by James Phelan
“What?” Somerville said.
“Comic-book reference,” Hutchinson said. “It’s like saying, who polices Batman? In this case, the MoD probably reached out to MI5 for help.”
Walker said, “Did you tell them this might be connected to what went down in New York?”
“You bet,” McCorkell replied. “That got us our audience.”
“I’m still unsure about the MI5 connection,” Somerville said. “It’s not right.”
“They deal with domestic security,” McCorkell said. “They might be looking at these guys as an emerging terrorist outfit. Their Terrorist Act of 2000 gives them a lot of sway. At any rate, we’ll know more soon.”
Somerville asked, “Did they give you a location on these guys?”
“It’s a farmhouse,” Hutchinson said. “Welsh coast.”
“Burnley Drive,” Walker said.
After a brief pause, McCorkell asked, “One of the guys at the tavern talked?”
“Field map in their car,” replied Walker. “Along with a piece of mail.”
McCorkell paused. “Walker, you can’t operate like this. I can’t protect you, legally, not like this.”
“They started it,” Walker said. “I was just trying to enjoy a pint.”
“It’s true,” Somerville said. “Well, the they started it bit. They instigated the violence. One drew a firearm. It was us or them.”
“Walker, they’re well armed,” Hutchinson warned. “Don’t approach this house alone. We can get a crew in. Liaise with MI5. Be there by nightfall.”
Walker remained silent.
“But Five aren’t talking to you,” Somerville said.
“It’s political,” McCorkell said. “I’m pulling strings. We’ll have answers within the hour.”
Silence fell between the four people in the two cars. Walker thought, We won’t have an hour—let alone nightfall. That publican will contact the farmhouse. If my father’s there, he will be warned—and he’ll be gone, and those other SAS guys will be lying in wait.
“Whatever it is you find out,” Walker said, “tell them to send another crew to that farmhouse. Tell them to bring a hearse. Biggest one they’ve got.”
4
Walker stood in the tree line, watching the farmhouse through the only worthwhile equipment taken from the SAS men’s vehicle: a small set of binoculars, about as far removed from military spec as you could get. The sun was an hour off setting. The farmhouse had whitewashed stone walls, a gray slate roof, gabled windows. The building was elevated, open terrain dotted with sheep wrapping around the house for a good 450 yards, creating a killing field all around; might as well have been a moat around a castle. Neither Walker nor Somerville had weapons besides the Browning loaded with twelve 9-millimeter rounds—good for in-close use only. Walker surveilled the scene, slowly raking his binoculars from side to side. No strong tactical options appeared.
“You think they’re in there?” asked Somerville.
“That’s the place,” Walker said, staring hard at the house. Had they received word? Was David Walker there? In just under three days, Walker had thought of the man less and less as his father and more and more as an adversary. “And someone’s home.”
“What if your father’s in there?”
“I hope he is.”
“What then?”
Walker paused, his hands tight on the binoculars. “Then I’ll talk to him.”
Somerville watched him for a moment before speaking. “Just like that?”
Walker nodded.
“You have a plan?” she asked.
“You stay here,” Walker said, passing her the glasses. “Observe, and report to McCorkell and Hutch when they get on scene.”
“And you?”
Walker looked to the south. Another farmhouse stood half a mile away, on an unsealed driveway off Burnley Drive. Smoke rose from the chimney. A time-weary tractor and a 1960s Land Rover short wheelbase were parked near a small iron-roofed barn.
Walker said, “I’m going hunting.”
•
“Walker’s reckless,” Hutchinson said as McCorkell drove. “Too gung-ho. He should wait for back-up.”
“He’s worked with the best operators in the world. Hell, he trained them. He knows what he’s doing.”
“That was, what, ten years ago?”
“He wasn’t exactly relaxing on a beach those ten years after the military. He spent them at CIA’s pointy end.”
Hutchinson looked out the window but didn’t notice the scenery. He was aware of the very real prospect of Walker heading into that farmhouse, alone, putting himself in a position where this—their only lead into the Zodiac program—would be lost. “Look, Walker’s been on the outer for over a year. He’s not as capable as he—as you—think he is. He’s not a surgical instrument anymore. He’s a wrecking ball. We need these guys alive. Especially his father. We’re talking about twelve major terrorist attacks that can be prevented, but only if we do this right.”
McCorkell thought for a moment, just the sound of the engine and tire roar. “You might be right, about Walker’s capabilities. But these guys have been out a long time too. And this is his father we’re talking about. Walker won’t jeopardize the long-term mission.”
“You trust him too much.”
McCorkell was silent.
5
Walker followed the road at a slow jog. His boots loud on the crushed granite that formed the surface but the strong wind blew the noise away. The land here was green, the sky now a darker shade of gray, the sun all oranges and yellows where it broke through the horizon.
The neighboring farmhouse was distinguishable for the work it did: sheep, hay, grains. To the west a field of knee-high barley whispered in the wind. A hundred yards out a dog barked. Walker hurdled the stone fence and quickened his step, moving low through the barley at a run. He approached with the sun at his back, not that it served any useful purpose of concealment in this moment. Gulls spooked and squawked as he hit the open ground toward the barn. He could smell the sea.
