Hellfire- The Series, Volumes 1-3

by Leigh Barker

  And that was a good question.

  “Tomorrow I’m going to see if I can get a boat and follow the route the barge will take. Maybe I’ll have an epiphany.”

  “Don’t know about the epiphany,” Frank said, “but I can get you a boat.”

  Harry was impressed. It was premature.

  “You remember Cyril Shaw?”

  Oh God, did he remember Shit-stain Shaw? “You don’t mean that floating cesspit he uses to dump waste illegally in the river?” Of course he did.

  “It’s a boat,” Frank said, “and you need a boat.”

  “I’d rather swim, but thanks. I think I’ll hire a nice little runabout.”

  Frank shrugged. “Please yourself.” He got up and returned to the sofa to resume watching football. “Some people have too much money,” he added a little sulkily.

  Harry smiled as he remembered Shit-stain Shaw’s boat. He wouldn’t get on that death trap even if he was wearing water wings and had a canoe strapped to his arse.

  The next morning was cold and grey, and he thought about Shit-stain’s boat with its warm if smelly cabin as he cast off the small motor launch he’d hired. It was the ideal craft for the recon mission, but the downside was it had no wheelhouse, no canvas cover, and no nothing of any kind to keep off the rain. He reminded himself it was perfect for recon, looked up at the dark sky, and asked God to hold off the downpour for a bit.

  As he passed under Putney Bridge, it began to rain, but of course it did. But, he told himself as he wiped the cold rain off his face, no point being tucked away inside a nice warm cabin when you’re supposed to be looking out for sniper positions. Within a few minutes, he’d found the perfect place. A high-rise apartment block a mile or so from the river, with an ideal angle and visibility. He was well into the process of congratulating himself, when he saw another perfect position, and another, and another. By the time he turned the launch round after Tower Bridge and passed HMS Belfast, he was soaked to the skin and totally demoralised. There were hundreds of places for a sniper within the optimum mile range of the CheyTac. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, or more accurately, he thought bitterly, a piece of straw in a field of haystacks. He was fed up. He was wet. He hurt. And he’d skipped breakfast, eager to get to it. What an idiot.

  By one of those twists of fate that happen in life more often than they should by sheer chance, Valentin Tal was also reconnoitring the river, but he was happy to find so many perfect positions. Spoilt for choice, he believed the expression to be. Standing on Tower Bridge, he was just another tourist, but unlike the rest of his fellow tourists, his interest was on the high-rise blocks to the south with stunning views of the Thames and the bridge. He smiled and went to find a taxi for a little trip up Jamaica Road.

  46

  Ethan was already forming the words to tell Leroy and Sam how they were going to capture or kill Lupus before he could release his toxin, when he scanned the documents he’d taken from the spook’s envelope. He stopped, reread it, and put it on the bed.

  “This shit job just got shittier,” he said. “Not only do we have a bioweapon, now we have some Cold War Russian spook in the game.” He closed his eyes and had to force them to open again, as the jetlag messed with his head.

  “Don’t those pricks know they lost,” Leroy said angrily.

  “Looks like they forgot,” Ethan said bitterly.

  “What have we got?” Sam asked, always the level-headed one.

  Ethan got his shit together, got up from the bed, and paced to get his blood moving. “God knows, but we have at least one man on the ground looking to cause grief.”

  Leroy opened his mouth to sound off as usual, but Sam spoke first. “Spook’s know what his game-plan is?”

  “Not really, all they know is that a former Soviet Russian spy has imported two CheyTacs.”

  Sam sucked air in through his teeth. “Shit, that’s a lot of firepower.”

  “Two?” Leroy said. “Then we can assume we have at least that many shooters.”

  Ethan nodded. “Anybody want to bet who the targets are.”

  “That’s a sucker-bet,” Sam said. “Question is, what are we supposed to do about it? The president’s security is handled by Secret Service, and they’re not going to buy us chocolates if we stamp all over their jurisdiction, post-Nine Eleven intel-sharing or not.”

