by Alex Shaw
The dog came to a sudden halt, cocked its head to one side and let out a quizzical bark. Akulov smiled, a gesture unseen under his balaclava. He dared not make a sound and he couldn’t move his hands without moving the rifle. He willed the dog to get bored and retreat. It didn’t. The dog edged forward, sniffing, and now its tail started to wag. Its nose nudged the webbing of his suit as it inspected the foliage attached to it and then it pushed its head down between Akulov’s feet, opened its mouth and grabbed the ball with its teeth before it bounded away.
Akulov let out his breath slowly. He had three options: go back, stay where he was or move forward. He decided to stay put, for now. Noise attracted attention but more often than not it was movement that gave away position. Minutes passed and he heard the dog jumping around on the grass on the other side of the shrubs and the voices of a young boy and an older man calling the dog, and then a car door slammed and the noises stopped.
Akulov waited until he was sure that the garden was deserted before he moved once more. He exited the trees and squeezed along the three-foot-wide gap between the garage and the wall and then paused a beat, listened again before he made for the fence, removed yet more loose boards and escaped into the woods beyond. He checked his watch as he reached the far side of the woods. It was eight forty-five and the fading light filtering through the trees now made it difficult for him to see, but also harder for him to be seen. Pulling back the chain-link fence he had strategically cut to make entry, Akulov appeared in the garden of the empty property. But this time it wasn’t empty. Akulov went prone in the grass.
Down the incline of the driveway and hidden from its entrance were two vehicles. One was his black Tahoe, and the other was a larger, dull red Ford pick-up truck. He didn’t want to kill the occupants of the truck unless he had to. The truck had reversed in. It was facing him. Its lights were off. He could see that the back door of the house was open. A dim light at a first-floor window caught his attention. It was bouncing erratically, a torch. An empty house, visited at night by someone entering via the back and using a torch? Akulov sighed. He had planned his mission down to the minutest detail but what he had not, could not have imagined was that the very same empty property that had appealed to him had also attracted intruders, thieves. And thieves were untrained and unpredictable.
The sight on the Blaser was stock. It was permanently affixed to the barrel so that when broken down and reassembled the rifle remained aligned, highly accurate, and that was the reason he had chosen that very model. But the scope was not set up for extreme low light levels. He had a dedicated NVG scope and barrel combination for that, but that was in a case, and the case was in the Tahoe and the vehicle was sixty feet in front of him.
Lights flared in a second room. Two distinct lights now were moving at the same time, a team of two? Unless he was running a solo operation, Akulov would have put at least one man as a sentry. He trained his scope on the Ford. It was the double-cab version with seating for five. The driver’s window was open to the evening air and the seat was empty, but the passenger seat was not. Camouflaged almost as well as himself, a figure sat stock-still. His clothes were dark and blended into the interior gloom of the cab. So was this a three-man team? A useful number, perhaps harder to detect, but surely a four-man team could lift more from the house.
And then the fourth man appeared from behind the Tahoe. He walked around the whole length of the vehicle and then passed in front of the pick-up before he opened the driver’s door. Akulov noted that they had disabled the interior light, which was a precaution he too would have taken; perhaps they had some training or, failing that, innate awareness.
Two men appeared from the back door of the house. They both carried a large sports bag in each hand and from the way they were walking, the bags looked to be heavy. The bagmen placed the haul on the truck bed before going back inside. Akulov cast his mind back to when he’d searched the house. He had a mental inventory of its contents. The house was sparsely furnished. It was decorated to sell, the old and expensive pieces of furniture – he imagined – having been taken by the current owners. As such it felt like a show home, a stage set. So what were the men removing from the house in bags? He’d wait for them to leave. He didn’t care … but then he did.
The two bagmen reappeared with two more bags each, heaved them onto the truck bed, and paused for a moment before pulling a cover tight across the space. The truck started up, a rumble of throaty thunder in the quiet night air. Not a vehicle he would have chosen for its stealth capabilities but perhaps it was the load-carrying capacity it had been selected for? The two bagmen got in the back of the cab. The Ford pulled forward. Its lights were off and then it stopped. The driver clambered down. He took a step away from the truck. The passenger got out too and joined him. As did the bagmen. There was a conversation. It was quiet but appeared heated as the driver was gesticulating towards the Tahoe.
