Stone Fall

by J. D. Weston

“So go to the museum.”

  “No, not my style. Something as valuable as the item you have your eye on could fund my little project.”

  “Your little project?”

  “Let's just say, I’m cleaning this city, this country. It is filthy.”

  “So leave, go back to wherever it is you came from.”

  “It is not that simple I’m afraid. I just couldn’t sleep at night knowing of all the sinners walking freely here.” Al Sayan paused. “You could help me. We’d make a great team.”

  “I won't help you,”

  “Then I am afraid little Angel here will die a very painful death.” He looked down at the little girl who cried out. “You hear her?” said Al Sayan.

  “I do, let me talk to her.”

  “No, you need to earn that.”

  “You’re a sick son of a bitch.”

  “Wrong again, what I am is dedicated.”

  “So I do the job for you, and you give me my daughter back?”

  “That’s the gist of it, but there is one more thing,” said Al Sayan. “An obstacle.”

  “What is it?”

  “How closely did you watch the news of our mutual friend?”

  “I have an eye for detail.”

  “So you would have seen the hero?”

  “He’s known to me.”

  “I know he is. He’s your obstacle, I want him out of the picture,” said Al Sayan, “and his friends, they’re already too close.”

  “How do you expect me to do that?”

  “I have already made plans for Mr Stone, he has ruined my plans once too often. He will be running now, so you should find it easy. The buddha arrives today and will be locked in the vault. The auction is in four days. In exactly two days time I will be creating quite a large diversion, somewhere close to the auction. The chaos will provide a means of escape for you and your team. Your death or capture will result in our little Angel here growing wings earlier than expected.”

  “Don’t you-“

  Al Sayan disconnected the call.

  4

  The Pack

  Frank Carver stood outside his office on the mezzanine floor in the team’s headquarters. He looked down and watched as his team arrived. Headquarters was a brick building beside the Thames Barrier in Silvertown, East London. It stood alone in a compound surrounded by a high wall and electric gates. The team occupied half the building, the other half belonged to the team of engineers that ran the barrier on a daily basis.

  Frank’s team was a specialist black ops team that reported to the Home Office, via MI5. They were not the balaclava-clad assault team that would abseil down buildings and storm into hostage situations or terrorist cells. They were a very small team of highly skilled individuals. Each of them was a specialist in their own field, and collectively they worked domestic organised crime investigations, while SO10 and other units dealt with the rising terrorist threats. The thinking behind Frank’s unit was that while the well known and well-funded black ops operatives stormed buildings and kicked the doors in of terrorist cells, the organised crime world was left wide open for gangs and criminals to run amok. The growth in organised crime since 9/11 and 7/7 was big enough to warrant charging a few highly-skilled operatives with the task of keeping the organised crime world at bay. The team let these criminals know that they didn't have free reign. Taking down the ringleaders and, most importantly, shutting the doors of sources to prevent crimes happening again was their main objective.

  Denver Cox drove the brand new VW Transporter into the HQ building. He parked between Harvey's BMW motorcycle and the team’s Audi in the engineering area immediately to the left of the large sliding shutter doors. The engineering area was his own domain. He was the driver, the mechanic and the engineer, plus he was an expert pilot in both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopter.

  Denver stepped out of the brand new van and stretched. He’d been in the seat for the entire day. The van was black with tinted windows, and had been significantly fixed up by Denver. He’d dropped the diesel engine out and replaced it with a four-litre V6. He’d upgraded the suspension, put bigger wheels on and improved the brakes. From the outside, it looked like a standard VW Transporter, but with Denver at the wheel, it could keep up with most cars on the road. It was an ideal team vehicle.

  Each team member had a specific skill set, and the Home Office had furnished them all with the tools required for the job. Denver had his engineering area, Melody had her armoury, and Reg had his command centre, which consisted of twelve wall-mounted twenty-four inch screens and his own computer software and hardware creation.

  Melody Mills was a surveillance expert and sniper, plus she was as smart as they come. She had aced every exam she had ever taken and worked her way up from entry level constabulary. After spending a few years as a detective, she was then pulled into SO10 where she met Frank. She was thirty years old and led the team’s operations.

  Denver opened the rear door for Reg to step out. Reg Tenant was just closing down his two computers that lived permanently inside the van. He climbed out and walked over to his command centre which was immediately to the right of the sliding shutter doors.

  Frank led the team. He was a highly experienced investigator who had worked his way through the constabulary and several detective units, eventually leading an organised crime division of SO10 before being given the chance to run a team of specialists. He was in his fifties, and if he wasn’t thinking about the case they were working on, he was thinking about his retirement.

  The covert team performed almost the same function as his SO10 team had, but without the restrictions of a government organisation. He was answerable to the Home Office and MI5, but aside from that, nobody knew of them. The team’s existence wasn't public knowledge. It couldn’t be, if the public were aware of them, there would be uproar. They weren’t licensed to kill, per se, but they were licensed to get the job done.

  Frank was happy with his team. It was still early days, and they needed a little guidance, but they worked well together and got the job done, and that was important for both the team’s success and Frank’s retirement.