He stopped dead twenty yards from the barn. The dog was there, some kind of long-eared hound, but that wasn’t what stopped him.
It was the shotgun that gave Walker pause. Double-barrel, over and under. Old but well maintained. Like the hands that held it.
The holder was a woman in her eighties. Short wiry gray hair, a face creased like a griddle pan, her frame maybe a hundred pounds when wet.
“Ma’am,” Walker said, standing to his full height and raising his open hands above his shoulders. The gun was steady in her hands, like she’d learned to hold it seventy years ago to take care of foxes and hares, and had not missed a day’s shooting since. “I don’t mean to bother you.”
She looked at him, and heard him. The American accent made her waver. His black jeans and dark blue T-shirt. His tan. Not all of it foreign to these parts but the sum of it different enough to give her pause.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked. She looked up in the direction of the road, as though expecting to see a car.
“Looking,” Walker said, a smile forming to ease the moment. “I’m a scout. For a film crew.”
“Film?” The gun lowered a little. “Hollywood?”
“That’s right,” Walker said, lowering his hands and taking a few steps toward the woman. “Hollywood. They think this area could be the next Middle Earth. Or Narnia. I’m here to see for myself. I’ll be on my way, though, if you like. No need to point guns and all.”
The woman looked at Walker for a long moment and then pointed the barrels to the ground.
“I suppose you can come in for a cuppa,” she said, and turned her stooped frame that had stood against many a gale and ushered Walker inside. “I do like the movies.”
•
“He’s gone to a neighbor’s house,” Somerville said into her phone. “Another farm that I can see from here.”
“What for?” McCorkell replied over his car’s hands-free speaker system.
There was a murmur that Somerville couldn’t make out, then Hutchinson said aloud, “He’s after a weapon. A rifle. And maybe some intelligence on the target building.”
“How far out are you guys?” Somerville asked.
McCorkell said, “Thirty minutes.”
Somerville said, “Better hurry.”
Hutchinson said, “You ain’t kidding.”
Somerville lowered the binoculars, knowing the tone. “What is it?”
“MI5,” McCorkell said. “We just heard back, and they’re not taking chances with us crashing their surveillance op. They’re on their way with a team of heavy hitters to apprehend everyone there.”
“Did they give you any answers?” Somerville asked.
“Not yet. But Walker better either hurry or stay out of the way.”
“You’re on the road, you’ll be ahead of them,” Somerville said. “We can help Walker when you get here.”
“No,” McCorkell said. “The MI5 crew won’t be taking the road.”
•
“Thanks,” Walker said, taking the chipped blue enamel mug of steaming tea. He sat in a chair opposite his host.
“So, you’re American,” the woman said. Her name was Doris. She had a friendly face, when not sighted down the barrel of a gun. “I do like Americans. We had some stationed here during the war. Army Air Corps. Fourteenth Ordnance Battalion. A couple of field hospitals.”
Walker smiled. Sharp mind. Doris wouldn’t miss much.
“Many neighbors about?” he asked.
Doris paused, said, “No, not for miles.”
“What about the house to the north?”
Doris looked a little uneasy. “Best you leave that place be.”
“Haunted?”
Doris shook her head.
Walker looked around. Books neatly lined on the shelves. The newspaper open on the table, the crossword completed. By the window facing the farmhouse sat an old pair of field glasses, better than the tiny binoculars he’d used earlier. Old enough to have been passed out to militia during the war to search the skies and fields for Nazis.
“Bird watching?” Walker asked, seeing that Doris’s gaze followed his around the room.
Doris didn’t respond.
Walker, a little forward, asked, “Who do you see out there?”
She looked at him. “Who do you think I see?”
“Men. Five of them. In the neighboring house.”
Doris nodded, said, “Do you know them?”
“No. Well, one of them. Do you know them?”
“No.” She watched him silently, the only sounds the crackle of the wood stove, the wind in the eaves and window frame. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”
Walker saw the look in Doris’s eyes. Canny. Calculating. Cautious. “I don’t look like a movie guy?”
“No more than I look like Ava Gardner.”
“Maybe you did, twenty years ago.”
“Don’t you be cute.” She looked deliberately to the shotgun leaning next to the front door.
Walker liked the old bird.
“You were a soldier,” she said. “Just like those men next door. But you’re not with them, are you?”
“No ma’am,” Walker said. “But I am here because of them.”
Doris was silent, watchful.
“I think they’re up to no good,” Walker said. “What do you think?”
“I think the same.”
Walker sat forward, said, “I came here, to your farm, because I was hoping I might be able to sneak in and borrow an old rifle.”
“But instead,” Doris said, pausing to sip her tea, her gaze not leaving his, “you found an old bird.”
“Yep. And I bet I won the jackpot.”
•
MI5 had its own paramilitary wing, and they weren’t using the road. Based just next to Heathrow, when they got the call to move, they moved. Fast.
Six men, armed with the latest generation Heckler & Koch UMP submachine guns, aboard a charcoal-colored AgustaWestland A109 helicopter.
