Liberation day

by Andy McNab

  I turned into the intersection and headed uphill, reasoning I might as well check the recycling bins now to see if anything had been left for me, and save time and messing around later. I was going to the same place that I’d collected the insulin packs and explosives from. The marker was the same Coke can. It would be left in position if something was there for me, and I would remove it once I had picked up.

  I drove past Hubba-Hubba’s cover position, then the drop-off, and on to the picnic area. My headlights hit the recycling bins and two huge green plastic bottle banks, each with a large steel ring poking out of the top. The Coke Light can was still in position just under the forward right-hand corner of the nearer one.

  There were no other vehicles in sight, so I parked up on the mud and gravel just past the bins, and turned off my lights. I pushed my hand underneath the one to the left of the Coke can, and felt for the broken brick that would be there if I had a message. Bingo. I dragged it out, a lot lighter than an ordinary brick, then took the can as well.

  I turned the car around and headed back the way I’d come, wanting to be clear of the area as fast as I could. Once back on the main road I turned left, toward BSM, leaving the warship lighting up the bay behind me. At the turnout behind the OP, I closed down the Mégane, then got out my Leatherman and started to dig into the brick with the pliers.

  The center had been hollowed out, then its contents plastered over. I pulled out the Saran-wrapped package and unraveled it, at the same time brushing the plaster dust off my clothes. Inside was a sheet of lined paper, covered in tight print. I opened the glove compartment and laid it on the drinks tray. There was no introduction, just the message.

  George did know about the connection between Curly and Greaseball. It also seemed the Ninth of May was well known to the French police. They suspected it had been used more than once to ferry heroin from here to the Channel Islands.

  Curly’s actual name was Jonathan Tynan-Ramsay, and he originated from Guernsey. I didn’t give a fuck: he was going to stay Curly for me. He had a list of minor drug offenses, and had been on court-imposed drug rehab programs, which he’d failed to complete. He’d eventually served five years in jail in England for his part in a pedophile ring, and left the U.K. after being put on the sex offenders list. He had lived in France for the past four years. He and Greaseball were members of all the same clubs. The sort of clubs Hubba-Hubba wanted to put a bomb under.

  George finished with a warning. The local police were taking an interest now that the Ninth of May was on the move; it had last been seen in Marseille three days ago. The police didn’t know what had happened in Marseille, but George reckoned it had picked up the Romeos from the Algiers ferry, and now the police were waiting to see where it popped up again. It was just routine, he said, but be careful.

  I tore the message into bite-size pieces and started chewing. As I headed back down the mountainside, I wondered why the hell George hadn’t told me all this in the first place. There’d been enough opportunity.

  38

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 01:38 HRS.

  I passed Lotfi’s vehicle position in the hotel parking lot and could see nothing out of the ordinary. Below and ahead of me was the marina, and quite a few of the boats were still lit up. Driving down to the entrance, I saw nothing to get me worried, nothing parked near the bus stops, no bodies sneaking around. I continued on up to the turnout behind the OP. It was empty, no sign of Hubba-Hubba’s vehicle. Good man: he had thought about the third party, parked elsewhere, and walked over to pick up my Mégane.

  So far everything looked normal—which didn’t mean a thing.

  A vehicle approached from the other direction, passed me, forgetting to dip its lights, and continued. I followed the line of the mountains toward Monaco, not wanting to park behind the OP now in case the van was back: it’d make too much noise this time of the morning. The marina lights in my rearview mirror disappeared as I completed the corner and drove into the darkness. Eight or nine vehicles were parallel-parked in a turnout ahead. They probably belonged to the cluster of houses above me on the steeper ground—apart from Hubba-Hubba’s Scudo. I pulled in at the end of the line.

  I got out, checked my fanny pack, and moved the Browning hammer away from the sore on my stomach, which had started to bleed. From the back of my Mégane, I retrieved the towel, left in the Saran-wrapped dump and urine-filled water bottle, and replaced them with my fresh supply of water and Snickers bars.

  I locked the Mégane, slung the towel and its contents over my left shoulder, and started back down to the OP with my cap firmly on my head to keep me warm later on.

  There were just one or two lights on in the houses way up the hill; other than that the mountain was asleep.

  An animal scurried away from me as I approached the entry point in the hedge. I had a quick look around before climbing over and following the hedge line on my hands and knees until I reached the V-shaped palm shrub.

  I sat there for a while and tuned in, then got the binos out of the towel. They worked well as a night-viewing aid with a little help from the dull lighting around the marina. I started with pier nine, but couldn’t be sure that the Ninth of May was still there. A boat was parked in its position, but it didn’t seem to have the same silhouette. The binos were inconclusive; they were good, but not that good.

  I’d have to go down to the pier to confirm physically, and do it right away. There was no point sitting waiting for first light, only to find that the thing wasn’t there.

  I scanned the general area through the binos for the van. There were about a dozen vehicles in the parking lot, only two of them vans. These were right next to each other, and parked facing the boats. The one nearest to me had some signwriting on that I couldn’t make out from here. Worryingly, both had a good view of pier nine.

