RW03 - Green Team
Page 37
I watched as Nasty dragged him out by the feet, his head going pitter-patter on the wood floor. If there’d be hell to pay, I was more than willing to risk it. What could they do—fire me?
Nah—I had fire insurance. It was buried underneath my kitchen floor.
0532. The building was declared clear. Mick and I stood in the ground-floor foyer, which still smelled of cordite, CS gas, and stale sweat. My face was grimy. I’d bloodied my nose at one point, my lip was split, and my elbows and knees felt as if I’d just played all the Stanley Cup games in the last decade at once.
And that was the good news. The bad news was that, despite a top-to-bottom search, despite my guys and Mick’s going over CINCUSNAVEUR inch by bloody inch, there was no canister of anthrax on the premises.
We’d been rused, used, and abused. To put it in SEAL terms, we’d been goatfucked, but good.
Of course we had been. Remember, gentle reader, when I said not so long ago that there was something wrong about these fuckers not making any demands? Well, it had nagged at me all night. The tangos we’d killed in Afghanistan all carried lists of demands. These guys had no such lists on them. Now, I realized why. They were a diversion. This whole op was a diversion. Just like all those terrorist bombings in Europe had been diversions—diverting attention away from the preparation for the attack on the Mountbatten that killed CNO and Sir Norman Elliott. There’d been five attacks in a week—and no demands made. Well, these assholes hadn’t made any demands either. So, somewhere out there, there was another shoe waiting to drop.
Said shoe dropped just as I was about to suggest that Mick and I take the men and find ourselves twenty or thirty gallons of good ale. Sir Aubrey Hanscomb Davis picked his way gingerly through the debris, taking care not to spoil the shine on his bench-made cap-toes.
His monocle hung like a bull’s-eye in the center of his chest. He carried a cellular phone in his hand. His expression was grim—as sour as if he’d sucked a pound of lemons.
He grimaced and handed me the phone. “There’s a call for you,” he said by way of dour explanation.
I pressed the button on the phone and put it to my ear. “Marcinko.”
“You are an intensely nettlesome fellow,” the voice at the other end said in an oh-so-proper Oxonian drawl. “It’s time to put a stop to this charade. I’m waiting for you and Sir Aubrey. Please come alone and unarmed—or there’ll be anthrax all over London.”
When you’re given such an exclusive invitation, the only possible response is a positive one. “Sounds good to me. You are calling from Brookfield House, aren’t you?”
When he didn’t answer, I continued, “I’ll be there in half an hour. But do you mind if I clean up first, old chap? I’m a bit, ah, gamey at the moment—spilt a lot of your chaps’ blood, it would seem, and it’s all over me.”
“Not-at-tall,” Call Me Ishmael replied through clenched (but perfect) teeth, “I b’lieve hawf an hour would still be an acceptable schedule.” He pronounced it the British way—shed-yule.
I didn’t give a rusty you-know-what he b’lieved. “Frankly, Lord B, I think your shed-yule is about to turn to skit. But don’t worry. I’ll be along as soon as I can manage.”“
Todd stewart met us at the door, his long hair tied down with a wide strip of Hunting Stewart tartan. We were told His Lordship was waiting for us in the first-floor drawing room. But first, there would be certain formalities.
Quickly, Todd ran his hands over Sir Aubrey’s bespoke suit. Finding nothing, he turned his attention to me.
As promised, I’d showered and changed clothes—getting them from the suitcase from Rogue Manor, which I’d stored in the Marriott’s baggage room before this whole chain of events had begun. I still wore my assault boots. But I now sported pressed jeans, a polo shirt with the SEAL Team Eight logo on the left breast pocket, and an H&K promotional sweatshirt, the back of which featured a huge cartoon of GSG-9 shooters ripping the hell out of some nasty-looking fundamentalist Islamic tangos.
