ALL ACTION THRILLER BOXSET: THREE MURRAY MCDONALD STANDALONE THRILLERS

by Murray Mcdonald

  As the phone clattered and smashed to the ground, the sniper avoided the blade and was already bringing his silenced pistol to bear with his other hand. Sam was just recovering from his initial strike as the silencer closed in on his face. Like his opponent, Sam reacted quickly and as the sniper depressed the trigger, Sam’s left hand burned as he pushed the barrel from his face and towards the sniper’s car. Two bullets tore through the side panel and rear tire respectively. With little strength in his left hand, Sam had no option but to drop the knife and use both hands against the pistol. Seeing an opportunity, the sniper took it and delivered a massive punch to the side of Sam's head. As Sam was forced from his feet, his two-handed grip on the pistol, although weakened, was enough to wrestle the gun free from the sniper. Sam was down, but with the pistol within his reach, he was most definitely not out.

  The sniper surveyed the situation in an instant. Sam had the pistol, his car had a flat and his phone was useless. Live to fight another day was a motto the sniper very much lived by. So he turned and ran. He needed his apprentice and some more weapons. Therefore, he needed a phone.

  Sam shook his head, the blow had been a good one and had certainly blown off the cobwebs. The pistol lay at his side and he quickly raised it in the direction the sniper had run. As with most snipers, he was quick and more importantly, silent. By the time Sam had him in his sights, the sniper had vaulted the gate and was just disappearing out of sight behind the wall of Tudor Place, a five-and-a-half-acre historic house and garden, in the heart of Georgetown and open to the public. Sam picked up his knife and noted the shattered cell phone. He looked at the board detailing the opening hours. The sniper would not have missed the fact that the building would be unoccupied at night, and being a tourist attraction, would have public phones.

  Sam sprinted after the sniper and once clearing the gate, picked up his trail. As the clouds moved across the sky, the moonlight, that had assisted the sniper in avoiding the knife, came and went. Shadows were thrown and disappeared almost as one. Sam stopped. This time, the sniper would know he was being trailed and from what Sam had witnessed so far, this guy was very good indeed. Although he had the pistol, the sniper, if he wanted, could let Sam walk past within inches and then disarm him.

  Sam stopped running and listened. His concerns were unfounded, the sniper had obviously only one concern, alerting somebody to his location. The tinkle of breaking glass from twenty yards through the undergrowth, meant he was breaking into the house. Sam picked up the pace and sprinted. He could just make out the dark shape slithering through one of the small panes that led into the drawing room. Sam had always enjoyed visiting the house and grounds when stationed in Washington, and had loved the peace and tranquility of being transported back to a century when life was more peaceful and far easier. It was one of the main reasons he had purchased the house on Q Street. This was his favorite part of Washington.

  Sam knew the public phones were located just off the main hall, which was through the Saloon. The sniper was very close to getting back up. So far, no alarm had been triggered. The system was as antiquated as the house and required a window or door to be opened to trigger it, which was just the way Sam wanted it. It also meant that he didn’t need to be overly careful. He had the pistol and the sniper was endangering his brother and himself. And, by association, he was guilty of the murder of his son, his wife, and his dog. It was this realization that sent Sam charging towards the Saloon window, with its semi circular floor-to-ceiling portico window. Two spits from the pistol eased his way through as Sam jumped through the window at full pelt. The sniper, caught in the middle of the large and open Saloon room, threw his hands up in surrender; knowing that his benefactor would come to his aid, once the police became involved.

  “Okay, you win!” offered the sniper, standing with his hands in the air.

  Sam almost laughed at the poor guy. He had misunderstood the situation very badly indeed. He must have assumed that, since his brother was a Senator, they would do the right thing.

  Sam did. The first two bullets removed the sniper’s kneecaps. The screams, although deafening, were contained within the old building’s solid walls. Even then, the large grounds meant that the nearest home was hundreds of feet away.

  “You’ve got approximately sixty seconds to justify an extension to your miserable life!” offered Sam as he pointed the pistol at the sniper’s head.

