by Geoff Wolak
‘This lot have only had ten days, they’ll get better quickly,’ I assured my guests and took them down the strip, some of their lads stripping and cleaning a variety of weapons, greetings extended. My guests observed their men for half an hour before I got them some food in the canteen.
‘This place hasn’t changed,’ Donohue noted, taking in the grey concrete walls. ‘No indoor plumbing yet.’
‘I make sure they keep it basic,’ I informed my guests. ‘Better for training.’
‘What about trains and planes? Opposed entry?’ Donohue posed.
‘SAS have practised it, never done it for real. Grab one of their old DS, get the manual, create a team and practise. Nothing stopping you from getting some old fucker out the pub and employing him part time. Back in the 1980s they were more switched on.’
‘We’ll look at that, yes,’ Donohue’s boss suggested.
With my guests back to Freetown, and a nice hotel no doubt, I shouted at a few people, and the police would now practise the exercises for dummies – how not to accidentally discharge. And they would do it till 10pm!
The next morning, the police looking tired, I had long patrols organised, the police not allowed to cock weapons. They returned at 9pm, damp, muddy, sweating and exhausted, early to bed after some food.
Robby and the Salties, meanwhile, had walked all the way to the base in Liberia we had hit, north ten miles, had shot-up a few armed men, and had walked all the way back. They were also muddy and tired, but in good spirits, joking about the men they had shot.
At 11pm, just as we were settling down, Henri brought me his phone again.
‘Captain Wilco,’ I stated.
‘Captain,’ came a French accent. ‘We think we now have a lead. First, Hammad has not been seen for many months. Second, he was reported to be angry at your operation in Angola –‘
‘Angola? What’s his connection there?’
‘An illegal gold mine for one, and that mine is linked to a group that trafficked blood diamonds from Guinea. You killed the men in that group, or many of them. They are linked to a Russian, Gorskov, involved in trafficking blood diamonds, but he stays one step beyond the law always. In Angola, the elite brigade was protecting his interests.’
‘Ah, I may have wounded some of them, yes.’
‘We are not sure who the big man is here, Hammad or Gorskov, and both have never been arrested.’
‘So one or both were mad at me because of Angola, and because I stopped the blood diamond gangs in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and they sent a man. But they sent no one afterwards.’
‘They may have lost interest, or simply considered you ... difficult to kill.’
I smiled. ‘Maybe, yes.’
‘We are asking London if we can ... borrow you.’
‘To go after them?’
‘No, to investigate around Africa. You have ... connections. We had a man killed, now certain it was Gorskov. And if Hammad loses his court battles it will be French insurance companies that pick up the bill, billions of Euros, so we need some answers. Someone poisoned the water, so why?’
‘Send a man with what you know, I’ll talk to my friends in low places – after I talk to London of course.’
‘Of course. Good night.’
I called Tomsk as I stepped outside into the dark. ‘Hey, Boss.’
‘Still sounds odd when you sat that.’
‘Listen, you know a man called Gorskov?’
‘Ah, him. Never met him, he’s lived in Africa ten years, don’t know how he could stomach the place. Very secretive, quite rich I suppose, diamonds and gold, some guns.’
‘He’s mad at me because I stopped the blood diamond trade and shot-up his men.’
‘Mad at you ... English captain you?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s not called me about Petrov, so ... he doesn’t know.’
‘Make some discrete enquiries about him, where he lives.’
‘He has a place in Lagos, Nigeria, and some big ranch in the Seren something.’
‘Serengeti? Tanzania?’
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘If he’s linked to Nigerian oil he may be one more person to avoid.’
‘Hah! I’ll stick a bomb up his arse.’
‘How’s business?’
‘Price of cocaine has stabilised, still up. When it went up I shifted a backlog, made a lot of money, bought more hotels. Oh, the Americans got the British Ambassador’s son.’
‘Yes, I got them the location.’
