escorted out of the container. The other hopeful migrants began to get up at the sight of the man, but he snapped at them. Something Gardner took to mean, Sit the fuck down, because that’s what they all did. Gardner and Aimée emerged into the night. The air was crisp and quiet. Searchlights illuminated patches of ground amid an otherwise solid darkness. Aimée yawned; she’d spent the past three hours asleep on his chest, the beat of his heart matching her breathing pattern. Gardner had craved forty winks himself, but he didn’t trust the other people in the container. Sleep would have to wait.
‘Quick, quick,’ the guy said. He ushered them across the pier. They came to the end of the pier. A barge was docked. Next to the barge was a small boat covered in black tarpaulin. The guy glanced across his shoulders at another Chinese man standing watch at the pier entrance. The man gave a thumbs-up. The first guy leaned over the edge of the pier and ripped off the tarpaulin.
‘You didn’t tell me you took the pills,’ Gardner said.
Aimée shrugged. ‘Well, I guessed that I had to have some money to pay my way if I escaped and, well, there they were. It seemed kind of stupid not to. Given the circumstances.’
‘Without them,’ Gardner said, ‘we’d be screwed.’
Gardner wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see underneath the tarp – maybe a piece-of-shit vessel with a leaking hull and a pair of oars for a motor. Instead he was confronted with a mean-looking speedboat. Twelve metres long and shaped like a traffic cone, the stern four times wider than the bow. The hull was made from glass-reinforced plastic – durable but lightweight. A two-metre-tall wheelhouse stood in the middle of the deck, the size of a Portakabin. It was painted black, like the rest of the boat. Eight 250-horsepower engines were fixed to the stern. That’s a fuck of a lot of motors, Gardner told himself. Evidently a bag full of pills bought a great deal more than a spot in a lorry container and a small air vent.
‘You go now,’ the guy said, shooing them like they were pests at a restaurant. ‘No time, no time!’
Another man bounded up the pier and joined them. He was middle-aged, dusty face, rust-belt beard with a greying pony-tail tied at the back of his head and a pair of wraparound Ray-Bans sitting on a peeling nose. He introduced himself as the pilot. Said his name was Peterson. He had a southern US drawl. Peterson didn’t ask after Aimée or their reasons for wanting covert entry into the UK. On a trip like this, the less crew and passengers knew about each other the better.
‘This thing will get us to the shore?’ Gardner asked.
‘Depend on it,’ said Peterson, gobbing over the side of the pier. ‘We do three or four runs a week with this baby, but not usually with human cargo, if you get my drift. You must’ve paid Chang here a good service fee?’
Gardner said nothing. He helped Aimée onto the boat. She wobbled, almost lost her balance. One look at her and Gardner realized she wasn’t a big fan of the sea.
Peterson said, ‘Anyways, we’ll be doing sixty knots or thereabouts the whole crossing.’
‘Is that fast?’ asked Aimée, holding tightly onto the hull with both hands.
‘About seventy miles an hour, land terms,’ Peterson replied. ‘But then you gotta remember we ain’t travelling on no flat surface.’
Gardner surveyed the boat. ‘Low profile, dark colours, sixty knots… You can probably outrun the navy in this.’
‘Some fool looks at his radar, I’m just a fucking blur.’
They set off into a night black as a mine shaft, engines chugging as they cut through the dark water. The distance to the English coast from the port of Rotterdam was 132 miles, or 115 nautical miles. At sixty knots they’d reach Felixstowe in two hours. Factor in the time to land undetected and gather their shit, and Gardner was looking at an ETA of midnight, leaving him and Aimée with nine hours to hit the road and wing it down to London. He noticed the deck was scattered with the leftovers from the last drug shipment: spare rope, plastic sheets and buoy markers for dumping product overboard, and Very flare guns used to alert their contacts ashore of their arrival. The flare guns were bright orange, breech-loaded with a single twelve-gauge round.
