by Rob Sinclair
‘Logan, no funny business now,’ Fleming shouted over. ‘Let’s just get this done quickly and quietly.’
Logan said nothing but he was fuming, his nostrils flaring with each angry breath. He looked over the car to Grainger. She was staring at him, two of Fleming’s guards crowding around her. She gave Logan a questioning look, as though asking what she should do next. He gave her the slightest of nods.
Evans walked forward.
‘Winter sent me, Logan. There’s no need to be alarmed. We know what’s happening. We’re going to help you.’
But Logan wasn’t really listening. For days, he’d struggled to keep hold of his anger. He’d done his best to ignore Butler’s many gibes and knowing looks. This time Logan knew it was a struggle he could no longer win. Fleming and Butler’s latest betrayal was a step too far.
Logan ducked down, away from the gun barrel, acting on pure impulse, no longer caring about potential consequences. He spun around, throwing his balled right fist up into Butler’s jaw. Logan’s whole body leaped up at the same time, the momentum of more than two hundred pounds of weight smacking into Butler’s chin. The shot was sweet, perfect contact, enough to knock out most men. But Butler was tough. His head snapped back but he didn’t fall, didn’t buckle.
Logan kicked out against Butler’s hand, which was gripping one of the MP5 sub-machine guns that had been in the back of the car. The kick was good. Enough to see the gun fly from Butler’s grip. The ex-soldier lunged at Logan, ready to counter any further attack.
As Butler came forward, Logan sent a right hook into his foe’s head. Then a quick left jab into the already injured nose, then another hit with his right hand, this one full force. And then, with Butler stumbling backward, trying his best to shake himself off and regain his composure, it took just one more left fist to the nose to knock Butler to the ground.
But Logan wasn’t quite finished yet. Butler groaned and rolled his head. His face was bloodied. His nose shattered. His eyes were defeated. He caught Logan’s stare for just a second before Logan sent a crashing boot onto Butler’s already pummelled face.
‘Enough!’ Fleming bellowed. ‘That’s enough!’
Logan, snarling, panting, spun around, his fists still balled, looking for his next target. His body was hunched over, knees bent, like a wrestler about to grapple with his opponent.
But when he saw Grainger in front of him, he suddenly straightened up and unclenched his fists. Grainger, her nose bloodied, was standing over by Fleming. Maksat, the giant, had one arm tightly around her neck. He was leaning back, pulling her up, her feet barely touching the ground. In his other hand was a gun, pointed at her head. Bulat stood a yard away, an assault rifle held high, its barrel also pointed at Grainger.
In those few moments of madness, Logan had been so consumed with inflicting pain on Butler that he’d not once thought of Grainger. He’d hoped she would have put up a fight, but had he really expected her to take on Fleming’s guards on her own, unarmed? He’d done exactly what he’d been trained not to do all those years ago: he’d fought with anger, resentment. He’d lost control. And despite the predicament that he and Grainger were in, he knew he wasn’t far from losing it again.
‘Just who the hell do you think you are?’ Fleming said, striding up to Logan.
As Logan readied himself to take on Fleming, he was taken by surprise when arms grasped him from behind. They wrapped around him, squeezing, gripping like a vice. Ilya or Vassiliy, Logan assumed.
‘If you’ve killed him, I’m going to end your days,’ Fleming said, lining up to take a shot at Logan.
Logan wasn’t finished, though. He wasn’t going to take any more shit from Fleming. As the ex-soldier came within striking distance, Logan lifted his legs in the air and, using the weight of the guard behind him like a springboard, he kicked out. His feet collided with Fleming’s stomach, causing him to double over.
Logan slipped out of the grip, spun around and took two steps away to give him space from Fleming and whoever had grabbed him. As he looked up, he saw it was Ilya.
Fleming straightened up and the three men faced off. But after a second, Fleming’s body relaxed.
‘Just go,’ he said. ‘I’m not losing any men over this.’