  Leaving the towel and its contents behind, I crawled to the exit in the hedge but, instead of going through it, continued on for another twenty-five or thirty yards as a vehicle moved into the marina. I turned downhill toward the Petite Afrique beach. There was no pathway, just scrub and dry earth all the way down to the sand.

  Once I hit the sand I got up and walked to the parking lot. My detour meant I was approaching the vans from the rear, on the assumption that if anyone was inside them they’d be concentrating on the target.

  I passed the swings and jungle gym, using the huge piles of sand as cover but walking normally, as if I were taking a shortcut back to my boat. It was pointless getting tactical and running, crawling, ducking, all that sort of stuff. I was out in the open and, no matter what I did, I would be seen when I crossed the flat, open expanse of parking lot, if not before.

  My Timberlands slipped and slid as I negotiated the sixty-odd yards of beach; then I hit the heat-cracked asphalt of the parking lot. I checked inside the cars as best I could, to see if any heads were pulled back in their seats, with their car windows open just an inch to prevent that ever-compromising condensation. The odd vehicle still moved to and fro along the main road, and I heard laughter from the far side of the marina. As I got closer to the parking lot I could see the silhouette of a couple kissing in a sedan to my right, near the garbage area, but that was all. It was probably the vehicle that had come in while I was moving down here. I didn’t think I’d seen it there before. I sauntered along until I got between the two vans. Once there, I stopped and listened, standing as if I were taking a piss. If there was surveillance, it would probably be in the unmarked one. The other was too easy to spot with such a VDM—visual distinguishing mark.

  There was nothing I could do but stand there and listen. I put my ear gently against the side and opened my mouth to cut off any cavity noise, but heard nothing. I did the same with the other one, but again, nothing. It would look highly suspicious to anyone watching, a guy putting his head against a couple of vans, but I didn’t have any other options.

  I must have been there for about three minutes, hearing nothing but the gentle lapping of water against boats
, and the odd clanking of the rigging.

  A vehicle screamed along the main road toward Monaco as I stepped out onto the pier. I wasn’t concerned about the kissers: they had other things on their minds, and might be there all night. The Germans weren’t dreaming of life on the big blue sea along with everyone else around here. Their TV was still going full blare as I passed, but it was the last thing on my mind by then. I had a horrible, empty feeling in my gut. I took a few more steps and stood, looking foolishly at the laundry that hung along the back of a boat called the Sand Piper, which was parked where the Ninth of May should have been. I stood there like an idiot, willing my boat to materialize, hoping I was about to discover I was on the wrong pier. But it wasn’t to be.

  Fuck—now what?

  Spinning on my heel, and quickening my pace, I checked farther down the pier, just in case it had been shifted a few spaces. I went back and checked the first pier. No luck. I was going to have to search the whole fucking place: I didn’t know how the system worked, maybe they’d been moved to another parking place, or they had a technical problem and were parked alongside the workshop on the other side of the marina. I wanted to cover as much of the area as I could, in as short a space of time as possible, but I couldn’t run. There was still third-party awareness to think about.

  As I made my way back toward the stores I delved into my fanny pack for the phone card and started to recite the pager number to myself. 04…93—45…Fuck, what if they’d left for Algeria already? What if Greaseball had been wrong, and there was only ever going to be one pickup? My mind raced. The tennis bags had been big enough to hold at least a million and a half dollars between them, more than enough to pay off a busload of relations.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Clenching the phone card in my fist and reciting the number like a madman, my eyes darted everywhere, still in hope of spotting the boat. My plan now was to work my way methodically around the whole marina. There was no other way to confirm whether the boat was there or not. I walked past the cars that were parked to my right, but kept on looking out to my left, at the boats.

  Two bodies stepped out from the kissing car. There was a challenge from the driver. “Arrêtez! Arrêtez! Arrêtez!”

  I carried on walking, my hands in my pockets, eyes down at the concrete. I wasn’t going to stop, but I didn’t know what I was going to do. Water was behind me: the only escape was forward, past them and up to the main road.

  The driver, a man, was about six yards away and came out past his car, blocking my path, his door left open. “Police! Arrêtez!”

  Now the other body, a woman, emerged, leaving her door open as well. She ran behind and past him, and continued down to the quay, maybe to make sure I didn’t jump in. Her black leather jacket glinted dully under the lights.

  39

  T he man’s voice was very calm. As he moved forward I could see his ponytail. “Arrêtez, police.”

  I kept walking, head down, and did my best to look confused. I didn’t want to open my mouth unless I had to.

  The woman moved in step with him, following the waterline no more than two yards behind. She kept at an angle to her partner so she had a clear field of fire. The man kept jabbering in French as he got closer to me, moving slowly, like a stalking cat, bending his legs and hunkered down a bit, treating me as if I were an unexploded bomb with a tremor switch. The woman sensed this was wrong: I hadn’t stopped. Never taking her eyes off me, she moved her right arm, pulling back the jacket to get to the pistol somewhere on her hip.

  No more than three yards separated us now. I stopped as I heard the squeak of leather as the woman’s pistol came up. I hadn’t exactly helped calm the situation down by not talking to them or looking as if this had never happened before. Her hair flicked up as she jerked her head around, checking everywhere to make sure I was alone, before getting eyes quickly back on me.

