by RR Haywood
ALSO BY RR HAYWOOD
The Undead Series
The Undead Day One-Twenty
Blood at the Premiere: A Day One Undead Adventure
Blood on the Floor: An Undead Adventure
Demon Series
Recruited: A Mike Humber Novella
Huntington House: A Mike Humber Detective Novel
Book of Shorts Volume One
Extracted Series
Extracted
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2017 RR Haywood
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781611099324
ISBN-10: 1611099323
Cover design by Mark Swan
Contents
Start Reading
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
About the Author
‘You do not pay me. You do not own me. You do not control me. The second you brought us back and explained why is the second you gave us the responsibility to deal with the problem. Can you understand that? You do not run this. This is not yours. This problem is bigger than you . . . the lack of care you have shown is staggering. I suggest, Roland, I really . . . really fucking suggest that from now you focus solely on providing the money and do nothing else that you can fuck up . . . Find someone with a military intelligence background . . . Find someone who knows what they are doing, because you don’t.’
Prologue
2010
She walks into the diner. Two Slavic-faced men on the right at a table eating eggs over easy. She crosses the room to take a seat on a stool at the counter.
‘Hey, Miri,’ Joanie says as she pours the coffee into a white ceramic mug. ‘Hot again.’
‘Sure is.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No.’
Joanie moves off, replacing the coffee jug on the hotplate as she goes, as she always does. Miri tugs the smartphone from the back pocket of her jeans. She props it against the serviette dispenser and takes a sip of the strong, bitter coffee.
She filters the noises of the diner as she sips. The scrape of cutlery on plates. Low conversations. An old rock track on the radio, but it’s low and muted.
The bubbled glass of the clean coffee jug gives her a view of the entrance to the diner. The reflection from a sliding glass partition between the counter and the kitchen shows her the toilet door. Her large-screen smartphone works as a mirror for the parking lot, and the highly polished stainless steel side of the chiller cabinet gives her the view of the two Slavic-faced men eating their eggs over easy.
California is a huge state. Bigger than Great Britain with a population of nearly forty million people, so two men in a diner mean nothing. Two men eating eggs over easy and drinking coffee while talking quietly are no different to the tourists, truckers and hikers all doing the same thing. America by definition is a land of varying cultures and genealogies.
Therein lies the problem. Therein is the tell. They are not tourists, truckers or hikers. They are dressed casually, and at a glance, they could pass for hikers, except for the lack of wear on their new boots and the fact they are dressed in denim when virtually all hikers now wear walking pants or shorts. It’s also their pale faces and the overly casual manner of their eating. She has never seen them before, which means they are new to this place, yet they do not look around. Any normal person eating in a new diner or eatery would at least be curious. These guys are not. They are eating, sipping coffee and talking quietly, but to her they might as well be holding a signboard saying We Are Bad Guys.
She sighs inwardly with the sadness of a long life, then an instant later feels the thrill of being back in the game. The years fall away then come surging back with the bitterness of her retirement and being too old to be operational and left with a skill set no longer required. She reaches for her phone: one message will invoke a swift and brutal reaction.
She stops and lingers with her hand almost touching the phone, and in that second she realises how much she misses it. She hated her work at the end. Her moral compass had become increasingly warped. She started to question why they were doing things, and someone at her level should never question the ethics of the mission. If she sends the message, she will be back in the world of briefings, debriefings, meetings, clearance and intelligence gathering. She will be actively involved in choosing a relocation site, and they will expect her to work through her old missions to identify who it is that has decided to track her down to this diner. She would be a somebody again, but only for a very short time, and then she would be back to living in a no-place town doing nothing other than sleeping with one eye open by candlelight.
The future looks bleak. When she was active, she could never understand why retired agents committed suicide. Now she understands. It’s the days and nights of memories of places, operations, kills, losses, missions and the never-ending motion of the machine they were a cog in. The nightmares come when you stop being active. The things you thought you dealt with and processed come back and make you scream out in the night. If she goes back, it will only make it harder to leave again.
Her hand lowers to the counter-top. Inches away from the phone. She stares at the reflection of the two men in the chiller cabinet and decides, in that moment, to do nothing.
Instead, she drinks her coffee and feels a sense of liberation. She can let go of her fear of the future because she knows she will be dead within two days.
She has been made. Tagged. Spotted. Seen. Located. The two men have not reacted outwardly, but right now one of them is keying a message into his phone, telling whoever they work for where she is. By tonight, they will have found out where she lives. By tomorrow night, they will have deployed resources and devised a method of attack, and at some point during the hours of darkness, they will come for her.