‘You set me up, you piece of shit.’
‘What did you expect me to do?’
‘Help me.’
‘And why would I do that?’
‘Why did you even bother to get us away from the NSC?’
‘I’m a businessman, Logan. This was simply business. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t want my relationship with the NSC to suffer. So I went with the best deal. As nice as it would have been to get one over on the CIA by helping you – and I really do despise those snakes – what you were offering just didn’t cut it.’
Fleming turned around and walked over to Butler, who hadn’t moved an inch since Logan felled him. Logan was both surprised and disappointed that Fleming had found the strength to walk away from the fight. Business. That’s what Fleming had said. It was just business to him. To Logan, it was so much more.
‘Come on, Logan,’ Evans said, putting a hand on Logan’s shoulder. ‘Let’s get out of here. I’m here to help you.’
‘Like hell you are,’ Logan said, brushing him off.
‘Believe what you want. But do I look like a threat?’ he said, holding his hands in the air. ‘It’s not my men who are pointing guns at you and Grainger.’
‘Let her go,’ Logan said, glaring over at Maksat.
The guard flicked his eyes this way and that, waiting for someone else to give him an instruction.
‘Just do it,’ Evans shouted. ‘The deal’s been done now. You can all go home.’
Maksat waited just a couple more seconds but then released his grip on Grainger. She dropped down to the ground, nursing her neck. Bulat too lowered his gun, then the two guards began to slowly, cautiously, back away.
Logan walked to Grainger and pulled her back up to her feet. She wrapped her arms around him.
‘Come on then,’ Logan said to Evans.
Evans and his companion turned and began to walk back over to their vehicles. As Logan and Grainger followed, Logan looked over his shoulder at Fleming. He was still kneeling by Butler, who was now sitting up but looked completely out of it. A part of Logan was disappointed that Butler had been able to get up at all. And he wished he’d had one real shot at Fleming. Just one chance to fell that treacherous shit.
‘You two can ride in the Land Cruiser,’ Evans said. ‘With me and Mason.’ Evans nodded to the man they were walking with. ‘The other two will follow us.’
‘Where are we going?’ Logan said.
‘Let’s just get out of here first. Before Captain Fleming has a change of heart. If he wanted to, he could kill us all and bury us out here. And you’re not exactly winning him over by trying to kill his friends.’
Evans had a point. With Fleming’s arsenal, it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to finish everyone else off. And Logan had certainly provoked him into a fight. Evans had three men with him, only two of whom appeared to be armed. Fleming had himself and five other armed men, all skilled fighters.
Logan certainly didn’t want to hang around any longer.
But he also had no intention of going anywhere with Evans, regardless of whether he was there to help or not.
As they drew nearer to the driver’s side of the Land Cruiser, the man Evans had called Mason took a set of keys from his pocket.
‘You get in this side,’ Logan said to Grainger.
He looked over at her as he spoke and gave her a look that he hoped she’d understand. The slight nod she gave him told him she had.
Mason went to open the driver’s door. Grainger stopped in her
Logan looked over at Evans, who stopped just as he reached the car and turned to the two men standing at the gate, who still had their guns at the ready.
‘Wait for us to pass, then follow us out,’ Evans shout
ed over to them.
As Evans turned back around, he was completely unprepared for Logan’s attack.
Logan lunged at him, grabbed Evans’s jacket at chest height and pulled him in. He sent a bone-splitting head-butt into the crown of Evans’s nose. The loud crack from the ferocious blow seemed to echo off into the distance. Evans crumpled toward the ground. Before his body had even hit the deck, Grainger grabbed Mason from behind and twisted his left arm behind his back into a hammerlock. The man initially squirmed and cried out, but soon became placid when Grainger pushed the shoulder to bursting point.
‘The keys,’ Grainger said.
