by Andy Maslen
TRIGGER POINT
The first Gabriel Wolfe thriller
By Andy Maslen
Copyright © 2015 Andy Maslen
Published by
Tyton Press, an imprint of
Sunfish Ltd
PO Box 2107
Salisbury SP2 2BW
T: 0844 502 2061
www.andymaslen.com
The right of Andy Maslen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Darren Bennett
Cover design by DKB Design
Author photograph copyright © 2015 Kin Ho
Editing by Tom Bromley
Formatted by Polgarus Studio
For Jo Maslen,
who made me believe I was a writer;
and for Katherine Wildman,
who helps me be a better one.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my parents, for having me in the first place, and inculcating in me a love of language that I now see reappearing in my sons. Thank you to my wife, Jo: you know me better than anyone and gave me that final push I needed to accept that writing is my true purpose. Thank you Rory and Jacob for being the best young bucks this stag could ever lock antlers with.
Thank you to Katherine Wildman, my writing mentor. You introduced me to Anne Lamott and for that alone I will be eternally grateful.
Thanks also to my friends and military advisers: Colonel Mike Dempsey, who gave me the tour of MOD Kineton; and Giles Bassett, who gave me invaluable insights into military training, strategy and tactics, and the way soldiers really behave.
Thanks to those patient souls who took the time to read the first draft and offer their support, encouragement and advice, and for not laughing in my face when I said I’d written my first novel: Jo again, Giles Elliott, Jane and Charles Kingsmill, and Rosie Maslen.
Tom Bromley is my editor, Darren Bennett designed and illustrated the cover, Kin Ho took the author photograph for the print edition: thank you all. And thanks finally to Jason and Marina Anderson at Polgarus Studio for their smooth and stress-free formatting for publication.
All of you helped make the book better: I retain responsibility for any and all errors, glitches and infelicities.
Andy Maslen
Wiltshire, 2015
Chapter 1
The four unarmed, khaki-clad men stood shivering at the edge of the cliff. The Outer Hebrides can be cold in mid-Summer: this was January, 2005. Behind them stood four soldiers wearing sand-coloured berets adorned with a patch depicting a flaming sword of Damocles. They held their rifles pointed at the ground, fingers curled over the outside of the trigger guards. Below the winged parachutes on the soldiers’ right sleeves were stitched small black diamond patches, no bigger than a thumbnail.
Ahead of them, separated from the cliff by five feet of freezing, squally air, was a three million year-old column of basalt. It was topped with a shaggy crown of moss, barely rooted in a scrappy layer of soil, like a tall, thin man in need of a haircut. Far below, they could hear waves hurling themselves against the jagged splinters of rock at the foot of the column. The men were muscular and lean with hard faces. Three shifted from foot to foot and glanced back towards the soldiers; one stood apart, hands dangling at his sides, staring across the abyss to the twelve by fourteen-yard platform.
The tallest of the uniformed soldiers, a captain, stepped forward. He addressed the row of men in the clipped tones of the public school-educated officers the British army had relied on for centuries.
“This is all about confidence. You wouldn’t be up here if we didn’t think you could do it. On my command you will take no more than two seconds to ready yourself, then jump to Old Tom. When all four of you are across, we will throw the ropes to rappel back. If you want to leave now, nobody will think the worse of you and you can return to unit with your head held high. Otherwise, it’s simple: you reach the rock, you pass the test.”
This was the final day of the first stage of training for the British Army’s Special Air Service, the SAS. Among special forces soldiers, the question of who were the world’s best was the subject of intense rivalry. Some claimed it was the US Recon Marines or Navy SEALs. The Army Rangers. The French Legion Entrangère. Israel’s Mossad operatives. The SAS professed not to care, though they did, of course. In general, their feeling could be summed up as this: we can handle ourselves and put the enemy in body bags, job done. The other girls can fight each other for the bouquet.
The men stepped away from the cliff edge and waited for the officer’s next command.
“Morgan. You first. Jump!”
Morgan was a big, heavily-muscled guy with close-set grey eyes. He eyed the top of the column of rock known as Old Tom, took four big strides backwards then crouched, ran, and sprang across the gap. He landed with a double-thump from his boots, recovered his balance and stood facing the others.
“Nothing to it,” he called across, in a strong Welsh accent.
The next man to be called, fiery red hair cropped short, tattooed arms protruding from rolled-up sleeves, also made the leap easily. Perhaps to be expected after six weeks’ training in brutal tests of endurance.
The two remaining men glanced at each other, wondering who’d be next. And who’d be last. One shivering, one still. One had a tightness around the eyes that betrayed a primal fear; the other looked almost peaceful, despite the cold. He was shorter than the others – maybe five eight or nine. Physically, he seemed dwarfed by them. His musculature spoke of fitness but not hours of weights work, or a genetic predisposition to bulk. His hair was so dark brown as to be almost black, and arrow-straight. It was cut short and stood away from his scalp in spikes where the sea-mist - harr, the locals called it - had soaked through to his scalp. He had the kind of face people always describe as average, although a careful observer might detect the faintest hint of his quarter-Chinese ancestry in the inner corners of his eyes, where the upper lids curled downwards slightly. His name was called next.
