Nick Stone 1 - Remote Control.

by Andy McNab

  people working there would be legit.

  I focused on the target as we walked past, but didn't look back. You have to take in all the information the first time around.

  "Nick?"

  "What?"

  "My feet are really wet."

  I looked down. Her feet were soaked; I'd been concentrating so much on what to do next that I hadn't noticed the puddles we were walking through. I should have bought her a pair of boots at the mall.

  We got to a T-intersection. Looking left, I could see that the road led down toward the river. More cars parked up on the shoulders, and even more scrap yards

  I looked right. At the end of the street was the elevated highway, and just before that, above the rooftops, I could see the dish on top of the Calypso Hotel. I was feeling good.

  A successful recon and somewhere to stay, and all before 11 a.m.

  We walked into the hotel parking lot. I pointed between a pickup truck and a UPS van.

  "Wait under the landing, and keep out of the rain. I'll be back soon."

  "Why can't I come with you. Nick? It's dark under here."

  I started my puppy-training act.

  "No wait ... there. I won't be long." I disappeared before she could argue.

  The hotel lobby was just one of the first-floor rooms turned into an office. Checking in was as casual as the layout. The poor Brit family story was understood a lot quicker here.

  I Went outside, collected Kelly, and, as we walked along the concrete and cinder block toward our new room on the second floor, I was busy thinking about what I'd have to do next. She suddenly tugged on my hand.

  "Double crap!"

  "What?"

  "You know, like not nice. You said the other one was crap.

  This is double crap."

  I had to agree. I even thought I could smell vomit.

  "No, no, wait till you get in. You see that satellite dish? We can probably get every single program in the world on that. It's not going to be crap at all."

  There were two king-size beds in the room, a big TV, and the usual dark, lacquered surfaces and a few bits of furniture a long sideboard that had seen better days, a closet that was just a rail inside an open cupboard in the corner, and one of those things that you rest your suit case on.

  I checked the bathroom and saw a little bottle of shampoo.

  "See that?" I said.

  "Always the sign of a good hotel. I think we're in the Ritz."

  I plugged in the telephone and recharger, then it was straight on with the television, flicking through the channels for a kids' program. It

  was part of the SOPs now.

  I pulled Kelly's coat off, gave it a shake, and hung it up, then went over to the air conditioner and pressed a few buttons. I held my coat out, testing the air flow; I wanted the room to get hot. Still waiting for some reaction from the machine, I said, "What's on?"

  "Power Rangers."

  "Who are they?"

  I knew very well what it was all about, but there was no harm in a bit of conversation. I didn't want us to be best buddies, go on vacations together, and share toothbrushes and all that sort of shit far from it. The sooner this was sorted out, the better. But for the relationship to look normal it had to be normal, and I didn't want to get lifted because some busy body thought we didn't belong together.

  I said, "Which one do you like?"

  "I like Katherine. She's the pink one."

  "Why's that, because of the color?"

  "Because she's not a moron. She's really cool." Then she told me all about Katherine and how she was a Brit.

  "I like that because Daddy comes from England."

  I made her change into a new pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

  It took a lifetime. I thought. Fuck parenting, it's not for me.

  Every moment of your time is taken up. What is the point, if you just spend all day on butler duty?

  She was finally dry and sorted out. Next to the TV was a coffeemaker and packets of milk and sugar, and I got that going. As the machine started to purr and bubble I went to the window. As I looked out past the curtain, left and right of me were the other two sides of the drab, gray concrete square; below was the parking lot, and across the road and higher up was the highway. I realized that my mood matched the view.

  Rain was still falling. I could see the plumes of spray be hind the trucks as they rolled along the highway. It wasn't heavy, but it was continuous, the kind that seeps into every thing. I was suddenly aware of Kelly standing next to me.

  "I hate this type of weather," I said.

  "Always have, ever since I was a teenager and joined the army. Even now, on a really wet and windy winter's day, I'll make myself a cup of tea and sit on a chair by the window and just look out and think of all the poor soldiers sitting in a hole in the middle of nowhere, freezing, soaking wet, wondering what they're doing there."

  A wry smile came to my face as the coffee stopped dripping, and I looked down at Kelly. What wouldn't I give to be back on Salisbury Plain, just sitting in a soaking-wet trench, my only worry in the world how to stop being wet, cold, and hungry.

  I went and lay on the bed, working out my options. Not that there were that many. Why didn't I just make a run for it? I could steal passports and try my luck at an airport, but the chances of getting away with it were slim. There were less conventional routes back. I'd heard that you could get all the way from Canada to the UK by ferry and land-hopping, a route popular with students. Or I could go south, getting into Belize or Guatemala; I'd spent years in the jungle on that border and knew how to get out. I could go to an island off Belize called San Pedro, a staging post for drug runners on their way to the east coast of Florida. From there I could get farther into the Caribbean, where I'd pick up passage on a boat.

