Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3)

by McDermott, Alan

  “His bomb went off but there was no-one in the caravan. I’ve got the two men and I’ll make them take us to the women.”

  “Hamilton, talk to me. What the hell is going on there?”

  “Hamilton’s dead,” Baker told him, as he ushered Levine forward. “So is Dougherty. I’ll report back when we’re done.”

  Farrar wasn’t happy that the mission hadn’t been wrapped up, but he accepted that it might take a little time to break the ex-soldiers. He told Baker to call him as soon as the job was complete, then signed off comms.

  When they reached the vehicles, Campbell offered Levine an apologetic look.

  “Sorry, mate. They got the drop on me while I was trying to slash their tyres.”

  “Shut it!” Hill hissed, giving Campbell a kick in the ribs.

  Baker told Levine to lie on the floor and ordered Hill to cover them both while he fetched two pairs of plasticuffs from the van. He returned and went to work on Levine first, wrenching his injured shoulder and pleased to see the signs of discomfort. Levine clenched his teeth as the pain from his shoulder shot through his body, but Baker wasn’t in the mood to be tender and he gave the arm another tug for good measure.

  When both prisoners had their hands secured behind their backs, Baker gestured for them to climb inside the van. Levine looked over to where Hill had Campbell by the scruff of the neck, and he moved towards the van, hesitating in front of the open door. Baker moved in to give him a shove and as soon as Levine felt the hand on his back, he made his move.

  Placing one leg up onto the sill of the van, he pushed back with all his strength, swivelling in mid air and coming down with an outstretched leg which caught Baker on the chin. The strike knocked the man backwards and he fell against the bonnet of the Ford, but managed to squeeze off a round which caught Levine in his good arm. The thud of the impact spun him for a second, but the adrenalin pumping through his body held the pain at bay. He kicked Baker’s legs from under him and as he hit the floor, Levine threw himself on top of him. He began using his forehead to pummel Baker’s face, smashing the nose and sending blood spraying into the air.

  Campbell took this as his cue and raked his heel down Hill’s shin. While the man was stunned by the intense pain he took a step away from him and tried to deliver a roundhouse kick, but Hill recovered just quickly enough to deflect the blow and he kicked out at Campbell’s groin, knocking the wind out of him. Once he was on the ground, Hill gave him another kick to the head, then went to help his team leader.

  Hill grabbed Levine’s blood-stained arm and dragged him off Baker, and the resulting scream pierced the night. Baker sat up groggily and climbed unsteadily to his feet, his pistol swinging drunkenly by his side. He gingerly felt for the damage done to his face, and his hand came away a dark crimson in the faint moonlight.

  With anger seeping from every pore, Baker approached Levine and pointed the pistol at his head.

  “I thought you wanted them alive,” Hill said, having seen the look before.

  Baker glanced over at Campbell and saw him sprawled out on the ground, alive but dazed.

  “We only need one,” he snarled.

  Carl Levine looked into the small hole of the suppressor and knew that death was an instant away. He’d always known it would come, and a bullet in the head was preferable to other ways of meeting one’s end, such as drowning or the lingering agony of a terminal disease, but his thoughts turned to his family. Who would look after them once he was gone? How would —

  The sound of the bullet echoed through the trees and Levine flinched, but the anticipated darkness never came. Instead, Baker sank to his knees before collapsing forward onto his face. A stranger came into view, with a pistol held in a two-handed grip and trained on Hill.

  “Drop it,” the newcomer said with a hint of an accent. As he drew closer to pick up the Hill’s weapon, Levine could see that he was of Asian origin, perhaps from India or Pakistan. Another man appeared and quickly cuffed Hill before leading him back down the lane.

  “Carl Levine, I presume.”

  Levine said nothing. While thankful to still be alive, he was too busy wondering what the hell was going on.

  “I know this is going to sound corny,” the man standing over him said, “but come with me if you want to live.”

