Blacke thought for a moment then looked up at Steel, his eyes wide open. “It was the contact, the one with the key. Damn it, they took me for one million on this.”
Sympathy was something that Steel wasn’t about to waste on this man—he just wanted to get everyone off the ship and to safety.
“So, Mr Black...God, this is getting confusing,” Albert stuttered. “Look, Tony, what’s our next move here?” John smiled at the large American.
“Well, I am going to find out how I can get you all off this tub, and then figure out exactly what it is that you’re bidding for and what they want for it.” Albert smiled with relief at the prospect of getting off the ship.
“So when you’re ready we can go.” Steel gently pushed the elderly man down in his seat.
“I am going alone, I can move quicker and quieter.” Steel looked round at Blacke, who just looked away at the insult. “All of you stay here and barricade the door, don’t let anyone in.”
Jane Stewart looked confused. “How are you going to get in to tell us it’s safe?”
Tia sat back in her chair and took a sip from the champagne glass. “I wouldn’t worry; something tells me he has had a lot of practice getting into places.”
Steel stopped at the door. “The cargo. Tell me, where is it?” He waited for the answer impatiently, with one hand on the door handle.
“In the cargo hold, you can’t miss it,” Jane said. “The door has a ‘do not enter’ sign on it.”
Steel nodded and left. As the door closed with a sucking sound, they wondered if he was coming back for them.
The sunshine was warm, wisps of cloud filled the blue sky, and a gentle breeze softened the warm air. Central Park was full of those who just wanted to get away from it all and lounge in the sun on the soft grass; joggers went past in their efforts to stay in shape for that up and coming holiday. The only sound was the noise of the park, dogs barking, children playing, the odd new musician trying to sell his latest album. The park was a place of peace and tranquillity, a place where even the noise of traffic seemed to be phased out by the park’s serenity.
McCall sat on the stone bench opposite the Victorian steps of the Bethesda Terrace; she looked upon the almost aged sandstone steps and the underpass. She sighed fondly as she remembered her first encounter with Steel, how she had chased him, but lost him in the crowds. That too was a warm day but as she looked up at the approaching figure the smile faded: this was one memory she didn’t need.
“Thinking of us?” the newcomer said. She looked up with dead eyes and glared at the CIA agent, who was tall with broad shoulders and brown hair that made him look just a bit too pretty. He sat down next to her and took off his sunglasses to clean them.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, her focus still on the place where she had first met Steel.
“Thanks for asking me here. How long has it been now? Five, six years?”
She didn’t answer. She wanted something from him and raking up the past wouldn’t get her anywhere. She pulled out a surveillance picture of Jones; she didn’t want him to know he was dead, not yet, for she had a card to play and she didn’t want to show her hand yet.
“Is this guy one of yours?” she asked.
Bryce took the picture and looked at it for a second.
“Can’t say, but I could do some digging for you if you like. Maybe give you the answer over dinner tonight?” McCall never faced him, she knew if she looked him in the eyes she would probably shoot his smug ass.
“Call me at the precinct, you know the number.” She got up and walked towards the steps, because she was anxious to put some distance between them.
Bryce leaned back on the sandstone bench and took in the rays with a broad grin on his face.
“Well, well, well. Samantha McCall.”
She walked back to the precinct from the parking lot and took the elevator up to Homicide. McCall was still seething from the encounter with Bryce, she knew he would try something tonight but she wouldn’t give him chance. As the elevator doors opened she saw the lieutenant from IA in the coffee break room, and she smiled to herself. Although this was the guy who was trying to get something incriminating on Tony, she did find him cute. She grabbed her cup from her desk and walked in.
“Morning.” her voice was soft and playful.
“You’re late, Detective.” He said the words but his tone didn’t mean it, she saw the corner of his mouth curl upward into a secret smile.
“Sorry, sir, I had a last minute thing with a contact.”
He nodded and smiled,
“So shall we?” He stretched out his right arm, urging her to lead the way to the interrogation room across the way. He could tell something was bothering her but just put it down to the stress of the past couple of days. As McCall entered the room she felt the anxiety that all the people she had ever brought into this place felt, that cold shiver as you instantly felt guilty on passing over that threshold. The walls seemed closer and the back wall two-way mirror seemed more menacing from where she was sitting. The mirror was a brilliant scare tactic, a person could lie to one other person easily, but to do it when you are looking yourself in the eye was a bit more difficult for some. The officer took out a pen from his leather-backed folder and opened it up to reveal a lined notepad of A4 size, then he arranged his paperwork, which included photographs of the scene. McCall saw one that had been taken from where Tony had said he’d been standing. She tilted her head slightly to try and steal a glance while he wasn’t looking or so he wanted her to believe, then she smiled and just took the photograph. He smiled broadly.
“I guess you have been doing this too long, Detective, sorry.” She smiled back and then looked down at the photograph, her brow crinkled as she studied the shot.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
McCall looked up and threw down the photograph onto the pile of papers,
“Nothing, I’m just curious. Never saw it from that angle. Mine was a little too close for my liking.”
