Too Far Gone (Sam Pope Series Book 4)

by Robert Enright

  ‘I doubt it,’ Amara retorted. ‘Money can’t buy you brains.’

  The man went to respond, smirked, and casually strode back across the bar, looking for another pretty woman to harass. What annoyed Singh most was that he would most likely be successful. She looked at her watch, noting that it was probably time to find a hotel for the night.

  The article had gone out that morning.

  Singh had enjoyed her chat with Helal, finding him to be a charming man with a genuine ability to listen. He was engaging and just as passionate about getting the truth out there as she was about exposing it.

  But now that it was, she’d felt a sickening puddle begin to pool in her stomach.

  It was one thing to kick the hornets’ nest.

  It was another thing entirely to slather yourself in honey and dive in headfirst.

  Blackridge had been tracking her ever since she’d typed the words ‘Project Hailstorm’ into her computer. The visit from Wallace, the unsubtle threat to her safety. Since then, every door had been slammed shut and every shoulder had turned cold. She was sure Ashton was screwing Wallace, the ridiculous schoolgirl crush was the easiest case she would ever crack.

  Pearce had also dobbed her in, but as time had passed, she felt bad for the way their friendship had ended.

  He was a good man and probably did put her safety first.

  But it was too far gone now.

  She was being followed.

  Her home had been invaded.

  Her safety had been threatened.

  As she signalled for the bartender for another gin, she thought about Sam. How all this had started with him and would most likely end with him.

  By looking into his past, she’d jeopardised her future.

  The gin arrived swiftly, and she lifted it in a mock cheers.

  To Sam Pope. The only man to change her life.

  As she took another sip, she wondered how long it would be until they would trace the source back to her. What would happen?

  Would she go to jail?

  Or worse?

  With regret an option she could no longer lean on; Singh was startled from her thought process by the buzzing in her leather jacket. She fumbled it open and pulled out her mobile phone.

  It was a number she didn’t recognise.

  Most likely Wallace, telling her he had a sniper aimed at her head and he was calling to hear her last words.

  Or Ashton, telling her they had the place surrounded and to come out and surrender.

  Something told her not to answer, that it would only lead her further down the rabbit hole. She took a swig of her gin, realised she’d passed the point of no return a long time ago and clicked the accept button.

  She should have listened to herself.

  ‘Amara.’ The voice shocked her straight. ‘It’s Sam. We need to meet.’

  In an unknown location, deep below a derelict building in the centre of a small town, a number of servers were humming loudly, the entire Blackridge network buzzing with activity. For all the dirty work the operatives got through, the computer experts furrowed away underground were just as vital.

  Every wiretap.

  Every intelligence report.

  Every location beacon.

  They all went through ‘The Hub’.

  The beating heart of Blackridge.

  On that Saturday evening, a young man who had been recruited personally by Wallace out of Cambridge on the promises of espionage and adventure, found himself sat in the dark room, the heat of the monitors and the power of the servers causing his back to dampen with sweat.

  Apart from the odd reconnaissance report and the one time he provided real-time information for an operative hunting down a target, the job had been oversold.

  But that evening, he hit the jackpot.

  The audio file had been downloaded from the tap on Singh’s phone and he’d run it against three separate voice recognition applications. Despite being in a shitty location, Blackridge had a near limitless budget and the equipment was enough to make his shorts tighten.

  All three different programs verified the voice.

  It was Sam Pope.

  With his fingers trembling, the young man scrambled to put his headset over his thick, sticky hair and he pressed the direct line to Wallace.

  His heart thumped with excitement and he almost lost his voice as the cantankerous voice of Wallace demanded the update.

  The young man licked his lips, cleared his throat, and spoke as clearly as he could.

  ‘We have him, sir. We have him.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The very idea of running a covert operation on home soil made Wallace nervous. Less than twenty-four hours ago, stood on his balcony, cigar in hand, he’d received a very real threat from the Hangman of Baghdad. It had seemed like the entire situation was slipping through his meaty grasp like particles of sand.

  But then he received the call he’d been waiting for.

  Sam Pope had resurfaced.

  With Assistant Commissioner Ashton at his beck and call, he would have preferred to have gone through the appropriate channels. Have her pull together the remnants of the failed taskforce and have them ready to pounce. Let the police do their job and bring Sam Pope to justice.

  But this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill operation.

  And Sam Pope wasn’t a run-of-the-mill target.

  Questions would be asked and the last thing Wallace wanted was the very few people he answered to asking them. No, this needed to be like majority of all other Blackridge operations.

  Off the books.

  Sat on the balcony of his remote safe house, Wallace felt the headset digging into his skull, listening with intent as the minimal task force moved into position. Three operatives had embarked on London Liverpool Street Station, all of them in their positions, ready to act at the first sign of Pope.

  The Hub were logged in, using their considerable authority to seize control of the CCTV equipment of the station itself and were furiously surveying the scene.

  Sam had given Singh strict instructions to meet him at one o’clock that afternoon.

