The Hunter

by WOOD TOM

  ‘You seriously believe that?’

  ‘Why not? Ferguson has been so careful about covering his tracks that he’s killed or tried to kill everyone who even knows a piece of the puzzle. If that’s the case, he’s sure as shit going to keep an eye on the person trying to put those pieces together.’

  Alvarez looked around. He thought back, trying to remember if he’d seen anything that could be surveillance. There wasn’t, but he just might not have detected it. Alvarez was a good operative, but he wasn’t deluded about his skills. He couldn’t guarantee no one had tailed him.

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘If you continue openly investigating, we may force him to abandon his plans and might never get this close to him again. We can’t have that. We’re going to pretend the matter is closed and make Ferguson feel secure while we look for evidence. You can’t be involved in that. Look what happened when you found out about Hoyt. He was dead twenty-four hours later.’

  Alvarez couldn’t hide his disappointment. ‘I’ve worked my ass off for the last two weeks on this, losing a good five pounds in the process of trying to track down Ozols’s killer and that goddamn flash drive – not to mention all the months it took me to get Ozols to play ball so we could get those missiles and stop any rogue states from getting their fingers on the technology. A colleague of mine is dead, killed by the same people who murdered Ozols. That person is someone inside Langley, if it’s Ferguson then he’s a fucking traitor whose hand I have shaken, and you want me to let it go?’

  It had taken all his will to keep from raising his voice.

  Procter looked at him sympathetically. ‘Not let it go, hand it over. You’ve done everything you can.’

  ‘Sir, I still think I can be involved without anyone knowing. We can—’

  Procter moved away from the fence and pointed his key fob at his car. ‘My mind’s made up, Antonio.’ He took a few steps before turning around. ‘Get me hard copies of everything you have and drop them off at my office Monday morning. Destroy your own copies. That’s an order.’

  Alvarez took an almighty calming breath.

  In the field the quarter horses were running. Procter watched them for a moment before looking back at Alvarez.

  ‘Go home,’ the big guy said. ‘Go home and get some sleep.’

  Alvarez’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel of his Dodge sedan. His eyes stared ahead, seeing the road, the traffic, but focused on a point far away. His nostrils flared with each big, regular exhale. The anger inside him made his heart thump hard. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been driving, an hour at least, maybe two. He didn’t know where he was heading but he was going nowhere. He passed the same landmarks, took the same intersections, circling the countryside so he could talk – try to talk – himself out of doing something stupid.

  But it wasn’t working. The more he thought, the angrier he got, until he made a right where he’d taken a left three times before, and twenty minutes later he was slowing down to drive past the big colonial house where a certain traitorous a-hole made his home. It was a nice place, that much was obvious, and Alvarez wondered how much had been paid for by dollars other than Uncle Sam’s. Ferguson was home, judging by the two cars on the drive.

  Alvarez pulled up on the opposite side of the road a couple of houses along. He turned off the engine and adjusted his mirrors so he could see Ferguson’s driveway. He checked his watch, figuring he wouldn’t have to wait long.

  If he’d been anywhere else he’d be asleep by now, but anger, adrenaline, and determination kept the tiredness from taking hold. It happened ten minutes later, one guy in a tan-coloured Ford. He pulled up on the same side of the road as Alvarez, two properties along, the other way back from Ferguson’s. Through his mirrors Alvarez watched the guy adjusting his own mirrors.

  Good. Alvarez had been worried Procter wouldn’t act soon enough, but he’d made a call and got someone watching Ferguson pretty damn quick. Very good. Now it would be impossible for Alvarez to kick Ferguson’s door down and threaten to plug the old fuck if he didn’t come clean.

  Alvarez gave it a minute or two before starting up the engine. He saw the guy in the tan Ford register him and expected a note would be made. Procter would probably give him crap about it when he found out, but Alvarez had been forced to eat enough crap today that some more would just seem like dessert.