The lieutenant gave her an understanding nod, then leant forwards.
“Okay, Detective, this is just a standard paperwork exercise we have to carry out after a shooting of this kind.” He switched on the two stick microphones that sat in the centre of the table, then adjusted his jacket, making McCall look at him quizzically.
“I thought this was radio not television,” she joked. “Or are you just making yourself look nice for me?”
He looked up at her and smiled, somewhat embarrassed. “Sorry, right then, Detective, in your own words what happened?”
“In my own words, we entered the hotel hoping to surprise a suspected killer and instead we ended up wearing his ceiling and Tooms nearly had heart surgery, then just as in the movies, the moment before he is about to tell me something, someone uses him as target practice. How’s that for in my own words?” McCall took a sip from her coffee and leant back on the back legs of the chair.
He looked down and flicked through her statement.
“So you wake up and find your partner cuffed to the radiator. Then what?”
McCall put the chair back on all four legs and put the cup down.
“He has taken my main piece off of me but left me my backup, which I thought was odd. Anyway I have the guy in my sights but I don’t have a shot. I shoot and Tooms has got a heart problem.”
The lieutenant put his pen down and reached for his coffee.
“Go on.” Sam McCall looked down at the photograph, her eyes fixed, but not on the picture but the memory of the moment it all happened.
“We start talking, don’t really remember about what, my head was still a bit fuzzy, I just got the impression something was wrong. Before I could learn anything the shots came.”
The man leant forwards.
“And that’s when you saw Detective Marinelli shoot the suspect and in the process possibly saving Detective Tooms’s life, is that how you see it?”
“Yes and no!” McC
all looked at him and smiled smugly.
“What do you mean ‘Yes and no’?” The lieutenant looked up, shocked.
McCall leant forwards, her elbows resting on the table.
“YES, the shooter did save our lives but NO, I didn’t see who the shooter was. I was over here when it happened.” McCall pointed to a point on the forensics map of the room.
“You were out of line of sight, so you only saw Detective Marinelli when you ran forwards to see who was doing the shooting?”
McCall sat back and enjoyed the look of disappointment on his face.
“Sorry to burst the bubble,” McCall said as she stood.
“Detective, we aren’t done yet.” He reached forwards and grasped her arm.
She sat back again, but she felt there was something eating at him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, leaning forwards and covering her microphone.
“Okay, Detective McCall, five-minute break.” He winked before closing down the evidence tape, and then headed for the break room. As they entered, he closed all the doors to the room then sat away from the window.
“You found something didn’t you?” the woman detective asked him.
“You don’t think he did it but you have got to go through the motions?” He nodded slightly.
“I saw what you saw in that photograph, Marinelli was too far away. I checked on his scores at the shooting range. He’s good but a crack marksman with a pistol he is not, unless he has been bluffing it all these years. Also where he was when you found him, there was no way he could have shot, and then run back to that position in time. We found the shell casings near the door, yet he was at least twenty feet beyond that.” McCall looked him in the eyes. “You figure he was set up?” He nodded as he pretended to drink from the empty cup.
“You saw the report from ballistics?”
McCall looked round to make sure they weren’t overheard before answering:
“Yes, and I am still confused. How the hell did they swap weapons? Was chain of custody broken? And if it wasn’t, that means we are looking at someone on the inside.”
The lieutenant nodded with a twinkle in his eye. She felt like screaming out as she told him, “You’re not after Tony officially are you, you’re after the mole?” He looked slightly shocked that she knew about it, but then he would have been even more surprised if she had been in total ignorance of the situation.
“The problem we have is that the gun was used in another shooting.” McCall nodded.
“Yes it was used to kill Bill Foster in his office, we know that.” He shook his head.
“No this was before that, it was used in Britain around ten years ago. That same weapon was used to kill some aristocratic Brits: Lady Steel and her daughter-in-law.” The female detective just sat there, open mouthed.
TWENTY-NINE
Steel moved through the lonely corridors quickly and quietly, for the plan was not to encounter or engage the mercenaries. Normally he would be after taking them down but he had no idea of their numbers or counter measures, he didn’t want to find that they had the ship rigged to blow up with over seven thousand unconscious passengers aboard. He needed to get down to the cargo hold and find out what he was dealing with. He also knew that the gas was probably being pumped through using the ship’s air conditioner unit which was near the engine room.
He was wearing one of the masks he had taken from the mercenaries in the elevator; this had a full-face screen, which gave him perfect full view, rather than lenses, which had many blind spots. Steel had found most of his routes included going down long corridors so he decided to take the long way. Elevators were also out, as they would draw attention to him. He was on the eighteenth deck and he needed to be on the second. As he approached the twelfth deck he looked at the wall map; this showed the back stairs, which would be easier to move around than large public staircases—he would have to navigate his way through the London Lounge. This was a kind of upper class bar that could seat five hundred people. It was filled with shelves full of books and leather armchairs, the furnishings were oak, and the carpet was thick and expensive, and the gaps between bookshelves were dimly lit by table lamps and the odd standard lamp.
