Brute Force ns-11

by Andy McNab

  Fine, but the only marauders I needed news of were whoever jumped us in Norfolk.

  I got to grips with the front page of the newspaper. Pakistani former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated in a suicide attack. She was leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi when a gunman shot her in the neck and then detonated himself. At least twenty other people died in the attack and several more were injured.

  I couldn't be arsed to read on. I put the paper on the table and stretched my legs and arms as I looked out over the piazza. Two immaculately dressed Italian women walked past arm in arm, yabbering away to each other. It seemed impossible to speak Italian without sounding as if you were either having an argument or trying to talk someone into bed. There had to be worse places on earth to sit and pass the time of day. For a moment I almost forgot I was being chased by men in leather jackets who wanted to kill me.

  A plan started to form in my head. After my coffee, I'd walk back to Lynn's apartment and we'd have a long discussion about his career since our last contact in 1998. Somewhere in there lay the answer to what bound us together and why someone wanted us both dead.

  My cappuccino arrived and I took a sip and went back to the paper.

  I scanned the inside pages. Jack and Katie were the most popular first names given to children whose births were registered in Northern Ireland in 2007. Time magazine's Person of the Year was Vladimir Putin. In Britain, the Foreign Secretary was about to visit Libya to tie off some loose ends in the Lockerbie agreement. I could imagine the chaos on the ground as British and local security tried to keep him safe from fundamentalists. Glad it was their problem; I had enough of my own.

  I folded it up, paid the bill and started back towards the apartment.

  56

  Lynn was sitting at the table. His laptop was open as wide as the smile across his face.

  'Good news, Nick. It's not the Firm.'

  'You've spoken to them?'

  'It's the internet, Nick! Don't worry, I surf off my neigh-bour's wi-fi – silly boy doesn't even have a password. We're safe, it's OK!'

  I shoved my face into his. 'You pissed? Do they know where we are?'

  'They just know it's Italy. Nick, it's OK – they can't trace Skype. It's VOIP traffic, there are no fixed lines. The packets are routed around the network on any one of a number of different routes. We're safe here.'

  'They know it's Italy, or you told them?'

  'I told them. Listen, the question's been bugging me ever since those cars turned up at the farm: why would the Firm use you to lead them to me when they knew all along where I lived? I know you think this will end in bin-liners, but you'll have to trust me – the same as I trust my old friends.'

  'Friends? Are you paying their mortgages?'

  'No.'

  'So why trust them?'

  'That's not how it works in my world, Nick – one of them is godfather to my son.'

  I turned to the window. The sun glittered on the sea.

  'OK, it's done. Damage-limitation time. What did they say?'

  'Just that it isn't them. They said we should come in from the cold, get their help.'

  It would be great if this shit didn't belong to them. They might even be able to help, if only because Lynn was involved. It would have nothing to do with the low life following in his wake.

  Lynn joined me at the window. 'I told them we could meet at the Autogrill. It's a public area, Nick.'

  'When?'

  'They suggested six thirty tonight.'

  I looked at my watch. It was already four o'clock. 'So they're not coming from Rome?'

  'They were at the consulate in Genoa.'

  'Is that the first call you've made to them?'

  'Yes. I didn't just say we'd come to them. I arranged an RV . . . and they do not know about the flat.'

  'Did you say what car we'd be in?'

  'No.'

  'What direction we'd be coming from?'

  'No.'

  57

  The apartment keys were back under the confessional seat, and the Fiat was stuck in a line of traffic. It was still hot and humid outside, but the sun was getting lower. We were heading for the Rapallo toll to get back on the A12, where we'd turn north towards Genoa, spin round at the exit just beyond it, and then to the Autogrill.

  The queue we were in wasn't anything to do with the toll plaza yet. We were still way back in the town. It was the sheer volume of traffic clogging the maze of narrow streets that had been built for horses and carts. There were traffic lights at every junction, and only about fifty metres between them. That didn't faze the mopeds and motorbikes that buzzed around us like flies. They all managed to keep moving; we managed about twenty metres at a time before the lights changed.

  I'd been checking the mirrors, doing all my normal anti-surveillance stuff: not looking, but at the same time looking. The unconscious absorbs everything like a sponge. If you come home and the doormat has been disturbed, you'll know it – even though you've never paid it any special attention. You don't know why you know it, you just do. Or when you get to your desk at work in the morning and your pen isn't at the exact angle you left it, little alarm bells ring in your unconscious. Everything is registered.

  And what had registered with me was a particular motorbike. I couldn't even make out the exact make and model just yet, but the bells had rung and I'd listened.

