A Hostile State

by Adrian Magson

  ‘Where are we going?’ Lindsay asked, keeping her head down. Her nearness felt pleasantly warm, as did the touch of her hand on my arm, something I didn’t usually experience on an assignment. I had to force myself to focus on the here and now and remember what we were doing.

  ‘We have to get out of here and do it nice and easy. There’s no police station in the town but it won’t take them long to have units placed on all roads in and out. The French cops are very quick to respond to reports of shootings.’

  ‘What happened back there?’ she queried. Her voice held a tremor which I put down to nerves, but it might have been the way I was hustling her along the narrow street. ‘I heard shots … are you all right?’

  We passed a church with a priest standing outside, chatting to two elderly ladies. They all turned and smiled with a traditional greeting, and I waited until we were past before replying. ‘I’m fine. They were amateurs, probably local bully boys sent by their far-right bosses to deal with Chesnais because they thought she’d be easy meat. Don’t worry – I didn’t kill anybody.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ She stared at me as we got to the car and climbed in. ‘Is this what it’s always like for you in the field?’

  I shook my head and drove out through the town on the opposite side to where the action had gone down. ‘Not at all,’ I told her. ‘Most of the time life is very quiet.’

  ‘Seriously?’ She almost managed a smile. ‘Not from what I’ve seen it isn’t. Remember me – your eye in the sky watching your back?’

  I had to give her that one. She was right. There had been moments while watching my every move from on high as comms support, either via a drone camera or a satellite feed, that events must have seemed chaotic and ridiculous and anything but quiet.

  ‘It’s different on the ground. Circumstances change all the time. Sometimes it gets messy.’

  Like right now, I thought, and decided not to mention the spotter who was probably calling in the hit team as we spoke. Hopefully we’d get away before they arrived and slip by under cover of the cops who would be arriving any minute.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she murmured eventually, sounding breathless. ‘That just now was … it was scary.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘Sorry. This place is so peaceful and … serene. I guess I wasn’t expecting it.’

  I was glad to hear her say so. Being scared was good; it would ensure she didn’t take lightly anything that happened later. Next time, if there was a next time, she’d know that this stuff could get serious in the blink of an eye, wherever she happened to be. I handed her back my cellphone. ‘Can you send a report to Callahan for me? Don’t give him our location just yet.’

  A flicker of blue lights showed behind us but they were moving crossways to our line of travel towards the park. I tucked in between a large truck-and-trailer combination and a coach and drove nice and steady, ready to split if we had to but hoping that wasn’t necessary. We wouldn’t get far if they latched onto us and the countryside here was too open to drop out of sight for long. A sign told me we were heading towards the towns of Gazeran and Rambouillet.

  Rambouillet was the forest of the same name. Lots of trees and quiet country roads and a chance to get lost. All we needed was time.

  Lindsay said, ‘I thought Callahan wanted you to keep him informed of your location.’

  ‘Yes, he did. I’ll explain why later. Before that can you check my maps app and the roads out of here. I’d like a quiet route to Paris if you can find one.’

  ‘Not the quickest?’

  ‘Too risky. They can close down freeways too easily and we’d be trapped. We need to drop off their radar until I can figure out what to do and where the next threat might come from.’

  That threat wasn’t helped by the fact that if Callahan had been told to drop me, he was limited in what resources he could provide for us in an emergency. Forget armed support or an evac flight out of here; that would only work short-term until the other side caught up with my next location. Sending Lindsay would have been taking a heck of a risk; if the people above him calling the shots ever found out that she wasn’t merely on vacation but here with me and actively involved in an operation, he’d be out of a job.

  The other point was, if she knew for certain the leak of locators was being used to track me across half the known universe, she would know that she was now in the same small frame and therefore as much of a target as me.

  She tapped away and sent the text, then called up a maps screen on her own cellphone. ‘Take the next left. It’s a narrow road but connects up to others after a few miles. What did you mean, the next threat? Will those two men have colleagues?’

  I took the left turn and found we were on a virtual single-track paved road through a spread of open fields, with a high centre-line and few passing places. Small farms and a few remote houses were strung out across the area in front of us, and directly ahead and over to the right was the dark stretch of the Rambouillet Forest. Until we reached the relative safety of the trees the lack of hedgerows and flat ground made us easy to spot from a long way off.

  ‘Forget those two,’ I said. ‘They’re not part of it.’ Unlike, I thought, the team tracking me across the globe and pinning me to the board like a specimen in a butterfly collection. ‘If Callahan hasn’t been able to isolate who’s been intercepting the references, I’m still vulnerable … and so are you as long as you’re with me.’

  She thought that over for a while, then said, ‘It’s that easy to do?’

  ‘It’s the same as using map references – only more specific, right down to a few feet. Even getting lost in a crowd isn’t as simple any more. The only advantage of being in a city is you can use other people as cover. I don’t want to do that.’

  ‘Who would be doing that to you?’

  ‘Somebody with know-how and resources. And a contact on the inside.’

