by Andy McNab
You never know when you are going to get another chance."
At last I was doing as I'd been told.
* * * When I woke up it seemed like the same cartoon was on. I must have left the TV on all night. I was dying for some coffee.
I got up, wet my hair, and looked out the window. The rain had gotten a bit more intense. I went downstairs and collected enough food and drink for three people--which was just as well, seeing the amount that Kelly ate.
"Wakey wa key I said.
Kelly still wanted to be marine life but woke up yawning, stretching, then curling up into a ball. I went into the bathroom and started to run a bath.
She appeared in the doorway with a towel. She was starting to catch on.
While she was splashing around, I sat on the bed flicking through the news channels. There was nothing about us.
There had been so many other murders in the homicide capital of the USA that we were old hat.
She came out, got dressed, and combed her hair, all without a single reminder from me. I opened an eat-from-the-pack carton ofF root Loops for her and poured in some milk, then headed for the shower.
When I reappeared, all clean and presentable, I said, "We've got to move from here today because the woman wants the room back."
Her face lit up.
"Can we go home now? You said Pat was going to help us go home."
I took her coat off the hanger and slipped her shoes on.
"Really soon, yes we will. But Daddy needs more time to rest. Pat will find out when it's OK," I said.
"But first, we've got to do some stuff. It's really difficult for me to explain to you what's going on just now, Kelly, but it won't be long. I promise you will be home soon."
"Good, because Jenny and Ricky are missing me."
My heart missed a beat. Had I fucked up? Had there been other people in the house?
She must have read my mind.
"They're my teddy bears," she explained. Her face went serious.
"I miss them. And I want to go to Melissa's party."
I started patting the top of her head. She looked at me; she knew she was being patronized. I changed the subject.
"Look, I'll show you where we're going."
I got the map out.
"This is where we are now, and that's where we're heading--just by the river. We'll get a taxi, find a nice hotel, and we'll make sure they've got cable so we can watch movies. If they haven't, maybe we could go to the movies."
"Can we see Jungle 2 Jungle?"
"Sure we can!"
What the fuck was that? Never mind; at least we'd gotten off the subject of family.
After checking out and, to my surprise, being offered a one-night rebate, I went upstairs to collect Kelly and the blue nylon sports bag. I left the USP in the toilet tank. It had only one 9mm magazine; I was carrying three .45s with the Sig.
Leaving the hotel, we turned left and immediately left again. I wanted to get out of sight of the reception desk before somebody thought of asking, "Where's his wife?"
We hailed a cab, and I asked for Pentagon City. The driver was an Asian in his sixties. He had a map on his seat but didn't bother to look at it. We seemed to be heading in the right direction. Kelly had her hat on; I thought of teasing her that she looked like Paddington Bear, but it would have taken too long to explain.
The driver asked where exactly I wanted to be dropped. "The Metro station, please." I didn't have a clue where that was, but it sounded as good a place as any.
I gave the old boy his cash and off he drove. The whole area looked new and high rent, both shopping and residential. There was a Ritz Carlton hotel and, a few minutes away, the Pentagon.
I got my bearings and led Kelly toward the mall. I wanted to visit an ATM to celebrate the start of a new financial day.
We exited and walked across the supermarket parking lot, then on toward the river. It was strange, because for the first time I felt like I was really responsible for Kelly. I still held her hand when we were crossing roads, but now it seemed natural to keep holding it on the sidewalks, too. I had to admit, it felt good to have her with me, but maybe that was only because I knew it looked natural and therefore provided ideal cover.
We walked under the concrete freeway bridge that led to downtown D.C. It was very busy. The traffic sounded like muffled thunder; I told Kelly about the scene in Cabaret in which Sally Bowles goes under the railway bridge to scream when things get too much for her. I didn't tell her that was what I'd been feeling like doing for the last forty-eight hours.
Past the bridge the landscape changed. It was easy to imagine what this area must have looked like maybe fifty or sixty years earlier, because it hadn't been fully developed yet.
