Assassin (John Stratton)

by Falconer, Duncan

  But Stratton wasn’t into cold-blooded killing. Neither did he hate Wheeland enough to end his life there and then, despite what the spook would do to him if their situations had been reversed.

  Something in Stratton’s eyes made it clear he wasn’t into any kind of deal. ‘I’m only a tool in this whole thing,’ Wheeland said.

  ‘They forced you, did they?’

  ‘Betregard’s the one you want. He’s the boss. This was all his idea. Him and Gatovik.’

  ‘Why is it people like you are so pathetic once you’ve lost your power?’

  ‘I never really had any,’ Wheeland said, trying to wriggle some sympathy out of the operative. ‘What are you going do with me? People like us can’t do time.’

  ‘I would’ve said it was the best place for people like us when we even think about crossing the line. That or dead. If you’d rather I killed you, let me know. Otherwise jail is where you’re headed. I understand the CIA can’t bear the thought of traitors seeing the light of day ever again.’

  Wheeland grimaced, like he’d never given a great deal of thought to being captured. The idea appeared to fill him with dread. More so than death. He took his hand out of his pocket, gripping a grenade. He pulled the pin. All he had to do was release his grip and the lever would spring, initiating the fuse.

  Stratton felt confident that if Wheeland dropped it, he could get clear in the four seconds before it detonated. His only consideration was whether to shoot him first. He was beginning to lean heavily in that direction.

  Wheeland let go of the grenade and it bounced on the tarmac between the two men. He remained still.

  Stratton hadn’t expected that. If Wheeland had run, he might have shot him before taking off himself. Wheeland didn’t seem the suicidal type, but because he hadn’t moved, Stratton couldn’t shoot.

  With two seconds to go, Stratton ran. Wheeland went with him. They reached the corner of the bullion truck as the grenade exploded. The force caught their backs and Wheeland grabbed Stratton as they were lifted up and Stratton’s M4 clattered away. The armoured truck shielded them from the worst, so both suffered fragment wounds but nothing serious.

  Wheeland ripped a combat knife from a sheath and it became the focus of the fight. As they rolled around, jostling for position, the back of the bullion truck began to rise off the ground. The sky crane pilot increased power as the aircraft took the strain. The nose of the truck scraped the ground before rising up above it. Stratton and Wheeland rolled under it as they fought desperately for control of the knife, exchanging blows.

  As the pilot continued his ascent something came into view directly ahead, something Stratton instantly knew would change the dynamics of the entire battle.

  A pair of Apache gunships came flying low over the rooftops towards the intersection. One of them loosed a missile that slapped into a Little Bird. The explosion, above the middle of the intersection, seemed to announce the beginning of the end as the flaming remains of the small helicopter dropped, its mangled engine slamming through the roof of a car. The cavalry had arrived. The Little Birds were no match for Apache gunships and neither were Wheeland’s men.

  The ground fire intensified as Wheeland’s men fired all that they had as they disengaged, running back in the direction of the city, into the endless wave of people still coming out of the streets, secure in the knowledge that the soldiers wouldn’t open fire on them for fear of hitting the innocent. It had been the original plan anyway, to make their way to prearranged hiding places in Manhattan and lie low for days. Only a couple of the men were picked off as they escaped.

  As Stratton struggled with Wheeland, he saw the M4 lying a few metres away. It was time to change tack. He kneed the spook in the crotch, released his grip on the knife with one hand and used it to push his fingers into Wheeland’s throat. The American released a hand to remove the interference to his breathing and as he did so, Stratton pushed away completely and rolled across the ground to the M4.

  Directly above, one of the gunships came into the hover in front of the sky crane. The pilot did the only thing he thought prudent to indicate he was surrendering: he reached for the emergency cable eject button and pushed it. There was a bang outside as the cable was severed by a small charge. The helicopter shuddered violently as it released the 25,000kg weight from its crane.

