by Andy McNab
‘Yup. I’m checking out that bungalow area.’
‘Okay. Listen, the van’s unsighted – I do not have. We’re going to check down the first junction right after the war memorial. It’s signed for Porthcurno, Minack Theatre, and the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum. It’s a dead end.’
‘Roger that.’
‘Jack, get your foot down. Lights on.’
33
We screamed downhill to Porthcurno on a road that got narrower by the metre. The phone signal was falling off a cliff.
‘Gabe? Gabe? Where are you?’
Finally: ‘Still at the bungalow.’
The one bar of signal flickered. ‘We might lose comms any second. I want you to stay up on the Penzance road and get the trigger on the junction to Porthcurno until we’ve checked it out down here.’
‘No, Nick, I’m not going to do that. We’ve found something here that’s much more important. I reckon she’s in the van, and we know where they’re staying. I need to do what I need to do here. I’ll get the trigger when I’m finished.’
I didn’t have the chance to tell him to do what the fuck he was told. Our headlights hit the signpost to the telegraph museum and beach, and a second later Jack had a hand off the wheel and was gesticulating. ‘There, Nick!’
I saw it too. ‘Keep going. Don’t stop.’
The road went uphill and Jack rocked forwards as if that was going to help the Jeep climb.
‘Gabe?’
The extra bit of altitude had brought another bar of signal.
‘Yup.’
‘We have the van. It’s in the car park at the bottom of the valley, by the museum. Wait. Wait. Brake lights are on. That’s now all lights off. They’re static.’
I pulled off my earphones, then my neck wallet and I cut the phone. As long as our lights were moving, everything would look normal. It was brake lights that would give us away. Jack had done what he was told as I opened my door. ‘Just keep moving.’
I collapsed out of the car onto the tarmac, chin into my chest, tucking in my elbows and knees, ready to accept the landing like a parachute jump that had fucked up when all you could see above you was a load of washing flapping rather than a fully opened canopy. My right shoulder-blade banged against a stone but that didn’t matter: adrenalin would take over when I started running. I rolled again and thumped into the bank. I took a second to get my breath back, then jumped up and got running. My shoulder-blade felt like someone had taken an ice-pick to it, and my nicely healing knuckles were now scab-free and raw once more, but I’d have to suck it up. Pain was secondary to finding the target.
The VW’s lights were still off, but others were flitting around.
A few metres short of the car park I slowed and gulped in oxygen. A hedge paralleled the car park, and others ran into the space as dividers. I couldn’t see the van now. I hugged the main hedge as I moved a couple of paces, crouched, stopped and listened. There was no light. I couldn’t hear them; they couldn’t hear me.
Another couple of bounds and I began to hear mumbling: no distinct language, just the drone of human speech. Down on my hands and knees I closed in, and the voices became more distinct. There were metallic sounds, too, but nothing I could identify.
The mumbling got louder. They were coming to me. Boots scuffed on the tarmac the other side of the hedge. I froze against the growth. Then I could make out the dull shapes of their boots on the other side, and the low mumblings became Russian. I spoke it well enough to know they were talking about ‘which one was first’, and I soon found out what they were on about. A torch shone a few inches off the tarmac on the other side of the hedge, revealing a fibre-optic cable that disappeared into the ground with the light. They couldn’t have penetrated the tarmac, so there had to be a manhole.
Whatever they were doing, they were pleased with the results. There was a bit of backslapping as they left the equipment where it was and the boots moved back to the van. I gave them a few metres’ start, then followed. Their noise would cover mine. They felt secure, so I needed to take advantage.
The roof came into view just above the hedge, and as I got closer I saw a dim light trying to burst through the greenery. Then more voices; also Russian. I saw the lights dotted around the car park, doing exactly the same as I’d just seen with the fibre-optic. I crawled on my elbows and knees slowly and deliberately so my boots didn’t scrape the tarmac, until eventually I was opposite the van. I pushed my head into the hedgerow. The sliding door was open, and the dim light I’d seen came from a row of four laptop screens set up against the panel dividing the cab from the rear of the van. The one on the far left displayed whatever was under the manholes. It might have been interesting, but for now I didn’t care: what mattered was a young woman, lots of hair, very skinny, on her knees in front of the screens, checking them out.
