Thankfully, West nodded, got onto his comms and instructed one of the team members to pull back and protect the building. ‘I’ll be co-ordinating the mission from here anyway, so you’ve got your two. Is there anything else, or can I go and do my job now?’
Farrar let the impertinence slide. ‘If you can do it without waking the neighbours, that would be good. We won’t be leaving the island for another twenty hours, and the last thing we need is the local police turning up on our doorstep.’
‘That was always the plan,’ West said. He turned and marched out of the room, leaving Farrar to finish his packing.
‘They’re still holding their positions,’ Farsi said over the net. ‘Two are inside the building, two more at the rear of the house, by the beach, and the remaining four covering the approach road, one pair to the north and the other to the south.’
‘Roger that,’ Gray whispered. ‘What about Sarah?’
‘Right on schedule. She’ll be here in ten minutes.’
‘Copy. Out.’
Gray felt the damp earth soaking into his clothes, but there was nothing he could do about it now. At least no insects had decided to explore his face yet, which was always a danger when one was buried under three inches of turf.
It had taken two hours to get the three of them into position in a fifty-foot triangle around the fallen trunk where they’d stored the weapons. First, they’d marked out a plot twice the size of each man near the foot of a tree, then dug them out carefully. It had taken a lot of skill to get the grass out in one piece, and once the top cover was removed, a hole had been excavated underneath. The dirt was carried out of the area so as not to leave any tell-tale signs, and finally the men lay in the holes while their comrades gently covered them over again. Gray had been the last to be buried, so he’d had to recruit Harvey and explain what was required. He only hoped his friend had done a good job, otherwise his plan to make it home for Christmas was going to turn to shit pretty quickly.
Each of them had nose and ear plugs, and the NVGs covered their eyes, but there remained the chance that a beetle, or worse, might decide to investigate their mouths. It had happened to Gray before, and he’d once had to resort to eating a large centipede rather than giving his location away.
Cramp was another problem to overcome. To accommodate the night-vision goggles, the three men were forced to lie on their sides. The alternative was to leave the glasses off until they emerged, but as the purpose of the exercise was to gain the element of surprise, there simply wasn’t time to jump up from their hiding places and start fiddling with the headsets.
If Sarah were minutes out, Gray knew he’d be in the hole for another three hours at the very least. Farrar’s men would wait until dark to tackle them, he was sure of that. His main concern was that Farsi’s laptop not run out of battery by then.
‘Hamad,’ he whispered, more to stop earth flowing into his mouth than anxiety over anyone hearing him.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Watch the juice on that laptop. We can’t have it dying on us.’
‘Already in power-saving mode,’ Hamad assured him.
With that fear allayed, Gray tried to relax his mind. The plan was simple enough, and it was too late to second-guess it. Having intercepted the call from Harper to Farrar, they knew Thompson’s phone would soon be tracked, so Sarah would meet up with Harvey at the side of the road, and it was Andrew who would walk into the woods and place the phone in the clearing. After that, he would retreat and the three of them would drive Sarah’s car a mile to the east. Farsi would stay with it to provide updates, while Thompson and Harvey would walk north to the beach and lie up a few hundred yards from the house.
After that, it was simply a waiting game.
‘They’re here,’ West said over the comms. ‘Looks like they parked on Via Blanca. I’ve got movement north, through the trees.’
He received a series of double-clicks in his headset, confirming that his team had heard the broadcast. Each two-man team had a designation, and he began moving his pieces into position, like a grandmaster engaging in a deadly game of chess.
‘Alpha, move west half a click and then south towards the road. If anyone’s in the car, take them out.’
Click-click.
‘Tango, move east two hundred yards, then south three hundred yards.’
Click-click.
With the two teams that had been covering the road moving to their new positions, he was left with the pair guarding the back of the house. It was highly unlikely that Harvey would have the skill or resources for a beach assault, so he ordered them around the building and told them to lie up ten yards inside the treeline.
‘Now what?’ Farrar asked. He’d been standing behind West, looking over his shoulder.
‘We wait until they’re settled into position. They’re unlikely to strike until at least one in the morning, when they think we’re at our weakest. While they count down the minutes, we move in closer. At eleven, we take them out.’
Chapter 42
21 December 2014
‘We’ve got one vehicle, and it’s empty,’ the southernmost team reported.
‘Roger, Alpha One. Target is two-five-zero yards north. Move in one-five-zero yards and hold your position.’
Click-click.
‘No surprises yet?’ Farrar asked. He’d left West three hours earlier and sought to reassure Joel, who’d become increasingly anxious at the thought of being caught in a shootout, but as the action began to unfold, he couldn’t help but oversee it.
‘Going like clockwork,’ West said. ‘My men are moving in now. They’ll be on top of them in twenty minutes.’
‘Why so long? Can’t you hurry this up?’
‘If they move any faster,’ West said, as if explaining to a small child why they shouldn’t eat from the cat tray, ‘they’ll give their location away. That would be bad.’
