Unbeknown to Bogdan Zhirkov was that both O’Neill and Gil were hunkered down behind one of the grassy mounds on the periphery of the expansive front lawn. Gil motioned to O’Neill not to fire. This was going to be her shot. Sniper training involves a whole lot of information, practice and resultant skill. Black Nana was a mere finger twitch away from being headless, dead as a dodo, permanently out for the count. Gil knew this. There was one target, one place in the human body that would generate an instant kill. Professionals called it ‘the apricot’. Its technical term was the medulla oblongata, located inside the brain, at the base of the skull. A direct hit there and not even a finger twitch would result. Obligingly, the Russian holding Frances Darke was exiting the front door backwards. In a few seconds he would call for his remaining men to join him.
Bogdan did not have a few seconds. Gil had lined up the goon’s apricot using her mil dot reticle. He was close, not even twenty yards away, so there would be no need to compensate for bullet drop. Gil dialled in a small adjustment for windage. They were at the edge of the Clyde and while it was not blowing a hoolly, it was breezy enough to make the trees’ leaves audibly rustle. She was satisfied. The target was still. Zip! Bull’s eye. The goon and his gun dropped instantly. No shots were fired from his machine gun. Frances Darke was unharmed. Babikov’s top man was toast.
O’Neill nodded to Gil and she acknowledged it. All the angst that she had given herself over the non-shot of the druggy dude in Boston had now been lifted. As the family and friends at the front of the house were regrouping, the rat-a-tat of machine gun fire could be heard. It was coming from the outbuildings at the back of the house.
“McCoy,” groaned O’Neill realising that his SEAL mate was on his own.
Frances Darke and Cyrus returned to the house to help tend to her husband and his granddad. JJ, Gil, Carolyn and O’Neill headed for the back of the house. Rapid gunfire was coming from one of the outbuildings used mainly for the storage of logs for the house’s fires and equipment for gardening. David McCoy was the subject of the gunfire. He was pinned down behind a sizeable tractor unit used for grass cutting and collection.
“Hey Big D,” yelled O’Neill. “Need a hand?”
“It’s about fuckin’ time,” Big D hollered back sounding none too pleased. “These commie assholes have had me stuck here for ages. You lot been havin’ tea and biscuits or what?”
“Or what,” responded O’Neill. “We’re here now. Keep your crew cut on.”
Mark O’Neill did not know how to address JJ, He wasn’t going to pre-emptively jigger up future events by calling him ‘Dad’ and ‘JJ’ seemed somewhat familiar given they had just met.
“Erm, Mr Darke,” began O’Neill.
“JJ,” interrupted the Scot. “Any friend of Carolyn’s and all that.”
“Fine. JJ is there any way into those outbuildings apart from the obvious entry points we can see?” O’Neill asked.
“Yes, if we go over that low level wall,” replied JJ pointing to the hundred or so year old four foot high brickwork to their right. “We could climb onto the roof. There’s a small skylight. It’s a tight squeeze but if one of us dropped on them then the others could crash the rickety door. We’d need to time it just right. The dropper will be the deader if we’re not inside in a flash.”
Size wise it made sense for one of the women to be the dropper. Gil would have volunteered but without saying a word she pointed to her gammy leg. JJ understood. In all likelihood if Gil had crashed down on the floor or even on top of the Russians inside the outbuilding she would be off-balance and more vulnerable than an able-legged human. O’Neill and JJ were too big to guarantee a swift drop from skylight to ground. Carolyn had drawn the short straw.
JJ briefed her quickly about the layout on the inside. McCoy was still under heavy fire. The increased number of small holes in his tractor cover would soon join up to leave a big hole and expose his person directly to the incoming projectiles. JJ had a plan. He gave Carolyn his Glock 19 and she still had her SIG Sauer. Gil was to stay in situ and drop any bad guy motherfucker who came out of the door. O’Neill was to low-crawl underneath one of the outbuildings’ windows and, in precisely four minutes from the synchronised initiation of JJ’s chronograph and O’Neill’s plastic Luminox, chuck a brick through one of the lower windows. There were plenty of loose bricks lying around. JJ was to go with his daughter. On hearing the breaking glass, Carolyn was to drop from the skylight, both handguns blazing as she went. She was bound to hit somebody.
