Quantum Breach

by Powell, Mark

  McCabe cracked off a shot which narrowly missed the front tyre of the Mercedes. Their car had now accelerated to 80 mph. The white Mercedes, being a heavier car, was losing ground, its headlights shattered by the rapid fi re now being put down by Stowe and McCabe. Steam started to billow out from the radiator. But for some unfathomable reason, the Merc was not backing off. The moonlight was strong enough to still see, even without headlights. It was as if the driver was determined to ram them from behind and push them into a crash barrier.

  Stowe noticed that the man seated in the passenger seat was out of action. He had slumped forward. The wind was howling in through the back window of Stowe’s car, bits of glass still fl ying in and stinging McCabe’s face. Stowe ordered his driver to slow down as he wanted to draw the other car in. It was risky, but he wanted to know who these guys were.

  At the next corner, the driver took the opportunity: the sharp corner sloped down with steep banks on either side. Surrounding them was a construction site. There were cranes and heavy earth-moving equipment parked under the dim night-lights. Heavy clouds of dust were sprayed into the air by both cars as they roared down the narrow road. Stowe’s car slid around the corner, two of its wheels edging off the road surface and onto the gritty sand, sending dust and grit spewing into the air. Stowe’s car then braked hard and skidded to a stop just around the bend.

  As the white Mercedes loomed up and around the corner, it stood no chance at all. McCabe neatly blew out the front offside tyre with a single shot from his Browning. Stowe followed with a shot which struck the driver hard in the chest. The man’s eyes rolled back as he fl ew back against his seat and then slumped forward over the wheel. The Mercedes barrelled out over the edge of the road and down the steep slope, fl ipping over several times, its doors fl ying open and windows quantum breach 290709.indd 98

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  shattering before it came to rest on all four wheels at the bottom of the slope. Clouds of dust and grit billowed into the night air. The fuel tank had struck a steel girder lying in the sand; fuel was now beginning to leak out.

  McCabe and Stowe charged down the slope towards the car, wanting to see if anyone had survived. Stowe reached in the driver’s door window which had shattered, and felt the driver’s neck for a pulse.

  He was dead, his neck broken by the steering wheel. With the chest wound that was centre-placed, he had no chance. The passenger was barely alive. McCabe dragged him out and away from the car. Black smoke and fl ames were beginning to lick up the sides of the car; the leaking petrol had ignited and the tank was about to blow up.

  ‘Come on, let’s get out of here!’ shouted Stowe.

  ‘Wait!’ McCabe shouted back. His instincts had guided him over to the boot of the car, which was buckled and half open. Inside, through the billowing smoke, McCabe could see a body. Holding his breath, arching his arm in front of his face to protect it from the growing fl ames, he reached inside and lifted out the man, dumping him hard on the ground. McCabe then dragged him over towards the bank.

  Only seconds later, the car blew up, sending fl ames and steel into the air. Both McCabe and Stowe were fl ung back by the blast. Stowe’s driver had already handcuffed the passenger and started to drag him up the slope towards the sedan. McCabe and Stowe sat there looking at each other, both out of breath, their hearts pounding, beads of sweat dotting their foreheads. There was a slight cut on Stowe’s head, which was weeping blood—a shard of glass had caught him when the rear window had shattered.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ said Stowe as he kicked over the body of what looked like a young man in his late twenties. He had clearly been beaten up badly. His throat had been cut.

  ‘Who is it?’ McCabe enquired.

  ‘It’s John, my plant, the guy we had working with Ying at your bank.’

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  ‘Jesus,’ McCabe responded

  ‘Come on, let’s get out of here before the area swarms with police,’

  Stowe said. ‘We need to interrogate this bastard,’ he continued, pointing to the man now being loaded into the boot of his car.

  It was getting close to 9:00 p.m. by the time they pulled into an underground car park located beneath a four-storey building in Dubai’s Old Town. Stowe and McCabe got out and went to the back of the car.

