Line of Fire:

by Andy McNab

  Yulia’s fingers froze and she scanned the screen. ‘Tell her, no problem. Ask where you should pick it up.’

  Jack did as he was told and Gail came straight back. ‘“I’m not sure yet, but as soon as I know I’ll text you. You’ll have to pay the charge, is that all right? I’ll pay you back, of course. Send your details and I’ll transfer.”’

  Yulia looked at Jack with a smug smile. ‘Told you. Do they have your date of birth, address and bank details from last time?’

  They did. I could almost see Jack’s heart sink.

  ‘You changed banks afterwards?’

  Jack nodded a sorrowful positive, knowing it hadn’t helped him one bit.

  ‘It’s okay, Jack, it doesn’t mean they’re going to strip out your bank account. They could sell your details on for fake ID. You get all the debt, somebody gets a mortgage or a loan. Or maybe they’ll use your account for money-laundering. Cash would route through in just a couple of hours.’

  Jack’s shoulders slumped, following his heart into his seat. Yulia had no sympathy. In fact she didn’t have anything – no anger, fun, emotion. It was just business.

  ‘Okay, the good thing is, they haven’t sold your details on to another group. If we stop them, we stop them for good. Tell her, no problem, you’ll pay.’

  Gabe stopped dunking his chips into a small pot of ketchup. ‘But what if I say no? We’re trying to get these fuckers, not give them more.’

  Yulia glared at him. This was her world. ‘Jack, please, just do it.’

  Jack complied.

  ‘She’ll be back soon saying something like she doesn’t want to take advantage.’

  The mobile pinged as Yulia put the laptop fully on the table, opened the lid and sat back. Jack read: ‘“Thank you, but I want our relationship to start correctly because I want it to work. I’ve been hurt so many times by men who just want to take and I don’t want you to think the same of me. I have to go now or they’ll think I’ve fallen down the toilet! Thinking of you all the time. X.”’

  ‘Okay, do your normal sign-off.’

  Jack hit the same key twice and placed the mobile on the table. He stared at it like it was an IED.

  There was a moment’s silence that Rio rightly ended. ‘Well? You got ’em?’

  Yulia was into her food, and clearly feeling pleased with herself. ‘Yes, they’re in the UK. Somewhere called Lie-sester.’

  Gabe frowned. ‘Lie who?’

  She turned the laptop round to show a Google map and Gabe laughed. ‘Leicester! They’re in fucking Leicester!’

  Yulia shot me an aren’t-I-good? look.

  Rio hit Jack’s shoulder, a comfort gesture, as he was totally destroyed. ‘Mate, no drama. We’ll sort these fuckers out. They can’t buy any of us off the shelf, mate – all right? Yuli here’ll get your life back. She knows how to do it. She knows all this shit.’ He bent a little to catch Yulia’s eyes as she ate. ‘Mate, you can do that, can’t you? Get him offline, no ID rip-offs, all that sort of stuff? Come to think of it, you should get all of us offline, yeah?’

  I’d kept my eyes on the crowd inside, which was growing, and the street. A grey Qashqai, two up, passed right to left, travelling just a bit too slowly.

  Mr Bland, earphones in, was in the front passenger seat, looking and listening. A woman was driving.

  ‘Lads – stop. Listen in, we’ve got a problem. Get everything packed up. Gabe, get another round of drinks in, mate. Make it look like we’re staying, but ask for the bill at the same time.’

  64

  ‘There’s a team outside. It’s the Owl – it has to be.’

  All I got was a sea of confused faces.

  ‘Look, I don’t know how – it could be the Beamer, the weapons, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that there’s a team out there. So this is what we need to do. I’ll draw the fire. You get out of here, bomb-burst into your two groups. Jack and Gabe, we really need the van. Rio, stick to Yulia like glue.’

  My eyes were on her. She looked anxious, as well she might.

  ‘Until we sort this, the life you want is fantasy. We’re going to try to make it work for you, but you’ve got to stay with us.’

  The tattooed arm came back to clear away our plates, and Gabe took the chance to order another round of drinks and get the bill.