Mason groaned and held out the keys in his other hand. Logan grabbed them off him. Grainger delivered a flat-palmed smack to the base of Mason’s neck that sent him to the ground. Logan raced over to the driver’s door of the Land Cruiser. He dived into the seat, sank the keys into the ignition and fired up the engine as Grainger jumped in the back. He was reversing out of the spot before either Evans or his companion had even stirred.
Logan shoved the automatic gear box into drive, then slammed shut his door and pressed down as hard as he could on the accelerator. The car shot forward. The tyres initially skidded on the icy surface, but the four-wheel-drive mechanism did its job and ultimately kept traction.
The two guards at the gate barely had enough time to get themselves into firing position as the Land Cruiser swept past them. Fleming and his men seemed almost oblivious to the proceedings. Perhaps they felt it was no longer their fight.
Evans’s two men let out a volley of fire, but it was clear they were aiming for the tyres rather than Logan or Grainger; the barrels of their guns were pointed low. It was only through sheer luck, or perhaps the fact the guards had been taken by surprise, that all four tyres remained intact as Logan steered the Land Cruiser away and sped down the track back toward the motorway.
PART 4
Chinks in the armour
Chapter 35
August, 2008
Barinas, Venezuela
The rocky precipice that Logan was hunched behind rose eight hundred feet above the area below. The base of the rock was twelve hundred yards from the small village that lay to the north. Logan eyeballed the largest of the residential units in the village, at the far northern tip of the small enclave, through the scope of his rifle.
It was four in the afternoon and the dazzling sun in the azure sky was behind Logan and off to the west, casting a clear glow onto the buildings below without causing any glare. The light and the conditions were perfect.
Logan pulled the rifle left and right as he moved his sight around the grounds of the sprawling building complex, noting and memorising everything about the layout. There was nobody home. The building was derelict. It had been for months. Since the demise of the local businessman who had owned it, much of the village had become empty, the closest and easiest line of work gone. But while nobody lived there anymore, Logan knew the once-grand home wouldn’t be empty for much longer.
Logan took his gaze away from the scope and looked up at the sky, the fierce sun making his face sting. He held the rifle up to his chest, caressing the warm metal, preparing himself. To anyone watching, it would seem as if he were in prayer. But Logan wasn’t religious, never had been.
When Logan was a child, moving from foster home to foster home, he’d always been fascinated by the sky. His upbringing had been rough – no real family, no siblings, no one who’d sincerely cared for him or for whom he’d cared. Whenever he had felt small or lonely or lost, he would look up at the sky, gazing at the vast nothingness in the day, counting and mapping the bright stars at night, all the time wondering what life was up there.
When he was twelve years old, he’d used his meagre savings to buy a battered old telescope, trying to bring himself closer to the galaxy that lay around him and the distant stars, planets and galaxies beyond. His foster brothers and sisters had taunted him over it. In fact, he’d been outright bullied. In the end, a grotesque boy by the name of Darren, who was three years older than Logan and at least twice his size, had smashed the telescope to pieces with the heel of his boot, for no reason other than that he took great satisfaction from hurting others.
Through his teen years, Logan had kept his fondness for the sky and for dreaming about what was out there. But as he’d grown up, Logan had never found any answers to what life lay beyond the misery of his existence on earth. He no longer wondered what kind of life was out there, up in the sky. Yet the ritual he’d developed remained – a homage to the person he used to be. Now it had become easy to find the life that lay at the end of his lens.
And it was just as easy to take that life away.
He looked at his watch again and then got himself back into position. Just a few moments later, an open-topped Jeep came careening around a corner – a small dust cloud billowing out behind it – and entered the building complex through the broken and open main gates. Its movement was entirely silent to Logan from his distant perch.
A few seconds later, it came to a halt and he spotted the target exiting the vehicle, his small, slight frame and his flowing black hair unmistakable. He had on a pair of aviator sunglasses that covered most of his face but Logan was certain it was his man.
