The Spy I Loved

by Dusty Miller

  A thorough search along the shoreline where Liam had first observed the boat turned up a most devious device. The police and military were cooperating fully, and being fed enough to keep them going by Marinaro and his staff.

  This was where they had found the portable launcher (now empty) for the boat. It was self-propelled in its own right. Someone had launched it, probably elsewhere with better cover, and then maneuvered it into position. It might have been moved subsequently. A hollow tube, it was stabilized by a simple lead keel. There was a door on the front end, motors, battery packs, solar cells on the top of it, and a binocular video camera on a short mast. It was capable of range-finding and locking onto a target according to the technical people’s initial reports.

  With the boat loaded inside and under constant trickle-charge, the camera had been sending scrambled signals back via uplink to a remote control operator. Once Liam (or any target) was positively identified, the controller hit a switch. A simple flat plate on the front opened, and a puff of CO2 ejected the boat from the launcher, fully charged and weapons armed. It had all the data from the launcher’s targeting system downloaded into it prior to launch.

  The boat had twin electric motors and ten cells, the latest in rechargeable batteries. It could have gone a lot faster as Liam had thought, but with the tiny boats, capsizing was always a risk.

  This was true on any kind of water.

  After launch, it was fly-by-wire essentially, with operators staring at screens. They might be just a few miles away, otherwise time-lag made it hard to control in a rapidly-changing tactical situation. Liam Kimball, all human frailty and warm flesh and blood, ripe for the spilling, was lucky. Just plain lucky.

  “So it wasn’t just a robot then. Well. That’s nice to know.” Liam pursed his lips in appreciation. “You’ve got to wonder what’s next.”

  “For one thing, you’re starting to talk like us.” Jenkins was sympathetic, but Liam was alive after all. “In a more open, more conventional warfare scenario, those things would be set on fully automatic.”

  It was an interesting shoreline defense, in Jenkins’ opinion, being relatively light, portable and cheap to build.

  Certain friendly governments would be informed of this development.

  However. Now they had something to go on. Such systems didn’t just grow on trees.

  Ian sighed.

  “And sooner or later, they will send a robot after us.”

  Jenkins sat up, looking for the bottle.

  The world wasn’t quite ready for that yet.

  And yet it was so close—you could almost build your own for fifty or a hundred thousand dollars, Jenkins thought.

  “What’s worse, is that now we’ll be keeping an eye over our shoulder, spooked by every kid with a radio-control dune buggy. Maybe not looking where we should be when the time comes.”

  Ian lifted an eyebrow.

  “Or—radio control helicopters, gliders, airplanes. It could be a cute little robot doggie, all lost and alone, going arf, arf, arf. Shit.”

  There was no telling what the enemy would try next, but with a little help from some friends, they might just intercept a signal. The trick was not to alert the enemy, or they would just switch it off—or blow it up. They could almost assume that it would be turned off until it was needed again. Their boat teams hadn’t been searching at night at all.

  The investigation would take a whole new turn, not that that was uncommon.

  You never really knew what you might dig up. It was a process.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jenkins cast her eye on their signal-blocker, set between them and their observers across the road.

  A little black box of the most anonymous kind, it identified low-powered bug-type signals and jammed them. The green light still glowed on the front and that was about it. It was also true that data could be captured by heat radiating from the screen and the machine had countermeasures in place, random bursts in selected non-visible EM frequencies.

  “Liam.”

  “Sir.”

  Jenkins and Ian stared at Liam from across his kitchen table. Little F was onscreen, and Liam had the laptop off to one side. They could all see F and F could see them. For want of inspiration, they were having dinner, barbecuing steak and drinking one or two welcome beers. Liam’s chest stung from mini-shrapnel, but he had the best painkillers in the world and knew how to use them without blurring his senses beyond reason.

  “Our two little frogs.”

  “Ah.” Liam tipped back his bottle and had a swig.

