by Dusty Miller
He had no idea of whether the devices would all be commonly linked. Considering the digital nature of the system, it was a distinct probability. There was nothing out there but water and the hills on the far side. The thing would be in standby mode, waiting for a major motion-detection to disturb its equilibrium. Only then would it begin transmitting again—if their technical analysis was correct.
“Call it in.” Curtis looked up the tree again.
He was prepared to wait.
“Ah, shit.” Curtis put the rig down, looking around for forked sticks and keeping a watch up the hill.
Invisible from where he was, Jenkins was presumably texting the query. Curtis didn’t have too long to wait. Jenkins got right back to him.
“We have a go-ahead.” Jenkins seemed confident.
“Okay.”
That was good enough for Curtis. He could practically feel the cross-hairs on his neck at this point in time. The woods were peaceful and all the birds and bugs were behaving normally. He’d been hearing one particular call for some time, for whatever reason he’d been wondering if that was an osprey. There was no real reason to think it was. He didn’t know much about birds but had read something recently.
Keeping to a crouch, he entered the thicker underbrush.
It took a couple of minutes of rummaging around, but he finally had the four sticks propped up in the shallows, straddling the boat-launcher device.
The machine bobbed steadily, its inexorable eye still staring off at the southwestern horizon. The camera was well away from his end, where the uplink antenna was according to the techs.
Curtis had a thought. If there wasn’t a signals burst immediately following the detonation of the other launchers, they could always get Jenkins to wear Liam’s hat and sweater and go for a boat ride.
He told Jenkins that as he carefully set the interception antenna in place.
As quietly as he could, he waded up out of the water. He recovered all equipment and settled the bag back on his shoulders.
At last.
Pulling out the little black pistol and holding it in a calm but ready position, he made his way upslope to a position ten metres to the right of Jenkins.
He looked over and nodded.
“Might as well give them the word.” He stuck the gun, safety on, in his side pocket and pulled the phone out.
Watching the water side as Jenkins focused on the land side, he sent a quick text message to waiting parties elsewhere.
They could go ahead and destroy the other pair of launchers any time they liked.
Approximately two minutes later came a couple of sharp cracks, one from fairly near and one from two kilometres upriver. That was number three, located at the forks. The drumming echoes went up and down the valley, then finally subsided.
Two minutes after that, Jenkins’ phone buzzed in her pocket.
Taking it out, she quickly read the text.
Success. Destroy the target.
She looked over at Curtis.
“Gotcha, Baby.” She gave him the thumbs-up.
“All right. Here we go.”
Leaving his bag on the ground, Curtis again cautiously approached the launcher. Half expecting the device to self-destruct at that exact moment, he lifted the sensor off the forked sticks. It was still attached to a solar collector via about thirty feet of wire. He took a look at the slack in the wire, and then tossed it up as close as he could get.
Snagging on some brush, it hung there three metres up the bank as he pulled the pin from a grenade.
“Shit.”
He eyed the bank carefully, finding the low spot and the gap in the brush where he had come from.
Seven seconds.
That’s all you got.
I pull the pin, drop it here, and on my way up the bank, take a quick grab at the sensor on the way past…
There is no time like the present. He pulled the pin and dropped it, sprinting up out of the mud.
He grabbed the sensor on the way by.
Curtis dove behind a boulder sticking out of the pine needles and humus that made for a soft landing. The sound of the explosion was partly muted by soft muck and a foot of water, although the breath was knocked out of him. A third mysterious explosion now echoed along the Espanola River, coming just minutes after the first two. Curtis got up and dusted himself off, picking away some of the larger sticks. Looking back, the device seemed to have been blown out of existence, although trees in the immediate vicinity had been damaged.
It was too bad, but.
Sacrifices must be made, thought Curtis.
“Right. Let’s go.” Their position had just become a thing of interest to anyone within hearing distance.
That would be an irregular pattern going out a couple of kilometres at least.
Number one priority was to clear the immediate area. Three minutes, time well spent. Next they laid up in their own ambush position for a half-hour looking for signs of pursuit. This was right out of the book. Sweat trickled, insects bit and buzzed. It was all they could do not to fall asleep after a pre-dawn start and a long walk. After a while, the forest, shocked into stillness by the loud report, came back to life and the birds started to sing again.
Nothing.
Time to start walking.
Six kilometres out, over hill and over dale.
The things we do for love.
I will definitely sleep well tonight, thought Curtis as he followed Jenkins, the two flitting from tree to tree and shadow to shadow. They were following elevation lines rather than any perceptible trail. In a valley, you could be observed from above. On a barren ridgeline, you could be seen for kilometres as any little movement gave you away. The best way to avoid detection was to avoid anything that looked like a trail or easy ground.
***
With only the four of them fully in the loop, they were sticking together in pairs. Team Three, their reserve, was also sticking together but keeping a low profile. As far as could be determined, Team Three still had no appreciable interest from the opposition. It was never wise to trust the opposition, but there was a distinct lack of information on that subject.