  More bizarre still, one of the guys in the Regiment had flown a single-engined Cessna from Canada to the UK-. The tiny fixed-wing aircraft had no special equipment apart from an extra fuel tank in the back. The radio wasn't the right kind;

  he'd had to work out the antenna lengths with wire hanging from the aircraft on a brick. He wore a parachute so that if anything went wrong, he'd open the door and leap out. How I'd sort that out I didn't know, but at least I knew it could be done.

  However, there was too much risk involved in all these schemes. I didn't want to spend the rest of my days in a state penitentiary, but at the same time I didn't want Kelly and me to be killed in the process of escaping. Simmonds had presented me with the best option. If I turned up in London with what he wanted, I wouldn't exactly be home and dry, but at least I'd be home. I had to stay and tough it out.

  It all boiled down to my needing to see who and what was going into and out of the building on Ball Street.

  "Kelly? You know what I'm going to say, don't you?"

  "Without a doubt," she smiled. I'd obviously been forgiven for drying her hair and putting her into nice dry clothes.

  "Ten minutes, all right?"

  I closed the door, listened, heard her hook the chain, and hung the sign on the door. Farther to my left was a small open area that housed the Coke and snack machines. I bought a can, then walked back past our room toward the elevator. To the left was the fire escape, a concrete staircase leading up and down. I knew the safety regulations meant that there had to be an exit onto the roof; in the event of a fire down below, the rescue would be by helicopter.

  I went as far as I could upstairs. Double fire doors led to the roof; push the bar and they'd open. There was no sign warning that the doors were alarmed, but I had to check. I looked around the doorframe but couldn't see a circuit-break alarm. I pushed the bar and the door opened. No bells.

  The roof was flat, its surface covered with lumps of gravel two inches in diameter. I picked up a handful and used it to jam the doors open.

  An aircraft was landing at National; I could just see its lights through the drizzle. The satellite dish was on the far corner of the roof. There was also a green aluminum shed
, which I guessed was the elevator housing. A three-foot-high wall ran around the edge of the roof, hiding me from the ground, but not from the highway.

  I walked across the gravel to the side facing the river.

  Looking down at the target building from this angle, I could see the flat roof and its air ducts. It was rectangular and looked quite large. Behind it were a vacant lot and fences that seemed to divide it into new building plots waiting to be sold.

  I could just make out the Potomac beyond the tree line and the end of the runway.

  I walked back, stepping over a series of thick electric cables. I stopped at the elevator housing. What I wanted now was a power source. I could use batteries to power the surveillance equipment I'd be using, but I couldn't guarantee their life. I tried the door of the elevator housing, but it was locked. I had a quick look at the lock: a pin tumbler. I'd be able to defeat that easily.

  Back in the room, I got out the Yellow Pages and looked for addresses of pawn shops.

  Then I went into the bathroom, sat on the edge of the bath, and unloaded the .45 ammunition from the magazines into my pocket, easing the springs. It's not something that you have to do every day, but it needs to be done. The majority of weapon stoppages are magazine connected. I didn't know how long it had been left loaded; I might squeeze off the first round and the second one wouldn't feed into the chamber because the magazine spring had stuck. That's why a revolver is sometimes far better, especially if you're going to have a pistol lying about for ages and don't want to service it. A revolver is just a cylinder with six rounds in it, so you could keep it loaded all year and it wouldn't matter--as soon as you pick it up you know the thing will work. I emptied the magazines into my pocket so that I then had the ammunition, magazines, and pistol all on me.

  I came out of the bathroom and wrote myself a shopping list of supplies that I was going to need and checked how much money I had. There was enough for today. I could always get more out tomorrow.

  I wasn't worried about Kelly. She had loads of food and was half-asleep anyway. I turned up the heat on the air conditioner.

  She'd soon be drowsy.

  I said, "I'm going to go and get you some coloring books and crayons and all that sort of stuff. Shall I bring back something from Mickey D's?"

  "Can I have sweet and sour sauce with the fries? Can I come with you?"

  "The weather's terrible. I don't want you catching a cold."

  She got up and walked to the door, ready to drop the latch without me having to ask.

  I went downstairs and walked to the Metro station.

  The Washington Metro is fast and quiet, clean and efficient, everything a subway should be. The tunnels are vast and dimly lit, somehow soothing, which is maybe why passengers seem more relaxed than in London or New York and some even exchange eye contact. It's also about the only part of the capital where you won't be asked by a seventeen or seventy-seven-year-old Vietnam vet if you can spare some change.