‘There’s no need to take the piss,’ Farrar said. ‘I just want this over and done with.’
‘It will be. Just leave it to the professionals, okay?’
Farrar bit his lip and concentrated on the screen, though there was little to see. The red dot hadn’t moved in hours, and West’s men weren’t highlighted on the map.
‘How do you know where your men are?’ Farrar asked.
‘Practice,’ West said. ‘Besides which, I have the GPS location of the target, and my men have the same GPS app on their phones. They’ll know when they’re within range.’
It sounded like West had everything in hand, so Farrar told him he was going downstairs to get coffee.
‘Black with two sugars,’ West said over his shoulder.
‘Movement your way,’ Gray heard in his earpiece. ‘Three hundred yards east, two-fifty west and two hundred south. Closing slowly.’
He gave two clicks in response, and felt his pulse quicken as the moment neared. After what seemed like an hour, Farsi updated the team to let them know the closest targets were at one hundred yards.
‘Coming in pairs. Should be with you in ten minutes.’
Click-click.
Once the targets were inside the kill zone, Gray and his team would spring up from their hiding places and cut them down. It would then be a sprint down the main road to the house. Harvey and Thompson would lay down covering fire against the front windows, while Gray and the others went round the back and made their way inside. With Farsi calling out the enemy locations, it should be easy enough to eliminate the remaining threats.
‘Len, you set?’
‘Set.’
‘Sonny?’
Gray waited, but got no reply.
‘Sonny, you there?’
‘Sorry, boss, I fell asleep.’
Much as he loved Sonny Baines, Gray found his sense of humour exasperating at times.
‘Cut the crap,’ Len broke in. �
�It’s grown-up time.’
‘Roger that.’
‘When they’re inside the perimeter,’ Gray whispered, ‘we go on my mark.’
Farrar returned to the spare bedroom and put the cup down next to West.
‘Almost there,’ the soldier told him. ‘Another five minutes and you can head to bed.’
Farrar took a sip of his own brew. ‘Don’t forget to hide the bodies afterwards. We don’t want a dog walker to trip over them in the morning.’
West turned to say something, but Farrar’s phone cut him off. It was Juliet Harper on the line.
‘What is it now?’ he asked.
‘I was looking for confirmation that Sarah is there, so I had her phone downloaded. I can confirm that she’s in Havana, but it seems she got a message from Paul Mackenzie to say that Tom Gray is with Harvey. You might have more company than you expected.’
‘Gray’s here?’ Farrar glanced over to West, who glared at him with narrowed eyes.
‘We’re not certain,’ Harper said, ‘but he was with Harvey two days ago, in Kano. They know Mackenzie was working for us.’
Farrar covered the handset and turned to West. ‘Tell your men to stop. There may be more than we thought.’
‘How many more?’
‘My guess is at least three. Tom Gray, Len Smart and Simon Baines.’
West got onto the comms. ‘Wait one. I repeat, wait one.’ He ignored the clicks coming through the headset and turned back to Farrar. ‘I know Gray. At least, I know of him. He was decent enough back in the day, but he’s been out for a long time now.’
‘So have the other two, but they’re like cockroaches: they refuse to die.’ He told Harper he’d ring her back, then ended the call. ‘So what’s the plan now?’ he asked West. ‘Your men could be walking into a trap.’
‘I’ll send two in while the rest hang back. If it is a trap, we’ll know shortly.’
‘Something’s wrong, Tom. The teams to your east and west are moving north towards the house.’
‘What about the others?’
‘Still approaching your position.’
Shit! Something had them spooked, and if the remaining four made it back to the house, it would be almost impossible to get to Farrar.
‘Tell Andrew and Sarah to get between them and the house, and if necessary, stall them long enough for us to catch up.’
He hated the thought of pitting the pair against four seasoned soldiers, but he had no other option. Hopefully he and Sonny could take their targets out and reach the remaining threats before that became necessary.
‘Roger. Your two targets are within thirty yards.’
‘Tell me when they get inside the triangle.’
Sweat began to trickle down Gray’s face as Farsi counted down the distance.
‘Twenty yards . . . inside the kill zone, ten yards from the phone. Five yards.’
‘On three,’ Gray whispered into his mic. ‘One, two, three.’
He threw back the turf covering him and sat upright, his silenced weapon coming up as he identified the first of the targets. The night-vision goggles outlined the figure in front of him beautifully; two silenced shots to the chest took him down. The second fell at the same time to a popping double-tap from Sonny’s gun.
With the immediate threat eliminated, Gray rose to his feet and stretched his legs to get some movement back into them. As he walked over to the bodies, he called Hamad. ‘Where are they now?’
‘Seventy yards north, still moving slowly.’
Gray gave each of the corpses a head shot to be certain that they were out of the game. ‘Let’s go.’
He led the way at walking pace, doing all he could to keep the sound of boots on undergrowth to a minimum. It wasn’t long before he spotted the next target, a man with his hand to his ear as he listened to an incoming message. Whatever it was, he never got to hear it. Gray brought him down with two rounds to the head, and his weapon was seeking its next mark before the corpse hit the ground.