  “Our mission hasn’t changed. We’re here to get the son of a bitch with the bioweapon,” Ethan said. “If we trip over the Russian, well okay, we’ll send him to Moscow in a body bag, otherwise, Sam’s right. It’s down to the Secret Service to sort that mess out.”

  “Roger that,” Sam said. “How are we going to find Lupus in a city of ten million people?”

  Ethan had been wondering the same thing, right up to the time he’d slept on the plane, but when he’d woken up, he knew. “I know how he plans to deploy the bioweapon,” he said quietly.

  “Okay,” Leroy said, “now we’re talking. How?”

  “He’s got the navy’s Silver Fox drone,” Ethan said.

  “Shit!” Sam said, showing rare emotion. “Then he can launch that from twenty miles away!”

  “Yeah, shit,” Ethan echoed, sitting down heavily on the bed and fighting off a wave of dizziness. God knows what time it was in his head. “We need to get the navy boys to monitor its frequency and tell us where the hell it is. They lost the thing, so they can help us get it back.”

  “On it, boss,” Sam said, taking out his satellite phone from his bag and ignoring the hotel landline on the desk.

  Ethan thumbed through the papers the spook had left with renewed interest. “Looks like there’re a couple of cops chasing down the rifles,” he said, turning the page to a photograph of Shaun and Danny. “One of them got himself shot.”

  “Shall I send flowers?” Leroy said with his customary quality wit.

  “I think I’ll go talk to the other one,” Ethan said, ignoring Leroy, as usual.

  “I thought we were going to leave the rifles to the Secret Service,” Sam said and then waved the response silent while he spoke into the sat-phone. He ended the call and put the phone back in his pack while they waited. “That was Lieutenant Command Lewis Druce, no less,” he said, with no one any wiser. “The Lieutenant Commander was sleeping and was dischuffed to be disturbed. Dischuffed,” he added with a grin.

  “Never mind the poor man’s broken sleep, is he going to play ball?” Ethan asked.

  “He said, and I quote, ‘If our commanding officer completes the necessary form and this is received in good order by his commanding officer, then he will follow his commanding officer’s orders.’”

  Ethan was going to swear, but so many suitable expletives rushed into his mind, by the time he’d selected one, the moment had passed, so he picked up his sat-phone from the night stand.

  “Who you gonna call?” Sam asked.

  Ethan let the obvious answer go. He was too pissed by the bureaucratic shit to bother. “Secnav,” he said simply, and that had more impact than any wise-ass answer.

  Sam and Leroy watched with undisguised pleasure as Ethan got straight through to the Secretary of the Navy. “Thank you, sir, I’m fine. How’s the kids?” He went on to explain that they needed the navy to track the drone on the hurry-up, but were being stone-walled by a seat-polisher in Washington. He listened for a moment and then hung up.

  They waited. He glanced at them casually. “Lieutenant Command Lewis Druce will be getting a call in a few seconds that will disturb his sleep and see him dischuffed for a very long time.”

  “Cool,” Leroy said. “So you know Secnav? Didn’t know you were so well connected.”

  “Did him a favour once,” Ethan said non-committedly. “I guess he thinks he owes me one.”

  “Cool,” Leroy said, not concerned about repetition.

  “I’m going to talk to the cop.” Shaun stood up. “Sam, you liaise with the navy on tracking the damn drone.” He looked at Leroy. “Get a helicopter, and get toole
d up. You are our fast-response force.”

  “Cool. Never been a force before,” Leroy said with a smile.

  If Shaun was surprised when the American marine turned up at his office, he didn’t show it, he just shook his hand and took him to a first-floor conference room.

  “I know about the rifles,” Ethan said, taking the offered seat at the big table.

  And if that was supposed to rattle Shaun into some sort of blurted disclosure, well, that failed to fly. He sat across the corner of the table from Ethan and offered him one of the many bottles of water in a neat collection.

  Ethan shook his head and then changed his mind. Rehydration after a long flight is crucial for the well-being of the system, and it also gave him time to think of a new strategy because this shock ’n’ awe wasn’t working — though as military strategy it was pretty much a failure too, being mostly shock and really piss people off so they joined the rebels.

