Plausible Deniability: The explosive Lex Harper novella

by Stephen Leather

  The sign may have had some effect, for there were no recent tyre-tracks or footprints in the dusty surface of the gravel track, nor any sign of recent activity. Even the graffiti daubed on the outer wall looked as if it had been there for years. Harper pulled over, stopped the engine and got out. He stood listening for a few moments, hearing nothing but birdsong and the wind in the trees, walked a little way along the track, then glanced back at the road and nodded to the others. This would be the place.

  That night the whole team assembled below decks on the Al Shaheen to finalise the details of the ambush. ‘As well as securing Channarong,’ Anwar said, ‘we need to dispose of his car and his bodyguard.’

  Harper left the Saudis to prepare the ambush point and arrange the necessary diversion for the Thais while he went ashore, drove back to the town where he had hired his car and traded it in for a Fiat Ducato van. He then drove to a shop specialising in the finest quality Persian rugs and carpets, where he bought a large rug, paying cash, and loaded it into the van. He bought some food and water for himself and the Saudis, then returned to the ambush point. He parked the van well out of sight up the gravel track, and they settled down to wait.

  The rest of the Saudi surveillance team kept up a stream of updates as Channarong and his bodyguard flew in the next morning, picked up their hired limousine and began the drive to Portofino. The Saudi followers had four cars in front and behind the Thais, rotating their positions so that even if in full counter-surveillance mode, Channarong would have had difficulty in detecting them. Further up the road, two large lorries were parked in a service area, the Saudi drivers awaiting the signal to rejoin the traffic.

  As the Thais were speeding up the autostrada, approaching a junction with Strada Statale 1, ahead of them a lumbering lorry was overtaking another one, backing up the following traffic. Suddenly it swerved as if a tyre had blown, and hit the other lorry a glancing blow. Both lorries then skewed to an immediate halt, completely blocking both carriageways. As the following traffic ground to a halt amid a traditional deafening Italian chorus of car-horns, the two lorry drivers jumped out and started shouting and gesticulating at each other. Those cars already past the junction had little option other than to wait, although some did start trying to reverse back down the autostrada to the junction, provoking fresh symphonies of horn-blowing, but those cars just short of the junction began to filter off and take the SS1 instead.

  The Saudi followers watched and waited as Channarong’s bodyguard, in the driving seat of the Merc, fiddled with the limousine’s sat nav, then swung the wheel and took the exit, driving off up the slip road onto the SS1. As soon as the Merc had disappeared from sight, the two lorry-drivers jumped back in their cabs, and set off again up the road in line astern, while the released traffic began to roar past them amid a fresh torrent of fist-waving and horn-sounding.

  Alerted by a burst transmission on their comms, Harper and the other Saudis took up their positions, hiding in the bushes lining the verge alongside the road. There was no guarantee that other vehicles would not pass through while the ambush was taking place, but even if they did, they would be unlikely to notice anything other than a broken down car at the side of the road. If someone stopped, then action would be needed but Harper was confident he could deal with any likely situation without creating further problems or unnecessary casualties.

  The Saudi followers had dropped well back from the Merc on the much quieter road, but were keeping Harper updated on its position using the data from the tracking device. When it was a mile short of their position, Harper called ‘Stand by! Stand by!’ to the Saudis, who were crouched in the bushes a hundred yards up the road in the direction from which the Thais were coming.

  There was a false alarm as a BMW swept past and then the Merc came into view. As it reached their position, the Saudis detonated the tyre exploder, which immediately blew out the front tyre. Just as Harper had planned, the driver fought the wheel of the Merc for a few moments, fish-tailing up the road, but as he caught sight of the gravel track, he pulled off and ground to a halt with the front wheels close to the precipitous drop into the ravine.

  Harper remained in cover, watching as Channarong berated the hapless bodyguard. Channarong remained in the back seat of the car, smoking furiously, while the bodyguard got out, looked at the tyre and then opened the boot to search for a spare. He was still bent over, rummaging beneath the carpet in the boot, when Harper crept up behind him and walloped him on the back of the head with a rock. The bodyguard fell without a sound. Harper stepped to the side of the car, and opened the rear door.

  Channarong turned towards him, a fresh curse forming on his lips, but his voice died away and his expression turned from fury to terror as he saw not his bodyguard but Harper standing there, with the pistol he was holding pointing straight at Channarong’s face. ‘Remember me?’ said Harper.

  Channarong’s lips moved but no sound emerged.

  Harper checked for traffic noise and, hearing none, motioned Channarong to get out of the car. He made him kneel in the dirt at the side of the track, hidden from sight of the road by the Mercedes. Thinking he was about to be executed, Channarong began begging for his life, promising Harper a million dollars to spare his life, but Harper remained silent, implacable, and the terrified Thai pissed himself in his fright.

  The Saudis dragged the bodyguard’s body out of sight, then rolled it up in a length of chain link fencing they had cut from the fence around the old quarry and weighted it with lumps of scrap iron and stone.

  Meanwhile Harper silenced Channarong by laying him out with a single, vicious blow to the back of the neck, then cable-tied his wrists and ankles, and forced a ball-gag into his mouth. He then took the expensive Persian rug out of the back of the van, opened it out and dragged the unconscious Channarong on to it. As he rolled it up again with the Thai inside it, there was the thunder of rotors and the helicopter from Al Shaheen went into a hover and landed alongside him, whipping up a storm of dust, twigs and torn leaves.

  As it cleared, Harper and the two Saudis loaded the carpet and the body of the bodyguard into the heli. Harper jumped in behind them and it was airborne again at once, heading for the coast.