  Yulia stared down at her empty plate until it was whisked away. It was a while before she glanced up and nodded. My eyes flicked to Rio. ‘Same thing I said at the weapons hide, mate. Do that and keep us safe.’

  I looked at them all. ‘Once you’re out of here, you’re on your own. Bomb-burst, then we RV with transport. Gabe – Easton, that’s where you’re going, right?’

  He nodded as I checked Safari.

  At last I found what I was looking for, an RV that was big, busy, easy to find and, most importantly, out of the city centre. I knew it from the old days but that wasn’t good enough. I had to know it still existed.

  ‘Okay, it’s near the M32. That’s where the RV’s going to be. There’s an Ikea and a twenty-four-hour Tesco there. So, nineteen hundred hours, in the Tesco car park. Gabe, Jack, just be there with a van. Wait fifteen minutes and pick up whoever has made the RV. If it’s a no-go from any of our group, the ones at the RV have decisions to make. You have the memory sticks and you might have Yulia. Maybe you go back to the barn and start shouting for the Owl, saying you want a deal. You’ll soon find out if there’s a device in there or not.’

  My eyes went back to Yulia. Her expression was hard to read, but inside that geek head of hers she had to be churning through her options. I knew I would have been. ‘You really are better off with us for now – you understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wasn’t sure she meant it.

  Jack erupted. ‘Let’s just take them!’

  Gabe looked proud of him. ‘Let’s front them up, all together!’

  I almost laughed. ‘Nice thought, but we’d lose. In any case, they want all of us together to take us down. They want control of the sticks and Yulia. Loose ends.’

  The drinks came over and we waited once more. Gabe smiled at the waitress. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort them all out.’ He didn’t smile at the bill lying on the tray, though. I put eighty next to it and waited for her to take it away.

  ‘We keep to the plan, yeah? We get out of here, and we carry on with what we decided about the scammers. The new mission. If we don’t, we really are like the pencil necks. So, let’s help Jack, and then we help ourselves. Nineteen hundred hours, Tesco’s, Easton.’

  I took a couple of gulps, stood up and checked the mobile was clear before shoving it into my jeans. ‘You know what? Me drawing fire for you lot is becoming a habit.’

  Gabe grunted. ‘That’s because you’re the only one with enough arms and legs.’

  Yulia looked disgusted, but the others smiled.

  Gabe got things moving. ‘So you’d better start fucking using them.’

  As Rio gathered the laptop into the plastic bag, I walked out onto the cobblestones and across the street, slowly enough for the trigger to be able to do their job, but not so slowly it looked like what it was. I glanced back through the doors, and the rest of them were starting their fresh drinks. I glanced left and right. I couldn’t see the Qashqai; I couldn’t see a trigger. I needed a target to draw the fire.

  The nearest road junction was to the left. Maybe the trigger was out of sight, ready to pick us up as we came onto the junction. Only one way to find out.

  I rounded the corner and there it was, in a parking bay about twenty metres down on the right, facing me on the narrow one-way. The grey Qashqai, still two up. I walked straight towards them, but they couldn’t be sure of my intentions. Behind me was the river, to the left a restaurant and offices. Further along on my right there was a multi-storey car park, but they knew I didn’t have a vehicle. Another fifty ahead of me was a crossroads. I kept going: I was going to pass them, a head-on encounter, something they would have wan
ted to avoid, but there wasn’t a thing they could do. If they started their engine it would attract my attention. Even if they did get out from between the tightly packed trucks and cars, they would be driving towards me – and then I would be behind them as they drove away and they would lose sight of me. They would have to stay where they were and bluff, play the normal bland lunchtime couple, bland vehicle, bland Tupperware lunch.

  I didn’t check behind me. There wouldn’t be anyone following. Mr and Mrs Bland could still be productive by checking in their mirrors as I passed and saying a left or right at the end of the junction. There would still be a trigger on the Brew House, and the leader of the team would have to establish whether they should stay or commit to this follow. The correct decision would be for them to stay eyes-on at the Brew House, but my job was to make sure that didn’t happen. Gabe and Rio had been right about us never becoming pencil necks. We looked out for each other. We might all be out of the army but …

  I was unsighted from the Qashqai as I walked along the side of a DHL truck parked about three vehicles in front of it. Now was the time to pull out the KA-BAR. I almost felt excited. Maybe the greatest freedom is having nothing to lose.