  Shaun poured the water into a glass, having first blown out any dust. Ever the thoughtful host. “Yeah, that’ll be Chuck and Chico,” Shaun said.

  Ethan took the water. “Chuck and Chico?”

  “Spooks,” Shaun said. “Though I’ve got to tell you, they’re not very good spooks.”

  “Ah,” Ethan said. “Walker and Rodriguez.” He smiled, which actually rattled Shaun a little. “Agent Walker, Chuck Norris. Yes, I like.” He frowned. “Don’t get the Chico angle, though.”

  “You’re too young, then,” Shaun said, knowing that to be a flat lie.

  “I wish,” Ethan said, feeling every day of it in the damp British weather.

  “Okay,” Shaun said, leaning his elbows on the polished beech conference table. “Now that we’re friends, do you want to tell me what this is about?”

  Ethan smiled again. He was beginning to like this Irishman. “In three days, the president of the United States is going to stand out in the open and wave to the cameras, it being an election year. I now find out that not one, but two super-long-range rifles have suddenly arrived in this country.”

  Shaun watched him without a flicker of emotion. He should play poker, but hell, he had enough vices without adding that one.

  “Agents… Chuck and Chico,” Ethan said and smiled again, “tell me that you know about these guns.” He waited. He waited in vain. Silence is the best weapon of an interrogator, nobody likes it, and sooner or later somebody needs to fill it. “I’m asking you,” Ethan said, going first because he was asking so in the weaker position, “in the interest of shared intelligence, in the spirit of this BS agreement they’re signing, for you to help me catch these bastards before they do something we will both regret.”

  Shaun spoke at last. “I won’t lose any sleep over somebody killing politicians.” He raised his hand before Ethan could tell him what he thought of that. “But,” he said, nodding once, “I will help you.” Which showed what a shrewd judge of character he was, for all the crap he projected.

  “Okay,” Ethan said. “Do you know who has the rifles?”

  “Yes,” Shaun said and then shut up.

  Ethan was beginning to re-evaluate his liking for the man. He intended to say something diplomatic, but that failed in the delivery. “Will you stop jerking me around and tell me which lowlife shit has the rifles?”

  Shaun smiled. “Okay then, that’s better. It looks like a cold war Russian spy—”

  “Valentin Tal,” Ethan said.

  “Yeah, so why the hell are you asking me?”

  “Because,” Ethan said gently, “I think you know more than you’re saying.”

  “You show me yours first,” Shaun said.

  Ethan was clearly thinking it through. Done. “Something just doesn’t add up here,” he said at last. “We have a Russian with a bunch of rifles, and an Al Qaeda nut with a bioweapon, both turning up in London at the same time as the big pow-wow.” He sipped some water. “It could be a coincidence, but—”

  “You don’t believe in coincidences,” Shaun said with a nod. “I agree, coincidences are usually planned convergence.”

  “So,” Ethan said, “they are in it — whatever it is, and I can guess — but they are in cahoots.”

  “I agree,” Shaun said. “What I don’t get is how? What have the two things got in common?”

  “Maybe the bioweapon is the real weapon, and we’re supposed to all run around after the snipers, who, let’s face it, are a much more familiar and comfortable threat.”

  “Comfortable is not a word I’m used to hearing with sniper,” Shaun said. “But what you’re saying makes sense. We put all our resources in chasing down these rifles, which could well be just ghosts, and Lupus detonates his ethnobomb.”

  “My orders are to find this bastard Lupus and neutralize him, and that’s just what I intend to do.”

  “Agreed,” Shaun said. “Lupus is here, I have a contact who can ID him.”

  “I thought nobody has ever seen Lupus?”

  “A marine had a face to face with him in Afghanistan,” Shaun said.

  Ethan looked surprised. “And this marine, is he named Harry?”

  “That’s the feller,” Shaun said with a smile. “You know him?”

  “Yeah, he saved my hide in some fly-blown village. Lost some good friends that day. And so did he.”

  “Well, we’re one big happy family now,” Shaun said, standing up to signal he was done. “So, we focus on the bioweapon and let the spooks take care of the diversion.”

