“Operational précis,” she began. “The mission is to terminate the command and control capability of a hitherto unknown nonstate-actor group considered an imminent threat to Her Majesty’s government’s interests and representatives in West Africa.” Her voice was throaty, but warm; trustworthy, without her laboring to make it so. “Detail,” she continued. “The group is headquartered here, at Karabunda, ten klicks south of the tenth parallel, right up in the far north of the country on the Guinea border. The nearest airstrip is near here, eight klicks northwest of Soron, a deserted hamlet five klicks due west of their base.” She pointed out the locations on the map as she spoke. “Karabunda is an old mining outpost. The Chinese abandoned it in 2009. As far as we can tell, there was—is—no civilian population on-site. Importantly, the timing of this operation has been brought forward owing to unforeseen developments here, at Musala, on the Mong River, nineteen klicks south of Soron.”
“Sorry to interrupt, Captain,” a hard-edged voice from my left butted in, “but is it no’ your job to foresee?”
“Sergeant Major, if you please. Captain Rhodes is merely—” David Mason was on his feet but was cut off immediately. Sergeant Major Nazzar was on a roll.
“Aye, well, this Captain Rhodes here told us last week—Wednesday, to be precise—that this operation would not be green-lit for at least thirty days. Thirty days. Meanwhile we’ve been telling you lot in Vauxhall for weeks to expect a push south by these jokers. Their hit-and-run attacks along the Guinea border weren’t meant to take territory—they were meant to capture manpower.”
Apparently unfazed, Captain Rhodes plowed on between Nazzar and Mason.
“Current planning is to deploy you to Freetown within forty-eight hours.” She looked up at King. Like everyone else in the army she was apparently well practiced at managing up. “It’s a bit of a slog up there, but it’s a one-shot deal. Neutralize the commander and the—”
Nazzar wasn’t finished and cut across Rhodes again, aiming another terse Scots broadside at Mason.
“On the Kabala road it’s a straight shot south to Makeni, the biggest town in the north, an’ they’re rapidly gettin’ the men tae do it. No, what we have here”—Nazzar leaned forward, nudging me to one side, lunging with his coffee spoon toward the red circle that picked out Musala on the map—“is a cock-up. I can tell y’right now that deploying one man, even if it is McLean here, is as much use as tits on a bull. For the record, I didnae authorize it. An’ I don’t bloody recommend it. You need boots on the ground before he deploys and that shower gets to within spitting distance of the capital.”
“Ah, yes,” Mason managed to interject as Nazzar drew breath. “Boots on the ground. You mean like there were in Benghazi, Sergeant Major?”
Nazzar breathed out heavily. Benghazi had been a disaster for him. Deployed as E-Squadron SAS with operators from the SBS, an entire squad of his best men had been arrested the moment they landed in Libya, chaperoning an MI6 negotiating team. The Foreign Office had begged, publicly, for their release. Mason blamed Nazzar. Nazzar blamed the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. King kept quiet counsel.
“Aye, well, good luck sending him into that lot by himself,” Nazzar retorted. “Have you got any idea what that terrain is like, Mason? Or what those jokers can do? I do because . . .” He composed himself abruptly. “McLean is valuable,” he said, more quietly, “too bloody valuable.” Nazzar was standing right next to me, his now-clenched fist resting lightly on my shoulder. King sat smirking at the head of the table, carefully threading his napkin through a monogrammed silver band.
After Benghazi, Nazzar wouldn’t commit troops to Special Reconnaissance Regiment operations unless he was running them personally. But his commitment to UKN was fireproof: the Wing and E-Squadron were our guardian angels. If the job blew up, it wouldn’t be Mason—or Frank, for that matter—who came to the rescue.
“An’ let’s not even mention Barras,” he muttered to himself.
I looked at King. There was a stillness around the table. Nazzar sat down; Mason awkwardly followed suit. He was a sharp, angular character—cut-glass accent and personality to match—and tipped to take over as the new controller of MI6. But unlike King, he was not the kind of man who bought his own furniture. No knighthood, no top-brass command—instead Mason boasted a massive inherited fortune and an estate the size of a small country. It was just me and Captain Rhodes on our feet now. She looked enviously at my cigarette.
