by A P Bateman
“Received…” Mac paused. “Port authority or acceptable loss?”
“Acceptable for sure.” Rashid replied, consigning the man taking a piss to his fate. They had a job to do and they were doing it. He moved the rifle again and re-sighted on the man. He’d finished what he was doing and was working his way around the warehouse in a clockwise rotation. “God to Penguins, wait one. X-ray is in front of you… now rounding the edge of the building… you’re good to go…”
“Penguins, this is control. Seaward side is clear. Four x-rays on north side, one on each end. The four x-rays are static and pouring something hot from a flask. They’re shooting the shit and chewing the fat. Mobile x-ray is still moving clockwise. Seaward side is all clear.”
Rashid could confirm Flymo’s report, but he kept quiet and watched the three men climb the steps, having tethered the small rubber boat to the bottom of the steps. Now that his team were exposed, he settled in behind the rifle and took plenty of tension up in his shoulder, and a little on the trigger. He tracked the crosshairs along the windows and towards the far eastern corner of the building. When he tracked back, he could see Goldie and Mac ferrying the gallon petrol cans across the open ground from the quayside to the building. One in each hand, both returning for another trip. A gallon of petrol holds the same detonation yield as a pound of plastic explosive, just as long as detonation is achieved, rather than ignition. The secret was in the amount of charge used, and they had constructed charge packs from a potent mix of gently heated petroleum jelly, pre-condensed bleach, chemical fertiliser and sugar, which was then poured into moulds with standard RDX detonators at their core. Each charge was about the size of a jam jar and while Mac and Goldie made another trip, Philosopher attached the charges to the petrol cans using cable ties. When the other two men returned, making twelve cans in all, Mac started attaching the detonation cord to the finished cans, while Philosopher applied the last four explosive charges.
“Control to Penguins. Movement. Coffee break is over. One x-ray heading clockwise on east side, one x-ray heading anti-clockwise on west side. Contact imminent…”
Rashid watched the east side, his finger tightening on the trigger as the guard came into view. He followed the man round, waiting to see what happened next. He would have to assume the men could take care of matters up close, but the warehouse was over two-hundred metres long and a push for the team’s 9mm weapons in the darkness. The guard hesitated near the wheelie bins and Rashid saw the man take the rifle from his shoulder, where it had been hanging lazily on its sling. That was enough, and he zeroed in on the man’s centre mass. Normally he would take a head shot, but he was a kilometre away and had a .50 at his disposal. He was about to leave a hole the size of a large apple. He took up the final resistance of tension on the trigger and the weapon hammered back into his shoulder and sounded like a cannon in his ear. He worked the bolt and the .50 shell case ejected and clattered on the ironwork of the crane and he picked up another bullet, then dropped it into the chamber and worked the bolt forward. When he re-sighted, the target was down and lying still. Rashid tracked to his left and could see Goldie crouched low, putting the final adjustments to the charge. He tracked further along the building and he could see the tall frame of Philosopher dragging the body of a man towards the wheelie bins and Mac sheathing his diving knife. They had managed a silent kill, but he wondered whether the .50 had been audible from their position, given the distance and sounds of the city behind him and the port in front. He tracked back to the east and focused on the port authority guards and Russian soldiers. They were all looking his way and the cigarettes had been dropped on the ground.
“God to Penguins. X-ray down, but I’ve screwed the pooch. The port authority guards and soldiers know what they’ve just heard, so they’ll be getting busy any minute. Out.” He took a breath and said into the mic. “Control. Give us a heads up.”
“Have that. Two x-rays down on seaward side. Two more heading both ways. Soldiers are coming through the barrier and the port authority guards are talking on comms. There are vehicles on the way, searchlights on top. The soldiers are getting ready to get on the vehicles.”
“Have that,” Mac said in his broad Scottish accent. “We’re going noisy any minute…”
With that Rashid saw muzzle flashes and heard the pop-pop sound of small arms fire a full second later. Right now, it was four against three, but he still liked their odds. But the unexpected always happened in firefights, so he turned the rifle towards the port entrance and sighted on the lead vehicle. He gave a little lead, then fired and by the time he had gotten over the massive recoil of the rifle, he could see the lead four by four swerving, then veering towards the guard’s security hut. It crashed through and sent wood and bricks scattering across the concrete. He worked the bolt and loaded another bullet. The second four by four had slammed on its brakes and Rashid wasted no time in putting his next bullet clean through the bonnet and engine block, where steam and smoke started to vent and the driver got out and fled for cover. The soldiers were scattering also, taking cover, and setting up firing positions. Rashid reloaded and looked for a material target. He had earlier made note of potential targets and he found the fuel pumps some two hundred metres north of the soldiers. He adjusted his aim, but from an elevated position and a thousand metres distant with a .50 he was just getting into his stride and sent an incendiary round into the base of the pump, where it ignited instantly and sent flames a hundred feet into the air. The sight flared and he snatched his head away, blinking and cursing his loss of night vision. He turned the rifle back to the warehouse, but the team was now out of view.
“God to Control, sit-rep!”