Eventually one of the bagmen shrugged, put his hand in his pocket, brandished something too small for Akulov to identify and approached the driver’s door of the Tahoe. He inserted it into the lock. Anger and regret surged through Akulov. They could not take his ride, and they must not gain access to what was inside. He had made a mistake leaving his kit there. His anger increased, but now with himself. They had become a threat he had to liquidate.
The bagman made short work of the Tahoe’s lock. The door swung open and the interior light came on. All four men were either looking at or moving to the large, black SUV. Akulov had no choice. The Blaser’s clip held five rounds. He had four left, and four targets, but the rifle was a straight-pull bolt action, which was faster to reload than a standard bolt action rifle but agonisingly slow compared to even a semiautomatic. The question was, how many could he get before they moved? He had more rounds in the SUV and a compact Glock 19 on a leg holster, but this was an unsilenced backup weapon. The men were moving; he had no choice. Speed and aggression were needed.
He lined the driver up in his sights, aimed squarely between the man’s shoulder blades and squeezed the trigger. Sounding like a heavy car door slamming, the supressed round took milliseconds to reach its target. The driver was propelled forward and landed face first on the grass. The passenger saw him go down, swung around, puzzled, shocked. Akulov had already ratcheted another round into the chamber and this hit the man in the chest. The passenger was lifted back and off his feet. He landed, sprawled against the Tahoe’s front grille like roadkill.
The second bagman’s right hand started to move towards his pocket, his eyes wide and whiter than his face in the failing light as he searched for the source of the gunfire. Akulov fired again. The man’s head exploded and the round carried on to hit the wooden-clad house behind. Meanwhile, the first bagman had dropped behind the open door of the Tahoe. Akulov fired his last round. It hit the middle of the door … and didn’t go through. He swore in his native Russian. A handgun appeared over the top of the door and two loud, unsuppressed shots were fired blindly in his general direction. The Kevlar panels insisted upon by Akulov’s employer to be fitted to all of the vehicles used to safeguard the operation may now be exactly what compromised his part of it.
Akulov rolled away from the rifle, then crawled to his left and retrieved his Glock from its holster. He had a full fifteen-round clip, which was more than enough to defeat the target but every round fired either by him or the bagman was another scream of help in the night. But then the night became silent. The bagman was behind the car door and Akulov knew he’d be panicking, assessing his options.
The obvious play was to climb in the SUV, shut the door and drive away, but attempting to bypass the electronic ignition would take time. The second option would be to get back inside the house, and then that gave him more options: hide, find a vantage point to attack, find an exit route. The third option was the fastest way to end it all, and the most foolhardy, but would the bagman really charge Akulov’s position? That left the fourth option: surrender. But surrender took more courage tha
n fighting or running as the bagman would be putting his life in his attacker’s hands.
Akulov gave the bagman no choice. He trained his Glock on the space under the open door and fired a volley of four quick shots. He then got to his feet and sprinted to the left again, to flank the target. He dropped to his haunches to minimise his profile and aimed the Glock. There was no movement from the bagman. The air was silent save for the ringing in Akulov’s ears. The firefight had lasted less than two minutes.
He rose to his feet and approached the SUV. He kept his Glock trained on the crumpled body behind the door, but let his eyes dart to the other fallen men. None of them moved; none of them made a sound. He kicked the bagman with his foot. The bagman’s head was resting on the doorjamb and his gun arm was inside. A Glock 17, standard police issue, had fallen into the footwell. He used his boot again and pushed the body out of the cabin. This time the bagman groaned as his head hit the ground and Akulov put a round through his forehead. Akulov went to each body in turn. There was no need for a close inspection; he could tell from the entry wounds and the lack of a head – in the second bagman’s case – that all the men were dead. He didn’t search any of the bodies for ID, or even look at their faces.
