Gray Vengeance

by Alan McDermott

  ‘I said you can have Farrar alive. Everyone else makes their own choice.’

  ‘I think Len’s right,’ Sonny said, changing the subject. ‘Approaching from the beach would be suicide.’

  ‘And we still don’t know if he’s even in there,’ Smart added.

  ‘We can sort that out tomorrow with a quick phone call,’ Harvey said, and explained what he had in mind.

  They considered other entry points for an hour while they tucked into the sandwiches that had been delivered, but couldn’t find an alternative to Smart’s suggestion. It was after three in the morning when Gray called it a night and told them all to get plenty of sleep.

  He had a feeling they were going to need it.

  It had been an hour since Sarah Thompson watched Harvey pull up to the entrance to his hotel, and she forced herself to accept the fact that they’d be settling in for the night. There was little point in hanging around, so she set off for her own hotel, which lay a mile to the west.

  What had surprised her most was seeing Harvey leave the hotel a couple of hours earlier in the company of Tom Gray. She’d followed them and seen them park up near the beachfront home, and had watched as Gray and his friends went to check it out.

  It had been during that stakeout that Mackenzie had sent the message to say his cover had been blown, and that someone must have been tapping her mobile.

  Harvey.

  He seemed a pretty straight guy, despite what the home secretary had told her almost a year earlier when she’d been tasked with taking the lead in finding James Farrar. It was Juliet Harper’s assertion that Harvey, Farsi and Veronica Ellis were complicit in Farrar’s disappearance, and at first Thompson had believed it. Harvey was obstreperous at the best of times, always insisting on looking in places she knew Farrar would never have visited. She’d been through the fugitive’s file a dozen times, and instinct told her that Farrar wouldn’t be caught dead in some of the third-world countries Harvey insisted on checking out. No, Farrar liked his luxuries and hated equatorial climates, so it would be somewhere with moderate temperatures, not too many bugs, and plenty of civilised company. That meant most of the places Harvey had suggested were way off the mark. Even when he’d recommended looking at more viable locations, she’d passed his suggestions on to the home secretary, who’d insisted on being the sole and final point of contact before any resources were allocated.

  In the last few days, though, Harvey had seemed to go out of his way to get to Farrar, which wasn’t something he’d do if he’d helped him disappear in the first place. He’d almost certainly sent Gray to Nigeria to look for him, based on the reports Mackenzie had sent her, and now Gray and Harvey had joined forces in Cuba.

  Could Farrar really be here? If he were, then Gray had mentioned Jakarta in front of Mackenzie deliberately to put him off the scent.

  Mackenzie had been one of the best in E squadron, which was why the home secretary had chosen him to work for Gray. She’d thought it odd at the time, assigning someone with such skill to a man who had nothing to do with the search for Farrar, but once Harper had explained how Harvey, Farrar and Gray had a common past, it made some kind of sense. The part about Gray wanting to help the man who’d tried to kill him didn’t, however. As Harper had explained, it was the connection between Harvey and Gray that Thompson would be covering. There was no way to get Mackenzie close to Harvey without it seeming suspicious, but he was a natural fit into Gray’s outfit.

  And in that respect, the home secretary had been proven right.

  But it still didn’t explain why they were both searching for Farrar if they were the ones who’d helped him escape.

  She thought about calling it in now and getting Harper’s perspective, but with a tainted phone, it would be too risky. At the very least, it would alert Harvey to her presence on the island. She would have to wait until the morning to find another way to get the message to Harper.

  If that was the right course of action . . . .

  Conflicting ideas bounced around her head as she pulled up to her hotel, and when she reached her room she realised that she hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. She set the alarm for eight in the morning and collapsed onto the bed, praying that a few hours of sleep would leave her with a clear enough head to make sense of this madness.

  Chapter 39

  21 December 2014

  Harvey’s Ford looked distinctly out of place as they cruised down the potholed road towards the meeting point. Graffiti covered just about every inch of the walls lining the street, the stores long since empty.