  Ponytail moved forward while she stood her ground, covering him. He had a couple of days’ stubble to go with his hair. He thrust his ID at me with his left hand. A National Police badge, looking very much like a sheriff’s star with the word Police set in a blue center.

  “Police,” he said, in case I had trouble reading.

  He flicked the fingers of his right hand upward, but at first I didn’t understand the gesture. Then I got it; he wanted my hands out of my pockets and up where he could see them. His eyes never left mine, looking for signs that I was going to try something. This guy was really experienced; he knew that eyes give away an action a second before it happens.

  He gestured upward again with his right hand. “Allez, allez.” He wanted my hands in the air, or on my head, I wasn’t sure which.

  What the fuck was I going to do? Jump into the water and swim for it? To where?

  He was just a pace away as my hands went up onto my head. He was pleased with that and continued to talk to me in confident, subdued tones as he closed his ID and shoved it between his teeth.

  She was still static at the water’s edge, behind him and to my left.

  Ponytail closed in and ran his left hand over the front of my jacket. His right hand was still free to draw down if necessary. Encountering the Sony, his eyes narrowed. He breathed through his nose, kept the ID in his mouth, and gave a muffled but calm, “Pistolet.”

  Even I knew what that meant, and the woman moved in closer until she was at right angles to me. I could almost feel her tongue in my ear as she whispered something along the lines of “Move and I’ll kill you.”

  She was too close. You should never be within arm’s reach. I had to do something, anything, before he got down to the Browning.

  He started to pull on the zipper of my jacket, yanking it with such force that it snagged about a third of the way down and I got tipped forward.

  It was time to act.

  His eyes were still staring into mine. My hands were still on my head and my left elbow was level with her pistol. Taking a slow, deep breath, I counted to three, then forced my arms forward to push the muzzle away from me. She shouted out, as if Ponytail didn’t know what was happening. I made a lunge to the left and body-checked her, toppling her into the water.

  Ponytail came at me. I tucked my head in and got my forehead into his face. There was a crunch of bone on bone and he dropped to the ground. I followed, my head flashing with pain. It felt like I’d headbutted a wall.

  He arched his back, trying to draw the weapon, which he had holstered behind his right kidney, as Leather Girl splashed about below us. His jacket fell open. I saw a cell phone clipped to an inside pocket. It was quicker to get to than my Browning or his pistol hand. Grabbing the phone upside down in my right hand, I knelt astride him and stabbed at him, using the stubby antenna like a dagger blade, stabbing into his shoulders and chest. I didn’t want to kill him, but I needed to mess him up for long enough for me to get away. He screamed in pain and I felt his blood warm on my hand as my own ran into my eyes. The pain in my head was a nightmare. I kept on stabbing, maybe six or eight times more, I wasn’t counting. Fuck him and his weapon, I just wanted to make some distance between them and me. Scrambling to my feet, I ran toward the concrete steps.

  Ponytail cried out in pain as he writhed on the ground behind me, and I could hear people calling out from the boats in a cocktail of languages. I wasn’t too worried about the girl. When she got out of the water, she’d stay with him, fixing him up. It might have been worse. I might have gone for his face or throat.

  I was taking the steps two at a time when Lotfi’s voice burst in my left ear. “Hello, N—N, radio check.” Almost simultaneously, I saw headlights coming from the direction of the town, down toward the marina entrance. I jumped over the “I fuck girls!” bench and hit the Sony pressle as I stumbled into the scrub. “Keep going, we have a situation, do not stop. Go to H’s vehicle. You’ll see mine there, wait there, wait there. Acknowledge.”

  Click, click.

  Mud caked my bloodstained right hand, as well as the cell phone. Lotfi’s ligh
ts continued on by the entrance and passed me as I grabbed the towel and the OP gear and scrambled along the hedge, leaving the screams and lights going on in boats behind me.

  As soon as I was out onto the road I started to sprint uphill as fast as I could, ready to leap back over the hedge as soon as any vehicle came along the road. My throat was bone-dry and my lungs hurt as I sucked in oxygen and pumped my free arm to get me up the hill and past the bend. I found Hubba-Hubba and Lotfi waiting in the Focus, lights off and engine on. Lotfi unlocked the doors as he saw me approaching.

  I jumped into the back. “Let’s go! Drive toward Monaco and get off the main drag—quick as you can, come on, let’s go, let’s go!”

  The Focus revved up and we screamed away from the curb as I tried to catch my breath.

  I shoved the cell phone with the OP gear into the towel, wiping the mud and blood from my hands as I did so.

  “The boat—it’s gone. At least, I think so. I only got to check two piers. The van, it was definitely the police. I’ve been stopped by them.”

  They didn’t look at all happy.

  “It’s okay, I think they just want to know what the boat is up to. The guy who owns it is a drug smuggler, small-time, that’s all.”

  I finished wiping my hands as the Focus hit the first of the hairpin turns, and stuck the corner of the towel on the split in my forehead, just inside my hairline.

  Hubba-Hubba’s mind was already jumping ahead. “The device…if they are on their way to Algeria, we must stop it now.”