‘That Minister, who lost his son, he was on the TV, talking about the British Ambassador’s son, glad that the boy was back safe. They had a little celebration.’
‘You keep the government happy?’
‘I bought some Panama debt from America, and now they owe me, just 1% to pay back.’
‘Careful, if they kill you they don’t have to pay!’ I teased.
‘We get on well, crime is down, people happy. And the DEA have been stopped from coming back.’
‘Really, can’t think why. You get on that treadmill!’
‘I was on this morning! I have coffee, I walk, then shower.’
‘Good for you.’
My next call was Mike Papa a short way away in Monrovia.
‘Ah, Petrov, how are you?’
‘I’m in Guinea, so I may pop in. Listen, you know a Russian called Gorskov?’
‘Yes, he’s active here in Africa, diamonds and some illegal gold mining in Angola.’
‘Why is the gold mining illegal?’ I puzzled.
‘The provisional government in Angola made it law that gold must come to the Government at a set rate.’
‘But it doesn’t,’ I guessed.
‘Not in the east, where the best gold mines are, it goes to the black market.’
‘And he lives in Lagos...’
‘I believe so. I met him once, long ago. He is very secretive. Why are your associates interested in him?’
‘He killed French agents, we want to know why.’
‘He is normally discrete, so I am surprised if he is killing people openly.’
‘Does he have interests in Algeria or France? Any work with pesticides?’
‘Not that I can think of. Would you like me to enquire?’
‘No, that would make him wary. I’ll go visit him.’
‘He may not be best pleased to find you at his door.’
‘What we do has consequences, and what he has done will bring consequences.’
After the call I stared out at the black tree line, checked my watch, and called Tinker. ‘You asleep?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Listen, run a name, Gorskov -’
‘Angola, illegal gold mining.’
‘You’re a smart fella. Anyway, he’s linked somehow to Hammad, so look for a connection.’
‘There is one, chemicals.’
‘How so ... chemicals?’
‘Gorskov has interests in Guinea, aluminium mining, and he buys chemicals from Hammad’s subsidiary. But Gorskov doesn’t appear to own the plant in Guinea, but we know he does.’
‘So they’d be business partners?’
‘Supplier and customer, but they probably had dinner.’
‘Gorskov has reason to want me dead. His operation in Angola was probably protected by the idiots I killed, so start looking at Gorskov.’
‘He sent a man more than a year ago, so maybe he’s forgiven you.’
‘The point is ... I haven’t forgiven him. Oh, and the French formally want this investigated ... by us, including operations on the ground.’
‘I’ll send the Director a note, your Director I mean.’
Inside, I grabbed Hunt and led him outside and gave him the detail.
Hunt began, ‘If London bows to French pressure then we go look closely at Gorskov and Hammad, wherever Hammad is hiding – and if we can find him. As for Gorskov, you planning a trip into Angola?’
‘That’s up to London, but if they want h
im dead I go after him. He lives in Lagos most of the time, so if I was to go after him then Angola would be preferable for a shoot-out, make it look like a hostage rescue.’
Hunt nodded. ‘My first week, and this is exciting stuff. London can be all research some months.’
The next day, fine and not raining, the police were worked hard on weapons in the morning, team tactics in the afternoon, a night patrol to plan for.
I watched them march out in three teams at 10pm, to be back for dawn, the creatures of the night to deal with, strange noises amongst a quiet background roar.
I was up as they returned - the still dawn being my favourite time of day here, no one having shot his mate by accident, but Rocko’s team had killed a pig, cooked and ate it.
Walking back to the building, I saw Hunt up early and using his sat phone. Halting, I glanced over my shoulder at the tree line. ‘My assassin had no phone?’ I said to myself.
I grabbed Swifty, Moran and Hamble, ten RAF Regiment lads, and led them off up to where the body had been found. ‘Form a line, two paces apart.’ I waited as they formed that line. ‘OK, dead slow, kick away debris with your feet, move bushes, find a sat phone! Advance!’
