Liquid Gold

by James Phelan

  “Okay, I want to find him.” Hutchinson ordered. “Get this image out. He’s likely to remote detonate—”

  “That’s got to be the frequency interfering with our audio!”

  The technician was right. Fuck.

  “Do we get Fox out?”

  Sirko rubbed his thumb over the detonate button, savouring the feel of it.

  He stopped himself and squinted down his scope. A van pulled up violently not far from the café.

  “I found an open frequency, spectrum range three-fifteen MHz,” the tech guy said. “Our gear’s all running around three-eighty to four hundred—”

  “And?” replied Hutchinson.

  “It means everything else is being jammed,” he replied. “Three-fifteen is all that’s open? That’s the standard channel for garage-door openers—”

  “That’s our IED trigger-type frequency—jam it!”

  “Sir,” a female agent held up her hand to get attention. “I have a spike in NSA real-time Echelon chatter, local, getting loud—”

  “Hub, Sniper Two, we’ve got company!” crackled the main comms-channel speaker. “Coming in via the road to the north.”

  The room went silent.

  “Company, what kind of company?” asked Hutchinson.

  “Make it a blacked-out Transit van with two chase sedans, approaching the café double-time.”

  Sirko saw a couple of cars pull up too. A few guys got out—had to be Americans. He looked over his scope, took in the scene. They were headed straight towards the café. The lace curtains blew apart in the breeze through the open balcony doors, and he tensed until they settled again, concealing him.

  Hutchinson looked wide-eyed at the screens: “Range on that kind of transmitter?”

  “With a boosted receiver, up to five hundred metres.”

  “So he’s in the neighbourhood. Find him. Take him down. Do whatever it takes.”

  Sirko had counted six of Babich’s bodyguards out in the open—this should get interesting. He waited a moment; no rush now. He had two good options to finish what he came to do, and he had waited many years for this moment of retribution.

  “You killed people involved in this water project,” Fox said. He wasn’t going to play Babich’s game until he got something more from him.

  “No,” Babich said. “I had problems solved for me. That’s how I operate, and I’m sure many Americans wish they could do the same.”

  “And Iran?”

  Babich leaned in close, pushed the binoculars closer to Fox. “How long do you think America will stay in Afghanistan?” Babich asked through cigarette smoke. “When they leave, that state will fail. Pakistan will fail. That whole region will need someone to go in and fix it.”

  Fox couldn’t tell if by ‘someone’ he meant Iran, or Umbra. Maybe both. He knew this man before him spoke like he had all the aces. Whatever was to be seen through those binoculars wouldn’t make things any clearer.

  “We’ve got visual,” the tech agent said.

  The image showed the van screech to a halt with the two sedans. Six men got out: buzz-cuts, slacks and open jackets, a couple of holstered side-arms visible. One guy carried what looked like a black cloth sack.

  “Holy shit! Hub, you getting this lake feed?”

  “What?” Hutchinson said, looking from the monitor of the van to the main screen, which showed a boat.

  “Is that Babich’s son … That’s a confirm, it’s Kolesnik!” an agent in the room said. “Kolesnik is on that boat with two armed men and a female. The female has been worked over, she’s a possible hostage.”

  “The van, they’re Babich’s guys? Who are they?” Hutchinson asked. Then he moved closer to the main screen showing the boat, looked at the grainy image of the woman’s face. “The van, guys—I need an ID!”

  “They’re going to take Fox?”

  “Do we get him out of there?”

  Hutchinson saw his team looking up to him as they chorused their questions but he could not focus on them—this was all happening fast, now. Time to shut it down.

  “Get the café agents on their cell phones now!”

  “The van—they’re CIA!” the FBI Legat said, getting a good close-up of the guy who had stayed behind the wheel of the van. “They’re local spec ops from NCS!”

  Hutchinson paused, but only briefly. Operatives from CIA’s National Clandestine Service would only deploy for—

  “Oh shit!” he said. “It’s a rendition team—get Fox and Babich out of there now!”

