Assassin

by Tom Cain

  Even for a regular parachutist, that is a tricky enough procedure. The key issue is to know exactly when to detach the parachute canopy. Do it too soon, while still too far above the water, and you’ll hit the surface too fast and just keep going down unstoppably into the depths. Plenty of special forces men have perished that way, dragged to their deaths by the speed of impact and the excess weight of their gear.

  Anyone who waits too long, however, risks becoming tangled in lines and canopy fabric. Unable to swim, they will then drown like a dolphin trapped in a tuna-net. The Goldilocks knack is to release the canopy not too high and not too low, but just right: ‘When you feel the water on the tips of your toes,’ as one of Carver’s instructors had told him.

  He might also have added, had he known what his pupil would one day attempt: ‘And for Christ’s sake don’t wear a wing-suit.’

  It’s hard enough to swim when your arms are prevented from moving more than 45 degrees from your body because you’re dressed like a man-sized bat. When your legs are hobbled by a triangle of tough, unyielding material it’s absolutely impossible. So long before Carver got rid of his parachute, he had to deal with his wings.

  A thousand feet above the water, he pulled on the cutaway handles that released his arm wings. He felt the ripping sensation of opening Velcro, raised his arms, yanked them outwards and exhaled with relief as the two black triangles fluttered like flags on the wind before disappearing into the night.

  His leg wing had no instant cutaway system. It had to be released by its zip. Carver raised his knees towards his chest, felt for the zip handle and tugged. Nothing happened. He tugged again. Still no response. The zip was jammed.

  Carver was twenty seconds, maximum, away from impact. He forced himself not to panic, but to think clearly and act calmly. All was not lost. Attached to his suit he had a lightweight combat-utility knife with a titanium handle and a steel blade, hardened with tungsten and carbon-diamond. It could cut through the toughest fabric as easily as it could cut through a man. Carver had counted on being able to do both.

  He grabbed the blade, reached down and started slashing desperately at the tough black material between his legs. The bottom end of the wing was reinforced with a panel of extra-stiff fabric, designed to increase stability and rigidity during flight.

  The water was rushing towards him. The knife was sawing back and forth across the panel. Carver cut through the final strands just in time. His legs were free, even if there were now two strips of fabric flapping round them like a pair of seventies disco flares. But then he realized something else. He had to release the parachute, which he could not do with a knife in his right hand. Nor could he risk hitting the water holding a deadly blade.

  With a muttered, ‘Shit!’ Carver threw the knife as far away from himself as he could. He had lost one of his most valuable weapons. But there was no time to waste worrying about that. He pulled at the release-cord and freed himself from his canopy.

  An instant later, he hit the water. And he kept going down.

  For a second or two his momentum seemed un-diminished, but then his descent slowed, he kicked out with his legs, pulled at the water above him with his hands and slowly, oh so slowly, he felt himself rise up towards the surface.

  At last he broke through and felt the glorious rebirth of that first desperate breath of fresh air. He was down. He was alive. Now he swam to the island and scrambled on to one of the rocks that surrounded it, taking care to stay well out of sight of the far shore, and the men guarding Lincoln Roberts.

  Carver had an equipment pouch strapped to his stomach. Inside it, he’d packed a shortened Heckler and Koch MP7 sub-machine gun. It was the updated version of the MP5 he had used in the past, designed to penetrate body armour, but he was still keeping out water the old-fashioned SBS way: with a condom stuck over the barrel. Next to it in the pouch were a selection of small explosive charges, a snorkel, a diver’s mask and a pair of fins. He removed the oxygen mask he had worn for the jump and threw it into the water, along with his parachute harness. He put on the sub-aqua gear. Then he slipped back into Currituck Sound, made his way around the island and started swimming towards the shore.