My jeans were held up by a wide, ornately tooled brown leather pistol belt, cinched with the five-inch, solid-sterling SEAL Team Six buckle I’d received as a parting gift from my men when I left the command to create Red Cell—the original of the replica currently on display at the UDT/SEAL Museum. It was the size of a rodeo trophy-buckle: a huge oval of hammered silver, on the surface of which was carved the SEAL Budweiser sitting atop the Roman numeral VI.
Todd started at the top. He fingered the neck-band of my shirt and retrieved the straight razor taped to the back of my neck. “Nasty, nasty,” he chided.
Then he worked his way round my sides. “You’re tickling me, chum,” I told him.
“Hard cheese, mate.” He continued, his fingers walking my rib cage, back to front, front to back. He plucked the Montblanc ballpoint out of my breast pocket and opened it up to discover the one-shot trigger apparatus and single .22-caliber hollowpoint round inside. He tsk-tsked and dropped the pen into his own blazer pocket.
He ran his hands around, then inside of my waistband, plucking the Emerson CQC6 folder from above my right hip and slipping it on his own belt. “You won’t be needing this anymore.”
He then worked his way south. He turned my front pockets inside out and patted the rear ones to make sure they were empty. He looked through my wallet. Then he slipped his hands down along the outside seams of my jeans, around the tops of my boots (removing the Gerber boot knife from the right one, and the Mad Dog Frequent Flyer from the left), then back up my inseam to my crotch, which he squeezed, then tapped with a cupped hand.
I coughed.
Satisfied, he stood back and admired his handiwork. “You’re clean,” he pronounced.
“And soft as a baby’s bottom,” I added.
It didn’t draw even a hint of a smile. Todd pointed up the stairs. “This way,” he said, leading the way.
Talk about your morose Scots. The man had no sense of humor.
Neither, for that matter, had Sir Aubrey. Monocle Man’s dour countenance hadn’t changed a whit since we’d climbed into his Bentley for the long haul up to Hampstead, accompanied by a quartet of Metropolitan Police outriders and two SAS bodyguards.
He’d sat silent in the left corner of the rear seat as we’d careened around Regent’s Park, past Swiss Cottage and Finchley Road, up Fitzjohn’s Avenue, through a narrow alley to Hampstead High Street, where we’d pulled up in front of the police station a block and a half from Brookfield House. Shoulders hunched, we’d walked together past the police roadblock, behind which television cameras and curious onlookers were held at bay, toward the Regency villa into which I’d broken only weeks ago.
Well, he had cause to be upset. He’d been the one to give Lord Brookfield a top-secret clearance and allow him inside Her Majesty’s government. This turn of events served him right, if you ask me.
Where I come from, it’s the accepted practice that people have to earn their security clearances. They don’t get ’em simply because they have a title in front of their name or happened to have gone to the “right” school. That kind of old-boy-network thinking has screwed the Brits up before.
You want an example? Okay—how about Kim Philby? Harold “Kim” Philby, the son of a famous English explorer, is the perfect example of Britain’s old-boy system gone wrong. A rich, stuttering alcoholic, Philby was one of Britain’s top spooks, recruited out of Cambridge with several of his friends.
He worked with the Americans during and after World War II, rising to the top levels of the British intelligence service. Then, in 1951, he was forced out of the SIS because he was suspected of being a double agent. Even so, he was still accepted and dealt with by many still in government—right up until the day in January 1963 that he disappeared from Beirut, defected to the Soviets, and turned up in Moscow as a highly decorated KGB colonel. Not only was Philby dirty, but three of the Cambridge boys recruited with him—fellow SIS stars Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, and Anthony Blunt—were also KGB agents.
He stood silent as we entered the room, his arm resting on the shelf of the intricately inlaid mother-of-pearl Syrian wedding chest. “So glad you could come,” he said evenly. He indicated a striped Regency sofa opposite where he stood. “Please be seated.”
Sir Aubrey and I plunked ourselves down side by side, like a couple of uncomfortable seventh-graders at our first dance. Todd took up a position directly behind me. His presence made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I rose. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d prefer to stand.”
Brookfield looked at me, his green eyes piercing. “Not at all,” he said.