  She didn’t speak for a couple of miles, and I guessed she was trying to equate the CIA she knew and worked in with this shocking new reality. I’d never been inside the Langley complex, but I’d been in similar buildings. They provided an aura of solidity, of security and indestructability. Throw in a network of electronic counter-attack measures and a small force of armed guards and you’d feel genuinely safe, regardless of what was going on elsewhere.

  But we were on the outside with none of the above. It would have been scary to anyone.

  ‘It’s likely to be one person giving out the leads,’ I told her. I didn’t want to frighten her off completely or torpedo her trust in the organization she’d come to believe in. ‘That’s all it takes. But it won’t last long.’ I added that in the fervent hope that Callahan would get to plug the leak sooner rather than later.

  She said, ‘I hope that doesn’t mean you’re thinking of dumping me at the airport.’ Her voice had lost the tremor and a quick glance across at her showed she was giving me the don’t even think about it evil eye.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Anyway, as you said, you’re the perfect cover.’

  I don’t think she knew what to make of that, which was good, because she didn’t ask any more questions. And that gave me time to think about what to do next.

  Unfortunately, that’s when I took my eye off the ball. I was so busy looking ahead and strategizing that I didn’t see the threat emerging behind us. The first thing I knew was when a volley of gunfire blew out the rear window and punched holes in the rear of the car.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Lindsay screamed in shock and I glanced across to make sure she hadn’t been hit. But she turned in her seat and looked backwards and muttered a very unladylike cuss which, in different circumstances, would have had me smiling.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, brushing a couple of bits of broken glass out of her hair. ‘I’m fine.’

  The car behind us was a chunky black SUV with a cut-down roof. It looked like a Range Rover Evoque. It had emerged from out of nowhere and must have been lying in wait for us. It was a fancy set of w
heels for this kind of work but carried enough weight and punch to make life difficult for us if they chose to ram us off the road and finish the job at their leisure. And they certainly had opportunity on their side; this road wasn’t the busiest I’d seen and the risk of them being interrupted if they did choose to launch an attack was minimal. But then after their tactics in Lebanon, Cyprus and Frankfurt, I guessed they were plenty ready to deal with that eventuality, too.

  I risked a glance in the mirror to check the size of the threat. I counted three heads up and a hand hanging out the passenger window holding what looked like a machine pistol. Not a great weapon to use at distances, especially from a moving firing platform against another vehicle, but useful for spraying at a target on the grounds that you were bound to get a hit eventually.

  And one hit in the right place was all it would take.

  I put on speed, the back of my neck feeling vulnerable. The car didn’t like it much, but hanging around wasn’t going to end well. I was wondering how they’d managed to be waiting at the right place and time, and ran a map in my head. We’d been on the road to Rambouillet, heading north-east towards Paris, and had hooked a left almost at random. So popping out behind us the way they did was either a stellar piece of guesswork on their part or the spotter back in Épernon had seen which route we’d taken out of town and called it in.

  Instinct told me that guessing didn’t come into it; their insistence on trying to nail me had already shown they had reach and resources, which included man-power enough to post watchers and hitters wherever they needed them. Sending in a single man to make sure we were in place first would have been a logical move, allowing their hit team to stay back until they were needed, then move in the moment they had instructions.

  Lindsay must have been having the same thoughts. ‘These are the people following you, aren’t they? Not the same as the other two.’

  ‘Forget them. They were following Chesnais. They’d been given a rough description and told where to find her. It was sloppy organization.’

  ‘So why come after me—?’ Then her eyes went wide as the realization hit her. ‘They thought I was Chesnais!’ She uttered another oath as she realized how close she had come to being a wrong target.

  ‘Can I have the gun?’

  ‘To do what?’ I glanced at her but she looked serious.

  ‘Please.’

  I gave in. ‘In my backpack. A Beretta.’

  She grabbed hold of my bag from the rear seat and hauled it over to the front. She took out the Beretta and checked the magazine. If she was frightened she did a great job of hiding it and seemed to be handling the gun with surprising ease.

  ‘Listen to me: the people behind us are different to the other two morons. They’re Russians – Moscow contractors like the men behind the previous hits. And, no I don’t know why they’re doing this.’

  ‘Callahan mentioned it but I wasn’t sure I really believed it … until now.’ She glanced to the rear. The Evoque had fallen back a way after hitting a dip in the surface and nearly going off the narrow road, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before they made up ground again.

  ‘And you agreed to this … having your locations known? Why?’

  ‘Because one, we need to know where the information is being intercepted, and two, I don’t like being used as target practice. This has to stop. We either plug the leak or I stop them coming after me.’

  ‘How do they manage to move so quickly?’

  ‘They have the resources. As soon as my location is picked up and passed on, they swing a team into position. In this case they must have had people in the area ready to go. Putting a man in the town as soon as they had the location was a clever move; it meant the hit team could hold back and wait for a call telling them which way we’d gone. Then they could set up an attempt outside of the town. Safer for them and allows them a way out afterwards.’

  She looked at me, her mouth open. ‘You make it sound like a freaking board game. How can you be so calm?’