  8

  Carver had spent his professional lifetime training himself not to think about the rights and wrongs of the work he did. It was not that he lacked a moral compass. It was just that there was no point in wasting time on matters over which he had no control. He’d learned that in the Royal Marines. Politicians started wars. Senior officers then had to prosecute them. They gave orders and men like Carver obeyed them. All along the line, people had reasons for what they did. They all thought they were doing the right thing. For the people at the sharp end, however, the issue wasn’t right or wrong. It was doing everything you could to kill the other guy before he got you.

  The same principle applied outside the armed forces. Carver had never been on a job, even the ones that seemed beyond all justification, that someone, somewhere didn’t believe was the right thing to do. He’d fought a man who was willing to bring down the wrath of God upon the world and provoke the end of days in the sincere and absolute belief that this was the road to salvation. Granted, he was crazy. But his conviction was no less total than that of men who’d claimed to be sane.

  So now he didn’t think about anything as he swam just beneath the surface of Currituck Sound, aside from the immediate, practical realities of his situation. He had several hundred yards to cover, through water that was virtually tideless, so currents were not a problem. The wind, now freshening once more, was against him, making the surface choppy. Although that slowed him down a little, he was virtually submerged, and the broken water surface only helped hide him from anyone watching from the shore. But having just overcome the threat of hypothermia, his biggest problem now was heat. His flying suit was acting as a dry shell-suit, but the multiple layers of undergarments essential to keep him alive at high altitude were putting him in danger of overheating. The process would begin with the swelling of his hands and feet, moving on to cramps and heatstroke, which could leave him disoriented, hallucinating and even comatose.

  For SBS operatives, who regularly have to shift from the extreme cold of, say, an underwater drop-off from a submarine to the intense exertion of a long swim, followed by a climb up a ship’s hull or oil platform, heat is a familiar adversary. So Carver took the swim slowly, regularly pausing to get his bearings and keep an eye out for hostile vessels. He presumed that the Coast Guard would be patrolling the sound, in the knowledge that al-Qaeda had made deadly attacks on US forces by speedboat before and might easily do so again.

  Sure enough, he twice heard the rumble of screws in the water. There was nothing to do but stop swimming and remain as still as possible, treading water just enough to prevent himself sinking, with his snorkel-tube just an inch or two above the surface of the water. The first time, the cutter passed by a good hundred yards away. The second time the deep rumbling in the water intensified until Carver knew it was headed directly for him.

  His eyes desperately widened to catch any scrap of light, he peered out into the black, murky water and then, suddenly, there it was, a foaming mass of bubbles streaming from the onrushing grey blade of a ship’s bow. Carver took one last breath and dived, frantically kicking out with his fins as he fought to escape the inexorable avalanche of steel now bearing down upon him.

  It was no good. He wasn’t getting away. The bow was going to hit him. And then, just as he braced himself for the impact, an unseen force picked him up and flung him sideways, displacing him along with the water being forced away from the ship and he was caught up in the wake as it flowed away from the hull, and then, like iron filings attracted to a magnet, was drawn back towards the vessel.

  Carver was hurled towards the flank of the cutter. He saw the diagonal red, white and blue stripes painted on its side and aft of them the words ‘US COAST GUARD’ printed in white capital letters. He hit the hull just under the final ‘D’, taking the
blow on his left shoulder, arm and hip with a force that knocked the breath from his body, before the current swirled away again and left him bobbing in the open water as the stern of the cutter disappeared into the night.

  Carver ran his hand over his body, pressing with his fingers to detect any broken bones. He felt shaken up and bruised, but his arm was still mobile and his chest only ached when he breathed, without the sharp, stabbing pain of a broken rib. He was fit to go on.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was treading water beneath one of the two L-shaped walls that stretched out from the shore to form the dock. The entire structure was about sixty feet wide and twice as deep. Right next to Carver, facing out to sea, was a gap in the wall, about thirty feet wide, to let boats in and out. A man dressed in black fatigues, with a black flak jacket, boots and cap, was patrolling the wall on the far side of the gap, walking to and fro, pausing every so often to raise his night-vision binoculars and look out over the water.