  Frank hadn't always been an honest cop. In fact, he barely remembered the days when he’d been green and keen. He’d been tangled up in the criminal world’s web of deceit for far too long. Often, a favour from one criminal led to him risking his job in return, which required another favour from another criminal. The cycle had been endless. Until, twelve months previously, when he’d watched through a window in the blackest of nights, as Harvey Stone had killed the man who held Frank’s balls in his hands. The man had been Terry Thomson, the renowned East End villain.

  Shortly afterwards, Frank had discovered the body of a man that Harvey had boiled to death, laying in an old copper bath in the basement of Harvey's foster father’s house. It had been the man Harvey had searched for more than twenty years; his sister's other rapist. Sitting beside the corpse on the cold stone floor was the missing sex offender that Harvey had left to Frank as a gift. He had been tied to a wooden beam in the cellar alongside the still-steaming, old copper bath.

  On the grounds of the estate, Frank had also found a transit van full of Heckler and Koch MP5s that he’d been looking for, another gift from Harvey.

  A bad man would have killed the sex offender, sold the guns on the black market and continued his life of crime. But Harvey had left all those gifts for Frank then retired to a little farm in the south of France. He’d escaped the life of crime, that was how Frank knew that Harvey wanted out. It was how he knew that the good inside him was stronger than the evil. It had been at a time when Frank was forming the team. They had the brains, a sniper and surveillance. They had the driver, pilot and mechanic. They had the tech guru. But they had needed someone with the skills that can’t be taught. Someone who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty, for the right reasons. That someone had been Harvey.

  So given the choice of prison or working for the team, Harvey had opted to work f
or the team. It had been a difficult transition. Harvey had spent his entire life surrounded by criminals and avoiding the law, and now he was adjusting. Harvey was guided by his moral compass, which was true and straight but lacked experience of the formalities. Frank was helping him adjust.

  Frank had promised to help Harvey find out the reasons behind his best friend Julios’ murder and his parent's deaths, their names and where they were buried, so that Harvey could move on with his life. Until then, Harvey was on a leash, and prison loomed over him like an angry black cloud.

  Frank watched Harvey step from the van and walk casually over to his desk. He was a fearsome man, Frank thought. Harvey wasn’t an oversized muscle head, he was athletic but strong. His confidence carried across the room wherever he walked, and people stopped and stared like the devil had passed them by.

  Harvey didn't have large, wall-mounted monitors. He didn’t have a tool chest or cabinets with automatic weapons and surveillance equipment. Harvey had a small desk for his laptop and a chair. Behind it was his punch bag, which hung from the mezzanine floor above. Harvey’s needs were basic.

  “Stone, Mills, my office,” Frank called down to them.

  5

  Unleash the Beast

  “Debrief?” said Frank, looking at Harvey.

  Harvey didn’t reply.

  “So we lost Victor Hague,” said Frank. It wasn’t a question. He had overheard the comms between the team, and then he’d seen the resulting media reports. ‘Breaking news. Unknown security organisation tackles terrorist with an explosive vest on London’s Millennium Footbridge.’ The video had been captured by a nearby tourist.

  “He was loaded, sir,” said Melody, “his backpack-”

  “I can imagine what he was wearing, Mills,” interrupted Frank, “but now we’ve lost our way in to the explosives supplier, and will need to start again.”

  “He would have been gone anyway, sir. He was going to blow something up, people, it’s the city, sir. It would have been a disaster.”

  “Agreed, so what do we have to go on?”

  Harvey tossed a plastic shopping bag onto Frank’s desk.

  “What’s that, Stone?” asked Frank, keeping his tone calm, but secretly outraged by having somebody throw a bag onto his desk rather than pass it to him in a more civilised fashion.

  “Hague’s hand,” replied Harvey.

  “His what?”

  “His hand.”

  “You cut it off?”

  “It was either that, or he would have cut Melody’s head off, in front of hundreds of members of the public,” said Harvey.

  “He put a machete to my throat, sir,” said Melody, by way of confirmation.

  “Yes, I saw the footage, someone recorded it and sent it to the BBC. Nice of them, eh? They didn’t show the hand, oddly enough.”

  Harvey and Melody were silent.

  “What’s the plan with it?”

  “With what, sir?”

  “The hand, Melody, are we going to stuff it and stick it on the wall?”

  “No, sir, but we thought it prudent to take it away from the general public.”

  “Can Reg do anything with it?”

  “Just prints, sir, but we already know what Hague was involved in, I can’t see it telling us anything else.”

  “Okay, print it, and send it off to wherever they have the rest of him. Then get everyone in the meeting room.”

  A short while later the team walked up the stairs to the meeting room and assumed their positions. Reg sat on one of the sofas, Denver sat on the arm of the other sofa, Melody stood near the coffee machine, and Harvey leaned on the wall by the door. Frank stood at the head of the room by the two whiteboards.

  “Firstly, team, thank you all for your efforts this morning, we managed to avert a potential disaster, and there is one less bad guy on the loose. However….” Frank inhaled deeply. “There are two pieces of slightly not so good news.”

  The team were all listening intently.

