The Kill Zone

by Chris Ryan

  He shook his head. The sooner Cormac stopped these nonstandard deliveries, the happier he’d be. This was the second one in the last week and the guys were getting suspicious. Hell, he was getting suspicious. Packages of heroin off the boat were two a penny for the guys, but if these curious shipments continued, his threats regarding Cormac’s retribution wouldn’t be enough to stop them poking their noses in.

  He turned to the man behind the wheel. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Don’t drive too quickly. We don’t want to be picked up.’

  His colleague looked at him. ‘Sure, Sam, you talk as if I’ve never done this before.’ And with that, he turned the ignition key and drove steadily off into the early morning.

  ‘Gentlemen, let’s see your imagery.’

  Brad Joseph was clean-cut and sharp-suited, his hair slicked back and his ever-present shades hanging by a cord around his neck. He’d flown in from Washington three days earlier, heading up the sixteen-man advance team from the President’s Secret Service detail. He sensed that the two Brits sitting with him in the slightly shabby ground-floor office of Scotland Yard resented his presence, even if they were too professional to say anything. But that didn’t matter one little bit to Brad Joseph. He was well used to it.

  Bill Oliver, i/c the British Police’s Diplomatic Protection Group, was a quietly spoken man in his mid-fifties with a receding hairline and the remnants of a Cockney accent. He clicked a button on the laptop in front of him – Brad couldn’t help noticing that it was a lot older and clunkier than the machines they were used to in Washington. Up on the wall appeared a large satellite image of the Greater London area. Superimposed in red was a dotted line leading from a point on the western part of the map, directly to a central location.

  ‘As we agreed,’ Bill Oliver said, ‘RAF Northolt is the most secure location for Air Force One to fly in to. We can seal it off and, unlike at the commercial airports, we can divert all other incoming flights elsewhere.’

  ‘And,’ Brad stepped in, ‘it’s nearby, in case of emergency.’

  Bill Oliver scratched his bald patch, raised an eyebrow at the interruption, then nodded. ‘That too,’ he said. ‘This shows the most direct flightline from RAF Northolt in to the helipad at Buckingham Palace.’

  Brad interrupted again. ‘You understand that Marine One flies with two decoy choppers and they’ll choose their own flight path in to the palace?’

  Bill nodded. He pressed the button on the laptop and another image appeared – the same map, but with a different route marked – this time a solid red line. It led from Buckingham Palace, along Birdcage Walk, round Parliament Square and into the Houses of Parliament. ‘And this is the most direct route from Buck House to Westminster.’

  ‘Buck House?’

  Bill smiled. ‘Buckingham Palace, Brad.’

  ‘I take it your teams have secured the route?’

  Oliver pressed another button and the image changed: the bottom panel of a lamp post, with a plastic cord tied round it. ‘We’ve sealed all the lamp posts and manholes, emptied and sealed all bins and postboxes. Parking restrictions are in force from today until you leave – any unauthorised stopping along these routes and the vehicles get towed away immediately. We also have four teams of Metropolitan Police outriders ready to escort the President wherever he goes.’

  Brad interrupted again. ‘It’s fully understood, I hope, that the President will have his own close protection and counter-attack team at all times.’ He set his face into a look of implacability. It was amazing how often foreign police teams got rubbed up the wrong way about this. Most figures of any kind of diplomatic importance could expect local bodyguarding teams; but not the President of the United States. Secret Service wouldn’t be letting anybody else close to him. And while most foreign security teams knew they had to surrender their weapons when they arrived in-country, the President’s close protection would keep their Glocks, Berettas and MP5 Kurzs firmly on their persons, no matter what; while the CAT’s armour-plated 4 x 4s, MP5s, G3s and UMPs had already been airlifted into Northolt ready for the President’s arrival.

  Bill Oliver nodded. ‘Understood,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave everything else to the President’s close protection and CAT team. Our outriders will just make sure that the path of traffic is cleared for the, er . . .’ The policeman’s eyes sparkled for the first time, and a ghost of a smile flickered across his lips.

