Slingshot: A Spycatcher Novel

by Matthew Dunn

  “Impossible in this light. Plus, we’ve always kept behind other vehicles, so their line of sight has been blocked.”

  “Okay. Roger, Mark: follow them in. We’ll stop on the hard shoulder.”

  Three minutes later, Mark said, “They’ve fueled their vehicles, have moved them to parking bays, and are drinking coffee and eating. Hold.” The line went quiet. “One man gets out of his vehicle; second gets out of the other. They move to the back of their cars. Withdraw large bags. Return to the passenger doors. Enter with the bags.”

  Roger spoke. “All are focused on what’s in the bags.”

  Will asked, “What’s happening?”

  The CIA officer answered, “My guess is they’re tooling up for direct action.”

  Twenty-Three

  Mikhail Salkov drove his SUV across Lower Saxony’s Lüneburg Heath. It was nearly 3:00 A.M., pitch dark, but he’d taken this route enough times to do it without the aid of maps or daylight. As ever, since being in Germany, he was dressed in jeans, boots, and a Windbreaker, clothes that would enable him to fight if need be. Tonight there would be a fight. He’d given instructions that at 5:00 A.M. the fifteen men on the perimeter of Kurt Schreiber’s farmstead would be reinforced with the fifteen men on rest, and the combined force would assault Kurt’s property. It was his last resort: he knew the farmstead was heavily defended, but time was now his enemy, as Kurt wouldn’t tolerate being trapped in the complex for much longer.

  He’d felt uneasy giving the task to the men who were watching the place. Most of them were eastern European assets, excellent at surveillance and other tradecraft drills, but less than half of them had any prior military training. Only Mikhail was ex–Special Forces, having spent five grueling years in Spetsnaz Vympel before transferring to the SVR, and he’d used his expertise to devise an assault plan to ensure that each man knew exactly what to do. Nevertheless, his men were amateurs. Last night he’d told his assets that there would be no shame if any one of them decided not to take part in the offensive. None of them had stepped down.

  Over the last twenty-four hours, he’d considered many times whether he should move his four men to the farmstead perimeter. They were professionals, all Special Forces, and their presence here would easily be worth that of another thirty untrained but brave assets. But if anything went wrong tonight and Kurt escaped, he needed them to be ahead of Kurt, ready to block off his route to the Black Forest. For that reason, four hours ago he’d ordered them to leave their Berlin hotel, travel west, and wait on the outskirts of Hanover.

  His thoughts turned to his family. His wife, Diana, had called him a day ago and told him that she’d been threatened by men representing the person he was seeking, that he was to send a messenger into the property he was watching with a note to say he was completely withdrawing from the place. His stomach had wrenched as he heard her speak, and when the call had ended he’d spent hours trying to decide what to do. Finally, he’d called her back and said that he was sending three trusted former police officers to their Moscow home. They would take her and their two daughters—Tatyana and Yana—somewhere safe. What he didn’t tell her was that he’d arranged for a further four ex-FSB men to watch the safe place. He knew Kurt’s men would follow his family and no doubt try to kill them when he realized Mikhail wasn’t going to back down. If they did that, they’d be confronted by an unexpected force.

  But the threat to his family had significantly enhanced Mikhail’s desire to get his hands on Kurt Schreiber’s throat. He wanted that just as much as he wanted to retrieve the paper. In just over two hours, he hoped to be holding a gun to Kurt’s temple and a cell phone to his mouth, telling him to order his men to back away from his family. If the former Stasi officer didn’t, Mikhail would have no hesitation in pulling the trigger.

  He slowed the vehicle and turned off its headlights as he drew nearer to the place he always stopped to examine the perimeter and the farmstead before proceeding onward on foot. Driving the SUV off the road, he brought it to a halt and exited the car. During daylight, visible over the two thousand yards between this position and the farmstead would be undulated land containing heather, blueberry heath, streams, isolated trees, and the occasional herd of moorland sheep. Three hundred yards around the farmstead, the land was flatter and featureless. The perimeter where the SVR assets were stationed was close to the outskirts of that flatland.