  He headed for DC, a little above the speed limit, and reached his destination in good time. Again he pulled up on the opposite side of the road and used his mirrors to watch the building. Sykes was on the third floor of the plush brownstone that was a good way above what he should be able to afford. Alvarez knew that Sykes’s parents were wealthy, so he wasn’t about to jump the gun and assume the guy was rotten just because of where he lived.

  Cars came and went, but Alvarez didn’t see any surveillance. That figured. It cost a lot to watch people, especially agency people, and Ferguson was the suspect, not Sykes. But Alvarez was convinced that if this whole thing was a rogue op run by Ferguson, he sure as hell wasn’t running it alone.

  Ferguson was too thorough and too careful to have gotten his hands dirty personally. There had to be a conduit between him and the assets on the ground. If it wasn’t Sykes, then Alvarez was going to have to look elsewhere, but if it was Sykes, then Alvarez was working a lead just sitting in his car. Procter had told him to keep off Ferguson. He hadn’t said anything about Sykes.

  After an hour Alvarez was starting to need to piss something bad, but ten minutes later he’d forgotten about his bladder entirely. Sykes was coming out of the building’s front door. He was carrying a suitcase and looked in a hurry. Alvarez sat up in his seat, watching Sykes intently as he hailed a taxi, starting the engine as one pulled up, putting the Dodge in gear as Sykes climbed in.

  The taxi was easy to follow. Alvarez hung back two cars, quickly realizing that it was heading for Dulles. Maybe Sykes was going overseas, somewhere sunny on the coast of the Indian Ocean.

  Alvarez took out his cell phone and cycled through his numbers until he found the name he was looking for. He hit dial, switched the phone to speaker, and put it in his lap so he could get both hands back on the wheel.

  After seven rings a man answered. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Joe, it’s Antonio. I need a favour, fast.’

  ‘Man, I’m only a Fed on weekdays. I’m at the park with my kid. Can’t it wait?’

  ‘Would I be calling if it could?’

  A pause. ‘Okay, what can I do?’

  ‘I need you to check credit-card transactions in the name of Kevin Sykes.’ He gave Sykes’s address.

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘He’s bought an airline ticket, and I need to know where he’s going.’

  ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘He’s on the way to the airport now, so not long.’

  ‘My wife is giving me dirty looks. I’m not going to get any tonight.’

  ‘Spare me the details. Just hurry, please. It’s important.’

  ‘I’ll phone the office now.’

  Alvarez thanked him and hung up. His phone rang after eleven minutes.

  ‘Okay, your friend Mr Sykes used his AmEx to buy a round trip from Dulles to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, by way of Paris and Amsterdam. Air France leaving at eleven fifteen. That’s a twentyfour-hour flight. And I figured if you wanted to know where he’s flying to, you’ll want to know where he’s going when he gets there.’

  ‘Yeah. Where?’

  ‘Some city in Tanzania, Tanga. It’s on the coast. He’s booked himself a room at a hotel there.’

  ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘Same way I know about his flight. His credit card.’

  ‘Shit, I didn’t even think.’

  ‘Well, you sound tired.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘There you go then. Plus, you never were very smart to begin with.’

  A few seconds later Alvarez was calling the airport. He couldn’t risk
taking the same flight as Sykes, even if the two had only met a couple of times in person. Alvarez learned that the next Air France flight left six hours later, which would give Sykes too much of a head start. He also learned that a Northwest flight leaving an hour after Sykes could get him direct to Amsterdam in time to join the same flight down to Tanzania. It was also cheaper.

  Surprised but pleased, Alvarez gave his credit-card details to the operator without hesitation. If Sykes was going to Tanzania, it could be for only one reason.

  He knew where the missiles were.

  CHAPTER 69

  Eighty Miles East of Tanga, Tanzania

  Monday

  12:27 EAT

  Sykes squinted against the glare of the afternoon sun. He stood on the deck of the commercial salvage vessel hired by Dalweg and Wiechman. The pair were former Navy SEALs who ran their own diving-and-salvage company based a few hundred miles up the coast in Kenya. They didn’t have the greatest of service records before leaving their respective teams, Dalweg in particular. He’d left the navy with a dishonourable discharge for beating a prostitute so bad she almost died. But the retired special-forces guys had been used by the company before on deniable operations and knew how to keep their mouths shut.

