by A P Bateman
The Five
By
A P Bateman
Text © Anthony Paul Bateman
2017
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, printing or otherwise, without written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction and any character resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Some locations may have been changed, others are fictitious.
Author contact: [email protected]
Facebook: @authorapbateman
Website: apbateman.com
Also by A P Bateman
The Alex King Series
The Contract Man
Lies and Retribution
Shadows of Good Friday
The Five
Reaper
Stormbound
Breakout
From the Shadows
The Rob Stone Series
The Ares Virus
The Town
The Island
Standalone Novel
Hell’s Mouth
Short Stories
A Single Nail
Atonement
(an Alex King short story)
For the four family, always
1
Two-thousand metres. Not far to travel in a car, more than noticeable on foot. A long way to fall. It depended on the perspective. Alex King knew that a shot of two-thousand metres was an incredible achievement. To send a .338 of an inch, sixteen-gram bullet, two-thousand metres over a valley with cross-winds, and of varying air temperature and thermal lift, to allow not only for this, but for the movement of the target, was a master-class in both marksmanship and ballistics.
Not an expert on bodies, although he had created a few over the years, he left the forensics team alone while he studied the terrain across the valley. There were more than a few potential firing positions, places he would have chosen. Some he could rule out. Trees or telegraph poles within the line of sight, or places that provided little more than a lack of cover.
He whittled the possibilities down to three. Three places a sniper could have laid up, would have settled in for the shot. And they would have to have settled in. The shot had been taken in broad daylight. One-pm. Dawn was around six-am. The shooter would have been in place long before this. Settled, ready. The concentration, the field craft and the knowledge needed to successfully complete a shot like this led King to believe the shooter was ex-military. Civilian shooters went home when it rained. They didn’t have the discipline for a wait like this, for a one-shot-one-hit deal. He knew some civilian shooters were amongst the finest marksmen in the world, but they couldn’t do this. Not even close. For a start, British Home Office approved ranges generally topped out at six-hundred metres. There were a few longer facilities, a three-thousand metre range in Wales, he recalled, but these facilities were rare. And to make a head shot at more than two-thousand metres after lying up for at least seven-hours, well that would take a lot of range time and experience. Conditioning in both mind and body. More likely years of armed service time with tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of ammunition at their disposal, curtsey of the tax payer.
The .338 Lapua Magnum. It was quite a specific calibre, but having travelled two-thousand metres, through and through the man’s skull, it had slowed up and dropped to the ground across the patio. Just past the pool, just short of the glass doors. It was a find. The biggest to date. Insignificant damage to its composition. Positively identified and weighed. That gave King the range. Or at least, where he would have taken the shot. The range should have been four-hundred metres shorter, but the valley negated this, as did the upwards trajectory. The ideal firing position lay at what King estimated to be two-thousand-five-hundred metres distant from the target, but he had dismissed this as soon as he had worked out the distance. Settled on the next best place, still a long shot for this piece of weaponry.
Standard doorways were six-feet-six inches high and two-foot-six inches wide. The house above the valley had three of them. King best guessed using the doors as six-six, came up with the calculation of two-thousand-five-hundred metres. Not a chance. Not from a .338, and the lead forensic scientist was adamant that the bullet she had found on the patio, just short of the glass doors was a .338 Lapua Magnum and consistent with the entry hole in the head of the fifth-richest man on the planet, the fourth man, of comparable wealth, to have died in the past two-weeks.
2
Four weeks earlier
Social media announcement
Anarchy to Recreate $ociety
The world’s five richest people (currently all white males) are worth as much as the collective wealth of the poorest 65% of the planet’s population. A net worth between them of three-hundred and eleven billion US dollars. Enough to build ten-thousand-three-hundred and seventy-hospitals. Enough to build three-hundred and eleven thousand schools. Enough money to feed three meals a day to every person on the planet for six-months. And how have they managed to accumulate this wealth? Because of us. Because of the consumer. Because of unfair pricing, low wages, inferior quality materials, tax avoidance and outright tax evasion.
We have built these billionaires, we have fuelled their appetites, thrown coals onto the fires of their ambition and continued to make them wealthier and more powerful than any human can possibly deserve. Every second, people die of starvation, poor water supply, illnesses that can be easily halted, even cured by drugs worth a few dollars or even cents. Instead, the pharmaceutical industry keeps the cost of these drugs unobtainable to the poor. Some people will say that this keeps the spread of the herd down. But who are they to decide? Who are the billion-dollar companies and individuals to decide what is best? Why are the lives of the poor of less value than the rich? Birth control should be free. If the poorest on the planet had more wealth, more life choices, then they would be able to control pregnancies and afford to plan families. Why is it that we dehumanise the poorest, judge them as if we ourselves are higher-beings? But that is the exact point, the multibillionaires at the top of society pour judgement on us, the middle-classes, the upper-working classes. The classes with the so-called disposable income to keep them all so rich.