  The meeting point was a warehouse that on first glance looked abandoned, but the man brandishing an automatic weapon as he stood by the wrought-iron gate told them they’d reached their destination.

  ‘Tom, you come with me. Hamad, take the wheel. Any sign of trouble, take off and call Doug.’

  Harvey and Gray climbed out of the car and Farsi shuffled into the driver’s seat.

  ‘You expecting trouble?’ Gray asked as they walked towards the gate.

  ‘We’re dealing with locals,’ Harvey told him. ‘Who knows how this is going to go down. Just try not to piss them off, okay?’

  ‘I’ll be good, I promise.’

  The armed guard nudged the nose of the weapon towards them as they approached.

  ‘I’m here to see José. The name’s Black.’

  They were ushered inside, where two men stood next to a black SUV. The tailgate was down, and an array of weapons sat on display. The elder of the pair blew a cloud of cigar smoke towards the ceiling and gestured for them to come forward.

  ‘Please.’ He smiled, showing two rows of yellowing teeth. ‘Select what you need.’

  Gray looked over the selection, please to see that the Heckler & Koch weapons looked to be in decent condition. He quickly stripped one down and checked for dirt. It had been well maintained.

  ‘Who’s paying for this?’ he asked.

  ‘My boss,’ Harvey said, ‘so don’t get greedy.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll take three of these,’ Gray said, moving on to the handguns. He chose a Glock 17 and gave it a similar inspection, declaring it fit for purpose. Five of them were added to the growing pile.

  ‘What are these for?’ Gray pointed to items in the pile.

  ‘Tasers,’ Harvey said. ‘I wanted an option other than killing everyone we come across.’

  Gray shrugged, and continued to sort through the items on display. He chose some comm units and three sets of night-vision goggles. He checked the battery indicators and saw that the NVGs were fully charged, but the two-ways could do with a little more juice. He began loading everything into a holdall that was sitting on the floor. He included two Tasers to placate Harvey, then began cramming as much ammunition into the bag as possible.

  ‘Do we get a receipt?’ Harvey asked. ‘I just want to make sure we get billed correctly.’

  His request drew another smile from their host. ‘This isn’t Walmart, my friend. If you don’t trust me . . . .’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ Gray said, hoisting the bag onto his shoulder. ‘I’m sure you’ll come to the right figure.’

  He started walking towards the exit, Harvey trotting to catch up.

  Once outside, they saw the car waiting, the engine still running.

  ‘And you told me not to piss them off,’ Gray said, shaking his head.

  ‘What if they decide to add a couple of attack helicopters to the list? Ellis is going to have kittens.’

  ‘From what you told me, Ellis is out of a job unless we get this done right. And if we do, she’ll be the last to complain about how much it cost to do it.’ Gray dumped the bag in the trunk and they climbed into the car.

  ‘I don’t like the idea of leaving the weapons in the car for the next twelve hours,’ Harvey said. ‘I suggest we drive over to Farrar’s place and st
ash them nearby.’

  ‘Nice idea,’ Gray said, ‘but not too close to his house. There’s a chance he might be out and about, and we can’t risk bumping into him.’

  He pulled out his phone and checked the local area on the map, then showed it to Farsi. ‘Hamad, if you can drop us off here, Andrew and I’ll take a walk into the woods and find somewhere to dump the bag.’

  Farsi was looking at a satellite photo of a tight clump of trees roughly a kilometre wide and four hundred yards long. Via Blanca ran directly alongside it.

  ‘No problem.’

  It took half an hour to get to the location, and Farsi pulled over to the side of the road to let Harvey and Gray out. Traffic was thankfully light, and they crossed the highway and disappeared into the trees, the canopy blocking out the sun as they ventured deeper into the undergrowth. Gray checked for signs of human tracks and was glad to see none, meaning their stash was likely to go undiscovered for the remainder of the day.