  Turning on his ISS T-iV HD Thermal Imaging Binoculars, he waited three seconds for the military-grade equipment to power up, then held it to his eyes. Though he was nearly one mile away, he could see the white images of four men, all positioned exactly where they should be. Moving the binoculars a few millimeters, he spotted three more of his men, all stationary and spread apart. The rest of his men were out of range and sight, beyond the farmstead’s buildings. Checking that his powerful MK23 .45-caliber SOCOM handgun was secure under his jacket, he jogged forward.

  Then he sprinted, leapt over a brook, and made for higher ground as he heard distant gunfire. Breathing fast, he placed his binoculars against his eyes and said, “Oh, no!”

  One mile away, men were running out of the farmstead. From beyond the SVR perimeter, more men were moving toward the farmstead. His assets were stuck in between both forces. He stood still, knowing he couldn’t get there in time, watching one of his men fall down, others emerging from behind the farmstead, three of them collapsing and staying still, flashes of light as some of them opened fire, more flashes of light from the hostiles as they returned fire. One by one, he saw his men being killed, standing no chance of escape, trapped in a pincer movement that had the sole purpose of massacring his men. He saw the last of them fall.

  More light, but this was brighter. Vehicles emerged from outhouses in the farmstead. The men in the complex ran to them and entered. Those who had attacked the perimeter from outside the farmstead retreated; within seconds they were heading toward more vehicles that had been hidden out in the heath. Mikhail ignored them, focused on the multiple vehicles leaving the farmstead, and muttered, “Bastard!”

  His reinforcements weren’t due here for another two hours. If he called them now, it would take them at least twenty minutes to get here, probably longer. He watched the convoy. It was heading away from the farmstead on the road he’d driven in on. In approximately five minutes, it would be driving within one hundred yards of his hidden vehicle.

  Mikhail decided the only thing he could do was wait for them to pass, get in his SUV, pursue the convoy, order his remaining assets to search the farmstead and dispose of their colleagues’ bodies, and tell his four-man team of shooters that they needed to be ready to intercept the convoy. He reached for his cell phone and ran to his vehicle.

  Twenty-Four

  One of them is on the phone. Engines are running. Vehicles are rolling.”

  Adam turned on the ignition. “We’ll take point.” He kept his headlights off, watched the two Russian SUVs emerge back onto the highway, drove off the hard shoulder, moved behind a civilian vehicle, then turned his lights on. “Shit! They’re driving at pace.”

  “Stay on them. I don’t care if they see us.” Will gripped his handgun, glanced over his shoulder, and saw Roger and Mark’s vehicle race out of the gas station. “Something’s wrong,” he said into the phone.

  “Yeah, I’m getting that feeling.” Mark accelerated. “Don’t think it was us that spooked them. There were nineteen other cars in the gas station.”

  Roger added, “It was the cell phone call that did it.”

  Will looked around. “Do you think they’ve got a countersurveillance team out? Maybe they spotted us; the call came from them.”

  “Nah. I’ve been looking since Berlin. There’s no team.”

  “Then most likely the call came from Mikhail,” Will said. Adam was now driving at nearly one hundred miles per hour. “But this isn’t premeditated. There’s been a change of plan.”

 
Mark’s SUV moved in behind Adam’s. “They must know we’re pursuing them. Let’s just hope they think we’re kids, looking for a race.”

  Will placed his pistol into his jacket and held his assault rifle with both hands. “Nice thought, but I doubt they’re thinking that right now.”

  The Russians’ vehicles were forty yards ahead of them, increasing speed, moving in between other cars.

  “Exit’s coming up. One hundred yards. They ain’t slowing. Fuck!” Adam yanked the steering wheel down as the Russian team took the exit at speed. Taking the corner, he shouted, “They’re trying to lose us.”

