by Chris Ryan
‘Where’s John at the moment?’
‘We’ve had eyes on the marina for the past few hours. He hasn’t yet shown there. Leaving it until the very last minute, I presume.’
Gardner made for the door. Pistol in his jeans, Bald on his mind.
‘You’d better be telling me everything you know,’ he said, then slammed the bullet-riddled door before Land could reply.
14
0355 hours.
Gardner hit Queensway and circled south around the marina’s edge. Nearly four o’clock and night was surrendering to dawn. The sky was a cobalt dome. Whitewashed apartment blocks shaded violet. He banged a right into Queensway Quay, passing a row of five villas and a giant lead anchor slanted over a manicured lawn.
The moon spotlighted the quay. West of his position the quay abruptly ended, giving way to the Strait. Three hundred metres to the south, across his left shoulder, stood the dockyard where HMS Lizard would be going through her final checks and repairs before setting sail. He thought about the Wren, about her mashed-up face.
He paced for two hundred metres to the western edge of the quay, where the road arrowed north and nine apartment buildings stood on a rectangle of reclaimed land, bordered by a rocky shoreline.
Gardner paused and scoped out the marina.
There’s got to be a hundred boats in dock, he thought. He counted two-seater cruisettes, fifty-foot luxury cruisers and commercial fishing ships, tied up at three concrete piers. He looked at the shot of the Defiant. She was a sizeable beast, thirty-eight feet, with a distinctive blue-and-white striped hull and a stern sleek as an arrowhead. Suddenly he spotted the cruiser yacht at the far end of the middle pier. But he didn’t move in just yet. He was waiting for Bald or Killen to show. So far, no sign of either.
Four in the morning and Gibraltar was a ghost town. Two until four was Gardner’s favoured time of attack. Soldiers called that period the dead hours – when most people were in a deep sleep.
He scanned the apartment blocks. Every window and balcony bay was encased in darkness. He imagined people tucked up in their nice beds, while he knuckled down to the business of killing men.
A thought gnawed at him. While Stone and Gill were dumb as shit sandwiches minus the bread, Killen was different. Cunning. No doubt he’d be figuring out the best approach to the Defiant. So Gardner had to be alert.
He backtracked east along the quay, resolving to patrol the larger marina a hundred metres to the north.
A silhouette shifted along the middle pier, thirty metres from the Defiant.
Gardner froze. The dark could play havoc with an operator’s vision, conjuring up shapes and movement where there was none. He ran his eyes around the silhouette, putting a distance equivalent to the size of his fist between the object and his line of sight. He looked away from it for several seconds, and let his eyes return to the shape. It had moved. His brain wasn’t tricking him.
He retreated up the quayside towards Queensway. Between each block of flats he risked a brief glance down to the waterfront, where he spied the figure shuffling along the pier. He was slow and deliberate, wanting only to keep an eye on Bald and assessing the surrounding area for threats. Any sudden noise might alert Bald to his presence.
Past the anchor again, Gardner hurried north. Two hundred metres further along the deserted Queensway, he turned left past a large Genoese-style development, all turquoise shutters and terracotta roofs. The pavement coughed him up at the northern pier. Palm trees and cannons lined the walkway. The middle pier was eighty metres south, and the silhouette was nearing the Defiant. Closer up, it took on definition. A man, tall, solid build. It had to be Bald. He held a torch in his right hand. His left gripped a black object. A pistol, Gardner guessed.
But where was Killen? If he planned to jump Bald at the marina this was his prime opportunity. And yet there was no sign of him.
Instinct – not even instinct, more like a clotting fear that fired from the base of his spine to the back of his skull – told him to glance back inland. He scanned the blanket of darkness swirling over the foliage. Shit! That’s it. He’d assumed Killen would be going for the up-close and personal approach. In doing so he’d ignored the widest vantage point of all. That’s fucking it.
The Upper Rock. The steep, jagged rock dominated the Gibraltar skyline.
Gardner surged towards the middle pier. John Bald was walking into the ideal spot for a sniper on the Upper Rock.
