by Chris Ryan
A boot crashed into the side of his chest, blasting the air from his lungs. Matt coughed violently, gasping for breath. His hand swung around, reaching for the leg to pull the man down, but he missed. The boot swung back, then forwards, this time hitting him on the side of the neck. The flesh started to swell instantly. Matt reached out, his reactions quicker this time, and his hand clamped on the boot. He yanked at it, hard. The man swayed, his balance thrown, and another yank brought him crashing to the pavement. Matt pulled back a fist high into the air, preparing to deliver a powerful blow directly to the man's teeth.
The least you deserve is an expensive trip to the dentist, you bastard.
'Damien,' he said, looking down into the face of his assailant. He stopped himself just in time. 'Christ, man, what the hell are you doing?'
'What the hell are you doing,' Damien spat, his face purple with rage and sweat. 'You're screwing her, aren't you?'
Matt rubbed his jaw with his hand. It was bruised, but there was no blood. 'Yes,' he said quietly.
'You're meant to be getting married in a few weeks,' said Damien. 'How could you do that to Gill?'
'We split.'
'Split? From Gill? You didn't tell me.'
Matt pulled himself up from the pavement. 'I broke it off,' he said. 'I'm in too much trouble to marry anyone, let alone Gill. I do love her, but I can't have her around me right now. She could get killed as well.' He helped Damien back on to his feet. 'I need this mission to get my life back together. When I do, I'll go back and marry her — if she'll still have me.' He paused, looking down at the water. 'I'm more certain of that now than I have ever been.'
NINE
Mongari was a few miles from Limassol, but it might as well have been on a different planet. Matt checked his watch as he walked with Ivan down the quiet street. It was just after ten at night, and whereas the holiday resort would be noisy with drunken clubbers staggering their way through the streets, here there was just the sound of the few fish restaurants that lined the bay being shut up, and the screeching of a couple of cats being put out for the night.
The two of them had come alone. The flight from London had landed mid-afternoon, and they'd transferred straight to the hotel. The rest, it was agreed, would stay behind in the bar while Matt and Ivan went to check the boat and the gear were all lined up.
We could get the call at any minute. We have to be ready twenty-four hours a day.
The houses in the village were all painted white. Half a moon was hanging in the sky, gently illuminating the curve of the dock and the fishing boats moored along the wooden jetty. The moon was rising, Matt noted. That meant that on the night of the raid it would be relatively light, unless there was cloud cover. That would make it easier for them to see the target. But it would also make it easier for the target to see them.
Given the choice, I'd rather take them by surprise.
Glafacos Hasikos was prowling along the edge of the jetty, his face illuminated by the orange stub of a cigarette glowing in the corner of his mouth. Matt walked up to him. 'Do you know the way back to Limassol?' he said.
'It's too far to walk, you'll have to go by bike,' Hasikos replied, chucking his cigarette into the water behind him.
That was the phrase arranged as a password. This was their man.
'Is this the vessel?' said Matt briskly.
The ship behind him was a tug boat, about eighty feet long, with a black metal hull and a pair of white cranes on its deck. At a quick glance it looked at least ten years old, but it was still in good shape. This was just what Matt wanted. He didn't need a new, untested boat, and he didn't want an old cranky one either. This raid would be dangerous enough without the equipment cracking up on them.
'I'll take you aboard,' said Hasikos.
Matt followed him on to the ship. Hasikos was a small, overweight man, with fingernails stained from nicotine and two days of stubble on his chin. The boat was moored to the jetty, but still swaying from the swell washing in from the open sea. 'Show us the electronics, and then where the gear is stashed,' said Matt.
The bridge was towards the front of the boat. Matt was not an expert sailor, but he felt comfortable about handling this. The ship was equipped with radars, giving position and depth of water. And there was a GPS locator. No nonsense about using the stars to guide you. If you could drive a car, you could drive this.
A green inflatable dinghy, identical to the one they had trained on in Bideford, was strapped to the side of the boat. Next to it was a long hook.