I checked the area around where the body had been found, slowly moving north.
Half an hour in, and nothing had been found. We reached the parachute, so I had them spread out. I sent Swifty up the tree. I told him, ‘Try and figure where he may have dropped a phone.’
Swifty shouted down a few minutes later, and several of us moved to be directly below him. We started to move debris with our boots.
‘Here!’ Moran called, and pulled up a muddy sat phone.
Mud cleared off it, water poured, the phone wiped, we swapped the battery and held down the green button. It burst into life.
I called SIS London from it.
‘Duty Officer.’
‘This is Wilco in Sierra Leone. This sat phone belonged to the dead and decaying assassin we found, so check who he called from it and get back to me.’
‘Will do,’ the man promised.
I called Tinker, and gave him the number as well before leading the men back. There were numbers programmed into the phone, but I was not about to call them. I switched it off.
An hour later, the FOB quiet apart from the RAF Regiment lads, my phone trilled.
‘It’s Tinker. London passed that number to GCHQ, we’ve been tracing the calls made and the positional packet data. Moving backwards from your FOB, he was in Ivory Coast -’
‘No surprise there.’
‘- and up in Guinea. He flew from Ivory Coast to your FOB, his last trip. Before Guinea he was in Mali, before that Morocco, before that Egypt, Cyprus, Corsica, France – a few different places in France, then Canada - Quebec.’
‘Do me a favour, try and link those dates to when the water was poisoned.’
‘Why would he have done that?’
‘Just check. Any calls to Lagos or Angola?’
‘No, but several calls to a Chinese sat phone sat in Switzerland. And that Chinese phone, it hasn’t done anything other than sit in Switzerland and answer his calls.’
‘Dead letter drop,’ I said.
‘Yes, old school.’
‘Got a location of that phone?’
‘A hotel, Zurich, impossible to tell which room.’
‘So someone knows his spy-craft.’
‘They do, which suggests an agency, not some amateur.’
‘OK, keep digging.’
I dragged Hunt outside. ‘Our hapless assassin had a sat phone that called a Chinese sat phone in a hotel in Switzerland, and the number it called was not used for anything else but to chat to him.’
‘Clever stuff, good field craft,’ he noted.
‘So ... agency, not amateur.’
‘NSA would never send someone after you. Maybe Gorskov has some ex-KGB working for him. Plenty out there, unemployed. They know their craft.’
I nodded, thinking. ‘So who did what, and why? Did Hammad ask Gorskov to come for me, or the other way around? Gorskov has the motive, Hammad had the man on his payroll.’
‘They had dinner, came up with a plan, outline on a napkin.’
‘Outline on a napkin?’ I teased.
‘You don’t know that story? Back in the Cold War days, two French agents sat in a cafe and made a plan to raid offices and get files, all down on a napkin. As they left the waitress picked up the napkin, only later seeing the detail, called the police, men caught red-handed.’
I laughed. ‘Glad that was not one of ours.’
‘What ours did was worse. One agent, he wanted to hide pistol in a toilet cistern, so opened it, water gushing, couldn’t shut it off, hotel flooded, police on scene, several of ours rounded up, CIA man accidentally caught.’
‘And yet people think our agents are all like James Bond.’
‘One guy, who panicked, went out a window in a snow storm, slid down a roof on the ice, over the side, landed on a KGB car and smashed the roof in – KGB inside at the time.’
I laughed loudly, Laurel and Hardy images coming to mind.
Hut said, ‘This is what they teach us early on; what not to do to look like a complete fucking idiot. Best was a KGB guy in Canada. He rang the secretary of a colonel in Canadian Intel, asked for files to be sent to an address ... and they were! First class!’
‘That guy I’d give a bonus to!’
In the morning, the police now rested, we held a contest, scores noted. Those at the bottom were given extra training on rifle or pistol, those at the top sent off on a day-patrol up beyond the old druggy village. And with trouble reported on the Ivory Coast border I dispatched Robby and the Salties, Moran and Hamble with them.
