Silent kill, p.12
Silent Kill, page 12
part #1 of Extreme Series
‘I’ll do the best I can.’
‘Then you’d better pray that your best is good enough. Taking down Pretorius isn’t just an opportunity for you to turn your life around, John. This might well be the last shot you ever get.’
Sixteen
0648 hours.
Bald boarded the early-morning flight from Wroclaw to Warsaw. Two hours to the Polish capital, then a connecting flight to Istanbul Ataturk. He landed shortly after 1100 hours with an hour stopover before flying to Kilimanjaro airport in Tanzania. He settled in for the seven-hour flight with a slug glass of Famous Grouse – there was no Johnnie Walker on offer on the flight, to his disappointment – and turned to the farewell present Chance had given him at Wroclaw, a briefing pack running to thirty-nine pages: the life story of Kurt Pretorius.
He had been born in Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, in 1955, the only son of poor white farmers scraping a living from the veldt. His father came from Dutch stock and his mother was a Scot from Glasgow. When Pretorius was nine years old, black workers attacked the family farmstead and butchered his parents. Pretorius survived the attack. He was taken in care by a distant relative in England, in Portsmouth. At a young age Pretorius turned to petty crime and progressed to street robbery. He spent a year in the merchant navy, returned home and one day attacked a West African immigrant in the street, beating him to a bloody pulp. After being cleared by the police, and aching to return to Africa, Pretorius enlisted at the French Foreign Legion barracks in Lille. It proved to be a decision that shaped the rest of his life.
Pretorius was not an outstanding soldier. A report from his commanding officer at the Battle of Kolwezi described him as a reckless and prone to making rash decisions, demonstrating a callous disregard for the life of his comrades. He stood just five feet five inches tall and his all-conquering ambitions led his muckers in the Legion to nickname him ‘Napoleon’.
After toppling Bokassa, Pretorius lived a nomadic existence, supporting despots and acting as bodyguard to self-styled dictators. He fathered half a dozen children in four different countries. Eventually the Western intelligence community grew tired of Pretorius and colluded with the enemy to eliminate him. In 1994 he tried to oust Togo’s General Gnassingbé Eyadéma from power. On a sweltering hot day in July, he crossed the border from Benin into Togo with a hundred men armed with AK-47s, Glock 19s and hand grenades. They were immediately arrested by lackeys from Eyadéma’s security services who had been tipped off by their French counterparts. Pretorius’s men were tortured, disembowelled and burned alive in the national football stadium while a marching band played music and showered the crowd with gifts. Meanwhile Pretorius managed to escape back across the border. He fled to Mozambique and disappeared from sight.
Until Somalia.
There was a photograph of Pretorius at the back of the file. It was a poor-quality shot, taken amid the rubble of Mogadishu. He was standing over an al-Shabaab suspect, his boot pressed down on the captured man’s back. Pretorius had an angular jaw and leathery skin, a deep frown etched into his brow. His eyes were jet-black and deep as bullet holes. Atop his head he wore a green beret stitched to the right side of which was a bronze insignia depicting a flame rising out of a grenade. Bald recognized it as the distinctive emblem of the French Foreign Legion.
Than Bald looked again at the photograph and felt his stomach churn.
The face staring back at him looked eerily similar to his own.
Bald landed in Mombasa at 1912 hours. Moi International was a cramped 1960s shopping mall masquerading as an airport. Guards toting Uzi submachine guns prowled around the gates in ill-fitting uniforms and cheap sunglasses. Bald breezed past the luggage carousel and made his way down an avenue of garishly lit duty-free and gift stores leading to the arrivals hall. He glanced around the heaving crowd. Chance was right. It took him about three seconds to single out Jamie Priest.
The agent had been telling the truth. Priest was the biggest guy Bald had ever seen. His shoulders resembled basketballs stuffed into sacks. The oversized G-Shock watch he wore barely reached around his wrist. His legs looked like they’d been stolen from the colonnades of the Acropolis and his black eyes were pressed deep into their sockets like a pair of copper shirt studs. Compared to Priest, the two Geordies Bald had laid out in Poland were practically midgets.
