SAVAGE PAYBACK (Jack Calder Crime Series #3)

by Seumas Gallacher

  These people were serious. Money, big money, paid in advance, non-returnable. A politician’s daughter. Easy target. School bus. No security to worry about. Installing the devices a piece of cake. The timers did their job. Now get on the plane and back to Casablanca. Then the world went pear-shaped. The airport locked down in minutes as several trucks of armed soldiers swarmed the place. They knew who they were looking for. Faced with a dozen guns, he realised he’d been set up. Bastards. Despite not resisting, they beat him up severely on the way to Lesotho’s infamous maximum security prison in Maseru. There was no trial. Daily, he expected a bullet in the head which never came. No lawyer to represent him. His name just another alias on a false French passport. The first couple of weeks he languished in solitary confinement, not even given time out to walk around the yard from where he could hear the pidgin English and fluent French of the regular inmates drift back to his pen. His SAS training kicked in. He kept up a rigorous exercise routine, even in the confined cell. On the day they moved him into the general prisoner stream he was ready for the expected move from the prison gang leaders. A team of four approached. He noted two were hard-muscled, the fitness freaks. The second duo carried nothing but attitude.

  “We wanna give you a Maseru welcome, Mister Child Killer,” one of the smaller men snarled. Boss Boy, leader, talker, won’t do shit, thought Duval. Leave him ‘til last. The larger heavies separated to pincer from either side, which suited him perfectly. He stared first at the gorilla to his right and beckoned him forward, pleased to see the momentary hesitation in his eyes. The man didn’t move, and as Duval edged closer to him, he sensed the second brute pacing towards his back. In a sudden twist, he turned and met the oncomer with a flying leap, landing his feet across each of the internee’s knees and smashing his forehead full into his face, breaking the legs at the stiffened joints and knocking him senseless in one pass. The remaining guy did as expected, charging forward at Duval. His own weight and speed worked against him, as Duval thrust his heeled karate blow into his groin, then pulled the head down to meet his right knee. Twenty seconds gone, two attackers down. He moved towards Boss Boy, who backed off quickly, letting the third assailant come at him. The knife in his hand was easily dealt with. Duval sidestepped the man’s lunge, jerking his arm back sharply. The scream of pain told him the limb was broken. The dagger fell to the ground, but Boss Boy didn’t move to pick it up. Duval swiftly retrieved the weapon. Then the guards stepped in, two with rifles pointing at his chest. The third guard, the senior man, Duval guessed, shouted, “Put that down or we’ll shoot you, pig.”

  He did as ordered and waited, knowing this wouldn’t be good. A rifle butt smashed into the side of his head and he lost consciousness. This saved him from immediate pain as the keepers kicked his body like an old football. Later he counted at least four broken ribs. His face was badly beaten, but surprisingly not to permanent disfigurement. The left leg bore the worst injuries, the knee completely damaged, where heavy boots had jumped on it more than once.

  When he regained consciousness, Duval had no idea how long he’d been lying back in the solitary cell. His mouth caked with blood and his tongue was swollen. The stiffness and aching in his chest told him the ribs were bad, but the leg pain was horrendous. What the hell had they done? No doctor came. No medication. Several days passed, with the scraping of the door opening to deliver food with water once a day. He dug deep. Deeper than he’d ever done. After what seemed like months, but was only a week and a half, they took him out of the jail to a clinic a mile away that customarily served the prison’s medical needs. The doctor, who’d seen the brutal results of prisoner fights and civil war attacks over many years, told him he was lucky not to be dead. The ribs would heal, he said, but the knee needed surgery, unlikely to be available anytime soon. No gangrene, a blessing which meant in a week or two he’d be able to walk. Meanwhile, the medic gave him morphine shots to help with the severe pain in the joint and issued instructions to bring him twice weekly to the clinic.

  “Why didn’t they kill me when they brought me in? Why didn’t they kill me in the prison yard? Why didn’t they kill me in the privacy of the solitary cell? Why? Why? Why?” he pondered. Then realisation dawned. “Of course! I’m the link to the killing. The tie-in to the bastard who ordered the hit on the bus. Their smoking gun – why there’s no lawyer and no trial yet – why I get clinic treatment. It suits the bastards to keep me this way for now. Jeez.”

  Over the next few weeks, the knee continued to heal, and they allowed him into the yard twice a day to exercise, noticeably with no other prisoners. They didn’t want him talking to anybody about the bombing. Clever bastards.

  At six weeks, his leg had strengthened, but he feigned otherwise. He figured the clinic held his ticket out of there. It proved a lot easier than he’d imagined. The two guards who brought him on the weekly visit spent most of the time smoking outside the surgery. Alone with the doctor, a knockout blow to the back of the neck ensured at least twenty minutes before recovery and alarm. Unseen, he eased out of the side window and walked a few streets into the town, his getaway complete with the theft of an old truck. With no money and no passport the airport wasn’t an option. He took the best part of five days to negotiate his way across the border into South Africa, then drove to Durban on the coast. When night fell in the city, a couple of muggings provided some cash, his victims unaware that if there had been any physical resistance, they would have ended up with broken necks. The port-side bar area yielded a cargo coaster needing extra labour with no questions asked, done over a drink with a Dutch skipper. The voyage helped in getting his muscles back into shape. Ten weeks after the bus explosions, Rikko Duval stepped over the doorstep of his villa in Casablanca.

