by Andy Maslen
Gabriel returned her look of doubt with a grim expression of his own.
“They’re not standard P226s. They’re modified. Chambered for high-power DU rounds. Get it right and we can take them out in one go. Vaporise whoever’s inside that Humvee and turn it into a Roman candle. Watch it, though. They’ve got a hell of a kick.”
Britta’s eyes widened so that white showed all the way round the bright blue irises. She swept her eyes clear of a few strands of hair, which had turned from copper to a deep brown as the rain soaked it.
“Depleted Uranium? In a pistol. Are you nuts? It’ll blow your fucking hand off!”
“It won’t. I’ve tried them.”
She shook her head, but picked up one of the pistols anyway.
“Heavy,” she said.
“Strengthened barrel. But mainly the DU. Aim high, they drop more than regular rounds.”
They crept into position, about thirty yards apart, bellies squashed down into the mud, and took up spots where they could see the Land Rover.
Gabriel gripped the SIG with both hands, cradling his right hand in the palm of his left. He locked his right elbow and braced his entire arm as best he could. Over to his right, he could see that Britta was doing the same.
Thirty seconds later, the Humvee roared up the road and pulled in, twenty feet behind the Land Rover. Two men, both white, heavily-muscled and dressed in black from head to toe, climbed out. Without shouting a warning, they levelled their pistols, squat black weapons Gabriel couldn’t identify through the driving rain, and emptied their magazines into the back window of the Land Rover.
OK. Bad men. Definitely bad men. Permission to engage.
Gabriel laid the SIG on its side and pulled his Glock from his waistband. No point wasting tank-buster ammunition on soft targets. Sensing that Britta would be doing the same, he aimed at the man on the left and shot him centre-mass with three closely grouped rounds.
The men collapsed simultaneously, their blood spraying out into the rain and turning a translucent pink.
Now for the main event. Without waiting for any more men to get out of the Humvee, Gabriel switched back to the SIG.
He re-braced his arm, gripped the butt tightly, looked along the iron sights and squeezed the trigger.
The heavens chose that exact moment to unleash their biggest fusillade of thunder yet. But the roar from the DU round was audible above the boom. A deafening percussive noise was accompanied by a two-foot jet of flame as the tiny projectile flashed from the muzzle and began the short journey to the target.
Free of the barrel, the dart shed its three guiding yellow sabots, which flew away like wasps.
Three milliseconds later, having flown in a virtually flat trajectory, the sharp point made contact with the Humvee’s armoured flank in the centre of the driver’s door.
One millisecond later, a second DU round, fired by Britta, penetrated the rear passenger compartment.
Propelled by the uprated loads of smokeless powder in their strengthened brass cartridges, the two DU darts bored through the Humvee’s steel armour as if it were made of cheese. Compressed by their own force of impact, they emerged into the cabin of the Humvee from their perfectly circular cross-section entry tunnels one millimetre shorter.
Their dissipating kinetic energy caused massive compression waves and generated enough heat to increase the internal temperature of the Humvee to a thousand degrees Celsius. The waves killed the occupants instantly. The heat reduced their flesh and bones to their constituent atoms before the darts left the Humvee via perfectly circular, 9 mm diameter tunnels drilled through the hardened steel.
The grey mist that until recently had been human beings was sucked out through the exit tunnels, where it vanished in the explosion as the Humvee and the ammunition it carried blew apart.
The entire destruction of their pursuers had taken one and a half seconds, from the moment the firing pin of Gabriel’s SIG hit the percussion cap to the point that the Humvee burst outwards and caught fire.
Gabriel and Britta hunkered down under the vegetation, hands over ears, eyes squeezed shut. Chunks of steel plate and fragments of Plexiglas showered down around them, thumping into the softened ground and stippling them with splotches of liquid red mud.
The smell of the flaming pile of wreckage, which until moments earlier had been a $300,000 Humvee, was an acrid stench, equal parts burning rubber and the sharp tang of steel heated to the point of ignition. Overlaying it all was the faint but unmistakable smell of charred meat.