  Roger’s vehicle was only feet behind, its tires screeching as it entered the bend. “They’d have been better off going into Hanover to do that.”

  “Exactly.” Will wrapped the assault rifle’s strap around his forearm. “They’re heading to an assault. Standby. Most likely they think we’re cops. They’ll try to kill us if they think we’re going to get in their way.”

  They were now on a minor road, straddled by countryside.

  “Multiple oncoming headlights.” Adam downshifted and braked hard as the Russian vehicles did the same. “Eight vehicles, all together. All look like SUVs.”

  Will stared at the approaching convoy, his mind racing. “That’s their target, and that’s our target!”

  The convoy was now ninety yards away. One of the Russian vehicles sped alongside it, reached the end, turned and stopped so that it was blocking the road. The other did the same at the head of the convoy, which was now trapped between the two vehicles.

  As Adam brought the car to a halt twenty yards away from the nearest Russian vehicle, the Russians leapt out of their cars and began opening fire with machine guns at the convoy. Immediately, men inside the vehicles returned fire.

  Will jumped out of the car, took aim, and fired a grenade. One of the convoy vehicles exploded. As he reloaded the grenade launcher, he shouted in Russian, “Here to help! Here to help!”

  The two Russians nearest to him were using their SUV as a shield, taking turns to break cover and fire rounds toward the convoy’s fuel tanks. Those at the other end of the convoy were doing the same. Hundreds of rounds were striking their cars; the men in the convoy were firing through windows.

  Will fired again, and a second vehicle exploded. Roger ran past him, his body low, heading straight toward the nearest Russians while shouting, “Friend. Friend.” Adam, Mark, and Laith were either side of the road, firing controlled bursts into windshields.

  Will saw movement. “Roger! Down! Grenade!”

  As the CIA officer threw himself to the ground, the Russians’ car lifted off the ground before crashing back down. Shards of metal tore through the two Russians, killing them instantly.

  Roger crawled toward the Russians’ destroyed vehicle and dived for cover as more rounds struck it. He shouted in English, “Hit them from their flanks,” and repeated the instruction in Russian. He stood, exposing his upper body to the hostiles, and fired a sustained burst of rounds into the vehicles.

  One of the Russian men at the end of the convoy broke cover and was shot in the head and chest.

  Laith and Adam sprinted down one side of the convoy, Mark down the other. The last remaining member of the Russian team ran out from behind the car while firing his submachine gun. Bullets from the convoy smashed a large hole into his chest.

  Will sprinted, jumped onto the hood of the first ruined vehicle, then leapt onto the roof of the second vehicle and began firing through the roofs, while the rest of Will’s team attacked the line of cars from the sides. Will leapt to the next SUV, continued firing down into the vehicles’ roofs, and moved onward, repeating the drill until he was standing on the last car in the convoy. After firing controlled bursts into the driver and passenger areas and the trunk, Will shouted, “Cease firing.”

  He jumped down and began searching each SUV with his colleagues.

  Everyone in the convoy was dead.

  Police sirens.

  Will felt sick with frustration and failure as he called out, “We need to leave right now!”

  Mikhail used his binoculars to watch Will and his team run to their vehicles and leave the scene. He waited a few seconds, then gunned his car and drove fast to the destroyed convoy. Exiting the vehicle, he ran along the convoy, glancing inside each SUV, ignoring the distant sound of police sirens. After he checked the last vehicle, he kicked it hard and shouted, “Bastard!”

  Schreiber was not in any of the vehicles.

  He’d tricked Mikhail by sending out a dummy convoy.

  And that could only mean he was now loose, traveling toward the Black Forest. But Mikhail had no idea where in the vast region Schreiber was headed.

  He ran back to his car, pressed hard on the accelerator, and chased after Will’s team. Following the big MI6 officer was his last remaining hope. But he’d have no hesitation in killing the operative if he got in his way.

