The rain was now pelting down, and the strong wind was rustling the small tent like a mainsail in the sirocco. Jack took a large gulp of his coffee. Sean sensed more was to come.
‘I can tell you now, Sean, that I didn’t know the details on this list until you just showed it to me. But Dominic needs that list of moles and it’s my job to get it to him. If this name gets out, the government will fall but, worse than that, it will create the conditions for a new subversive government to take over. None of that is in anyone’s interests but I’ll make sure the endgame is played out properly – and for the benefit of the public too.’ Jack, as ever, kept his counsel but showed that he too was not happy with all that was happening around him.
‘One other thing you probably want to know, Sean – it was my idea all along to find a job for you and get you out of that jail. Dominic gave me this mission and I needed to make it happen. It was me who wanted to see you redeemed and brought back in from the cold. No one else.’
Sean looked up into the eyes of Jack, totally surprised at what he was hearing.
Chapter 44
Port-Vendre, France, 28 April 2016
Sean arrived at Natalie’s room at exactly 7.25pm.
‘Time to get down to business I think, Natalie,’ Sean said cheerily as he walked through the door, acting chirpily.
‘Why? What’s happened?’ she inquired, holding the door open.
‘Well, it’s all good. I have the files for you. It’s time to see you transfer that money into my account if you don’t mind. The files are all on a Dropbox site that Alfie uploaded them to. I also want to discuss the conditions under which Melissa is released.’
Natalie closed the door, simultaneously responding with a large smile. ‘Great, let’s have a celebratory drink and get down to business then.’
Natalie, looking elegant in a red dress and black heels, walked behind Sean as he strode purposefully to the round table next to the balcony.
He sat adjacent to her laptop, the smell of Natalie’s perfume permeating the air. Sean placed his phone next to the laptop and gently aimed his covert live-feed camera, hidden in his jacket button, towards the keyboard.
The live feed went directly to one of Samantha’s operators sitting at his desk in London. Sean visualised the activity of Samantha and her operators back in MI5, who were watching as Natalie typed in her login name and password on the keyboard. Sean’s phone, issued by GCHQ, had a very powerful Wi-Fi encryption scanner inside it, and it began to lock onto the wireless ports within Natalie’s laptop. The technology had been designed by GCHQ and started to retrieve data via cyber vulnerabilities and to break through the encrypted firewalls of the laptop’s Wi-Fi system, creating a data tunnel. It then retrieved a series of files and operating system codes which were immediately uploaded across an encrypted point-to-point link, allowing an operator in Cheltenham to grab the files. The operator would soon be able to mimic the Wi-Fi and 4G connections that Natalie would link to, and then breach the established data security software to retrieve all elements of the operating system held on her laptop. He would effectively have full command and control. Once he had confirmed he had control, Samantha authorised him to embed a small application – and he began retrieving the files he wanted.
Sean asked Natalie to transfer the funds, so he could then hand over the files. Natalie opened up an HSBC online account, one of many she used, and Sean captured the keystrokes she made on the keyboard via the covert camera. Samantha was immediately able to penetrate the account using the apps that had been placed on the computer as well as the typing her operator had picked up from Sean’s still photographs. Natalie then transferred fifty per cent of the funds to two of his accounts. Sean sat back and passed the logins to Natalie for the cloud account holding the data. Sean passed the envelope to her and, before long, she had gained access to the site and files.
Natalie was in. Sean could see her elation, and sense her thoughts. She was joyous that she had succeeded and was thinking about the effect it would have on her Moscow overlords. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at Sean. She then began trawling through all the files. Sean felt pleased.
‘Look at the one called QUERY,’ Sean said wryly. ‘Quite a revelation if you ask me.’ He then stood up and made his way to the drinks bar.
Chapter 45
Languedoc-Roussillon, 28 April 2016
Swartz and the eight SAS soldiers remained pensive as they waited to move out of their bolt-hole. Few people talked, most just sat checking their kit, some had the odd discussion and each of them visualised their mission-specific tasks for the night ahead. There was no gung-ho behaviour, no high fives, no pre-match banging of heads. They were just waiting for a concise and highly charged set of orders to be given to them by Swartz.
The guys knew they’d be in for yet another of Swartz’s stirring speeches for this set of orders. They all knew him well and responded to him. They would follow him anywhere. He looked around each of the faces as they sat close together in a semicircle in the room.
He gave each person one short nod and a curious smile before he began speaking. The smile meant, ‘Follow me boys, you’ll be fine.’ Swartz had a real knack of being personable and genuine when it came to delivering such a crunch briefing, which he relished and enjoyed. His brief focused the hearts and minds of every single soul in the room.
Swartz did not make the briefing too long. To have effect, he knew it had to be short, sharp and to the point. But he did know he had to raise the tempo and give a morale-boosting uplift to the assembled team, which he did with aplomb.
The atmosphere was tense as he finished going through the timings. With professional control, the small team were now at the apogee of their instincts – primed like elite athletes, high on adrenalin, immersed in courage.