There was a period of silence. I could hear the ticking of a clock somewhere in the house. Then Brookfield opened one of the topmost cabinet doors of the Syrian chest and withdrew an olive drab canister—just like the ones I’d retrieved from the radwaste facility at Numéro Douze outside Nice. The canister was sealed. But around the outside of the bottom was wrapped a single strand of flexible ribbon charge. Into the charge, a pencil-sized electronic blasting cap had been inserted through the lead sheathing.
Now I realized that wires from the blasting cap ran from the canister and inside Brookfield’s tweed hacking jacket. I looked closely. He was holding the self-powered detonator in his right hand.
What we had here was a living, breathing explosive device. There was absolutely no way I could reach Brookfield before he’d be able to set off the charge and propel the deadly anthrax all over north London.
The smug look on Brookfield’s face told me he knew that I knew what he’d accomplished.
“You have to accept the fact that I am ready to die,” he said by way of explanation. “I told you, Captain, that jihad had already claimed more than two million martyrs.”
“Yes,” I said. “And that it might require two million more.”
“Precisely. You know, then, that I am absolutely serious. Absolutely committed to my cause.”
“Yes, I believe you are.” I paused. I realized that he was setting the pace of this meeting, and that Sir Aubrey was allowing him to do so. That put Lord B in control—which was not in my interest. It was time to shake things up a little—not to mention get down to business. “Okay, Lord Brookfield, why did you summon us?”
“Although I am quite willing to die, I am not sure this is quite the time or place. There is work left to do.”
“I’m sure there is,” I said, moving slightly in his direction. “But not by you.”
As I moved, Todd Stewart shifted, too. He put himself between me and Brookfield.
The young nobleman motioned his bodyguard aside so he could face me directly. “We’ll see about that,” Brookfield said. “You are a worthy adversary, Captain. I must admit that it concerned me—not being able to contact my teams. Which is why, at the last minute, I did not allow this”—he tapped the canister of anthrax—“out of my possession.”
I’d been right—the tangos at CINCUSNAVEUR were a diversion. He’d held the BWR back. I edged to my left. Todd mirrored my move. I looked at Brookfield and balled my fists. “You son of a bitch.”
“Captain—no.” Sir Aubrey rose to his feet and spread his hands, palms up. “Let us hear what Lord Brookfield has to say.”
“Thank you, Sir Aubrey.” Brookfield inclined his head toward the monocled spook. “I will be brief. The fact is, sir, that despite the advantages I was given, despite my birth, and my position, I was never seen by any of you as anything more than an outsider.”
“I say—” Sir Aubrey’s monocle plopped onto his chest. “I must protest.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Brookfield’s voice took on a resigned, even fatalistic tone. “You may protest, but it’s true. I may have been the son of an English nobleman—all you saw was one of those rich Arab boys come to England to become educated. I read and write Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic, not to mention French, German, and Italian. I speak, read, and write Arabic—more than most of your scholars can do. You allowed me into your homes, your clubs, your government. But basically, you all saw me as … nothing more than a privileged wog. Fortunately, I was able to deflect your prejudice and use it to my advantage. It deepened my commitment to all Islamic people. It made me strive toward my destiny of leadership.”
It was time for plan A: Marcinko subtlety. “What horse puckey,” I interjected. “What horse shit.”
Brookfield looked as if I’d slapped him across the face. “What?”
“You’re just another can’t-cunt whining no-load shit-eating asshole. You blame everyone else for your problems. Well, fuck you. You had all the advantages—money, education, position, connections—but all you can do is snivel, like some snot-nosed schoolboy whose hankie isn’t ironed the way he likes it. You’re just a pussy, Lord B. A fucking pussy.”
By the time I finished, Brookfield had regained his composure. “You are trying to provoke me. It will not work, Captain.” He withdrew a huge linen handkerchief from his left trouser pocket and wiped at his brow. “You know, in the Bekáa Valley, as a hostage, I read the Holy Koran for the first time. I’d read it twenty times before—but never really understood what it was telling me.”
Okay—on to plan B. I broke into his monologue again. “And what, pray, did it tell you?”
