The clipboard hit the man square on the chin, allowing Sean the milliseconds he needed. He launched himself into the man’s torso but got wacked by his elbow in a vicious blow to Sean’s jaw. Unperturbed, Sean grabbed the man’s wrist, bending it with such force that his pistol dropped neatly to the floor. Sean ripped the man’s left arm behind his back, grabbing it so hard that he was thrown by the momentum to the floor, where he wrenched the man’s arm so violently that it dislocated from its socket. The man was screaming in agony and his body went limp. Sean wrenched the arm again to cull any form of retaliation, knowing he now had to kill the man. Breathing wildly, Sean wrapped his forearm around the man’s neck, tightened his grip and ripped it backwards with such ferocity that no one could survive such trauma.
He heard the crack of a broken neck and lay there trying to catch his breath.
Chapter 14
Istanbul Port
Sean didn’t lie still for too long. He had a job to complete. He rose to his feet, shaking off his aggressor’s clasped hand and rolling the heavy corpse off his chest. Sean’s pulse was racing, and his throat was now as dry as a bone. He reached for his rucksack, grabbed his water bottle and swallowed half a litre of water before squatting down to think through his next moves. His jaw throbbed as he checked the bone for any serious injury.
His aim was to get as much intelligence from this building as he could. The levels of forensic collection he retrieved from this location would be the launch pad he needed to tackle Nadège and to find out the degrees of sophistication the Iranians had weaved into their planning. Sean gazed around the room and started to control his breathing. Tonight was the only chance he would get and, whilst he now had a body to get rid of, he was not going to pass up the chance and abort the mission. The mission was simple. Get in, verify the site was being used by the Iranians, grab what intelligence he could, get out. Then move on to Nadège.
He momentarily thought of D providing some sort of award for this mission if he got it right, but then again, he remembered he’d never get any such rewards. His life as a legitimate officer of the Crown had long gone. He was now a rogue agent easily deniable by HM Government and no one would give a hoot if he was killed on this operation. A mosquito buzzing at his ear brought him back to his senses as he realised he was expendable here. Why run the risk of multiple casualties during a normal covert search when a deniable operation and a deniable person could easily be waved away by the British intelligence services? A win-win for Jack and MI5 if it produced the goods, and zero loss if Sean was captured or killed.
Sean swiped the air a few times to get rid of the mosquito and focused. Where could he dispose of the body? How could he clean up the site? He stood above the corpse, knowing he had to act fast. Dump the body first? Or collect the intelligence he needed? It wasn’t long before he was dragging on the cigarette he had vowed not to light. He decided he needed to start the search first and deal with the corpse later.
Sean retrieved some of the technical materials he needed for the search from his rucksack. He placed an explosive trace-detector kit on the ground - the type used to identify whether a room had any occupants who were handling explosives by swabbing obvious surfaces that they would touch. Finally, he carefully extracted a machine that would be used to analyse the trace-detection swabs and provide an indication on the three-inch LCD screen of any chemicals present on the swabs. The equipment was a forensic spectrometer and would determine the types of chemical substances he might find at extremely low trace levels. It had been miniaturised for single-person operation and was normally the size of a desktop computer.
Sean glanced at the body, still wondering how to dispose of it quietly and without it being found for some time. The port basin was the obvious answer but how the hell would he lug a sixteen-stone body across the concourse and roads? He felt beads of sweat drip onto his cheek, wiped his brow and took another swig of water to try and stave off the headache he knew was coming. He spotted a red forklift truck and had a thought.
