. . . . . .
Five days later John Sea gave Sir Thomas a call. “Everything is in place,” he said. “We are just waiting for the go from you.”
“Okay,” said Sir Thomas. “Stand by.”
On that same day, The Grey Man was struggling with another migraine. He had only recently started to get them but they were debilitating. He was taking pain killers like they were sweets and still the pain would not go away. He called up Collins and then patched in Surge on the conference call.
“Are you still under observation?” he asked. They both confirmed that they were.
“Well, we have a problem then. They have now sent someone to check on me. Yesterday an army Land Rover went by with two soldiers in it. My auto surveillance camera picked up the number plate and ran it through the system. It was army surplus, no longer in service and been sold to the public. Over the next few hours it circled my place stopping at various places where I assume, a long range camera was being used.”
“In conclusion, it looks like we are in trouble. I cannot find anything inside The Firm that says this is official so we have an enemy or enemies staking us. I assume Mr Sea is the culprit with Sir Thomas backing him up. Give me two more days to see if I can get the exact reasons for all this work and then I will send in The Firm to sort this matter out. Is that okay with you two?”
“Yes, no problem,” said Surge and Collins.
“In the meantime,” said The Grey Man. “Let’s assume we are operational and protect ourselves at all times.” With that the phone went dead.
Chapter 13
D- Day
The next morning The Grey Man woke from a fitful sleep to total darkness. He reached for the light switch and clicked it on. Nothing happened. A cold sweat swept over him. In a panic he realized he was completely and utterly blind. This was his worse fear, his room 101 torture. Of all things, for him to go blind took away all his skills, everything he had built up over his life. He reached for the phone and had to orient himself with the outside buttons to know which way up it was. “How do you phone a number,” he thought, “When you have a smooth, touch keyboard?”
Slowly he started to control himself. He still had his mind, his greatest tool. He worked out the buttons for volume on the right, the main menu button was in the middle. He pushed it. He reasoned the icons would now be showing, he worked out roughly where the phone icon would be and touched the screen. Now he worked out where the phone numbers would be. He had used this phone hundreds of times, he would let the memory of it guide him. He then held his finger down on what he hoped was the number three. This was the speed dial to The Firm. He was relieved when he heard a familiar voice at the end of the line.
Without any preamble he ordered a car to come as soon as possible to his address and an urgent appointment with an eye doctor.
“Understood,” said the voice. “I will call you back in five minutes.”
The Grey Man put down the phone and moved carefully round the room banging into chairs. He finally managed to scramble into some clothes.
. . . . . .
In Whitehall Sir Thomas received a call.
“Morning Sir,” said a voice. “We have had a unusual request from The Grey Man. He is asking for a car and to see an eye doctor. I thought you might like to know.”
“Thank you very much,” said Sir Thomas with a smile and hung up. He could feel his adrenalin pumping as he made his next call. If The Grey Man wanted a car he reasoned that meant he could not drive and was now, hopefully, fully blind. He got straight through to John Sea.
“You are a GO,” he said.
Martin got the call thirty seconds later. Two minutes after that both Land Rovers were loaded and were barreling away from their hideout.
Surge had just started his morning run. Collins was eating his breakfast.
The five miles to The Grey Man’s place were covered in seven minutes. Both Land Rovers were pushed to the limits down the country lanes. Martin in charge of one, Big Rob the other. Martin crashed through the front gate, stopped and spun the vehicle round with the back pointing towards the house. Him and his two men de-bussed. Both fired grenades through windows in the top floor of the house. Martin took out a special shotgun which was designed by the special forces for this very job and blew off the hinges of the front door.
Meanwhile Big Rob and his opo had crashed the back gate and swept across the field. They both jumped from the Land Rover and threw grenades through the upper back windows.
The explosions were deafening. Big Rob and his guy then dropped to the ground laying behind the Land Rover as flat as possible as Martin and his team dropped their weapons and opened the back of their Land Rover. Mounted on a strong tripod was the L1A1 12.7mm (.50) Heavy Machine Gun (HMG), developed from the best machine gun ever made, the Browning M2.5 caliber. This weapon was belt driven and could fire 635 rounds a minute. Martin swept up the stock as his number two fed the belt and he racked the ground floor of the house from one side to the other. Walls, doors, windows and bricks would not stop the huge rounds and the house started to disintegrate with smoke and dust billowing into the air. The bullets passed right through the house and over Big Rob’s head.
After thirty seconds of continuous fire and as prearranged, Martin stopped and both teams took up their Heckler and Koch Sa80’s assault rifles and ran towards the crippled building. Anyone inside would surely be dead but they had to make sure.
As soon as the Land Rovers had crashed the gates, the alarms had sounded in the basement. The Grey Man had made plans, once he knew that he was under surveillance, to protect himself and his computers but he had no idea they would come with so much firepower and no idea he would be blind.