  Now that all bets were off and things were a little more open, he had the boss on speakerphone.

  “What about them?”

  A fresh notice appeared in his bucket and there were attachments as usual.

  Liam opened it up, and then shoved the computer over their way. Ian and Jenkins leaned in, reading it without moving their lips so to speak. Names, dates, addresses, passports and birth certificates. Hmn.

  Subject Number One. Caleb Hanson, born in a small town in Arkansas. Military training. Thirty-four years old. He’d been employed by a slightly-notorious American private security firm, with a few years of employment in Iraq, Afghanistan and in several strife-torn African states. His last known employment was eighteen months previously.

  Subject Number Two. Simon Barnet, born on Martinique. No major information. Twenty-nine years old.

  “These guys have the look of mercenaries.” Entered the country claiming to be on vacation.

  No real questions asked at Canada Border Services Agency when they arrived, driving a truck, bearing fishing gear, credit cards, and having a reservation at The Pines. No prior arrests.

  They fit the profile well enough and didn’t trigger any thresholds.

  There wasn’t much to go on with such preliminary information.

  Ian sat back and Jenkins pushed the machine back to Liam.

  “We’ll talk to you later, Uncle Frank.”

  “Keep in touch. Bye-bye.”

  Marinaro had a quick tete-a-tete with Frank that they didn’t need to hear, but kept his image onscreen. His next appointment was a few minutes away and someone might think of another question.

  It made for some interesting reading.

  Frogman number one, as Marinaro was calling him, was a white male. He had been in excellent health and about six feet tall. He weighed in at over eighty kilos. No identifying marks. Brown eyes and brown hair, clean-shaven. The picture of the face was not a flattering likeness, not in life or death, and the harsh light gave it a waxy look. Liam didn’t recognize him.

  Frogman number two was an African male. Liam shook his head. Looking, back, there might have been something, the dark skin around the white-edged eyes in the scuba mask. Race was the last thing on Liam’s mind at the time. He was six-foot, three inches tall. Ninety kilos, brown eyes, a few small tattoos, purely decorative in the opinion of the experts. There was no deep meaning or affiliation, not as far as they could determine from databases of such artworks, databases compiled over many years and from many different sources.

  According to the report, the police were being cooperative. They needed all the help and manpower they could get. Police were keeping an eye out for unaccounted-for vehicles, people not returning to their site or accommodation. There were always recreational divers in the area in summer. As many as possible were being interviewed casually by docksides and wharves by junior operatives. The cops were pitching in when they could on the lower-level activities.

  They were looking at all rental properties, looking for those that were occupied but seemed too quiet.

  It was a big job, like looking for a needle in a haystack. People had rights, including the right to privacy. This sort of job usually took a while. It’s what the police and more conventional civil authorities were equipped for. Unless the divers had been dropped in via some long-range transportation, they had to have had something—a base of operations, the boat of course, and other transportation. Sinc
e nothing like a vehicle and trailer had been located anywhere near the scene of the incident, they must spread their nets wider. There was a distinct possibility that they had been dropped off at a boat launch. Then a driver, a third party, took the vehicle and trailer somewhere else. Vehicles and trailers parked by area boat launches were being tallied, license plates run. They would be watched if they sat for any real length of time. The small rubber boat could have been trailered by a small car or minivan, so they weren’t ruling anything out. Deflated, it could fit into the trunk of a larger sedan, as they well knew. Liam had done it himself a time or two.

  Scuba divers, or any kind of mercenaries, were expendable, assuming they didn’t accomplish their mission. All the bad-guy driver had to do after launching the boat was to sit and wait for a call. If no call came, the odds were that the trailer and vehicle would be quickly abandoned. He would get out, open a door, and walk away. He would get in a different vehicle and drive or be driven away. That would be a possible fourth party.

  They could have hidden the vehicle in any one of a million places.