Sean walked around the large warehouse, looking for a suitable crate or box. One big enough to hold the man’s body with additional space for a solid quantity of scaffolding poles which he had spied on the racking. Within minutes he was putting a makeshift coffin together before dragging the dead weight towards the crate, which was placed next to the forklift truck. Sean adjusted his headtorch and sat the body up. He knew the man’s face would be etched in his memory if he looked at it once more, so he didn’t. He was going to slam this episode shut in a drawer in his mind that he would never ever open again. Just like how he coped with all of life’s ordeals. He knelt down, braced his back and then, with both arms under the man’s armpits, he grabbed him in a bear hug. Sean groaned, banged out a few short sharp breaths and then forced the man’s chest against the crate – a further couple of heaves saw gravity take its course as the body tumbled into the crate. Fifteen minutes later the crate was filled with ballast, the lid nailed down securely and the red truck manoeuvred into place with its forks perched ready to go under the crate. The short drive to the quayside would hopefully not draw too much attention with the port’s staff still diverted by the cyber-meltdown.
With a sense of real danger now, Sean knuckled down and got on with the job in hand by heading straight into the unlocked workshop. He needed to act more quickly. He began swabbing the desktops of the laboratory that was open, remembering to swab the door-handle first. Then he went to the keyboards – it was obvious that people handling explosives might touch them. The room had waist-high workbenches around two of its sides, with racking bolted onto the walls that held a variety of boxes and equipment. In the centre of the room were two desks standing opposite each other with a computer on each of them.
Sean placed his mini spectrometer on the high workbench adjacent to the frosted window, switched on the machine and waited for it to boot up. The workshop was a mechanised freight and sorting room where each workbench had machine wrappers, desktop drills and a variety of packaging on them.
Sean gently inserted the first swab into the receptacle of the spectrometer which would provide forensic data on the traces of particles from the surfaces he had swabbed. The machine took a few seconds to analyse the swab and then blinked for a few seconds before squirting out its analysis onto a red digital screen. He looked at the reading, letting out a long sigh. He blinked a few times, trying to focus on the small text, but he was certain. Certain that what he saw first were the four large letters PETN. The abbreviation for pentaerythritol tetranitrate – an organic compound used in high-grade military explosives. Traces of explosive content had been left on the metallic surfaces and the door-handle. Squinting, he checked the next letters on the LCD screen. He made out the letters TNT, which comprised a smaller percentage of the trace compound. He didn’t know it at the time, but this mixture of PETN and TNT provided the compound pentolite, a powerful explosive used in rockets that could penetrate five inches of armour plating.
Sean stood back, knowing he had got a result. The facility was being used by state-sponsored terrorists with the legitimate frontage of a commercial company. He’d already placed transmitters on all the IT servers and surreptitious key-loggers on every computer downstairs, as well as photographing key documents that might be of intelligence use. But if he found any bomb-making equipment it would verify what he thought about this place. That it was being used as a hub to store bomb-making equipment before it was smuggled into Europe or the Middle East and then assembled to strike against the terrorists’ final targets. Sean worked through the permutations of how such a bomb-making cell might work. They could build the core parts of a bomb, such as the power supply and timer unit, elsewhere. Perhaps even build the complex electronics in another country before shipping them to where a team could construct the final device before it was deployed at a critical infrastructure target. Sean knew that most of the smuggling routes into Europe traversed the Balkan states of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia and Croatia and onwards throu
gh Hungary into the heart of Western Europe. He suspected that this warehouse played a part in a complex logistics chain that would be using routes where officials had been bribed at border crossings, customs posts and freight stations. The drivers, couriers, money mules and hired labour would all be operating together as a highly organised gang, with the Iranian MOIS officers managing every aspect of the operation.
Sean sat on the leather swivel chair in the centre of the room and began to spin it clockwise. Slowly. He looked around the room, scanning areas he might have missed. What had he overlooked? He hadn’t found any bomb-making equipment, hadn’t found any explosives and the trace levels of explosive compounds were low. Just as those thoughts crossed his mind he noticed something underneath a table in the corner of the workshop. For some odd reason there was a carpet under the table. Under the table. Why? He reminded himself of his covert-search training all those years ago. Look for the absence of the normal, and the presence of the abnormal.
