Crisis Four ns-2

by Andy McNab

  They stopped. They exchanged a few more words, then Men In Black took a last drag on his cigarette, dropped it on the ground near his feet and stubbed it out with the toe of his trainer. He obviously hadn't read the signs asking him to leave only footprints.

  They turned right about ten meters short of my position, moving uphill toward the track. They were taking the easy route as the ground right next to the house was steeper. Too Thin To Win led the way.

  They walked up onto the track, and I realized that they were checking the ground. They were looking to see if there was any sign left by anyone during the night. They moved off the track and downhill, but stopped short of the house and didn't move any closer to it. I wondered why, and then I realized: there must be proximity alarms. As well as the motion detectors, which would trigger the lights, there must be sensors that informed them of movement outside. Judging by the route the two of them took, I worked out that the proximity alarms were probably covering an area about twelve to fifteen meters out from the house.

  MIB lit up again as they went back onto the track, then disappeared behind the house, still playing with his beads. I used the time to check the cam, the bung behind me and that my pockets were done up.

  After four minutes I watched them emerge from the opposite side of the house, the lake side, and walk toward the boat on the trailer. They clambered aboard and started up the engine, revving it until I could see the blue two-stroke smoke pumping out of the exhaust. Then, just as suddenly, they killed it, and jumped out with lots of talking as they disappeared through the gap between the garage doors. I heard the wagon start up. It wasn't going anywhere because the boat was in the way. It meant these boys were good: they were checking everything, including their getaways, in the event of a drama.

  The vehicle engine cut and there was silence. They didn't reemerge.

  I now knew there were at least two in the house, and I also knew that there must be access to the house from the garage.

  That was it for another couple of hours. I just lay there, watching, resting one eye at a time. Now and again I could hear a putt-putt on the lake, and a couple of times the sound of a toilet flushing. Occasionally there was the far-off screaming of kids, possibly in a boat or playing in the water, but otherwise nothing unusual.

  At ten fifteen I watched as Mom, Dad and kids from the other house started to push another boat toward the lake; that was probably them out of it for the day. Well, until it rained anyway.

  After that, nothing at all happened. It was pizza and Mars bar time.

  At about eleven thirty I started to get movement from the garage doors.

  Still nibbling at the last bit of my third Mars bar, I moved my thumb over the cable release.

  MIB came out. I watched him and slowly swirled the camera to the right, wishing I had a wider lens. He walked to the front of the trailer and stopped near the hook-up point. He seemed to be waiting; sure enough the wagon sparked up.

  Sarah walked out. Gotcha! She was wearing blue jeans and a blue sweatshirt with the Quiksilver logo on the back. I knew her gait, I even recognized her walking boots. She stopped to look at the sky. Yes, it was going to rain. I hit the cable release and hoped I'd got her. If so, the job was just about over. It felt so strange, seeing her after so long, and in this way. She still looked just like the picture in her apartment, but without the smile. It gave me a strange sense of power over her by being hidden, watching.

  As the boat was in the way, the garage doors couldn't open fully. She and MIB twisted the boat so that it was parallel to the water, then they opened the garage doors fully and out came a black Ford Explorer. One up. It was Too Thin To Win, and going by what I could see of his top half, he'd smartened himself up probably had a shit, shower and shave.

  The engine revved as he came screaming toward me then uphill toward the track. I craned my head in an attempt to catch the registration. I couldn't get any detail, but it definitely had a North Carolina plate with the "First In Flight" slogan and a picture of the Wright Brothers' aircraft on a white background.

  My eyes jumped back to Sarah. She was helping to turn the boat around so that it faced the water again, ready to go. This was an escape route, for sure. Once they had done that, they went inside and the garage doors were closed fully behind them.

  Very weird shit. It seemed that London was right to worry about her after all.

  slowly got out the 3C and slid open one of the ports, inserted a flash card from my jeans pocket and turned it on.

  A flash card stores information in much the same way as a floppy disk does for a PC. What came up on the screen from this one was a selection of about 200 words or phrases, each with a five-figure sequence of numbers beside it. The letters of the alphabet were also encoded, so that uncommon words could be spelled out. To compose my message, all I had to do was scroll through to the word or phrase I wanted and write down the corresponding five-figure group on my notepad with a pencil. I preferred pencils to pens because you can write with them in the rain. I always used one that was sharpened at both ends, so that if one lead broke I could still use the other.

  The first parts of the message I was going to send were standard and didn't need the codes. My PIN was 2442, but since the numbers had to be in groups of five for the code to work, I made it 02442.1 followed this with the time/ date groups: 02604 (April 26th). I had a look at Baby-G and wrote down 01156 (1156 hrs; times are always local). It was then just a matter of scrolling through the codes to make up the message.

  The first I looked for was "tgt loc. 6 fig grid." I gave the map sheet details, plus the six-figure grid reference of the target. Just to make it clear, I told them that it was the eastern most building of the two.

  My message continued: "echo one (Sarah) located with two bravos (males) middle eastern. are aware. no weapons. mac down. waiting

  FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS."

  I ended the message with my pin again 02442 and that was it. It worked out that I had twenty-one groups of numbers.

