“Stop being paranoid,” Reyland said.
“And,” Brooke said, ignoring him, “some of these covert military ops in which he was involved are quite familiar to me. They were SEAL-SAS joint operations, which means it’s probable that Gannon might have actual contacts here in the UK.”
“We’ll find him,” Reyland said. “Santos is in a box. NSA is in complete control of his communications now. There’s no way to make contact with Santos by phone or text or fricking carrier pigeon.”
“How much time do we have on that end?” Wrenhall said.
Reyland looked at his phone.
“We have T-minus eleven hours and eight minutes.”
“You knew this Gannon was involved. His background, his training, and yet you failed to mention it?”
“I found out five seconds ago, Brooke. I had no idea,” Reyland said.
“You know what McKendry said about this? Do you know what he said when I suggested Gannon might be at loggerheads to our operation? He said, and I quote—”
“Brooke,” Reyland said.
“And I quote,” Brooke repeated. “‘You folks just opened yourselves up a box of hell.’ End quote.”
“A box of hell?” Reyland said, wincing.
“That’s what the man said,” Brooke said.
“Even so, Brooke, what should we do? Abort? And what then? Shoot ourselves? We’re in this completely, and there’s only one way out. We either pull this off or...” He trailed off.
Out on the water, a low canal boat went by, the wood roof glossy like the lid of a coffin.
He tapped at the glass.
“Or that, Brooke, that right there. Only over a waterfall and on fire.”
She looked with him out at the coffin-like boat and took a deep breath.
“You’re right, Robert,” she finally said. “Of course. Tell me what you need.”
92
“Taxi, sir?”
Rolling his carry-on into the drizzle out the front doors of Heathrow, Gannon shook his head.
“No, thank you. I’m waiting on a ride,” he said.
Twenty-four hours before, Little Jorge had smuggled Gannon into the Dominican Republic near the port of Bajos de Haina just west of Santo Domingo.
The Dominican Republic was the center hub of Caribbean drug smuggling, and with a little help from some friends, Little Jorge was able to get Gannon everything he needed in quick order.
They had found a very accommodating Venezuelan bank to open up a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar account in cash, and Gannon had put the rest of the money along with the diamonds in a safety-deposit box in a large Canadian bank across the street.
The stolen Canadian passport Little Jorge had scored for him six hours later had cost five grand, and Gannon had flown first-class out of Puerto Plata on an overnight Eurowings flight.
Stick and Ruby had wanted to come, but they could score only the one passport, and there was no more time.
Being an international fugitive wasn’t that difficult, Gannon thought, as he removed his burner phone from the pocket of his new raincoat.
All you needed were extremely heavy-duty criminal smuggling contacts and an unlimited amount of money.
“Yes, hello?” a voice said when the phone picked up. It was a little boy’s voice in an almost whisper.
“Hi. Is Callum there?” Gannon said.
“Yes, but Daddy can’t talk to you. He’s driving.”
“Oh, okay. My name is Mike, and I’m a friend of your dad. Could you tell him I’m outside of the airport?”
“Daddy says don’t worry—we’re on our way. We’ll be five minutes.”
“Thank you,” Gannon said, smiling as he hung up.
It was more like three minutes when the beat-up white Volkswagen Golf pulled out of the busy traffic to a stop in front of him.
“Mickey! Screw me sideways! Mickey! How ya been?” his tall lanky old buddy Callum said, wrapping him in a bear hug as he leaped out.
He’d lost most of his sandy hair, Gannon could see. He was also thinner than he remembered him and was wearing glasses. He almost looked like a professor now.
Gannon remembered where they’d met. Some shithole outside Kirkuk where Callum and his SAS guys got cut to ribbons trying to free some brain-dead Brit tree huggers who got kidnapped by al Qaeda. Callum had been shot five times, and the bad guys were pulling him into the back of a technical when Gannon and his boys had shown up.
“I’m really sorry to bother you, man,” Gannon said, frowning at him. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Sorry? Get stuffed. Here, give me that,” Callum said, grabbing his carry-on and going to the trunk.
There was a strawberry blond–haired kid of four or five in the back seat playing a game on an iPhone.
“Are you an American?” the boy said as Gannon put on his seat belt.
“Yes. Born and raised.”
“Did you know Daddy when he was a soldier?”
“Yes, I did,” Gannon said. “That’s when we met.”
“Were you there when he got his scar?”
“Just after, son,” Gannon said, smiling.
“He’s the one who gave me the ride in the dune buggy,” Callum said, slamming the driver’s door.
“Oh, with the camels! When you saw the camels, Daddy!” the freckle-faced boy said, his eyes as big as saucers.
“Yes. Now play your game with the headphones,” Callum said.
“But—”
“Play!” Callum yelled.
“I wish I had a dune buggy,” the little boy mumbled to himself as he pulled on a pair of headphones.
Gannon laughed as he looked out at the traffic.
