She faced the hotel and walked in.
Immediately inside the front door was a small entrance hall with another door directly ahead. Through the glass she could see the bar and people inside. She opened it and stepped in.
A log fire burned in a large brick fireplace the other side of the room. There was a dozen or so people; a couple were seated at the bar and the rest at some of the old wooden tables. No one gave her any more attention than a brief glance as she walked to the bar.There a short, stout bartender, almost as broad as he was tall, asked her for her order. She asked for a glass of white wine and after paying for it took it to a corner table near the fire, from where she could see everyone in the room and the front door.
She sat down with her back to a bookshelf stacked with old hardbacks, took a sip of wine and tried to compose herself. She was tense, her neck and shoulders were aching. She suddenly felt eyes on her and glanced at a couple sitting by the large bay window that looked out on to the front of the hotel. It was not the couple watching her, but someone outside looking in, a man, in his fifties, in a well-tailored coat. She stared back at him. He walked away and a moment later the door to the bar opened and he stepped inside. He was carrying a hatbox tied with a decorative twine and walked directly to the bar and ordered a drink. She watched as he placed the box on the bar, took a wallet from inside his coat pocket, paid for the drink, and replaced the change in the wallet and the wallet back inside his coat. He turned at the bar to face her, took a sip of what looked like a whisky, picked the box up off the bar, and walked over to the fireplace. He put the box down to warm his hands and glanced over at her.
‘What’s the weather like in Boston, Kathryn?’ he said.
She said nothing and just stared at him. He picked up the hatbox and sat opposite her, placing the box on the floor between them.
The man was known to the Northern Ireland detachments as O’Farroll, RIRA’s quartermaster. This was only the second time he had stepped outside of the Republic of Ireland in the past six months. The last time was to visit a church in County Tyrone to put on a little pantomime in order to draw the attention of a man hidden inside the boot of a car.
‘You must be tired,’ he said.
Kathryn was uneasy in his company. Something about him reminded her of Father Kinsella. He too looked like he had once been a street fighter. ‘I’m okay,’ she said.
‘Good. Well, it’ll all be over soon and you can go back home.’
‘What about my husband?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘When can I see him?’
‘Soon. By the time you get to London he’ll be starting his journey to you.You’ve just got one little thing to do for me, and that’ll be that.’
He glanced around casually to make sure no one was within earshot as he took a sip of his drink.
‘Under the table, between us, is a hatbox. You saw me carry it in. I’m going to get up and leave in a moment. When I’ve gone you’ll pick up the box, walk over to the bar and ask the barman to call you a taxi. You’ll take the taxi back to King’s Lynn train station and follow your instructions to London.’
She leaned back to take a look at the box.
‘Don’t worry. It’s not a bomb. It’s just a small inconsequential package.You’ll be met at King’s Cross station by a man who’ll ask you if the Hoste Arms was crowded. You’ll hand him the box and he’ll tell you where you can go and pick up your bag. Is that simple enough?’
She nodded.
‘Don’t talk to anyone else, and don’t let the box out of your sight. That’s all you have to do to get Hank back,’ he said with a thin smile. ‘You have a good life, Kathryn. Sure I wish I were taking a trip to America myself. I haven’t been there for ages . . . Good day to you,’ he said as he finished his drink, stood and walked out of the bar and the hotel.
She could not be more pleased with his comment that the sooner she got going the sooner it would be over. She took a long sip of her drink and got up. She reached under the table and picked up the box. It was surprisingly light for its size, as if all it did contain was a small hat. If it was a bomb it was a very small one.
She went to the bar and asked the bartender to call her a taxi.
No one paid her any attention as she left the hotel and stepped outside. There was no sign of the man she had met. She placed the box on one of the picnic tables and waited for the taxi. There were quite a few people in the village centre, passing in and out of the little stores and looking in the windows of estate agents and antique shops. Not even a trained surveillance operative would have noticed the car parked the other side of the village green with two men in it watching her. The one in the passenger seat was Brennan.
Chapter 20
Stratton sat in the ops room with his feet up on a table, lost in thought. Sumners was studying the maps while sipping a mug of tea. Tanner was going over equipment lists and options with Captain Singen. The three Americans had left to take their kit to the mess and grab a meal. It was late in the afternoon and Sumners had mumbled more than once how they should’ve heard something by now. Coastguards along the entire west coast of Europe had been alerted, through circuitous means involving various foreign intelligence agencies, to be on the look-out for a boat possibly smuggling weapons into England. No one knew that the weapon was biological. That had to be kept secret. MI5 had issued a report that the occupants were highly dangerous and under no circumstances was any suspicious boat to be boarded and searched. It was to be left to run its course after its position had been reported. That suited the various European law enforcement agencies, who did not particularly want to get involved in a gun battle at sea with desperate terrorists. They would happily let the Brits deal with it.
The phone rang. Sumners snatched it up. ‘Sumners here.’