It was full of derelict railway-siding buildings, some of which had been taken over as offices, though much of the area was just fenced off into lots or used as car pounds.
I looked left and saw the elevated section of the highway disappear into the distance toward downtown Washington. A concrete wall hid all the supports, and a road ran alongside.
There was no sidewalk, just a thin strip of hard ground, littered with soda cans and cigarette packs. It looked as if people parked up on the shoulders here to avoid the parking charges farther in. There were old, ramshackle buildings everywhere, but the place was still being used. On the right was the dark Street Playhouse, a theater in what had once been a railway warehouse. The tracks were still there, but they were now rusty, and weeds were growing through. From above us came the continuous roar of traffic on the elevated highway.
We passed a scrap-metal yard, then a cement distribution plant where the boats used to come up the Potomac and dump their loads. I then saw something that was so totally out of place it was almost surreal. A late 1960s hotel, the Calypso, was still standing in defiance of progress. It was marooned in the middle of an ocean of chrome, smoked glass, and shiny brick, as if the owners had decided to give the finger to the property developers who were slowly taking over this dying area.
It was a very basic, four-story building, built in the shape of an open square; in the middle was a parking lot crammed with cars and pickups. There were no windows on the outer walls, just air conditioners sticking out of the cinder block.
We turned left; with the highway thundering away above us we walked past the hotel on my right side. We were now parallel with Ball Street, which lay behind it. Kelly hadn't said a word. I was in work mode anyway; if it weren't for the fact that I had hold of her hand, I would probably have forgotten she was with me.
As we got even with the Calypso I wiped the drizzle from my face and peered up into the gloom. On its roof was a massive satellite dish, easily three yards across. It wouldn't have looked out of place on top of the Pentagon. We turned right and right again. We were on Ball Street.
From street numbers on the map I knew that the target was going to be on my left. I kept to the right side for a better perspective.
It was still incredibly noisy; if it wasn't an aircraft taking off from the airport just the other side of the tree line, it was the continuous roar from Highway 1. "Where are we going?"
Kelly had to shout to be heard above it all.
"Down there," I nodded.
"I want to see if we can find a friend's office. And then we can find a nice new hotel to stay in."
"Why do we have to move around all the time?"
I was stumped on that one. I was still looking at the street numbers, not at her.
"Because I get bored easily, especially if the food's no good. That one last night was crap, wasn't it?"
There was a pause, then, "What's crap?"
"It means that it's not very nice."
"It was OK to me."
"It was dirty. Let's go to a decent hotel, that's what I want to do."
"But we can stay at my house."
A jet had just left the runway and was banking hard at what appeared to be rooftop level. We watched for a while, trans fixed; even
Kelly was impressed.
As the roar of its engines died down I said, "Come on, let's find that office."
I kept looking forward and left, trying to judge which building it was going to be. There was a hodgepodge of styles old factories and storage units, new two-story office buildings rubbed shoulders with parking lots and truck container dumps. In between the buildings I could just glimpse the trees that lined the Potomac maybe three hundred yards beyond.
We were in the high nineties, so I knew the PIRA office building wouldn't be far away. We walked on until we got to a new-looking, two-story office, all steel frames and exposed pipe work All the fluorescent lights were on inside. I tried to read the nameplates but couldn't make them out in the gloom without squinting hard or going closer, neither of which I wanted to do. One said unicorn but I couldn't make out the others.
It didn't look much like the sort of Sinn Fein or PIRA offices I was used to. Cable Street in Deny, for example, was a row house on a 1920s residential street; the places in west Belfast were much the same. Had Pat got this right? In my mind I'd been expecting some old tenement. Chances were this was just a front--it would be a commercial business;
people working there would be legit.
I focused on the target as we walked past, but didn't look back. You have to take in all the information the first time around.
"Nick?"
"What?"
"My feet are really wet."
I looked down. Her feet were soaked; I'd been concentrating so much on what to do next that I hadn't noticed the puddles we were walking through. I should have bought her a pair of boots at the mall.