The plan was off to a good start. O’Neill signalled to McCoy to stop firing. The Commander then lobbed a fair sized brick right through the window immediately above his head. On hearing the crash the two Russians started firing at the hole in the window and Carolyn dropped like the proverbial stone, blasting away indiscriminately, unloading her bullets on the blurs that were Babikov’s men. One of them crumpled instantaneously. As the other rounded on Carolyn, JJ had his upper torso dangling through the skylight, he was wedged in. Strangely, this was part of his plan. He was stable in his position and had already loaded and aimed his crossbow. Whoosh! The standing man was no longer. JJ’s arrow hit him in the throat. He was spurting and gurgling blood.
O’Neill leant through the smashed window, grabbed the arrowed Russian by the head and hauled him backwards out of the window space and thumped him hard onto the cobble stoned courtyard. He intended to twist his neck, but no need, the Russian was already dead.
Carolyn was a mess. Not from any gunshots, the Russians had all missed her by a mile. She was sore from landing on the hard surface of the outbuilding and she had straw embedded in her hair from the bales of hay that Babikov’s men had been using as cover. Her clothes and face were black with dust and the general muck that flies about such an unkempt storage facility. David McCoy and Mark O’Neill came through the door. O’Neill caught sight of his love interest.
“Not one word O’Neill,” said Carolyn before her open mouthed Navy SEAL could say anything.
“A little help here,” implored JJ, well and truly wedged in the skylight’s opening.
There were no more gunshots to be heard. All was quiet and the group of five finally leaving the outbuilding were walking back to check on the four still in the main house. As they approached the front door, they could hear the engine of a powerful car start up.
“Boris, get us the fuck out of here,” yelped a most unhappy Babikov. The driver reversed his Merc 4x4, turned it left onto a small footpath in the grounds and then drove out of the front gates at pace. He avoided the police Land Rover but not the unfortunate constable who had previously harangued Carolyn. The police officer was sent flying into an offside ditch and eventually rolled onto the rocky beach. He was not dead but had two broken legs and quite a few facial lacerations. Boris was lamenting his lack of boy action. Vladimir Babikov was lamenting the loss of his entire bodyguard squad, his money and the damned day that he had ever come across that reprobate Neil Robson. If it wasn’t for that scumbag debtor he would never have come to Scotland, never known of the existence of JJ or Cyrus Darke and never left the warm home comforts of Mayfair for this cold, desolate island. Babikov’s lamenting was not over. He was about to lament that the Rothesay to Wemyss Bay ferry ran only every hour at this time of day. He was about to lament that the armed police response unit from Glasgow was ready to disembark from the ferry that he was hoping to board. Finally, he was about to lament that four heavily armed Americans were only minutes behind his getaway car. It was a day of laments for the criminal, murderous Russian. Fitting then that a lone piper on the pier was droning out ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ on his beloved bagpipes.
* * *
There are more than five hundred armed police officers in Scotland, under the command of Police Scotland. Their capability was beefed up in response to three events; the massacre of schoolchildren in Dunblane in 1996, the terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport in 2007 and the Whitehaven killing spree in 2010.
Angus Me
tcalfe was a young, rookie copper when he joined the first wave of police to attend the Glasgow Airport incident. As a terrorist attack it was plain rubbish. Two deranged towelhead loonies drove a green propane canister armed Cherokee jeep into the bollards at the main entrance. They broke some glass, damaged the jeep and then fell out of it, one of them ablaze. There was no explosion. Several members of the Scottish public appeared to go to help the injured Cherokee occupants. Appearances can be deceptive. Two of the public were actually giving the burning terrorist a good kicking. The Scots got burned for their efforts and needed to go to hospital for minor injuries. The ablaze terrorist eventually died from his burns and the other idiot got a minimum of thirty-two years inside. Angus Metcalfe learned a few things from that incident. One of them was that terrorists come in all shapes, sizes and disguises.
Before departing Glasgow with his six man unit in a new ARV, Metcalfe had been briefed by the local Rothesay police. They did not know the extent of damage or carnage inside the Darkes’ property but they did know that the perpetrators were travelling in Mercedes cars, one of them a black M-class AMG 4x4. Metcalfe and his team were first off the ferry and onto Rothesay Pier. As they drove up to the only set of traffic lights on the island they had to pass the three lane vehicle queue waiting to board. Sergeant Metcalfe was in the front passenger seat with Constable Duncan Robertson driving.