Bald’s second thought was that Chance had made a grave mistake in recruiting Priest. He was easily north of two hundred and fifty pounds. Bald watched the guy lumber over. Thinking, Jesus fucking Christ. The guy looked badly out of shape. In the unforgiving terrain of Somalia, Bald figured he’d be lucky to last five minutes.
Priest was all smiles as he thrust out a hand at Bald. Like a log sliding towards him, thought the Scot. Stretched to his full height, Priest stood a full six inches taller than him.
‘Welcome to Mombasa, boss,’ he said with a grin.
Bald glared at him. Left the hand unshaken. ‘Why the fuck are you calling me boss?’
Priest folded his face into an apology. Even up close his peepers somehow looked too small, Bald thought. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just – I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you. Everyone at the Firm knows your story.’
‘Stop calling me boss. Got it? We’re not on fucking parade.’
Priest nodded. ‘This way, boss.’
Bald quelled his anger. Five seconds around Priest and the guy was already pissing him off with his Cornish accent and his brown-nosing. He almost found himself pining for his dead mucker, Joe Gardner, as he followed Priest, threading his way through the crowd towards the exit.
As they stepped outside, a warm wind immediately fluttered over Bald, drifting in from the highlands and drying the sweat on his back. It looked like they were walking out onto a bowling green. Long stretches of grass, manicured hedges. The terminal resembled a hunting lodge, Bald thought. ‘KENYAN AIRWAYS WELCOMES YOU TO MOI INTERNATIONAL,’ a sign, lit up in primary red, announced cheerfully on the roof of the building. The night sky was studded with stars. As if someone had fed a De Beers diamond into a wood chipper. Bald followed Priest towards a silver Subaru Forester compact crossover at the short-stay car park.
‘Where’s the meet with Stegman?’ he said.
‘The Zanzi Bar, boss. In the old town. The meet’s set for 2100 hours, according to the briefing notes I got from Avery. Stegman is expecting two ex-SBS operators. He’s going to be getting us instead.’
Bald checked his cheap plastic Casio. 1936 hours. Loads of time to make the RV, he thought. He bundled into the front passenger seat of the Subaru, Priest cramming his enormous frame behind the steering wheel. The guy took off his G-Shock, turned it over and flipped open the back cover. Bald peered at Priest’s hands as he scooped out a couple of SIM cards secreted inside the watch. After placing the SIMs on the dashboard, Priest popped open the glove box and fished out a pair of BlackBerry Bolds. Bald scoffed. The Firm still preferred out-of-date BBs over the latest models, allegedly because of the encryption techniques. But Bald figured it was more likely because Whitehall was too skint to upgrade their kit.
He noticed a copy of Kenya’s Star newspaper on the dash, folded to a photograph of a smiling young blonde woman with bright-blue eyes. Bald tilted his head and skimmed the headline. The report said the woman had been abducted in a suspected pirate kidnapping at a beach resort north of Mombasa.
Priest inserted a SIM into each of the BlackBerries and passed one of the phones to Bald.
‘You’re to check in with Avery,’ he said. ‘Verify your whereabouts.’
Bald nodded. Mission protocol. Each of the SIM cards stored the contact details for their handler at the Firm – Avery Chance. With phone-tracking devices easily available over the internet for a couple of hundred pounds, disposing of SIMs was now a standard operational procedure. After a call had been made, the card was to be removed from the phone and destroyed. The idea of using a stash of SIM cards to evade tracking had been pioneered by drug dealers in America in the early 2000s. Now it had gone mainstream.
As Priest drove out of the airport, Bald noticed the temperature inside the car was thirty-six degrees. ‘Put on the air con,’ he gasped. ‘It’s fucking boiling in here.’
Priest tapped the a.c. ‘It is on, boss.’
Bald scowled at it. ‘Piece of junk.’
They headed east, then south along Mombasa Road, the asphalt flanked by rolling plains of savannah grass so parched and brown Bald wondered how anyone had managed to eke a living out of this place. At his twelve o’clock he could see the island city of Mombasa on the other side of the bridge arching over Tudor Creek, brown and white and flat, like a stubbed-out cigarette.
Priest cast an admiring glance at Bald. ‘I’ve followed your career, you know. I know you used to be in the Regiment. I thought about trying out for Selection myself once too.’
Bald grunted. ‘Is that a fact?’ He turned to Priest, glared at him. ‘What were you doing before you joined the Firm?’
