by J. B. Turner
Stone walked over to the small kitchenette and ran the cold faucet. He splashed water on his face and felt refreshed. Dried himself with a towel, which he dropped on the floor.
He knew he had crossed a line. He knew they were going to kill him whether he liked it or not. He couldn’t hide. It wasn’t his way.
It was time.
He picked up the backpack, with all the guns and night sights, and two knives.
Stone peeked out of the window. No one around. He climbed into the RV driver’s seat, switched on the lights, and started up the engine. Then he pulled away. The headlights picked out the road ahead. He drove until he saw streetlights in the distance. He noticed a sign for the harbor and turned toward it. Through deserted streets, not a soul around. At the harbor, he switched off the lights and the engine of the RV.
He picked up the backpack with all the equipment. But something made him stop.
He checked the phone and saw that the document and message had been uploaded.
Stone was taught that it was better to double up to be safe. A double tap to the head was better than one bullet. Certainty. He pulled up the website of the New York Times.
Mark Mahoney’s name jumped out at him. The journalist had been embedded with the US Marines in Baghdad. He’d won a Pulitzer. And the name flashed through Stone’s head. He’d once had to get him from one building in the Green Zone to another during an attack. They had spoken briefly.
Stone dialed the Times’s main number. “Mark Mahoney,” he said.
A man’s voice said, “Mr. Mahoney is not working out of this building. He works from home.”
“I need to speak to him.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t give out his number.”
“Fair enough. Get him to call me on this cell phone within the next five minutes. I have a document.”
“Sir—”
“Shut the fuck up and do what I said, you understand?”
The line went dead.
Three minutes later the cell phone vibrated.
“Mark Mahoney. I was asked to call this number.”
“Yeah. Gimme your private email address.”
“I don’t usually—”
“Be quiet. I’m genuine. I met you once in Baghdad, in the Green Zone.”
“You gotta name?”
“It’s on the document I want to send you. They think I’m dead.”
Silence.
“Can I have your email, please?”
Mahoney sighed before giving the details, which Stone entered into an email. Then he sent the document and message.
A few moments of silence.
“You got it?”
Mahoney said, “Nathan Stone? What the hell is this?”
Stone said nothing.
“So who are you?”
“I kill people.”
Mahoney said nothing.
“Senator Brad Crichton is dead. I killed him. Did you hear what I said?”
A long silence opened up. “That’s not correct. He died of a heart attack.”
“Negative. Made to look like a heart attack.”
Mahoney began to read the details of the list. “Christ.”
“What?”
“Where did you get this?”
“It was around Crichton’s neck. Someone passed it to him.”
“This doesn’t make sense. I deal with military and intelligence people day in and day out. What the hell is this?”
“Names at the bottom are behind this. Sands is my boss.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Stone sighed. “Do I sound like a guy who kids around?”
“Who else has this?”
“It’s been uploaded to Tor for WikiLeaks.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yup.”
“Where are you?”
“Not far from where Senator Crichton was killed. They’ve already tried to kill me twice.”
“This is bullshit.”
Stone was getting bored with the tone of the conversation. “If you say so.”
“Listen, it appears, with just a cursory glance, to jibe with something I heard a few weeks back. Intelligence chatter from a couple of sources but never firmed up.”
“That would make sense.”
The journalist whistled down the line, as if finally grasping the significance of the document. “This does indeed look like a log of an intercepted message retrieved by the NSA that was stolen by a contractor. It was meant to be deleted, but it wasn’t. That’s what I heard.”
Stone said nothing.
“Nathan . . . I’ve just googled your name. It says you drowned. Nathan Stone.”
“It’s a lie. I was reborn. But I haven’t got long.”
“Give me your date of birth.”
“Listen, do me a favor and do what you have to do with it.”
“I’ve got questions for you.”
“Maybe another time.”
Stone ended the call. Took out the battery and dropped it on the floor. He got the flash drive and prized open the dead German’s right hand. He placed the flash drive in it, closing the fingers and fist tight around it. He knew rigor mortis would set in and keep it closed until he was taken to the mortuary. This would be a third way to get the information out.
He took a few moments to compose himself. He got up, put on the backpack, opened the door, and locked it quietly behind him.
Then he took the short walk to the harbor’s edge. Boats bobbing in an eerie darkness.
Stone spotted a small boat, lobster traps piled high in the stern. He jumped on board and cut the rope. He switched on the engine, and the radar monitor lit up. He maneuvered the boat out of the harbor with the aid of GPS. Then out into dark, choppy waters.
An idea that had been forming in his head for hours was going to play out.
Stone negotiated the tight harbor entrance and steered a path clear of the rocky outcrops several hundred yards out. He was then in open water. No obstacles. He plugged in the coordinates for the island eight miles northwest of his position.
The small boat was moving slowly, but he was happy. While he used one hand to steer, he used the other to pick up the night-vision binoculars. In the far distance, he saw a few lights on the island. Twinkling, innocent, and unassuming in the murky darkness.
