by Chris Ryan
From where Porter and Bald were sitting they had an unobstructed view of the area immediately surrounding the strip club. They could see everyone entering and leaving. The two operators had been observing the joint for the past twenty minutes. Ever since Bill Deeds and his mates had entered the club. Now all they had to do was wait. If everything went to plan, ninety minutes from now Deeds would be bound and gagged in the back of a getaway van.
‘Can’t believe you’re actually drinking that piss,’ said Bald, nodding at his mucker’s pint.
Porter looked at his glass. He was drinking a shandy. Bald had gone for a bottle of low-calorie American lager. They weren’t supposed to be drinking on the job, but two middle-aged blokes drinking Cokes in a bar would look suspicious. So they drank to blend in with the crowd of expats and holidaying Brits. The Paradiso had a Brit theme. Union Jacks all over the place, Stella on tap and Proclaimers tunes blaring out of the dusty speakers. The joint reeked of stale sweat and piss and roll-ups. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the invention of the internet. Match of the Day was showing on a big TV in one corner of the bar. Chelsea versus Spurs. Chelsea were winning one-nil. George Weah had just scored.
‘I’ve had worse,’ said Porter.
And I have. A lot bloody worse.
He took another sip of his shandy. Could hardly taste the alcohol in it. I could do with something a bit stronger right now, he thought. Something to calm my nerves. A double measure of Bushmills would go down nicely.
‘Better make that pint last a while,’ said Bald. ‘You can’t get pissed on the fucking job, mate.’
‘That’s fucking rich, coming from you,’ Porter growled. ‘You’re no slouch when it comes to the drink. I’ve seen you put it away.’
‘Maybe,’ said Bald. ‘But I know when to drink and when to stop. That’s the difference between you and me, mate. You can’t stop. The lads at Hereford were bang on the money. You’re out of control.’
Porter took a gulp of his pint and set the glass down. Gripped it tightly and eyeballed the Jock. ‘I’m not the one with the fucking problem here. I’m not the one sneaking around behind everyone’s back.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That bird you bumped into at the hotel,’ Porter said. ‘I saw you and her outside the safe house. You were giving her some sort of package. What the fuck was that all about?’
‘Her?’ Bald made a face. ‘She’s my solicitor.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Porter. ‘That’s not what you said at the Piano Bar. You reckoned you didn’t who she was then.’
Bald hardened his expression. His face looked like a slab of concrete. ‘It was private business. Nothing to do with you. I was handing over the signed deeds for a new flat in Hereford, that’s all. Now fuck off.’
He took a pull on his beer and looked away. Porter glanced at his Casio G-Shock Mudman watch. It said 2350 hours. Deeds had a fairly regular routine, a blessing for the guys on the hit team. According to their int, Deeds bugged out of the strip club at around 0030 hours every night. He headed straight back to the hotel he was staying at on Calle Torre Verde, a mile to the east of the marina. Instead of catching a taxi, Deeds usually took a ride back to the hotel from one of Scarsdale’s lieutenants. Which meant that in around forty minutes’ time Deeds would be leaving the strip club. And then the strike team would make their move.
A wave of tiredness settled like a fog behind Porter’s eyes as he kept a mark-one eyeball on the strip club. The team had arrived in Spain three days ago, entering the country at different times and locations. That had been a necessary precaution, to make it more difficult for the authorities to trace the other guys on the team in the event that one of them got into trouble. Devereaux and Coles had taken the land route, riding the Eurostar from Waterloo down to Gare du Nord in Paris then taking the TGV to Barcelona. From there they’d rented a Honda Accord using their new papers and made the ten-hour drive south to the safe house. Meanwhile Bald had taken an easyJet flight out of Luton, landing at Malaga International Airport at around the same time as Devereaux and Coles hit the RV.