“Hey Dunky, pull over and do a Uee, as if we’re going back on.” Without questioning the order Dunky swung round.
“What’s up, Sarge?” asked the police driver as he joined the nearside embarking queue.
“I think that’s one of the Mercs that’s led to us being here, Dunky. Tell the lads. Get tooled up and let’s go see,” said Metcalfe pointing to Babikov’s 4x4.
Two of Metcalfe’s team stayed in the ARV. The Sergeant, Dunky and two other officers, quickly got out. They crouched down and weaved their way towards the rear end of Babikov’s Merc. A startled ticket collector almost gave the game away but didn’t. Two kids in the back of a camper van spotted the armed officers and got very excited. Their parents, however, could not see the police so told them to ‘wheesht’ and wheesht they did for fear of a slap round their lugs. All four Scottish policemen had Glock 17 pistols and HK MP5 machine guns, weapons that Ethel Rogers would be well familiar with. They also had tasers and batons but, from the report of the action already occurred, a wee tap on the heid may not be what was called for.
Babikov and Boris should have been paying more attention to their six. However, Boris had noticed that the first line of the three to board the ferry had gone. The Russians were in line three, Boris started up the car, ready to go, both Russians’ gaze firmly on the boat that would take them off this god-forsaken island. The armed police were now in situ, one at the rear end of the Merc, one at the front, with Metcalfe and Robertson crouched down under the driver’s and passenger’s side windows respectively. On Metcalfe’s signal, they rose in sync.
“Hands on your heads and don’t move a fuckin’ muscle!” yelled Metcalfe pointing his machine gun at Boris’s head. Robertson had his aimed straight at Babikov’s bonce and the officer at the front of the vehicle was alternating his sight line between the heads of the two Russians.
Boris, for an instant, was tempted to run over the officer in front of his car. He thought better of it as he gauged that he would surely perish in a hail of deadly bullets. If he could have seen his future then he may well have opted for suicide by cop. As Babikov and Boris exited the Merc, hands up and offering no resistance, the four Americans pulled into the ferry queue in their VW Touran. They quickly assessed what was going on. Babikov and Boris were in speedcuffs and being led to the rear door of the ARV. Metcalfe and Robertson would commandeer the Merc and head out to the scene of the crime. They had already been informed that the shooting had stopped. Local police were on the premises and an air ambulance was setting down on the front lawn of the Darkes’ house. It was easily spacious enough to land a helicopter.
“You guys stash your weapons. I’ll get out and talk to the polis,” said Carolyn trying her best to sound Scottish. Carolyn walked up to Metcalfe. The police officer saw the somewhat dishevelled but intrinsically pretty woman headed his way. He was taking no chances. He turned to face her and pointed his MP5 straight at Carolyn.
“State yer business and don’t come any closer,” he barked. Carolyn stopped, raised her hands above her head and spoke.
“My name is Carolyn Reynolds, I am a US Intelligence Officer. My credentials are in my jacket’s inside pocket if you care to verify. The two men you have in your custody are part of a Russian Mafia gang who have shot my grandfather and wrecked his house on this island. The trio in the VW are two US Navy SEALs and well, er, I guess my wee brother’s nanny. Don’t ask about the last bit.”
Metcalfe looked directly into Carolyn’s eyes, gun still pointing. She didn’t appear to be lying but it was one wild tale. On the other hand in 2007 when he had first heard about two terrorists driving their jeep into Glasgow Airport he was a bit dubious about the veracity of that one.
“Dunky!” hollered Metcalfe. “Check the young wummin’s inside jacket pocket.”
“Sure Sarge. It says she’s an NGA Officer from America, Sarge,” noted Dunky scanning Carolyn’s wallet. Angus Metcalfe had never heard of the NGA. He’d heard of the CIA and the FBI but not the NGA.
“What’s the NGA?” he enquired of Carolyn.
“The National Geo-Spatial Agency,” she replied. “We’re like spies of the skies, we look at satellite images, photographs, schematics, anything to do with dubious activities of America’s enemies that we can get a picture of.”