  This opened up new areas of search, including a hundred ravines and dead-end tracks within a quick drive from the drop point. The foliage was fully out, the leaves small but green as hell. Visibility in the ravines would be poor.

  All they had to do was drive into a big enough barn or shed and close the door.

  Shit.

  There were a fair number of boat launches and private docks within a few kilometres of the point of the attack. The rubber boat and motor in question might have been dragged overland from a logging road, which seemed the most likely scenario. Four healthy people could have done it in one go.

  ***

  Just as it became fully dark, a dusty maroon minivan entered the camp and pulled up close in front of Cabin Seven.

  The front door of the cabin opened even before anyone got out. The locks sounded as the driver sat there impassively. He was an anonymous figure, and yet camera shutters were probably snapping.

  It was Jenkins who took the handle of the side door and pulled it open. The three of them quickly unloaded the standard-issue blue canvas kitbags, pulling them in through the gaping front door. Ian came out and closed the van door. The locks clunked down.

  Across the road, there were two people sitting beside a campfire. There were brown bottles of beer in evidence. They sat and roasted their marshmallows, their faces ruddy with the glare, glints and highlights framing their little round glasses.

  The Bernsteins (according to the registration and the debit cards used) were just another pair of happy anglers, enjoying the peace and quiet of a warm night in early summer. Since credit card transactions went through instantaneously, that tidbit of information was relatively easy to get using the highest unofficial channels. The Bernstein’s had been kind enough to sign the guest book. The vehicle had license plates. It was almost too simple sometimes. On the face of it, they lived in Guelph. People were looking into it, but it had to be done with discretion or that part of the operation would be blown. One must always assume the enemy would assume some scrutiny, and would have planned accordingly. It was always the way. The question was how tight it might be.

  Once Ian was inside again, the front door slammed shut. The minivan cranked its front wheels hard to the right. The transmission clunked into gear. Doing a tight U-turn, the vehicle drove out of the camp again, its mysterious errand complete.

  Inside the cabin, Ian and Jenkins were suiting up as Liam opened the third bag to reveal a matte-black inflatable canoe along with two-piece plastic paddles and a handful of CO2 cylinders for inflation. He installed the first one, carefully tightening the clamp until he heard and felt it puncture the seal.

  The suits were black like the boat. The two pulled on thin neoprene hoods. The booties were always too tight and Jenkins cussed like a trooper, needing more talcum powder and not finding it immediately to hand. Their survival suits were insulated with shiny Mylar plastic on the inside layer. This was to trap and mask heat. They strapped on the night-vision goggles, leaving them tilted up on their forehead. They each had a bottle of ice water as the body’s core temperature tended to mount alarmingly. It was already uncomfortable and they would soon be sweating like pigs if they didn’t get outside pretty damned quick.

  “Are we going to inflate that in here?”

  “Ah. If we can do it.” Liam eyed up the back door and the kitchen table. “Let’s get this lot out of the way.”

  The two males moved the table as Jenkins grabbed loose chairs.

  The boat was wide, but low to the water. It was a question of length and to some extent the rate of inflation. The stubby little boat wasn’t meant for speed. It was only a little over five metres from stem to stern. With the kitchen, the front hallway and the back door lined up just so, there would be enough room.

  The room was full of that new-plastic smell and just a hint of CO2.

  Liam, with help from Jenkins, unfolded the heavily-creased boat, nose pointing to the rear door. Ian put the paddles together and then put on his weapon and shoulder holster. He moved to the table, checking for what else had to go. Jenkins pulled the red plastic D-ring on the inflation valve. The canoe came alive on the floor.

  Liam stepped back. Jenkins did one last check on her suit after hanging on the iron as she called it. Both were using an odd-ball holster. Six millimetres thick, it was made of radar-absorbent materials. The guns were the only hard metal objects besides the goggles. These were ninety-eight percent plastic, due to weight constraints. It was better not to be spotted on millimetric radar. Their enemy might just have such devices in place.

