Assassins Rogue

by Rachel Amphlett

  ‘Very well. Proceed.’

  ‘All right.’ Elliott turned back to the drone pilot. ‘Have your sensor operator confirm the identity of the driver before we strike.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The General’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘I’m simply being careful, General Yilmaz.’ Elliott spread his hands. ‘We’ve come this far, and you have a great future ahead of you. It makes no sense to rush these things.’

  The other man’s shoulders relaxed, and he gave an enigmatic smile. ‘You are right, of course. Are you sure I cannot persuade you to join me in this venture, Mr Wilder? Your insights would give me a great advantage, I can tell.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you to say so, General, but I’m afraid my business commitments prevent me from doing so.’ Elliott grimaced. ‘I would hate for there to be any, shall we say, conflict of interest.’

  Yilmaz guffawed, and turned back to the drone camera screens. ‘I’m sure there will be plenty of conflict to serve your interests, Mr Wilder.’

  Elliott cast his gaze across the room to where a pair of heavyweight men stood, their backs to the double doors of the warehouse, a shimmer of daylight behind them.

  Beyond it, a black four-by-four had been parked, the driver visible through the windscreen as he read a newspaper and waited for his passenger to return.

  Three miles away, Elliott’s pilot also waited for him, the private jet refuelled and ready for take-off as soon as the General released the final payment.

  ‘And you say the British government are no wiser since your meeting with them?’ called out Yilmaz.

  Elliott turned to see the General peering around the side of the screen at him.

  ‘Don’t worry about the Department for International Trade,’ he replied. ‘My brother is still in London, negotiating on your behalf so that you’ll receive additional help with financing your purchases once the coup is complete.’

  ‘Excellent. Here – join me. Come and watch this final demonstration of our power, Mr Wilder.’ The General smiled benevolently as Elliott sank into a chair beside him. ‘The next time you see this happen, it will be all over your news channels as I make sure my country’s place at the negotiating table is assured, together with our future.’

  Elliott nodded, and wondered what the current incumbent would think of Yilmaz’s plans to rip Turkey away from Europe once and for all.

  He checked his phone, wondering if he should tell the pilot to warm the engines and be ready for an immediate take-off the minute Elliott’s driver delivered him to the private airfield.

  Instead he exhaled, crossed his legs and watched while the drone’s sensor operator began adjusting the controls and the camera feed came to life as the Reaper dropped through the low cloud cover over Algerian territory.

  ‘How long before they track us?’ murmured the General.

  ‘We’ll be in and out before they know it,’ said Elliott. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘We have got visual,’ called the sensor operator.

  Elliott held his breath as the camera lens zoomed in to where the Land Rover sat parked beside a rough track leading away from the ramshackle hut that they’d seen from the satellite images.

  ‘Is it him?’ The General shuffled forward, jutting his chin and squinting.

  The camera zoomed in further, and Elliott blinked before taking another look.

  The sensor operator had locked on to the windscreen of the four-by-four, a man’s hands resting on the steering wheel.

  Eyes closed, his head tilted back, he appeared to be asleep, his mouth open as if snoring.

  ‘Do we know who he’s meant to be meeting with?’ said Yilmaz.

  ‘A local,’ said Elliott. ‘Our intel suggests the man is a drug dealer – Leavey must be getting desperate for help after the death of his colleagues.’

  ‘We should wait, and kill them both.’

  ‘If we do that, we risk being caught, and the drone will be destroyed,’ said Elliott, keeping his voice calm. ‘It’s now or never, General.’

  ‘Do it.’

  Elliott nodded at the pilot. ‘You heard him.’

  ‘Sir.’ The pilot’s thumb nudged the firing button, then: ‘Missile released. Impact in fifty seconds, forty-nine, forty-eight…’

  Yilmaz turned to Elliott, his eyes blazing. ‘As soon as this is done, I want that drone back here.’

  ‘Not a problem, General.’

  ‘And my missiles?’