“And do you find many of them, here in Rothesay, on a remote Scottish island?” he interrupted, as yet not convinced by Officer Reynolds’ story.
Carolyn was getting bored with this line of questioning. She wanted to lower her hands, get back to see her dad and grandparents. She’d had enough chitty-chat with the Scottish police.
“Look, PC fuckin’ plod. Do you think you could get a move on? You’ve got two dodgy Russians in custody. How often does that happen on a remote Scottish island? Anyway, there’s about ten dead dodgy Russians littering my grandparents’ premises. Maybe you and your plod mates could come along and inspect. What’d ya think?”
Jings, thought Metcalfe, this wee wummin has fair got a gob on her. Still, there did seem to be some Russian connection going on.
“Awright, wind yer neck in, we’ll all go to your grandparents’ hoose. Ma team will take those two tae Glesga for processing. Me and Dunky here will drive the Merc. You can come with us. OK?”
“Yes,” replied Carolyn.
“Are yer friends in the van armed Ms Reynolds?” asked Metcalfe, somewhat belatedly.
“Yes, to the teeth. Would you like me to ask them to hand over their weapons to you, Sergeant?” replied Carolyn with a look of bare-faced cheek.
“Aye, that would be nice,” retorted Metcalfe, keen to calm everything down.
Carolyn returned to the VW and explained the situation to the trio. They were reluctant to hand over all their gear so they gave the Scottish police the hardware that they could not hide about their person. Maybe Sergeant Metcalfe should have had them frisked, but he didn’t.
On returning to the house, the two Scottish police officers and the four Americans saw an air ambulance take off and a local ambulance drive past them in the opposite direction. The air ambulance was headed for The Royal Alexandra hospital near Paisley. It would be only a fifteen minute flight. Both Frances and Robert Darke were on board. Granddad Darke was in a bad way and needed an emergency operation. Despite Becky’s excellent first aid efforts it was touch and go whether he would make it. Frances Darke was in a bad way too, but emotionally, not physically. The local road ambulance was headed for Rothesay hospital, where the broken-legged constable would get basic emergency treatment. He would recover fully and live long to tell his mates and family about the infamous shootout in Asco
g.
“Holy Jeezus,” exclaimed Angus Metcalfe on entering the Darkes’ grounds. “Ah’ve no seen this much damage since Celtic beat Rangers on penalties in the Scottish Cup final a while back.”
JJ came out of the house to greet the returning group. He introduced himself to the police, informing Metcalfe that he was a former MI5 Intelligence Officer. On discovering that Babikov and his thug were in police custody, JJ encouraged Sergeant Metcalfe to get in touch immediately with the top dog in Police Scotland. From there they should contact Sandra Hillington, Director General of MI5. The security forces would definitely want a chat with the chief dodgy Russian.
A few days later chat they did. Boris Akulov was quickly identified as a hapless soldier in Vladimir Babikov’s employ with nothing much to tell. He was also an illegal immigrant and was swiftly shipped back to Mother Russia once he had spilled the little he knew about Babikov and his operations, both legal and illegal.
The Russian authorities did not really want Boris back. He was ex-FSB but he was an unstable deviant and brought only disrepute to Russia. He was sentenced, by a judge in a closed courtroom, to life imprisonment in Russia’s notorious Black Dolphin prison camp. Penal Colony No. 6, to give the correctional facility its official name, was one of Russia’s oldest prisons and close to the Kazakhstan border. It housed the worst of Russia and Boris was deemed to be in that category. Black Dolphin has seven hundred inmates all serving life, and nine hundred prison officers. The inmates were allowed to exercise for ninety minutes per day and fed chicken four times a day. It seemed impossible to escape and equally impossible for inmates to harm one another or themselves, the checks were so regular and so thorough. Still, where there’s a will there’s a way. Aided by one of the Federal Penitentiary Service guards, who had often been rejected by the FSB, a Chechnyan terrorist lifer did for Boris one day, stabbing him thirty-five times with a prison made chiv. The rejected guard spotted Boris on the floor of his cell, bleeding out and dying. He was not going to get help or raise the alarm. Too much paperwork, too many investigations, simply too much hassle.
Darke Mission Page 53