“I forgot about those camels,” he said as they pulled out.
“I didn’t,” Callum said, smiling, as he pushed his glasses up his nose with a thumb. “Nor the ride.”
93
The farm was in Wycomb in the Midlands about an hour west of London.
Callum listened patiently, and when Gannon was done, he put down his tea mug with a clack on the kitchen counter. He folded his arms.
“Lying about the dead FBI director. They’re all mad now. Just mad. They’ll do and say bloody anything. And even the press doesn’t care? I knew it was heading this way. I worked for a contract company for over ten years, but it just got to be too much. Just bedlam on every level. Anyway, ready to see the stuff?”
They went out the front door of the damp little stucco house and walked along a field with two fat red cows in it toward a concrete barnlike building. As they came around its corner, Callum’s son was kicking a muddy soccer ball off the side of it.
Inside, there were milking stalls and an office with a window. Callum led them into the office and clicked on the light and closed the door. He opened a large steel locker in the corner.
“I think I was able to get everything you asked for.”
Gannon looked at the night vision goggles. The two Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns.
The oiled black pistol he lifted looked almost like a Colt M1911 .45 automatic but the barrel was too small.
“MAB?” Gannon said, squinting at the markings.
“Yes, it’s a French company. Fifteen in the mag and one in the pipe. A pistolet automatique très bon.”
“What is it? A thirty-eight?” Gannon said.
“Nine millimeter,” Callum said.
“Ah, of course, the metric system,” Gannon said. “And that was the box truck we passed on the way in?”
“Yep. Rented on the sly just like you requested. So it’s all good, yes?” Callum asked.
“Yes, it’s good, Callum,” Gannon said with a nod. “Very, very good.”
Callum went to the computer on his desk and clicked at the keys.
“Screw m
e, you’re right. Here it is in the Daily Mail,” he said. “‘Messerly announces newest leak is a major one. Tomorrow night, the people of the Western world will learn what their governments are supposedly doing in their name.’ End quote. Listen. They’re speculating there’s evidence of illegal arms trading, drug smuggling, satanic shite, pedophilia, you name it. And that many brand-name multinational corporations might be involved. A bunch of major banks.”
“I told you Messerly’s about to blow the sewer wall,” Gannon said. “And fifty years of the rankest filth and corruption the world has ever seen is going to come a’ flooding down Fifth Avenue and Downing Street and the Champs-Élysées.”
“And you’re saying your FBI friend, Reyland, is going to try to grab Messerly’s data tonight to prevent it from coming out?” Callum said.
“Yes,” Gannon said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“You’re going to stop him from stealing it.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Gannon said. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. But I’ll think of something.”
“But why?”
Gannon thought of Sergeant Jeremy. His starched shirts. His kindness. What he had done for him.
Hair actually stood up on the back of his neck as he suddenly remembered the title of the sermon the good sergeant had never gotten to deliver.
God Has a Mission for You.
“Because I have to,” Gannon said.
“But you have that bag of money,” Callum said. “Why not take off? Why not go fishing forever?”
Gannon laughed. Ruby had said almost the same exact thing to him at the airport in the Dominican.
Before she had unexpectedly kissed him goodbye.
He gave Callum the same answer.
“But I am going fishing,” Gannon finally said with a smile.
He thought of Reyland.
“Tonight, I go for Moby Dick,” he said.
94
Two hours later, at ten o’clock, everything was ready.
Reyland, with all his notes memorized, turned from the window at his agents and analysts. He smiled at the buzz in the air, smiled at his security men standing at the back of the room with their blunt, hard faces.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, he thought.
There was a blown-up map of the city of London on the whiteboard behind him, and in front of him on the conference table was a 3-D cardboard mock-up of two buildings, one marked EMBASSY and one marked WORK SITE.
Reyland took out a pair of reading glasses and a laser pointer as he cleared his throat.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this,” he said, waving the laser pointer across the shorter side of the box marked EMBASSY, “is Upper Belgrave Street.
“This,” he said, pointing the laser between the boxes to its shorter side, “is Wilton.
“Our setup is at this work site here across Wilton, which we will infiltrate from Wilton Mews here to the north. Our agent in the embassy will open a window here on the Wilton side of the embassy in the back. Once the exchange from the window to across the street to the work site is complete, we will exit here down the work site scaffolding on Upper Belgrave into a waiting vehicle here. Once in the car, we will go in a protective convoy back here in the route that you’ve all been given. So far so good?”
He looked at the faces. Everyone was nodding.
“Any questions?”
“What about the foreign service security at all the embassies on Upper Belgrave? What if we’re spotted?” asked an agent.
“You don’t have to worry about that. We will be jamming all communications,” Reyland said.
“In addition, all pertinent staff at surrounding allied embassies have been briefed. The whole area will be on stand-down,” Wrenhall added.
“What if there is resistance from the Chilean embassy security or another intel force? Do we have permission to engage?” said another ops agent.