  “We cannot take credit for today’s actions. We are, as you know, informal, we don't exist. SO10 will take the credit. Secondly, and far more importantly, we no longer have an in into Hague’s world, and ladies and gentlemen, without Hague we won't know when the next shipment will be coming. But we can be quite certain that the first shipment has already been distributed.”

  “How does that concern us?” asked Melody, “Surely that’s a job for Customs and Excise.”

  “Typically, yes, however one of the buyers is known to us and falls under our jurisdiction,” replied Frank.

  The team thought on who might want explosives.

  “Want a clue?” asked Frank.

  The team were quiet.

  “My theory is that the explosives sold to our man will be used to blow a vault door.”

  “Not people then?” asked Melody.

  “No, Mills, not people, that would be terrorism, and as you pointed out earlier, that does not fall under our jurisdiction.” Frank put the whiteboard marker down and walked to the front of the table, where he sat back and leaned on the edge. “Hague had his fingers in many pies, all different flavours. Our particular pie is quite straightforward. I had Reg analyse Hague’s phone records. Lots of data, most of it useless. Untraceable phones, unknown owners, short calls, coded messages. Mostly garbage.” Frank cleared his throat. “However, one number that Hague had been talking to had contacted somebody we all known, who has evaded us for many years. Somebody who targets diamonds and art, and somebody who, with the right amount of plastic explosives, could get into any vault.”

  “Who, sir?” asked Reg. “The suspense is killing me.”

  “Not yet, Tenant,” replied Frank. “First I want to paint a picture.” Frank hit the space bar on his laptop, which was connected by HDMI to the TV in the room. A photo of a small, green Chinese buddha appeared on the large screen.

  “Can anyone tell me what this is?” asked Frank.

  “A scented candle?” said Reg.

  Melody smiled. “It's a buddha, sir. By the colouring, I’d say it was jade, and by the condition, I’d say it was old.”

  “Good,” said Frank. “It is, in fact, an ancient jade buddha. How old?” He offered the question to the room.

  “Five hundred years,” said Denver.

  “Older.”

  “Seven hundred and fifty,” asked Reg.

  “Older.”

  “Fifteen hundred?” asked Melody, her eyebrows raised in doubt.

  Frank looked at her, then paused. “Older,” he said quietly.

  “Two thousand years?” asked Denver.

  “Give or a take a century, experts can’t date it accurately.”

  “This is fun,” said Reg. “What’s the next question?”

  “Why am I showing you it?” asked Frank.

  “It’s a target,” said Melody. “You think somebody’s going to steal it?”

  “Two points to Mills,” replied Frank. “The two-thousand-year-old jade buddha is going up for auction later this week.”

  “Where?” asked Denver.

  “Cornish House, out in deepest darkest Essex according to a website I found this morning.”

  “Essex?” said Denver, “Why there?”

  “You’ll see when you go. It’s an old English manor house, surrounded by miles and miles of greenery with no tunnels, a large vault and no possible way of escaping. The owner is of English gentry and is a keen collector of art.”

  “So how do we know it’s going to be stolen?” asked Reg.

  “You’ll see,” said Frank. “How much do we think it’s worth?” Frank offered the question to the room again.

  “Ten million?” asked Denver.

  “Twenty million,” said Reg.

  “You’re both wrong,” said Frank. “The item has never actually been bought or sold. It’s been passed down through generations in a particular family of the aristocracy, and the starting bid price has not yet been disclosed.”

  “So how does anyone
know how much money to bring to the auction?” asked Reg.

  “For somebody so intelligent, you do ask some stupid questions, Tenant,” said Frank. “Buyers of this type of artefact do not turn up to an auction with any money at all. In fact, the only people invited to the auction are ten of Europe’s biggest collectors, all with a combined net worth greater than many small countries.”

  “So there’s no price?” asked Melody.

  “Not yet, but it’s known that all of the buyers want the piece, just how far they’ll go is yet to be seen.”

  “Crazy,” said Denver.

  “So that’s what, where and why,” said Harvey, speaking up for the first time.

  Frank turned to face Harvey. “Who do you think would want this more anything in the world?”

  “Only one person I know who could pull the job off.”

  “Go on,” said Frank, smiling at the suspense.

  “Stimson,” said Harvey.

  “Adam Stimson. Bonus points to Stone,” said Frank, smiling. “Hague’s phone records showed contact with one number that is in direct communication with Adam Stimson on a daily basis. What does that tell us?”

  “Stimson’s active. He’s smart,” said Harvey, “He won't contact anyone himself, he has men that do things like that for him.”

  “So if Stimson needed a little bang for his next job-“

  “He’d have his closest man arrange it, he wouldn’t trust anyone else,” said Harvey.

  “So if we add two and two?” asked Frank.

  “Stimson needs explosives for a vault, and coincidently a priceless buddha is up for auction,” said Melody.

  “Your job is to recce the manor house. There’s a restaurant attached so maybe you can go for breakfast?” began Frank. “I want to know exactly how you’d get in and out. Once we have our own grounding, we should be able to put plans into action to stop Stimson. Maybe this time we’ll actually catch him.”

  “What about the source of the explosives?” asked Denver.

  “Good question, it’s a great question in fact, but alas, it’s not our problem.”