  I put the second flash card into Port B, took out A and put it back in my jeans pocket. I could run the Psion with both cards in, but I didn't like doing it; if there was a drama and I was caught, it meant the whole system would be accessible all at once. At least with them separated I had the chance to hide or destroy a key part of it.

  The second card held a series of numbers, also in groups of five, called the "one-time pad." Devised by the German diplomatic service during the 1920s, the OTP is a simple encoding method consisting of a random key used only once. There are a few variations on the OTP theme. The Brits first started using it in 1943. Still widely used by the intelligence services of all countries, it is the only code system that is unbreakable, both in theory and in practice.

  I started by writing down in my notebook the first group from the OTP under the first group of the message, my PIN. I carried on until all twenty-one groups had another set of numbers from the one-time pad under them.

  What I had to do then was subtract 14735, the first group of the OTP, from 02442, my identification code, and came up with 98717 not because my math was shit, but because in spy land sums, you don't carry the ten over, you lose it. Bloody typical.

  At the London end, they knew the message would start with my PIN, and groups are always used in the order they are laid out in. It would be easy for them to add the groups on their corresponding OTP from the groups that I'd transmitted, and they'd come up with the original set of numbers again, because they would also do spy land sums. Referring these back to the code book, they'd produce my intended word or phrase. Once used, those groups would never be issued again.

  I did my spy-type sums one more time to confirm my arithmetic, and was ready to send. I turned on the phone, tapped in the PIN code and waited for a signal. I tapped out "Kay's" on the Psion to retrieve Elizabeth's number; I hadn't got around to learning it after all. After two rings a recorded message from a synthesized but happy-sounding female voice said, "Please leave your message after th
e tone." Two seconds later, there was a beep.

  I tapped out the message of twenty-one groups on the number pad, then pressed Pound and listened for the auto-acknowledgment.

  "Thank you for your" there was a pause, then a different electronic voice "twenty-one group" then the original voice "message." It cut off and so did I. I put the flash cards back in their separate jeans pockets. I wrapped the piece of paper up in a sheet of plastic wrap and tucked it under a branch in the mud. I didn't want to get rid of it yet, because I didn't know if I was going to need it. If London came back and told me they couldn't work out my message, it might be because I'd fucked up the encoding or spy sums. The system can be time-consuming, but used properly it works.

  The next part of the job was to "Mac down" the pictures. I plugged the lead into the phone, clipped it into the receiver end of the camera and clicked on its internal modem. I dialed the same London number and got the same recorded message. I pressed Send on the camera; the telephone was taking the information from the digital camera and bouncing it off a satellite up there somewhere. Pictures would come up on an Apple Mac screen at the other end and hard copies would be made. Within minutes Elizabeth and Lynn would have my nice holiday snaps of Sarah and her two playmates on their desks.

  After transmission, I switched off the phone to save the battery. It was pointless leaving it on; they weren't going to get back to me straightaway.

  If they did, the phone's message service would intercept the call anyway, so no problems. I was in no rush; even if they said, "End-ex," I couldn't come out of here until nightfall.

  Events had moved on since my briefing. I tried to imagine what would be going on in London. Elizabeth would probably be at home, as it was the weekend. A car would be sent to her country seat to bring her to the operations room in Northolt, North London. The opening scene of James Bond's Tomorrow Never Dies, with large screens and computer projections on VDUs, wasn't that far from the truth. The people receiving my int wouldn't have a clue what it was about, or whom it was from. Elizabeth would lock herself away with Lynn somewhere and look at it, probably complaining that it had taken me so long, and then drink some more tea.

  From what I could remember, it seemed very fashionable to drink a herbal blend at the moment. But not her, she'd be throwing Earl Gray down her neck. Meanwhile, I waited out in this hole.

  Elizabeth, not Lynn, would make the decision on what I was to do next.

  I wished again that I knew who she was; I hated it when people had so much power over me, and I didn't know who had given it to them or why.

  I had my fingers crossed that they wouldn't want a technical device put in to find out who these people were and what they were up to, because that would entail me doing a CTR (close target reconnaissance) to help whoever was being sent to do the job. That would mean getting into the house and working out the best way to bring the technical device in, as well as describing the makeup of the general area, the size of the house, how many stories, the kind of doors, the kind of locks. A locks recce is a task in itself; it means going right up to the door or window to study them in detail. Sometimes you put a little bit of talcum powder on the lock, then press Plasticine into the keyway, pull it out and put it in a secure container so you can take imprints later. Then, of course, you have to remember to remove all the dust from the lock.

  A CTR has to answer every conceivable question that might be asked by a third party who's been tasked with making entry. Are the windows locked? What is the area of clear glass? Of frosted glass? What are the main access routes to and from the target? Is the target overlooked by any buildings? Are there any garages or outbuildings or car parking spaces?

  How many doors are secured, how many are loose? Do they make a noise when they open? They would need to know to take in some oil, to stop any creaking.