Akulov checked his watch and knew that he had only minutes before neighbours and law enforcement arrived on the scene. The unsuppressed gunfire, he imagined, had also brought the general’s wife into the garden to make her own discovery. And that would create one hell of a show. There was no way he wanted to drive back past her place. He retrieved his rifle, didn’t break it down, just stowed it in the trunk. He stepped over to the pick-up, unlatched the cover, pulled the corner back and inspected the truck bed. It revealed one of the bags. He tugged down the zip.
It was packed with bricks of one-hundred-dollar bills. Each brick was held tight by a Federal Reserve $10,000 strap. He felt his pulse rise, higher than it had during the firefight. He carried out a hurried mental calculation. It was a life-changing amount, for most people. American dollars were a global currency, but how much would they be worth after the attack? But the cash was free, the spoils of war.
Akulov quickly grabbed the nearest bag but as he hefted it up from the truck bed he heard a sound, and then voices. He smiled ruefully; he’d run out of time. He slung the single bag into the back of the Tahoe and closed the boot. Quickly and quietly, he clambered into the driver’s seat. The Tahoe rumbled on start-up – nothing he could do about that – and drove slowly up the drive. He rounded the trees just as figures with flashlights appeared on the highway at the entrance to the property. He flicked his lights on to full beam to dazzle them and pushed the gas pedal flat.
The Tahoe’s V8 growled, the tyres bit as they made the transition from gravel to tarmac and then the heavy SUV catapulted itself north, away from the carnage, away from the dead and towards his extraction point.
Chapter 6
Camden, Maine
Tate didn’t know what it was that woke him. He lay still on the bed, eyes wide open, staring at a crack of pale sunlight that had slipped between the curtains of his hotel room. Even before he checked his watch he knew it was early; he was still on Camden time – Camden UK that was. He rolled out of bed and padded naked to the bathroom. He showered and felt more alive. Wrapped in a bath towel, he brushed his teeth and carried out a self-assessment. He looked tired, or perhaps he just looked old. He’d never thought he would reach thirty-five. He was glad he had all his hair. That had been one of his greatest fears as a kid – going bald. He and his brother used to chat about it. He smiled.
A year after officially leaving the SAS his fitness hadn’t diminished; if anything, he had trained harder. He had to because his new, highly specialised role demanded it. But for now he was on holiday and allowed to relax, paid to in fact; however, the problem was that he couldn’t. Something inside would not let go.
Shootings, both professional and amateur, intentional and unintentional happened all the time, true more so in the states than the UK, but even here a chain of professional hits was unusual. Especially in Maine. Especially when he was in Maine. Little wonder the police chief had been sceptical. Tate mentally shrugged. Sometimes coincidences were just that. He dressed and headed for the door. His stomach was rumbling but he knew that save for an all-night diner he was too early for breakfast, and during his walk the night before he’d not seen a single one.
Outside the light was flat, pale, causing shapeless shadows around the vehicles and buildings as though a shimmering sheet had been thrown over the world. Directly in front of his door sat his hire car – the black Chevrolet Tahoe. Next to that sat another, and another. Three black Tahoes, his and the two driven by the Russian guests. A row of three, like a line of tanks waiting to advance on an unsuspecting enemy. His SUV had a small rental sticker in the rear window; the others did not. Tate’s mind drifted back to the words of the police officer who had pulled him over, ‘This is a large vehicle for one person.’ And here were three Tahoes in a row, each being driven by a single person.
Tate cast a glance at the window of the Russians’ room, the curtains closed and the lights out. They had two SUVs but one room. Military men thought nothing of sharing a room, a dormitory with twenty, thirty other soldiers all coughing, farting and flicking their bogies, and they travelled in vehicles packed like sardines in tins to full capacity. And that was the contradiction here. Two men, seemingly working together, seemingly military or ex-military, sharing a room but using two separate large vehicles?
