Dark Winter ns-6 Read online

  She laughed, a bit too much, but so did I.

  She was back to normal now. ‘Throw up, that’s what you call a U-turn in North Det, isn’t it?’

  I navigated for her as we screamed along narrow B roads and through villages with no street-lights. The gearbox would be in shit state by the time we got there, but who cared? It was a big firm.

  We hit a town called Swaffham and headed northish towards Fakenham. It was a much better road now, but I couldn’t stop myself doing some phantom braking as Suzy threw the car into the bends. ‘Stop doing that,’ she snapped. ‘Or drive yourself.’

  I smiled, got out my cell and tapped in Josh’s number. Suzy didn’t say anything as I sat there with something to my ear that obviously wasn’t a moan-phone.

  Josh answered. I bent down into the footwell to try to find a quieter spot. ‘It’s me, it’s Nick.’

  It seemed he couldn’t hear me too well over the noise of the high-revving engine. ‘What? That you, Nick?’

  ‘Yes, listen – she’s coming back tomorrow.’

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Tomorrow, she’s coming back tomorrow.’

  ‘Where are you, man? In a wind tunnel or something?’

  ‘Call Carmen, will you? Find out her flight and pick her up. You’ll need to pick her up. She is back tomorrow. You get that?’

  Josh had, and was in orbit. ‘What are you at, man? You’re doing it again – you’re butting out. What is it with you?’

  ‘Just call Carmen – she’s arranged everything.’ I didn’t add that I only hoped she had.

  Suzy braked sharply and I looked up to see her flashing a VW to get out of the way. Its horn blasted as we overtook near a bend and Josh screamed at me down the cell.

  ‘Fuck you, man, you’re doing it again!’ The Yes Man wasn’t the only one tonight who’d changed his Christian ways. I must have the gift.

  ‘Call her, call her.’ I hit the end button. However pissed off he was with me, he’d be on the phone to Carmen right now. We’d just have to patch things up later.

  36

  Suzy’s face was caught in the glow of the dashboard, still concentrating on the tunnel of light created by the headlamp beams and the high trees either side of the road. The rev counter was into the red. Without so much as a sideways flicker of the eyes, she smiled knowingly. ‘Kelly going home?’

  ‘Fucking right she is.’ I gripped my seat as she took a bump and all four wheels left the road. ‘Aren’t you worried about anyone?’

  ‘Nope. No one.’

  A sign flashed by at 115 m.p.h. ‘Fakenham 4’.

  Another corner was coming up. She dipped the lights to double-check if any traffic was coming the other way, then switched back to full beam. She braked hard on the straight, block-changed from fifth to second, and accelerated hard through the apex on the wrong side of the road. An oncoming car two hundred metres away flashed us angrily.

  I gave it a few more minutes and dialled Carmen.

  ‘It’s me, Nick. Did you change the flights?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nick.’

  ‘It’s very late, you know.’

  ‘Have you organized the flight for tomorrow?’

  ‘It’s so late and what with Josh just calling as well . . . he woke us up.’

  ‘Have you sorted out the flights?’

  ‘Yes, she’s flying in the afternoon. We have to be there at one, so we’ll leave at eleven – that’s if we wake up in time. Now, if we pay as soon as the statement comes in you won’t have to—’

  ‘Is she awake?’

  ‘Of course not – I imagine she’s only just got back to sleep after talking to Josh. I can’t wake her again.’

  ‘Carmen, please? This is really important.’

  ‘Nothing’s as important to a girl her age as a good night’s sleep. I’m not going to wake her.’

  ‘OK.’ I resisted the urge to yell my frustration at her. Maybe she was right. ‘I’ll call again in the morning. Look, I’m going into a tunnel, got to go.’ I cut the phone’s power.

  We were hitting the outskirts of Fakenham and almost immediately the racecourse was sign-posted to the right. We took the turn, then another less than half a mile later. The roads were getting narrower each time. Suzy made few concessions. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Drive in and park up, I suppose.’ I picked up the moan-phone and called the Yes Man. ‘We’re here.’

  ‘You still have the mobile and the canisters?’

  ‘Yes.’ What the fuck did he think? That I’d popped them into a car-boot sale?

  ‘The pickup should be there soon. Bring him in on Quebec.’

  ‘OK, on Quebec. It’ll be a Maglite.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is. Just bring him in and get on board.’ The phone went dead.

  The road became a narrow stretch of tarmac with white-painted posts either side, which soon became a long blur as Suzy forgot to relax her right foot. I was looking out for possible landing sites in case we couldn’t get on to the racecourse itself. We passed tennis courts to the right, some buildings to the left, and arrived in a large gravelled parking area. Cars were clustered round the entrance to what looked like a sports club, with signposts pointing off to squash courts and all sorts. Light shone from the front windows and I could see a group of not-so-sporty figures inside, propping up the bar.

  The racecourse was in front of us, fenced off by white-plastic rails. To our half-right was the shadow of the grandstand. Suzy parked and we took our cover docs from under the seats and stuffed our ready bags with all the empty military NBC wrappers. We didn’t want the local police finding a car full of interest. They’d be happy with just a few new pairs of socks and my Next boxers.

  Suzy brought the key with her as we started towards the grandstand. That way she knew it wouldn’t be found in a wheel arch by accident. There had been no instructions from the Yes Man about the car, but it would need to be collected quickly; it was an untidy loose end.

  The glow of the town was off to our left, a floodlit church tower dominating the high ground. I began to hear a faint rattle in the distance, which became the more definable clatter of rotor-blades somewhere in the darkness above us. He was coming in without lights.