I’ve got to get John out of the line of fire, Gardner thought. But your cover will be blown.
If I don’t, he’ll be killed.
The hollow sound of Gardner’s feet pounding hard on the planks alerted Bald, who had stopped at the Defiant.
Twenty metres, and Bald was spinning around, torchlight searching the pier. Gardner fixed on the black object in his right hand. Bulky-looking thing, some kind of a gun. He had time enough to think how shit it would be to die at the hands of the corrupt ex-Blade he was trying to protect.
Ten. Gardner ducked like a sprinter at the finish line. The Upper Rock was eight hundred metres away. Clear night, full moon. No wind to distort the shot. If Killen got his shot off, it was all over.
Five, and Gardner caught the faint crack of a rifle. He lunged at Bald. The torch blinded him. Gardner knocked them both to the pier floor, the torch dropped into the water and the Defiant reeled with the smack of a bullet into her hull.
Gardner blindly grappled with Bald. He couldn’t see shit. He dragged Bald away from the boat. Bald struggled. Gardner brought an elbow down against his skull. Jesus fucking Christ, John, he thought. Bald’s grip was stronger than he remembered.
Scarcely able to see ahead of him, Gardner moved as quickly as his legs and Bald’s weight allowed. Another crack and the plank in front of him exploded. Splinters speared his forehead.
He ducked behind the remnants of an old fort. Weathered stonework now shielded them from the Upper Rock. Gardner gathered his breath and peered around the corner of the fort. The Upper Rock was jagged and dark as a lump of charcoal. Fuck, he told himself. Without a viewing aid, he had no way of getting a fix on Killen’s location.
Bald tried standing. He was unsteady on his feet. He reached into his jacket pocket.
‘Not this time you don’t, mate,’ Gardner said, smacking him in the middle of his back with the butt of the PMR-30. Bald grunted, dropped and rolled on to his back.
Then Gardner noticed a dull, sticky stain on his knee.
Moonlight splashed across his face. He stared at Gardner from behind a pair of black Ray-Bans. Blood gleamed out of a fresh gash on his jaw, where Gardner had struck him on the pier. The man’s features were coated in the grainy film of night, but they were clear enough.
‘You’re not John,’ he said
Mr fucking Crowbar.
15
0423 hours.
‘Where the fuck is John Bald?’ Gardner said, aiming the PMR-30 at the big man’s chest.
‘I would think carefully about your next move, if I were you,’ Golan, aka Mr Crowbar, said. His accent was foreign, the bastard offspring of French and German.
‘Only you’re not me. You’re the fucker with the gun in his face.’
Gardner noticed the elbows of the guy’s jacket were smeared with blood and dirt. Wherever he been in the five hours since Gardner had introduced him to a steak knife, it wasn’t the local A&E.
‘You’ve got about six seconds to tell me who you are and what you know.’
‘Kill me and you’ll upset a lot of very important people.’
‘Fucking talk,’ Gardner said as he pushed the PMR-30 hard to Golan’s temple. The polymer housing dug into his flesh. One click, he was thinking, and a .22 Magnum cartridge, powered by two hundred joules of muzzle energy, would carve open his skull. Like a boot through soft snow.
Golan must have sensed that Gardner was ready to back up his threat because he gritted his teeth and glowered, as if steeling himself for the bullet. Gardner couldn’t see his e
yes through the shades, but he got the impression that Golan was an unflappable son of a bitch.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘My mission is simple,’ Golan said, talking to the barrel of the PMR-30. ‘My people instructed me that no harm must come to the mark.’
‘The mark? What are you on about?’
‘The man I was sent here to protect.’
Gardner burned up like diesel. ‘Terry Gill?’
‘That is not the name I was given.’
The realization struck Gardner like a boomerang.
‘John.’
‘John Bald,’ Golan said. ‘Yes. He is the one.’
Gardner inched closer to his face. He wanted to tear off his shades and go eyeball to eyeball with this arsehole. He had the sense he was only dimly aware of the full story surrounding his old Regiment mucker.