Tate let out a long sigh. Anything could look dodgy, unusual, out of place if you looked too long at it, and two different cars probably just meant they’d come from two different places. But then again …
Tate’s eyes fell on the three SUVs. With the exception of the rental sticker they looked exactly the same, clones even down to the rims. He consigned the plates of the Russian SUVs to memory and then crouched down and surveyed the underside of his rented Tahoe. He then compared it to the underside of the nearest one being used by the Russians. The ride height appeared to be the same but yes, there were differences. He then checked the next. In the gloomy light he could make out that both of the Russian vehicles had uprated suspension made to compensate for a heavier load or perhaps the rigours of “off roading”. The Tahoe could handle bumps, sand and snow but nothing that would warrant upgraded suspension. But then if you’d gone to the trouble of upgrading the suspension, why not raise the ride height and add larger rims and tyres? Why keep the street rims and stock tyres? Unless the idea was for the vehicle to look stock, like a sleeper.
Had the engines been uprated too? Without popping the hood he had no way to check. Tate frowned. The two Russian vehicles were armoured; they had to be. Without checking the shut-lines very carefully or banging his palm against the panels he couldn’t be sure, but he would wager good money on it. This was the only logical explanation. But who rode around in vehicles augmented with ballistic glass and panelling? The rich and famous, VIPs, mafia bosses? If this was Mexico City or Moscow, he wouldn’t have found it odd, but in the car park of a three-star Maine inn?
Tate stood and walked away towards the road. Past the dark windows of the reception and bar. He reached the road and stopped. A little after five on a Sunday morning, Camden was asleep around him. He’d retrace his route from the night before into town and back. Perhaps he’d even head to the harbour to see if any of the fishing boats were coming back and then perhaps walk along the coastal path whilst it was tourist-free. But first he had a call to make and a question to ask. He retrieved his encrypted iPhone from his pocket, brought the screen up but then a shape shimmered in the distance. The ever-increasing morning sun now hit the polished roof like a mirror. A car, a Camden PD patrol car. Its roof lights silently rotated and flashed for a couple of seconds as it came to a halt in front of him.
The window powered down. Chief Donoghue looked up. He appeared tired. ‘Get in.’
It sounded like a command, one soldier to another, not a fr
iendly request. Tate didn’t bother to question it until he’d climbed in, negotiated the extra law enforcement panels jutting out from the dashboard, and shut the door. ‘You arresting me for jaywalking?’
Donoghue checked the rear mirror and the car pulled away. ‘Guilty conscience?’
‘Always.’
Donoghue worked the wheel. The car made a tight turn and headed back in the direction it had come, back to Camden. Tate glanced at the police chief, and tried to read his face. ‘What gives so early on a Sunday?’
‘I’m going to talk to you frankly, Mr Tate. I’d appreciate the courtesy of you helping me. This is a small department in a small town and we just don’t have access to the experts with the right skill sets.’
‘And you think I have those skill sets?’
‘Tate, I know you have them.’
‘OK.’ Tate tried to be noncommittal. ‘So where are you taking me, Chief?’
‘There’s been another shooting, an assassination. Same MO, same weapon we believe – but the ballistics have not come back yet.’
Tate whistled. ‘The third in three days?’
‘The third in two days – this happened last night.’
‘Two hits in the same day? That’s highly—’
‘Unusual?’ Donoghue cut him off.
‘Unheard of.’
‘This one was different, maybe it was poor planning or bad luck but the shooter was interrupted.’ Donoghue explained the crime scene at the two properties at Northport, bordering the Atlantic Highway; that a large black SUV had been seen speeding away from the second crime scene and lastly who the victims had been.
‘A retired general and what, a bunch of crooks?’
‘Crooks certainly but they may well be the same crew who held up an armoured car in Boston a month ago. Too coincidental for any other explanation. Look, even though we may be looking at the same perp as the previous two shootings, these crime scenes come under the jurisdiction of Northport. They’re covered in tape and techs and they’re waiting for the FBI and the whole works. Northport’s given me copies of the crime scene photos. I want you to look at them, and they’re back at my office.’