Liam and Ian Spencer were seated on the living room couch in Cabin Seven. Their laptops were lined up on the coffee table, and they had coffees and an ashtray.
The speaker of his machine sounded.
Bonk.
“Bingo.” Liam straightened, eyes lighting up.
He opened it and had a look.
“Hmn. Nice.” Ian leaned forward, peering at the screen. “Well. Let’s hope the lab boys and girls can make something of it.”
The launchers were linked by radio. When one blew, it fell off the net and that fact had been noted by the nearby launchers. All the information was listed in sequence down the screen. The time of transmission, frequency, and its signal strength. Geographic location and other information including a commercial account number.
He snorted lightly. The signal had been routed through an everyday communications satellite, just like any other phone call. It didn’t prove they were privateers. Various powers did the same thing, when they didn’t have their own satellite, when they were making low-priority calls, and the like. Typically, bureaucrats used free commercial email accounts, as often as not preferring them over expensive, custom-built in-house versions created at a cost running into the hundreds of millions. There was another government email scandal every day, or so it seemed.
The signal was encrypted, and it was routed to an unlisted number in Geneva. It wouldn’t take long to get a name. That’s not to say the signal wouldn’t be bounced from one place to another, using proxy servers and call-forwarding. The Tor network, alleged to be run for benevolent reasons, was like that, and there were other networks known and unknown. Another good setup. You could almost put money on it. There would be an address, a mailbox, a name, an internet connection, a simple program, a router bouncing calls and emails to yet another dummy identity—and not much more.
And yet they were making progress.
“Very, very nice.”
Liam got up to get himself some fresh coffee, noting the fruit machine was still humming away.
The phone buzzed in his pocket.
“Hello?”
“Dipthong, arbalest.” This was their little joke, a kind of game.
They were always trying to outdo each other, always trying to stump one another.
Recognition words were still used in making rendezvous with strange faces. This was just plain fun, something overlooked in more typical corporate environments.
“Smegma, trudfunctate. What’s up, Little F?”
“It worked like a charm.”
“Thank you, sir. Any idea who that belongs to?”
“Does the name Speck ring any bells?”
“Ah. Yes, it does.”
“Okay. He has an associate. This man. Jackson. The listed name is theoretically a tenant in an apartment building owned by a holding company held in turn by another shell company. It goes on and on, but. He runs a little tech company, more than one actually. The signal is encrypted, and we’re working on cracking that as well, but Mister Jackson, according to phone records, calls Mister Speck at least once a day and sometimes fifteen or twenty. Speck owns Jackson. They go way back to his boxing days.”
A trusted associate, in other words; one who had survived long enough to prosper. Liam studied the pictures.
“How did we get all that?”
“Money talks and bullshit walks, Liam.”
In other words, he didn’t need to know. Suffice it to say, that it had probably cost the taxpayers some money.
Speck had a long, lined, lean face with cold hard eyes. Jackson had a round face, seamless, even friendly-looking in what was a publicity shot for one of his companies.
“Ah.” This was another suggestive bit of information. “Business as usual then.”
“Arguably.”
Liam stood there thinking for a moment.
“Can you give us the full dossier on both men?”
Ian was watching from the couch. Not a smoker, he idly picked at the bridge mixture set out in a bowl from the snack compartment in the well-stock minibar. There were corn-chips and dips and things like that.
Liam winked and continued listening.
“We’re sending that now.”
The machine gave its cartoon little bonk sound and then Liam was opening the first attachment.
Chapter Seventeen
They sat at their respective locations and read the file.
Ronnie Speck was born in East London, August 9, 1963. His father Reginald was a dealer in scrap gold. This neatly tied in with his pawn shop and a reputation as a fence. The father had done time in his youth but somehow steered clear of jail in later years. This was reputedly due to his acquaintance with criminal types including known enforcers, knee-cappers and other assorted thugs. His best friend was a lawyer. It was at about this time that he began cultivating city politicians and greasing palms among the more corrupt police officials.
Speck’s older brother Charles had died in his twenties. It was a robbery attempt gone wrong. Two civilians and a Bobbie had died along with Charlie Speck. Surrounded and besieged with a couple of mates in a secluded farmhouse in Devon, Charlie went down with gun blazing. In their youth, they had taken up boxing. An uncle on their mother Isobel’s side had a private boxing club. As young men, their gang was notorious for violence in a neighborhood that was tough to begin with. When one of their victims was blinded due to a head injury, Ronnie went into hiding for five years. All of his accomplices were picked up within months. Not Ronnie. They never got a sniff of his whereabouts after the first six months. After a while, he must have tired of the fugitive life—he had also learned much. He had obviously done a cost-benefit analysis and come to the conclusion that if he got straight with the law, new opportunities would arise and he would soon recoup the loss of time. This implied a strong business head. After some negotiation via his mouthpiece, Ronnie Speck had surrendered to police. He was very well dressed in the press photos, nicely posed pictures, with smiling, cooperative officers and the man himself. Ronnie obviously liked to cut a certain style. He went on to plead guilty to aggravated assault and got eighteen months. The rather large fine, part of a plea agreement, was paid in full. It was paid on time. He was out in fourteen months. No parole violations. Considering the subject’s prior history, this was relatively mild punishment. Pleading guilty as an accessory, his bodyguard and lifelong confidante Dugald Moffat, since deceased, had gone in with him just to keep him safe.