So be it. Better to die by the sword than lonely and forgotten in some shitty little town where she spends her days constantly looking over her shoulder.
Her time is over. She would never take her own life, but she can be passive in reaction to someone wishing to take it for her. There are no more missions. No more operations. She is too old to be a part of the machine, but too young to be
left solely to her memories.
Miri finishes the coffee, drops down from the stool and walks out without a single glance at either of the two men, who in turn look everywhere else but at her.
When she gets back to her ranch-style house nestled in the open plains of the asshole shitty county, she finds a note pinned to the front door.
She reads it.
She does nothing.
She makes a light salad and does nothing.
She lies awake in bed and does nothing.
The next morning, she sweeps the wide porch and does nothing.
When the helicopter goes overhead, she does nothing.
She packs. She waits.
At dusk, she sits on her freshly swept porch with the Glock pistol wedged under her right thigh and waits.
If she were in charge of her assassination, she would devise a covert approach using stealth to gain the target property. Once entry had been made, she would advise that the subject first be incapacitated and then negated in a manner resembling a natural death. A gas leak. A hanging. Overdose by medication. If a search revealed the target was a gun owner, then that firearm could be used, by manipulation of the target’s hand, to fire into the head. Or a simple robbery gone wrong is also very effective. Home invasion crimes at detached, isolated dwellings are not uncommon.
The motion sensors hidden in the scrub at the edge of her land ping softly from the receiver just inside the main door. She inclines her head and waits. The distance and the contours of the land will prevent them having line of sight yet, but no doubt they use night-vision aids and will eventually see her immobile in the chair.
The only reaction she shows is when the pings continue. Eight. She is impressed, flattered even. They obviously know who she is. They have sent eight operatives against her. She wonders who they are and narrows it down to three possible organisations, all Russian-connected. The Cold War may appear to have been a long time ago in the media, but the after-effects will forever be ongoing.
She sits and waits, with only the faintest increase in heart rate showing her expectation of immediate death. Five minutes, maybe ten at the most. She looks up at the sky. At the stars and the moon. The same stars and moon she has stared at from a hundred or more different cities on a hundred or more different missions. She thinks of the note on her door.
She could still call it in. One call would do it. She could hold them off long enough for the cavalry to arrive. She would be whisked away, and the threat negated and removed from existence by sunrise.
A scrape of a shoe. A tread of a foot. She rises, turns and strides into the hallway with the Glock held in a double-handed grip. A man is coming from the kitchen. Tall with swept-back dark hair. It is not possible for him to have gained entry without her knowledge. Every window is secured with motion sensors. Every door. Alarms would have sounded. Foot-pressure pads in the paths and grounds should have sent signals. A blue light spills from the kitchen behind him. He spots her a second later and flinches away with his hands coming up.
‘Don’t shoot . . . friendly . . . friendly!’
A British accent. She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t recognise him. He looks to be late forties, maybe early fifties. Younger than her generation, but only by a few years. She’s met most of the British agents of her time.
‘Miriam? Are you Miriam?’
‘Who are you?’ Miri asks, calm and controlled.
‘I’m here to save you . . . You’re about to die,’ the man blurts. ‘Right now, there are armed men coming to . . .’
‘I know,’ Miri says bluntly. ‘Who are you?’
‘Roland. My name is Roland.’ He whimpers, staring at the gun in her hands. ‘I don’t know if you are Miriam . . . I mean . . . I couldn’t find any pictures of you online or . . . but Ben said to find someone from military intelligence and . . . I mean, you weren’t on the original list, but I should have realised we needed someone like you . . .’
Roland stops to draw breath and force a calmness into his voice that he doesn’t feel at all. Safa and Harry are both dead. Ben is going to try and rescue them, but he will fail, and that leaves Roland back at square one, and there is no way he is going through it all again. Ben was right. They need professionals. He falters, still too scared to reveal who he is and what he knows, but also aware the risk has to be taken. This woman is going to die anyway. This house will be blown to pieces by an apparent gas explosion. He read the declassified reports detailing one of the attackers who defected to the US and informed the authorities what really happened. He exhales to gain composure and tries to look past the pistol in her hands. Being around Safa and Harry has at least hardened him somewhat.
‘I need to extract you . . .’ he starts to explain, but the words trail off when she lowers the gun, hefts the big black holdall on to her shoulder and stares at him with an air of expectation.
‘I’m ready, Mr Cavendish,’ she says in a flat, hard tone. ‘We have work to do.’
One
The explosion is huge. The charges dropped in the warehouse detonate to scorch the air and send a shockwave that rips bricks from the walls and sends debris flying into the attackers. Bones are broken and lacerated. The petrol Miri poured before setting the charges explodes in flame that heats the air so quickly it fuses the material of the black covert clothing to the flesh inside them.