‘Who sent you?’
‘That I cannot say.’
‘Mossad?’ His finger tensed on the trigger. ‘You’re Israeli, I know that much.’
Golan grinned at the barrel, like he was fucking flirting with it. ‘If I told you who sent me – well, I’d have to kill you.’ He laughed, then went on:
‘Oh yes, your superiors gave you weak information. They told you Bald would be departing from the marina. On the Defiant, yes? They are badly mistaken.’
‘Tell me where John is.’
‘Why? So you can kill him?’
Gardner shook his head. ‘I’m here to protect John.’
Golan frowned.
‘The shots fired just now were intended for John. It’s an ambush,’ Gardner said. ‘Looks like it’s not just my intelligence that’s full of holes.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘Nah, mate. Hate to break it to you but the only reason I saved your arse back there is because I thought you were John.’
Golan looked sceptically at Gardner.
‘You remember the King’s Hotel? Gardner said. ‘The guy who turned up there to slot Bald—’
‘An MI6 agent,’ Golan cut in.
‘No, he was a bloody cowboy. Out to slot John and rob him. The sniper on the Upper Rock is a cowboy mate of his. Name of Killen. And if we fuck about much longer, John’s going to end up very dead.’
Golan weighed up the words.
‘It seems to me we’re on different ends of the same boat,’ Gardner said. ‘Either we work together to find John and get him out of the line of fire – or we’re both going to end up on the losing team.’
Gardner glanced over the fort wall. Queensway was deserted. Not a fucking soul about.
Golan took off his shades, unveiling a swollen right eye socket, a battle scar of their earlier fight. ‘OK,’ he finally said. ‘We help each other.’ He reached for something inside his jacket. Gardner’s right hand shot up, PMR-30 level with Golan’s mug. His finger tensed on the trigger mechanism.
‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’
‘I have a handheld tracker. It will lead us to the mark.’
Gardner recalled the black object Golan had been holding on the pier. He’d assumed it was a gun, but perhaps it really was a tracking device. Gardner had no choice but to trust the Israeli. Since Land had sold him dud intelligence, Golan was his only hope of getting a lock on Bald.
‘Do it.’
Golan quickly dipped a hand into his jacket.
‘Slowly.’
The Israeli produced a sleek black device the size and thickness of an iPhone, except this one featured five buttons at the bottom and an extended aerial on top.
Gardner lowered the PMR-30. He leaned in as Golan entered a pin code on the touch screen and was presented with a thermal satellite map of Queensway, with one centimetre representing a hundred metres. A red icon blinked in the middle of the map.
‘The Navy woman who was supplying cocaine to Bald,’ Golan explained. ‘I put a transponder into one of the packages before she completed the delivery. It emits a signal to a satellite in near-orbit and relays the position directly to me. Simple – but effective.’
Gardner nodded. ‘So… where is he?’
Golan brushed his index finger over the screen. He tilted the device and looked over his shoulders, trying to establish his bearings.
‘We don’t have much time.’
‘He’s very close,’ Golan said. ‘And still on dry land, it seems. Rosia Road.’
‘That’s to the south.’ Gardner scanned the screen. ‘Fifty metres beyond the Botanic Gardens. That means he’s just over three hundred metres away. Maybe he’s winging his way up here. To the boat.’
‘Then we can intercept him.’ Golan was scrambling to his feet.
Gardner blocked his route with an outstretched arm. ‘The sniper’s still out there.’
‘But Rosia Road is highly exposed,’ Golan said. ‘If the sniper spots Bald, he has an easy shot.’
‘Let’s keep low. We can move behind cover to John’s position.’
‘Agreed.’
‘You lead the way.’
If he tries anything, I’ll get the first shot off, Gardner thought.
Golan paced south, hugging the hotels’ walls and pausing at the gap after each hotel. Gardner looked ahead for any sign of Bald, but his eyes had not yet fully adjusted to the dark. It took an hour for the average person’s eyes to adapt to seeing in the dark as the brain switched from retinal day cells to night. He’d left Land at 0350, less than forty-five minutes ago.