  Are there any good approach routes? Any major obstacles? Is there lighting? What are the weather conditions like? What are the routes to the target? What's the general condition of those routes? What would you need to get to the target? What type of ground ploughed, pasture, boggy? What sort of natural obstacles are there? What is the time and distance from the DOP (drop off point)? Where is the DOP? Are there any animals about? Dogs, horses, geese? And that was assuming I could get onto the target at all, past the proximity lights.

  The list of questions can seem endless, especially when you're two hours into a CTR, first light is approaching and you seem to be only a third of the way down the list. Where are the best places to put OPsin? In this particular case, that was easy: I was in it. Where would be the best place to put long-range technical devices in for a video soak? That would be somewhere over on the other side of the lake. Could we have a helicopter trigger? Could we have a helicopter that just flies around maybe three or four Ks out?

  Once I'd gathered all that information on the exterior, I would have to CTR inside the house. For that I'd need to take in an infrared camera, or buy commercially available infrared niters to fit my camera, so that I could take pictures without disturbing the people in residence. They'd want to know the full real estate agent's monty. What are the dimensions and layouts of every room? Where is the electrical supply? If you're putting listening or picture devices in, batteries last only so long, so you might have to tap into the mains. Where is the best place to put a listening device? And that might entail looking at the direction of the floorboards, because if you're trying to hide an antenna, you'd put it in the gaps between them; but that also means taking a compass bearing of the floorboards, so the scaleys (communications personnel) can work out their antenna theory.

  Stuff like this takes days and days to organize, and it would be my job to stay and wait with eyes on target while everything was prepared. If my stores ran out I would have to be resupplied via a dead letterbox and outside help and even that would be a pain in the ass to sort out.

  As far as I was concerned, my job was now finished. I'd found Sarah and confirmed it with photography. I didn't want to be a part of anything that happened next.

  I cut away from it by thinking about a job I'd done in the jungle once.

  We'd got to our report line, it was pouring down with rain and we were gagging for a hot brew, which we couldn't sort out because we were on hard routine. We transmitted our sit rep, something to the effect of "We are at the river head, what now?"

  We were told, "Wait out."

  About four hours later they came back to us and said, "OP any track."

  What the fuck did they mean, OP any track? What good would that do us? We asked, "What track?"

  They came back, "OP any track that runs west to east."

  They had to be mad. We sent back: "We can't find one running west to east. However, we've found one running east to west and we're going to OP that one."

  All we got back was, "East-west is good, out." Either they were taking the piss, or the world's most useless officer was manning the desk that night. We never found out which. You never do.

  Nothing was happening. Even the fishermen had gone back to their tents for lunch.

  I'd just decided it was pizza time, and was about to reach for one of my wraps when I heard movement on the ground, and soon afterward, rapid, heavy breathing.

  The distinctive, metallic tinkle of a name tag on a collar became louder as the dog got nearer. I hadn't seen anything around the target that identified it as having a dog, so it probably wasn't from the house. But the name tag meant the animal was domestic, and that meant there would probably be people with it.

  I began to hear aggressive sniffing; seconds later, a wet, dirty nose was nudging the hide. Maybe he was a fan ofWal-Mart's Four Seasons.

  I moved my hand slowly to my pocket, easing out the Tazer and the pepper spray. I didn't know if the pepper would work on dogs; they can be immune to some of this shit. One thing I knew for sure: he wouldn't enjoy the Tazer. But then again, the yelping would alert everybody and what if the shock killed him stone dead? I would have to drag him in with me an
d have a smelly, wet and very dead dog as my new best mate.

  The sniffing seemed just inches from my ear. This dog was excited; it knew it could be din-dins time.

  A young woman called, "Bob! Where are you? Here, Bob!" I recognized the voice.

  Bob carried on sniffing around the OP. Straightaway I thought, I'm a British journalist working for a tabloid newspaper. I'm doing a story on the famous people hiding in the house, and I want to get pictures of their illicit affair. I'll jump straight in with questions before they can ask any.

  Do you know anything about them? Do you live around here? You could make a lot of money if you tell us what you know about them ... The brain has two orbs. One side processes numbers and analyzes information, the other is the creative bit, where we visualize things and if you visualize situations, you can usually work out in advance how to deal with them. The more you visualize, the better you will deal with them. It might sound like something from a tree buggers' workshop, but it does the business.

  My eyes were glued to the target, but my ears were with the dog. It's nearly always this sort of third-party shit that compromises you, and dogs can be the worst of all. They can detect your every breath and movement from as much as a mile away under favorable conditions which it seemed I had given him. Dogs have very poor eyesight, only half as good as man's, but their hearing is twice as good. The wind was blowing from the lake toward the dog. He might have heard me, but I was sure it was an odor that was attracting him. It's not just food smells that provide a target;

  so does body odor, or clothing, especially if it's wet. Soap, deodorant, leather, tobacco, polish, gas and many others are all a giveaway you name it. Who knows what it was in this case.

  The more Bob sniffed, the more I came to the conclusion that he was after the pizza. No matter how much I'd wrapped it up, his nose wasn't fooled. Cannabis smugglers wrap eucalyptus leaves around their stuff to put off sniffer dogs, but it doesn't work: the mutts can smell both at the same time and know they're going to get a nice chocolate drop as a reward.