  Through the opening into the dock, Carver could see a yacht, moored to a floating pontoon at the foot of the far wall, its bow pointing towards him. This must be the Lady Rosalie, a 42-foot sloop loved by the President almost as much as the wife after whom she was named. He took a deep breath, dropped beneath the surface of the water and started swimming towards her.

  Carver surfaced on the far side of the bow, in the narrow gap between the hull of the Lady Rosalie and the wooden planking of the pontoon floating beside her. At the far end of the pontoon a set of stone steps marched diagonally up the side of the dock wall. Still staying below the level of planking, Carver made his way along the hull. He ducked behind the yacht’s stern, breathed deeply once again and dropped below the surface of the water. A good sixty seconds passed before he reappeared and looked back along the hull towards the guard. He had walked out along the wall, his back was turned and his attention was now focused out to sea. Still in the water, Carver pulled off his mask, snorkel and flippers. He pulled himself out of the water on to the dock and scurried across to the steps.

  Crouching in the shadows, he reached into the pack on his chest and removed the Heckler and Koch. It was compact and snub-nosed, little more than a foot long, but plenty big enough for the job he would ask it to do.

  Carver closed his eyes, regulated his breathing until it was slow and easy. His mind was running over the plans he’d memorized of the grounds of Lusterleaf, and the main house itself, no more than a hundred feet away across the grass that ran up to the dock. About twenty feet shy of the house ran a low stone wall, with a flower-bed in front of it, and a stone terrace behind, furnished with tables and chairs, that ran up to the back of the house.

  Carver assumed that there were lookouts on the roof of the house. He also took it for granted that there would be agents inside the building, and that the lawn would be covered by motion-detectors, pressure-sensors and cameras with thermal-imaging capacity. There was no way he was going to get across that open space undetected. He just had to get across it fast.

  The way Carver looked at it, the odds weren’t really too bad. It would take less than four seconds to cross the open grass, hurdle the wall and get to the building. The man on the dock wasn’t likely to pick him up straight away, and even if he did, he would have to be damn good to hit a running man from where he was standing. The agents up on the roof would be hampered by basic geometry. They would have to shoot downwards, and the closer he got to the house, the tougher that shot would become. And again, they would have to react with remarkable speed.

  There were two possible ways into the house from where he was positioned: French windows leading into the main living-room and a back door by the kitchen. If Carver could get to either of those entrances, blast them open and then start shooting, he backed himself to take down anyone he met inside, including Lincoln Roberts.

  So he crouched by the foot of the steps, as tense as a sprinter on the blocks, took three deep breaths, then sprang upwards over the stone and on to the grass. And then he just ran like hell.

  Carver didn’t need Einstein to tell him that time was relative. Four seconds feels like a lifetime when it only takes a fraction of one of them to trigger the alarm system that sets bells ringing and lights blazing… and suddenly you feel as if you’re running through treacle. Warnings are being shouted from all directions. Guns are being raised. You’re trying to jink and swerve to unsettle the shooters, but every sidestep only slows you down. Then the firecracker explosions of small-arms fire rip through the screaming of the alarm bells, and you wait for the first bullet to tear your flesh, but none comes, and then you just throw yourself the last twenty feet, and…

  Carver hit the ground, ducked into a forward roll and made it alive to the wall of the house. The French windows were just ahead of him. A shaped charge was in his hand, ready to blow them open, and then the gunfire and bells both stopped, instantaneously, and his ringing ears heard a voice shout, ‘Drop your weapons, now!’

  Carver did as he was told. Slowly, without giving anyone any cause for alarm or reason to shoot, he placed the gun and the explosive charge on the stone flagstones at his feet.

  ‘Now place your hands behind your head.’

  Again, Carver obeyed the instruction.

  ‘Turn around. Nice and easy.’