The boat sped out into the dark waters. He was at cruising speed, bouncing off the waves, salt water in the air, seagulls swooping low. Thoughts racing with what lay ahead.
Half an hour later, as he approached the island from the northwest, Stone cut the engine. He dropped anchor two miles offshore. The night-vision binoculars picked out tiny figures on the cliff edge. Two men smoking cigarettes, chatting.
Stone wondered if he could land at that location without being observed. He realized that wasn’t the best option. He switched on the engine and sailed around the island, approaching from the southeast this time. When he dropped anchor again, he didn’t see any figures. He didn’t see any lights. Just darkness. And a small sandy cove.
He dropped a small inflatable over the side and climbed down, bringing the backpack.
Stone began to row toward the shore.
Seventy-One
It was the dead of the night in the command room, and Brigadier Jack Sands was stifling a yawn as he leaned back in his seat. He looked across at Drenge. “Look, I don’t hold any ill will toward you. You’re calling the shots. And whatever you want, if I can help you in any way, you just need to ask.”
Drenge said, “Appreciate that. OK, we’ve lost two good operatives, with one still missing. We haven’t got the flash drive. And we have Nathan Stone unaccounted for. It ain’t good.”
Sands nodded.
“Look, you know Nathan Stone better than anyone. We find him, we clear this whole goddamn thing up.”
“What do you want to know?”
“File says he worked for you the best part of a decade. American ghost.”
“Nathan Stone is possibly the m
ost dangerous person I’ve ever worked with. Not so much what he can do but what he won’t. He doesn’t do boundaries. And he follows orders to the letter. Always has. But something has changed.”
“Got to admit, this doesn’t look good.”
Sands felt a cold knot in his stomach.
“We gotta kill him.”
“You gotta find him first.”
Drenge rubbed his face with his hands. “Yeah . . . you know how it works. We train these guys. They can do anything. No compunction about neutralizing anyone. But we also teach these bastards how to disappear, drop off the grid. We haven’t gotten any signals from our original two operatives. The body of one has already been found.”
“Know what I can’t get out of my head? That bizarre death shot of him using one of the other operative’s phones. Got to say he fooled me.”
“Misdirection. Very clever.”
“The question is, where do we go from here?”
Drenge sighed. “We don’t know where he is. We don’t know if he’s alive. He might be dead for all we know.”
“We blew it by trying to get him on the road.”
“The direction he was traveling said one thing.”
Sands nodded. “I know exactly what it means.”
“You think he’s become enraged that two operatives were tasked to take him out?”
“One hundred percent.”
“What the hell does he think he’ll accomplish?”
Sands sighed. “Nathan Stone has a very disturbed background. Which makes him ideal for our purposes. He is cold. Focused. Deadly. But also a brilliant critical thinker. You think you understand him. You think you know him. But no one does.”
“He’s got a sister, right?”
“Been in an institution since she was a young woman. Killed her father with a pair of scissors. Nathan was there. But over the years he’s visited her on numerous occasions. That was the old Nathan. He’d look out for her. I made sure she had what she needed. And I used that as leverage. She’s the thing we can truly say he cares about. He doesn’t give a shit about anything apart from his sister.”
Drenge got quiet before he spoke. “You think he’s coming here to try and kill or be killed in the process?”
“That’s what I’d do.”
Seventy-Two
Nathan Stone landed in the sandy cove, pulled the dinghy high up the beach, and buried it. He was wearing night-vision goggles. Then he began the tough climb up the cliff face as a howling gale barreled in off the sea. It wasn’t long before his fingers were bleeding from the sharp edge of the cliffs. He was panting hard, climbing his way to the top, backpack heavy. Heart pounding. Working at the outer limits of his physical ability. He clawed his way higher and higher, the winds whipping in hard, almost losing his footing.
His stomach churned as he considered the scale of the task ahead.
The more he thought about it, the more he wondered why he was undertaking such a crazy mission. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just take care of the two operatives sent to kill him and then disappear, like any ghost would have?
It would’ve made sense. He could get himself out of Scotland. Out of the UK. Maybe get to France on the Eurostar.
He had his Tom McMasters’s documentation, but he couldn’t use that now. They would find him almost immediately. It would make things tricky. But not insurmountable. It was common knowledge that, since the former Eastern Bloc countries joined the European Union, hundreds of thousands of Poles, Czechs, and Lithuanians had been free to work legally across EU countries, including the UK. And there was a black market in getting forged passports from these countries for people from non-EU neighboring countries.
Stone knew that in Warsaw he could get a Polish passport for 300 euros. He knew the name of the bar where people got them.
So he could disappear back to the US on a fake Polish passport without any trouble.
His mind drifted as he climbed. He thought of his sister, stuck in a psychiatric unit in Florida. He wanted to see her. To talk to her. But he knew they would be waiting for him to do that.
He wanted to hear her voice. That was why he’d called her.
He wanted to be back home. He missed being on the move in the States. The ability to jump on a Greyhound bus or train, or get in a car, and go anywhere at will as and when he was needed.