  The boot popped open and they lifted the lid. The driver pushed in past McCabe and started to lift out the man. The man’s eyes showed no fear, only defi ance. He knew he would be interrogated.

  ‘You don’t have to be a part of this, McCabe,’ Stowe said.

  ‘Like hell, Stowe. I’m in. Ying could be in danger and I want to know how these fuckers got on to us. Can you use me here?’ asked McCabe.

  ‘Of course. I need all the experienced hands I can get.’

  They entered a door off to one side of the low-lit garage, walked up a narrow staircase and into a room off a small passage. The room was dull with only a table and two chairs inside. McCabe looked around. It was once a storage room by the looks of it; the remnants of steel racking was stacked up in one corner.

  Stowe’s driver sat the man down on a simple steel chair and re-cuffed each of the man’s wrists to the arm of the chair. He then left the room.

  Stowe walked up to the man, grabbed hold of his hair and yanked his head back.

  ‘You know the drill: you may not talk, but I will have fun trying to make you.’

  The man looked defi antly up at Stowe and spat in his face. Stowe wiped it off with the sleeve of his jacket and paced around the table.

  ‘So you understand English,’ Stowe remarked.

  McCabe stood back in one corner just observing. Stowe’s driver returned with a small red toolbox, placed it on the table and fl ipped open the lid. Inside was a basic set of handyman’s tools. McCabe knew what they would be used for, and not mending the kitchen sink. At this quantum breach 290709.indd 100

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  point, he stepped outside and called Ying. The phone rang several times before she picked it up.

  ‘Boss?’ she answered.

  ‘Hey, you okay?’

  ‘Yes, fi ne. Why?’

  ‘Good.’ McCabe was short and direct.

  ‘What’s up? And what is that dreadful noise?’

  Hearing the man in the background, McCabe needed to go.

  ‘Nothing. Just checking you’re okay. I’ll swing by later.’ McCabe then hung up.

  Stepping back into the room, McCabe observed Stowe at work with a pair of old pliers wrenching out one of the man’s front teeth very slowly. The screams of the man were only subdued by the fact his mouth was full of blood, which was burbling out through his lips. The man sat, moaning and straining in the chair, the handcuffs rubbing the skin of his wrists. McCabe stayed silent. He knew better than to disturb Stowe, who was doing what he thought he had to do in order to extract information. McCabe knew that no amount of slapping the man around the head would make him talk. Extreme measures were required.

  Stowe stood back and shouted at him. ‘Tell me, you bit of shit, whom do you work for?’

  Stowe’s driver translated what Stowe said into Arabic just to be sure he understood. The man slumped forward, his mouth dripping with blood, which he spat out. As Stowe went to hit him, he started to plead in broken English for mercy. He was beginning to crack.

  Observing this, Stowe turned and ambled over to one corner of the room, bent down and picked up a long thin piece of steel rod, McCabe following him with his eyes. The rod looked like it was once a part of a shelving structure, but Stowe clearly had another use for it. He walked back to the man, raised the rod and jabbed one end fi rmly into the bullet wound on his left shoulder. The man immediately let out a blood-curdling scream and started to jerk around. Stowe leant on the quantum breach 290709.indd
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  rod, applying pressure and making it bend as it penetrated deeper.

  The man screamed in pain.

  ‘Whom do you work for?’ Stowe held the man’s jaw with his right hand and shook his head violently from side to side, slapping his face to stop the man from passing out. He then withdrew the rod and dropped it on the fl oor. It clattered as it hit the concrete, the sound echoing around the empty room.

  ‘Tell me! Tell me now, or it gets shoved up your arse next,’ Stowe demanded.

  ‘A woman, that’s all I know, a woman. Rain …Rain … ’ The man’s English, now sharpened by his ordeal, was clear.

  Stowe shot a glance at McCabe, his eyes showing that they were getting to the point of interest.

  ‘Rain, what are you talking about? Explain!’ Stowe now bellowed into the man’s left ear.