He brushed my sarcasm aside. “That redemption was within my grasp,” he said, his expression tranquil. “‘God promises those who believe in him lush gardens irrigated by cool waters where they will live forever in great houses, graced by God’s presence.’”
I looked at Lord Brookfield and edged an inch or so in his direction. “You recite Allah’s promise to the true believers.”
He looked coolly back at me. “I choose to think of it as the Prophet’s promise to martyrs. The following verse, Captain, says, ‘Make war on unbelievers and hypocrites. Deal with them mercilessly.’”
I moved again. “With terror? Through biological warfare?” Todd Stewart held his ground as I spoke.
“If that is what it takes,” said Brookfield. “These canisters are simply a means to an end.”
I moved once more. “That end being?”
“Islamic unity. Islamic unity cannot be bought, as the Saudis and others have tried to do. It cannot be achieved through coexistence with the West—as those who have been subsidized by your country to make peace with Israel will discover. It must be earned—earned through struggle and redemption. It can be fulfilled only by following my plan.”
His plan was wholesale biological warfare. So far as I was concerned, he’d obviously gone over the edge. What he was saying made no sense, and I told him so, edging another few inches closer without attracting anyone’s attention.
“Not to you, perhaps,” Brookfield said, his eyes bright. “But the chaos that will come as a result of these canisters will show my Moslem brothers once and for all that the West is vulnerable—that it can be defeated. There have been victories in the past—but nothing on such a massive scale.”
I was about to contradict Brookfield again, but before I could, Monocle Man entered the dialogue. “We suspect, sir,” he said deferentially, “that there are other anthrax caches in Britain.”
That was news to me. Mick had briefed me pretty goddamn thoroughly, and he hadn’t said a word about any anthrax other than the six canisters I’d taken from Numéro Douze and sent back.
Sir Aubrey continued, “If you would give me their locations, and your word as a gentleman that you will not employ them against us, we may be able to reach some sort of agreement.”
Brookfield’s lips drew back in a smile. “My word as a gentleman?” he asked rhetorically. “I say, Sir Aubrey, that’s good.”
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Sir Aubrey shrugged. “I was instructed to ask.”
“I’m sure you were.”
Brookfield was crazy. No doubt about it. And things were getting out of hand. It was time to deal with reality. “Look,” I said, “let’s cut to the chase here.”
Brookfield peered at me. “What?”
“Cut to the chase—get on with it. You’ve told us about your Pan-Islamic vision. Okay, message received. And you’ve explained that you don’t care very much for people like Sir Aubrey here. Well, frankly, I agree with you. He’s an asshole—stiff upper lip and all. But the bottom line here, Lord B, is that so far as I’m concerned, you’re a fucking tango. Cut the martyr shit. Bag the intellectual rhetoric and the fifty-dollar words. To me, you’re just another perp trying to hurt innocent people—millions of them. The proof’s right here in front of my big Slovak nose: you’ve wired yourself to the goddamn anthrax. That means you’ll set it off if we don’t meet your demands. Okay, Lord B—what do you want?”
“You’re always very direct, aren’t you, Captain?”
“It saves time.”
He grinned malevolently. “I expect so.” He shifted, turning his body toward me. “As you say, I’ve wired myself to this canister of extremely hazardous material. What I want is safe conduct for myself and for Sergeant Stewart here. We will leave aboard my own plane. Our destination isn’t important. The fact that we will be allowed to fly undisturbed is.”
I knew he wasn’t finished. “And?”
“And when we arrive wherever we will arrive, I will—my word as a gentleman, Sir Aubrey—let you know where other similar containers are located.”
Monocle Man nodded. “How many containers are there?”
“Six,” said Brookfield.
Now I realized what Sir Aubrey was up to. He was sending me a message: there were no six containers.
Why? Because I had sent the six BWRs in question to Mick Owen, courtesy of Colonel Angelotti.
The lightbulb that went off above my head was so bright that I wondered whether or not everyone else in the room could see it. When no one reacted, I surmised that the epiphanies in question were mine alone.