  ‘The Beast,’ Brad said in a voice devoid of irony. The British could laugh all they wanted, but there was no doubting that the Secret Service felt a hell of sight more comfortable now that the President was able to travel in the world’s most secure armoured car. The Beast – Cadillac One to Brad and his colleagues – was an awesome machine. It could take hits from small arms fire, the tyres worked even when they were flat, and the vehicle could be completely sealed with its own oxygen supply in the event of a chemical attack. It wasn’t so much a car as a moving fortress, and even as they spoke a C-17 Globemaster was transporting that fortress across the Atlantic so that it could be waiting for the President at Buckingham Palace when he arrived.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ murmured Oliver. ‘The Beast.’ He brought up another picture on the screen. London again, this time with two locations marked: the residence of the American ambassador, Nathaniel Gresham, in Regent’s Park, where the President would be staying the night; and Buckingham Palace again, where he would be having a lunchtime audience with the Queen on 8 July, before Marine One returned him to RAF Northolt. There Air Force One would be waiting to transport him back to Washington. Brad Joseph would never have admitted it in front of his British counterparts, but that moment couldn’t come soon enough. Back home, it was easy to keep him safe; the moment he went walkabout, every goddamn eventuality had to be accounted for.

  ‘Routes to and from the Embassy and Buckingham Palace secured?’

  Oliver nodded.

  ‘And do we have alternative evacuation routes from all the President’s locations back to Marine One at Buckingham Palace?’

  Again the policeman nodded, and over the course of several more pictures he explained the emergency extraction routes. ‘We’ll leave your people to decide which priority to give the evacuation routes. Just let us know which ones you’re likely to use for preference.’

  ‘Negative,’ Brad stated, and he ignored the widening of Bill Oliver’s eyes. ‘Secret Service will keep the evacuation route priority classified.’ And before the police officer could make any complaint, he turned to the other man sitting in the room.

  David Colley hadn’t said a word. He’d just sat there, expressionless, in his grey suit and sober tie. As a representative of MI5, the nitty-gritty of the President’s movements were not his immediate concern. He was here to give Brad an intelligence briefing. Even though the Security Service and the CIA were constantly liaising over the President’s visit, it was important that the guys on the ground should have some face time. Brad knew Dave Colley from previous assignments. For a spook, he was OK. Brad kind of liked him, and trusted his judgement.

  ‘So, Dave. No alarm bells ringing over at Thames House?’

  Colley inclined his head. ‘There’s always alarm bells,’ he said soberly. ‘The skill’s in judging which ones to listen to and which ones to ignore.’

  Brad smiled for the first time in the whole meeting. ‘My line of work, Dave, you react to every goddamn alarm bell you hear.’

  Colley shrugged. ‘In that case, Brad, you should call the whole thing off. Anniversary of the London bombings, your man should be safely tucked up in the Oval Office.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth,’ Brad agreed. ‘Look, we know the score. This is party time for every wannabe Al Qaeda nut in the UK. We get the same shit on 9/11. But you get even a sniff of anything we need to take seriously—’

  ‘You’ll be the first to know, Brad. Meantime. . .’ He slid a thin file across the table. ‘That’s a precis of any relevant intelligence. It won’t take you long to read.’

  The Secret
Service operative nodded. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, taking the file and standing up, ‘thank you for your time and your cooperation. Bill, you’ll pass the imagery on to my people? And we’ll stay in constant touch between now and when Air Force One flies on the morning of the eighth. You have my cell, right?’

  ‘Of course,’ Oliver and Colley said in unison.

  ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, my team needs to recce these routes and arrange our OPs around the President’s stop-off points. Don’t want any big-game hunters taking pot shots at the Beast, huh?’

  He winked at them, then turned and left, leaving the two British men to exchange a raised eyebrow before they themselves continued about their business.

  Nairobi to London. Nine hours. Jack used the remainder of the O’Callaghan notes to book them into first class, where the safari clothes they’d borrowed from Markus raised some eyebrows, but they were too exhausted to pay any attention to that and just used the flight to sleep.

  It was just before 6 a.m. when they emerged through the cloud cover to see the patchwork fields of southern England as the plane made its approach to Heathrow. As the remainder of the passengers waited for their luggage, Jack and Siobhan walked wordlessly through passport control. Out on the concourse, they stood awkwardly.

  ‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’ Siobhan said.

  Jack didn’t need to reply. ‘Get on the next flight,’ he said. ‘Go straight to the flat and don’t do anything until you hear from me. OK?’

  ‘OK.’ No aggression now. No argument. Siobhan had learned her lesson. He hoped. ‘But don’t go dark on me, Jack.’ She looked up at him. ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Any problems call me immediately.’ He gave her his mobile number, which she put on to speed dial. Then he handed over her car keys and a crumpled ticket. ‘It’s parked at the airport,’ he said. ‘Your weapon is in the glove compartment. I had to break your kitchen window to get in.’ Jack smiled for what seemed like the first time in days. ‘Sorry about that.’

  Siobhan smiled back and he kissed her lightly on the top of her head. The kiss seemed to surprise her, but she didn’t look displeased. She squeezed his hand, then turned and disappeared into the crowd.

  Jack watched her go, then followed her from a distance. He watched as she approached the BMI ticket desk; when she turned away five minutes later, she was holding a ticket. She’d booked herself on to a flight and was now heading towards the check-in desk.

  Jack walked up to the BMI desk. An attractive brunette with large eyes and full lips smiled up at him. ‘When’s the next flight to Belfast?’ he asked.

  She checked her terminal. ‘I can just get you on the ten-thirty. After that, I’m afraid, it’s the three p.m.’

  That was all he needed to know. Siobhan would be on the first flight, and he wanted to get to Belfast without her realising. So the 15.00 hrs it was. ‘I’ll take a seat on the three o’clock,’ he replied, handing over his credit card.

  Once he had his ticket, Jack headed to the retail area of the terminal where he bought himself a full set of clean clothes before leaving the building and checking in to a hotel for a couple of hours. He showered off the dirt, put on the new clothes and left Markus’s safari gear in the bin. They still had the faint reek of Africa about them. He was glad to be rid of it.

  With time still to kill, he lay on the bed, closed his eyes and straightened his head. Everything was so confusing. Upside down. He needed to clear his thoughts and plan his next move.

  Maybe he was wrong to pull the wool over Siobhan’s eyes. He admired her for her determination, but now wasn’t the time for her to stop him doing what needed to be done. There was only one lead he could follow. One person he knew of who could give him anything on Khan. That person was Cormac O’Callaghan, and Jack couldn’t be sure that Siobhan wouldn’t try to stop him making contact with the PIRA bastard. She would do anything to find Lily and he could tell she didn’t fully agree with his strategy to go it alone. Truth was, he couldn’t risk her getting in the way. Let the authorities question O’Callaghan and they’d play it by the book. It would take too long. If Jack was going to do anything, he needed to work quickly. Without interference.

  His strategy was clear. Raid the O’Callaghan lock-up for a weapon, then hit some of the bars of Belfast that were once Republican hang-outs. If he asked the right questions of the right people, he’d soon be able to track O’Callaghan down. And he didn’t mind admitting to himself that once he had the bastard in his hands, he’d almost enjoy the process of extracting every last bit of information from him. Cormac O’Callaghan might hold the key to preventing a major terrorist attack; he might give Jack a lead on where his daughter was; but when it came to answering for his crimes, he had a lot of back payments to make. Jack was perfectly happy to act as banker.

  He looked at his watch. 12.30 hrs. Siobhan would have landed now. With any luck she’d have taken his advice and headed home to lie low. Unwanted, the question she’d asked him back at Markus’s popped into his head. About them getting together again. He put it from his mind. When this was all over, when he had held Lily in his arms and seen that she was safe, maybe he could think about it. But until then . . .

  Jack left the hotel then returned to the terminal to check in.

  Siobhan walked across the concourse of Belfast International in a daze. In a corner of her mind she remembered what Jack used to be like when he came home from ops. Distracted – like the world he had just left was the real one, and this was a fake. In her dazed state she took a while to find her car and she drove on autopilot. She couldn’t think right and she needed to sleep. To recuperate. Jack had told her to go home, and she planned to do exactly that.