  “Our guys moved out.”

  “What?”

  “Our back-up in the van outside—they’re gone!”

  Luigi dropped Brick and Ivan at the apartment.

  All comms were down and he was leaving his post. He was breaking just about every rule, and he was sweaty as hell, but what choice did he have? None.

  “Go back now!” Brick ordered Luigi, who took off in the van towards their station: guarding the rear of Guzzi’s.

  Brick and Ivan approached their target building from the side, hugging the wall of the neighbouring building, Gatecrasher in hand. They had seen a shooter, and he wasn’t one of theirs. They ran up the stairs; Brick swore as they kicked down the door to an apartment and rushed for the wall.

  Fox looked through the binoculars. It took him a few seconds to find the target: a small speedboat bobbing in the water, doing slow circles two hundred metres out.

  He saw the burly driver and the guy next to him, could make out two occupants in the back—a man and a woman. But he didn’t have a good view of either.

  “I want you to leave this alone,” Babich said quietly. “This story, this investigation of yours, I want it to end. If you do, she lives.”

  “Your water operation in Pakistan, I need to—”

  Fox stopped talking. Looked over the binoculars to the speedboat. Looked through them again, focused. Searched the faces, found her.

  “You leave this alone, you make sure it’s left alone—and she lives,” Babich said. “You tell me who your sources are, you tell me where they are, you give me everything—and you will get to live, too.”

  Fox’s world was on the head of a pin. Time was frozen.

  “This is it,” Babich went on. “The time has come. One way or another, you will stop your investigation. This is the end of the story.”

  That face—that face had haunted his dreams for months … And she was hurting, she had taken a beating.

  “So, Mr Fox. What are you prepared to do?”

  Sirko checked his watch—time for his delivery. He would give it ten seconds. He would count up slowly, calmly—then detonate, and stay ready to fire high-calibre rounds if anyone managed to emerge alive. He settled in behind his sight, his thumb on the detonator, a smile on his face.

  A bowl of chocolate gelato was placed on the table in front of Babich. He looked up at the waiter with a smile: “What is this?”

  “Your friend,” said the waiter. “He ordered it for you earlier this morning.”

  Babich smiled, looked down, unsure … Chocolate gelato. His friend. Who—who would have—this was the meal that … No. But it was. Little Petro’s mother had served them chocolate ice-cream for dessert … The mother and son weren’t supposed to be there on the father’s government trip—the little baby boy, his parents …

  He looked up at Fox wide-eyed: it seemed that none of this mattered now anyway.

  As he reached nine seconds he saw the men from the van rush towards the café’s doors. Babich’s guys drew guns, a shot rang out.

  The small plastic garage-door opener was steady in his left hand, pressed tight against the forward grip of his rifle. His thumb was light on the detonate button.

  Ten.

  He pressed the button. The explosion was immense, knocking the air from his lungs, even from up here.

  101

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON DC

  He’d listened and
heard enough. A rising Persian state … Jesus.

  Sure, there was a new administration here at the helm, but this was an opposite course of action to anything he could have imagined just a year ago.

  “You know, if Iran does absorb Afghanistan and Pakistan?” McCorkell said. “You’ll be creating a monster.”

  “Better the devil you know.”

  “When they can, they’ll be after Mecca. They’ll go on to all the oil states and we’ll have a resurgent Persian Empire with more than just the bomb to contend with.”

  Niemann stood, extended a hand to McCorkell. He took a moment to take stock, shook the intelligence man’s hand, watched him leave the room, and he remained behind, alone.

  Times were a changin’. His country had set many a precedent for preemptive action and now none was to be taken. Wars had been fought over oil and water and land and religion and a million other reasons and that would likely always be the case. Fact is, you can’t win them all.

  102

  BELLAGIO, LAKE COMO, ITALY

  Brick was through the hole in the wall that the Gatecrasher had blasted. He rushed the room, dust coating his goggles, scanning with his H&K UMP submachine gun.