  I couldn’t help but smile at her cross face. Even under the circumstances it was endearing. ‘I’ve tried panicking but it never works.’

  We covered another mile in silence while the Evoque crept up on us. I wondered what their strategy was until I realized they were probably waiting until we got into the forest where they could take us without being seen.

  ‘So it’s really happening – there’s a leak inside Langley.’ She sounded shocked, as any insider would have done. A traitor inside the CIA was tantamount to sacrilege. Then she told me about someone having been at her comms desk and Callahan’s instructions to leave the details in full view.

  ‘Did they find anyone?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet – at least, I don’t think so. It’s a busy place … people come and go all the time, and when you’re on the inside of the building you don’t think about CCTV apart from what’s on the outside.’

  I knew what she meant. It was the concept of the middle ages: the bigger the fort the safer you were. And look how that worked out. Lindsay and her colleagues were going to have to come to grips with the idea that someone inside the CIA bubble was sending out information which threatened the life of a co-worker – even a non-attached person like me. The whole concept was not easily accepted or understood, especially in an organization which saw itself as the centre of the nation’s intelligence, and therefore invulnerable.

  She huffed a bit and checked the position of the Evoque. It was still there but hanging back. The road stretched out for a good way in front of us but was too narrow to risk passing us. Big as it was, it still stood a chance of driving off the road by mistake.

  They were waiting their chance to jump us.

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier for them to take us back in the park?’ she said.

  It was a reasonable conclusion to draw, but I was guessing they hadn’t had time to get their apples in order. I had no idea where this latest crew had come from, but it was probably Paris. The Russians have people all over, small teams of men and women in place and waiting for orders. If they needed specialist work they would fly in a unit from Moscow or one of their special ops bases.

  ‘It’s a matter of logistics,’ I said. ‘We’re mobile, they have to play catch-up.’

  The whole thing about following a target constantly on the move is that the pursuer is always on the back foot. Responding to a new location or turn in the route is inevitably after the event, thus rapidly becomes old news. Whatever local resources these people had on the ground to provide intel would call it in, but the reaction team would be constantly running to make up lost ground, relying on their latest information still being relevant by the time they got geared up and arrived in place.

  The Evoque dropped back again as we barrelled over a narrow, cratered stretch of road like a switchback. The centre line had a curved surface and the edges were crumpled where I guessed a succession of heavy farm vehicles over the years had chewed away at the tarmac. I didn’t think the Evoque would hold off for much longer; up ahead the trees were getting closer, throwing a dark shadow across our horizon. It was an illusory suggestion of safety that could switch in a heartbeat to one of disaster if the men in the car behind saw their chance and decided to take it.

  When we hit the treeline it was like entering a dark horizon, an impression of gloom suddenly closing around us as the light was filtered out by the foliage overhead and the thick growth of trees on each side. I put on speed and hoped there were no happy campers out on a field walk to get in the way. The Evoque did the same, only faster, and I gave it about ten seconds before they got close enough to open fire again. They needed this to be over and to be gone before the cops responded. Quiet as the road was right now, someone would have heard the burst of machine pistol fire and called it in, and the area couldn’t stay that way for long.

  Isobel, I reflected, would have reacted well to this. Maybe not accurately, but well. Just because I don’t, doesn’t mean I can’t.

  Then Lin
dsay surprised me. She lifted the Beretta, flicked off the seat belt and, twisting round, squirmed like an eel through the gap between the seats into the rear of the car.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, although it was pretty obvious the moment I said it.

  ‘They just scared the living crap out of me,’ she said shortly. ‘I want them to know how it feels.’

  At least I think that’s what she said. The wind was howling around the broken rear window and drowning out some of her words, but I got the gist. She was good and mad.

  ‘Great. Remember to keep your mouth open when you—’

  But she lifted the Beretta before I could finish and fired off three rounds at the Evoque’s grill, which was now barely thirty yards away. The gunshots were very loud and bounced around the inside of the car. In spite of the noise being dampened by the absence of glass at the rear it was still painful on the ears.

  In the mirror I saw the rim of one of the Evoque’s headlights separate and fly off. Another round punched out part of the upper grille before carving its way up the hood. It made a spider’s web of the windscreen, which held for a second or two before caving inwards under the air pressure and vibration through the suspension.

  The driver nearly lost it, the wheels wobbling sharply, and they almost came off the road before falling sharply back, the screen now completely gone. I didn’t see where the third shot went but slammed my foot down and opened up the gap between us as quickly as the engine would allow me.

  I needed a turning, somewhere to fight back. But where? We were in what resembled a corridor of trees with nowhere to turn. Then I saw a gap coming up on the right. It looked like a fire-break road if they had them here, narrow and unmade and unlikely to be a through-route, so we’d have no way of getting off it without turning back.

  We really didn’t have much choice; they would soon overhaul us if we stayed on this road, and I figured they were mad enough now that Lindsay had bruised them to want to take the first chance they got to end this. They also had the firepower to make it happen.