*
They moved quietly as they mounted the vehicles and headed to their drop-off points. The first phase would see Phil taking control of how they entered the building: he would provide the eyes on the three Russians that they would take out and kill. Phil assigned Jim and Chris to take control of the sensors and central initiation switch and to look out for any covert cameras that might be in play.
The first four men made their way to their pre-identified positions around the building, hard up against its skin, whilst avoiding the external PIRs. It was now 7.45pm and reasonably dark. Swartz would lead the shooters who would execute the kill – they made their way to their own start positions around the cottage. Radios would not be allowed to transmit until Phil had done his job by means of an explosive entry through the windows on the ground floor.
Chris set up his endoscope and immediately had eyes on the room that Melissa was booby-trapped in. The other team had eyes on the kitchen and hall. It was quiet, with only the slight noise of distant traffic in the air.
Meanwhile, Jim was poised to take out the initiation switches, which he assumed were under the sofa in the lounge.
They sat silently and waited.
Swartz watched Phil set up his small line of explosives on the two windows and door to be used for entry. It took him a while to carefully lay out the detonation cord and detonators, and then make his way around the house to each entry point he would soon blow open. His fingerless black gloves allowed him to calmly twist the initiation wires and accurately set up the detonators deep within the line of blue plastic explosive. He pre-prepared his detonation-cord connections and used small metal clips to make sure it all lay in a structured manner. Then he rolled the small coil of black wire back to his start point.
Swartz helped him with the coil of detonation cord, feeling the sweat emerge on his brow and hearing the sound of distant thunder as he watched Phil set up his remote detonating device. Phil used his teeth to expose two wires through the plastic, twisted them and then finally pressed them into a spring-loaded capsule which he held between his knees.
Phil was good to go. He took a long breath and checked the time on his army-issue watch. Swartz heard Ph
il hum, in a curious way, the Welsh national anthem, ‘Land of my Fathers’, as he always did, keeping his fingers crossed and hoping that the foreigners were not watching the CCTV, given the activity that was about to ensue. Swartz then watched Phil mimic his next moves – mind and movement rehearsals for his actions in the room – something he had watched Phil do all day during quiet periods. It was vital Phil moved with great speed to the bomb if he was to keep his life – and save Melissa’s.
It was all set. They didn’t know exactly where the Russians were – but they knew where they could and couldn’t go, given the myriad of booby traps inside the house.
Melissa was lying on her bed, curled up in the foetal position with the bomb around her neck. Swartz checked his MP5 safety catch was off and checked that Phil and the other operators were primed to spring into action. The explosive means of entry was set.
Swartz heard the distant thunder, knowing it would get closer, as a deep blackness drew in. He waited.
Chapter 46
Languedoc-Roussillon , 28 April 2016
As Sean leant over to lift his cup in Natalie’s hotel room, all hell broke loose. He heard the boom of a thunderous explosion as the door was smashed open and saw the black outlines of very large men, who pounced on him, smashing him to the ground.
He heard the crack and thump of a double-tap gunshot as he saw Natalie stand and fire two shots into the second attacker, who kept coming straight for her despite bullets hitting his chest. The body armour repelled the nine-millimetre shots Natalie had fired and she was pounced on by a huge man, who punched her straight in the face before turning her onto her chest, and then thrusting her head into the carpet. Sean was bundled to the ground, his arms and shoulders pinned down, and a set of plastic tie-wrap handcuffs violently strapped around his wrists. He felt the pain of his nose breaking as he was brutalised into submission.
‘What the fuck?’ Sean screamed, before being kicked firmly in the ribs. They pulled him to his feet as the shock of capture registered once more with him.
‘Right: get these two out of here, do a check for weapons and make sure you search them thoroughly before you get them into the wagons,’ the leader shouted, whilst gesturing to his team to get a move on.
Sean was frogmarched outside the hotel. All he saw was blue and white police tape and flashing blue lights everywhere. The hotel had been quietly evacuated and he caught the eyes of a crowd of people watching from a distance behind a cordon manned by the gendarmerie.
Chapter 47
Languedoc-Roussillon, 28 April 2016
It was 9.55pm. Cold dark shadows. A gloved hand firmly placed on the shoulder.
‘Fucking hell Sean, you’re cutting it fine,’ Swartz said, as Sean watched him turn calmly.
‘Late but primed, mate. The bloody French overdid it a bit.’
‘Shit, I can see that. You look like Phil ‘The Nose’ now – your conk is bent to fuck.’
‘It breathes. All set to go?’
‘Yep. Let’s do this.’
At 10.05pm Sean moved round the corner, tapped Phil on the back and gave the order. He watched as Phil stood up and moved his thumbs across the small, square detonating equipment until he felt them reach the recessed buttons. Sean heard the whispered words ‘Three, two, one, firing now.’ Phil pressed the two buttons simultaneously, sending the electric current down the wire and into the detonation cord.
‘BOOM.’ The air around the cottage vacuumed up and outwards and the over-pressure of the explosion rocked every timber of the building. The noise was deafening and each of the three men inside were semi-frozen with shock. The blast wave forced the two windows out and the doors blew off their hinges – all with simultaneous precision. Phil had given two firm presses on his radio switch to signal to the rest of the team, followed by another two presses which signified five seconds until explosion. Each of the men heard the short crackles of the button being pressed, tensed up poised to strike and shot into action as soon as the doors and windows were blown off.