“Wolfe! Jump!”
Gabriel Wolfe breathed in once, cleared his mind of everything but the empty air that stood between him and his dreams. He visualised himself gliding over the 270-foot drop, arms outstretched like wings, then ran and leapt.
As his feet touched down on the fog-slicked moss, he skidded, and for one heart-stopping moment felt himself sliding towards the edge of the tiny platform. His fingers and toes dug in for grip and, traction restored, he straightened, triumph gleaming on his face.
He had passed the final test of the first stage of his training. Months later, he would earn not just the coveted winged parachute badge, but also one of the discreet black diamonds. They signified a small cadre inside the SAS. It was called 19 Group in official memos but nicknamed The Black Dogs. Its members possessed additional, even unorthodox, skills. While not a requirement for the SAS itself, these were nonetheless prized by the shadowy officials who oversaw 19 Group’s activities, both on, and off, the books.
In Wolfe’s case, his admission ticket was his unusual upbringing. Born in a leafy commuter-belt village in Surrey in 1980, but brought up in Hong Kong, he had been expelled from seven or eight schools for fighting, for disrespect, for “lack of discipline”. In the end his parents had entrusted their only child’s education to a family friend. Zhao Xi tutored their much loved but wayward son for seven years, instilling in him the self-discipline Gabriel’s parents hoped he would and ancient skills that they knew nothing about. Along with karate, meditation and hypnosis, they’d worked on Yinshen fangshi, which Master Zhao, as Gabriel learned to call him, translated into English as, ‘the Way of Stealth’. His father had assumed he would go to university – Cambridge, like he himself had done – and the Diplomatic Service. Gabriel had other ideas and had told Wolfe Senior he intended to join the Army. Not just any regiment either – the Parachute Regiment.
For now, though, having passed the ‘jump or leave’ test, he wanted some warm clothes and tea – the perennial fuel of the British Army.
Just one man remained to make the jump. Then the unit could rappel themselves back to safety. And a brew. The cold winter light gave an unhealthy grey cast to the last jumper’s brown skin. Gabriel could see from his body language that the man was nervous. His eyes flicked left and right. He seemed unsure how to time his jump; either he wasn’t going to make it – or wasn’t going to jump at all.
“Smith!” the officer barked, sending a couple of curious seagulls hopping around the soldiers wheeling and crying into the air.
“Jump!”
“Yeah, come on Smudge, boyo” Morgan yelled. “It’s just like jumping around in the trees back home.” Smith frowned, took a last look over the chasm in front of him, then backed up, tensed and ran. As he leapt, he screamed. Gabriel knew in that instant what would happen. Perhaps screaming stole crucial energy from the skeletal muscles responsible for propelling Smudge through the air. Perhaps his lack of commitment led him to pull his jump. Either way, he failed. He was short by a foot. Not a huge distance – less than a third of a pace when you’re tabbing across Dartmoor carrying 50 lbs of kit, less than the distance between an outstretched hand and a pint of beer at the end of a long, hard day. But when that foot extended backwards from the edge of a 300-foot column of rock, spearing up out of the North Atlantic, too much.
Smudge’s scream increased in pitch as his fingers scrabbled at the smooth, wind-riven edge of Old Tom’s basalt face before his body slammed against its sheer side. As he began to fall a hand shot out and grasped his right wrist like a vice around a piece of steel bar. Gabriel’s hand. He had already moved into position as Smudge began his descent from the peak of the parabola. He hauled his comrade up and over the edge of the tower of rock, then leaned down to him.
“I’ve got you, Smudge,” Gabriel said.
Then he caught the rope slung across from the cliff by one of the uniformed soldiers and swung himself back to safety.
Ten years later, Gabriel was a civilian once more. After leaving the army, many of his former comrades ended up working for private contractors in one of the world’s proliferating trouble spots: the Congo perhaps, Afghanistan and Iraq, Mexico or the Balkans. There was always a scrap going on somewhere for a motivated man with weapons skills, combat experience and a shortage of cash. Gabriel had avoided that field. Instead, an old friend from the Regiment had swung him a job at an advertising agency in London as an account manager – one of the plausible young men and women called upon to charm, seduce and occasionally appease clients. As a child of a diplomat and an English teacher, Gabriel could be both persuasive and articulate, and the agency’s boss had hired him on the spot. Often, his job was to present creative work produced by the “kids” as he thought of them, who sat at their desks or on fluorescent beanbags, writing copy, doodling on pads or – more often than not – watching web videos and checking their social media pages.