But he knew those days were over, and he was going to die before her.
Stone felt a sharp pain in his leg as he scraped his shin against the sharp rock face. “Fuck!” he said through gritted teeth.
He scrambled up the final fifty or so feet of near-sheer rock, clinging onto the cliff for dear life. Inching his way to the top. Closer to his fate.
The mission was madness.
What was he trying to prove? What was the point?
Stone edged his way to the top. He pulled himself up to the cliff edge. Then he peeked over some rough grass. Through the green hue of the night-vision goggles he saw harsh light and movement. Maybe five or six hundred yards away, a man driving a golf cart with high-powered lights illuminating everything in its path. But it was being driven away from Stone’s position.
He saw a rabbit bounding into view. It was no more than twenty yards from him, its body highlighted through the goggles. His breathing was more settled after the exertion of the climb. He was getting his bearings.
He scanned the surrounding area. Mile upon mile of bleak fields as far as the eye could see. He had no idea how big, wide, or long the island was. But it was clear the facility was situated at the far end of the island.
Stone checked his watch. It showed 3:32 a.m. He wondered if he had just caught the tail end of a three-thirty inspection. That would make sense. Were they once an hour? Once every four hours? Once a day?
Then again, maybe inspections were ad hoc. Guys patrolling the island night and day.
Suddenly, in the distance the drone of a chopper. Then lights scouring the open fields.
Stone pressed himself close to the cliff face. His breathing was fast. The rotor blades were getting louder. But still he could hear his heartbeat. The roar got louder as the chopper swooped in. Lights searching for any sign of life.
His fingers gripped the cliff edge tight as the downdraft shook the ground. Stone held on for dear life as the chopper banked hard and turned back inland. The seconds seemed like hours as he clung on, fingernails bleeding.
Stone didn’t move for a few moments. He waited until the downdraft had subsided. He pulled himself up a few inches and dared to look over the edge. The only movement through the night-vision goggles was from a few rabbits.
He scrambled to the surface and opened up the backpack. He pulled out the night-vision rifle parts and assembled the weapon in seconds. He took off his goggles, placed them in the backpack, and zipped it up.
Then he lay spread-eagled on the ground, rifle locked and loaded as he used the range finder to get his bearings.
He sensed he didn’t have long. He knew it was just a matter of time before the patrol returned. It could be seconds. Minutes. Maybe an hour if he was lucky. But he knew there were only two options.
The first option was to get up and get on the move. That would be the natural reaction. But it would make him a much easier target.
The second option was to sit and wait. Hunker down. That left him badly exposed.
It did, though, offer one advantage. He wasn’t a moving target.
The night-vision goggles used by helicopter pilots would kick in from a couple hundred yards away. That gave him a slight advantage with his long-range sniper rifle and night sights.
Stone scoped out the green-hued landscape. It had no cover to mention. He ran through in his mind some scenarios that might evolve. Mapped out a series of plans.
He thought of the weeks and months over the last two years when he’d been confined in the facility.
He rationalized that he was lucky to have been saved in the first place. He was glad they had let him live. And he ha
d no compunction about the mission.
What he did have a problem with was being neutralized.
Stone knew the final decision to neutralize him would have been made within the facility. By his handler. He was pulling the strings. At least within the facility.
He could see now that he was being drawn back. It was almost as if events were unraveling and taking on a life of their own. He was no longer in control of his actions.
Stone peered through the crosshairs and saw a spectral figure in the far distance, partially concealed by a small vehicle. The night-vision optics showed the person was slightly more than a thousand yards away. The man’s body heat was revealing his location. Stone stared. It looked like the man was taking a piss. He turned around and climbed into what looked like a golf cart. The lights came on. And the cart began to move in Stone’s direction.
Stone felt time slow down. He felt his finger on the cold steel of the trigger. The man was in the crosshairs. Closer and closer. Eight hundred yards. Seven. Six.
Stone held his breath. His heart beating . . . he could hear it. The man was five hundred yards away. Then four hundred yards. He squeezed the trigger. The silenced rifle went phut. And the man slumped in the cart, which came to a grinding halt, his foot having come off the accelerator.
Stone stayed crouched for a few moments. The wind was buffeting hard up the cliff face behind him. The grass before him was cold and wet.
He got to his feet and ran toward the cart. Panting. Breathing hard. His heart pounding mercilessly. He was aware he was on open ground. He had broken cover.
But it was too late now.
As he approached the cart, his senses were on fire. He stepped forward and touched the man’s neck. Felt for a pulse. Nothing.
The dead man was wearing a uniform. Stone pulled it off until he had stripped the man down to his underwear. He took off his own clothes and pulled on the uniform. Then he pulled back the tarp over the rear of the buggy. He shoved the man’s body in beside flashlights, night-vision goggles, flares, CS gas canisters, and two gas masks. He took three flares, the CS gas, and a gas mask and placed them in the backpack. He put on a pair of the facility’s night goggles. Then he carefully took the lanyard with the ID that was hanging around the man’s neck and placed it around his own.