  Stratton, still on his back, brought the gun up on aim towards Wheeland. The spook, also outstretched on the ground, the knife in his hand, realised he had been outmanoeuvred. He could do nothing but wait for the shot. And Stratton felt happy at that point to oblige. The CIA man had used up all of his chances. It was time to call the game to an end.

  But as Stratton squeezed the trigger several tonnes of metal dropped in front of him, burying the end of the assault rifle into the road. He could only lie there in shock as bits of the armoured truck fell about him. When it all went still he looked at the huge piece of smoking wreckage, the butt of the M4 sticking up at an angle above him.

  He got to his feet and walked around the side of the truck in search of Wheeland, expecting to find his flattened remains. The man had been barely a couple of metres away. But there was no sign of him. No squished body or blood oozing from under the wreckage. There was no evidence Wheeland had even been touched.

  Stratton looked up the street in every direction. The spook had gone. He looked skyward and, other than the sky crane still hovering, the airspace was all military. The shooting around the intersection had also come to an end. It would seem the robbery had been thwarted.

  ‘Stratton!’ he heard a voice call out. He looked around to see Chandos making his way to him between cars. Civilians were still heading past them, those who had just arrived from side streets totally unaware of what had been going on.

  ‘Stratton, my boy,’ Chandos said as he got closer, a smile on his face. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine. Where’s the bomb?’

  ‘Over there.’ Chandos pointed at the taxi. ‘Where’s Wheeland?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Bugger. Well, we won and that’s the most important thing.’

  ‘Not quite. Not while Betregard and Wheeland are still out there.’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do about that now, is there?’ Chandos said decisively. ‘You have to know when to let go and allow others to take over. They’re gone, and that’s that. And I suggest we do the same.’

  Stratton couldn’t let it go. There had to be a way of getting to Wheeland. The trail had hardly gone cold. His eyes fell on a briefcase lying in the road outside the open door of an abandoned car. Beside it was an iPad. He walked over to it, picked it up and turned it on. It booted to life. He opened the browser.

  ‘What was the tracking program you used to find your stone?’ he asked Chandos.

  ‘Monarch. Why?’

  Stratton handed him the iPad. ‘Wheeland has it.’

  Chandos logged into the program. Within a minute a satellite image of the city of New York came to life on the screen. On it they saw a lone marker in Little Italy.

  ‘I have him,’ Chandos said, and Stratton was already marching away towards the taxi. ‘It’s only a matter of time before they find us,’ Chandos said as he followed, looking skyward.

  ‘Then we’d better hurry.’

  Wheeland drove an abandoned car into West 28th Street in Midtown, weaving between several trucks that had been left in the middle of the street. There was no one around. The place was empty. An abandoned city in the middle of the afternoon.

  He turned into the entrance of a car park nestled between a pair of towering buildings and smashed through a flimsy wooden barrier to enter the lot. Empty parking bays ran along one side of a low, windowless, concrete building. He pulled the car into one of them and killed the engine. He climbed out and looked around. A gentle wind blew trash along the ground. The only sound was a distant police siren.

  Wheeland walked to the only door into the building, a metal one without handles, locks or any clues that it ac
tually opened at all. There was a clunk and the door moved. He looked up to see a CCTV camera aimed down on him. He pulled open the door and stepped inside. He was faced with a long, narrow corridor with a door at the far end. He had never been inside the building before and was unsure of himself.

  He walked to the door, which was similar to the first one: metal, no handles, locks or hinges. Another clunk and it moved slightly inwards. Wheeland pushed it open. There was yet another door immediately to his front but it was already open. He pushed through it and stepped into a large room lined with maps, charts and half a dozen flatscreen monitors showing parts of the city and harbour, most of them aerial shots and city-link CCTV.

  He saw two men seated in comfortable chairs, turned so they could look at him as he walked in. They didn’t appear to be pleased at all.

  ‘How did you find out about this place?’ Henry Betregard asked. He wore a dark suit and in the dim light it was hard to see his eyes, which were like well-holes in his face. Mikhail Gatovik leaned back in his chair, his portly stomach fighting against the buttons of his shirt.