Twenty minutes into their trip and the speedboat was bouncing up and down like a cork in a pan of boiling water. Stars dotted the dome of the sky, brilliant and raw. The smell of diesel fuel and sea salt corralled in Gardner’s nose. He saw the lights of ferries and tankers blinking miles away. Reds, greens and yellows strung along the horizon like Christmas tree decorations.
‘Wind’s picking up,’ Peterson said. ‘It’s gonna get bumpy.’
‘And this isn’t?’ Aimée asked. She was ashen-faced already.
‘Try to focus on the horizon,’ Gardner said.
‘What horizon?’
Something zipped through the air. Unseen. Like an invisible dart. Peterson grunted and flopped to the deck. Aimée screamed. Blood squirted out of a hole in the American’s neck. His legs twitched. Then Gardner made out a distinctive noise above the loud whirr of the engines. He killed them to steady the boat and turned to face the stern.
The guy with the prosthetic arm was riding on their coat-tails.
19
2155 hours.
Kruger burned the engine on the Zodiac rubber raiding craft and drew alongside the Brit and his fucking bitch. It had taken two hours to debug the virus she’d downloaded to the cyberware network. He was looking forward to making that whore pay.
He had chopped down the pilot with a single shot from the Stoner Rifle-25. The rifle was chambered for 7.62x51mm calibre ammunition and accurate up to a distance of 1500 metres. The detachable sound suppressor did its job as the round propelled out of the muzzle. The SR-25 was mounted on top of a Harris bipod. The bipod was connected to the underside of the rifle’s barrel along the length of its Picatinny rail system via a hardened aluminium adapter. Inserted into the SR-25 was a small computer chip which allowed Kruger to control the weapon through his arm. Fuck, he only had to think about pulling the trigger and the SR-25 obeyed.
Kruger’s employers usually asked for zero collateral damage, but the Zodiac had a max speed of around thirty-five knots and only half a tank of fuel, so killing the pilot had been the only way to catch up.
When the Zodiac was parallel with the speedboat, Kruger stopped the engine and leapt over the void onto its deck. Gardner saw him coming. But Kruger’s arm was superhumanly fast, capable of delivering a hundred-mile-per-hour uppercut before he had even finished thinking about it.
But the Brit wasn’t slow. He was fucking fast. Slugged a solid fist into Kruger’s chest. He had a strong punch on him. But not nearly enough to put Kruger down. He staggered on the deck and mentally directed the SR-25 at Gardner’s chest.
But the Brit was now diving at Kruger’s legs. The SR-25 kicked up a little as the round was fired and the jacket ejected. There was a half-second’s silence, then a raging hiss. Bullet striking the inflatable hull.
This time Kruger was knocked backwards by the Brit. He didn’t panic. His arm gave him the tactical advantage and, when it came down to shit, the Brit was going to be on the losing team. Gardner’s fingers were searching for Kruger’s eye sockets. He wants to fucking gouge me, Kruger thought.
In your dreams, buddy.
Kruger accessed the Zodiac through his mind and fired up the engines. Then he steered it into the speedboat. The bow piled into the hull and rocked the vessel. It felt like the whole world was sliding this way and that. Like they were sitting on top of an angry whale.
The bitch lost her balance.
Woman overboard.
‘Aimée!’ shouted Gardner.
Kruger thrust his right arm up and clamped his fingers around the Brit’s neck. His face blew up like a blowfish as air became trapped in his throat
, depriving his brain of vital oxygen. Kruger imagined all those red blood cells inside his skull desperately competing for air. Credit to him, the Brit fought hard. Both of his hands were trying to force apart Kruger’s prosthetic digits. But it was a futile act.
Another forty-five seconds and the guy would be dead. That’s all it would take. Kruger could hear the girl splashing and screaming in the water, but figured he’d leave her to drown, or freeze. Whichever happened first, he was easy.
Thirty seconds.
The Brit stopped pawing at Kruger’s fingers. Looks like he’s given up already, he thought. I figured he was a pussy. Came down to it, the SEALs had the beating of the SAS any day of the week.
Twenty seconds.