Sean threw a flash bang stun grenade into the kitchen and waited for the six rapid flashes and explosions. The flash bangs were over in less than three seconds as Sean stepped around the corner into the room, with Swartz slightly behind his left shoulder. Sean saw a Russian at the end of the room, frozen with shock, and aimed the red laser at the middle of his forehead. He fired two shots to the head and another two shots at his torso as the Russian began falling to the ground. Sean sprinted past him and turned right into the hall, moving quickly but breathing hard.
*
Jim leapt into the lounge seconds after the windows had exploded and was at the sofa within four quick strides. ‘Fuck!’ he shouted, as he saw an incendiary device explode to his right, making a loud crack and a shallow pop before it burst into flames. The flashback engulfed him, before the flames swamped the wall and curtains at the end of the room.
‘Must have set off a bloody sensor,’ he muttered, as he looked at the flashing movement device located high above him to the left. The fireball reduced in intensity and he cracked on at speed, pushing the sofa backwards as quickly as he could. The heat in the room was increasing. He saw two square plywood boxes with black wires leading straight into them and two mobile phones strapped to the side: the command box for all the booby traps in the house. He shuddered, knowing that at any time someone could detonate the devices from a remote location many miles away. He was staring into the abyss – and he froze. One of the phones was ringing. He knew he had seconds to live.
But the seconds continued. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he ranted. ‘This is crazy.’
Nothing happened.
The phone continued to ring. He knew he had seconds before the next one would ring, and he instinctively grabbed the phone, ripping the wires from its connection. The fire inside the room was raging and he knew he was in trouble.
‘The bomber fucked it up and something failed,’ he mused instinctively. He had been staring at a complex multi-initiation bomb and watched the phone screen light up in green as it rang. He knew the first phone had to ring followed by the second before full initiation would take place.
He had done it. He had stopped the entire house from being blown up. He lay there for a few seconds, gripped by the sheer luck of a failing circuit. The fire was searing, and the flames were now whipping out of the windows and shooting up to the second floor. The heat was intense.
*
Sean and Swartz had moved through the hall at pace and were starting to climb the stairs when they heard the explosion above them. It was a deep pounding blast that reverberated around them, rocking the staircase violently. Sean saw Swartz blown backwards and was showered from the debris falling from above. Sean recovered from the shock and saw a gaping hole in the roof above where the landing had collapsed, with one of the Russians falling through it. He pumped four shots straight into him before moving back down the stairs to the hall as a huge fireball swamped the second floor of the cottage. The building was now in meltdown and Sean assumed that no one would have survived the explosion on the second level. He rushed into the dining room where Melissa was coiled up shaking with fear on the bed, and screaming.
He saw Phil leap through the window into the dining room and heard the crack and thump of the explosion next door where Jim would either win or lose the day.
Sean watched as Phil dealt with the power leads of the first active infrared beam, watched the power lights drain down and gave the thumbs up to Sean as he bent on one knee. The beams of the virtual fence were de-armed.
‘Stay perfectly still Melissa. Lie on your back for me,’ Sean commanded as Phil de-armed the other active infrared beams. ‘We’ll sort you out now, just stay quiet and lie perfectly still. I need to sort this bomb out on your neck and we’ll have you out in a jiffy.’
Melissa was shaking incessantly and crying with intense fear. Her feet were trembling from the panic and Swartz held her legs down as Phil crouched down to deal with the bomb attached to her neck
. He ripped her gilet open to reveal a thin black harness with a tiny aerial, a 12-volt power pack and a tiny electronic LED timer.
‘What the hell?’ Sean mumbled as he saw the secondary initiation system in front of Phil’s face. It was an electronic timer that would initiate if the Wi-Fi signal failed at any time.
‘Shit,’ Phil said. ‘Sean – move that bloody Wi-Fi router to the window. If we take her out of the room and the Wi-Fi goes down, the timer will kick in. I don’t know the countdown, but it will trigger if we take her outside the Wi-Fi area.’
Sean responded instantaneously, and then moved straight back to watch as Phil checked how the bomber had set up the circuitry. Sean knew immediately that the bomber had put together a damn good system. If these were collapsing circuits then Phil wouldn’t be able to cut any wires and, if he did, the explosives around Melissa’s neck would detonate, taking her head and torso off and killing him and Phil instantly too. Sean held Melissa still whilst Phil entered his world of instinct. Phil pressed a button on his waistband and, to Sean’s astonishment, he heard the canned music of ‘The Triumphal March’ from Aida – Phil’s favourite tune to accompany his hands and mind working in rapid synchronisation to defeat the bomb.
Despite Sean nursing her, Melissa shook continuously like she was having a fit – he noticed her breathing was shallow before she fell unconscious.
*
Gregory was lying on his hotel bed when his laptop alarmed loudly. He didn’t have the CCTV screens open on his laptop and had to scramble quickly to get the software booted up. He then reconfigured the six screens, so he could quickly see what was happening in the cottage. Using the mouse, he dragged the screen to show the view of the dining room and enlarged it.
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