During one fraught meeting about a year after he’d joined Mackenzie, Allen and Farrant, the marketing director of a big fashion industry client had rejected the ad Gabriel had presented to her. She’d thrown the layout boards across her office and yelled that she was never going to sign off anything written by that “black monkey” in their creative department. In language that would have made his father blanch, he told her she was a racist then walked out.
After that, the next development in his career was inevitable.
Later that day, Martin Mackenzie, the agency’s CEO, stopped by Gabriel’s desk. The Scot’s belly spoke of too many expense-account lunches but his tailored suit contrived to make him look substantial rather than merely fat.
“If you’ve a minute, son, I’d like a word with you in my office. Quarter of an hour.”
Unlike most of his younger employees, Mackenzie never ended declarative sentences with an upward inflection as if he were asking a question. It made everything he said sound like an order. No option but to comply. Then he’d continued on his rounds, like a surgeon touring a hospital ward.
Gabriel finished the email he was working on then made his way to the lifts. He thumbed the button marked P – for penthouse. The entire top floor of the building was Mackenzie’s office, or “The Lair” as most of the agency’s staff called it, only half in jest. Mackenzie was sitting on a low leather sofa sipping whisky from a heavy cut-glass tumbler.
“Gabriel! Come and take a pew. Drink?” he asked, waggling a matching decanter at him.
“A small one please, Martin.”
Mackenzie fixed Gabriel with an appraising stare, unblinking, despite the shaft of late summer sunlight falling like a blade across his fair-skinned face.
“Well, now. I hear you had a wee spat with Paola today. That right, eh?”
“It wasn’t a spat. She’s a racist bitch and I told her so.”
“Not very diplomatic that, now was it? You didn’t like something she said, no?”
“No. I didn’t.”
Gabriel could feel his pulse ticking up a notch. He was used to standing his ground with people a lot more dangerous than Martin Mackenzie. Something about the Scot’s demeanour, though, unsettled him. He wasn’t scared of him. Agency boss or not, he was just a man: Gabriel had taken orders from tougher, scarier men, had killed men bigger than him. But he could feel trouble coming.
“Listen, son,” Mackenzie continued. “I like you. The tough guy who swapped the sword for the pen: it’s a great story. But there’s a wee problem. I just got off the phone with Paola-racist-bitch-Conti and guess what? I have to go over there in half an hour and eat humble pie or lose the whole bloody account. Probably have to eat it off her shoes.” Mackenzie’s voice was rising. It had acquired a sharp edge and Gabriel knew what was next. “But before I do, I’m firing you. You’re done here laddie. Collect your stuff, see HR for your cards and don’t let the door hit you in the arse on your way out.”
Mackenzie held the rim of the tumbler of whisky just touching his lower lip, breathing the fumes in, watching Gabriel over the top. Gabriel stood, causing Mackenzie to jerk backwards. He placed his own glass on the coffee table, careful not to slop any whisky onto the polished surface, and walked to the door. He turned, hand resting on the steel handle.
“Thank you, Martin. I’ve learned a lot from you.”
Then he was through the door, and heading for the staircase. Time for a change anyway, he thought. By the time he reached his cottage in Salisbury he’d decided on his next career move. Take his communications and leadership skills, add in the military background and voila! He’d become a corporate negotiator, helping beleaguered CEOs and their boards sort out seemingly intractable problems with maybe a dash of teambuilding thrown in. Hell, he could even lead an awayday to the Brecon Beacons for some executive bonding at the top of a mountain.
Chapter 2
A year later, Gabriel was returning home from a meeting with one of his clients. After leaving the advertising agency he’d spent a month on the phone and in meetings, pitching his services as a free
lance negotiator. Thanks to his contacts from his service days and the agency, his business had grown fast and he had chief executives and political bosses queuing for his services. It was the perfect job for him. Though the clients often expected him to be a hard man who’d bully their opponents into submission, Gabriel saw his job as more of a mediator, helping both sides get what they wanted out of a deal.
It was a fine evening and Gabriel decided to walk to Waterloo Station to catch the train home. Ninety minutes to Salisbury, then a 15-minute drive out to his village. Reaching The Strand, he turned down a narrow cobbled lane and into Villiers Street before a quick detour through the arch under the pedestrian bridge. He preferred using Westminster Bridge rather than the one above his head, because despite the tourists taking endless selfies, there was more room to dodge and weave and shave seconds off his journey to the station.
Gabriel hooked right under the bridge, the light dimming as the brick ramparts obscured the sun. As he walked through the short tunnel, past an old guy lying on some folded cardboard with a coffee cup containing a few coins placed hopefully in front, three men with shaved heads and sharp suits came round the corner towards him. Gabriel ran a combat appreciation. The man in the centre had a cocky swagger to his walk and was about his height. Slim build but fit, wearing a gold stud in his left earlobe. To his right, a giant, well over six feet. Heavy too, with the kind of muscle only steroids can build. To his left, a smaller man, not so keen on the gym, more of a beer and chips guy, soft flesh on his face and pudgy hands poking out of his shirt cuffs.