  Carver turned and came face to face with Special Agent Tord Bahr. There was a hint of a smirk playing round the corners of his mouth. And there was a look of real pleasure in Bahr’s eyes as he raised the pistol in his right hand, aimed it directly at Samuel Carver’s unprotected chest. And fired.

  9

  Carver spent the small hours on a bunk in the estate’s staff quarters, his chest unharmed by the blanks that had been fired at it. At six thirty in the morning, after three hours’ sleep, he was in the dining-room, with one hand round a mug of strong coffee and the other holding a steak sandwich, the bread richly infused with blood and melted fat.

  The Secret Service had fixed Carver up with a dark blue T-shirt and a pair of athletic grey sweatpants. They’d given him a toothbrush but no razor, nor a hairbrush. He was looking pretty much the same as any other man on a Saturday morning after a hard Friday night. That was the way he liked it, appearing so normal as to be almost nondescript.

  Carver wasn’t especially tall, just a fraction under six feet. He didn’t ripple with muscle, or exude the air of physical menace that characterized so many men who dealt in violence for a living. He was happy to blend into the crowd and go about his business unnoticed. Only the most sharp-eyed observer would spot the controlled athleticism of his walk, the set furrow of his brow or the way his eyes, so clear and so green, snapped into focus when his concentration was engaged. Right now, though, the only thing they were focused on was his sandwich.

  On the other side of the table Tord Bahr was eating a bowl of granola with skimmed milk and sliced banana. He was already dressed in a suit and tie, his earpiece and wrist-mike in place, showing no sign whatever of the night’s exertions. The only scintilla of human weakness Bahr allowed himself was the expression, dangerously close to an actual smile, that conveyed his deep satisfaction at the way the dummy attack, designed to test his men’s readiness, had panned out. From Bahr’s perspective, the night had been a total success. Carver had provided a tough test, but then lost.

  ‘The wing-suit,’ he said, having first made sure that his mouth was completely free of granola pieces, ‘what gave you that idea?’

  ‘Process of elimination,’ said Carver. He was now leaning back in his chair, side-on to the table, looking out of the dining-room’s open French windows. ‘I thought about conventional HAHO and HALO insertions, but then… hang on…’

  Carver got up and walked over to the windows. The Lady Rosalie was out on the water, heeling over in the fresh breeze, her sails dazzling white in the low morning sun. There were two speedboats flanking her, a helicopter hovering above.

  ‘Who’s taken the yacht out?’ he asked.

  ‘The President,’ Bahr replied. ‘He’s been
here all night.’

  ‘The President?’ Carver tried hard not to splutter meat and coffee all over the floor. ‘What do you mean, he’s here? I thought this was just a training exercise. Is that regular procedure, having him on-site?’

  ‘No, it is absolutely not regular. It’s beyond irregular. We have a training division with its own facility. Anything we need to train for, we can pretty much do it right there. But the President had his own views and of course we, ah… we respected those.’

  Carver said nothing. He turned back to the window and watched for a few seconds, before looking back at Bahr. He seemed to be on the verge of saying something.

  ‘You got something on your mind?’ asked Bahr.

  ‘Come here,’ said Carver.

  ‘Lemme just finish my granola.’

  ‘No, I think you should come here.’

  Bahr sighed, shook his head, then got up from the table and began walking towards where Carver was standing. He had only taken a couple of steps before an explosive crack split the air.

  A tiny figure in the cockpit of the Lady Rosalie rushed to the stern as the boat turned into the wind, its sails flapping uselessly as it slowed almost to a halt. The speedboats were already racing towards the yacht.

  ‘What the fuck-?’ shouted Bahr.

  He raced the last few feet towards the window, and then kept going till he was standing on the grass outside. Carver saw him put a finger to his ear and bark into his wrist-mike.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he was saying. ‘What are you saying? What do you mean the sea has turned red?’

  Up in the helicopter the pilot was looking down on a crimson stain spreading out around the Lady Rosalie.