Whisky was busy teaching the RAF Regiment, so I left him to it, and I sat on the roof for a few hours, enjoying the view.
Tinker called around 3pm. ‘You were right, and our man could have poisoned the water.’
‘I don’t think Hammad paid his own man to poison water that would get him arrested.’
‘No, so ... maybe the NSA poisoned the water.’
‘Did anyone die?’
‘A few old men, most were just sick, hair falling out.’
‘Try that hotel in Zurich,’ I pressed.
‘Be damn hard to get their records, Swiss don’t release anything.’
‘Then go steal it.’
‘Israelis are good at that, they have a big team in Zurich.’
‘They do?’ I puzzled. ‘Well ... ask a favour.’
‘We can send it through channels, yes.’
Call cut, I sat on the roof, staring at the phone, and finally called Langley.
‘Deputy Chief.’
‘It’s Wilco. I have some intel, but you won’t like it.’
‘Hit me.’
‘Hit me? You play cards in Vegas?’
‘Not a term you Brit’s use I guess. So what you got?’
‘Looks like our NSA friend was the one poisoning the water; we can place him at the scene each time.’
‘That’s ... not good. You know when you complain that one agency doesn’t cooperate with the other, and that departments don’t cooperate, well I think this is one of those times – some little shit running his own show. Any solid evidence?’
‘Not yet.’
‘As a favour to us, suppress it if you get it. The guy is dead, deed is done, or was done a year ago or more.’
‘My only interest is who sent that man, so I’ll keep it quiet.’
Off the phone, I tapped the phone against my chin, the RAF Regiment lads observing me. I called Tinker. ‘Any water being poisoned in the last year?’
‘Yes, but accidentally – so it seems.’
‘So it may not have been our guy, or maybe someone took over after he failed to call in.’
‘Most of the evidence points towards a rusty pipe breaking, chemicals flowing into the water table.’
‘Rusty pipes can be given a nudge. Keep at it.’
‘Give me the brief, and we’ll decide.’
Harris and his assistant opened a map on the map table. ‘Three kidnappings, white faces taken, locals let go, same jeep described in each, even got the license plates.’
‘Not the smartest bunch,’ I quipped.
‘No, and we know where that jeep parks of a cold night.’ He tapped the map. ‘Here, southern end of a small town, old water workings.’
‘How many men?’
‘Never more than ten seen, but that town could have a lot more.’
‘Simple job.’
He straightened. ‘French have complained through channels.’
‘What about?’ I puzzled.
‘It’s their back yard, they have men there, and that we should not be launching operations there without them.’
I sighed, and nodded. ‘Have Henri pass it to French Echo, and let’s keep our French cousins happy. At least for one raid.’
‘We pass it over?’ Harris queried, not happy.
I held my hands wide. ‘It’s all politics and bullshit, you know that. So yes – we pass this one. Next job – French can’t whinge. And right now we need French Intel playing nice on another job, a more important one.’
My phone trilled. ‘Wilco.’
‘It’s Major Sanderson.’
‘Sir?’
‘We have two new warm bodies, a French chap and an American chap, both civilian agencies. We’ve found them desks and have ordered computers and fax machines. They have desk phones for now. Oh, I put them in the Officers Mess, nice enough rooms.
‘Also had your friend the Air Commodore drop in a few days ago, was passing and wanted to chat to you I guess. He spoke to the RAF facilities man about this hangar and was not happy -’
‘Not happy? About what?’
‘The Portakabins, so they’re erecting a metal frame as we speak, and on top with be a mezzanine floor like the pistol range, offices on that floor. When we’re in there the Portakabins will go, then they start on the downstairs offices.’
‘Oh, well ... that sounds better, sir.’
‘Should be better offices, yes, be ready quickly. He said he had a team that had done the same thing at many RAF hangars, so they knew what to do.’