Many are killed outright. More lie writhing and screaming in agony from burns, breaks, lacerations and horrific injuries.
‘Fall back.’ Alpha’s voice is calm. His manner controlled. This is why he is Alpha. This is why the five are who they are. They heard the pre-emptive click of the charges. It was this alone that made them drop and turn as the warehouse detonated. Only Echo sustains injury. A shard of a tibia from the first attacker embeds in his bicep. He spins from the impact, but grunts to swallow the pain and maintain focus.
The windows at the front of the building explode out. Glass flies far across the road. The fire roars, with flames licking through the new holes in the wall.
Alpha strides backwards with an arm up to protect his balaclava-covered face from the heat. The other four at his side in a line. Calmness in all of them. Not a flicker of panic shows. Bravo turns to see the bodies of Malcolm and Konrad being carried into the truck that seals the junction at the end of the road. Echo looks back at the buildings opposite the warehouse that they used as a base.
Alpha holds for another few seconds, assessing the carnage in front of them. If there is a way through, he will risk it, but the fire is growing bigger and more intense. The tang of petrol hits his nose. An accelerant was used. The ground was prepped in advance.
There is no choice. He pulls the phone from his pocket and thumbs the screen to dial the number.
‘Hello,’ the friendly female voice says when the call connects.
‘Mother, it’s Alfie.’
‘Alfie, darling. Are you okay? How’s Berlin?’ Mother asks from her office, instantly knowing something has gone wrong. Calls from the field are only ever made when the mission is at a critical point. She doesn’t reveal that thought process. Instead, she smiles into the phone to ensure her voice sounds as warm as it should be. She acts the part; she believes the part. She is Mother.
‘That show we were going to see?’ Alpha says, forcing himself, despite the carnage all around him, to hold a steady, friendly tone that matches hers. ‘Been cancelled.’
‘Oh, that is a shame,’ Mother says. ‘Did it start?’
‘Yes, it did, but I think a new actor did something they were not prepared for . . .’
‘Oh dear.’ Mother tuts and sighs. ‘So you never got to see the main act.’
‘Afraid not. We, er . . . We did make two new friends though. They’re with us now. Nice chaps, but very quiet . . .’
‘Well, be thankful for small mercies,’ Mother says, closing her eyes to decipher the words. Two new friends will be Malcolm and Konrad. The mission was to wait for them to come out, then intercept before they could give w
arning or go back. Very quiet means they are dead. ‘Just a thought, Alfie. But do your new friends know of any other shows you can see?’
Alpha processes her words in the blink of an eye. Dead bodies cannot talk. He frowns for a second as the penny drops. Dead bodies cannot talk, but they do yield information. ‘Ah, I am so glad I called you now,’ he says, smiling under his balaclava to make his tone match the content of the conversation. ‘That is a great idea. Yes, we’ll ask them. There must be somewhere round here we can take them for a nice meal and a drink . . .’
Mother taps the tablet on her desk, which brings a 3D, perfect-quality hologram operating system glowing in front of her. She swipes through the icons. Double-tapping and flicking to get the information she needs.
‘Shall I have a look for you, dear?’
‘Great, thanks,’ Alpha says. ‘Dad okay, is he?’
‘Oh, your father is fine,’ Mother says, typing, reading, processing and speaking all at the same time as the air in front of her face fills with pages of information. ‘Oh look – yes, there is somewhere. I can text you the details, if that’s any good? Shall I contact them and book for you?’
‘Mother, I don’t know what I would do without you. Er . . . I was thinking about our other friends here. I mean, we did bring a lot to this show.’
‘Oh, Alfie, darling. Now don’t be silly. They can’t go with you . . . They should have made sure the show went on, and you need to move fast to catch the next one with your two new friends.’
A split second of a pause as Alpha looks at Bravo. ‘Okay, Mother. I’ll do that.’
‘Speak soon, Alfie. Take care.’
‘Yes, you too, Mother.’
Alpha puts the phone away and glances round. A fire this size will draw the authorities. Emergency services will already be scrambling towards this location. He looks from his position to the warehouse and counts three operatives still alive. Another four are inert. Either dead or unconscious.
‘Them?’ Bravo asks Alpha, having tracked what Alpha was looking at. He already knows the answer. They all do.
‘Staying here,’ Alpha says. He lifts his submachine gun and fires at the first writhing figure. Bravo and Delta negate the others. Bullets fired into heads and centre of masses. Charlie fires into the inert bodies to ensure death is given. Injured people talk; dead people don’t.