  The pair had arrived in Tanga the day before Sykes and had hired the boat and purchased equipment they weren’t able to bring across the border. A sizeable chunk of cash had already been wired into Dalweg and Wiechman’s company bank account. They would get the same amount again when the mission had been completed.

  As Ferguson had made clear, Sykes had first informed them of the rough details of their task and had only given them a full briefing when they were on the boat.

  ‘That’ll increase the fee by twenty-five per cent,’ Dalweg had said.

  Sykes had assured him that he would see to it when the job was done. Figuring that would happen, Sykes had only offered them half of what Ferguson was willing to pay. Even with their increased fee, Sykes would still walk away with a fat few K’s of the total in his own pocket. He was pretty pleased with his brokering skills, and it felt good to be ripping off that fucker Ferguson too.

  Sykes found Dalweg and Wiechman to be typical ex-military types, particularly ex-spec ops guys. They were big built and tanned, with lined and weathered faces and stares that could curdle cream. Both were around forty and had the scars and stories that only men who had fired rifles in anger carried. Despite their penchant for expletives and bad taste in jokes, Sykes found them to be all business.

  The temperature had slowly been on the increase since the boat had left port, and Sykes was sweating more than he had in years. He wore long shorts and a T-shirt that was showing dark stains under the armpits and at the centre of his chest. He would’ve taken his shirt off, but, despite his weekly gym visits, he felt very body conscious alongside the two former SEALs, who both had arms as thick as his thighs. He knew, even without their taking a look at his love handles, that they already looked down on him as a soft CIA pen pusher who had no place in the field.

  They had dropped into the sea twenty minutes ago and had assured Sykes their recon dive would take no more than half an hour. With the aid of standard dive tanks, they had descended to the seabed to examine the frigate and the missiles. They would then surface and plan how best to extract them from the sunken ship. With luck they would be back at port before dark, and anything they couldn’t get today would be extracted tomorrow.

  There was a big hydraulic winch fitted onto the deck, next to which was a large amount of equipment that Sykes didn’t recognize, and he didn’t want to show his ignorance by asking for it to be explained. He knew it was salvage-and-demolitions equipment, but that was the extent of his knowledge. He unscrewed the top from a bottle of water and took a long drink.

  The ocean was far calmer than he expected, but Sykes was a certified land lover who much preferred a swimming pool and a deck chair to a beach and surf. He’d popped a couple of sea-sickness pills just in case, and it was almost time for some more.

  Normally waiting around with nothing to do would have frustrated Sykes, but he was deep in thought. It wasn’t long ago that he was fantasizing about briefcases full of dollar bills and bank balances with lots of zeros. Not any more. The close calls and narrow escapes of the past couple of weeks, combined with the new insight into Ferguson’s plans, had left him feeling scared and regretful. If he wasn’t in so deep, Sykes would have gone straight to Procter to fess up. Ferguson’s comment about the lethal injection was never far from Sykes’s mind.

  Whatever else happened, Sykes was sure of one thing: it wasn’t going to end well. Ferguson had shown himself to be a thoroughly unscrupulous and spiteful bastard who Sykes could barely trust. After the way Ferguson had made sure everyone who knew anything about his plans had met with the grim reaper, how did Sykes know he himself wouldn’t end up being a similar liability that needed silencing?

  That thought had meant he’d barely slept since Ferguson had ordered him to fly to Tanzania. He put a hand to the back of his shorts and checked that the SIG was still there. He’d kept it on his person every second since landing. Dalweg and Wiechman didn’t strike him as the kind of guys who would turn hitman for a few extra bucks, but he wasn’t about to take the chance.

  He knew he was probably just being paranoid. Ferguson needed him. But Sykes, who was aware of his own considerable usefulness and the irrationality of having him killed, was also perfectly aware that Ferguson had shown himself to not always be the most rational of individuals.