  I got out after seven or eight stops and one transfer. The place I was looking for was just a few blocks away, but it was in a neighborhood I bet didn't feature in anybody's vacation brochure. I was used to the Washington where those who had really had. This was the part of town where those who didn't have had absolutely nothing.

  The single-story building was set back from the road and looked more like a supermarket than a pawn shop, with a front that was at least fifty yards long. The whole facade was glass, with bars running vertically. The window displays were piled high with everything from drum kits to surfboards and bedding. Fluorescent-yellow posters promised everything from zero percent interest to the best gold price in town.

  Three armed guards controlled the doors and watched me enter.

  Looking along one of the aisles to the rear, I saw a long glass showcase that also formed the counter. Behind it were more than a dozen assistants, all wearing similar red polo shirts. It seemed to be the busiest department in the shop.

  Then I saw all the handguns and rifles behind the glass. A sign announced that customers were welcome to test fire any weapon on the range out back.

  I went to the camera department. In an ideal world, what I was looking for would be something like a security camera, with a long cable connecting the camera itself to a separate control box that also housed the videotape. I could put the camera in position on the roof, leave it where it was, and hide the control box elsewhere, maybe inside the elevator housing.

  That way it would be easier for me to get to it to change the tape and--if I couldn't tap into the power lines--the batteries, and all without having to disturb the camera.

  Unfortunately I couldn't find anything like that. But I did find something that was almost as good: a Hi-8 VHS camera, the type favored by a lot of freelance TV journalists. Certainly I'd be able to change the lens to give me more distance.

  I remembered working in Bosnia and seeing guys running around with

  Hi-8s glued to their eyes. They all thought they were destined to strike it rich by selling the networks "bang-bang" footage.

  I caught the eye of one of the assistants.

  "How much for the Hi-8?" I said in my usual bad American accent.

  "It's nearly new, hardly out of the packaging. Five hundred dollars."

  I smirked.

  "So make me an offer," he said.

  "Has it got a spare battery and all the attachments for external power?"

  "Of course. It's got it all. It's even got its own bag."

  "Can I see it working?"

  "Of course, of course."

  "All right--four hundred, cash."

  He did what every plumber and builder throughout the world does when discussing prices: started sucking air through his teeth.

  "I'll tell you what: four-fifty."

  "Done. I also want a playback machine, but it can't be a

  VCR."

  "I have exactly what you want. Follow me."

  The machine he retrieved from the back of a shelf had a hundred-dollar price tag. It looked about a hundred years old, complete with dust. He said, "I'll tell you what--save the trouble: ninety dollars and it's yours."

  I nodded.

  "I also want some lenses."

  "What kind are you after?"

  "At least a two-hundred-millimeter zoom to go on this, preferably Nikon."

  I worked on the basis of one millimeter of lens for every yard of distance to target. For years I had been stuck in people's roof spaces after breaking into their house and removing one of the tiles so I could take pictures of a target, and I'd learned the hard way that it's a wasted effort unless the result is good ID-able images.

  He showed me a 250mm lens.

  "How much?"

  "One-fifty." He was waiting for me to say it was too much.

  "All right, one hundred fifty dollars. Done--if you throw in two four-hour tapes and an extension cord."

  He seemed almost upset at the lack of a fight.

  "What length?"

  More haggling. He was dying for it.

  "The longest one you've got."

  "Twenty-foot?"

  "Done." He was happy now. No doubt he had a forty-foot.

  I came across a Wal-Mart a couple of blocks short of the Metro. I ducked inside and wandered around, looking for the items I'd need to set up the camera.

  As I moved down the aisles, I found myself doing something I always did, no matter where in the world I was:

  looking at cooking ingredients and cans of domestic cleaner and working out which would go with what to make chaos.

  Mix this stuff and that stuff, then boil it up and stir in a bit of this, and I'd have an incendiary device. Or boil all that down and scrape off the scum from around the edge of the pot, then add some of this stuff from the bakery counter and boil that up some more until I got just a sediment at the bottom, and I'd have low explosive. Twenty minutes in Safeway would be enough to buy all the ingredients for a bomb powerful enough to blow a car in half, and you'd still
have change from a ten-spot.

  I didn't need any of that today, however. All I was after was a two-liter plastic bottle of Coke; a pair of scissors; a roll of trash bags; a mini Maglite flashlight with a range of filters; a roll of gaffer tape; and a tool kit with screwdrivers, wrenches, and

  pliers--twenty-one pieces for five dollars, and an absolute rip-off; they'd last about five minutes, but that was all I'd need. That done, I grabbed some coloring books, crayons, and other bits and pieces to entertain Kelly. I also put a few more dollars in Mr. Oreo's pocket.