  Stowe then took out his pistol, placed it hard against the man’s left kneecap and pulled the trigger, the sound nearly deafening the room’s occupants. Even McCabe fl inched as the bullet shattered the kneecap of the man. The scream that followed was heart-wrenching. The man’s knee was now a bloody mess of shattered bone and sinew.

  Stowe continued to interrogate the man for another hour, but got nothing more out of him. Knowing he was spent, Stowe fi nally called it quits and decided they should all leave.

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’ McCabe enquired.

  Looking back at McCabe with a blank stare, showing no sign of emotion, Stowe replied, ‘The rats can have him.’

  As he and Stowe left the room and walked back down the stairs towards the car, McCabe heard the unmistakable thud sound of a silenced Sig, a single shot. Stowe’s driver appeared in the doorway a few moments later and walked to the car. McCabe cast a glance at Stowe and shook his head, showing that he knew what had happened.

  ‘No point in leaving live bait for the rats,’ Stowe quipped.

  They all got back in the car and drove off. As they sat in the car, quantum breach 290709.indd 102

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  nothing was said. Stowe knew that McCabe would have dealt with it very differently, perhaps even handing the man over to the authorities.

  But Stowe had another code, complete with its brutal tactics.

  As the car continued on towards McCabe’s hotel, Stowe called his team in Thames House, the MI5 HQ in London. Despite the early hour, his team, ‘D’ section, were all hard at work in the offi ce; they would remain on call 24 hours if required, especially when an operation was in full swing. Using his mobile phone, Stowe fi red off the photo of the mysterious woman who had met with Aziz in the cafe. He was hoping there was at least an Interpol fi le on her.

  Stowe also knew that the fi rm in London would be less than happy to hear that John, the young MI6 agent assigned to him for fi eld training, was now dead. Specifi cally because Stowe was 5 and under observation, the fact that he had screwed up was embarrassing. Hardly a glowing example of Stowe’s ability to train, no way 6 would take him now. His death would more than cause a few ripples amongst the MI6 top brass when his body arrived back in London. The sad fact was John’s family would be told an outright lie. They would be made to think that their only son had died as a result of a freak car accident, with no medals or ceremony that indicated he was, in fact, serving Queen and Country. A cover-up, pure and simple; such was the MI6 code.

  As they listened in on Stowe’s account of the night’s events, the combined MI5 and MI6 team in London were taking the approach that Stowe had been compromised. They would assume Afzal Jihad were behind the assassination of John, and, as such, were on to Stowe.

  But they wanted to believe that Stowe’s new seconded team member, Mark McCabe, had not been compromised.

  McCabe had now been fully cleared by the British Secret Service to join the covert team, but strictly as an observer. He was not to enter into any operational encounters, which meant killing anyone. Trent was very clear on this point. Stowe was to be held fully responsible. McCabe was to remain undercover as a banking employee, which in truth he was, his mission to confi rm if Aziz was indeed working for Afzal Jihad, and what quantum breach 290709.indd 103

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  connections they had, if any, to the Asian drug cartel. The Operation was to be codenamed ‘Snow Wolves’.

  Stowe’s boss, Malcolm Trent, a 30-year veteran of the British Secret Service, aka MI5, a small bull of a man with a ruddy face, the result of too much port wine, thought it highly amusing that one of his most important operations was now in the hands of two 45-year-old warriors. Snow Wolves, he thought, was an apt name given they were both greying. But he also knew that, despite any outward appearances that may suggest they were past it, both men were well-experienced operatives, still very fi t and very dangerous.

  Much to Stowe’s annoyance, Trent did not seem overly surprised at John’s death. He seemed to dismiss it as a matter of trivial fact. Very unusual, given MI6 will dine out on that fuck-up from their brothers for many months, Stowe thought. He knew Trent hated giving ground to those cocky bastards.

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  TWELVE

  As the car pulled up outside of McCabe’s hotel, he turned to Stowe.

  ‘Call me tomorrow. You can fi ll me in on where we go from here,’

  McCabe said, and got out of the car.