  It was behind us, maybe four or five cars back, and it had been behind us for the last three or four sets of lights. Why wasn't it cutting through like the rest of them? It wasn't as if it was a big old bike like a Honda Goldwing with panniers and fairings, so bulky it couldn't manoeuvre. It wasn't an old guy's bike either, the sort of big menopausal BMW that retired dentists buy without really knowing how to ride, and don't risk in traffic in case it gets scratched. This was just a slim road bike. The rider had a shaded visor over his plain black helmet, a black bike jacket and jeans. He looked local, but wasn't acting it. There was something wrong.

  Lynn was in a world of his own. He kept looking at his watch and willing the traffic to part like the Red Sea. That was just fine. I wasn't going to tell him what was behind us. I didn't want him sparked up and turning in his seat to see for himself. The rider would be straight onto his radio to tell the rest of the team that we were aware, and that wouldn't be good. Whatever they had planned, they might bring it forward. They certainly weren't going to lift off and come back another day. If they knew that we knew, they were going to take action. We were following the river that ran through from the high ground beyond the motorway down to the sea. We limped towards the next set of lights.

  We inched forward another thirty metres, our best bound so far. The bike stayed behind us as the rest of the two-wheeled traffic weaved its way as far as it could get.

  'How many more turns before we hit the tolls?'

  Lynn sighed as he checked his watch.

  'Don't worry about it – we've got lots of time before the RV. We take a right up here, and then round the corner there's another set, and then we turn left. Then it's straight up to the toll plaza, about a kilometre.'

  I nodded and played it casual, checked the wing mirror. I could see the top of the helmet behind the line of cars.

  We rolled another twenty metres and the bike pulled out a fraction to make sure he still had eyes on target. It was a blue Yamaha VFR. The rider's helmet was down, as if he was checking the machine. There was fuck-all wrong with that machine. It moved when it had to.

  I indicated right and the dash clicked away while we waited. It looked like I'd get through on the next green.

  If the Yamaha was part of a surveillance team – or a hit team – there would be cars ahead of us by now, trying to pre-empt so the surveillance wasn't so obvious, trying to get ahead of the junctions so they could take us once the bike had told them what direction we'd committed to.

  Other cars might be behind us, caught in the traffic, trying to close in, but it didn't matter too much. The stark fact was, there
wouldn't just be a lone bike following us. They'd be all over the place. If I was heading the team, I'd send a car or bike straight to the tollbooths.

  The lights turned to green. We went right and onto another junction about seventy metres further on. The lights were at red. A green sign pointed left to the autostrada. I hit the indicator while a dozen or so bikes and mopeds pushed past. The VFR went with them. I checked my wing mirror. He'd had no choice: I'd been the last car through.

  Lynn checked his watch again and tutted.

  58

  The lights changed and I followed the traffic left. As I drove, I swivelled my eyes to check a filling station and shop car parks. Less than fifteen metres from the junction, there he was. The VFR was static between two parked cars. The rider was going through the motions of sorting himself out, but I knew from where he'd positioned the bike that he would have eyes on the junction.

  And I knew what he'd be saying into his radio: that I was now heading towards the tollbooths and not turning right and going back into town. In other words, I wasn't doing anti-surveillance.

  I pointed ahead. 'We're definitely on the straight now for the toll road, are we?'

  'Yep, not far – thank God.' He checked his watch again.

  The bike hadn't come with us. There were others ahead, for sure.

  The road widened after one K into the toll plaza, as Lynn had said it would. Cafés and shops lined the route to the six or seven booths. So did parked cars and trucks. One in particular caught my attention. It was a dark blue Golf. If you'd jumped out to grab a coffee or a paper, you would have nosy-parked. This one had reversed in, ready to go.

  As I drew level, I could see it was two-up. Both sat well back; no conversation, no movement. The side windows were tinted but the windscreen had a direct view of the tollgates. Both guys had black hair, days of growth, black leather jackets. I'd know that look anywhere.

  I checked the rear-view as I got to the booth. The Golf cut out into the traffic at the same time as the VFR appeared in the distance.

  I took my ticket and the barrier went up. We had two choices: left towards Genoa and the RV, right to head south, further down the coast.

  I took the right.

  'No, Nick, we want left, towards—'

  I put my hand on his to stop him pointing. 'Shut the fuck up.'

  The Golf was coming with me.

  The Yamaha reappeared as we spiralled up to the autostrada. Good, just the bike and the Golf to contend with so far. With luck, everyone else would have been staking out the RV. Now that we were committed, they would be gunning it down to the next junction.

  'We're going the wrong way. We're going to be late.'

  'Listen in. Do not look back. Just look at me or ahead.'

  He shuffled around in his seat, trying to decide what to do.

  'We're being followed, got that? I thought you said Skype was safe . . .'

  'It is, Nick. I don't know what's going on.'

  'Well I fucking do.'

  A sign said the next exit was a K away. I moved over to the right-hand lane, making it easier for them.