  It took approximately three minutes for the sniper to tell Sam what he needed to know. Nobody knew where the sniper was, other than roughly Washington and even then, it was his apprentice who had no knowledge of who their client was nor who the target was. The client was a man called James Lawson. Sam recognized the name, but didn’t know where from. He confirmed the main target was Senator Charles Baker and his companions i.e. Clark and Sam. It also transpired that the sniper was unaware of and as such, not involved in the attack on Sam’s family. That earned him, after his three-minute extension, a carefully placed bullet in the head, and not the gut shot that Sam had been contemplating.

  Sam couldn’t cover the break-in, but he could dispose of the body. A small pond on the grounds would have to suffice in the short term. Dragging a dead weight with one and a half arms was not easy, but he managed and after putting the body in the pond, he found a number of large stones to lay on top. The depth and age of the pond made it unlikely that the body would be spotted, for at least a few days A quick return to the house to pick up cartridges and to wipe down visible blood stains, left nothing but a break-in for the police to investigate.

  The final task was to move the sniper’s car. With a bullet hole and a flat tire, it would stand out in the tree-lined street of multimillion dollar properties. A six-block ride had the tire all but shredded as he pulled into the University of Georgetown Hospital. Avoiding the CCTV cameras, Sam parked next to a number of other cars and jogged back towards the townhouse.

  It was time to have a serious chat with Senator Charles Baker and find out how James Lawson fit into the picture.

  Chapter 39

  The Knesset

  Ben had churned through a number of departments delivering the simple message, ‘you don’t have sixty days, you have twelve’. All had argued that it was impossible. Ben had ignored them all.

  “Enter!” he shouted as the tap on the door alerted him to his next meeting.

  When he looked up, expecting to see a representative from the medical team, he saw a face he did not recognize. He looked again at his diary. His secretary had inserted a name he did not recognize and she had added, ‘five minutes only,’ as a note.

  “Good afternoon,” said a rather strange little man, checking his watch. “Mr. Meir, it is an honor to meet you.”

  “Sorry, have we met?” asked Ben, gesturing for the man to be seated. Ben could not take his eyes off the man’s face. He was wearing the most ridiculous looking glasses Ben had ever seen. That, combined with his small but rotund stature, gave him the look of a mole.

  “No, I can’t say we have,” he answered, offering nothing else.

  After a moment of awkward silence, Ben spoke.

  “Sorry, why are you here?”

  “Because of this.” The man reached down and rather clumsily produced a photo from his briefcase and laid it in front of Ben.

  Ben looked at the photo and saw little more than a grainy picture from a high angle, looking down on what he recognized to be the Rafah border-crossing from Gaza to Egypt.

  “Where are you from?” asked Ben, still trying to assess why the little mole was in his office.

  “Intelligence Group, IAF,” replied the mole succinctly.

  The mention of the non-Arab Affairs Department caught him off-guard. Particularly, as he was looking at a picture of the Rafah crossing. With everything else on his plate, the last thing he needed was something unconnected to the Arabs.

  Ben was beginning to lose it. He did not have time for some emotional retard to waste his time, and addressed him as evenly as he coul
d.

  “Would you mind telling me, what exactly it is that I’m looking at?”

  “Well, you see,” the mole replied, pulling another photo from his case. “This was just,” he took back the first photo from Ben’s desk. “To pinpoint the location.” And replaced it with the new one. “This one is in a much greater resolution.”

  Ben rubbed his forehead as he tried to stay calm. The mole had stopped talking as he laid the second photo down. All Ben could see were a number of blurred faces. He still did not know what the hell he was supposed to be looking at.

  Ben looked up from the pointless photo and stared at the mole.

  The mole just stared back at him somewhat vacantly. A knock at the door and the entrance of the Commander of the IAF (Israeli Air Force) interrupted the awkward stand-off.

  The Air Chief knew Ben well and could see the anger and frustration in his face. He looked at the mole who smiled back at him.

  “I see you’ve met Harry?” he said with a smile.

  “Kind of,” replied Ben as evenly as his temper would allow. It was the busiest day he’d had in years, and he had no time to waste.

  The Chief turned to Harry. “Harry, I told you to make the appointment, but you were to wait for me before going in.”