  Until things had calmed down, Sykes would stay on guard. If anyone so much as looked at him funny, he would turn himself in. Maybe he’d be able to cut a deal, testify against Ferguson to avoid the needle. Better to spend his life behind bars than end up victim of Ferguson’s madness.

  He stared off into the distance. All around was water. Endless blue sea that met the sky at the horizon. He felt utterly alone. There was a splinter of worry at the back of his mind. What if Dalweg and Wiechman got chowed on by sharks or their tanks ruptured? Sykes didn’t know how to drive the boat, and he certainly didn’t know how to navigate.

  He took another gulp of water and turned around as he heard a noise. A head emerged from the sea a few feet from the boat. Wiechman. He pulled his goggles up from his eyes and removed his mouthpiece. He pushed sandy blond hair away from his face.

  ‘What’s it like?’ Sykes called.

  Wiechman shook his head. ‘It’s a wreck.’

  ‘I know that.’

  The former SEAL swam the short distance to the boat. When he reached the back he pulled himself on board. ‘It looks good,’ he said. ‘Hull’s split open real nice, so we’ve got an open channel straight to the missiles.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’s eight on board, four are crushed, smashed, or otherwise totally fucked up. The casings on two more have ruptured, and the seawater has corroded them to hell. We can get two for sure. It’s going to take all day, though, because of the amount of other crap down there burying them.’

  ‘Two’s good.’ Sykes’s eyes squinted behind his sunglasses. ‘We never figured on getting them all.’

  ‘Looks like they’re just practice warheads.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  Dalweg surfaced and swam to the boat. Wiechman wiped the water from around his eyes. ‘Fuckers are big, though, bigger than I thought; we’re never going to get them up here in one piece. We’ll have to dismantle them as best we can first. Then bring them up with balloons before we winch them on board.’

  ‘Whatever it takes.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Dalweg joined them on the deck. ‘Reckon with a little luck we’ll get you the two good ones up before we have to head back later. Can always come back tomorrow to see if anything else is recoverable.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Sykes said. ‘Just make sure you don’t blow yourselves up.’

  Dalweg laughed, but Sykes hadn’t been joking.

  He took a seat
while the two divers sorted through their gear. He didn’t understand how the hell he’d landed himself in such a mess. He’d thrown away his honour for nothing more than money. It wasn’t as if he was even poor to begin with. He’d just wanted more than he had. Sykes put a hand to his chest, feeling the sudden burn of rising acid. If his insides didn’t melt away before the end of this thing, he was going to be very surprised.

  Luckily it was almost over now. They would have two extremely valuable missiles within twenty-four hours, and they’d sell them to jihadists or North Korea or whichever psychos paid the most. Then they could develop their own arsenals of antiship cruise missiles, and Sykes would spend the rest of his life praying one was never used to sink an American vessel.

  Sykes knew he was greedy and stupid and a coward.

  But at least he was going to be rich.

  CHAPTER 70

  Tanga, Tanzania

  Monday

  17:03 EAT

  The target was quite clearly troubled. His manner bespoke of a man anxious and distressed. His movements were rushed and awkward, his face a picture of concern. What perturbed him Reed could only guess, but even if he could guess correctly, he wouldn’t care. Reed stood with his arms folded in front of his chest, leaning against a low wall. At least two dozen people were between Reed and his prey. Reed’s eyes were hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  Two large men, one blond, the other dark, disembarked from the cab of a three-ton truck caked with dirt. They were the target’s travelling companions. Both had deep tans and bulky limbs. Along with the target, the two men walked around to the back of the truck and peered inside. Seemingly satisfied, they crossed the road and approached their hotel. None of the three saw the Caucasian man who stood within a crowd of locals, watching them with an amoral gaze.

  The hotel was a decent one, or at least it was for this part of the world. Tanga was large and sprawling, but seemed quiet and sleepy, almost deserted in its centre, where once-impressive German colonial buildings had succumbed to age and disrepair. Around the bustling market Tanga was more vibrant and crowded, with colourful, busy streets lined with more modern but less-grand structures.