  They saw me emerge from the rear of the truck, knife raised high. Mr Bland made to get out of the car and the driver waffled into her mic. Without a doubt, a mayday.

  Mr Bland wasn’t quick enough as I slammed the weapon into his window. The blade worked like a safety hammer and the shattering of the glass released the woman’s voice. ‘Attacked! Attacked!’

  Mr Bland had bent down to take cover, but he didn’t know I wasn’t trying to kill him. I ran to the other side of the car, the KA-BAR up, and rammed it into her window. Mrs Bland thought I was going to stab her and ducked forward, but had the presence of mind to keep one hand above her on the ignition. Glass showered on her dark brown bushy hair as she tried frantically to fire the engine. Mr Bland stretched to get his legs and back as straight as he could as his hands shot to his waist. He was reaching for a weapon.

  Through the smashed window I leant over the woman’s back and jabbed the tip of the blade into the top of his arm. He screamed and recoiled as I extracted the knife, and then the engine turned over. I looked fast to my right, towards the river, at movement in my peripheral vision. Two bodies were running towards us. That was exactly what I wanted.

  I turned left, shoving the knife under my left armpit inside my jacket, and ran the other way, up to the crossroads and right, away from the Brew House and the drama behind me. I ran into the multi-storey. They’d have to cover a lot of ground and vehicles to find me. I could have run further down the street and that would have drawn them away, but it would also have got the third party even more involved and someone would have called the police or, worse, had a go. I wanted to contain this. I wanted the drama to be between me and the surveillance team.

  My mouth was dry and my lungs were heaving as I took the stairs two at a time, making distance, my hand grabbing the rail a metre or so ahead at each bound for extra momentum.

  I finally burst through the door on the top floor and onto the roof-space parking area. It was open to the sky but the buildings next to it were taller. No chance of jumping onto them. It was stop, breathe, think.

  65

  I ran back through the door to the stairwell, panting, a pain at the back of my neck as I fought for more oxygen. My chest expanded close to bursting and my windpipe was so dry that each breath burnt my lungs.

  Below, they were coming. I could hear the slap of their feet on the concrete stairs, the sounds bouncing off the narrow walls of the shaft with only two ways to travel. The echoes got louder and louder and soon I could hear the heaviness of their breathing. A head pushed out into the space below me and peered up, checking it was safe before the rest of him followed. Maybe he’d heard me breathing and wondered what a racehorse was doing on the stairs. It was the same short blond hair from Rio’s house.

  I burst back onto the top floor and headed for the ramp. They were coming up to me. Now was the time for me to get down and out. I had them where I wanted them. I heard vehicles moving, but gently – the third party doing its stuff.

  I reached the floor below and kept running down. The Qashqai was coming up. Mr Bland saw me filling his windscreen and Mrs Bland revved the engine and screamed towards me. The ramp curved and the vehicle’s wheels were committed by the kerbs either side. The alloys screeched against the concrete and the vehicle stopped. Mr Bland was moving to get out. His damaged arm must have made it hard to open the door, but he looked determined to grip me. I pulled out the knife as I jumped to the side, and rammed it vertically into the bulging sidewall of the offside tyre. There was a loud and sudden release of pressure, a massive fuck-off hiss.

  The knife handle was ripped out of my hands as Mrs Bland put her foot down and the vehicle jumped forwards. I kept running down the ramp, hit the next floor, and carried on. I wasn’t worrying about the third party, wasn’t worrying about what was in front of or behind me. All I needed to do was keep moving.

  The exit barrier was ahead. There was just enough room for me to squeeze past and back onto the road, take a left, then left again, back the way I had come, towards the river. It should be free of the Owl’s team. If not, I was about to find out.