“Two x-rays down on west side. Penguins setting charges. Two x-rays on east side. They’ve taken cover and are watching the port authority guards five-hundred metres away. Vehicles burning, fuel pumps on fire. One x-ray has now fled. The other is heading for the seaward side of the building.”
“Have that,” Rashid replied and moved the weapon back to the far end of the building.
“He’s edging along. Now three metres from the corner. Two metres… one metre…”
Rashid fired at a spot six inches out from the corner of the building and one and a half metres off the ground. He recovered from the recoil in time to watch the man step around the building and walk into a .50 calibre bullet travelling at nine-hundred feet per second with a closing energy of 9000 ft/lbs at a thousand metres. The man was practically broken in two.
“Control to Penguins. East side is now clear.”
Rashid moved the weapon along the building but could no longer see the team. Instead, he focused on the threat of the mounting guards and soldiers half a kilometre away from the warehouse. There were a few brave soldiers edging out from cover and he put a bullet onto the ground fifty feet in front of them, where it sparked intensely and he watched the men scatter, this time returning fire vaguely in his direction, but falling way short of his position. One thousand metres and over two hundred feet of elevation was way off the capabilities of a Kalashnikov and the bullets were dropping harmlessly into the sea.
“Penguins to Control. Devices set. Working exfil.”
“Control to Penguins, have that.”
Rashid watched the three men bolt out of the shadows of the warehouse, weapons raised and covering the open ground to their left. He saw a man dart out from behind some shipping containers, his rifle raised. “Penguins! X-ray two-hundred metres to the east, armed with a long!” He sighted on the man, but he was moving quickly, and he struggled to track his movement smoothly enough for a shot. He cursed. He hadn’t seen the man and Flymo hadn’t, either. He could see muzzle flashes sparking in the night, highlighted in the green hue of his night vision. The team were still too far off for an accurate shot with the MP-5 carbines, but they were raining rounds down around him, and it was enough for the man to stop running, drop to one knee and take a well-aimed shot. Rashid took up the tension on the trigger and fire
d. A full second later, the figure sprawled forwards and his rifle spun off to the side.
“We’re clear and on route,” Goldie said through the comms. “Light her up!”
Rashid smiled as he packed the rifle away and strapped the slip to his back. He picked up the control unit and switched it on. There was an illuminated panel which showed a signal in the same way a mobile phone did. It indicated four bars, but he had checked it earlier and knew it would be. He flicked the arming switch, then pressed the button, not looking at the warehouse until the blistering, simultaneous explosions had flashed, and the noise rumbled towards him. When he did finally look, the warehouse roof had sunk, and all four walls had fallen inwards. The building was ablaze, flames licking the sky some hundred metres high and smoke was billowing into a mushroom cloud three times higher than the flames. The fire roared but continued to grow in intensity as the contents of the warehouse started to combust and ignite.
“Job done,” he said quietly, then clipped onto the rope and stepped over the railing, before abseiling the two-hundred and sixty-feet to the ground below. He disconnected and climbed over the great bundles of caged boulders that had formed the man-made island on which the crane stood. Behind him the flames grew in intensity, and the darkness had become light. The cages of boulders, some eight feet cubed had snagged weed and debris and driftwood at the sea edge and seagrass had grown to form a shoreline. Rashid had moored his boat directly to the cages, hidden by the seagrass. He took the rifle off his back and dropped it into the boat along with the harness and backpack. The rubber boat flexed as he got in and untied, then cast off with the tiny oar. He started the electric motor and it silently kicked into life, propelling him across the bay towards the moored ships and smaller boats. As he left the burning sight of the quay behind him, and the night grew darker with every metre he travelled, he slipped his night vision goggles down and snapped them into place. Ahead of him, he could make out the second rubber boat heading silently out of the port and down the coast.
Rashid grinned. It was going well, and they had made their fourth successful strike, but this time at a larger, and altogether more dangerous enemy.
10
One week later
St. Petersburg, Russia
“English?”
“British.”
“What’s the fucking difference?”
“One of the voices was Scottish,” Major Diminov replied. He was an officer with the SVR, Russia’s foreign espionage service. He was in his late forties but looked to be in his late fifties. A life starting with poverty and culminating in excess had not been kind to his system. Hard service, deception and stress had not been kind to his face, in particular his eyes, which were cold, lifeless and devoid of emotion. “We can do better than that, though. The man with the call sign God has traces of a Birmingham accent, most likely from a place called Oldham, and almost certainly of Asian descent.”
“Asia is a big place, Major Diminov,” said Romanovitch pointedly. “We are in Asia ourselves, after all.”
“Northern India or Pakistan.”
Romanovitch nodded. “So, a Scotsman and an Indian-English immigrant.”
“Or Pakistani.”
“And the others?”
“Our linguists are certain the man known as Control is British, but of Afro-Caribbean descent. The other two voices are white-British one from South London, the other most likely from the Southampton area.”
“A mixed bag,” he said. “A team, all individuals, but collectively British.” Romanovitch paused. “A wanton act of vandalism, nothing more. Nothing stolen. And certainly, nobody of any importance killed.”