This was in the opinion of the Organized Crime Intelligence Unit of the Metropolitan Police.
This was where his penchant for operating things at a distance first manifested itself. Ronnie started small and worked his way up methodically. He was just like any other executive, any other businessman with a dream. Working from jail, it was hard to pin anything on him. One or two of Ronnie’s smaller fry had been intercepted bringing drugs in and cash out. He could have made a real stake inside and probably had. Until the death of his brother, he had always been a follower. In order to hold the gang together and be the boss of it, he had little choice but to go bigger, get smarter, and increase profits. He’d even reduced the level of violence. This was only after a particularly vicious turf war with the Freddie Boys in the early nineties. Ronnie Speck and another gang, the Tigers, had banded together to wipe them out.
Decimated, the rival groups had held a conference in Brussels, each gang sending three trusted men. Surrounded by a larger circle of not-too-subtle gang members situated in other hotels, (no doubt armed to the teeth) they had, apparently, settled their differences. The one non-negotiable condition, according to a source whose name had been redacted from this particular document, was that Ronnie Speck was to be top dog. A truce ensued.
There was relative peace for three months, and then a fresh massacre of the remaining Freddie Boys. Those who survived this new purge of the syndicated gang of Ronnie Speck either left the country or went into permanent hiding. After a time, the Tigers were no longer referred to. They had been absorbed, happily enough as it turned out.
Late in the eighties, Ronnie Speck, who already owned a small pub and other properties, investments of ill-gotten gains but a valuable front, had made a kind of bid for respectability. Like father, like son. It was about this time when the old man died. His mother Isobel was quickly placed in an old-age home, where she was clearly bound anyways. She had Alzheimer’s. Until then care had been in the home. Care was provided by an expensive little firm that might very well have been owned by Speck or an associate through intermediaries. Security for the home of his aging parents had been provided by a similarly little-known firm, Stilton and Associates. The firm had been closed out shortly thereafter. This had the look of a standard tax dodge, paying yourself for services rendered by yourself and to yourself (or other gang members) and then taking the expense as a tax write-off for medical care. These expenses were usually well above the going rate as quoted by legitimate firms. The expenses of the shell companies would be wildly exaggerated as well for their own money-laundering purposes. You couldn’t be accused of having too much money if you could show where it was spent and that you had earned it through legitimate enterprise. Ronnie had been growing in sophistication as he went. He was also getting some very good financial advice. The list of bankers and stockbrokers seen in his increasingly-jovial company was fairly long, rather impressive in the case of certain names. Some of the costs were covered by private insurance and government benefits. The whole thing smelled of a carefully-managed, very professional but low-level scam. As for the mother’s property, it was extensive, with many holdings in her portfolio. This was estimated at about ninety thousand pounds that was traceable. Ronnie was trustee and the executor when her time came. There was a lawyer of doubtful reputation, Nigel Simmonds, listed on the file as well. There was much speculation as to what Ronnie might have inh
erited from his mother and father and how much of that was hidden from the revenue people.
Taking his best building, or rather his best location, he had renovated it into a chic little watering hole. The place soon attracted politicians, pop singers, sports figures and stars of telly and cinema. The prices were outrageous and the entertainment scandalous but sophisticated according to reports. He became a celebrity in his own right, magazines eager to photograph him and his friends. Their glossy promotional photos soon lined the walls of his club, Ronnie’s Place.
Ronnie was getting older and had retired to the Costa del Sol. His wealth was estimated in the millions, possibly hundreds of millions. It was said Speck or enterprises controlled by him held stocks in dozens of major companies ranging from film production, hotels, candy stores and casinos. They seemed to like any type of operation where there was either creative accounting, an international market to play, (always with a high cash flow), or both. Guys like Ronnie liked a big markup, and a captive audience. Most such information was gossip. Ronnie himself didn’t talk too much about it.
Ronnie Speck wasn’t above the rackets, but he had gotten smart. Now he merely franchised them to lesser men, including blackmailers, drug pushers, pimps, prostitutes, the usual enablers and perverts. It gave him money, power and in some of the more political cases, control. He’d always had an eye for building a network, the commentary summarized. It was believed a certain cabinet minister had committed suicide, unable to pay and unwilling to be exposed. Going by reputation, it had something to do with child brothels, although Ronnie himself would have bristled with indignation at the mere mention of it.
“No, not me, I’m an honest criminal—” The sort of crap the press lapped up from certain types in a kind of Robin Hood mentality.
They really did love their bad boys.
Ronnie had generated reams of lurid copy over the years.
This gave rise to certain other speculations, none of which seemed very relevant to EMERALD.
There was more, plenty more on Ronnie Speck and the criminal syndicate that he had painstakingly built up over more than forty years.