We got to a T-intersection. Looking left, I could see that the road led down toward the river. More cars parked up on the shoulders, and even more scrap yards
I looked right. At the end of the street was the elevated highway, and just before that, above the rooftops, I could see the dish on top of the Calypso Hotel. I was feeling good.
A successful recon and somewhere to stay, and all before 11 a.m. We walked into the hotel parking lot. I pointed between a pickup truck and a UPS van.
"Wait under the landing, and keep out of the rain. I'll be back soon."
"Why can't I come with you. Nick? It's dark under here."
I started my puppy-training act.
"No wait ... there. I won't be long." I disappeared before she could argue.
The hotel lobby was just one of the first-floor rooms turned into an office. Checking in was as casual as the layout. The poor Brit family story was understood a lot quicker here.
I Went outside, collected Kelly, and, as we walked along the concrete and cinder block toward our new room on the second floor, I was busy thinking about what I'd have to do next. She suddenly tugged on my hand.
"Double crap!"
"What?"
"You know, like not nice. You said the other one was crap.
This is double crap."
I had to agree. I even thought I could smell vomit.
"No, no, wait till you get in. You see that satellite dish? We can probably get every single program in the world on that. It's not going to be crap at all."
There were two king-size beds in the room, a big TV, and the usual dark, lacquered surfaces and a few bits of furniture a long sideboard that had seen better days, a closet that was just a rail inside an open cupboard in the corner, and one of those things that you rest your suit case on.
I checked the bathroom and saw a little bottle of shampoo.
"See that?" I said.
"Always the sign of a good hotel. I think we're in the Ritz."
I plugged in the telephone and recharger, then it was straight on with the television, flicking through the channels for a kids' program. It was part of the SOPs now.
I pulled Kelly's coat off, gave it a shake, and hung it up, then went over to the air conditioner and pressed a few buttons. I held my coat out, testing the air flow; I wanted the room to get hot. Still waiting for some reaction from the machine, I said, "What's on?"
"Power Rangers."
"Who are they?"
I knew very well what it was all about, but there was no harm in a bit of conversation. I didn't want us to be best buddies, go on vacations together, and share toothbrushes and all that sort of shit far from it. The sooner this was sorted out, the better. But for the relationship to look normal it had to be normal, and I didn't want to get lifted because some busy body thought we didn't belong together.
I said, "Which one do you like?"
"I like Katherine. She's the pink one."
"Why's that, because of the color?"
"Because she's not a moron. She's really cool." Then she told me all about Katherine and how she was a Brit.
"I like that because Daddy comes from England."
I made her change into a new pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.
It took a lifetime. I thought. Fuck parenting, it's not for me.
Every moment of your time is taken up. What is the point, if you just spend all day on butler duty?
She was finally dry and sorted out. Next to the TV was a coffeemaker and packets of milk and sugar, and I got that going. As the machine started to purr and bubble I went to the window. As I looked out past the curtain, left and right of me were the other two sides of the drab, gray concrete square; below was the parking lot, and across the road and higher up was the highway. I realized that my mood matched the view.
Rain was still falling. I could see the plumes of spray be hind the trucks as they rolled along the highway. It wasn't heavy, but it was continuous, the kind that seeps into every thing. I was suddenly aware of Kelly standing next to me.
"I hate this type of weather," I said.
"Always have, ever since I was a teenager and joined the army. Even now, on a really wet and windy winter's day, I'll make myself a cup of tea and sit on a chair by the window and just look out and think of all the poor soldiers sitting in a hole in the middle of nowhere, freezing, soaking wet, wondering what they're doing there."
A wry smile came to my face as the coffee stopped dripping, and I looked down at Kelly. What wouldn't I give to be back on Salisbury Plain, just sitting in a soaking-wet trench, my only worry in the world how to stop being wet, cold, and hungry.