‘Bloody hell Sean,’ he mouthed dramatically. ‘Get a grip. It’s right in front of your eyes. The presence of the abnormal. A fucking carpet under a table.’ He sprang to his feet, rushed across the room, heart beating with anticipation, and tugged at the carpet. It took him a few heaves to pull the five-foot carpet away but below it was a large grey lid – about two-foot square with a recessed handle in the middle.
Could it be booby-trapped? No, surely not. His thought process suggested it would be unlikely but, nonetheless, he needed to be cautious. He felt around the rim for any obvious wires or booby-trap triggers. Nothing. Then he had the thought it might be on a pull switch. But where was the means to disarm it if he was the custodian of the void? His threat assessment, made within a few seconds, told him it would be fine. He pulled on the lug and placed the lid to his right-hand side. Grappling for his pen torch he peered inside the void, spotting a number of small cardboard boxes. A dozen or so. He pulled one out and stopped to think. He needed to make sure the occupants didn’t know that he’d found this small cache and tampered with the contents. Then he’d need to maintain constant surveillance on the warehouse, its staff and the table with the carpet under it. This he knew could be achieved by hacking into the CCTV cameras that operated within the workshop.
He looked carefully to see how the cardboard box was sealed and took a photograph of it before taking a few shots of the void and its cache of contents. The box was sealed with heavy-duty Sellotape. He looked at the others in the void. Most were sealed but the one furthest from his reach wasn’t. He memorised exactly how they were arranged and reached into the void to lift that box out. It had interlocking triangle-shaped wings. Next, he gently pulled the flaps apart, surprised to see a myriad of electronic circuits and batteries. He wasn’t sure what it all meant and knew he’d need Phil Calhoun, his explosives expert, to have a look at the photos later to verify it was indeed bomb-making equipment. He photographed inside the box without touching anything, capturing the images of carefully welded circuit boards, two cigarette-packet-sized boxes with a number of leads coming from them and what looked like a couple of small black aerials that were not connected to anything. He was no expert, but everything he saw told him that this was some kind of telemetry manufactured to high precision and likely to be used to initiate IEDs. IEDs that would kill and maim.
Sean was done. He had collected a stash of intelligence on the target-site exploitation but started to feel his headache getting worse, probably from the elbow he had taken in the face earlier. He grabbed his water bottle and downed another half-litre in one go before wiping his forehead with his jacket cuff. He wanted to know more about this Iranian operation and how it was linked to Nadège and her role in it. He knew The Court’s cyber-team would begin exploiting and analysing the servers’ data and he had a team that might just be able to help put this puzzle together – and hopefully put a damned big nail into what appeared to be a high-grade bomb-making operation.
For now though, he had to extract himself on the forklift truck, dumping a body en route.
Chapter 15
Istanbul
Midday sun. Searing heat. And a pounding headache. Sean walked slowly up the incline of the long driveway that led to a villa that Samantha had managed to acquire from the CIA as the team’s operating base in the city. Sean was wearing blue shorts and a white T-shirt, wraparound sunglasses and a black baseball hat and clutching his red rucksack, which was full of goodies from the insertion the night before. He felt sluggish and drowsy, not having slept at all well, and his headache had simply got worse.
He stopped halfway up the incline and turned to admire the views of the city from the neatly manicured grounds of the holiday mansion. He spied the grand domes and elegant minarets of the Suleiman Mosque in the far distance and a flotilla of sea-going vessels in the busy shipping lanes transporting all manner of produce and tourists around the inlets of the Istanbul archipelago. The magnificent views of the Bosphorus Bridge provided the perfect backdrop for some of the world’s most expensive seafront hotels a short distance down the road. Parked just outside the gate was a Turkish telecoms van with a dog cocking its leg to take a leak on the rear wheel, its elderly owner tugging on the lead.