Then Kruger noticed the Brit dropping his right hand down and to his rear, scrabbling for something on the deck. Kruger tightened his grip and told him to hurry the fuck up and die.
Ten seconds.
Gardner lifted something up in his right hand. Kruger couldn’t immediately make it out. It was bright red and clunky. Then, when Gardner brought it level with Kruger’s face, he realized he was eyeball-to-eyeball with a Very flare gun.
‘Son of a fucking bitch!’
Gardner pulled the trigger.
The flare set fire to Kruger’s upper right arm. The part that was real, not fake. The part that could feel pain.
The flare’s magnesium and nitrate mix ate into him like acid, burning away skin and flesh. Sparks rained down on his face, scorched his beard and melted the cartilage in his ear lobe. Kruger couldn’t see shit. His world was doused a pyrotechnic green. His arm loosened from the Brit’s neck as the pain overwhelmed him. Nerve endings fried and sent signals to his brain. It felt as if he was overheating at his core. He reached across with his left hand, trying to pat out the flare. But the heat, sweet Jesus. Too fucking much.
Then he felt movement. Gardner was dragging him across the deck. Kruger went to lunge at his legs, but the flare had turned the whole right side of him into a goddamn spitroast. The smell of burned flesh took him back to Afghanistan. A smell nobody ever forgot. When he lashed out at Gardner, the nerve endings were screwed and the power drained from his arm. If anything, the prosthetic felt super-heavy now.
Still he fought. Because he knew what the Brit was doing.
Because Kruger would do exactly the same.
Gardner shoved him halfway overboard. His legs on the deck, his body doubled over the hull, his head pushed just beneath the surface of the water. And in a weird way he was relieved to be underwater, because the flare was extinguished and the chill North Sea cooled the wounds on his face, shoulder and arm.
Then he saw the propellers spinning furiously either side of him, slicing through the water, and he wasn’t so relieved.
The Brit was going to start the engines.
Turn my head into fucking chop suey.
He tried to lift his head above the water. Fought and fought and fought. He yelled into the water, ‘Fuck you, you fucking English bastard… sack of shit,’ but the words just came out as bubbles of air that floated to the surface and burst.
The engines sputtered into life.
‘Fucking son of a fucking bitch, cunt ass—’
20
Felixstowe, UK. 0031 hours.
Gardner rowed the last five hundred metres to the port. By switching off the engines he could keep the noise to a minimum. He didn’t want to disturb anybody. Least of all some over-zealous copper. Not with his and Aimée’s faces splashed all over the evening news.
Aimée sat in the wheelhouse, shivering from her plunge into the sea. Gardner had wrapped her in two thick woollen blankets he discovered in an emergency compartment in the cabin. She’d only been exposed to the water for less than a minute. Get her a brew and a new set of clothes and she’d be OK.
Gardner pulled ashore two hundred metres from the private harbour where the sailing yachts and gin ships slept. He escorted Aimée onto the beach. His mind was on Land and the final act of revenge.
Nine hours to go.
21
London. 0839 hours.
Leo Land paced up and down the Foreign Secretary’s office. The room was a tasteless clash of the old and new. Fusty portraits on the walls, antique timepieces and ergonomic sofas, glass coffee tables and an HD TV. Pierce sat in his executive leather chair. The more relaxed he seemed the more Land’s mood darkened.
‘Try again,’ Land said, stopping in front of an antique floor-standing globe carved from solid beechwood. As he ran his eyes over the exotic place names – Niger, Mauritania, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan – he could feel the opportunity slipping away from him. ‘I said, why don’t you try them again?’
Pierce sighed. ‘Because the answer will be the same. If the police had found them, we’ll be the first to know about it, and… for God’s sake, Leo, you can’t smoke in here!’
Land left the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Understand what?’
Land didn’t reply. He was turning over scenarios in his head. If they come out with the truth now, he thought, I’m done for. I’ll be fed to the bloody dogs.
Think, man, he told himself. There’s got to be a way out of this.
‘We should talk to the Israelis,’ he said.