  ‘This will do,’ he said, as they reached a tree trunk that looked to have fallen years earlier. Harvey kept watch as Gray carefully bent back some ferns and scraped out a shallow hole. He opened the bag and extracted the comm units and charger, then placed the holdall in the hole and eased the foliage back into place. He stood back a few paces and, satisfied that the weapons were sufficiently hidden, he marked their current location on his phone’s GPS app.

  They retraced their steps and emerged back into sunlight, darting across the road and back into the car.

  ‘Where to next?’ Farsi asked.

  ‘Back to the hotel,’ Gray said. ‘Let’s get something to eat and a few hours’ sleep. I need everyone wide awake when we hit them tonight.’

  Sarah Thompson saw the car carrying Harvey and his team pull over to the side of the road and wondered for a split second if they’d noticed her tailing them. She’d been following them since they left the hotel just before lunch time, and it hadn’t been easy to keep them in sight as they entered one of the seedier areas of Havana. It was obvious from the bag Gray had been carrying that they’d acquired something—most likely weapons—during their brief stopover.

  The previous evening had been the typical stakeout, so she knew that they planned to storm the house at some point. It was unlikely that they’d do it during the day, but she knew she couldn’t afford to let them out of her sight. She tried to control her breathing as she maintained her speed, and she kept her eyes on the road while cruising past them as two figures emerged from the vehicle.

  She watched in her rear-view mirror as Gray and Harvey crossed the road and headed into the trees, and once she was round the bend and out of sight, she made a U-turn and parked up facing the way she’d come. She got out of the car and walked back along the treeline until she could make out the front of Harvey’s car, then made her way in amongst the trees. Down on her hands and knees, she edged closer to the car, moving slowly so as not to give her location away.

  After ten minutes, Harvey and Gray reappeared, minus the bag. She watched them climb in, and then the car pulled off the grass verge and turned back towards Havana.

  Torn between running back to the car to follow them and her curiosity about the bag Gray had ditched, she elected to let them go and walked to the area where Harvey and Gray had entered the trees. She easily picked up the trail and followed until it abruptly stopped near a fallen tree trunk. It didn’t take her long to find the holdall, and a quick glance inside revealed the small armoury.

  Thompson pulled out her phone, a new burner cell she’d purchased that morning. She’d had plenty of time to call Harper to update her on developments, but even now, she was unsure what to report.

  How would the home secretary react to the news that Harvey and Gray had found out about Mackenzie, and that they were now here in Cuba and possibly on Farrar’s trail? It certainly didn’t make sense to her yet, and if she called it in she’d most likely sound like a babbling fool.

  Still, she entered the familiar number . . . but something made her pause before hitting the button to connect the call.

  She’d been wondering about Harvey’s motives ever since she got on the plane, and nothing seemed to add up. If he were helping Farrar, then why come to visit him and leave such an easy trail to follow? On the flip side, he and Gray had just scoped out the house and looked ready to launch a full assault.

  Could she have been wrong about Harvey? Was he really here to bring Farrar home? If he were, then it meant Harper’s intel had been way off the mark.

  Harper’s intel.

  It couldn’t have come from within MI5, or Harvey, Farsi and Ellis would surely have known about it, and she’d certainly seen nothing about it over at Six before being assigned to the case. In fact, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t been offered any evidence that the trio were involved in Farrar’s disappearance.

  So who had actually briefed Harper?

  She cast her mind back a couple of years to the time when Harper’s predecessor had been brought down after it emerged he’d been running a covert team led by James Farrar. Black-ops teams were part and parcel of every government, but this one had sought to kill Tom Gray and his close colleagues in order to preserve the lie that Gray had died during his siege. When news broke that the government were targeting their own citizens, the unit was shut down and several high-profile heads had rolled.

  Had Harper revived it? Was that who had fed her the info?