  One of Harper’s Saudi back-up team was already replacing the Mercedes tyre, while the other one threw what was left of the destroyed tyre into the ravine. They then drove the Mercedes and Harper’s hired van back to Pisa airport and parked them at the far end of the rental compound. They threw the keys into the bushes and then walked to the terminal and caught a flight to Rome from where they could fly direct back to Riyadh.

  When the disappearance of Channarong and his bodyguard were noted, the Thai authorities would be able to track their movements by the records of the airline and car hire company, but they would then hit a brick wall. Lacking any further information, the obvious conclusion, or so Harper hoped, would be that the notoriously corrupt Channarong had finally accumulated enough cash to flee Thailand for a new life under a new identity somewhere else in the world, and had made careful plans to cover his tracks in case of pursuit.

  The heli had meanwhile crossed the coast, but instead of making directly for Portofino, the pilot continued out to sea, until the coast and its water-borne traffic was just a faint blur in the haze. It then went into a hover while Harper slid open the cabin door, manhandled the bodyguard’s body to the edge and pushed it out. It hit the sea with a splash of foam and green water and sank without trace at once. The weights would keep it pinned to the bottom and the mesh of the chain link would allow fish, crabs and lobsters to get at the body. Even if it was discovered one day, by then the body would be nothing but bones.

  The heli then turned back towards the coast, landing on the deck of the Al Shaheen in the harbour at Portofino. Before the rotors had stopped turning, Harper had shouldered the carpet and jumped down from the heli. If anyone had been watching from the shore, they would merely have seen the owner’s latest extravagance, a luxurious Persian rug, being lif
ted out of the helicopter.

  Harper made his way below decks to the Ops Centre where the Commander was talking with his counterparts in Riyadh. With the air of a stage magician unveiling his signature trick, Harper unrolled the carpet, sending the now fully conscious and absolutely terrified Colonel Channarong tumbling onto the deck. After hauling him upright and jerking his head back so he was looking straight into the camera that was sending images back to Riyadh, reassuring them that they did indeed have their man, two of the Saudi black ops team took Channarong away at once, locking him in a cell deep in the hull.

  ‘I have just finished speaking to my superiors in Riyadh,’ said Anwar. ‘They are very, very pleased with the way the operation was carried out. They look forward to entertaining you again in our country in the near future and showing you their gratitude. In the meantime, to maintain the legend we’ve created and continue the distraction, we have a party to organise, and I think it will be better, my dear Lex, if you sit this one out.’

  The Saudis showed him to a sumptuous cabin further below decks where Harper settled back for the evening with a bottle of Krug, a super-Tuscan red wine and some delicious Italian canapés for company. The faint sounds of music and laughter and the noise of the coming and going of the ship’s tenders filtering down to him showed him that the party for Portofino’s rich and famous was in full swing. By the early hours the sounds were growing fainter and eventually ceased altogether, but by then Harper had drunk most of the champagne and wine, and was fast sleep.

  The rumble of the engines woke him the next morning. Venturing out on deck, he climbed into the heli, which took him back ashore, dropping him on a quiet stretch of road a few hundred yards from the town. As he walked down to the harbour to catch the coastal ferry to Rapallo, he caught his last glimpse of the Al Shaheen as it dipped below the horizon, far out on the open sea.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Stephen Leather is one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers, an eBook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider” Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is one of the country’s most successful eBook authors and his eBooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US. The Bookseller magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world.

  Born in Manchester, he began writing full-time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series, Two of his novels, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were filmed for TV and The Chinaman is now a major motion picture starring Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan.

  To find out more, you can visit his website at www.stephenleather.com.

  THE RUNNER

  The explosive new stand-alone thriller from the author of the Spider Shepherd series.

  Sally Page is an MI5 ‘footie’, a junior Secret Service Agent who maintains ‘legends’: fake identities or footprints used by real spies. Her day consists of maintaining flats and houses where the legends allegedly live, doing online shopping, using payment, loyalty and travel cards and going on social media in their names - anything to give the impression to hostile surveillance that the legends are living, breathing individuals.

  One day she goes out for a coffee run from the safe house from which she and her fellow footies operate. When she comes back they have all been murdered and she barely escapes with her own life. She is on the run: but from whom she has no idea. Worse, her bosses at MI5 seem powerless to help her. To live, she will have to use all the lies and false identities she has so carefully created while discovering the truth …

  Hodder and Stoughton have published sixteen books featuring Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd written by Sunday Times bestselling author Stephen Leather. His standalone thriller The Runner, featuring characters from the Spider Shepherd books, will be published in January 2020.

  You can preorder The Runner now on Amazon

  Also by Stephen Leather

  Pay Off

  The Fireman

  Hungry Ghost

  The Chinaman

  The Vets

  The Long Shot

  The Birthday Girl

  The Double Tap

  The Solitary Man

  The Tunnel Rats

  The Bombmaker

  The Stretch

  Tango One

  The Eyewitness

  Penalties

  Takedown

  The Shout

  The Bag Carrier

  Spider Shepherd thrillers:

  Hard Landing

  Soft Target

  Cold Kill

  Hot Blood

  Dead Men

  Live Fire

  Rough Justice

  Fair Game

  False Friends

  True Colours

  White Lies

  Black Ops

  Dark Forces

  Light Touch

  Tall Order

  Short Range

  Spider Shepherd: SAS thrillers :

  The Sandpit

  Moving Targets

  Jack Nightingale supernatural thrillers:

  Nightfall

  Midnight

  Nightmare

  Nightshade

  Lastnight

  San Francisco Night

  New York Night

  Tennessee Night