  Stowe nodded before signalling to his driver to move on. McCabe stood there, sullenly observing the blue sedan as it moved away down the driveway. He then turned towards the hotel as he drew a deep breath of the warm night air and trotted up the marble steps and into the hotel lobby. He instinctively paused when he entered the lobby area and stood there looking for anything that seemed out of place. McCabe observed several Arab men smoking and drinking coffee in the lobby café; a few men who looked like they had just arrived were checking in, and hotel porters were running around with bags. All seems to be normal, he thought, before he headed off towards the lifts.

  A knock came on the door. Ying, who had been watching a movie on TV, had fallen asleep with the TV on. Startled by the knock, she stirred and got up off the bed. She carefully walked to the door and peered through the spy hole. She could just make out the dark, broad fi gure of McCabe standing directly in front of her door, despite her eyes being still blurry from sleep. McCabe knew she would be peeping at him through the spy hole. He heard the door chain release and the door slowly inched open. He squeezed his way past Ying and entered her room.

  ‘Hey, come in, why don’t you,’ muttered Ying. She was dressed in quantum breach 290709.indd 105

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  a white T-shirt and track pants, her hair loose and messy. McCabe sat down on the bed and clasped his hands in front of him.

  ‘Sit down, Ying. I need to explain a few things.’

  Ying sat down on a small armchair next to her bed, and leaned forward to listen expectantly to what McCabe had to tell her. McCabe knew that he had to at least alert Ying to what was going on, but not tell her too much: she would be of no use to him scared. But he had to protect her and this was best served by telling her, in part, what was going on.

  Oh well, here goes, he thought to himself. For the next hour, he calmly told Ying all about Stowe and how they knew each other, this time in more detail. He also fi lled her in on Afzal Jihad and how they operated. He then paused and related the car chase earlier that evening and how John was found dead.

  On hearing this, Ying looked up, clearly shocked at what McCabe had said. ‘John? What has he got to do with anything?’

  ‘He was an undercover British Intelligence offi cer working with Stowe.’

  ‘You mean he was watching me all that time? But why?’ she asked with a slight ton
e of anger.

  ‘He was sent to observe a man called Aziz. Aziz works in our bank as a salesman. MI6 don’t know for sure if he is in any way connected with Afzal Jihad, but he has had such dealings in the past. They want to know what he’s up to now.’

  Ying sat dumbfounded by all that had been said to her, just staring at McCabe, her mouth wide open. After a few minutes, she stood up and walked over to the bed and sat next to McCabe.

  ‘So what are we going to do now?’ she asked.

  McCabe looked at her. ‘Well, you will do nothing; just carry on with your job. I’m going to stick around and see if I can’t fi nd out what this Aziz is up to.’

  Ying’s face lit up. ‘I can do it, boss. He wouldn’t suspect me, but you, you stand out like a … ,’ she paused, ‘what you say, sore thumb.’

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  McCabe knew she was right, but there was no way he could expose her to such danger. He stood up and looked down at Ying.

  ‘Get some rest. We can meet in the morning and discuss more then.’

  With that, McCabe walked to the door and opened it. ‘Lock your door and do not let anyone in. Good night.’ He then closed the door behind him and walked off towards the lift.

  Ying remained seated, motionless on the edge of her bed, trying to digest all the information McCabe had entrusted her with. So much was now whirling around in her mind. She reminded herself that her boss was not a middle-aged Mr Soapy. That was Ying’s term for a boring expat who looked like the only excitement he had in his life would be taking the kids to the park. He was an ex-Special Forces soldier with a very dark past. Her emotions were confused and then excitement started to consume her.

  Suddenly, her thoughts passed to John. The poor guy was dead.

  Despite not knowing him well, she felt sad. Then it clicked: Aziz, of course! She had booked some of his deals today. Oh my God, she thought. It was then that Ying knew she could help McCabe; she would convince him in the morning. She climbed under the bed covers, reached over and turned off the light, snuggling down in the duvet, her mind still racing. How on earth could she sleep now?