  “That’s how I’d play it,” Ethan said.

  And if Valentin had heard them, he would have smiled.

  47

  Harry held the striped shirt up under his chin, sighed, and tossed it on the bed with the others, unaware that he was truly his mother’s son when it came to selecting an outfit for a date. He chose a blue shirt, because that was all that was left, and anyway, blue’s good, probably. He held up his one tie and threw that back into the wardrobe. This was a date with Laura, not some special occasion.

  The doorbell rang, and he heard Frank talking to the visitor. “I thought it was customary for the man to collect the woman for dinner?” Frank’s muffled voice said.

  Harry entered the living room just as Laura answered. “No guarantee he’d be able to find his way,” she said, looking directly at Harry. “Remember the last and only time?”

  Frank didn’t and said so, but Harry did. “Hey, c’mon,” he pleaded. “I was picked up by the MPs and sent on an urgent mission.”

  “So you say,” Laura said slowly. “But I think you got cold feet and ran away to join the Foreign Legion.”

  “Maybe I saw myself as a latter-day Beau Geste, all dashing and romantic.”

  She looked him over, noting the creased blue shirt and the beige pants. “Yeah, dashing,” she said and looked to heaven.

  “Don’t wait up,” Harry said to Frank as he marched to the door, looking all dashing, and a right mess.

  “Change of venue,” Laura said, in pursuit. “We’re going to the Chinese on the High Street.” She winked at Frank. “They’ll serve anyone there.”

  Frank grinned and returned to watching the game. “Young people. Thank God I was never one.” He half turned on the sofa and looked back at the closing door. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to give the missus a call, just to see how she is. Funny how you can miss someone, even when they’re a real pain. And with love in the air, maybe he should get out of Harvey’s way and let him… go on, then, let him what? He sighed, but maybe Margaret would rethink… nah, unlikely. He topped up his glass from the bottle secreted behind the cushions. Still, worth a bit of… y’know, matchmaking. He’d call the missus, she was a dab hand at that sort of thing, and it would give him a reason for the call. He smiled. Two birds, one brick. He turned up the sound. Nice telly, though, he was going to miss it.

  Laura caught up with Harry as the lift doors opened and he stepped inside.

  “Hey, Prince Charming,” she said, putting her hand on the door to stop it closing in her face. “Aren’t you go
ing to wait for your date?”

  “I’d have to wait a long time,” Harry said, pressing the lobby button. “I don’t have one.”

  Laura decided she would have to do something about his dress sense if they were going to be an item.

  The creased blue shirt played another starring role in their relationship later, when Laura leant over the table in the restaurant and dabbed a blob of sauce from the front. “Are you actually paying attention to what you are eating or trying to eat?” she said, with an exasperated tone.

  He blinked twice and focused. “Oh, yeah, sorry.” He looked down at the remaining stain. “Shit, this is my best shirt.”

  “Which is truly worrying,” she said. Note to self, on-line clothes shopping as soon as poss. She looked him over and tried to guess his size, but all she got was fit and toned, which didn’t help much and just made concentrating on her sweet and sour chicken more pressing. She changed the subject of the conversation that he wasn’t involved in. “What exactly are you preoccupied with? You’ve hardly said a word all evening.” Which, since they had been out only an hour, didn’t amount to much.

  He put the forkful of bean sprouts back on the plate. “It’s military-type things,” he said, and his man-brain thought that was an explanation.

  “And do these military-type things have anything to do with sniper rifles?” She frowned, as if struggling to remember something she knew perfectly well. “Extreme-range sniper rifles?”

  Harry’s mouth was open, and not to receive a manly helping of gloop. “How the hell—”

  She raised her hand. “Here’s three words that I think will help you out,” she said and leaned forward. “Harvey, Sir Richard, office door.”

  “That’s five,” Harry said absently, but he got the gist of it. “Okay, yes,” he said and also leaned forward until their faces were just inches apart. Two young people with eyes only for each other. “I’ve been trying to work out where the snipers will set up to shoot the world leaders.”

  So, not romance.