  Wheeland became nervous now that he was in front of them. He was in uncharted territory. He had the realisation that essentially he was a civilian now. A privateer. A criminal, and an unsuccessful one at that. And he had no future other than with Betregard. With Stratton still out there, he would go to jail if caught.

  But now that he was there, Wheeland didn’t feel much safer in front of Betregard and his Russian buddy. Gatovik was looking at him in a dangerous way. He knew his choices were limited, and he was prepared to take his chances.

  ‘I dropped you off here once, six months ago,’ Wheeland said by way of explanation. ‘I was curious about the place and found out you were building an ops room.’

  ‘You snooped,’ Betregard said.

  ‘You sound like you don’t trust me any more.’

  ‘Why should I? You just destroyed my operation.’

  The screens showed the mopping up of the intersection by police and military. A sky crane was being escorted somewhere by an Apache gunship.

  ‘I did everything we planned,’ Wheeland said.

  ‘Then why did it fail?’

  ‘Stratton.’

  ‘What the hell is a Stratton?’

  ‘A Brit. SBS. SIS. He brought the bomb out of Afghanistan with the integer.’

  ‘You were supposed to kill him,’ Gatovik said.

  ‘Then you did screw up,’ Betregard said. ‘You expect me to believe one man wrecked this operation?’

  ‘She helped him,’ Wheeland said. ‘The integer was the one who betrayed us.’

  ‘Integers don’t betray,’ Betregard said. ‘They have no opinion. They just do.’

  ‘He got to her.’

  Betregard and Gatovik watched him coldly.

  Stratton and Chandos turned the taxi into a corner of a broad street void of life. Abandoned vehicles were everywhere.

  ‘He’s two blocks on the right,’ Chandos said.

  Stratton looked skywards to see several helicopters cut across the street half a mile ahead. ‘Here they come.’

  Chandos wound down his window. ‘Hear that?’

  A distant sound of sirens appeared to be getting closer.

  A gentle alarm beeped on the ops console and Betregard and Gatovik turned to look at one of the screens. The view was of the parking lot outside. A yellow taxi cab was driving in through the broken barrier.

  Wheeland watched as the taxi came to a stop and the doors opened. He saw Stratton climb out, followed by Chandos.

  ‘That’s him,’ Wheeland said. ‘That’s Stratton.’

  Stratton tossed the iPad onto the seat. ‘They’re in this building,’ he said. He noted a couple of CCTV cameras. ‘Come on.’

  He went to the back of the taxi, opened the trunk and took hold of the atomic bomb. Chandos grabbed the other side and together they struggled to heave it out. It thumped heavily onto the ground and the pair of them rolled it around the vehicle and placed it on its end in the open.

  ‘Now what?’ Chandos asked.

  ‘I think this is it.’

  ‘Do we stay here?’

  ‘Might as well.’

  Betregard sat forward in his seat with a look of disbelief. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘It’s the bomb,’ the Russian said, shocked.

  ‘You led them here.’

  Wheeland could only watch, just as stunned as they were.

  ‘You’re a damned fool, Wheeland,’ Betregard said as he raised a pistol and shot Wheeland. The bullet struck the spook in the forehead and he fell back to the floor with a heavy crash.

  Betregard got up out of his chair and went to a cabinet, which he unlocked. ‘My instincts tell me that if we get rid of those two, we’ll have a lot less explaining to do,’ he said, handing Gatovik an assault rifle and taking another. Together they marched out of the room.

  As they headed down the corridor towards the door at the end, Betregard said, ‘I’m going to give you a quick lesson in Wild West diplomacy, Gatovik.’ He cocked his weapon and brought it up into his shoulder. ‘We’re going to settle this the old-fashioned way. Open the door and come out shooting.’

  Gatovik loaded and cocked his weapon. ‘I always liked the Wild West way of doing things,’ he said.

  Betregard kicked open the door and brought the barrel of the weapon up as he marched outside. Gatovik moved out behind him and to his side.