Priest grinned. ‘I spent three years as a bootneck in the Corps. We’ve got a lot in common.’
Bald suppressed a smirk. ‘Judging by the fucking size of you, we’ve got nothing in common, mate. You’re carrying too much timber for a start. You’re going to get crucified in this heat.’
Priest shook his head. ‘I’m fitter than most, boss. I was first on the hill runs in the Corps. I’ve got an oversized heart and lungs. My ticker is twice as big as normal. That’s why I’m the size I am.’
‘Try telling that to Stegman,’ Bald scoffed. ‘He’s the one in charge of getting us on the team. We’ve got to convince him that we both know our shit. I’ve been there, done it and bought the T-shirt, mate. I’m a living legend. What experience have you got?’
Priest thought for a moment. ‘After the Corps I served in the Met for four years, made my way up to detective and transferred to the Specialist Crime Directorate, specializing in organized crime. Mainly Russian mafia. My CO in the Marines was always banging on about how I had an eye for numbers. Anyway, I caught the attention of Six and they picked me up soon after. You know how it is.’
Priest remembered something and nudged Bald, grinning broadly. ‘If things work out on this op, maybe you’ll pass the vetting process, boss. Like I did. Then we’ll end up working together full-time.’
‘Bollocks to that,’ Bald fumed. ‘I don’t need to pass any fucking vetting process.’
That shut Priest up good and proper, so Bald turned his attention to his BlackBerry. Fired it up, waited for the home screen to appear. Then he tapped open the Contacts tab and thumbed down to the only number stored on the card. ‘Dentist,’ the name said.
Bald tapped ‘Call’.
Chance answered on the third ring. ‘Hello?’ she said, clipped and curt.
Bald pronounced slowly the security word he’d been given: ‘Flamingo.’
Chance’s sigh of relief came down the line like a zephyr as the Subaru shot across the Makupa Causeway connecting the mainland to the island. But then she seemed to come over all anxious. ‘John, thank God. I’ve been wearing a trench line into my office waiting for you to touch base. How far are you from the RV with Stegman?’
Bald glanced ahead. The old town sprang up in front of them, a mass of mud shacks and decrepit two-storey housing blocks, their grey frontages scuffed like dirty old sneakers. Behind the maze of derelict and collapsed structures a mountain of rubbish rose over the city, smoke from a trash fire lighting up the night sky and smothering the locals in a filmy smog. Kilindini Harbour was at their three o’clock, the masts of a clutch of boats jutting into the sky above the glistening black sea.
Bald said, ‘Closing in on the RV as we speak.’
Chance hissed under her breath. There was a pause and she said something Bald couldn’t make out. Then she came back on the line and said, ‘Listen carefully, John. We may have a problem.’
Bald tensed up, tightened his grip on the BlackBerry. Anger brewing in his chest, neck muscles tightening. Problems. The Firm. They seemed to go hand in hand.
‘What is it?’ he snapped. Priest, hearing his tone of voice, slowed the Subaru to 60k per.
Bald listened as Chance took in a sharp draw of breath. Then she said, ‘We’ve just received int from GCHQ. One of our guys picked up chatter between Stegman and Drake a few hours ago. Turns out there’s a third recruit to the team. His name is Vincent Dallas.’ She paused for a couple of beats. ‘Is that name familiar to you, John?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it should be. Dallas is a regular on the Circuit. According to our files he’s worked all over the place. Libya, Zaire, Afghanistan . . . including a job in Baghdad working for the same company as you.’
Bald snorted. His guts tangled themselves into knots. The op was already in danger of going tits up and they hadn’t even made the RV with Stegman yet.
Chance went on, ‘There’s a chance that Dallas might finger you if he sees your face. We can’t afford for your cover to be blown. The mission will be dead in the water. You have to take care of him before he has a chance to identify you to Stegman.’
‘Shit!’ Bald hammered his fist on the dash so hard the Subaru shook. He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. Suddenly all his old fears and bitter feelings towards the Firm came rushing back at him. Too late to back down now, he thought. Only one thing for it. He popped open his eyes. Took in a deep breath. The air was thick and dry. He sighed.
‘Where’s he staying, Avery?’
‘The Baring Lodge. Across the creek. You’ll have to hurry. He’ll be leaving for the meet soon.’