  Levine saw two more men appear. One came over and knelt down next to him, placed a first-aid kit on the ground and pulled out a bandage which he used to dress Levine’s bullet wound. The other went over to Campbell and helped him to his feet.

  “You mind telling me who you are, and who they are?” Levine asked, nodding towards Baker’s corpse.

  “We’re Five,” the man told him. “The name’s Hamad. Hamad Farsi.”

  Levine looked sceptical. “If you’re Five, who the hell are these guys?”

  He winced as the medic tightened the bandage around his wound and declared him good to go, before calling the other man over to help carry Baker’s body. They dragged it to the van and unceremoniously threw it in.

  “You’ll find two more in the field,” Levine told them as he staggered to his feet. “Head towards the fire, you can’t miss them.”

  The two men trotted off and Farsi gestured for Levine to follow him. “We need to get you to a proper doctor.”

  Levine stood his ground. “You still haven’t told me what’s going on. Who were those guys?”

  “They work for the government, and we believe they’re trying to eliminate everyone involved in the Tom Gray episode last year. Why, we don’t know.”

  Levine thought it was obvious, but he didn’t let on. He wanted to speak to Jeff alone before he said anything else, so he followed Farsi down the road to where two saloons were parked. Campbell was already in the back seat of one and he climbed in beside his friend.

  Farsi climbed into the front passenger seat and turned to face them.

  “Are your families close by?” He asked as the first of the emergency service vehicles roared past, sirens wailing.

  “They took off hours ago,” Levine lied. Until he knew exactly what was going on, he wasn’t about to drag his family back into this. “If we don’t get in touch with them within four hours, they take our story to the press.”

  “And just what is your story?” Farsi asked.

  Levine and Campbell looked at one another. “Let’s get Carl sorted out first,” Campbell said. Farsi nodded and told the driver to move out.

  “It’s a bit of a coincidence that you should show up just in time,” Levine said as they drove past the camp. He noticed that the fire now having spread to a third caravan, and was thankful that the girl next door had let his daughter’s indiscretion slip. There was no way any of them would have survived the blast or the resulting inferno if they’d been tucked up in bed.

  “It was close,” Farsi said. “We’re guessing your daughter sent her boyfriend a text, but it didn’t hit our desk until an hour and a half ago. The night shift didn’t realise the importance, otherwise we’d have been here hours ago.”

  “Is that how the others found us?” Campbell asked.

  “We believe so,” Farsi said, “and we’d really like to know why they want you dead. Apart from the team that just tried to kill you, we know there’s a contractor waiting for Simon Baines and Len Smart to land in South Africa tomorrow evening.”

  “South Africa?” Campbell asked. “What the hell are they doing there? I thought they were in the Philippines!”

  “And what do you mean by contractor?” Levine said. “A hit man?”

  “At least one,” Farsi told him. “They’re on a cargo ship that will be arriving in Durban and we intercepted instructions that sound very much like a kill order. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to establish just who will be meeting them.”

  The news confirmed what Campbell and Levine had thought all along: the government wanted rid of everyone who knew that Tom Gray was still alive.

  So why couldn’t Farsi put two and two together? Surely it was obvio
us that the information they had could cause the entire government serious damage. The opposition, who had been ousted in the last election, were responsible for creating the subterfuge, and the current ruling party were complicit by not only maintaining the silence but also sending out kill squads.

  There could only be one explanation — Farsi didn’t know that Tom was still alive.

  “So why are you helping us?” Levine asked. “If the government are looking to kill us, surely MI5 would be involved in the plot.”

  “You’ve been watching too many movies,” Farsi told him. “Our mandate is to protect the citizens of the UK, not kill them. If someone has committed a crime, we seek justice through the courts.”

  “Then how come you just shot that guy?” Campbell asked. “You could have tried arresting him.”

  “Because I knew he’d been sent to kill you, and it was his life or yours. Hopefully that will convince you that we’re on your side.”