  It couldn’t be. That whole episode was still under scrutiny, and it would be career suicide. Even if Harper had reformed the unit, she would have used them to investigate Ellis and company rather than adding Six to the mix.

  And why assign Harvey to the search in the first place? If the home secretary thought MI5 were involved in Farrar’s disappearance, the prudent thing would have been to cut them out of the loop. Instead, Harvey had been tasked with leading the investigation. On top of that, they were only allowed to allocate resources in the search for Farrar on the home secretary’s authorisation. Harper had let Thompson have people to search in countries far from Farrar’s actual location, but blocked her requests when they got too close.

  With no other credible source, Thompson could only reach one conclusion: there’d never been any evidence implicating Harvey.

  Harper had made the whole thing up.

  Thompson shook her head. This was nonsense! It would have to mean Harper knew who had set Farrar free, and was using Harvey as a scapegoat.

  Implausible as it sounded, nothing else came close to making sense.

  She put her phone away and sat on the tree trunk, trying to think of a way to get a definitive answer. Confronting Harvey would tip her hand, but if she let Harper know what she’d seen over the last thirty-six hours, there was a chance that she might warn Farrar. If they were indeed working together, then Farrar would either flee or have time to prepare a welcoming committee for Harvey’s assault.

  She finally made up her mind, and opened her Text Later app. She composed a new message and keyed in the time to send it. Calculating how long it would take to reach Harvey’s hotel, then have an in-depth chat with him, she added on an extra hour for good measure.

  If her plan to get the truth from Harvey didn’t work, the text message would reach Harper in the next three hours.

  Chapter 40

  21 December 2014

  Gray knocked on the door and walked in, just as Andrew Harvey emerged from the en-suite bathroom. Farsi turned from his computer to look at them both with a broad smile on his face.

  ‘Did you just get laid while I was in having a shower?’

  ‘I wish,’ Farsi said. ‘No, I did some more digging on the Cayman Islands holding company that owns Sarah’s house. She told you she was renting it from a relative, right?’

  Harvey nodded.

  ‘I think I know who.’ Farsi turned the laptop screen towards Harvey, who saw a famil
iar picture.

  ‘Juliet Harper?’

  ‘She’s Thompson’s great-aunt. Harper’s the youngest of five daughters, and one of her sisters is Thompson’s grandmother.’

  ‘It would explain why Harper put her in charge of the search,’ Gray said.

  Harvey stroked his chin. ‘Yeah, and why she’d trust Harper, even if she was being fed a line of crap.’

  ‘Also,’ Farsi said, ‘I’ve been checking Thompson’s phone for new traffic, but she hasn’t used it since last night. I think she may know it’s being tapped.’

  ‘That was to be expected. Once Mackenzie got free, it was only a matter of time before she figured it out. What about Harper’s phone?’

  Gerald Small had finally managed to get limited access to the home secretary’s handset. He could intercept her newly written messages but was still working on getting into the text library, which Harvey would need as evidence.

  ‘Tried that, but there are no incoming messages relating to Farrar.’

  Harvey knew that when things went quiet, it was seldom a good sign.

  ‘Hang on,’ Farsi said, tapping away at the keyboard. ‘Looks like we have another phone that’s had Harper’s number typed into it.’

  ‘There’ll be a lot of those, I imagine.’

  ‘I know, but this one is eight clicks from us, and closing fast.’

  Harvey was immediately alert, bending closer to watch the dot’s progress on the screen. ‘Download everything you can from that phone. Tom, let the others know to expect company.’

  Gray dialled Smart’s room on the hotel phone and asked him to come up as soon as he could. By the time he returned to the laptop, Farsi had the new phone’s contents on the screen.

  ‘Bring up that one,’ Harvey said. Farsi double-clicked the file and a text message appeared on the screen.

  Harvey located Farrar at 4 Avenida de La Mar, Havana, Cuba. He’s planning an assault on the house.