  He pushed his gun onto Sirko’s head, heard it smack down on the tiles.

  Sirko was covered in dust, the blast debris all around him. Before he could register what had happened there were strong hands pinning him down, flexi-cuffing his hands behind his back.

  Brick patted him down, hauled him to his feet—and in that moment, Sirko saw that the café was still there.

  Brick spoke right in his face: “We know how to jam frequencies, too.”

  On the lake the bomb blast echoed out, carried on the wind.

  Kolesnik swivelled towards the café—it was fine. He scanned the streetscape, couldn’t see anything from here. Then gunfire started up, sporadic, then violent. On the shore men were running … Now it was automatic gunfire from several weapons; it sounded like a war zone.

  He heard a siren bleep and turned. An Italian police boat was coming in fast, a few hundred metres out, headed straight for him. He looked at Kate, her eyes no longer so frightened. In that split second he knew what to do.

  He punched Kate in the side of her head, sending her overboard, unconscious, her limp body bobbing in the water face down. Then he powered off at full throttle.

  As the shots rang out, Babich’s men inside the café moved towards their principal target.

  Within seconds Fox had Babich on his feet, a butter knife to his throat and his arm twisted behind him in a pain-compliance hold. He held Babich as a human shield between himself and the two bodyguards. As he dragged him through the café, both Russians drew their side-arms.

  In one fluid motion Duhamel stood, drew down and fired: double-tap, both targets down—blown back hard off their feet as blood splatter-painted the wall behind them. He scanned the crowd: no other threats, everyone frozen mid-movement.

  He stayed in tight next to Fox as they backed Babich out of the kitchen door, just as shots resumed outside in a full-scale firefight, and a squad of Babich’s guys burst through the front door.

  Fox was through the rear door of the café, and almost collided with Luigi, who was on his way in.

  “You’ll burn in hell for your sins,” Fox whispered into Babich’s ear, roughly palming him off to Duhamel. He sprinted towards the water.

  Gammaldi had the timber speedboat ambling in a circle. He stood behind the wheel, watched Fox running from the café, caught glimpses of him through trees and between tourists. He lost him in the fracas of the gun battle in the car park, came closer to shore and saw him emerge over the bonnet of a car and point towards a jetty several hundred metres along the foreshore.

  Fox ran flat out, saw Gammaldi would get there first. He heard the sound of a scooter on the road behind him; in a second he had pulled the tourist off and had climbed on, hammering the little Vespa’s engine flat-out toward the stone pier, people scattering out of his way. He headed straight for the edge, continually measuring the distance to Gammaldi.

  He flew off the edge of the pier, landing twenty metres out in the lake, well ahead of the little Vespa. He swam a few strokes towards the boat before Gammaldi swept by, arm out, and hauled him in.

  Gammaldi was already on the throttle as Fox got his feet and scanned the water—Kate was floating, the police boat was pulling up next to her.

  “There! The police boat!”

  Gammaldi steered for the boat. In the distance a helicopter came thundering down the lake.

  Kolesnik pushed the throttle but it was already fully engaged. Behind him the police boat was occupied with the woman.

  The chopper wasn’t friendly—Italian cops, coming in at him low and purposeful. It buzzed overhead and let rip with a machine gun, water spraying him under the fire. As he yanked the wheel hard to port, one of his two guys slipped overboard; he completed his one-eighty degree turn, saw Lachlan Fox rushing to rescue his woman, and headed straight for him.

  Gammaldi pulled up next to the police boat and yelled to them in Italian to pursue the other craft. The cops passed Kate’s limp body over to the timber speedboat and headed off towards the threat.

  Fox hunched over Kate, checking vitals, while Gammaldi watched, wide-eyed.

  Kolesnik noticed the bow of the police boat lifted into the air as it raced towards him. They were headed on a collision course, both powering flat out, both with armed men waiting to get inside kill-range.