“Keep down!” Gabriel shouted as Britta raised her head to get a better look.
Moments later, further stocks of small-arms ammunition inside the Humvee began exploding. Bullets flew out in all directions, whistling past them, shredding leaves, smashing branches and ploughing narrow furrows along the ground. Gabriel and Britta were sheltered from the volleys by a sturdy ironwood trunk that had toppled in front of them in the blast.
Once the rounds had all discharged, Gabriel signalled with his index finger. Gingerly they extracted themselves from their improvised bunker and stood. The rain was easing off and the few drops still falling sizzled and flared as puffs of steam as they hit the red-hot metal of the dead Humvee.
“Who the fuck were they?” Britta said, swiping her forearm over her face to dislodge the bigger mud clots that clung to her freckled cheeks.
“Not sure, exactly. But the kit, the clothing. The build. I’m thinking either South African or one of the US outfits that support their guys in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“Well they’re fucked now, that’s for sure. I never liked those guys, even when I was fighting alongside them. Always looked like they were enjoying the killing too much, you know what I mean?”
Gabriel nodded.
“So you said we’d been set up. Anybody in mind? You must have made a few enemies working for Don Webster, or on your own account. Anybody with enough cash to hire that lot?”
Gabriel paused before answering, aware that a crucial insight was locked away behind a door in his mind. He thought back to his original conversation with Barbara Sutherland and Don in her sitting room in Downing Street. The pause didn’t last long. Just long enough for the tumblers in the lock to fall into place . . .
Don’s oddly distracted manner as they left the MI6 building after meeting Sam Flack.
Click.
Philip Agambe’s scream in Xhosa.
Click.
His dying words, about Barbara Sutherland.
Click.
The threats repeated by Marsha Agambe.
Click.
The door swung open. And Gabriel didn’t like what he saw in the room behind. Disliked it so much he started to deny the thought itself.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Or, rather, I have an idea, but it’s such a shitty one I don’t want to believe it. I don’t think I even want to say it out loud.”
Britta swept her arm out to the horizon.
“Look around. You could rig up a PA system and scream it into the mic – I don’t suppose there’s anybody for a hundred miles in any direction who’d hear you.”
He frowned, wishing she’d laugh at what he was about to say, fearing she wouldn’t.
“I think it might be Barbara Sutherland.”
Britta spat out the water she’d just taken from a bottle.
“Fuck! What? You think the Prime Minister of Great Britain put out a contract on us with some heavy-duty paramilitary dudes in a Humvee? Jesus, Wolfe, I know you’ve got your problems, but that is properly crazy, even by your standards.”
He’d got his wish. But it didn’t make him feel better. Instead he put the case before Britta.
“I know it sounds a little crazy . . .”
“A little crazy? No, Gabriel, it sounds completely, one hundred percent, batshit crazy. That’s what it sounds.”
He waited for her to finish and tried again.
“I know all that, but,” he held up a palm to encourage her silence, “look at what we know
.” He held up five fingers and started counting off points, a habit he’d picked up from Don Webster. “One, Barbara authorises the trip. So she knows I’m here. The only other person who knows where we are is Don, and I trust him with my life. Yours, too. Next point, Philip Agambe should have been a Shona-speaker, according to Barbara. She told me off for not having the same quality intel as her. How come she got that wrong? Plus, he asked me if she’d sent me to kill him. How would he know that? And his dying words. That he’d take her down. Third point, Marsha Agambe on the TV. Making the same threat to expose her.” He finished counting and searched Britta’s face for a sign that she believed him. Her face was impassive. Not a line on her forehead, not a crinkle at the corner of her mouth.
“That’s a nice, neat story to explain your theory. But how about this? One, Barbara Sutherland owes her life to you, remember. Two, in case you’d forgotten, she’s a democrat. She goes to G7 meetings, NATO Security Council, European summits, all of that. Do you really think she’s spending her quiet time ordering foreign agents to assassinate her own people? And three, why?” Her eyes wide now, Britta spread her hands in front of her, palms uppermost. “Why would she do it, Gabriel? What motive could she possibly have?”