“The sensitivity of this operation could not be greater,” Reyland said. “With that said, the acquisition and protection of this asset supersedes everything, and I mean everything.”
“Engage anything that jeopardizes the mission?” said the security man.
“Yes, treat Upper Belgrave as a battlefield. Engage and remove all threats,” Reyland said.
“Robert, if I could?” Brooke Wrenhall said, standing from the table.
“By all means,” Reyland said.
“As you all know, this operation is in no way, shape or form authorized by any local police, so use the highest levels of stealth and aversion at all times,” Wrenhall said.
“But remember,” she said. “There aren’t any words to explain exactly how important this mission is. I’ve been working in intelligence circles for almost forty years, and what we are seeking to recover is the most important piece of actionable intel I’ve ever come across.
“This mission is tide turning, ladies and gentlemen. History making. Or breaking. We all know our jobs. Let’s do them.”
95
Belgravia in London was a neighborhood that seemed to consist solely of large white bank-like buildings.
From the box truck’s front passenger seat, Gannon looked out at the perfect columns and pristine arches, the stone balconies, the high dark windows.
“Ritzy,” Gannon said as he went around a double-parked Rolls-Royce.
The Chilean embassy at 14 Upper Belgrave was on the northeast corner of Wilton. As he passed it, Gannon surveyed its security cameras, its twelve-foot-high thick wrought iron gate. The heavy black metal door behind the gate was as featureless and formidable as a bank safe’s.
No wonder the intel services had gotten so desperate, Gannon thought. No one was getting in there without a wrecking ball or a five-hundred-pound bomb.
He passed the embassy and made a right onto a tree-flanked road then another onto Belgrave Place, and then twenty feet up past a road called Eaton Square he pulled over.
Gannon got out and went to the back of the box truck that now had telephone company markings along its side. He popped the doors and put on a hard hat and orange traffic vest. There was a telephone company manhole just in off the corner, and he took out some traffic cones from the back of the truck and placed them around it. Then he lifted a crowbar off the floor of the truck and bent and popped the manhole.
After he dragged the lid aside, Gannon stood on the street glancing nonchalantly at the passing traffic. Then he went down into the hole with a flashlight and a pair of bolt cutters.
There were four old lead-covered phone cables and five fiber-optic cables leading into the block of buildings he was parked in front of, and it took him less than two minutes to cut every single one of them.
When he was done, he climbed out of the hole and slipped on a large backpack from the rear of the truck and lifted the crowbar. There was a work site there at the first building of the block he’d just blacked out, and he ripped open its plywood door at the hinges.
Inside was a completely gutted hollowed-out building with just a staircase left. There was no alarm clang even after a full minute, and he closed the plywood door and quickly went up.
It was three flights to its roof, and he came out a little attic-like door and stood up on the tar paper roof in the cool air looking north over the chimney caps. From Eaton Square to Upper Belgrave were fourteen separate town houses that butted up against each other so tightly they looked like the same building.
Gannon hefted his bag and walked north to the first terra-cotta roof edge and quietly stepped over it and kept going.
Two minutes later, he stood near the northern edge of the last building overlooking Upper Belgrave directly across from the embassy. There was a large air-conditioning unit there about the size of a minivan and he pulled himself on top of it and unstrapped th
e knapsack.
Of all people, Gannon knew exactly how ballsy it was to just walk into the middle of an intel op.
But also of all people, he knew what such an op was like from the inside.
He’d been on manhunts before. All eyeballs involved were now Krazy Glued on Messerly and the embassy and whatever the hell was going on in there. The last thing any of them would be thinking about was someone coming up on their six.
He zipped open the pack and opened the first flap and began laying everything out on the metal roof of the A/C unit.
The barrel of the sniper rifle came first. Then the bolt. Then the suppressor. The lower part of the rifle was under the second flap and he lifted it out and extended its bipod. He turned on the FLIR scope that was already attached and then slapped in the magazine of ten .338 Lapua Magnum rounds and slipped in the bolt with a click.
He played with the FLIR scope’s settings until the contrast was just right, and then settled in flat on his belly.
It took only five minutes before he saw one of the white panel-like coverings on the third floor of the construction site across from the embassy on Wilton Street open up.
Someone appeared in the gap. Someone with binoculars, pointing at the embassy.
Gannon checked his watch and smiled.
“Thar she blows,” he said.
He’d guessed right. Small smartphone-powered drones had limited ranges. He’d studied the map around the embassy. The work site was the only logical place for Reyland to wait to receive it.
As he focused in the FLIR’s zoom, he saw that the figure in the work site flap wasn’t Reyland but a woman.
But that didn’t matter, Gannon knew. Reyland was up there. He’d known men like Reyland. Psychopaths. He’d met his share of them.
Reyland wouldn’t miss being front row center for the grand finale of his sick little play for all the world, Gannon knew.
Stop at Nothing Page 23