The richest judge us, yet thrive from our own existence. Well, no more.
Like and Share this, to be part of what needs to be done.
3
Alex King looked back at the house. It was more of a compound, really. Or a Beverly Hills style estate. The house had been designed on three levels, each one looking out onto a terrace, with the swimming pool and patio on the top level and the lower floors each opening out to well-tended gardens. The entire plot was walled, although the details of the property indicated that it was set inside a further fifty-acres of Cornish countryside. It was prime real estate, on the Roseland Peninsular. A finger of land protruding from the south coast of Cornwall with a tidal river and large body of water on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. It was an area with less population per acre than much of the country and rolling hills of lush farmland and patches of woodland. To King, it didn’t have the same feel as the rest of the county and reminded him of Wiltshire or Hampshire. There wasn’t the bleakness of the north Cornwall coast, or the granite to the west of the country and the harsh moorland to the east.
He glanced back at the house behind him. This one was more low-key. In keeping with the setting, but still worth way north of a million. The three doors, equidistant to each other along the front façade of the building, were indeed six-feet-six-inches high. He imagined the owners frowning over the Beverly Hills style ‘McMansion’ across from them. Imagined some p
eriod granite farmhouse getting demolished in favour of the California treatment with white-wash, accentuating red brick, glass and Perspex and chrome, patios and pools, hot-tubs and a gymnasium. He doubted the owners of this period house had lodged a complaint. Too refined to object. Poor show.
King could see the helicopter landing pad beyond the California house with the black Sikorsky in the centre. He guessed the pilot was now out of a job, as were the five rugby-player back row bodyguards wearing ill-fitting suits over musclebound frames.
There were two vehicles parked at the farmhouse. A Range Rover and an Audi. Both were new and expensive. He had seen an Audi dealership on the drive in from Newquay airport. The Range Rover had a dealer’s sticker in the window whose address was Truro. It looked like the owners of the farmhouse were keeping it local. He had also noticed the dead man’s cars at the California house. British, American, German and Italian-made exotica, gleaming in their underground garage. There weren’t any of those high-end car dealerships in Cornwall, he was sure about that.
He had earlier read a dossier, hastily put together at Thames House. Sir Ian Snell (OBE), owned fourteen homes around the world. Each was equipped with his favourite cars, and identical helicopter. Fourteen helicopters, although he doubted there was a helicopter and the necessary landing pad at his property in Chelsea, so maybe this was an exaggeration. Even so, thirteen helicopters were still a squadron more than some country’s armed forces could muster. Each helicopter was assigned a pilot earning over one-hundred-thousand pounds a year. Ian Snell wanted the best, and he paid for it too. These pilots were on retainers. King doubted half of them flew for Snell each year. The aircraft would still need regular flying, regardless if nobody needed to be taxied to meetings or events. A pilot’s dream. These pilots must have felt like rock stars. And then there was the security factor. Snell employed a private company with access to somewhere between thirty and fifty security personnel. From security advance parties (SAP) to personal bodyguards, chauffeurs, static guards and even intelligence analysts. Many were former special forces, all were ex-military men and women. Ironically, Snell felt safest in Britain, and because of the country’s stringent firearm laws and his security’s inability to carry weapons of any type, his security detail was always kept low-key. When in Britain, he chose not to make his whereabouts public, and never worked to a schedule. Not only that, but he had always felt he could take a step back, lower the order by which he functioned in the rest of the world. And as he felt safer in Britain than anywhere else, did not need the security detail worthy of a US president. It wasn’t a cost-saving exercise, merely one of practicality. Money was never an option.
Snell’s wealth did not end there. He owned the third largest, and second most expensive yacht in the world. It sailed constantly, changing course in keeping with his ever-changing schedule. It was now steaming towards Falmouth from Monaco, manned by a full-time crew of twenty. It was equipped with a landing pad on board, along with a full-time helicopter and pilot. King supposed this was number fourteen. Thames House must have been correct after all.
Behind every multibillionaire man was a special kind of woman, and Snell had been no different. King had once read in a newspaper that Sir Ian Snell’s Russian wife had thrown a quarter of a million-pounds worth of glassware and crockery overboard this behemoth yacht because she wanted some by another design house. King mused that she was a self-made woman in her own right, owning a fashion business and design studio in Los Angeles, Milan and Paris worth an estimated thirteen-million-dollar fortune. However, after a little digging a journalist for a lifestyle magazine had discovered that it had initially been funded by an off-set of funds by Snell for seventeen-million. A four-million-dollar loss in a little under two-years. King had smiled as he had read the dossier. Everyone needed a hobby.