  The first thing Betregard noticed was Stratton and Chandos standing with their arms high in the air. Half a second later he realised why.

  Several hundred police and soldiers surrounded the entire place. A couple of squad cars screeched to a halt in the street. An Apache gunship thundered low overhead.

  Gatovik turned around to see soldiers roping down onto the roof of the building from a helicopter, a line of them already in position and aiming their guns at him.

  ‘Put your weapons down and hold your hands in the air,’ a voice boomed over a loudspeaker. ‘You have three seconds to comply or you’ll be killed.’

  Betregard lowered his weapon to the ground. When he straightened up, he stuck his hands in the air and looked at Stratton coldly.

  The operative stared back and gave him a wink.

  Epilogue

  Chandos and Stratton walked through the departure hall of JFK International airport towards their gate. Stratton had a slight limp. One of his arms was bandaged and in a sling. They were cleaned up and wearing new casual clothes, care of the Central Intelligence Agency. And two suited men from said organisation were escorting them along the hallway.

  They reached their gate, a BA flight to London Heathrow.

  ‘We’ll leave you to it,’ one of the agents said with a friendly smile.

  ‘Thanks very much for your hospitality,’ Chandos said.

  ‘Thank you,’ the agent said. ‘You have a good flight.’

  They all shook hands and the suits departed. Chandos sighed heavily and sat down. He wore a look of immense satisfaction.

  Stratton sat beside him, looking troubled by something.

  ‘So, we return conquering heroes after all,’ Chandos said. ‘When we get onto the plane I strongly suggest we have champagne right away. One must always grab any opportunity to celebrate.’

  Stratton forced a smile but his thoughts were elsewhere.

  ‘What is it?’ Chandos asked. ‘If you’re still bothered about the interrogation from our chaps when we get home, don’t worry about it. I’ll take full responsibility.’

  That wasn’t what Stratton was thinking about.

  ‘By the way. Lydia asked me to tell you thank you very much for everything.’

  ‘Lydia?’

  ‘Bullfrog. She’s unable to take any credit for her side of things, of course. After a pat on the back, her people would more than likely fire her for the way she got the information out of the meeting room in the first place. There’s also no way of knowing how many senior Russians were invo
lved. So mum’s still the word as far as she’s concerned.’

  Stratton saw someone across the hall who suddenly consumed his entire focus. She was wearing a colourful, summery skirt and looking fresh and quite beautiful. Her expression was blank, to the uninitiated that is. But Stratton was one of the few people in the world who had learned to see the smile in her eyes.

  He smiled back.

  Lara walked towards him. He pushed himself out of his seat.

  ‘What are your plans?’ Chandos asked him, unaware of Lara. ‘Are you going to take that vacation you’re owed?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  Chandos realised Stratton was distracted and followed his gaze.

  The operative walked over to meet her and they stopped in front of each other. She didn’t take her eyes off his.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I was hoping I’d see you.’

  ‘I find myself with time on my hands,’ she said.

  ‘You have a break from work?’

  ‘More like work has broken from me. I’ve been released.’

  ‘You did the right thing.’

  ‘I don’t have any regrets. But I expect the organisation will be disbanded. We were compromised.’

  ‘What will your father say?’

  She smiled at the thought of him. ‘He would’ve done the same thing.’ She looked into Stratton’s eyes. ‘I’m going to be in Geneva tomorrow evening.’

  ‘I’m envious.’

  ‘A Swiss International Air Lines flight leaves for Geneva three hours after you land in Heathrow. There’s a first-class reservation waiting for you at the check-in desk.’

  Stratton did his best to control his surprise. ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll see you at Geneva arrivals.’

  He was suddenly unsure about something. ‘Is this business or pleasure?’

  ‘I’m going to take you to a log cabin in the mountains where there’s a fire, a cauldron of hot water and a small bed on the floor,’ she said. ‘I want to start some things over again.’

  She leaned close to him and her lips met his. They kissed gently, the sparkle mutual.