‘I’ll take care of it.’
Bald ended the call. He flipped open the BlackBerry and ripped out the SIM card, his hands trembling with a hot mix of adrenalin and rage as he rolled down the window and tossed the card onto the dirt road. He could feel his hopes of securing a permanent posting with the Firm slipping through his fingers. They had a little over an hour to nail Dallas, dispose of the body and make the RV with Stegman.
Five minutes in Africa, thought Bald, and I’m already having to get my hands dirty.
‘What’s going on?’ Priest asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Bald filled his partner in. Priest listened silently as he steered through the Mombasa slums. Across the other side of the Creek Bald made out a row of gated communities and luxury hotels. Giant billboards were draped over the sides of whitewashed apartment blocks imploring buyers to invest in a strictly white version of paradise. When the Scot had finished explaining the situation, Priest frowned deeply, as if trying to solve a maths problem.
‘So what’s the plan, boss?’ he asked.
‘We’ll find Dallas. Follow him to the RV. Then we’ll fucking do him.’
Seventeen
1959 hours.
Priest tapped ‘Baring Lodge Hotel’ into the GPS navigator and followed the directions relayed to him by the honeyed female voice, steering onto Ziwani Road and across the New Nyali Bridge. Bald pointed at the GPS unit.
‘Can you get that voice to shut up?’ he snapped. ‘I’m trying to think here.’
‘Sorry, boss.’
They bounced over the bridge and swept past the bay on the other side of the creek. ‘That thing is really pissing me off,’ said Bald.
Priest shrugged. ‘First-world problem.’
Bald shot a look at him. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’ve never heard the expression, boss? It means something that, you know, is a problem you only get if you’re living in the first world. Like, you get stressed when the Wi-Fi at Starbucks goes on the blink, or you’re worried about which diamond ring to buy your missus, or—’
Bald raised a hand. Give me strength, he thought. ‘I get it. From now on, how about you drop the hip phrases and talk in plain English.’
‘Sure, boss.’
They cut down the bay. Several pristine white hotels gazed out across a palm-treed marina. Bald ignored the view, ignored the GPS, his mind weighing up the angles, figuring out how best to take care of Dallas. He silently cursed Chance. She’d promised a new broom. Instead Bald was quickly learning it was business as usual at the Firm. New faces, same old shit. Priest arrowed the Subaru down the affluent Links Road. A hundred metres further on, he brought the car to a halt.
‘This is the place?’ said Bald.
Priest nodded. ‘This is the place, boss.’
They had parked fifteen metres due south of a hotel best described as the last word in posh. Whoever had designed it probably considered a night at the Ritz as slumming it. From their vantage point Bald and Priest were out of the eyeline of the staff. Bald craned his neck so he could score a better view. He spied a colonnaded entrance set ten metres back from the road, at the end of a drive lined with marble statues. There was a lavishly planted garden at the front of the hotel, adorned with toothbrush trees and neatly clipped hedges. The hotel itself resembled some aristocrat’s country seat, with its ornate roof and elegant frontage. At the main entrance a black valet wearing white gloves and shiny black shoes was smiling attentively at an elderly couple as he ushered them into the lobby. It was all so very English.
‘What now, then, boss?’ said Priest.
‘We wait.’
They didn’t have to wait long.
Vincent Dallas emerged from the hotel at 2018 hours. He sported a grey crew-cut and a chinstrap beard and he was decked out in a cream-coloured gilet, beige combats and a wide-brimmed suede safari hat. He looked like he had come straight out of the bush.
Bald noticed him first. Priest was too busy checking a text on his BlackBerry. He hit ‘Send’, tucked away the phone and looked up, chasing Bald’s line of sight. The two men watched Dallas as a valet retrieved his Chinese-manufactured Chery SUV.
Dallas drove away from the hotel and Priest followed at a distance of three cars’ length. The Chery raced back across the New Nyali Bridge, then south onto Arab Road, a potholed tongue of tarmac running between dilapidated colonial-era apartments and breeze-block buildings with corrugated-metal roofs. There were no tourists here, Bald noticed. Just the odd woman wearing a colourful kanga and carrying a big bundle on her head. Gaunt-faced old men pushing wagons piled high with jerry cans of potable water.