One of the Wolves came to the door and muttered to Yulia as he pointed at a screen. She turned to reply and I got a good side view of her face and neck. Her hair was the same messy mop, but there was a difference between her passport photo and what I was looking at now. There was a neck tattoo that really did cover all of her throat. I couldn’t make out the pattern but, from the rest of her, it was going to be more hedge monkey than hipster. The feeds they were looking at were of deep, narrow, cobwebbed concrete chambers, with fixed ladders leading to the bottom, which was awash with gungy water.
The fibre-optic must have been an endoscope device, the sort used by border guards to check the contents of fuel tanks. The torch was to give extra light to penetrate the chamber.
About three metres down the chamber I could also make out thick cables, secured to the walls with ties, leading off to conduits either side of the manholes.
A Wolf went inside the van and brought out the antenna box I’d seen at the caravan park. He suckered it to the front passenger window as Yulia tapped away on a laptop. What the fuck were they checking for? I cut away. No time to think about that. Now was the time to work out how to lift Yulia and house her before first light. I crawled back to the road while they were still engrossed, then, covered by the hedge, I legged it up the hill.
The Wolves might have been covered with prison or gang tats but there was an order about them that worried me even more than their size. They knew what to do and when to do it, moving quietly as they got on with their tasks. I would have wanted the SNS to operate exactly the same. The Wolves were professional.
Easy-peasy, my arse.
Jack had stopped about three hundred up the hill in a car park for the Minack Theatre, which overlooked the sea. I jumped in and closed the door to the first click. I’d do the rest when we moved. There were houses up here and it was always good drills to do what might be needed all the time so there wouldn’t be a fuck-up when it was actually needed.
I gulped air as I rehung my wallet round my neck, pushed in the earphones and pressed speed dial as Jack grabbed the nearest earplug and I leant across to help.
‘Where are you, Gabe?’
‘Just finished round the bungalow area. Nick, we gotta—’
‘Wait, mate, let’s get sorted first. Get to the junction for Porthcurno. We need the trigger. We’ve got the target – she’s in the van. It’s static in the car park. Lights still off. We’ll trigger them away from here, and you can give direction from the junction. Okay?’
Gabe wasn’t listening to the last part. He’d got it. He knew what he had to do. It was the first statement he liked. ‘I fucking said she was in there! But did anyone listen?’
‘That’s for later, mate. We’ve got a problem.’
‘Fucking right we do. We have one fucking big problem. We need to RV.’
Rio cut in: ‘We gotta RV and right now, Nick. It’s important.’
‘Fuck the target.’ Gabe’s voice showed he meant it. ‘This is major shit. If you don’t RV we’re gonna have to come to you, ram that fucking van and take ’em on right now. They gotta be stopped.’
Jack shuffled in his seat, tryi
ng to push the plug in deeper, as if he’d misheard.
‘Okay, you get the trigger on the junction and we’ll RV there. We’ll let the van bounce around here. We’ll be there in a couple. Keep the comms open.’
I turned to Jack and made sure I had his attention as I took the plug back. ‘I want you to open and close the door in real time, slam it. Give it a couple of seconds before starting up and putting the lights on. Just as you would normally. Then drive as usual, okay? Don’t worry about the brake lights now. Let them see lights belonging to real people.’
He nodded as we both opened our doors and gave them a slam. A few moments later the Beamer’s lights cut across the high ground as we started downhill.
There were no pinpricks of light below us in the car park. They would have closed down until we passed.
What Gabe had to say had better be worth it.
34
We were about five hundred short of the junction at Trethewey so I gave the Beamer a warning. ‘Gabe, you should see lights soon.’
‘Roger that. Get to the junction, turn right. On the right in the line of vehicles.’