  Elliott held up his phone, a new text message displayed on the screen. ‘At the quayside in Malta, ready for your orders. I’m told by my contact there that they can have them on a ship to your named destination within two hours.’

  The General rose from his seat, tugged at his jacket, then smiled and stuck out his giant paw of a hand.

  ‘Then I believe we have a deal, Mr Wilder.’

  Chapter Fifty

  Algeria

  * * *

  Eva wiped her forehead with her sleeve, and shifted her weight from foot to foot.

  The stench of goat shit mingled with over-ripened prickly pears clinging in vain to twisted vines leaning against the tumbledown walls of the abandoned building, but the place provided shade – and a place to hide.

  Several hundred metres away, far enough that shrapnel from the blast wouldn’t decapitate them, sat the abandoned Land Rover.

  Behind the steering wheel sat the body of Patrick Leavey.

  She could see his face through the windscreen, his pale features turning a blue hue by the time they’d reached their destination. Initial rigor mortis had passed, and she had watched as Decker and Nathan wrested the man’s body into position before sprinting to join her under cover of the dilapidated building’s tin roof.

  Nathan hovered at her side, his nervousness radiating from him in waves sending goosebumps scuttling across her forearms.

  ‘Any moment now,’ he murmured.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of an engine turning over, its pitiful choked attempts filling the space.

  ‘How’re you getting on with that?’ she said to Decker, who turned the ignition once more.

  The engine died again.

  ‘We did that bloke a favour buying this off him in Saïda,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘It’s a heap of shit. No wonder he was so fucking friendly.’

  Eva swallowed.

  The little two-door hatchback was their only means of escape after the drone strike, the only way to try to avoid detection by any military aircraft swooping over the area in the aftermath of the explosion.

  It had to work.

  ‘They should be here by now.’

  Nathan’s voice roused her, and she turned back to face the Land Rover.

  Were they too late?

  She had faced death before, many times, but on each occasion she had at least met her opponent face to face.

  She had been trained to fight – weapons, unarmed combat, poisons – but she had never been up against a threat like this.

  An invisible opponent.

  Behind her, the car rumbled to life.

  ‘Thank fuck for that.’ Decker slammed shut the door and wandered over to where she stood. ‘If I’d known I was going to be little more than a glorified fucking mechanic…’

  ‘Elliott’s missile is incoming.’ Nathan pressed an earpiece with his forefinger, and murmured a response to the Section’s command centre. ‘Twenty seconds to impact.’

  Eva tugged him away from the open door, moving into the shadows alongside Decker, and held her breath.

  They all knew what the destructive force from a Hellfire missile could do, and she had no wish to get caught up in the imminent shockwave.

  ‘We’re too close,’ Nathan said through gritted teeth and peered up through the holes in the roof, dust motes spiralling in the sunlight streaming through. ‘If that missile lands in the wrong place, they’ll be etching our names on a memorial.’

  ‘No they won’t,’ replied Decke
r. ‘We don’t exist, remember?’

  Eva let their words wash over her, her mouth dry while she tried to batten down the urge to run.

  Here was safer, she knew that, but the temptation to flee was almost too much.

  ‘You’ll be torn to pieces by the shrapnel, Delacourt.’ Decker rested his hand on her shoulder. ‘Stay where you are.’

  ‘Ten seconds,’ Nathan intoned. ‘Nine… eight…’

  ‘This was a really bad idea,’ said Eva, and then followed Decker’s lead and dropped to the floor in a crouch, folding her arms over her head.

  Even then, the sheer noise from the blast as the weapon found its target knocked her backwards, hot air sending scorched dust and sand through the open orifices of the abandoned building.

  The ground shook, a deep rumbling that seemed to emanate from the depths of the earth.

  Coughing, they instinctively huddled closer together, and Eva rubbed her forearm across her eyes.

  ‘Jesus,’ she managed, her voice rasping as she sucked in a deep breath while the blast passed overhead.