  Harry just smiled back at his Chief.

  Ben shook his head. “I’m sorry, but what the hell is going on? Is he some kind of re…”?

  “I should explain,” the Chief interrupted. “Harry is an analyst in one of our photo surveillance departments. And is an autistic savant.”

  Ben began to calm down. There was something wrong with ‘Harry’. He understood the term ‘autistic’, but not ‘savant’.

  “Savant?”

  “They have a special skill. They can be musical, scientific, artistic or any number of things. Harry here, has a photographic memory and remembers every face he has ever seen, and any detail about that person that we know. Address, phone number, date of birth, anything.”

  Ben began to understand. He looked down at the photo again.

  “So, who are we looking at?”

  Harry leaned forward and pointed to a face in the foreground. It was slightly blurred, but revealed a middle-aged man with pale skin, something which did help single him out.

  “Professor Ilya Keilson, graduate of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. Hero of Socialist Labor, Order of Lenin and winner of the Stalin Prize. Born November 16th 1960. He worked until 1992 in Kremlyov, which changed its name to Sarov in 1995, and is the center for Russia’s nuclear research program. His particular specialty is maximizing yield potential and detonation. His father was Klaus Fuchs born 29 December 1911…”

  Ben held his hand up to stop Harry, who was reciting all of the detail from memory.

  “What use is he in Gaza?” asked Ben. “The weapons were moved to Israel months ago.”.

  The Air Chief looked at Ben.

  “This photo was amongst a number taken some time ago. It was only by accident that Harry here spotted it. Harry’s a Russian specialist and as such, doesn’t cover Gaza or the West bank. He only spotted it as he walked past a desk this morning, and instantly recognized the face. I’m afraid this photo is about nine months old.”

  Ben’s mouth went dry. Nine months ago was almost exactly when they believed the Palestinians had been given the bombs.

  “So this guy, Keilsen, can take a bomb and improve its yield?”

  “Yep,” replied Harry confidently.

  “But only by so much. The mass material is key. There is a maximum. So, for example, a 75kt device may be able to improve by say 20-30%, but it’s unlikely you could get higher than that.”

  Ben relaxed a little. Was a 100kt nuclear weapon really that much worse than a 75kt?

  “He also specializes in trigger and detonation systems,” added Harry.

  “And that means?”

  “He can take a device and reconfigure the trigger or design an entirely new one.”

  Ben’s heart almost stopped.

  “Ben? Ben?!” The Air Chief rushed around the desk, as Ben’s face turned sheet white.

  Ben held his hand up, he was still alive.

  “If you wouldn’t mind excusing me, I have some calls to make,” he whispered in a tremble.

  Chapter 40

  Sam arrived back to find Clark and his brother sound asleep on the sofas. The house remained, as per his instructions, in darkness. He grabbed a couple of blankets from a closet and placed them over the pair. Sam had purchased the house from a German diplomat who, at the end of his time in America, just wanted to take his clothes and leave. It meant that Sam was left with pretty much everything he would ever need. The German had, much to Sam’s amusement, even agreed to the realtor’s discount to cover the cost of removing unwanted goods. He not only got a fully furnished house, he got it for $30,000 less than an empty one.

  Sam had spent less than two minutes deciding on the purchase three years earlier, and since then, he had not stepped foot in the property and had no idea where anything was, let alone his own bedroom. He climbed the stairs, opened the first door, and finding two twin beds, fell on the first one and was asleep by the time his head hit the pillow.

  ***

  By the time Rebecca reached Edison, she reckoned she was fifty minutes behind whoever had killed the couple. She fished around in the bottom of her make-up bag and pulled out another federal badge. This time, she would be FBI, but with no witnesses in the house who could speak, she kept a lower profile and canvassed the neighbors. She soon had the registration and description of the woman’s Ford Focus. Within five minutes, she left the scene, and taking an educated guess, she headed south so as not to lose any valuable time as she worked through the leads.