At the junction Jack turned right.
‘Just throw it in on the left now, Jack. I want to get the lights off soon as – and we close the door just one click, yeah?’
It wasn’t as if the locals would think there was an operation going on outside their homes, but there might have been burglaries that had heightened their awareness of car doors closing early in the morning. We needed the third party to stay asleep.
We got out of the Jeep, and the Beamer was parked in a row of vans and cars about forty metres away, facing the junction. The sting came back into my knuckles as I swung my arm, along with the thick clear liquid that started once again to ooze. I gave them a lick, but there was so much shit from the car park embedded that no homemade liquid was going to do the job.
We climbed into the back seats and no lights came on. The gaffer tape had done its job. Rio was in the driving seat, suicide spinner attached to the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Gabe swivelled towards us. His face said his brain was starting to fizz. ‘The fucking road checks? They were inspecting manholes.’ He jerked a finger downwards.
I almost laughed. ‘So what? We’re here to lift her, nothing more.’
Rio jumped in. ‘You gotta listen, Nick. He knows what he’s on about. He was posted to 14 Sigs for years.’
I knew 14 Signals Regiment was an electronic countermeasures unit that handled the military side of geeky surveillance, but I didn’t have time to think about Gabe’s posting.
He ploughed straight on. ‘Down there, just a couple of fucking metres below us, is the whole world’s internet traffic. When my kids use Facebook, the comms go to servers in the US, then bounce back. People think the internet is about satellites, but it isn’t, it’s physical. Satellites haven’t been able to handle the volume of traffic since the early dotcom boom. There are undersea cables connecting the whole fucking planet, and they landfall here. Every bit of traffic goes through Cornwall. We are on top of the most important and powerful telecommunications hub in the world. That’s the fucking problem.’
The finger jabbed downwards once more as if I didn’t understand what he’d been saying and pointing would make it clearer.
‘Right under our fucking arses, Nick, the planet’s internet traffic. Kids googling, lawyers doing lawyer shit.’ He took a breath to calm himself, then listed everyone who had ever been online. ‘Now do you see? That skinny fuck is checking out the cables – and why? National security, Nick. That’s what makes it a problem, and that’s why we’ve got to do something.’
Rio jumped back in. ‘Tell him what you said about the stations, mate.’
Gabe took a deep breath to keep a cap on the ever-building pressure. ‘That first place you told us to look at? Skewjack Farm. That building has a dual-generator backup.’
Rio couldn’t help himself. ‘It’s no pasty factory, Nick. It’s one of the landing stations for the cables. There’s stations all over the place. All the cables come into one, then go wherever they’re going. That’s what he says.’
Gabe jutted his head towards Rio, who didn’t react – he was used to it. ‘You gonna let me fucking finish or what?’
Rio shrugged. ‘Remember what you need to tell him and get it in order. Do that and I don’t have to cover your arse. Continue, Cable Boy.’
Gabe turned to face the rear of the Beamer once more. ‘The manholes, they’re everywhere. There’s more steel on the roads round here than tarmac.’ Gabe jabbed a finger back towards the junction. ‘And that’s no bungalow the other side of the war memorial. It’s another landing station. It’s Cable & Wireless’s, hiding in plain sight.’
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him. I just wanted to know why he knew so much. ‘How do you know that?’
Gabe hit his mobile screen. ‘Because I can read the signage on the manholes. Here, look.’
I took his phone and swiped at flash photography of manhole covers. Big names I recognized, like Verizon, were stamped into the steel, but there were a whole lot more that meant nothing to me – ‘Route 4’, ‘MFSN’ – along with a mass of information that might as well have been in Mandarin.
Gabe’s finger stabbed the screen, like he was trying to goad it into a fight. ‘All that shit on the top means something. See that one there?’
The main name said Telecom, along with other geeky shit. Two steel plates were welded on opposing sides.
‘Those are locked covers, Nick. That means there’s critical cables running through it. Look at that one.’
I stopped the swipe on a cover that said ‘CATV’.