He scrambled around on the floor searching for his emergency rucksack and as the noise grew louder and louder he focused on finding the secret exit. One of the reasons he had chosen this house was the fact that it had been used by rebels during the Jacobite risings in the 18th Century and it had a concealed bolt hole and passageway which was not on any plans. He thought of the old adage taught to him so many years ago at Spy School. ‘Never enter any building that you do not have at least two exits from.’
Yesterday he had found it, cleared away the cobwebs, oiled the hinges and checked the passageway was clear. He was glad he did as it was still fresh in his memory. As he stumbled through the concealed door he threw across the bolt and as quickly as he could he stumbled along the old passageway to freedom dragging his escape bag. Behind him he could hear shots as each room upstairs had the door kicked in and it was raked with machine gun fire.
Martin was worried as soon as he got in the house. As destroyed as it was, it was clear that only one room was furnished, the front room. Everything else was bare boards and empty. “That means the bastard was not using the house at all!” he thought. Then he wondered if there was a cellar. He quickly located the door and threw down two hand grenades. Once the noise had stopped he went down the stairs two at a time. The cellar was full of half destroyed computers, an old camp bed, a rail with clothes hanging on it and a small kitchen area but no one there.
He walked round carefully. There must be another exit he reasoned. Finally he saw it. Behind a damaged false wall was a small round oak door. He pulled the cast iron handle but it was obviously bolted from the other side. He swung round the SA80 which was on a strap over his shoulder and sent a burst into the door but this was old iron and hard solid English oak and all he produced was splinters. He shouted up to Rob, “Get me the shotgun, quick.”
Big Rob sprinted to the Land Rover and was back in under a minute. Martin took aim.
The Grey Man had stumbled the full length of the passageway. His knees and shin’s were bloody and bruised. Twice he had walked face first into the wall as the passageway had curved. He was not a young man and he felt every one of his years. With his chest heaving, he threw himself on the grass knowing his pursuers were just behind him. He heard the shotgun boom from inside the remains of the h
ouse. He reached inside his bag grabbing a small box. He flipped open the catch and pushed a button. Inside the house, the explosives that he had laid so carefully yesterday in the basement went off with an almighty bang and the whole house lifted up off the ground before disintegrating. The Grey Man was lucky that he was laying down away from the passage entrance as a blast of superheated air burst from the opening and screeched into the sky.
Martin and his men ceased to exist in that one blinding moment.
The Grey Man lay there in the thick wet grass for a full five minutes recovering. Then, hearing police sirens he got up and staggered towards the trees that he knew were a little off to the right. Once in the woods, he lay still hoping he was hidden under bracken. His mind was racing. He realized it was no coincidence that his blindness and the attack came at the same time. How did they know though? The only conclusion was the telephone call he had just made. Someone in The Firm had gone bad. It shocked him to think this. The Firm was his and normally he would now just make a call to be safe but who to trust? Then he thought of Surge and Collins. They must now be in serious danger. He carefully went through the phone routine and this time hit speed dial four connecting him with Collins.
Collins had been existing day by day. The shop had helped give him an anchor as had the work from The Firm but he still felt low. Now though, once The Grey Man had said they were operational and with the thought of danger, he was pumped. The adrenalin was flowing and he felt alert and alive. For the first time in a long time someone was hunting him rather than him doing the hunting. It felt strange and weird and exhilarating. He thought about how he would pull it off and decided it would almost certainly be at his home. His street was quiet and mostly empty and the house was big and set back with no noisy neighbors to overlook it. “So how?” he thought.
He decided to set up some traps to give him an edge. He wired in some simple infa-red sensors at ground level. The beam was invisible to the naked eye but anyone approaching the back of the house would break the beam and an alarm on his phone would activate. He then reinforced the windows and doors with stronger locks and placed pressure sensors at strategic points. None of this would stop a professional but he did not feel he was up against the best. If the watchers were anything to go by, they were just thugs. Lastly, weapons. He taped handguns under tables and chairs near both exits and entrances. He decided to start carrying the 9 mm Glock in a shoulder holster concealed by a loose fitting jacket as it was an incredibly reliable weapon.
That night Jonathan came home from the shop and saw his dad was armed. “What’s going on?” he said.
“Not sure. We think we may have some unfinished business going on and I am taking precautions. The Grey Man is investigating and will bring it to a head in the next few days.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No. This is part of the business I am in. Just one thing, keep your phone with you at all times, fully charged and be careful at the shop. I am sure they will not go there but if they do, you tell them I am at home. Okay? I can then meet them here on my terms.”
After watching his dad in action when they went after his mother’s killers, Jonathan knew how deadly his dad was but he still went to bed worried.