'Where's the packages?' Ivan asked.
Hasikos led them down into the hold. A single battery-powered electrical light was burning in the corner, its pale light struggling to illuminate the metal interior of the vessel. Four crates were resting to the side of the stairway. Ivan told Hasikos to leave the hold for a few minutes. Matt opened the first of the boxes up. Two Bushmaster rifles and two Beretta 92 pistols. There were ten magazine cartridges for the rifles, each one holding thirty bullets. He checked the rest of the crates. Six more rifles, six more pistols, and another thirty magazine cartridges.
That made twelve hundred bullets, Matt calculated, not counting the pistols.
Should be enough to deal with six men. Two hundred each.
'How's your gear?' he said, looking across at Ivan.
Ivan had opened the first of a set of three smaller crates. Inside each one were three two-pound blocks of Semtex. He unpacked the first one, holding it in his hand. The explosive had no smell, and the consistency of children's modelling dough, but evidently Ivan had handled enough Semtex in his life to tell that in this batch the cyclonite and penaerythrite tetranitrate — the two main chemical ingredients in the explosive — had been mixed to perfection.
'It'll be fine,' he said.
Matt climbed back on to the deck. Hasikos was leaning against the railing, ash from his cigarette dropping into the sea. 'Everything is as it should be,' he said. 'I can't say for sure when we'll be taking her out. Just make sure she's ready at all times, and the tanks are full of oil.'
Hasikos nodded. Matt had no idea how much Five had already paid him, but it had to be a lot.
'She's a good craft,' Hasikos said. 'I've worked her for ten years. Try to bring her back in one piece.'
Matt grinned. 'The boat's not going down unless we do. And I'm not planning to let that happen.'
* * *
Waiting around. That was always the part of any mission that Matt hated the most. The hours dragged slowly by, the nerves gradually building in all of your muscles and the tension rising in the pit of your stomach. It preyed on your mind and grated on your nerves.
You just want to get out there and get into the thick of it.
Matt glanced out across the pool. There were a few young couples, some families with toddlers in tow, but mostly singles. There was a wet T-shirt contest down on the beach and Cooksley and Reid had gone down to take a look. Matt couldn't be bothered. He'd had his fill of women for this month. There were more important things to do than watch some podgy slapper from Sheffield tip a bucket of water over her head.
The sooner I can get out of here and get back to Gill the better.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon and the heat of the sun was starting to ebb when Matt called the group together in a quiet corner of the poolside. 'I want to make sure we're all agreed about what happens to stuff when we've taken it, and when we split up the money. We agree a plan, and we stick to it. That way, there's no room for disagreements later.'
'We need to get it to Rotterdam,' said Damien. 'That's the best place in the world for fencing gold and jewels. About half the illegal trade goes through there — gold smuggled out of Russia, diamonds from South Africa, the works. I've got a guy who'll take the lot, and give us at least a third of full market value. He pays laundered money, cash. A mixture of pounds, euros and dollars. All of it untraceable.'
'Can't we do it somewhere closer and get the cash quicker?' said Reid, tapping his cigarette lighter
against the table.
Damien shook his head. 'The point is that al-Qaeda are going to be looking for us. Try fencing this stuff in any city on the Med and word will get around. A bunch of white guys trading big quantities of gold and jewels a few days after their boat got hit. They aren't stupid; they'll be on to us like a flash.' He paused, opening a can of Diet Coke. 'The market in stolen jewels in Rotterdam is so big, no one is going to notice.'
'So how do we get it to Rotterdam?' said Ivan.
'We've bought two Land Rovers,' said Damien. 'Cooksley has stripped them down, taken out the engines and the undercarriages. We're going to stash the stuff inside those, then put them on a boat to Rotterdam. There's a cargo ship that leaves in three days — we should be able to get them on that. The trip takes seven days, but it's much safer than putting it on a plane. Customs almost never bother to check an imported second-hand car, but anything of that weight on a plane will automatically make them suspicious.'