Pierce raised one of his unruly eyebrows and the liver spots on his forehead were pushed together in a sort of polka-dot pattern. ‘Oh, and do tell, Leo, what good would that serve?’
‘We could encourage them to strike early. Before these idiots have a chance to sabotage all the hard work.’
‘And you really think the Israelis aren’t going to suspect foul play, when we come knocking on their door and asking if they wouldn’t terribly mind getting stuck into the Iranians?’ Pierce tut-tutted.
Land took a deep breath. The smell of polished mahogany filled his nostrils.
‘Wherever they are, they can’t go far. If they’d made it to the UK, we would’ve picked them up by now.’
Pierce somehow frowned and smiled at the same time. ‘The Border Agency’s under dreadful pressure,’ he said. ‘Thousands of people arrive undetected in Britain every week, you know. And if this chap is ex-Regiment… What the hell—?’ Pierce was staring out of his window at the street below. The Secretary’s Office backed onto Parliament Street and the Cenotaph. Land paced to the window and cast an eye over proceedings. A media scrum was making its way down Parliament Street heading south, towards the House of Lords, the Treasury and Parliament Square. Land counted satellite vans from all the major news outlets, some reporters in cars, others on foot. They seemed to be in a frightful hurry. Sound booms and video cameras and digital recorders weaved amid the scrum.
‘Bloody hundreds of the buggers.’
‘I wonder what they’re here for?’ said Pierce.
‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ said Land. The trembling in his hands had returned.
Pierce called in his assistant and asked him to operate the forty-two-inch flatscreen TV which stood on a stand next to the coffee table. The assistant flicked to Sky News. The feed was live. From Parliament Square. Land saw the figures on screen. He vomited a little in his mouth. Swallowed it. He scooped up his jacket.
‘Where the hell are you going, man?’
Land stopped, turned, stared daggers at Pierce. ‘I won’t let them do this, Milton. There’s too much at stake here. For you as well as me.’ Pierce’s eyes sank to the floor, but he said nothing.
Land stormed out of the room.
22
London. 0856 hours.
They stood on a sodden patch of earth at the eastern tip of Parliament Square. The ground was mulch from the peace protesters whose tents and placards had occupied the square for years.
Gardner and Aimée were side by side and felt their hands brush against each other. The morning was overcast, the sky a patchwork of dirty white sheets. To Gardner’s right was the grand fortress of HM Treasury, and to his left the Purbeck marble and flying bu
ttresses of Westminster Abbey. The two buildings stood on opposite sides of the square, like chesspieces on a board. Gardner and Aimée were poised to make their move.
Aimée was back in her comfort zone. She’d spent the two-hour train ride from Felixstowe planning her address. It was short, simple and to the point. She waited for the scrum to settle down, gave time for the photographers to set themselves up and then she spoke.
When she mentioned the involvement of foreign agents in the nuclear disaster at Istanbul, the reporters shouted questions at her ten at a time, left, right and centre. She paused. The voices simmered down.
‘We have evidence,’ she said, her tone measured and confident, ‘that a person within the British establishment was aware of collusion between the Russian and Israeli authorities to detonate the suitcase nuke during its transit to Iran.’
This girl knows how to play a crowd, Gardner thought. He scanned the rooftops and the slow-moving traffic encircling Parliament Square. They were in an area that afforded no protection, and Gardner had to remain vigilant. He had three fears. One was that the police would arrive at the scene and detain Aimée before the truth could out.
The morning was ugly and brought with it a blustery wind that stabbed his cheeks and made his eyes water. When this is over, he thought, maybe I’ll move abroad. Maybe with Aimée. Somewhere warm and sunny.
‘This person may or may not have been acting alone. What we can say is that he not only neglected to inform the government of the plan, but he actively encouraged that plan to succeed. This man’s name is Leo Land.’
His second fear was that one of the reporters might be an undercover agent doing Land’s dirty work. He ran his eyes constantly over the journalists. They didn’t necessarily have to be carrying a gun on their body. He’d heard of pistols being concealed inside the hollowed-out frames of video cameras.