  He used the sea passage for some hard thinking and solved a puzzle. If he’d been kept alive at the prison as living evidence of the bombing, that wasn’t under instruction from the politician’s rival. The order had come from the politician himself. The bastard had arranged the killing of his own daughter and the other kids to pin blame on his political opponent. What kind of animal behaved that way?

  The Hotel Warrabi in Lagos is as five-star as any the city boasted. The visiting Lesotho Minister for Foreign Trade could sleep easy with his bodyguards posted outside the suite. The deal concluded in late afternoon with his Nigerian counterpart would be well received back home, and his cut, directed to a private bank account in the Cayman Islands, was enough to make this a good payday. He draped his jacket over the rear of the couch and poured a large slug of Scotch from the minibar. As he moved across the room, he picked up the remote control for the television and pointed towards the console. The green ‘on’ button clicked. A split-second later an enormous double blast engulfed the place. The bodyguards kicked in the door and met the devastation around the mangled body of their charge. No human being, not even a powerful, corrupt Minister for Foreign Trade, could have survived the twin explosions, front and back, the same technique that had resulted in the death he’d ordered of his own daughter exactly a year and a month earlier.

  Once more, the memory of the payback seven years ago brought a sense of satisfaction. Rikko Duval swallowed another painkiller and, smiling to himself, settled back to regain some sleep.

  CHAPTER 13

  The grainy images shot from a lens a few hundred metres distant showed the unmistakable features of Manuel Estrada. The photograph sequence detailed a medium-height, stocky Caucasian shaking hands with the Mexican drug boss before stepping into a limousine with darkened windows. A second man held the door for the Caucasian and took the passenger seat next to the driver. The Drug Enforcement Administration agents tracked the vehicle to Boston’s Logan International airport, where two other men met the target. They had ‘bodyguard’ written all over them. The group made its way to the check-in for Delta Air Lines and through passport control to the First Class lounge. The DEA surveillance team discreetly showed their badges to the check-in clerk. Mister Clem Darcy and his trave
lling companions were booked to Istanbul. Darcy was one of Ahmed Fadi’s aliases.

  Ten hours later, the wired alert to Turkey triggered arrangements to tail the party north from Istanbul airport to a secluded private compound in the Black Sea coastal suburbs of Kilyos, the base for Fadi’s business empire.

  This information relayed back to Boston and appeared as an item of interest to all major law enforcement forces, including the Metropolitan Police in London.

  Alan Rennie received dozens of alerts like these on a daily basis, but few carried the Istanbul connection. The report sounded bells in his head. Istanbul had been the starting point for the seized drug shipment on The Constellation. The link with Manuel Estrada was compelling. The Assistant Commissioner sent a return message to the DEA and Interpol, tagging the possible overlap connection. He also gave Jules Townsend a call, with the same information. William Lang wasn’t on his circulation list.

  ***

  The CCTV footage from the car park in Berlin covered the period from a week before the shooting of ISP’s head accountant. Through Donnie Mullen’s connections with the local Chief of Police, copies of the film from eight of the cameras reached Jules and the team in London. For two days, hour after hour they screened the tapes repeatedly against the bare, white wall in the boardroom. Jules had the initial run-through with all of the squad present, then re-runs in pairs looking at them. Jack and Malky first, followed by the two former cops, Paul and Donnie, finishing with himself and May-Ling, before having the six together again for another viewing.

  “What’ve we got? Jack, you kick us off,” said Jules, directing the debriefing process.

  “The van shows up for two consecutive days before the hit,” said Jack. “The plate number’s as clear as crystal, so we know it’s the same vehicle. Confirmed as stolen, as expected. It drives in about an hour before normal office closing time, and exits minutes after she leaves in her Volkswagen. Identical timing both days. Standard reconnaissance stuff.”

  “On the afternoon o’ the shooting they came earlier,” Malky cut in. “About an hour and a half. They prob’ly wanted to make sure they’d enough lead time to get a parking slot close to her car. After they shot her, they didn’t speed away. The gun silencer meant no triggered alarms, so no need to raise attention by driving too fast leaving the place. Yer men there’ve done their homework.”

  “Paul, Donnie, you guys get anything?” asked Jules, turning towards their end of the table. Donnie gestured to his pal to go ahead.

  “Yes, we’ve some views of the occupants through the windscreen. The side windows are darkened, so the front shots are the only ones directly of their faces, sort of blurry. We had them enhanced and sent across to our mates at the Met to run the computer match checks.”

  “And?”

  “So far nothing back. That’s all we got boss. Not much. How about you guys?”

  “Show them,” said Jules, making way for May-Ling to play the tape showing the shooting. She located the sequence and set it in slow motion. The frames jerked across the office wall. The range was too close for the bullets to miss their target, and the ISP men winced as their employee’s demise replayed. The light in the van switched on as the slide-door drew back for the shooter to do his work, the side view of his head illuminated. The shots matched the earlier pictures taken through the windscreen.