  Twenty-Five

  An icy early-morning wind buffeted Simon Rübner as he knelt down and used a trowel to dig through the Black Forest mountaintop’s soil. Momentarily, he wondered if he was in the right place, whether the code’s numbers had been altered when in the SVR or CIA vaults. His tool struck metal, he wiped away soil, and he sighed with relief.

  The metal box was in the hole.

  He stared at it.

  Many people had gone to enormous lengths to get him to this place, but none of them had sacrificed as much and worked as hard as he had to ascertain the location of the DLB. It had started six months before. He’d been toying with leaving Mossad to earn a more lucrative salary in the private sector and had made some discreet enquiries with prospective employers. He later learned that one of them was a cover company owned by Mr. Schreiber. Over the course of three weeks, he was interviewed by twelve men and women. They’d told him nothing about their backgrounds, but he could tell they were all former intelligence officers because they asked him precisely worded questions that were designed to not only define whether his responses were consistent but also to subtly elicit a portrait of his character. He could see what they were doing and they knew it. So he’d played it straight and told them that money was his prime motivator and that legalities had never been particularly interesting to him in his line of work. At the end of his twelfth interview, the female interviewer told him that she was recommending that he be advanced to the final interview and that if he was successful he would be hired. Two days later, on a Sunday morning, an elderly, diminutive gentleman knocked on the door to his home in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. He introduced himself as Colonel Kurt Schreiber and said that he was there to conduct the final interview.

  Simon was totally unprepared for the interview and had to ask his wife and teenage daughter to go out for a few hours to give them privacy. He sat with Mr. Schreiber in the living room until midafternoon. At the end of the session, he was mentally exhausted. The German had barely spoken, instead had sat motionless, his eyes flickering behind his rimless glasses, with a slight smile on his face and an expression and demeanor that suggested immense intellect, focus, perception, and cruelty.

  Simon had guided him to the front door, at which point Mr. Schreiber turned to him and said that he would pay him one million dollars per year with performance bonus on top and that he was to resign the next day. Simon had instantly accepted. The other jobs he was considering had salaries less than a fifth of what the German was offering.

  After he’d given his notice with Mossad, he’d taken his wife and daughter to New York. Upon landing at JFK, he’d told the immigration officer that he was a private investor looking to set up a business in the States. The officer grilled him for fifteen minutes before telling him that he and his family needed to wait in a room until a decision had been made as to whether he could enter the country. Two hours later, another man entered the room and asked more questions before obtaining all of Simo
n’s contact details and letting him go.

  Of course, the delay of entry had allowed Immigration to contact other U.S. agencies and ultimately the CIA, who would have given U.S. Immigration assurances that they and the FBI would keep their eyes on the known Mossad officer and would use him for their own benefit.

  He put his family in a Manhattan apartment and took possession of one of Mr. Schreiber’s dormant but legal companies.

  Four men from the CIA approached him ten days later, saying they were from a Belgium consultancy called Gerlache and were seeking to establish a partnership with a company that could provide information to U.S. companies seeking to set up operations in the Middle East. He’d accepted, and at first their requirements from him were unremarkable. He took their money, telling them that he needed the cash to support a wife and daughter who drove him crazy with their shopping sprees and that the daughter wanted them to stay in the States so that she could attend one of the fancy and expensive East Coast universities.

  It was exactly what they wanted to hear.

  And accelerated their decision to tell him that they had affiliations to U.S. political entities, knew that he was an Israeli intelligence officer, and wanted him to pass them Israeli secrets.

  He’d pretended to be shocked and confused. He told them that what they were asking of him would make him a traitor, but that he’d become reliant on their money. They gave him assurances that no one would ever know about his secret work for them and that they would pay him double. He agreed. They had him hook, line, and sinker.

  Or rather, he had them hook, line, and sinker.

  They could barely contain their excitement when he started feeding them the names of Israeli agents operating in the West. But he did it slowly on the pretext that he had to discreetly get the information from Mossad files, whereas the truth was that Mr. Schreiber had told him to get all the information before he resigned.