King brought the field glasses up to his eyes. The forensic team were finishing up their investigation and the coroner’s team were loading the body onto a gurney. There was no great mystery to the cause of death when a bullet .338 of an inch in diameter went through someone’s head at half its initial muzzle velocity, but still with a closing speed of six-hundred metres per second, but he had ordered a full post-mortem nonetheless. He had the budget and the authority, if not really a clue what to do with it. Maybe he’d learn on the job.
He turned back to the farmhouse. It was still. No movement, no signs from within. No shadow or light, no silhouette at the windows. Warm in there too, the top window was open about a foot or so, the curtain was open a few inches as well. There was little breeze today and the curtain rested still. The rest of the curtains were drawn wide open.
He looked back at the closed curtains behind the open window. “Yeah,” he mused to himself quietly. “That’s how I would have done it too.”
4
Three weeks, four days earlier
Social media announcement
Anarchy to Recreate $ociety
With the poorest 65% of the planet’s population worth the sum of just five men, that’s a staggering five-billion people, how can we continue to live as a society? Anarchy to Recreate Society does not want a socialist society, nor does it want the failed aspirations of communism. We want people to succeed. We want innovation. The planet needs innovation and success for mankind to continue to evolve, to find ways to heal the damage we have done. To move forward though, to be a humane and just society, we must first acknowledge that the gulf between poverty and wealth is now too great. The poorest people are reliant upon hand-outs and charity. These charities need more money to shrink that divide. Governments are in deficit and return little to their citizens because of the tax avoidance of billion-dollar commerce the world over. There are now almost two-thousand billionaires. Our argument is not with them. Our argument is with the top of the pile. Not the people who have gone beyond the million, gone beyond a thousand-million. But with the people who have gone a hundred times beyond that. Where did they think they would get to? When was ever going to be enough? Stand with us for justice. Stand with us for ethics and humanity.
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5
Ignoring the area of foliage at the two-thousand metre mark, where he would have conceded to have taken the shot, King walked across the quiet country road, so narrow that moss ran through the centre of the tarmac, safe from vehicle tyres, and climbed the hedge to get onto the property. The farmhouse stood on a raised piece of ground, and as King neared and looked back down on the California house, he could see why. The height afforded a spectacular view of behind the compound opposite, and out across the stretch of glistening water beyond. He had studied the map before he had arrived to get a feel for the place and what neighboured the property. He could clearly see why the waterway, fed by several rivers, provided a sanctuary for yachts and small pleasure craft. Great headlands hemmed in the creeks and opened out to form a triangular shaped bay a mile across. Falmouth harbour and docks were visible from here, and the Atlantic Ocean beyond the headland tossed and churned with white horses. But he already knew this. He was familiar with this part of the world. He owned a cottage near Restronguet Creek on the Carrick Roads. On the other side of the expanse of water in front of him, and a few miles inland from the ocean. He had lived there for part of the year, between their assignments, with his wife, Jane. He had lived there alone too, as a widower. On and off for three-years. Between assignments and postings, when his wife had been alive, it had been a bolt hole for them, their plan for a retirement cottage one day. But plans were things you made when you should have been living. He had learned from this with both regret and a new-found commitment to live more in the moment.
King turned and walked across the grass. It had the look of a garden let go to field. He thought the term was fallow, but he would be the first to admit he knew nothing about farming. His cottage had a small field, or paddock, like this. He liked the meadow flowers and long grass th
at swayed with the breeze. He would sometimes walk through it in late summer and brush the seeded tops with his fingers, like in the opening scene in the film Gladiator. Maybe the owners of this property didn’t like the view anymore and left the grass go. Didn’t feel inclined to sit out and look over the vulgar property of the fifth richest man on the planet, even if he was only in residence for two or three days a year. The wealth rating was a subjective exercise. Snell had technically been the second richest man alive that morning. His company’s shares had risen and continued to rise. News of his death would affect that, but news of his death had not yet been linked. The rich-list was ever-evolving, and only because of a sniper’s bullet. An official list would be out later this week. Naturally nobody yearned to feature on it quite so much now.
King vaulted the metal park fencing and landed softly on the gravel driveway. The fencing reminded him of a country park, a National Trust property he had recently visited with his fiancé, Caroline. As he walked, crunching on the thick bed of gravel, he felt a sad nod to his past, knowing he had walked similar parks, seen the same fencing with his late wife too.
Another life.
Keep moving forwards.
The rear of the house confirmed his assumptions. The garden was exquisitely kept. An expensive timber climbing frame and swing wrapped itself around an oak tree. Either the homeowner was a craftsman, or a team had been hired to do the job. King suspected the latter. The grass was cut short, the plant and flower beds well-tended and edged, bird tables and statues made from marble or polished concrete, along with several mature trees randomly planted a hundred years ago by people with both the required vision and sentiment. They wouldn’t sit in their shade, but they had selflessly left something beautiful for future generations. The property had that feel. That it was a family’s home, no matter how large that family had become, nor how long the family line had extended.