He listened for a second then put his cup down quickly and signalled the others. ‘That’s good enough for right now,’ Sumners said into the phone then hit the hold button. ‘Get in the air,’ he said to Tanner, then depressed the hold button again and put the phone back to his ear. ‘Names, names! For God’s sake, man!’ he said as he grabbed a pen and started scribbling. ‘Glory Bird, Wind Dream, Alpha Star. Why three so close together? . . . What?’ he exclaimed. ‘Which was the first? . . . Alpha Star. When for God’s sake? . . . This morning! Before first light! What’s the type and tonnage?’ He scribbled it all down, then put the phone back in its cradle and addressed the others. ‘The Dutch Coastguard monitored three ships heading out from Den Helder.’
‘That’s Dutch Navy ground, isn’t it?’ said Tanner.
‘Yes, and you could hide a bloody supertanker in those waterways. The Alpha Star is the best possible to start with because she’s got no cargo registered and left before last light. She was last sighted heading due west.’
‘Why’s this info taken this long to get to us?’ asked Singen.
‘The report’s been lying on some idiot’s in-tray all bloody day. She could be on our east coast by now,’ Sumner said as he stuck a pencil on the map and drew a line due west across from Den Helder. ‘Twenty-eight thousand tons. What kind of draught would that be?’
‘Two, three metres maybe. Depends what kind of boat it is,’ Stratton said.
‘Hull to Ipswich,’ Sumners said, marking the map.
‘Big area to cover,’ Tanner added.
‘Your teams should head for somewhere central to start with.’
‘What’s exactly due west?’ asked Stratton following a line.
‘North Norfolk. Great Yarmouth to Hull.’
‘Split the difference,’ Sumners said. ‘Head for Lynn. You can go either way from there. We’ve got a Nimrod somewhere in that area. Get going. Hopefully I’ll have something for you before you’re halfway.’
Singen and Stratton headed for the door and were gone.
Sumners picked up the phone as he stared at the map, as if hoping it would tell him where the boat was. ‘Twenty-eight thousand tons, two metre draft,Yarmouth, Lynn
or Hull,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘Unless they stopped off the coast and transferred to another boat, or went north or south along the coastline to another port.’
‘Or it’s a boat load of Afghans,’ Tanner said.
‘That would be a good one to tell the local authorities,’ said Sumner. ‘Time to bring them into the game, I think.’ He dialled a number. ‘Sumners here. Time to alert the port authorities . . . All of them from Cornwall to Edinburgh. Start with Ipswich to Hull.’
On the camp rugby field the twin rotors of a Chinook helicopter beat the air. Two vans pulled up near the rear ramp and a dozen men in black assault gear, equipment harnesses and carrying weapons, climbed out. Most were equipped with the reliable H&K SD silenced SMGs, two carried bags containing a selection of sniper rifles including 22.250s and 7.62 Barking Dogs, and everyone wore a Sigmaster 226 9mm semi-automatic pistol in a holster strapped low on their thigh. They trooped into the techno-cave interior of the CH47 where equipment boxes were already stacked and a loadmaster was making final pre-flight checks. Stratton arrived carrying a bulky black kitbag, with Singen close on his heels. He took a seat near the forward door while Singen plugged his headset into a communications socket across from him, then looked over at his team leaders, who gave him a thumbs-up.
‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Singen said to the pilot via his headset.
The loadmaster started bringing up the ramp.
‘Wait up!’ Stratton shouted. ‘Where are the Yanks?’
‘Are those them?’ asked the loadmaster, pointing towards three men emerging from the trees, running as fast as they could under their heavy kitbags.
‘Yeah, that’s them,’ Stratton said.
As the men bounded up the ramp the loadmaster continued closing the back.
Stewart dropped his kit bag on to the floor and slumped into the seat beside Stratton almost completely out of breath. ‘Wouldn’t be trying to leave without us, would you?’ he asked.
‘Don’t you read the newspapers? We can’t do anything without our American cousins these days,’ Stratton shouted above the noise of the engines.
Jasper and Pete dropped into a couple of seats, both sucking in air as the helicopter screamed and shuddered and slowly raised its awesome weight off the ground.
‘Where we to?’ Stewart asked, removing the tie he had put on for his meal in the mess.
‘Norfolk mean anything to you other than in Virginia?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well maybe it will by the time this day is over,’ Stratton said.
Stewart nodded and was quickly lost in thought. On the surface the American was blasé, cool, laid back, which was his style and he wore it well. But deep down he had concerns he’d been unable to shake since the briefing. He’d pushed to the front of this operation, got his boss to bully the Brits into allowing him and his two chiefs to take a point responsibility on the assault, since it was the Brits’ fault Hank had been kidnapped. That the Brits had allowed them to take part was actually a compliment. They wouldn’t have done so a few years back, but his unit had since reached standards the Brits considered high enough to play with them, the arrogant bastards. But now it was suddenly real.
He’d gained a lot of experience over the years - perhaps more in the last four than most SEAL officers had in the thirty or so since the end of Vietnam - but nowhere near that of these guys.They were still way ahead of every Special Forces unit in the world when it came to small team, waterborne assault ops, the undisputed champs, with a dozen successful operations to their name over the last decade. Shit, they were still the only people in history to have captured and sank a ship after landing on it from the air - and that was twenty years ago.