  Decker murmured something next to her, a look of wonder on his face as he turned and stared out the open door.

  She shook her head, pointed to her ears, then followed his gaze.

  The four-by-four vehicle she had seen only seconds ago had been reduced to a smoking crater several metres wide, a number of large boulders strewn across the dirt and sand that had been dislodged and spat out by the impact.

  Eva coughed again, then moved to the door, making sure she kept to the shadows to avoid any prying cameras thousands of metres above her position.

  ‘Where’s ours?’ she said, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare. ‘Shouldn’t they be close behind?’

  ‘They’ll be here,’ said Nathan.

  Decker’s top lip curled. ‘They’d bloody better be.’

  Chapter Fifty-One

  London

  * * *

  Miles glanced over his shoulder as the door to the command centre opened and Gerald Knox walked in, his face etched with worry.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Elliott’s missile found its target.’

  ‘Where’s our drone?’ Knox pointed at the GPS displays and satellite images projected onto the wall above their heads.

  ‘About twenty seconds away.’

  Miles used a laser pointer to show Knox where to look, then tracked the Section’s drone as it pursued its quarry.

  The aircraft swept across a cement factory on the outskirts of Saïda, then banked to the right and passed over a narrow track leading away from the town.

  ‘I need to hang back,’ called Marie, ‘otherwise Elliott’s lot will spot us on their radar. They’re still on site, maintaining an altitude of five thousand feet.’

  ‘Do it,’ said Miles to the pilot. ‘Be ready to drop into position the minute you need to, though.’

  ‘Why would they do that instead of using the camera to zoom in?’ said Knox.

  ‘Either Elliott or his client wants to make sure no-one else is around,’ Miles murmured.

  ‘Do you think they’ve heard about the shipment?’

  ‘No – I don’t think so. They wouldn’t have risked using the last missile to take out Leavey otherwise.’ Miles turned to the Section chief and grinned. ‘I think our ruse worked.’

  Knox’s jaw clenched, then he turned back to Marie. ‘Are you in position yet?’

  ‘Yes, Chief.’

  ‘Get the target on camera.’

  Miles reached out, resting his hand on the back of his seat as the camera zoomed into its target, a sudden vertigo causing a dizziness that made him look away for a moment.

  When he raised his eyes to the screen once more, he saw it.

  The pale grey outline of the rogue drone, hovering above the desert landscape.

  ‘Prepare to fire,’ said Knox, his voice ringing out in the enclosed space.

  ‘We need to strike now, Gerald,’ Miles murmured. ‘They could turn and be over a nearby town within minutes.’

  Knox said nothing, his face passive as he watched Elliott’s Reaper.

  ‘Marie? The minute that missile’s away, you need to get the hell out of there, otherwise we’re going to have an Algerian MiG fighter plane on our tail,’ said Miles. ‘Understand, that isn’t an option.’

  ‘Copy that,’ came the calm reply. ‘We’ll be across the border and over international waters before they can get off the ground.’

  ‘Make sure you are.’

  Knox finally held up his hand, his gaze remaining on the screens. ‘Marie? You have a “go”. I repeat, “go”.’

  He could hear the slight intake of breath from the woman at the realisation she could now wreak her revenge on the man who had killed her crew, and then she spoke.

  ‘Copy that. Missile is released.’

  ‘Confirm estimated time of impact?’

  ‘Ten seconds, and counting…’

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Algeria

  * * *

  ‘Get down!’

  Nathan grabbed Eva’s sleeve and pulled her to the floor.

  She swore as her elbow smacked against the hard earth, then Decker shoved his hand against her and tumbled on top of them both.

  Just in time.

  She felt the shockwave a split second before the roar from the explosion hit her, dust and stones cascading over her head and shoulders.

  Hot metal fragments shot overhead, and her eyes widened as a long piece of metal embedded itself in the wooden doorframe.

  ‘Stay down.’