He looked away, wondering the same thing. Why does she want me dead? He was doing her bidding. He was loyal. He was working for The Department, for God’s sake. The protocols they all operated under meant that blowing the whistle on any of his work would be the equivalent of putting a pistol to his own temple and pulling the trigger.
“Honestly? I have no idea. Come on, we’d better get going. I hope the Land Rover’s still good to go.”
“Fine. But I think you need some sleep or some meds or a bloody big drink, because I’m not buying your theory about Barbara Sutherland, regardless of that business in Harare.”
The Land Rover was driveable, though the rounds from the private security men had blown out the windscreen. Gabriel knocked out the rest of the glass from the steel frame with the barrel of his Glock. “Dust protection might be a good idea,” he said.
They improvised masks from rags they found stuffed in a storage cubby in one of the rear doors. With Gabriel taking the wheel, they left the scene of their attempted murder, the stink of burnt-out Humvee making them wrinkle their noses behind the bandannas that gave them the look of Wild West cattle rustlers.
*
After six hours’ driving, taking two-hour shifts behind the wheel, they were both ready for a break from the relentless buffeting delivered by the Land Rover’s primitive suspension.
“Shall we find somewhere to camp?” Britta said from the passenger seat. “I’m beat.”
“Me too. According to the satnav, there’s a small lake coming up in a couple of miles. Let’s push on till we get there.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Ten minutes later, they arrived at the shoreline of the lake. Too small to have a name, it was still a pretty spot, with a flock of red-legged waders paddling in the shallows picking some sort of shellfish out of the mud beneath the water. The birds took off in a swirling cloud of white and grey as the Land Rover disrupted their peaceful feeding with its diesel clatter and fumes. Finding they weren’t under threat, the birds returned in ones and twos, then larger groups, until the entire flock, numbering many thousands, were calling to each other in staccato bursts of chirruping as they resumed feeding.
“I’m hungry,” Britta said. “And not for any more of those shit stridsportions, either.”
“You don’t like our field rations?”
“You ever had beef stew that tasted like that squeezy stuff they gave us?”
Gabriel wrinkled his nose and pulled his mouth down. “I’ve eaten worse.”
“Me too. And now I want to eat something better. Look around you, Wolfe. This place is teeming with game. We’re dressed in camo and we have two hunting rifles courtesy of the British Secret Service. Let’s go hunt ourselves some dinner, ja?”
Gabriel couldn’t help smiling. In all the years he’d known Britta Falskog, which were now in double figures, he’d never tired of her enthusiasm for shooting her own dinner.
There had been a time in Bosnia when, at the end of a long, cold and arduous day hunting a Serbian war criminal, she had insisted they go out with a sniper rifle to “find something tasty for the pot”. To the delight of their comrades, they’d returned an hour later with a small roe deer slung between them on a tree branch. The taste and smell of the roasted venison had stayed with him ever since, as had the aura of complete and utter stillness given off by the Swedish sharpshooter next to him as she watched and waited for the doe to move clear of a stand of young birch trees.
22
Plan B
LONDON
AMONG the predominantly male invitees to the reception at Downing Street, Barbara Sutherland stood out in her flame-red suit and high-heeled black shoes.
A tall man appeared silently at her left elbow. “Excuse me, Prime Minister,” he said. “May I introduce you to His Excellency the Minister for Arms Procurement, Sheikh Al-Bashravi ibn al-Ahmadi?”
“Thank you, David,” she said, then turned to greet the short, fat Arab man in traditional robe and headgear who had just been brought over to meet her. His brown eyes twinkled in the light from the chandeliers and his thick, black moustache gleamed with some sort of oil or wax. He bowed slightly then held out his hand.