They were a tough act to join but the past five or six years had been good to the SEALs. They had gained a lot of experience around the world and had no major cock-ups to be embarrassed about. He knew he was up to this job. He’d had the training and enough combat experience to know he was confident and reliable in a firefight. But assaults of this kind were not ordinary. Boarding a boat occupied by armed terrorists with the view to capturing it and rescuing a hostage without losing any of the team required pure surgery. Stewart and his team were amongst the most qualified in the SEALs to mount a ship assault - having led most of the rehearsals over the past year, boarding a dozen different types from small merchants to super tankers - but no one in the training or ops team had ever done one for real apart from a couple of drug boats, which didn’t really count. The Brit operators surrounding him in the helicopter knew that. They would all be wondering if these Yanks could cut it. There was more at stake here than just Hank and the virus. By pushing his guys to the frontline Stewart had made a statement: that they were as good as the best. Stewart was one of the finest officers the SEALS had, an ‘A’ student, smart, fit and had never screwed up in his career. But he knew that record was not just down to ability. Luck had played its part. This business was often like that of a trapeze artist’s; sometimes you had to leap blind, trust in fate as well as your teammates, and hope the bar was where it should be when you reached for it. He’d been lucky. He just hoped it would stay with him for this one.
‘What’s your sensitive equipment?’ Stratton shouted into Stewart’s ear, snapping him out of his reverie.
‘What?’
‘The sensitive equipment you’re carrying. What is it?’
‘Nothing too sensitive really,’ Stewart admitted.‘I was pissing on your tree a little.’ He reached for his bag, unzipped it and took out three small black plastic hexagonal shapes, each half the size of a cigarette packet, and also a small electronic device. He handed one of the hexagons to Stratton. ‘I was gonna give ’em to you guys anyway. It’s our new super explosive remote-door charge. The initiator’s good up to a hundred metres line of sight, fifty in a built-up area.’
‘I’ve heard of this stuff. Is it as good as they say?’
‘Don’t know what you’ve heard, but it’s good. Faster burn rate than C4 or PE, higher temperature, lighter; down side is it’s harder to shape, which is why it comes in pre-moulds, otherwise great . . . Take ’em,’ he said, handing Stratton the other two and the detonator. ‘I’ve gotta bunch of ’em.’
Stratton nodded a thanks, then studied the devices. Super ‘X’, a nice addition to anyone’s arsenal.
Kathryn was seated in the second to rear carriage of the train as it sped through the countryside towards King’s Cross. Beside her on the seat was the hatbox. A ticket inspector came through the connecting door to the rear carriage calling for all tickets to London. She produced hers and he stamped it and moved on. The last ticket he checked before stepping through to the next carriage was Brennan’s, who was seated where he could catch a glimpse of Kathryn if he leaned into the aisle.
As the ticket inspector disappeared through the connecting door Brennan had a quick check on Kathryn and then sat back and looked out of the window, hardly interested in the view, but it was better than staring at the back of the seat in front.
Brennan had mixed feelings about this sudden and unexpected field promotion. On the one hand he felt relief since he had feared he had lost favour with the War Council after the failure of his last operation, having not heard from them since the debriefing a week later. It was possible he was reading too much into it; perhaps there wasn’t a lot of work about - there had been long dry spells before - plus his buggered leg was likely another reason the phone hadn’t rang. Not that his leg was that bad. He had a bit of a limp and he might not be able to run as fast, but then he never ran anywhere anyway. Everyone knew it was not his style. Sprinting on a job showed bad planning in his books. If pursued, his MO was usually to fight, which was why he insisted on being well armed.
On the other hand, his new level of responsibility suggested that his role within the organisation had significantly altered and he wasn’t sure he liked the implication. He was nominally a gun for hire, not truly an official member of RIRA.
O’Farroll’s ca
ll had come out of the blue. Brennan’s role was to be one of considerable importance in the most bold and destructive operation RIRA had planned to date. In fact it was greater than anything the Provisional IRA and IRA had planned in their own histories.
The initial offer was a routine abduction and execution of a tout, Seamus. But after he arrived on the boat in Holland Brennan was told exactly what it was Seamus had acquired and that it was on board. He was shocked, although he didn’t show it. O’Farroll gave him the responsibility of escorting the weapon to its final destination. Brennan liked his mercenary status but being brought closer into the fold made it more difficult to discuss his financial compensation for operations. Next thing they would be expecting him to work for the cause rather than for the money. O’Farroll, the head of the War Council, had told Brennan he would be well looked after for his services but there had been no time to talk about money. Everyone had been so tense, what with the virus on board as well as the American, and uncharacteristically Brennan had agreed to take part in the operation before the financial side had been discussed. He had to figure out a tactful way of reminding the War Council that his position as a hired specialist was unchanged.
One would expect such a key assignment to be given to a senior officer. Asking Brennan to do it suggested it was highly dangerous, but it also meant the War Council trusted him greatly and regarded him more highly than he thought, and truthfully, more than he wanted. Then again, it was also possible that they were short of clean manpower, not that Brennan was exactly pristine, but that was better than clean and green.The only new and untarnished members of RIRA who were not on Special Branch’s suspect list were youngsters with no experience.
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