'So the gear is out of our sight for a week?' said Reid. 'I'd rather watch my stash.'
'This is the best way,' said Matt. 'We stop here for a week, drink some beer, then get on a plane to Rotterdam the night before the cargo ship arrives. We collect the stuff together, and take it together to Damien's man. We get the cash, split it up there and then, and go our separate ways. Job done.'
Reid nodded. 'Wouldn't it be better if we all went on the boat?' he said. 'I don't want it out of my sight.'
Damien shook his head. 'It's a cargo boat. It'll be perfectly safe,' he said. 'We'll all watch it go on to the ship, and we'll all watch it come off. Anyway, you can't ask for five blokes to come aboard a cargo vessel to watch their stuff. It would just create suspicion.'
Reid looked away. 'It's my gear, I want to look after it myself.' He looked to Matt. 'Maybe we should split the gear up here, and then go our separate ways.'
Matt looked around the table. 'We need to trust each other,' he said, a note of impatience in his voice. 'That's the only way this is going to work.'
* * *
The bar was heaving with bodies. It was quarter to twelve at night and the main strip running through Limassol was brightly lit, full of people streaming up and down, standing outside every doorway, all of them drunk. The boys were wearing tight T-shirts, baggy jeans and baseball caps, and the girls were in mini-skirts and high-heels, with studs sticking out of their belly-buttons.
'Get me out on the ocean,' Matt said to himself.
Somewhere I can hear myself think.
The noise of the disco next door and the people at the bar crashed against his eardrums, making it almost impossible to hold a conversation. Matt reckoned they were the oldest men in the bar by at least a decade.
'The point about bridge is you have to plan several moves ahead,' Ivan was saying in his ear. 'That's what distinguishes the great players from the ordinary players. You have to see the whole game before anyone else can see it.'
Across the bar, Matt could see Cooksley and Reid chatting to a pair of girls. No chance, boys, he decided. Way too young. They looked nineteen or twenty, sisters maybe, with brown hair and green eyes, and bodies that were pressing hard against their clothes. Both of them had Bacardi Breezers in their hands and smiles on their faces. I know that sort, thought Matt. Right now, they are cuddly and sexy. At thirty, they'll be fat.
'So how many moves do you plan ahead, Ivan?' said Matt. 'In life, not in cards.'
'Three,' replied Ivan. 'More than that, you can't see what's happening. Less, you're just being stupid.'
In the distance, Matt could see two men approaching Cooksley and Reid. Brothers, boyfriends — it was impossible to tell. They looked pissed up. Their faces were red, and their eyes were woozy, and it was written all over their body language that they were ready to kick it off. One of the girls put her hand on to Reid's back, rubbing it provocatively.
You're trying to start something.
'How many moves do you plan?'
Matt laughed, looking back towards Ivan and taking a swig from his beer bottle. 'Frankly, I think two is my limit,' he answered. 'And that's on a good day.'
The first punch had been thrown quicker than he'd expected. One of the boys had put a fist into Reid's face, knocking him sideways. The boy didn't look like a trained fighter, Matt judged, but he was young and fit — and he had several pints of beer sloshing around inside him, and that always makes a man braver. Reid staggered two paces backwards, about to regain his footing, when his foot caught some spilt beer. He slipped and crashed to the floor, pulling a few bottles and glasses with him. When he lifted his head, Matt saw a deep-looking cut in his ear. Immediately there was blood on the side of his face, and the crowd around them seemed to freeze.
Mistake, thought Matt. That's a man whose punch was legendary even in the Regiment.
The girls were backing away now. It had started as a bit of fun, making their boyfriends jealous, but now the situation was escalating into something violent and ugly. The fun had shut down.
You girls can start it but you can't finish it.
Reid rose to his feet, the boy taunting him with a drunken grin. Matt watched as Reid pulled his fist back, the shoulder muscles powering up. He threw a left straight into the boy's face. Then, as a right crashed into his nose, the boy's knees buckled beneath him.
The second boy had smashed a beer bottle and was now advancing with it towards Reid and Cooksley, waving the jagged glass edge.