Leaving his charge to the attentions of the Sheikh, the man the Prime Minister knew as David Brown – elegantly dressed in a handmade suit, woven navy-blue silk tie and highly polished black shoes – slipped away from the reception.
His phone’s screen displayed two alerts. A missed call, and a text:
Webster on Thames path opposite Houses of Parliament.
He dialled the ‘missed call’ number.
“Robert. Tell me it’s done,” he said.
“I’m afraid not. We were following the whole thing on a satellite link. Your two operatives were rather better trained than our squad of ex-jarheads. Better equipped, as well.”
Brown scratched the tip of his nose. “What do you mean, two?”
“I assumed you knew,” Hamilton said. “We picked up two figures in the Land Rover Webster supplied.”
“I wasn’t expecting him to take reinforcements.” He paused, just for a moment. “Never mind that for the moment. What are you going to do now?”
“Relax. I have an alternative plan. Do you happen to remember that nasty business in Zambia a couple of years ago? Couple of feuding warlords took to cutting each other’s supporters’ hands and feet off?”
“Vaguely,” Brown said, thinking of some photographs he’d been given in a briefing. “Those bloody Africans are always chopping somebody into stewing steak. Why?” he asked, pausing to smile at a Scandinavian diplomat passing him on her way to the reception.
“Because we equipped and trained the winning side. ‘The Rock and Roll Boys’, they called themselves, with, if I might say so, a startling lack of originality.”
“Just get on with it, Robert. I really don’t give a flying fuck what they were called or whether they won any prizes for literary effort.”
“Their head man is one Jonathan Makalele, though he calls himself General Rambo. We supplied weapons, ammunition and tactical training to Makalele and his gang of cutthroats. He owes me a favour. Rather a large one, in fact, since he now controls a sizeable goldmine and half the industrial protection rackets in his little corner of Mozambique. I was thinking, I might suggest he be on the lookout for a couple of white insurgents sent by British intelligence to infiltrate his supply chain and take him out. That should be enough to have the General locking and loading. I can’t believe your guys can withstand a full-blown assault from a warlord and his crew.”
“They’d better not. What do you need from me?”
“From you? Well, a GPS reference for wherever they’re heading would be nice. It would make an ambush a lot simpler than our last attempt.”<
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“Fine. I’ll have it over to you as soon as I can. And just promise me Wolfe and this mysterious sidekick of his are history.”
“Hyenas will be snacking on their remains within forty-eight hours. That’s a promise.”
“I wouldn’t make promises to me, Robert, unless you are one hundred percent sure you can keep them. Now, you must excuse me, I have a Prime Minister to manage.”
Ending the call, Brown returned to Barbara Sutherland’s side. She excused herself from the Arab man and walked to a quiet corner of the reception with Brown.
“What is it, David?”
“I’m afraid I am needed at the office.”
Outside, buttoning his navy-blue overcoat against the icy wind blowing up Whitehall towards him, and swinging a tightly-rolled black umbrella, Brown strode off towards the river.
*
About forty-five minutes later, as Don Webster was walking along a stretch of the path beside the Thames, looking across the river to the Houses of Parliament, a tall man in his sixties wearing a long, dark overcoat and carrying an umbrella veered into his path. Don tensed for a moment before relaxing. Muggers didn’t wear shoes with that degree of shine on the toes.
“Mr Webster?” the man said.
“Yes. Who are you?”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. But I wonder whether I might have a word with you. About your wife.”
Don frowned. “What about my wife?”
“I heard she had a stroke. I hope she’s recovering well.”
Don’s eyes blazed and he clenched his fists. “That’s none of your bloody business. Who the bloody hell are you?”
“I am somebody who works closely with the Prime Minster. In fact I just left her side. Now, I’ll tell you another condition that lays people low, Mr Webster. Apart from strokes, that is. Multiple sclerosis. Such a terrible disease. I hear it can make people suicidal. A friend of your wife’s died recently, didn’t she? What was her name? Georgina Paris. Was that it?”
Don set his mouth in a grim line, breathing loudly through his nose. Then he spoke.