  Kate’s lips were blue and water trickled from her mouth. Her chest was still.

  Fox rolled her on her side, emptying her mouth and throat. She was cold and inert. He pinched her nose closed, locked his lips over hers and started mouth to mouth. He did this three times, then pumped rhythmically on her chest with his hands, hard, and counted to ten under his breath. He repeated the process.

  “Kate, come on! Kate!”

  Kolesnik’s man sprayed the police boat with an MP5 on full auto, forcing them to turn and head out of immediate range. Dark smoke billowed in their wake.

  The sound of the chopper’s machine gun tore the air in another strafing run. Kolesnik continued at full throttle towards Fox’s timber speedboat just a couple of hundred metres ahead, the distance closing as the water-cutting machine-gun fire arced its way towards him.

  “Shoot them!” he yelled to his gunman, who retrained his submachine gun from the chopper to the timber speedboat.

  “Fire,” Sefreid said.

  Emma Gibbs was in a squat position, her Accuracy International AW sniper rifle sighted, super-magnum round loaded, her finger’s weight on the trigger.

  Pop.

  The gunman on the boat was hit in the chest, blown overboard.

  “Target,” Sefreid said. “Pull right.” Gibbs reloaded. Fired.

  “Missed. Lower.”

  The driver had taken cover. Gibbs hit the side of the boat, and again, and again—click, out of ammo. The boat was fifty metres out from Gammaldi and Fox.

  “Lachlan, we got incoming!” Gammaldi said.

  Fox stared down into Kate’s half-open, motionless eyes. Pressed down on her chest five more times, a couple more breaths of air into her lungs—he felt her lips move slightly under his, or did he imagine it? He repeated the process, pressing, breathing, his lips over hers, frantic, the kiss of life.

  “Kate, come on. Do it for me—”

  She convulsed. Her eyes opened wide. She coughed, spurted water and heaved in lungfuls of air, rolling onto her side and clutching the floor of the boat, alive but groggy.

  “Hang on!” Gammaldi yelled. He had their boat hitting full speed and the wheel turned at full lock, but it was no match for the speedboat heading towards them like a homing torpedo.

  “Jump!” Fox yelled as he picked up Kate and launched them aft. Gammaldi flung himself over the port side.

  Kolesnik’s boat sliced the timber craft in two.

  H
e jumped out as his boat became airborne, hit the water hard. As the chopper strafed it broadside, his boat caught fire, then blew, the explosion concussive as he stayed underwater. When the rotor-wash faded he surfaced, scanned, found his targets.

  Gammaldi swam over to help Fox with Kate, who was becoming more lucid with every moment.

  “Kate, stay with Al, okay?”

  She nodded and Gammaldi took her, neither of them comprehending until Fox turned and swam hard towards the fast splashing form headed for them.

  Kolesnik elbowed Fox in the back of the head, dazed him, and seconds later set on Gammaldi. His punch glanced off Gammaldi’s face; he grappled Gammaldi and Kate underwater.

  Fox’s head was ringing, but he knew what he had to do. He pushed through the pain and swam towards the struggling trio. He took a long, deep breath before pulling Kolesnik off and dragging him under by his hair.

  Ten metres down it was dark. Kolesnik fought, but Fox had control. He stopped swimming down, then let go of Kolesnik but caught him again as he tried to kick for the surface. Fox held him at arm’s length by a handful of his jacket and shirt. Kolesnik attacked Fox’s outstretched arm, punching and clawing, but Fox kept still, kept a slight downwards motion to his movements. It took almost a minute for Kolesnik to go completely limp; Fox held him for another thirty seconds before letting go and heading for the surface.

  Hutchinson stood in the street outside Guzzi’s Café. The lights of two ambulances flashed: two CIA rendition men were dead, as were five of Babich’s bodyguards. Duhamel and Brick had Babich and Sirko secured in the back of their van. Italian cops were everywhere, as well as Hutchinson’s own men, all of whom had left the Hub and were surveying the scene.