They headed southwest at a cruising speed of 155 miles per hour. Their orders were clear: capture and detain any and all that they found. They knew that the targets were armed and dangerous. Deadly force was authorized.
6
Doris turned out to be a goldmine of information.
The house had been empty for a decade, and when the new tenants arrived they came in a couple of Land Rovers, nothing more. No furniture-movers, no truck full of domestic necessities. Four men. Ex-soldiers, like the tough and lean types she’d seen around Hereford, only these four, who had become her neighbors, were all old sergeants or warrant officers who’d retired.
At first she thought the MoD might be setting up a top secret post, some kind of off-the-books site that traded in specialist training. Or, maybe it was going to be one of those places that trained movie stars how to hold guns and roll around in the mud. But no one else came. No one, except, during one gale-force winter afternoon when she was repairing some missing slate tiles, one more man.
This man was different. He was older, not her age but splitting the difference between her and the initial four: call him mid-sixties. He was tall, with an athletic build that had softened over decades of office work. He wore a suit the day he arrived, but never since. He dressed differently from the others. He wore jeans; they wore khakis. He wore plain blue button-down cotton shirts; they wore prints and tartans. He stayed in or near the house, leaving perhaps once a month; they went out daily.
Walker showed Doris the same photo he’d shown at the pub. Doris looked at it, then at Walker, and made the connection.
“So, what do you want with your father?” she asked. Her eyes twinkled with cunning—this was the type of lady who’d finish the cryptic crossword while watching a BBC whodunit. “Is this about the Army?”
“No,” Walker said. “Not really. It’s hard to explain.”
“But it’s important that you go over there. With a rifle.”
“Vital.”
Doris nodded.
•
Hutchinson drove hard, the Army’s Ford Focus bouncing across the country road as they raced toward the farmhouse.
“Say we do get there before the MI5 crew,” he said to his boss. “Then what?”
“We take Walker Senior in,” replied McCorkell.
“How?”
McCorkell paused as he slowed for a tight corner, said, “Put him in the boot, get to a safe place, question him.”
“Those ex-SAS guys are armed to the teeth.”
“Walker will have sourced a rifle or gun—you said so.”
“And, what, he’s going to take out these other two SAS guys and grab his father in the next, oh, twenty minutes?”
“I doubt it,” McCorkell said, his voice hard. “If Walker’s already on the move, it’ll start and finish well before we get there.”
•
Walker moved toward the whitewashed house in a crouched run. For a man measuring six foot three and 230 pounds, he moved fast and quiet. Training. And application. Nothing sharpened the training like application under fire, and Walker had been through plenty enough of it to know to keep his head down, to stay alert, to expect the unexpected.
He paused to listen. All quiet.
He continued on.
The Holland & Holland shotgun in his hands—20-gauge, under-over, twin triggers—was well used and well maintained for a working gun from a farm. Snapping the breech open had revealed the mechanism to be smooth and oiled. The top shell would eject clear, while the bottom caught a little due to a gouge in the breech. A defect like that was important to know about because the removal of the spent bottom shell and subsequent reload would add a second to any engagement. Walker had twelve shells in his jacket pocket and two in the gun.
Up against two ex-SAS guys with automatic weapons.
Not ideal.
The tall grass from the
road provided visual cover during his approach. Ahead, the white house had four windows at the front—two downstairs, two up top—and Walker noted lights on in the right-hand window on each level. The wind was behind him. Soon he would reach the clearing in front of the house, where he would be exposed for the final leg of his approach. He could do nothing about that. The longer he waited, the more chance the occupants would receive word from either their surviving compatriot at the Boar and Thistle or the publican that there was a guy out there asking about them.
The house was 150 yards away. Walker paused at a hundred; barely fifty yards of cover remained ahead. He spotted Somerville’s position concealed behind the pines; she wasn’t visible from the house but Walker could see a glint off the car’s roof from his location, caught by the dull low sun.
He pushed on. Fifty yards. His cover ended. All low-cut grass and gravel drive from here.
The kill zone.
He stopped. Waited. Watched.
Still no movement in the house. The windows to Walker’s right were still lit from inside. The front door looked old but sturdy, solid timber, weathered as gray as Doris’s hair.
Movement—the bottom window, this time on the left. Another light came on. A curtain moved as someone brushed by it. A man. Not his father. One of the ex-SAS guys, moving slowly, no urgency.
Walker looked around a final time as he readied for the dash ahead. The sun was low; he had perhaps twenty minutes before it dipped below the line of pine trees to the west. There was no sound but the wind in the barley. Like a calm surf washing ashore.
Then, a noise. Loud, distinct, sudden. A pistol shot. To the east. The Browning. Somerville.
7
Walker ran for the white house.
Again he saw movement behind that downstairs curtain—the ex-SAS guy.
Walker shouldered the shotgun and let off two rounds through the window, maintaining his forward momentum and speed as he broke the breech and ejected the stuck round and reloaded two more.
BRRR BRRR.
Two triple taps from an MP5K rippled through the air by him. The sound of the six 9-millimeter rapid-fire bullets was terrifying to anyone on the other end of it, and Walker was no different. But his best option was to push on with the assault. He hit the front wall of the house, next to the door, and listened.