  It was a compelling argument, Levine thought. If they were just playing good-cop-bad-cop, burning one of their own to execute the charade was a bit extreme. While Farsi’s sentiment about following the proper judicial procedure was noble, Levine wondered how the man would react when he discovered the truth. Would he or his superiors allow Tom Gray to announce his return to the world once they realised how devastating it would be to the credibility of the government?

  Levine decided that while he trusted Farsi — if only for the time being — he would keep that particular card close to his chest.

  “When you get to the next village you’ll see a supermarket on the high street. Our families are in the car park at the rear.”

  Campbell threw him a look, but Levine assured him it was okay. “There’s a loose end we need to tie up,” he told Farsi. “The man you shot was due to report in once he’d finished his mission.”

  “No problem,” Farsi said. “We’ll take care of it.”

  Chapter 11

  Monday May 7th 2012

  The chirping of his mobile woke Farrar from a fitful sleep. According to his watch he’d been asleep for less than two hours.

  “What?” He barked into the phone.

  “It’s Hill. The job’s complete.”

  “Where’s Baker?” Farrar asked.

  “He’s...tidying up,” Hill told him.

  “I’ll give him a ring,” Farrar said, but Hill told him not to bother. “During the takedown, Baker got into a skirmish and his mobile was damaged.”

  “Just get him to call me when he’s got a new phone,” Farrar said, and hit the End button.

  Durban was an hour ahead of the UK, which meant it was just after seven in the morning in Durban. Having woken Palmer just a few hours earlier, Farrar decided to wait until he got to the office before contacting him again. He’d said he wouldn’t have access to the website until the afternoon, so there was no point in depriving the man of any more sleep when he had an important hit to carry out.

  Despite the abrupt wake-up call, Farrar found himself looking forward to the day ahead. He headed to the shower and began preparing his report for the Home Secretary, which he would deliver once Palmer confirmed his kills.

  * * *

  Even though it was barely six in the morning, Veronica Ellis found that she wasn’t the first member of the team to make it into work. A light from the technical team office told her that Gerald Small had beaten her to it.

  “Morning,” she said as she stuck her head through the doorway. “What’s got you in so early?”

  “Just finishing up the website,” the technician told her. “I managed to get the source code from Gordon’s cloud storage account and the ISP has graciously agreed to point the IP address to one of our machines.”

  “So when Farrar uses the site, will he notice any difference?”

  “None at all,” Small said, “but we haven’t been able to crack the encryption algorithm he used to generate the passwords. The best I could do was to pretend to authenticate, but in actual fact it will accept any password the user enters.”

  “If you have the source code, why can’t you figure it out?”

  “It relies on a key in the web.config file,” Small explained. “It reads the key and uses that as the hash for the encryption. Trouble is, this is his backup version, and the key is blank.”

  “Surely this would only be a problem if they intentionally entered the wrong password, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Small told her. “The risk is tiny, but there nonetheless.”

  Ellis wasn’t about to second-guess him on anything technical, and if he said he couldn’t do any more, that was the end of the matter. At least they had the site in place, and following the news she’d received an hour earlier, she only expected it to be in use for another twenty-four hours at the most. They already had logs that tied Farrar to the website, and one of his operatives was currently being more than co-operative in a safe house south of London. While compelling reading, Andy Hill’s testimony wouldn’t be enough to get Farrar into court, let alone convict him. According to Hill, there’d been no written instructions beyond a workup file, which had been deleted once the plan had been drawn up and approved, so it would be Farrar’s word against theirs. Farrar would no doubt paint his team as disgruntled, rogue employees and have some high-ranking figures offer testimony on his behalf, so the more proof she could gather, the better.

  With that in mind, she thanked Small and went to her own office to let Andrew Harvey know about the latest developments.