  Decker’s hand met the back of her head at the same time as his voice, and she gritted her teeth as a secondary explosion ripped through the hot air.

  ‘Fuel tanks,’ mumbled Nathan.

  As a cloud of sand passed overhead, Eva blinked and used her arm to shield her face.

  Her ears were ringing, her eyes were streaming, and she turned away for a moment to spit out the dirt that had somehow found its way around her teeth.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Decker.

  Eva wiped at her eyes, then raised her head to see the older assassin peering around the stone wall, his expression grim.

  Following his gaze, she pushed her fringe out of the way and blinked.

  She had never seen a MQ-9 Reaper up close, never realised how alien the aircraft appeared with its windowless nose cone and fuselage.

  ‘They must’ve caught him hovering a few miles away,’ said Nathan. ‘They were supposed to make sure it crashed into the hills, not here.’

  ‘Bloody spooks,’ said Decker.

  The drone had crashed on its belly, skidding past the crater where Leavey’s Land Rover had once stood, and buried itself into the earth only a few hundred metres away from their position.

  Black smoke rose from the broken aircraft, flames spewing from the pierced fuel tank while the stench of burning plastic and metal assaulted Eva’s senses.

  Decker shielded his eyes with a hand. ‘Well, at least no-one will fly that thing again.’

  ‘A shame someone didn’t take care of it properly the first time around,’ said Nathan. He frowned as his phone started to ring, then put it on speaker. ‘Miles?’

  ‘Everyone all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘On our way out of here now. We should be across the border and back in Tangier tonight.’

  ‘Change of plan.’

  She bit her lip at the sound of Knox’s voice, saw Decker roll his eyes, then shook her head to silence him as he opened his mouth.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  ‘We’ve received new intelligence to suggest Elliott Wilder’s private plane has lodged a flight plan to Monaco. Not only that, we’ve discovered that he hasn’t been working alone. He has a brother – Aaron Sykes.’

  ‘The financier that brokers deals for foreign governments?’ said Nathan. ‘But he’s Romanian, not English.’

  ‘Elliott Wilder had two siblings,’ said Miles. ‘They didn’t trave
l to the UK with their parents when they left in the sixties and were raised by an uncle in Bucharest.’

  ‘Why the bloody hell did we not know this before?’ said Decker.

  ‘We only got confirmation a few minutes ago from our sources there,’ said Knox. ‘And we need to move fast on the information, because when Elliott finds out his drone’s been destroyed and his plan to start a new war in Turkey and the Middle East has gone with it, we think he’ll make a run for it.’

  ‘To Russia?’ said Eva.

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Nathan. ‘You said Elliott had two siblings. Who’s the other one?’

  Eva heard the Section chief sigh, a mixture of exasperation and frustration in his next words.

  ‘Charlotte Hughes. Private Secretary to Edward Toskins, Minister for the Department for International Trade.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Decker, shaking his head.

  ‘All three are Russian agents,’ said Miles. ‘And between them, they’ve managed to embed themselves in deep cover for the past fifteen years. God knows what secrets they’ve managed to hand over to their masters in Moscow. We’ve also received an anonymous tip-off from Prague with the toxicology reports on the poisoned dart that killed Kelly O’Hara. It contained traces of a Russian-designed nerve agent, as well as an anti-coagulant.’

  ‘The PM wants this contained, and now,’ said Knox. ‘That means no-one else can be involved, so we need you back here. Your mission is to remove Elliott Wilder and his immediate family. Cut them off from him so he has nowhere else to go. Permanently. Is that understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ said Decker. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Try to be subtle about it.’

  Eva ended the call, already calculating how far the small car had travelled, and how much fuel they had left.

  It would be close.

  ‘Okay, let’s get on with this,’ she said, setting her shoulders.

  ‘Are you serious?’ said Nathan, his eyes wide. ‘We’ve just spent the best part of three years keeping our heads down and avoiding the Section. Now you want to go back?’