“I missed Barras,” I said, loudly, but to no one in particular. The Royal Irish Regiment had got themselves into hot water back in the year 2000. Ten of them and their local liaison officer had managed to get themselves kidnapped by a rebel faction called the West Side Niggaz—rechristened the West Side Boys by the politically correct correspondents at the BBC. The operation to rescue them had been code-named Barras. In the end the Irish had been saved by Nazzar, fighting then with his old outfit D-Squadron SAS. Most of the rebels were either killed or captured. None of the hostages died. But the rebels’ determination to go out fighting had cost the life of one SAS operator. Nazzar never forgave himself. I regretted missing it.
King reached for the decanter nearest to him, hesitated and then poured a small measure of thick, bronze Madeira into his empty wineglass, shaking his head—though whether at the proceedings in his dining room or in disappointment at the lack of proper glasses, it was hard to say.
“Captain Rhodes, please continue.” Apparently neither King nor Mason wanted to dwell on Barras and the past. Nazzar sighed heavily and reached for the Scotch.
“Sir, yes, sir. As I was saying, sir.” Rhodes paused and first glanced at Nazzar, then spoke to me. “You’ll be deployed under natural cover to Freetown on a civilian flight operated by Boliviana from LGW at zero five thirty on Tuesday. ETA thirteen hundred local at Lungi Airport.” She readjusted her glasses and opened a file, filled with papers and photographs, that was rubber-stamped SECRET in red on the cover. “On arrival take the chopper shuttle from Lungi to Aberdeen. Your driver, Roberts”—she fumbled for a photo—“will meet you in this taxi, here. He’s local, not military. Good driver. Trustworthy.” I held her gaze for a moment. She wrinkled her nose. “Very trustworthy.”
“Aye, he’d better be,” Nazzar chimed in.
“He’ll take you to the Mammy Yoko Hotel—big international place, run by Radisson now. Famous during the war. We’re hiding you in plain sight.” She looked up and smiled at me. I smiled back.
“OK, where do I get comms and tools?”
“Roberts will give you this bag”—she fished out a photograph of a Billingham satchel—“containing a local smartphone and an international smartphone and a two-way video BGAN sat phone. It’s civvy spec, but Inmarsat grants us unit-to-unit comms via the land earth station in the Netherlands. There is no GSM signal where you’re heading, but the BGAN will connect directly to the smartphone.”
“So I get video and voice comms from the field back to Hereford?”
“To Whitehall,” Mason corrected. “All routed through a NATO firewall. It’s unhackable. Except by us, of course.”
“Whitehall?” I was looking at Mason. Mason was looking at King. Madeira distractions aside, King hadn’t stopped looking at me since the briefing began.
“This operation is being overseen by David Mason, McLean,” King explained. “There mustn’t be any visible UK military involvement. Moreover, we are most keen not to—how shall I put this?—disturb our American allies with this operation. Under normal circumstances on a job like this, we would, of course, prefer to have you fully supported on the ground, but on this occasion, for reasons I’m sure Captain Rhodes will elucidate presently, you’ll be working solo.” He kept looking at me, but spoke to Nazzar. “My apologies, Sergeant Major, for not explaining that sooner. You are quite right, of course, about boots on the ground. But as you shall see, the exigencies of this operation do not allow it, and we don
’t consider Freetown to be the rebels’ primary objective. We aren’t involving or informing the Sierra Leone Army in our planning. But I am quite sure they will delight in taking credit for the outcome.”
“Your tool kit will be in two separate drops,” Rhodes went on. “Your SIG and ammunition will be in your en suite, under the floor tile underneath the, uh, toilet paper dispenser.” We smiled at each other again. “We’re giving you a 229 and match-grade 9mm ball, if that’s OK?”
I nodded and lit another cigarette as Rhodes turned her attention back to the map on the table.
“And you pick your rifle up here, in Makeni.” She handed me a single silver car key. “White Merc, parked at the hotel.”
“My own kit?”
“Yes.”