  * * *

  With an hour remaining of the flight to London Heathrow airport, Abdul Mansour carefully adjusted his burqa, unlocked the toilet door and returned to his seat. He hadn’t spoken a single word to his male companion during the entire flight lest anyone discover the charade that had seen him pass easily through passport control at Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International airport. He hadn’t really expected any problems leaving Pakistan, but he had to trust Al-Asiri when he said the arrival would be uneventful: That wasn’t normally the case when walking into the lion’s den.

  Thirty minutes later, the plane began its decent. Mansour once again felt for the inhaler in his pocket, and he decided that if they were stopped on their way through the airport, he would set the device off and leave himself at the mercy of Allah.

  When they eventually touched down, Mansour and his companion, Ali, joined the throng of other passengers heading towards the immigration desks. Mansour looked for a desk staffed by a likely ally, but Ali guided him to a queue manned by a burly male. He kept his hands inside the burqa and removed the canister from his pocket, ready to activate it should there be any trouble.

  It took ten agonising minutes for them to reach the head of the line, and Mansour prayed that they would be let through with just a cursory inspection of their documents.

  It wasn’t to be.

  “Lift the veil, please,” the border guard said, flicking through the passports.

  Mansour pretended not to understand the instructions, and they were repeated with hand gestures. Again he didn’t move, but Ali lifted the thin material and Mansour found himself staring into the official’s eyes.

  He pressed down on the canister and began a silent count of ten, but he only got to two before the guard nodded, handed back the documents and waived them through. Mansour let out the breath he’d been holding and glanced back, but the man was already inspecting the paperwork for the next passenger.

  They collected their single suitcase from the baggage hall and made their way to the exit, where they found a man holding a placard bearing Ali’s surname. They followed him to his vehicle, which was located in the multi-storey car park. Once they’d cleared the airport, Mansour finally felt he could relax.

  “I wish you’d warned me what to expect,” he told Ali.

  “He has been working for us for quite some time now,” his companion told him. “The man has a severe gambling problem, which we feed with a few thousand pounds every month.”

&n
bsp; “Is money enough to ensure his obedience?” Mansour wondered aloud.

  “It usually is. This one was about to lose his house because of his addiction, but we paid off the mortgage arrears and he gets a gambling allowance in cash every month. He is happy with the current arrangement, but he also knows that if he tries to cross us, his precious home will go up in flames while he and his family sleep.”

  “Sometimes the carrot works, sometimes the stick,” Mansour said, “but a combination of both is better.”

  Ali nodded. “I have been here eleven times, and you are the eleventh wife he has allowed me to bring through immigration control. It has proven to be a valuable route into the country.”

  Mansour agreed, though he did wonder why he hadn’t been told of it on his last visit to England. Hadn’t they trusted him? His masters had provided him with a forged passport and let him make his own way there, rather than disclose this more secure method of entry. Perhaps the operation had been so hurriedly put together that there simply hadn’t been time to ensure their man would be working when he touched down.

  That was a year ago, he reminded himself, and his exploits since had surely demonstrated his loyalty beyond any doubt.

  His loyalty to the cause, at least.

  In his pocket he had the flash card from the mobile he’d been carrying on his recent visit to Azhar Al-Asiri’s home, and embedded on that drive were the GPS co-ordinates of the building. Once they reached the London safe house, he would send someone out to a local toy shop to buy the equipment he needed for the next part of his plan.

  * * *

  Andrew Harvey removed the magazine from the 9mm Beretta, checked the chamber was empty and stripped it down, as his firearms training dictated. The barrel looked clean and the moving parts slid nicely into place. The well-oiled gun had obviously been properly maintained.

  “Thanks, Dennis. Should I ask where you got this?”

  “Best not to,” Owen smiled.

  They were sitting in Harvey’s hotel room waiting for a phone call so that they could make a move. The plan was to check out the area around the port exit to see if they could spot anyone waiting for the Wenban haulage trucks to make an appearance. Unfortunately, they still had no idea just how many they were up against.