  'This can't be them. I trust them—'

  'Trust them or not, they've stitched us up.'

  The Golf had followed us into the right-hand lane.

  'We're going to try and lose them, dump the car and then do a runner.'

  The slip road curled steeply to the right. The surface was canted; our wheels juddered on the rumble strips that lined the concrete drainage ditch.

  Lynn turned to see what I kept checking in the mirror.

  'For fuck's sake! Don't let them know!'

  It wouldn't have mattered. The Golf came up close, with the Yamaha following. They were coming for us now we were out of view of the autostrada anyway. It was the best time and the only place to do it.

  The Golf was going to ram us into the ditch. The rider would then pull up and drop us with a weapon.

  'Fucking hold on!'

  I rammed the wheel to the left and moved out into the centre of the road then hit the brakes so hard Lynn's head banged on the dash.

  The Golf had been coming up alongside. Now it nearly overshot us. The bonnet was ahead.

  I hit the wheel hard and sharp, banging into it and turning immediately back to the centre. There was a screech of metal and its rear windscreen shattered. The driver's arms flailed at the steering wheel as the Golf lurched then disappeared into the ditch. It flipped twice, landing on the driver's side.

  The Yamaha braked so hard his back wheel smoked as it slid out from underneath him. I racked the wheel hard and clipped him. The bike banged against the concrete wall that towered up to the autostrada. The rider fell off and tumbled end over end along the tarmac. His machine spun in mid-air.

  I put my foot down to clear the area, tyres squealing. Little Fiat Puntos weren't made for this sort of thing. I pumped the brakes to slow down before I hit the exit booth, and came to a screeching halt just in time. I handed over my eighty cents to a woman who didn't even glance up. This was Italy, after all. She'd seen worse.

  I was pouring with sweat as we hit the road. 'Tell me where to go. Somewhere to dump this fucking thing and get on a bus so we can get out of here. Tell me.'

  59

  We sat on the bus for Chiavari, still heading south along the coast, away from Santa Margherita. Our seats were halfway along the single-decker and out of view of any vehicles that followed. We'd dumped the Punto in a residential street and Lynn had navigated us to a bus stop. We'd bought our tickets at the roadside machine and jumped on.

  His head hung down. He was feeling shit for compromising us, and so he should. But I had to keep him revved up. We still had a lot to do.

  'Fuck it. Don't worry, it's done. We all fuck up. Besides, they were going to hit us anyway.' I leant over. 'I guess we now know it's the Firm.'

  His head jerked up. 'Do we, Nick? It couldn't have been Skype. It's secure. All the Firm knew was our RV. They wouldn't have had operators scouring the whole length of the autostrada just to follow us in. Why bother, if they knew where we were going?'

  He had a point.

  'And if they'd got a fix on us from the call, why wait until we were on the road? Why not hit us at the flat? Why take the chance of the surveillance being compromised, why take the chance of us not going to the RV?'

  He was right. We still did have a place to hide.

  The bus stopped for a couple of waffling women and some kids with day sacks. The air conditioning kept everything nice and cool and calm. It was helping me, for sure.

  We got to the edge of Chiavari and the bus stopped. I stood up and Lynn followed. We might as well stay on the outskirts of this place and move back to the flat once it was dark.

  We went into a café to keep out of sight of the road. I nursed an espresso as I visualized the opening of my cache down on the Golden Lane Estate. I picked up the menu and gave it to Lynn. 'Might as well order some food, eh?'

  I played with my coffee. In my mind's eye, the screws were still in place. The mortar was still in place. Even the clingfilm; everything was as it should have been. I swallowed the shot and shuddered – only partly because the coffee was so strong. Mainly it was the thought that whoever knew about my cache would have my passport details, and everything else would have followed. They would have trawled through any credit card movements. My passport would have been pinged by the biometrics as soon as it was put under the reader at Genoa, and that would have confirmed that the tickets I'd bought on the credit card weren't a decoy. The hire car would have turned up on their screens, and all they had to do was check the camera information coming out of the tollbooths.

  It all pointed back to the Firm, no matter what Lynn believed.

  They would have some intelligence-sharing agreement in place with the Italians. They'd be able to link into their cameras and access plate-recognition machinery at the tollbooths without even leaving their desks. The Italians wouldn't have had to know what was going on. The request would hav
e been entirely routine, and submitted with a big pile of others.

  Once they knew where we'd come off the autostrada, they would have had to start checking the old-fashioned way, and they wouldn't have involved the Italians in that, for sure. Meanwhile, they would have been looking for us electronically, waiting for credit cards to be pinged.

  Lynn was busy waffling away to the waiter when I realized that there was someone I'd overlooked – someone else who knew about my passport.

  The waiter left.

  'Can you get me a phone card?'