The target walked a few yards from the vehicle to a rickety old bench. A few moments later, as Logan scanned the area, he caught sight of a trail bike weaving its way through the quiet, dusty streets of the village. It pulled into the gates of the large property and the driver parked, stepped off and strode over to the target, who was now on his feet.
Logan glanced down at his watch again. Bang on time. But as he looked back into his scope, he saw the driver remove the helmet and his feeling of quiet satisfaction was quickly shattered when he saw long, wavy, glistening hair – it was a woman. She walked right up to the target and the two exchanged a warm embrace – not lovers, but the contact between the two suggested they were more than business acquaintances, Logan thought.
He quickly lowered the rifle and picked up the telephoto lens that he’d laid at his side. He zoomed in as far as the lens would allow and began to snap away as the target and woman began a slow saunter around the grounds.
Logan’s instruction had been simple, but the unexpected turn had flummoxed him. He had known the time and location of the target’s meeting, but the intel had suggested the rendezvous was with a representative from Colombia’s largest drug cartel.
The cartels in Venezuela manufactured little cocaine of their own but transported vast quantities of Colombian drugs across their country en route to the US and Europe. Disrupting the Venezuelan cartels, which was the JIA’s aim and Logan’s job, would not only damage the Colombian cartels’ supply chain but also provide a great deal of useful intelligence about the operations of the drug barons and their extensive armies.
But this woman wasn’t part of that, surely? She certainly didn’t look like any cartel rep Logan had ever seen. He’d been neck deep in intelligence on the key movers and shakers for weeks and had never come across her face before.
Satisfied with the clarity of the pictures, Logan dropped the camera and picked up the rifle again, then peered down the scope and followed the man and woman as they meandered for a while, deep in conversation. They sat on the bench and after a few moments, the target reached into his jacket and pulled out a large envelope, which he handed to the woman. She took it and placed it on her lap without opening it.
‘Shit,’ Logan said.
He reached down and pulled the mobile phone from his pocket and dialled the number for his boss, Mackie.
‘Is it done?’ Mackie said without any pleasantries.
‘We may have a problem,’ Logan said.
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘The meeting. It’s with a woman.’
‘So? What are you waiting for, Logan? Do it.’
‘But I’m not sure she’s from the college,’ Logan said, using the basic code to refer to the Colombian cartel
they had thought the meeting was with.
‘There isn’t time. Finish the job, then leave.’
‘She’s not from the college, Mackie. I need to find out what’s happening here first. I’m not sure what we’re dealing with.’
‘Logan, have you gone deaf?’
‘No, I just think–’
‘I’m not asking you to think!’ Mackie bellowed.
‘There’s been an exchange. I think she might be–’
‘Do it, Logan. Do it now. That’s an order.’
Mackie ended the call and Logan lay there, listening to the beeps on his phone, thinking through what to do next.
He wasn’t really sure why he was so hesitant. It wasn’t the morality of the order that troubled him. His inquisitive mind told him there was more to this meeting than the intel had suggested. In fact, it looked like the intel had been plain wrong.
Mackie had made himself clear, though.
Logan laid the phone down by his side and looked through the scope of his rifle once again. The woman got to her feet and the target followed suit. It looked like the meeting was over.
Logan took a deep inhale of warm, dusty air and held it in. He could feel his heart slowly pumping in his chest. Could almost feel the blood winding through his still body. The air around him was calm. Everything seemed to fall deathly silent as Logan entered a state of heightened concentration.
As he let out a long, slow and silent exhale, he squeezed the trigger, only barely aware of the thunderous crack that came from the rifle and the huge recoil of the powerful weapon that made his whole body shudder. With his eyes still on the scope, working on autopilot, he quickly locked and loaded another cartridge into the chamber. In the few seconds it had taken him to reload, the woman had turned and was running back toward her bike, her mouth wide open in what Logan guessed was a scream.
He followed her movement for just a second, pulling the line of the rifle’s sight to the left of her body to account for the moving target.