Porter had been the last to arrive. He’d stopped over in Zurich, making a withdrawal from the safe deposit box at the Rehmer Bank on Seefeldstrasse in the heart of the city. He’d taken a hundred thousand in cash out of the box, stashing the thin bands in a black briefcase he had been carrying. He spent the afternoon opening current accounts at four separate commercial banks using his fake ID, depositing twenty-five thousand pounds in each account. The sums of money were too small to attract the attention of the banks and the team would be able to draw on each of the accounts wherever they were operating. In the evening Porter had taken an airberlin flight to Malaga, landing twenty-four hours after Bald and the rest of the team. He breezed through immigration control and took a cab direct to the safe house on Calle Ramon Areces in downtown Puerto Banus, RV’ing with the other guys. He checked in with the phone number in Austria that Lakes had given him, but there was no message waiting for them from the numbers station. Just a tune that played over and over and sounded like the title music from a Nintendo game.
Then the team went over the plan to lift Bill Deeds.
The plan was simple. While Porter had been moving money around in Zurich, Coles and Devereaux had been running surveillance on Deeds, with Bald carrying out a detailed recce of the marina and surrounding streets. The team had agreed that the optimum time to grab Deeds was when he slipped out of the Pony Lounge shortly after midnight. On each occasion Deeds and his driver took the same route back to the Range Rover, heading down a narrow alley that acted as a shortcut between the strip and the main road along Avenida Julio Iglesias. Bald had scoped out the alley during the daytime, checking it for security cameras and activities at the balconies above. The alley was thirty metres long, about as narrow as a Chinaman’s smile and dimly lit by streetlamps at either end. There were no CCTV cameras and only two balconies, both of which were empty.
It was the perfect place to make the snatch.
Once the team had agreed on a plan, Devereaux got on the case with the hardware. He reached out to Templar’s local contact, an Algerian gun-runner who operated out of San Pedro Alcantara. Devereaux met him at an abandoned luxury development further along the Costa del Sol. One of those places that the government had sunk millions into, hoping to transform an empty beachfront into a tourist mecca. But for whatever reason the investment had dried up and the government had got cold feet, and now the half-finished concrete blocks were left to mothball under the lazy Mediterranean sun.
Devereaux purchased three Glock 17 semi-automatic pistols and two boxes of ZQI 9x19mm Parabellum, each with fifty rounds. He also bought three shoulder holsters, plus a Heckler & Koch MP5SD 9mm submachine gun fitted with a suppressor in case things went noisy. The bill for the hardware came to five grand. Expensive, but that was the going rate on the black market. And the weapons were in good nick. No scratches, no obvious damage. Devereaux paid for the tools in cash in Spanish pesetas, from one of the accounts Porter had opened in Zurich.
Porter and Bald had their Glocks concealed in the shoulder holsters beneath their leather jackets. They were armed, and ready.
‘How long’s it been?’ Bald asked.
‘Thirty-nine minutes,’ said Porter.
Bald took a pull on his Yank brew and shook his head in disgust. ‘Ain’t right. Those poor fucking students are six feet under, and we’re having to sit here while that tosser gets a lap-dance special.’
They had their differences, but Porter shared his mucker’s rage. In the days since the attack he’d been trying to process it, and failing. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t forget what he’d seen. He remembered Kinsella’s lifeless corpse, the guts spilling out of his severed torso. He remembered seeing the gaping hole where Terry Monk’s face had once been. Bald and Porter hadn’t talked about it. They weren’t about to open up and get all softy-softy. That wasn’t the Regiment way. There was only one way
to heal those wounds.
Vengeance.
Porter said, ‘I can’t get my head around it.’
‘Around what?
‘The attack. How the fuck did they manage to pull it off, mate? Christ, we couldn’t have planned it better ourselves.’
‘What’s your point?’ Bald growled.
‘Nothing, maybe. Only that Lakes is right. Deeds is part of something much bigger. We’re dealing with some serious people. Deeds probably is right at the bottom of the food chain. Whoever’s at the top, they’ve got some balls on them going after the Regiment like that. They’re not going to be easy to get to.’
‘I don’t give a shit who they are. Those lads were ripped to shreds. Now we’ve got an opportunity to do the same to them. And I’m going to rip every one of those bastards up. Starting with this tosser.’
At that moment a shout came from the direction of the strip club. Porter looked across the street and clocked a group of about twenty blokes on a stag do trying to get into the Pony Lounge. The stag was steaming drunk and the burly-looking bouncer at the door wasn’t having any of it. After a few half-hearted protests the blokes turned away and moved on.