“Great. And what about Ebola? Where do I pick that up?”
“Sierra Leone has been transmission-free of Ebola since January 2016, Mr. McLean.”
When we finally got to it, the target turned out to be a white man in his mid to late sixties.
This much Mason and King said they knew: near the remote jungle outpost of Karabunda, way up in the northern hills of Sierra Leone by the Guinea border, a group of rebels (the “nonstate actors,” as Mason and Captain Rhodes insisted on calling them) had constructed a camp of some sort, which they’d managed to protect from satellite surveillance under the patchy savannah canopy.
The rebels’ motivations were unclear: no manifesto, no ultimatum, no obvious objective. So far, it was just a rumble in the jungle, but one that had the potential to destabilize the entire region.
King maintained the rebel main force was remnants of the former factions that had fought against the Sierra Leone government, and the British, in the late nineties. “Still hungry for a slice of the pie,” as he put it. A jailbreak a month earlier by a rebel general who’d run a huge illegal diamond mine in the old civil war lent this idea some weight—even if he’d been found dead in a ditch the following week.
As far as King was concerned, Sierra Leone was a linchpin of international significance: if Sierra Leone plunged into chaos, so would its neighbors. If the war spread as far as Nigeria—one of the world’s largest oil producers—the consequences could, he said, be catastrophic. With the Americans playing second fiddle to Moscow on the United Nations Security Council, any sort of peacekeeping intervention would be hard to come by.
As usual, minerals equaled mobilization.
It was from this isolated camp, King, Mason and Rhodes concluded, that the rebels had launched a series of successful and unexpected raids initially north across the Guinea border, and then south, seizing the town of Musala—an island of tin roofs and dusty streets in a sea of forest and savannah, clinging to the southern bank of the Mong River. With it framed from above by the satellite’s lens, it was hard to see why anyone would be interested in it. But from here the Kabala road wound its way south first to Kabala town, then straight to the major center of Makeni and, ultimately, all the way to the capital, Freetown. Even if Freetown wasn’t their objective, Makeni linked by road to practically everywhere else worth seizing in the country. All three of them agreed the white man was instrumental to the camp’s operation—and the rebels’ rapid territorial gains. Nazzar said nothing.
“And you have no idea who this Mr. Kurtz is?” I asked Captain Rhodes.
She tilted her head to one side, recentered her glasses and opened her mouth to speak. But it was Mason who replied.
“We think he’s ex–Soviet bloc. Probably Russian: Forty-fifth Guards Spetsnaz Regiment. Or at least working for them, with them.”
“Forty-fifth Spetsnaz. That’s Russian airborne special reconnaissance.”
“Exactly, Major McLean. Exactly.” Mason filled his glass with the Lebanese red, then mine. “Formidable, frankly. And that’s the crux of it. A year ago the Americans would have been out the gate with us on this operation, both guns blazing. But as General King has alluded to, we all know the regime in Washington is, to put it mildly, somewhat less of an enthusiastic ally against Moscow than it once was. As such, details of your mission will not be raised at the next, or any, Joint Intelligence Committee meeting here, and as I’ve made clear, your presence in Sierra Leone will be deniable by HMG—not just to the public but to all our NATO allies. That means, of course, that there will be no access to US intelligence sources or AirScan imagery. On the plus side, Major McLean,” Mason concluded, “you will have a clear run in-country without interference from Langley or the Pentagon. On balance, US exclusion from this operation should not hinder liquidation of your target’s command.”
The room lapsed into silence as we considered the operation ahead. As far as dastardly Russian plots went, it looked like Moscow was returning to form. Proxy wars in Africa had tied the US down for decades before the Berlin Wall came down. They’d cost me a family tragedy, too. But I didn’t want to think about that surrounded by King and his coterie.
“Isn’t he a bit old for a field officer? I mean, in his mid-sixties he’d even be giving Jack here a run for his money.” Nazzar grunted. Rhodes laughed and then caught herself abruptly, blushing. Mason took a swallow of his wine—it was only his second glass of the evening—and handed me a photograph. In grainy black-and-white close-up, many times magnified, it showed a balding white man with his back to the camera. He was saluting while being shown into the backseat of a Toyota Hilux double-cab by a stout, clean-shaven man in his mid-forties.