I went and lay on the bed, working out my options. Not that there were that many. Why didn't I just make a run for it? I could steal passports and try my luck at an airport, but the chances of getting away with it were slim. There were less conventional routes back. I'd heard that you could get all the way from Canada to the UK by ferry and land-hopping, a route popular with students. Or I could go south, getting into Belize or Guatemala; I'd spent years in the jungle on that border and knew how to get out. I could go to an island off Belize called San Pedro, a staging post for drug runners on their way to the east coast of Florida. From there I could get farther into the Caribbean, where I'd pick up passage on a boat.
More bizarre still, one of the guys in the Regiment had flown a single-engined Cessna from Canada to the UK-. The tiny fixed-wing aircraft had no special equipment apart from an extra fuel tank in the back. The radio wasn't the right kind;
he'd had to work out the antenna lengths with wire hanging from the aircraft on a brick. He wore a parachute so that if anything went wrong, he'd open the door and leap out. How I'd sort that out I didn't know, but at least I knew it could be done.
However, there was too much risk involved in all these schemes. I didn't want to spend the rest of my days in a state penitentiary, but at the same time I didn't want Kelly and me to be killed in the process of escaping. Simmonds had presented me with the best option. If I turned up in London with what he wanted, I wouldn't exactly be home and dry, but at least I'd be home. I had to stay and tough it out.
It all boiled down to my needing to see who and what was going into and out of the building on Ball Street.
"Kelly? You know what I'm going to say, don't you?"
"Without a doubt," she smiled. I'd o
bviously been forgiven for drying her hair and putting her into nice dry clothes.
"Ten minutes, all right?"
I closed the door, listened, heard her hook the chain, and hung the sign on the door. Farther to my left was a small open area that housed the Coke and snack machines. I bought a can, then walked back past our room toward the elevator. To the left was the fire escape, a concrete staircase leading up and down. I knew the safety regulations meant that there had to be an exit onto the roof; in the event of a fire down below, the rescue would be by helicopter.
I went as far as I could upstairs. Double fire doors led to the roof; push the bar and they'd open. There was no sign warning that the doors were alarmed, but I had to check. I looked around the doorframe but couldn't see a circuit-break alarm. I pushed the bar and the door opened. No bells.
The roof was flat, its surface covered with lumps of gravel two inches in diameter. I picked up a handful and used it to jam the doors open.
An aircraft was landing at National; I could just see its lights through the drizzle. The satellite dish was on the far corner of the roof. There was also a green aluminum shed, which I guessed was the elevator housing. A three-foot-high wall ran around the edge of the roof, hiding me from the ground, but not from the highway.
I walked across the gravel to the side facing the river.
Looking down at the target building from this angle, I could see the flat roof and its air ducts. It was rectangular and looked quite large. Behind it were a vacant lot and fences that seemed to divide it into new building plots waiting to be sold.
I could just make out the Potomac beyond the tree line and the end of the runway.
I walked back, stepping over a series of thick electric cables. I stopped at the elevator housing. What I wanted now was a power source. I could use batteries to power the surveillance equipment I'd be using, but I couldn't guarantee their life. I tried the door of the elevator housing, but it was locked. I had a quick look at the lock: a pin tumbler. I'd be able to defeat that easily.
Back in the room, I got out the Yellow Pages and looked for addresses of pawn shops.
Then I went into the bathroom, sat on the edge of the bath, and unloaded the .45 ammunition from the magazines into my pocket, easing the springs. It's not something that you have to do every day, but it needs to be done. The majority of weapon stoppages are magazine connected. I didn't know how long it had been left loaded; I might squeeze off the first round and the second one wouldn't feed into the chamber because the magazine spring had stuck. That's why a revolver is sometimes far better, especially if you're going to have a pistol lying about for ages and don't want to service it. A revolver is just a cylinder with six rounds in it, so you could keep it loaded all year and it wouldn't matter--as soon as you pick it up you know the thing will work. I emptied the magazines into my pocket so that I then had the ammunition, magazines, and pistol all on me.