  “The face doesn’t give us anything new,” said Jack.

  “No, but this does. Look,” said Jules, motioning again to May-Ling.

  She played back a few stills and froze the reel where the gunman reached out towards his victim.

  “There. Enlarge that.”

  The magnifier ballooned the image to six times the original. In clear definition, the hand holding the pistol appeared thin and veiny. Across the skin on the wrist above the thumb a distinctive birthmark spread like a large, coffee-spill stain.

  “Good spot, Jules, you’ve got the eyes of a bluudy hawk,” said Jack.

  “Not me. The hawk eyes belong to your wife. May-Ling picked that one up. But I’ll claim this one,” said Jules, gesturing again to her. May-Ling changed the slides and ran the CCTV pickup from the bomb attack on the Moertens outlet. In a few seconds the frames moved to the assault on Martha Compton, the hammer blow to the store manager’s head inflicted by the same bony hand bearing the unmistakable image of a large, coffee-spill stain.

  “Bejeezus, Jules. You guys aren’t human,” said Malky, laughing. “So we look for a bloke with a birth mark? All we’ve gotta do is to check the hands of three billion adult men and we’ve got ‘em, right?”

  “Not that,” said Jules. “But it does confirm the New Bond Street hits are tied in with the murders of our own people.” The mood quieted in the room. “Something else came in this morning from Alan Rennie.”

  Jules went on, “We never ever identified the lad whose shipment we busted last year. This guy keeps so low under the radar even Mac’s records didn’t surface anything for us. I think we might have an idea now of where and who he is.”

  They were all ears as Jules explained the intelligence surfaced via Boston and Istanbul.

  “What do we do about it?” asked Paul.

  “I’ve got some ideas, but I need to check out another couple of things before I bust your brains. Meantime, good work on this. I’ve already shared this with Alan at the Met.”

  As the meeting broke up, Jules said, “Malky, Jack, check your visas. We might be taking a little trip to Mexico.”

  Malky’s expression spoke for him.

  Mexico?

  He knew Jules kept two or three moves ahead of most people, but this one he couldn’t get immediately.

  Well, never mind. We’ve been here before wi’ the boss, and I’m sure he knows what he’s doin’.

  CHAPTER 14

  Cy Foster met Jules with a strong bear hug. At six-five, and two hundred and forty pounds of muscle, he towered above the ISP chief. The last time the pair had been together they led a combined undercover operation to eradicate a nest of renegade Honduran soldiers turned rogue killers, embedded in the jungle area of Mosquitia. The fire-fight lasted twelve minutes with total wipeout of the enemy for no loss.

  Foster’s handsome, African-American features would have graced a movie set, including the diamond stud in his left ear lobe. The bass voice came all the way up from his toes as he greeted his visitors. A loose, faded-blue, denim shirt reached below his sweatpants, covering the holstered Glock pistol at his waist.

  “Welcome to El Paso-Juarez, the DEA’s little piece of Paradise. Hardly five-star, but hey, we do a mean line in coffee.”

  Jack and Malky shook hands with the head of station for the United States’ busiest anti-narcotics field location. The converted warehouse nudged the Mexican border and was the largest of seven one-storey buildings in a fortified complex housing Cy and several dozen operatives, all hand-picked. The open-plan space contained desks in clusters of six in the middle of the expanse, laden with telephones and wide-screen computers. Large-scale maps, with coloured circles indicating known border-crossings covered the warehouse walls, interspersed with groups of photographs pinned in columns showing different gang members. Many of the mug shots had thin red ‘X’s, confirmed victims of turf warfare or killed by the authorities. Others bore green, full-picture question marks – missing, believed executed. The war against the cartels was relentless, matched by the constant flow of drugs through dozens of relay points between the countries.

  Cy leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, coffee mug smothered in his cupped fingers,

  “What’s cookin’, Jules? You said you needed background stuff on Manuel Estrada.”

  “A long story, but the short version is we think he might’ve found a new friend in Europe. You ever hear of a guy called Ahmed Fadi?”

  “Sure. He’s the biggest mover and shaker of this shit all the way from Afghanistan to your backyard in England, right? Isn’t he the ultimate invisible man? Must be shellin’ out a fortune in payoffs
to stay that way.”

  “We helped put a major spanner in his works last year. You probably heard about the raid on his boat in England. He’s bound to be hurting for cash flow. A tie-up with somebody like Estrada makes a lot of business sense.”

  “You guys got a piece of that action?” Cy raised his eyebrows. “Nice work.”

  “Your people in Boston photographed Estrada looking cosy with an unknown Caucasian, traced back to Istanbul. Our betting says that was Fadi.”

  “And you’ve put two and two together to make five, right?” Cy said. “Why are you so interested in him? Last time I looked, you guys ain’t law enforcement. What’s the deal?”

  Jules nodded to Jack to explain.

  “Three of our clients were hit in the New Bond Street bombing heists,” said the Scotsman. “Now the insurance companies want us to help get their gear back.”