  Her first three calls were to Sayanim within America’s largest cell phone networks, Verizon, Cingular/ATT and Sprint and all were asked to investigate the same occurrence. Did any of their cell phones make two calls at specific times from two locations; Rebecca gave them the GPS coordinates for the Howard Johnson in Newark and the house in Edison, and the times of the shootings, with a five-minute window either side. Rebecca’s thinking was simple. Whoever had killed the couple were after the Senator. She did not believe for a second, that the Senator had perpetrated such an atrocity. To be following the Senator, the killer would have had to have followed him from Newark and whoever he was, he would have a boss or bosses to report to.

  In the meantime, to keep the trail warm, she headed south, continuing on the previous direction from Newark to Edison. Without confirmation that this was the right direction, she held the speed steady at fifty. She wasn’t going to widen the gap too much in the short term, just in case.

  The Sayanim proved their worth again. What would have taken the federal agencies weeks to uncover was relayed to Rebecca a mere seventeen minutes after her call. A Sprint prepaid cell had made two relatively short calls from both locations within the time frame. Being prepaid, there were no details as to ownership and unfortunately, both calls were likewise received on prepaid cell phones. So Rebecca was no further forward in who she was chasing. However, the operator not only knew where the phone had been, they knew where it was heading, or at least the direction in which it was heading, due south.

  Rebecca almost doubled her speed as she hung up the phone.

  It was another two hours before she received the follow-up call. The prepaid cell had stopped moving and was located in and around the Georgetown area of Washington DC. Rebecca checked the satnav. She was only thirty-two miles away. Two hours of high speed driving had dramatically shrunk the gap between her and the target.

  By the time Rebecca pulled onto Q street, Sam had already dumped the sniper’s car. The sniper’s phone, which Rebecca was tracking, lay in bits alongside the sniper’s rotting corpse at the bottom of the pond. A phone call from the Sayanim confirmed that the phone was no longer searching for signal, its last triangulation placing it within the grounds of Tudor Place. Rebecca had just parked o
n 31st NW and killed her lights as she caught a bizarre sight in her rearview mirror. It was approximately 2.30 a.m. and a man jogged across the road behind her. It wasn’t a man merely running across a junction, it was a man who was jogging. Not only that, he was fully dressed. In Rebecca’s experience, men out at 2.30 a.m. did many things, but jogging was definitely not one of them. Rebecca was a Mossad agent and one thing that Mossad had instilled from day one, there was no such thing as a coincidence. If it looked out of place then, it was more than likely that, it was.

  Rebecca waited a few seconds before exiting the car quietly, and walking back towards the Q street and 31st NW crossover. She looked tentatively in the direction of the jogging man. She watched as he entered a house further up the street. She ducked back and, checking her sat nav, she worked out which number the house was. She checked her watch, 2.43 a.m. Cell phone companies worked twenty-four hours in the US, but legal firms did not. However, it was already 8.43 a.m. in Tel Aviv. She dialed Mossad’s headquarters and was quickly connected to one of the many hackers who ensured almost instant access to records from across the world. Ten minutes later, she had the details of the person who had purchased the house some three years earlier, but that led nowhere. However, the coincidences were mounting. Not many homes hid their ownership. What were the chances that the house she was researching would be purchased by an anonymous entity? Like many other coincidences that night, the chances were remote. Rebecca considered calling Ben. She was 90% certain she had the Senator in her sights, but wanted to be certain. She extracted another federal badge from her bag. This time, it was a Secret Service identity in the name of Rebecca Mills. She walked along 31st NW and soon turned onto Avon Lane NW. A right turn at the end, took her down to Cambridge Place NW. She hopped over the fence and dropped noiselessly into the garden of the house four along from her target. It was a three-story white house facing the Senator’s hideout. Rebecca worked her way silently through the gardens before reaching the back door of her target property. Her next problem was gaining access without alerting the house opposite. Another call to Mossad secured an unlisted number and after a quick and alarming call to the owners, the back door opened, as instructed, in darkness. Rebecca smiled at what a woman could achieve that few men could, even with years of practice - instant trust. She displayed her badge to the property owner and continued to explain her requirement to remain out of sight, and in surveillance of their neighbors. Being Secret Service, she could of course, divulge little, other than to emphasize that it was a matter of national security and that the property owners should remain quiet about the situation.