'Police,' shouted one of the men behind the bar. 'Someone call the police.'
This has gone far enough.
Matt signalled to Ivan and Damien, and the three men moved swiftly across the floor, pushing aside the crowd of people gathered to witness the action. One boy was out cold on the floor, Reid was circling the other, waiting for his moment to strike. Two of their mates had walked up and were starting to confront Cooksley, and the two girls stood behind them, their expressions terrified. Cooksley was trying to calm them down. 'That's enough, lads,' he said. 'Let's not all spend the night in a Cypriot police cell.'
In the distance, Matt could hear the wailing of a police siren. He marched into the centre of the crowd, shoving one of the boys aside, and grabbing Reid by the shoulders. From past experience he knew that once Reid had too much juice inside him he could turn into a dangerous animal. Reid was resisting, but with the help of Damien and Ivan, Matt was strong enough to wrestle him towards the door, blood dripping on to his shirt.
'You fucking tossers,' shouted one of the boys from the bar in a scouse accent. Reid turned around and attempted to lunge back into the crowd. Matt struggled to hold him — the man had the shoulders of an ox — and signalled to Ivan and Damien to give him a hand.
Reid snarled as they hauled him off towards the door. 'A bloody Irishman and a bloody bender!' he roared. 'Get your stinking hands off me and let me finish this fight!'
'You're a fucking idiot,' Matt shouted back, steering him out into the street. 'Just leave it. You get yourself arrested, the whole job goes to bloody pieces.'
* * *
After the trouble in the bar, Matt wasn't about to let the gang out of his sight. The next morning they were sitting around the hotel, none of them drinking anything harder than orange juice or coke. Reid had a plaster stuck over his ear and a bruise on his face, but otherwise was in good enough nick. 'You don't look any uglier than usual,' Matt remarked, after he patched him up. Reid had apologised to Ivan and Damien and although they had laughed it off Matt suspected it still rankled. Insults, he knew from long experience, are seldom forgotten quickly.
It's going to be hard work to keep this team together.
Ivan was trying to teach them the basics of bridge. He and Cooksley made up one team, Matt and Damien the other. They had played a few rounds already, and Matt could see that Ivan was wondering whether Cooksley and Reid weren't more suited to snap. He was clearly struggling to hold back from making any condescending remarks.
The game was not so different from soldiering, Matt decided, l
aying down an ace of trumps and collecting the trick from the table. You save your big gun for when you really need it.
'OK,' said Damien. 'After I get this money I can see I'm going to piss it away playing cards.'
'I'll have it off you in no time once we're playing for money,' said Ivan, glancing upwards. 'I'm already working out how to spend four — my two and your two.'
Matt glanced at both men, aware of the tension in both sets of eyes, then gave himself a break by collecting a new round of drinks from the bar. Two Cokes, two orange juices and a large bottle of still mineral water. 'Great looking stag party we make,' he said, putting the tray down on the table. 'I feel sorry for the bride if this is the most fun we know how to have.'
He glanced at his cards. One ace, a couple of queens, and a pile of fives or sixes. Rubbish, he decided. A beep from his mobile broke his concentration. Matt fished the phone from his pocket. A text message. He pressed the button, glanced at the words displayed on the tiny screen, then looked up at the men seated around the table.
'Time to go.'
'Finish the round?' said Ivan.
'Who do you think you are?' Matt said, standing up. 'Sir Francis fucking Drake?'
TEN
The boat ploughed steadily through the night water. Damien stood on the bridge, his hands steady on the wheel. It was one o'clock in the morning and a bank of clouds had drifted across the night sky, dimming the light of the moon. As the darkness descended upon them, their faces were illuminated only by the green glow of the radar screen.
Towards the back of the boat Matt could hear a pair of gulls squawking and the insistent monotonous hum of the engines. But the men had all quietened down — and so had the wind.
There is always a moment of stillness before a mission begins.
'How far?' Cooksley asked, standing next to Matt on the bridge.