The next morning Jonathan left for the shop as Collins was still eating breakfast. As soon as he left, Collins went upstairs and started his watching routine. Every car, and every person who walked by he categorized and discarded. Finally he spotted them - a big man in a coat far too warm for this weather which looked very bulky, walking from the right and a thin postman on a bicycle who he had not seen before, approaching from the left who did not stop at any other houses but made a beeline for Collins house.
The Assassin flew down the stairs and looked out the side window. He could see the big man crouched on the other side of the hedge pretending to tie up his shoe lace but actually bringing out a fully automatic machine gun from under his coat, poking the barrel through the hedge which he was trying to thin out with a large knife.
The postman parked his bike, walked past the man as if he did not exist and started to walk up the path carrying a parcel, whistling softly, trying to appear nonchalant. His job was obviously to bring Collins to the door where the shooter would open up. But Collins beat him to it. As the postman was half way up the drive and before the shooter was properly in position Collins threw open the front door. With his gun still in its holster out of sight and his arms by his side, the shocked postman did not know whether to abort the mission or carry on. The old man in front of him looked ordinary and vulnerable but most of all weaponless, so he did the worse thing possible, he went for his gun which was in a holster on his belt, nestled against his spine. The big man, seeing what was going down, threw himself through the hedge, head and shoulders getting caught up in the bramble, trying to get down on the ground behind the machine gun.
The Assassin’s expression did not change. His right arm came up and swept his jacket aside. He drew the Glock in a smooth and relaxed move, to an outsider it might even have looked slow but he was far faster than the two gun men. He shot the postman once between the eyes, the bullet travelling through his brain and out the back of his skull taking gore and bone with it. The power jerked his head back viciously and he fell down flat on his back, dead before he hit the ground.
Then The Assassin turned, walked forward firing as the big man scrambled around trying to get through the hedge. He put three bullets into him with incredible precision, the head, neck and spine, smashing all three, the body jerking each time the bullets hit. He lay still, blood already starting to flow as the heart continued to beat after death.
Collins took out his phone quickly and phoned Jonathan.
“Jonathan. It’s Dad. Are you in the shop?” Collins said without any preamble.
“Yes,” said Jonathan.
“Go to the window. What do you see?”
“Two big guys getting out of a black merc. The driver is still inside. They have parked on a double yellow line and I can see from the exhaust that the engine is still running. They are walking towards the shop!”
“Have they seen you?” asked Collins.
“No,” said Jonathan. “Not yet.”
“Right, grab Olivia and get upstairs as quick as possible.”
Jonathan started to argue.
“Look,” said Collins. “They know where I am, I have just had a visit. This means they are after you. Now move!”
. . . . . .
Surge was again operational and it felt good. He thought about how he should protect himself. Not used to being hunted, it was a strange experience. He reckoned that if they had wanted to kill him it would have been done by now, a shot from the woods or a passing car, so it must be a snatch, it was the only thing that made sense. But if they wanted to kidnap him they had to get close and if that happened they entered his world.
He opened the locked chest he kept in the corner of his garage. Inside under various clothes were weapons. Surge had studied martial arts all his life becoming a master of unarmed combat. To achieve that he had trained in weapons defense, learnt how someone used and moved with a weapon and devised ways to combat them. He rarely used any weapon himself but as he got older he knew he needed an edge. At the bottom of the chest he found what he was looking for, an expandable baton much favored by the Japanese police. It was around eight inches long and looked like a handle with a flattened round piece of lead on the end. When flicked down the telescopic arm shot out and the baton extended to seventeen inches long. The telescopic arm was made of a similar material to a car aerial and had significant whip with the lead end piece moving at an arc and smashing into any target with incredible force. When used well it could break bones but in the hands of someone like Surge who knew all the vulnerable parts of the body, it could be devastating.
To run that day he chose shorts and a T-shirt. He strapped the baton in its special holster underneath his right forearm then pulled a loose sweatshirt over the top. He dropped his
arm quickly and the baton dropped into his open hand perfectly. He flicked and swung it and the lead piece whistled through the air exactly where Surge wanted it to go.
He did his stretches and started his run. There was a breeze and light rain was falling as he loped up the country roads then down past the drug dealers flats where the music, as normal, was pumping out. He continued into the village and up the High Street. He saw them at once. Two huge men, almost seven feet tall and nearly as wide, wearing long, brown leather coats and close cropped hair. Between them was a small man in his mid-forties with greasy hair wearing a cheap blue striped suit that had seen better days. They walked towards Surge as he jogged up the hill.
As they got closer the small man opened his jacket so Surge could see the handgun in its holster.
“In the alley way if you please sir. My companions and I would like to have a friendly word,” he said in his lilting Scottish voice, smiling at Surge.
Surge stopped and followed the little man down the alley to a dead end, a space behind the small bakery which was big enough to park two medium sized cars. The Russians blocked the exit with their huge frames.
To Kill a Grey Man Page 7