“That’s almost certainly him, your target,” Mason continued. “The man helping him into the car is Colonel Vladislav Proshunin, Forty-fifth Spetsnaz, Nine Hundred First Airborne Battalion.”
“We encountered him in Kosovo in ’ninety-nine.” King picked up the story. “The sergeant major here very nearly interrupted his holiday at Pristina Airport. Mike Jackson calmed the situation down before we engaged. Damned close call.”
“Aye, that’s Proshunin all right.” Nazzar shifted his weight in King’s Regency upholstery. “Nasty bastard. Should have slotted him when we had the chance.”
“The image is a crop of this photograph, taken in Kabala by a Global Assistance Committee volunteer based in Makeni. It was collected by our Official at the British embassy four weeks ago,” Captain Rhodes added. “It’s the only photo we have.”
The full photograph showed a primary school decked out with a red and white banner: “Global Assistance Committee and the Department for International Development—Working Together for a Brighter Future.” The vehicle, Proshunin and the target were on the hard left-hand edge of the frame.
“What’s the balance between ‘almost certain’ and ‘certain’ that he is the target?” I asked Mason.
“We know Proshunin personally drove this man from Kabala to Musala and then returned to Freetown without him; and we have a credible report that there is a man fitting this description at the Karabunda camp, and that his presence at the camp has coincided with the rebels’ push toward Makeni.”
That was it. And that was enough.
“What we don’t know,” added Captain Rhodes as she passed me the file, “is whether the man in the Hilux is definitely the man running the camp. But on the balance of probabilities . . .”
“He makes the kill list?”
“Exactly,” said Mason. “You have a Class Seven authorization from the foreign secretary, effective immediately. Once you’re deployed, we expect your target to be eliminated without delay, and without the, uh, theatrics of your last assignment. Is that clear, Major McLean?”
5
A sloppy film of sleet sloughed off the Bentley’s windscreen as it hissed along Piccadilly. We dipped down into the Hyde Park underpass, heading toward my hotel in South Kensington. The chauffeur’s profile lit up and died back into the London night in an erratic strobe of oncoming headlights. It was cold outside, and too hot in the car. I sat up front in silence, running over the known-knowns of the job so far—wh
ich boiled down to this: I’d get one shot, at one man, to stop a war.
The hotel was a good one, discreet and expensive, with a nondescript entrance on Queen’s Gate and a fire escape dropping down into the neighboring churchyard. A loaded P238, a clean Canadian passport in the name of Maxwell McLean (a medic from Vancouver) and five thousand US dollars were waiting in the safe. The .380 was for personal protection in London; I’d been promised more cash in Freetown.
I’d be operating under natural cover: the Canadian passport was real, not a forgery, and sanctioned by their government—but for what purpose they’d neither ask nor be told. It would check out online, too: Canadian Max wasn’t just an alias; he was an entire social media creation.
Two Hugo Boss suits hung in the wardrobe: one black, one dark gray—both forty-two long. Next to them were suspended half a dozen Eton shirts. I wondered if Captain Rhodes had chosen them. Six dressed me better than I dressed myself. On the shelves: jeans, cotton slacks, T-shirts and underwear. On the floor: a pair of gleaming brogues and my battered pigskin walking boots. Slouched on the luggage rack: a red North Face duffel bag, filled with the kit I’d need in-country—all civilian, as usual. The North Face: outfitters to UK Special Forces.
A glass-fronted bar fridge sat humming in the wardrobe alcove, nestled under the safe. I poured both the miniature Johnnie Walker Blacks into a water glass, knocked back a Valium and lit a Marlboro. I emptied Rhodes’s file on the bed and began leafing through the photographs and maps. The faces around the briefing table snapped into sharp mental focus.
The only evidence—Mason’s “credible report”—actually placing the mystery white man in the camp was from a source code-named “Juliet,” categorized as Ex4x5 in the intelligence report:
The Break Line Page 4