“There’s more,” said Diminov, leaning across the table and handing the Russian mafia boss his phone. “Those are pictures of Commander Robinson entering Thames House, the headquarters of MI5. Not exactly my opposite agency in the United Kingdom, but the one that hunts down people like me operating on their soil. Commander is head of SO15, the police counter terrorism unit.”
“So?” Romanovitch shrugged, swiping over four photographs of a man in his fifties with grey hair and an unremarkable appearance.
“Those images were emailed to me when I started my enquiries. A small team of SVR agents have the police chief under surveillance. He has been quite vocal in his condemnation of Russian intelligence services interference.” He paused. “As has the British Home Secretary. She has cited Russian crime and state-sanctioned interference as one of their biggest threats.”
“But she would be right,” Romanovitch smiled wryly. “Your agents in Salisbury? A most audacious assassination attempt of a double agent and defector.”
Major Diminov reached back across the desk and took his phone out of Romanovitch’s hand. “I am helping you, not requiring your judgement.”
“And I am paying you a fortune!” Romanovitch snapped. “Don’t ever forget that!”
Diminov nodded, reminded somewhat of both the man’s lack of fear for members of his country’s intelligence services or armed forces, but also of his considerable reach. It was rumoured that Romanovitch had moles in multiple government departments, and as one of them, Major Diminov could certainly testify to that. “Your contribution to my son’s, your godson’s, education fund will never be forgotten, nor overlooked, my friend…”
Romanovitch scoffed. Diminov was a slippery one, always covering his back. That was how he had risen to such heights in military intelligence. The rank of major was nothing out of the ordinary, but the unit he commanded within the SVR was legendary. It would not be out of the question for this meeting to be recorded, and the intelligence officer would never assume he could talk openly about the subject of his monthly bribe. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, his hands steepled. “Bribe, sweetener or fund for my godson, whatever we call it, you had better deliver.” He paused. “If this police chief, Robinson, is looking into my affairs, then I want him gone. No mistakes and no delays. No agents caught on CCTV, no Novichok or bullshit with poisonous umbrellas. Just a bullet in the head. Nice and public.”
Diminov nodded. “And this team of saboteurs?”
Romanovitch opened the drawer next to him and took out an A4 padded envelope. He tossed it across the desk at the SVR agent. “Find out who they are, then find out where they are,” he said. “Then call me.”
Major Diminov nodded. He peered inside the envelope, which was stuffed full of neatly stacked bundles of fifty and one-hundred-euro bills. He tucked down the flap, but the bundle was too large to fit into his pocket. “Just call you?”
Romanovitch nodded. “Just call me.”
“And the Albanian problem?”
“That is in hand,” he said. “As we speak. But I am sure that the two problems are one and the same.”
“What will you do?”
Romanovitch stood up and walked to the window. The city of St. Petersburg sprawled before him, the Moyka River glistening in the bright, early summer light. For three days after the raid on his warehouse, some four miles distant, he had seen the smoke from the smouldering remains of his property. Tens of millions of dollars’ worth of petrochemicals and equipment had been destroyed. His operation had been set back years. And now there would be questions. He wasn’t too worried about the government – he had enough people on the take, all the way to the top. But the opposition parties and the bedroom journalists operating on social media, websites and YouTube were tenacious and proving incorruptible. He had lost count of how many he had ‘disappeared’ but another would always take their place. For the first time in his career of crime, and certainly since he had taken over from his deceased brother’s mantel, he had questioned whether it was the right time to liquidate his assets and lie low. He could still live a luxurious life in the South of France. But he couldn’t take the defeat. The sense of being pushed into such decisions. He turned and looked coldly at the Russian intelligence officer. “What will I do?” He paused. “Rest assured, Major. I will have these people’s heads. I will cut them, per
sonally, from their shoulders and I will do it in front of them, so they know they have been defeated. And I will do it slowly, and with great care, and I will laugh as I do it…”
11
One month later
Cornwall, England
King had discovered that what he had initially thought of as relatively unskilled work had in fact been far more skilled than he had originally perceived. Like when the world first experienced lock down and key workers were found to be those stacking the shelves of supermarkets or driving a delivery van. Solicitors and financial advisers and estate agents were suddenly barely thought of, and the importance of what was to be deemed essential worker had far outweighed the higher earning professions with true value and worth being placed above salary.
He had previously learned to plaster and paint, and the skill had proved invaluable as cover for his last, and unofficial mission. However, laying blocks and bricks had required a steeper learning curve, and that had taken him into the realms of tiling and roofing and guttering, and whenever he thought he was getting ahead of the game, another factor came into force and he had yet another DIY hurdle to master.
There had been no repeat of the pregnancy test. No false hopes or spikes in euphoria at the thought of becoming a family. It wasn’t an issue, but each month Caroline had spent a sullen few days lamenting what wasn’t to be before getting on with things, and life was settling into the same routine. King hadn’t thought about it much at all. The building project was ongoing, although they had completed the rental cottage to net them an income and had been left starting over and living within a building site once more. He supposed it wouldn’t be the right time to start a family, although they hadn’t exactly been careful in that department. They would simply allow things to happen, but he knew that Caroline was starting to worry that it hadn’t.