Golan moved with surprising ease, Gardner thought, considering the state of his left knee. Gardner kept up the pace to the rear, hoping to fuck that they reached Bald before Killen could zero in.
‘This sniper—’
‘Killen.’
‘Is he a good shot?’
Gardner considered the question as they passed the plush villas with the giant anchor staked out front. ‘He qualified top of the class in the sniper cadre of 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment.’
‘I’m not familiar with that school.’
‘Put it this way. To pass out of the cadre, the sniper’s got to achieve a first-round kill on a man-sized target at nine hundred metres. Killen could do that blindfolded.’
Golan was silent as they approached the Ragged Staff Gates, an eight-metre-tall wall of eroded concrete originally built by the Moors and later used as a defensive perimeter during the Siege. The gates provided them with cover as the marina ended and Queensway became Rosia Road. They were now just one hundred and twenty metres from Bald’s position.
‘What made you think I was MI6?’ Gardner asked.
‘I have my sources.’
‘Well, you’re fucking wrong. I don’t work for anyone but myself.’
‘Spoken like a true government man.’
Golan passed the Botanic Gardens. Then he slowed his step. Gardner halted in his shadow. They crouched down behind a cargo container parked beside the road and adjacent to the industrial park. A hundred metres due south Rosia Road curved to the right, rolling around the fringe of the industrial park and the dockyard. Gardner cocked his eyes. His vision had improved in the last few minutes, but he was troubled by what he saw. Or rather what he didn’t see.
‘Where’s John?’
Golan consulted his tracker. ‘According to the transponder, he should be here.’
‘This is a built-up area,’ Gardner said. ‘There’s any number of locations he might be. Inside a building, hiding in a hotel room, maybe parked up in a car somewhere… We need a pinpoint fix.’
‘When I said “here” I meant right on this very spot.’
Gardner darted his head left and right. Not a sniff of Bald in any direction.
‘So where the fuck is he?’
16
0458 hours.
Craning his neck around the edge of the container, Gardner scoped out the scene. Street lamps poured orange light over a vacant road. The pavements were deserted, save for a macaque rummaging through a rubbish bin.
‘I don’t see him,’ said Gardne
r, running his eyes over the Upper Rock. ‘Something’s wrong. Maybe your transponder signal’s fucked.’
‘Impossible.’
‘It’s either that, or John’s turned into the invisible man—’
Golan had tuned out. He was scrolling down on the tracker, shifting his position and glancing down at the industrial park. He looked confused.
‘What is it?’ Gardner asked.
‘The signal’s moving.’
‘Bullshit. He’s not here. There must be some kind of problem with the hardware on that thing.’
‘There is not, I can assure you.’
For fuck’s sake! Gardner thought. Two spies tracking the same man on a slab of land of less than three square miles, and neither of us can find him. Anger lodged in his throat. He was mad at Golan’s tracker, mad at Land’s dodgy int.
The transponder blinked Bald’s location: the industrial park. Gardner scanned the docks and the berthed Lizard. The sun was rising in the east, mottling the blackness. Seagulls flapped. No trace of Bald.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’
The dot shifted further south.
Gardner dug out his mobile to call Land.
He got nothing. Not even a dial tone. The signal displayed no bars.
‘My phone’s down… something’s wrong.’
‘Your phone isn’t the problem.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Communication countermeasures.’
Golan looked up at the sky and the paling stars. ‘We wanted to make sure MI6 was not in a position to compromise the mark’s safety. Until 0530 all foreign satellite and radio comms in a mile radius are disabled.’
Gardner’s skin burned like hot rubber. He sensed everything was going pear-shaped fast. His shot at redemption – at being a soldier – was disappearing quicker than a Scouser into the nearest William Hill.
Fuck it! All this way. The shit I survived in Rio, the fucking cowboys, and now—
A throbbing, purring noise drilled his mind.
The two men exchanged a look.
‘Sounds like—’ said Golan.