  It was chilly back at the flat because of the broken window, but she was too overcome with exhaustion and emotion to do anything about it; instead she headed straight for the bedroom, plugged her mobile phone in to charge, then climbed, fully dressed, into bed. She was asleep in seconds.

  It was the mobile that woke her, painfully puncturing her sleep like a knife piercing flesh. She rolled over and fumbled with it. ‘Yeah . . . hello . . . who’s this?’ It was a chore just to get the words out.

  ‘It’s me.’

  She shook her head and tried to place the voice. Male. Surly. She recognised it, but her exhaustion got in the way of pinpointing who it was.

  ‘I know a lot of “me’s”,’ she murmured.

  A pause. ‘And there was me thinking I was important to the pigs.’

  ‘Kieran?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’

  ‘I’ve been out of town for a bit,’ Siobhan said, sitting up on the side of the bed. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Clever old Kieran’s got something for you.’ He sounded terribly pleased with himself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not on the phone.’

  Siobhan shrugged, even though there was no one to see it. ‘All right then. The usual place.’

  ‘No,’ Kieran said quickly. ‘Not there. That’s no good. I’ve got something to show you.’

  She stood up. ‘What?’ she demanded.

  But Kieran remained enigmatic. ‘You want Cormac,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you Cormac. On a fucking plate. You only have to meet with me. Once I’ve shown you what I’ve got to show, I won’t need to look at your ugly pig face ever again.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ She felt uncharacteristically wrong-footed. ‘Where are you now?’

  She listened carefully as he gave her directions to the outskirts of Crossgar, a village thirty miles to the south of Belfast. ‘There’s an old farm there,’ he said. ‘Deserted. I’ll be waiting for you in the barn. I think you’ll have a nice surprise when you get here.’

  Siobhan hesitated for a moment. ‘Forget it, Kieran,’ she decided finally. ‘If we’re meeting, I name the place.’

  ‘The place,’ Kieran replied, ‘is the important thing.’

  ‘What do you mea
n?’

  There was a pause. Siobhan half imagined Kieran looking over his shoulder. ‘It’s a stash,’ he said quietly. ‘Dug into the ground. Street value a couple of hundred G. And the barn’s Cormac’s. You can trace it to him. He’s got sloppy.’

  Siobhan paused, turning it over in her mind, trying to think several moves ahead. Cormac was their only lead to Khan. Frankly she didn’t care about the drugs any more, but if she could use Kieran’s info as leverage, maybe she could find out something about Lily . . .

  ‘I’ve heard whisperings they’re moving it tonight,’ said Kieran, ‘and the chances of Cormac fucking up again—’

  ‘All right,’ she heard herself reply. ‘I’ll be there in an hour. This had better be worth it, Kieran.’

  A minute later she was walking out of the flat. On the street, the old bag lady was there with her supermarket trolley. Her eyes were bloodshot and wary; she spoke, but Siobhan didn’t hear what she said as she strode round to where her car was parked.

  She sat behind the wheel, one hand on the ignition keys, and stared through the windscreen. It was late afternoon and everything around her was grey: the tower block, the pavement, the stooped old man walking towards her. Through her dazed numbness she heard Jack’s voice. Go straight to the flat and don’t do anything until you hear from me.

  She should go back. She knew it. God knows how many SOPs she was breaking. But somehow she couldn’t make herself do it. Call it arrogance, call it determination, call it desperation, call it what you like. Siobhan could no more ignore a bite like this than she could stop breathing. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t take precautions. She found her M66, which Jack had left in the glove compartment, then pulled her phone from her jacket. She held her finger on the number 1 and speed-dialled Jack. There was no ringing tone as it clicked automatically on to his voicemail. This is Jack, leave a message.

  ‘Jack, it’s me. It’s Siobhan. I know you told me to stay at home, but something’s come up. I need to visit my O’Callaghan tout . . .’ She recited the directions Kieran had given her. ‘Just in case, you know . . . you need to find me. And Jack . . .’ She paused, then spoke quickly. ‘Jack, I meant what I said. I want you to come back. I want us to try again.’