  It would be busy.

  It would be full of people.

  Clever, Wallace thought. The more people around, the harder it would be for his team to intercept. But his operatives were the best of the best, all of them recruited the same way Sam had been all those years ago. These were trained soldiers, all of them looking for the bigger thrills and the fatter paycheques.

  Leading the team was Roland Brandt, one of Wallace’s ghosts. Brandt had been recruited seven years ago, after spending twelve years in the Kommando Spezialkräfte, an elite German special forces squadron organised under the Rapid Forces Division. Brandt was as ruthless as they came and if Wallace directed him to put a bullet in both Sam and Singh’s heads, he would do it without hesitation.

  But he needed Sam alive.

  Singh, she was collateral damage, but he figured he could throw Ashton a bone and let her prove that Singh was in collusion with the wanted vigilante. Both would rot in prison and Wallace would get his hands on the stolen files.

  Two birds with one stone and hopefully, enough to remove Farukh from his life forever.

  As Wallace sipped the large glass of Scotch that sat beside his laptop, he felt his heart rate quicken. He had carte blanche to run his operations across the world, eliminating terrorist targets, and dealing in the dirt that the UK government didn’t want to be a part of.

  He had never failed them.

  But this was personal.

  He was trying to cover tracks he’d thought were long since covered and by carrying it out, in the midst of the British public would certainly land him under the microscope.

  That could not be a possibility.

  The entire morning had been spent trying to locate Farukh, with a number of his staff sending messages of the operation to all the possible contact numbers they had for the man. Emails, texts, phone calls – even remote, isolated messag
e boards on encrypted websites in the vain hope that he would pick them up.

  There had been no response.

  Wallace took another swig of his Scotch and then lit a cigar.

  It was ten to one.

  ‘This is General Ervin Wallace,’ he barked into his headset. ‘We cannot fuck this up. Sam Pope is a wanted vigilante with government files that we believe he is trying to sell. The man is a turncoat and must be stopped.’

  ‘Understood.’ Brandt’s robotic voice cackled through, his German accent thick and menacing. ‘STK?’

  Shoot to kill.

  Wallace smirked. Brandt’s ruthlessness had always impressed him and while he would have loved to have given the order, he had to put his personal vendetta to one side.

  ‘Negative,’ Wallace commanded. ‘Our target is meeting Amara Singh in the middle of the concourse. Once we have eyes on her, I want all operatives to maintain their positions until visual is established.’

  Sarah Masters, one of the other field operatives spoke up.

  ‘In position, sir.’

  The final member of the three strong team, Will Cook echoed her message. Wallace watched the multiple cameras on his screen, all of them laid out like a grid. He could see Brandt stood by the ticket machines to the left of the escalators, his muscular frame shrouded in a leather jacket. Somewhere within, it concealed a firearm that his itchy finger was undoubtedly craving.

  All three of them wore earpieces, along with heart rate monitors, their vital signs displayed in a small window on Wallace’s screen.

  He had eyes on everything.

  ‘We have visual of Singh.’

  A voice cackled through from The Hub, one of the analysts speaking in a nervous tone.

  ‘Eyes open,’ Brandt barked, as he tried to blend into the pandemonium of one of the UK’s busiest train stations on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The footfall was massive, with the station linking to a number of major UK cities, bringing a large number of tourists and day trippers to the capital city.

  There were plenty of witnesses.

  Enough people to blend in.

  Several chances for this to go wrong.

  Wallace nervously ran his hand across his mighty brow, the skin slick with sweat. He pulled a cigar from the gold-plated case on his desk and snapped the end off with the cigar cutter which still bore the bloodstains of his dear friend, Carl Marsden.

  It reminded him of how out of control the whole situation had got.

  Good men had died.

  The national security of the country was at stake.

  The very real threat of Farukh hung over him like one of the bodies of the man’s victims.

  ‘I repeat,’ Wallace barked as a thick, grey plume of smoke snaked into the bright, spring afternoon. ‘We cannot fuck this up.’

  ‘Understood,’ Brandt answered immediately, his voice calm.

  Wallace’s eyes flickered around the screens and he felt himself hold his breath, as the digital clock at the bottom of his screen flicked to one o’clock.

  The knot in Sam’s stomach tightened.

  London Liverpool Street Station was a hive of activity, the foot traffic absorbing the concourse as the city went about its business. Stood on the upper level, he watched as people filtered in every direction. Directly in front of him, he could see the steps which led down to the London Underground, connecting the commuters with the rest of London through the Metropolitan, Circle, and Hammersmith & City lines. As droves of people made their way underground, Sam cast his gaze across the rest of the station.

  The high ceiling was made of thick, glass panels, allowing the spring sunshine to bathe the public in its warm glow. Underneath the walkway that Sam stood, entrances to the national rail line platforms were in full effect, with station staff checking the tickets of those heading in and out of the city. With connections all over the country, the station was one of the busiest in the country, if not Europe itself. In the centre of the main concourse, a vast, computerised screen hung, divided into nineteen boards, all of them providing information on a specific platform.