Sonny’s rifle spoke twice, and a fourth player was taken out of the game. Now muzzle flashes lit the trees like lightning as the enemy finally realised what was happening.
‘Alpha One, report!’
‘I hear gunfire,’ Farrar said, standing to the side of the window that overlooked the woods.
‘Someone, tell me what the fuck is happening out there!’
West was becoming increasingly anxious at the lack of response, and the fact that his men were shooting meant he’d underestimated his opponent. He went over to the window just as the first member of Tango team emerged from the trees and ran across the road. He made it to the other side before collapsing as if he’d been kicked in the back.
‘Tango Two, what the hell’s going on? Where’s Echo team?’
The silence in his headset matched that from the forest, as the gunfire suddenly stopped.
Six men down.
There wasn’t time to reflect on the losses. West knew the house would be their next objective, and he had to make sure no-one got close enough. It wouldn’t be easy, as the enemy had the numerical advantage, but he could even that up a little.
‘Charlie, get down to the basement and bring me two M4s and all the ammo you can carry.’
A minute later, the last remaining member of West’s team entered the room with two rifles, two boxes of ammunition and a half-dozen magazines. He started filling them as West handed Farrar one of the weapons.
‘You know how to use one of these?’
Farrar looked for the safety and switched it to three-round burst, then took one of the clips from Charlie and rammed it home. He racked the slide, putting a round in the chamber, and looked at West. ‘Yeah.’
‘Good. Give that to your boyfriend, show him how to use it and then come back for yours.’
Farrar ran to the master bedroom and handed the rifle to Joel. ‘Ever fired one of these?’
Joel shook his head, so Farrar gave him a fifteen-second crash course before leading him back to West, who handed him another assault rifle.
‘Where do you want us?’
‘One of you cover the left side of the building, the other the right. Charlie and I’ll take the front.’
Farrar grabbed four spare magazines and gave two to Joel before heading off to the window on the first floor landing. He opened it fully and stood to the side, only an inch of his profile visible from the outside. Looking down the hallway, he saw Joel copying him at the opposite window, and he gave his lover a reassuring smile before turning back to scan the night for Gray and his team.
‘I’ve got movement at the side window,’ Sonny said into his mic.
‘Farrar?’ Gray asked.
‘Negative.’
‘On my mark, take him out. Len, are you in position?’
‘Roger that. Twenty yards inside the trees. I can see the first-floor windows but no-one near them.’
‘Okay. On three, lay down suppressing fire while I get round the back.’
Gray was crouching two hundred yards to the east of the house, and he readied himself for the dash across the road. He started the countdown and waited until he heard the tinkling of glass as Smart took out the windows before running at full speed across the tarmac.
Two bullets pinged off the road in front of him, but he kept going, throwing himself behind one of the trees that lined the street. Two more rounds thumped into the side of the trunk, sending splinters of wood past his head.
With his colleagues otherwise occupied, Gray knew cover fire would be out of the question. He took a deep breath, then stood and sent a three-round burst towards the open window on the first floor, moving for the beach as he fired. He found cover behind another tree before more rounds were hurled his way.
‘Target down,’ Sonny said. ‘Moving towards the rear.’
As
Gray swivelled to let off another burst, he heard an animal cry from the direction of the house, and a silhouette ran away from the window. He took the opportunity to crab his way towards the sand, his rifle aimed towards the building, until he found Sonny waiting by the other end of the wall.
‘You’ve been begging me to get you back in the action. Now’s your chance. You go first,’ Gray whispered. ‘I’ll cover you.’
Sonny smiled and vaulted the three-foot wall that ran parallel to the beach, then sprinted for the glass doors. Once in position, he motioned for Gray to follow him.
The first-floor balcony hung above them, and Sonny cradled his hands so that Gray could climb up. Once in position, Gray leaned over and grabbed Sonny’s outstretched arm, pulling him up. They discarded the NVGs and found themselves staring into a huge bedroom, where four suitcases sat at the foot of a double-king bed. Using hand signals, Gray indicated that once through the door to the landing, Gray would go right and Sonny would head towards the front of the house.
On Gray’s signal, they burst through the doorway. Sonny headed off to the open door opposite and his sights found a man’s broad back. Three bullets dropped him to the floor, and after a quick scan for other hostiles, he moved on to the next room.
Back on the landing, Gray saw James Farrar weeping as he cradled a man in his arms, crimson running from a hole just above the corpse’s right eye. Gray reached to his waist, drew his sidearm, and aimed it at Farrar’s head.
‘Farrar.’
Farrar’s head jerked up and Gray found himself looking into the teary eyes of his nemesis.
‘You might as well kill me now, Gray.’
‘That’s all I’ve ever wanted.’
Gray moved the sights down to Farrar’s chest and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 43
21 December 2014
Harvey ran up the stairs and found Gray standing over Farrar’s bloody body.
Gray Vengeance Page 30