  My throat was agony and my lungs were about to explode. Sweat poured down my face and neck as I passed the line of parked vehicles. At the river I turned right and ran along the cobblestones. A few metres short of the Brew House, I came to the service area Gabe had talked about. At the bottom there was a little car park for the workers, and a fire escape, but mostly crates full of empties, piles of packed-up cardboard, then rows and rows of wheelie bins.

  I dumped the mobile into the first I came to and carried on to the end, sliding on the greasy ground. I burrowed in behind the bins, curled up and made myself as small as I could, using two flats of cardboard to give me a bit more cover. I took deep breaths as I tried to ease my lungs.

  My face dripped sweat onto the cardboard. I didn’t know if the rest of them had got away, but that wasn’t my job. Drawing the fire was. If the surveillance team hadn’t responded to Mrs Bland’s mayday and had still been staking out the Brew House, I would have been picked up by now. My job was done. I just hoped the others had done theirs and managed to get away.

  My breathing had calmed but my throat was so dry I could almost feel my Adam’s apple creaking up and down. Like my jaw back in the forestry block, there was no oil in the joints.

  I waited some more, and finally felt confident enough to move my head out from behind the cardboard. I could see right down to the river at the end of the service road and it was empty. I looked at my watch. I had nearly six hours until the RV. I decided to stay where I was and see if there was any movement from the Owl’s team, particularly around that first bin with the mobile in it.

  66

  Tesco car park

  I leant against the community bus stop, watching mums drag reluctant kids into the superstore and exit pushing trolleys laden with flat-screen TVs, school clothes and baked beans. Around me was a bunch of unhappy shoppers now the wind had picked up and the first few specks of rain were falling.

  I had changed my last twenty to get a bus here and was now down to just two after buying a hoodie, an extra large Mars bar and a litre of milk. At least I looked good in my nice blue top. It had been worth shopping and getting exposed to CCTV to shed the VDM skin I’d had with the other.

  The mobile I’d grabbed back out of the wheelie bin still had 30 per cent charge, and we could top that up once the van arrived. And the van would turn up. Thinking positively was always the answer. Never ‘maybe’ or ‘if’: the mind has to be certain. Only then can you start to think about what to do when things go wrong. You need a plan first, or everything becomes a heavy lift.

  I had dumped the mobile to see if the Owl’s team were tracking it and they weren’t. I’d seen the blond man and Mrs Bland on foot, crossing my arc of vi
ew at the end of the service road where it met the cobblestones and the river beyond, but they had never been close to the wheelie. It must have been the Beamer or the weapons that had given us away – probably the Beamer. It didn’t matter. This stuff happened and you should expect it. As long as we kept one step ahead, and shed our skins on the way, it would work out.

  From my hiding place behind the cardboard there hadn’t been any sight or sound of Gabe and the others, so I was expecting them to be here on time.

  As the clock ticked on, I kept my eyes on Tesco’s filling station and the approach road from the elevated M32.

  I had a good view of the windscreens of the vehicles coming down so it wouldn’t be too hard to ID their drivers, and it wasn’t just the van and its driver I was looking for. I had to make sure they weren’t being followed. As for Rio and Yulia, I didn’t bother looking for them at all. I would soon find out who had made the RV.

  At seven or eight minutes before the top of the hour I downed the last of the milk and, moments later, spotted Gabe, one up, at the wheel of a 10-reg Peugeot van. It had taken a few knocks, and where the metalwork had buckled and the paint had cracked, there were lines and layers of rust. But the wheels were going round, and that was all that mattered. The once-white van came into the car park and took a space fifty or sixty metres away, facing the superstore exits.

  I set off towards it, and as I dumped the empty milk container in a bin, Rio and Yulia came into view on my right, weaving their way around the parked vehicles. That was a relief, and not just because we’d all made the RV. Once this scammer job was over and done with, we still had a lot to sort out.

  Gabe saw us, but he looked beyond, left, right and behind, checking there wasn’t the world’s biggest drama following. Rio and Yulia reached the van first and as I came up level with the cab the side door opened. I jumped in and Gabe got the van moving. The rest of the team looked at me, waiting for me to speak, wanting to know what I knew. ‘Definitely the Owl.’