Twenty metres to the west of the Pony Lounge, Davey Coles looked up from the newspaper he was reading and glanced at the tourists. Coles was the third man on the OP. He was sat outside a late-night restaurant, smoking and sipping a Diet Coke while he pretended to read the Daily Mirror.
The team had run through the plan a dozen times back at the safe house until everyone knew exactly what they were doing. As soon as Deeds swept out of the strip club with his driver, Coles would move fifteen metres ahead of them down the alley. Porter and Bald would exit the bar and follow the target, keeping an equal distance behind. Bald would deal with the driver while Porter focused on grabbing Deeds. Coles would block the alley exit, stopping the target from escaping.
While they were busy lifting the target, Devereaux would be sitting behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van parked on the corner of Avenida Julio Iglesias and Calle Jesus Puente, sixty metres due west of the alley. The van had been painted to look like it was from a local cleaning firm, and Devereaux had the MP5SD submachine gun stowed in the front passenger seat. He would be keeping eyes on the alley, waiting for Coles to emerge. Once he saw Coles, he’d know that Deeds was right behind. That was the signal for Devereaux to fire up the Sprinter. He’d steer the van across the street, stopping directly in front of the alley. Then Bald and Porter would pop open the main door and shove Deeds inside the back before anyone else realised what was going on. Then they’d speed out of Puerto Banus, changing getaway vehicles a few miles outside of town before driving to a separate safe house they’d rented in Fuengirola, twenty-five miles to the east.
The plan relied on coordination, and timing. The team didn’t want things to get noisy. Gunshots meant cops, and in a place like Puerto Banus with a lot of tourists and celebrities, the police would be on the scene within minutes. From start to finish, the grab should take no more than ninety seconds.
Porter took another sip of his beer and glanced down at his watch.
It said 2356 hours.
Thirty-four minutes to go.
Not long.
Not long at all.
0039 hours.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Bald. ‘What’s taking him so long?’
Porter shrugged. ‘Probably getting a happy ending.’
Bald was still on his first bottle of beer. Porter had switched to something a little stronger. He’d ordered a triple measure of Bell’s while Bald had nipped to the toilets and tipped the shots into his pint glass. He could feel the booze already working its magic, glowing in his veins and easing his nerves. Drink was his crutch, and Porter wasn’t afraid to admit it. Alcohol slowed other people down, but not Porter. That’s what he told himself, at least. It helped to settle his anxieties. Helped him forget the fear brewing in his guts. They were taking a big risk with this op. If it went south, the guys could end up spending the next ten years in a Spanish prison.
They’d been OP’ing the door at the front of the Pony Lounge for the past hour and Deeds still hadn’t emerged. Outside the streets had started to empty shortly after midnight and most of the action had switched to the clubs further to the west along the strip. Across the street hookers and drug dealers had crawled out of the woodwork and were openly touting for business. Which was fine with Bald, because he had a thing for hookers. Mainly high-class ones with posh accents, but right now he had his eyes on a leggy blonde shrink-wrapped in a red latex mini-skirt and a pair of white stilettos that wouldn’t look out of place on a Romford dance floor. She had high cheekbones and pouting lips and piercing light blue eyes. Slavic, thought Bald. Czech, maybe. Or Slovakian. She blew him a kiss then strolled off up the street, hips swinging seductively from side to side. Maybe he’d come back to Puerto Banus after the mission, Bald thought. Look her up.
Over on the TV the programme had switched to a late-night boxing match in between a couple of Ukrainians Bald had never heard of. Most of the punters had cleared out and the few that remained were sitting around at the bar, hunched over their lagers while they moaned about mortgages and ex-wives in their slurred voices. The regulars all seemed to know each other and Bald was conscious of the fact that he and Porter stood out like a pair of bishops at the morning call to prayer. He hoped to fuck that Deeds showed his face soon. It was only a matter of time before the punters started to take notice of the two guys by the window, slowly sipping their beers.
Bald said, ‘If he doesn’t come out soon, I’ll go in and find the cunt myself.’
Porter gritted his teeth and said, ‘No one’s going anywhere, Jock. We stick to the plan.’
Bald stewed. Porter checked his G-Shock for the hundredth time in the last five minutes.
It said 0042 hours.
Twelve minutes late.
Where the fuck is he?