‘That would normally cover cable TV lines, but I bet there’s fuck-all cable down here. It wouldn’t be economic to lay it – not enough customers. That’s why I have a problem. Yulia is fucking about with important shit.’
Gabe waited for a reaction but it wasn’t coming from me yet. I knew he hadn’t finished.
Rio opened his mobile and did some swiping of his own. ‘It isn’t just external locks, Nick, there are thermal trips inside. As soon as you hit one of them fuckers, there’s gonna be a quick-reaction force screaming down in their wagons from those landing stations.’ He shoved his fist into Gabe. ‘Show him the bungalow.’
Gabe was close to exploding as he snatched the phone off Rio, found what he was looking for and shoved it at me.
I was now staring at a satellite image of the bungalow. It showed a nice stone-faced building at the front, but the structure extended so far back it could have accommodated a couple of Olympic swimming pools.
‘And now we’ve got a fucking geek from Belarus and a vanload of muscle crawling all over it. This is bigger than our job, Nick. Serious shit. The two busiest internet hubs on the planet are London and New York, and there’s nine fucking cables that link them right underneath us.’
I handed back his mobile. ‘So what do you think they’re doing?’ I could guess but it was better coming from him.
‘They’re looking for a way to get to the cables without triggering the alarms. Then they’re going to blow the fucking things. We gotta stop them. Get hold of the security service, the police, the QRF, whatever. I don’t give a shit who does it, but they need stopping. Right now, right this fucking minute.’
Gabe was too fizzed-up to see more than his part of the picture. ‘I get it, mate, and you’re probably right. But us lot are so far down the food chain we need to be careful. We don’t know exactly what’s happening out there. We could get fucked over just as much as that lot in the van would be if we gave them up without thinking.’
Gabe wasn’t buying it and finally blew. ‘Fuck Yulia, fuck the food chain. I’ll ram that fucking van right now if I have to!’
Rio’s hand came down on Gabe’s shoulder. ‘Calm, mate, calm. Don’t want to wake the kids, know what I mean?’
Gabe pushed him away. ‘Fuck off, and remember this moment. It’s the
reason I’m going to hurt you one of these days.’ He came back at me hard as Rio just shrugged off the anger. ‘Forget Facebook and porn. What if they’re looking to hit something like the London and New York stock exchanges? If we leave Europe, London stays top dog because of instant trading with New York. They’re the two biggest stock exchanges. They’re like twins sharing the same umbilical cord. There’s even computers now that trade between the two just working on algorithms rather than instincts. These things are now responsible for over a quarter of all trading already. Cut all that shit for just a day, and the world economy goes tits-up.’
Rio’s thoughts on the situation were nearer to home. ‘Including our pensions.’
Gabe didn’t even bother giving him his normal look of contempt. ‘Those fucks could be doing more damage down there than a Cruise missile attack!’
I’d learnt years ago never to underestimate a person’s knowledge base, even if they were homeless or looked like they should be in prison, because I’d had a lifetime of people jumping to conclusions about me. But it had been a long time since I’d worked with other people, and I mentally thanked him for the kick in the head to remind me.
I kept my tone low and calm. ‘Mate, I get it, believe me. But we have to stay focused to stop whatever they’re doing. It’s at the recce stage so we have time. If we start opening this thing up to the world, even just the QRF down the road, we have no idea what that will expose us to. Having the memory sticks only protects so far. That’s why we’re here, trying to keep onside. We’re just minnows. We can still be disposed of if the decision is to clear the whole mess up. Do we want to take that risk without thinking about it first?’
A couple of nodding heads told me I was getting approval from Rio and Jack.
‘We need to carry on with the mission, mate. That way we stop whatever is happening in that van, and we still lift Yulia. I’ll call the Owl, and tell him what’s going on, yeah?’
I wanted at least to meet Gabe halfway. Besides, if I was right about the snide, the Owl would know soon enough anyway. Gabe’s blank stare said he wasn’t there yet.