  The hissing sound was loudest at first, and the boat stretched and lifted, twisting and writhing as the various segments filled in sequence. As the canoe firmed up, taking its proper shape, the hissing diminished until it was almost indistinguishable. Ian bent down and put his ear beside the cylinder and valve assembly.

  “Still going.” Protocols called for full discharge, and then installing a new cylinder before setting out.

  There was a top-up button on the valve and it had come in handy before.

  They wouldn’t be out there twenty minutes. Even so, each agent took an additional cylinder and stuck it in an upper chest pocket.

  Jenkins gave it a kick.

  “Okay.”

  “The apparatus, mes amis.” It was a devious device, sending out a beam of light invisible to the naked eye.

  The set of frequencies and power levels were carefully chosen in order to avoid counter-detection.

  However, it would reveal coated optics. The drone boat-launchers were using state of the art military optics—which all major intelligence services knew quite a lot about as they and their own military used them to detect enemy surveillance. This included snipers, for example IRA snipers hiding in culverts waiting for the Royal Army to drive past. It was so much better to see them first.

  Liam nodded, and they looked at the back door.

  Jenkins stood there..

  “Any last thoughts?” There was no guarantee the enemy wouldn’t fire on them.

  It was anyone’s guess if they could be identified or even observed using this particular equipment. There were other boats on the lake, the coloured lights visible out the dining room window.

  Ian grinned.

  “It never costs nothing to put on a show.” He was thinking of their minders, sitting across the street and blinded by their own fire.

  His eyes turned to Liam, who for some odd reason was thinking of bottle rockets—better yet, a light anti-tank rocket, shoulder-fired.

  “How come you get all the good jobs?”

  “Ours is not to reason why, my friends—ours is but to do, or die.” If the Bernsteins showed signs of restiveness, he could always grab a couple of cold beers for them and go out there.

  What in the hell were they going to do then? He was almost looking forward to it.

  His finger hit the button on the fruit machine
, turning it off for the moment.

  They had been turning it on and off all day in a kind of spontaneity. This allowed the enemy across the way to hear selected snippets of useless information, bad jokes, gossip and even a particularly loud and odoriferous flatus produced by a proud and expectant Jenkins to much fanfare and mutual disgust. No doubt they would be cussing their defective bug and hoping to sneak in a replacement during the hours of darkness.

  Next Liam hit the button on the stereo system. He switched off the bossa nova music favoured by Ian. They had a disc provided by Q-Branch for their little ploy. Cued up and ready to go was the sound of Liam, Ian and Jenkins, drinking, telling stories, and carousing in an otherwise alcoholic haze. The background music was some sort of medley put together by the techs.

  Ian set a long, triangular piece of three-quarter inch plywood, black-painted, in the front foot-well and then went to the back of the canoe.

  Jenkins turned off their solitary light, opened the door and then bent to pick up her end.

  The pair of them stepped quietly out the back door, holding it sideways and trying not to scrape the doorjamb. The plywood fell out with a soft clatter. Liam hastily stuck it back in once they got outside.

  The pair shuffled down the bank, screened by trees and the cabin itself.

  Liam went back inside. Pulling the curtain back, he had a look out the small panel of glass in the front door.

  Their two gomers were right where they ought to be, eyeglasses reflecting the fire and watching the front of Cabin Seven.

  There might be other observers. Psychologically, those other observers would be relying on those closest to the target. The enemy would be shorthanded, and in the case of non-state actors, which was the prevailing suspicion, they would be even more so.

  He turned and picked up the detector and followed them out. They were sitting in the boat, a couple of feet of the back end sitting on sand.

  Barefoot for the occasion, Liam waded carefully out and put the machine down in between Jenkins’s knees. Jenkins steadied it on its tripod. Patting them both on the shoulder, Liam went to the back end. Giving them a long, slow shove, he watched them disappear from the pallid illumination of the docks. They put out their paddles and moved off with slow, careful little noises coming from the blades.