The staff at the Paradiso were beginning to close up for the night. They were collecting empty glasses and wiping down the tables and emptying ashtrays. Some of the bigger joints stayed open until four or five, but the clientele here was mostly Brits and the bar closed at one o’clock on the dot. Other than Bald and Porter only a handful of hard drinkers remained. In another ten or fifteen minutes they would have to leave the OP and find another spot with a good vantage point overlooking the street. But most of the other boozers at this end of the strip were also shutting up for the night. If Deeds didn’t emerge soon then they’d have to abandon the mission and try their luck again tomorrow. Porter was starting to think they’d have to abort.
Three minutes later, Bill Deeds stepped out of the club.
‘Here’s our boy,’ said Porter.
‘About fucking time,’ grumbled Bald.
Deeds swaggered out of the door at the front of the Pony Lounge, thirty metres away from the Blades’ position at the bar. He looked pleased with himself, a massive grin plastered across his ugly face. He also looked even bigger than Porter remembered him. His biceps bulged out of the sleeves of his Lacoste t-shirt like a pair of basketballs stuffed into sacks. His thighs were as wide as tree trunks inside his dark blue jeans. His skin was the colour of mahogany from all the fake tan. Deeds’s left arm was strapped up in a dressing. Porter recalled shooting the ex-squaddie in the shoulder, moments before he’d sped away from the Beacons reservoir.
A heavy stood at his flank. Porter recognised him from the dry runs they’d made on the target over the last two days. A low-level operator in Scarsdale’s organisation. The driver. He was also thickly-built, but stood next to Deeds he looked like a contestant trying out for a Mr Muscle ad. He wore a baggy Burberry polo that hung like a tent from his wide frame and knee-length cargo shorts. His eyes were like buttons pressed into the folds of his face. He looked like the kind of guy who bench-pressed a hundred and fifty kilos at the gym and thought that made him tough. He was big and mean and dumb.
Low-grade thugs, Lakes had said. Yo
u could probably handle them.
But Porter wasn’t worried about the driver. The real difficulty was going to be getting away without alerting any of the other gang affiliates. He recalled what Lakes had said about Scarsdale’s people owning half of Puerto Banus. They operated several bars along the strip and had VIP lounges in all the clubs. Their foot soldiers worked the doors and supplied the drugs to the clubbers. From their surveillance Porter and Bald knew that there were at least a dozen of Scarsdale’s people inside a hundred-metre radius of the alleyway. No wonder Deeds was acting so chilled. He was in Scarsdale’s back yard. The idea of someone lifting him would simply never have occurred to him. But if Deeds did manage to sound the alarm, Porter reckoned they would have thirty seconds at most to bug out of the marina before things went south. Everything depended on the grab being quick and clean and smooth. Any delay risked turning the op into one big clusterfuck.
He looked on as Deeds pounded down the stairs alongside Burberry. As soon as the Brits hit the street level they turned and headed west along the strip, making for the darkened alley twenty metres away at Porter’s twelve o’clock. At the same time Coles calmly stood up from his table across the street, left his newspaper and a couple of notes for the bill, and paced ahead of Deeds and the driver. He hit the alley fifteen metres ahead of the target. Twenty metres ahead of Bald and Porter. Six seconds later, Deeds and Burberry stepped into the alley.
Then Bald turned to Porter.
‘Let’s grab this cunt.’
The two operators slid out of their chairs and made for the door.
A cool breeze hit Porter as he stepped out into the street, running its fingers through his hair and thrusting down the bones of his face. There was a salty chill in the air and the streets were spit-polished with the look of recent rain. They fast-walked towards the alley, fifteen metres behind Deeds and Burberry. By now most of the nearby joints had almost emptied out. The streets were brimming with dealers and pimps, jostling for custom with pissed tourists. Bald and Porter were now twelve metres behind Deeds. They had to force themselves to move at a slower pace in order to keep at a reasonable distance from their quarry. As they approached the alley Porter could feel his heart beating like a snare drum inside his chest. His muscles instinctively tensed. His guts tied themselves into a vicious knot, mixing with the alcohol glowing in his chest. They were getting close now. Another thirty seconds and Bill Deeds – the first name on their deathlist – would be in the bag.