John Steel moved in low, using the large furnishings as cover as he went. As he neared the middle of the room, he stopped and listened. He heard voices that were muffled by their masks, and he knew it had to be mercenaries. He had a plan and the exit was in sight, and as he passed by one of the couches he saw four men grouped around a pretty cocktail waitress.
“Come on, boys, get her on that couch, and let’s have some fun,” yelled one of the mercenaries, laughing as he struggled with his belt. Two of the men picked her up and threw her onto the sofa so that her top half was lying across the back. The first man finally unbuckled his trousers and dropped them, cheerfully announcing, “Okay, boys, I am going in.”
He turned at the sound of someone falling down, only to find the two onlookers grasping their throats, now without masks
“What the—?” he yelled through the restricted respirator. Then he looked up to see a man in a gas mask holding something. The rapist began to scream,
“Don’t shoot” but the taser’s remote shockers found their mark in the exposed flesh of his crotch. The man fell, twitched, and convulsed in agony as the many thousands of volts buzzed through him. Steel caught a glimpse from the respirator on the ground; a reflection in one of the lenses alerted him to the danger behind. He rolled just in time as the fourth man swung two steel batons at Steel’s head, which missed but contacted a table lamp, smashing it to pieces.
The investigator landed in a crouched position ready for the man’s next move. The rapist’s friend had two flick extension batons, and he knew how to use them. The man raced forwards twirling the batons like two propellers as he went, hoping to gain the most coverage. As he neared Steel he changed tactics and swept with both rods at the same time, causing Steel to fall backwards, the thick carpet’s pile catching him as he fell. Then the mercenary spun round and with both rods together, smashed down onto the carpet immediately below where Steel’s head had been a second before. Steel rolled to the side, then came back, pushing the rods out of the mercenary’s hands. With one swift movement Steel thrust a straight palm upwards so the man’s throat met with his open grip. The mercenary stumbled backwards holding his throat and Steel grabbed the batons and stood up.
Shrugging off the attack, the man stood ready and drew out a long machete-type blade from a sheath behind his back. Steel held the batons tightly and he stood ready in a half-crouched position. The mercenary rushed forwards, screaming into his mask, slashing with the blade, but Steel just crouched as the blade came overhead. He swept the man’s legs with one stick and the other smashed into his throat. There was a brief gargling sound then silence. Steel took off the man’s backpack and stripped the men of their ammo and weapons; while he couldn’t use them all, he could deny the enemy a resupply. However, his main thought was he didn’t like the thought of some poor kid finding one and taking out his family because he thought it was a toy.
John Steel made for the back stairs, when he noticed the touch-screen information panel on the wall. He typed in ‘Security room’, and a 3D image came up showing the location of that place. Steel needed that room: the mercenaries could track movement throughout the ship using the security cameras, so he had to make them blind after he had located all of the hostiles. The room was at the middle of the floor he was on, but the simplest route was through a kids’ playground called The Adventure House.
The playground consisted of three rooms that had a jungle scene, and each one had plastic palm trees and bushes and a rope bridge system that zigzagged its way across the twenty-foot square rooms. The wood-and-rope walkway expanded over a great pit filled with blue coloured foam spheres the size of tennis balls that gave a water effect. The lights were low and dry ice crept across the fake water below. The noises of the jungle echoed through loudspeakers and things such
as birds and bats flew around, controlled by computer technology.
The six men of Delta Squad were placed at their locations and given their orders, which were to hold and contain the area. The men were at the top of their game, some of them ex-Delta or some other equally prestigious Special Forces unit, and they were there for the promise of a good payday and easy money. The men had been broken down into three teams: Delta One who were stationed in the first room down to Delta Three, who had the last room and exit. The men of Delta One had never met prior to the job and were from different parts of the world. One of them stood on the bridge watching the entrance near his new colleague, while another stood at the door watching his old buddies play racket ball using the coloured balls and a flick-out baton.
“So it’s a sweet deal we got here, huh?” said one of the men. The other man just shrugged and muttered, “No hablo ingles.”
The British mercenary just flicked his hand and strolled over to near the entrance, saying, “Yeah whatever, you ignorant fuck.” He left the man laughing at his friends in the next room as they failed to hit a single ball.
As the South American mercenary watched his friends, he never noticed the figure loom out of the fake water and grab the other man, dragging him over the side of the handrails and into the three feet depth of water in the pool. He laughed and clapped as his friends shouted muffled curses at him jokingly. The one facing the door, who was the pitcher, reached down to get some more balls from the pool, the bridge being only an arm’s length from the top of the surface made it easy pickings for his very long arms. He stood up and got ready for the first pitch, but looking over to the doorway he noticed that their colleague had gone, but thought nothing of it.
He stood ready in a pitching position, his arms locked in, as he mockingly got ready to throw the first ball.
“Are you ready, hombre?” he challenged.
Operation:UNITY (John Steel series Book 2) Page 33