Sean walked towards the villa entrance, catching the sensation of water droplets on his face, which were being hurled from garden sprinklers around the immaculate lawns. As he approached the entrance he was pleasantly surprised to see Samantha waiting for him under an ornate porch. She was leaning against a white pillar with her arms folded and a look on her face that appeared to be an impatient grimace. She looked to the entire world to be a disgruntled housewife about to lambast a late and drunk husband. Sean rubbed his chin, hoping he wouldn’t get another blow to it, and smirked. Here we go, he said to himself, head down and trying hard not to laugh, which seemed to produce more pain in the jaw, suggesting it might be fractured.
‘Late on bloody parade yet again Mr Richardson’ was the first quip from Samantha. Probably the first of many to come, he thought. He couldn’t help but love her feisty and impish character. At least she has some charisma, he thought.
Sean kept his head down until he was just in front of her, stopped and took his hat off, doffing it to offer an olive branch. He had evaded her for so long now. ‘Good morning Sergeant Major. How’s the troops?’ he inquired sarcastically, knowing full well that Samantha liked to keep a house in good order with no irksome behaviour.
Samantha threw him a look, then stepped forward and gave him a big hug. It seemed to last an age.
‘The troops are inside waiting for you, wanting to know when they will eat and when they’ll get paid,’ she said, floating an appealing expression. ‘You look good by the way. Oh, and it’s been too long.’
It had indeed been too long. Sean had managed to keep Samantha at bay for a long time, much to her annoyance. She was indeed persistent. Sean always gave her that. A dalliance or two over the last ten years had seen them remain great friends, lovers on many occasions, but Sean was always happy to keep the relationship at arm’s length. Nice and casual. But Samantha was not happy with that. Sean noticed she had taken some time and effort to make herself look good. Classy make-up, outlandish curls in her dyed blonde hair and deep red lipstick, which Sean always liked. He put his arms around her and gave her a firm hug. He felt her breathe across his right ear and the puckered kiss on his cheek. The smell of her favourite Penhaligon’s perfume lingered hard. Sprayed just before he’d arrived. He knew it.
‘So, let me show you around. It’s just what we need and a great base for us.’
Sean watched her turn, momentarily admired her short green dress and began to wonder how this was going to pan out over the next few weeks or months together. Samantha was a specialist. An expert cryptographer and signals intelligence officer who Sean had met when she started her career in the Intelligence Corps in Northern Ireland. She had come a long way since those heady days of the ‘90s. Speaking five languages, including fluent Russian, she could also turn
her hand to managing the logistics of any major intelligence operation with boots on the ground. She liked to be in charge too.
Sean looked around the bright and airy courtyard. He loved the feel of the open-plan villa, which had a small water feature in the centre of a huge courtyard illuminated from the atrium glazing above. He spotted a mezzanine balcony before being ushered by Samantha into a dining room that had a huge captain’s table as its centrepiece. The walls were pleasantly adorned with paintings of historic ships navigating the Bosphorus channel and his eyes alighted on expensive silver goblets and urns that took centre stage on an adjacent oak sideboard.
Jugsy was the first to greet him. ‘Oi, big man. You haven’t paid me yet, what’s going on?’ he barked sarcastically with a beaming smile, arms outstretched.
Sean laughed, casting his rucksack aside on a nearby chair before throwing out his hand and gripping Jugsy’s firmly. ‘It’s all in wads in my rucksack, you impatient bugger. How’s it going?’
‘Oh you know, bills to pay, not enough fun and working for idiots like you lot. Other than that, it’s all good my friend.’ Jugsy was his normal gregarious self, saying it how it was, coming across as a grump, but behind that mask Sean could see in his eyes there was an excited man – excited about being back amongst the team and hoping it would be another adrenalin-filled job.
‘Did you bring your toys Jugsy?’
‘Of course. Two unmanned air vehicles and a hand-launched one too, plus some new imagery-analysis software. High-resolution stuff and with a great target-tracking capability too. I’ve already tested them this morning so we’re good to go whenever you give me the nod.’
‘Great, where’s Billy Phish?’
‘He’s having an old man’s half hour,’ Samantha chipped in. ‘I’ll go and get him. Briefing in thirty?’
The Kompromat Kill Page 11