  Trains were running late.

  Some had already arrived.

  The volume of the station echoed around the impressive structure like an orchestra, a calming beauty compared to the isolation Sam had endured in Italy.

  He thought of Alex Stone.

  Where had she gone?

  It had broken his heart to leave her. They had forged a bond, not off the back of the one night of passion, but of their reliance on each other. They had saved each other’s lives, literally, and had survived together. Alex had nursed him back to health, when the ghost of his past and come close to claiming him.

  He had made her a promise.

  While he intended to keep it, he knew he had to break it to keep her safe. Hopefully one day she would understand and when the time came that he could reunite her with her family, he hoped she would forgive him.

  If he didn’t end it, she would never be safe.

  Lodged in his left ear, the high-tech earpiece crackled.

  ‘Sam. How’s it looking?’

  Etheridge was back at base, headset on, and his permanently damaged knee resting comfortably on the leg support. He had hacked into the station CCTV system, laughing at the pathetic security system they had in place. For such a valuable gem in the London economy, the transport service’s digital protection was alarmingly bad. He made a note to offer his guidance, using his expertise to enhance their platform but there were bigger things in hand.

  They needed to bring down Wallace.

  They needed to open the files.

  They need to know the truth.

  Sam looked around, drawing a wry smile from a pretty woman as she walked past.

  ‘It’s busy,’ he responded, shyly looking away from the woman and lowering his head. He wore a black baseball cap and a navy bomber jacket, with Etheridge ordering him some new clothes online and paying for express delivery.

  It paid to partner with a man who had a serious bank account and no real need to spend it.

  Under the jacket, he wore a black T-shirt, along with jeans, and black trainers.

  Sam was never one for fashion and he knew his basic look would help him blend in with the moving crowds. Etheridge had already confirmed that there was another hack into the security system, joking that Blackridge were about as a subtle as a sandpaper suppository.

  Sam had rolled his eyes at that one.

  As he scanned the station, his eyes fell on the large digital clock attached to the far barrier.

  Three minutes.

  Sam lifted the coffee he’d bought from one of the many outlets dotted throughout the station, appreciating the warm caffeine as it flowed down his throat. Although the station’s primary function was for transport, it had an impressive number of food and clothing outlets dotted on both floors, with a number of chain restaurants and high street brands pitching their flags. There were plenty of places to hide, but most importantly, plenty of small alcoves where discretion would be afforded.

  It would be needed.

  Sam pushed himself away from the railing and slowly meandered down the walkway, gazing blindly at the shop windows of the stores that lined it, immersing himself in the crowd.

  Blackridge were there.

  The call to Singh had been used to fish them out and Sam knew that they would have their field agents patrolling the station, all of them champing at the bit to bring him down. They all wanted the gold star from Wallace and after a few encounters with some of their teams, Sam knew how keen they were for violence.

  They were built in Wallace’s image.

  They would all fall in it, too.

  But Sam felt uneasy, the idea of pulling Amara Singh further into his world had kept him up all night. The phone call had been brief, telling her he was alive and that he needed to speak to her urgently. While it had been nice to hear her voice, the expletive laden rant she began reminded him of how volatile she could be.

/>   Be that as it may, Singh was a fighter.

  She’d been with him in the Port of Tilbury and had risked her own life to save Jasmine and the other girls. She’d put the needs of others before her own career and if what Pearce had said was true, it had been costly. She was on Wallace’s radar, one of the most dangerous places she could have landed, and it was his fault.

  She’d done some digging.

  And it was that which Sam used to lure her to the station. He had told her he needed to speak to her about Wallace and ‘Project Hailstorm’. That was all it took.

  She agreed immediately.

  Sam could hear the nerves in her voice and secretly, he echoed them. It had been a long time since Lucy had left him, moving on with her life as a way to deal with the pain of losing their son. She was remarried and on her way to starting a new family. While his tryst with Alex had been memorable, it blossomed into a true friendship. But there had been something about Singh, from the moment he’d evaded her at Etheridge’s house to watching her flip him the bird through his sniper scope.

  In another life, perhaps.

  Sam shook his head clear and felt the guilt rising within him. One of his first missions as the designated shooter was in his early twenties. He was seen as a sniping prodigy within the armed forces and, under the tutelage of Carl Marsden, soon found himself on covert operations way beyond his experience should have attained.

  The mission was a simple extraction within the Amazon jungle, where a popular candidate for the Brazilian Presidency had been taking captive. With the risk of an uprising, the UK and US armed forces had dispatched an elite team to bring the man home.

  But he’d been used as bait.

  Seven of the team had died, with a rogue sniper putting Sam to shame and several bullets into several of his comrade’s skulls.

  The candidate, an innocent man who had done nothing other than fight for a better future for his people, was on the receiving end of a pinpoint bullet, which obliterated the top of his skull.

  The failure of the mission had stayed with Sam. Marsden had told him it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t have eyes everywhere.