  I fumbled around and pulled out the mini Maglite, turning the top to switch it on as I hummed the Bridal March. ‘Here comes the bride, daa-daa-de-daa.’ Suzy looked at me as if I was having a fit. ‘It’s the only way I can remember Quebec. Get it? “Here comes the bride, daa-daa-de-daa.”’ I kept mumbling it to myself as I pointed the Maglite into the air, twisting and untwisting the end in time with the beats to transmit the Morse letter Q. Aboard the helicopter they would be seeing the pinprick of white light from below in a field of darkness – and if they didn’t, I’d just keep on doing it until they did.

  Here comes the bride, daa-daa-de-daa .

  The noise in the sky became a throbbing roar, and within seconds I could make out the nose of the heli just fifty feet above and in front of us, coming in low. I pointed the Maglite down to the grass and kept it on as a reference point for the pilot, and to make sure it didn’t shine into his eyes. From the aircraft’s silhouette, I knew it was a Jet Ranger.

  It hovered for a few seconds, the downwash from its rotors battering against us as it wavered left to right before plopping down on its skids about twenty feet away. I turned off the Maglite and there was a sudden solitary flash from the navigation light under the Jet Ranger’s belly to give us a fix in case we hadn’t seen it. As if.

  Suzy ran past me to the aircraft’s nose, then round to the opening door. I followed, my bag on my shoulder, automatically bending at the waist. I never knew why people did that because the rotors are always well above head height.

  The downdraught buffeted my face and clothes as I followed her round, and the smell of aviation exhaust drenched the air.

  My bag was soon being bundled into the back, and I had Suzy’s arse in my face as I tried to get in and she tried to organize
her own bag behind the seats. We eventually made it and I pulled the door closed, cocooning us in a world of warmth and comparatively little noise. I could smell coffee, but not strongly enough to wipe out Suzy’s vomit.

  The Jet Ranger lifted from the ground. The pilot, seated directly in front of me, was wearing NVG [night-viewing goggles], like a pair of small binoculars held in place by a head harness, about half an inch in front of his eyes. They were bathed in the green glow from the rear of the goggles as he checked the take-off.

  Suzy turned and started shoving the bags further behind us, to create more space, then the roar of the engine drowned everything else. It was pointless talking, which suited me fine.

  The guy sitting next to the pilot pushed himself round in his seat until he more or less faced us. He had a headset on, with a boom mike by his mouth. In the low light of the instruments I could see he was a small, smily, friendly overweight thirtysomething with dark, curly hair. He stuck his thumb up by his ear and his forefinger down by his mouth, and shouted at me almost apologetically: ‘The phone, please? The phone?’ He was wearing a padded check shirt, open over a Lord of the Rings T-shirt that strained across his stomach. I pushed my hand into my jeans pocket and produced the girl’s Motorola. Frodo took it with a nod of thanks.

  The lights of Fakenham shrank below and behind us as the pilot got busy talking to whoever pilots talk to when flying these things covertly round the UK. Well, not that covertly because they were operated by commercial companies with pilots who liked to moonlight for the Firm. Why go to the expense of buying and running your own when you can hire them by the hour? Apart from anything else, it was a better cover.

  Frodo the tech took the SIM card out of the phone and inserted it into a machine on his lap about the size of a reporter’s notebook. Within a few seconds words and numbers were scrolling down the display panel in front of him, and he was jabbering into his mouthpiece. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but guessed he was on a radio net that connected him to the Yes Man, or whoever was checking these out. It would be only a matter of minutes before they knew everyone she’d ever talked to or been called by.

  I gazed vacantly out of the window, my mind very much in Bromley. My operational concerns were finished for the moment: I had no control over what was happening to me, I was in the hands of the pilot.

  What would I do with her if the attack had already taken place? Would it be safer to keep her in England, or risk her moving through a possibly contaminated airport?

  I suddenly thought of something I did have control of. I leant forward and tapped the tech on the shoulder. He turned and I mimicked pulling one of his earphones out of the way. He did and leant closer. ‘Come on, I can smell it. Where’s the brew?’

  He spoke into his mouthpiece and the pilot felt around by his feet and produced a large stainless-steel flask. I took off the cup, unscrewed the top, and poured out half a cupful. I offered it to the two in front, but they shook their heads. Maybe they’d just finished one. Suzy took it and had a few sips before offering it back to me. It was black and very sweet, but it hit the spot.

  I dug into my jeans and pulled out one very squashed card of pills. I swallowed four with a swig and passed them to Suzy with the cup. I turned away and looked out of my window again at the bright ribbon of the M11 in the distance, and beyond that the lights of Cambridge.

  Frodo talked some more into his mike, nodding as he turned to me and took off the headset, gesturing to me to put it on. As the white, cloth-covered cans went over my ears, all I could hear was the gentle thud of the rotors in the background.

  Then – ‘Are you there?’ It was the Yes Man. ‘Hello?’

  Frodo held my hand and guided me to the rocker switch on the headset lead so I could flick to send. I nodded my thanks. I already knew how to do it, but there was no point offending him. ‘Yes, I’m here.’

  ‘Listen in. You’re going into Northolt. Roger so far?’

  We were on secure comms, so we could talk in clear speech, yet as soon as he got on a radio he thought he was back running the signals department.

  ‘Roger that.’ Play the game.

  ‘Yvette will be there with transport. Roger so far?’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘OK, well done with the phone. It has been used once, nearly two hours ago. That mobile number is still static in the area of King’s Cross station, operating in the triangle formed by Pentonville Road, Gray’s Inn Road and King’s Cross Bridge. Roger so—’

  ‘We know it, we know the building. Something’s wrong here. The source lives only about three hundred away.’

  ‘Roger that, I’ll—’

  ‘Get the source to call us once we’re on the ground. We might be able to use him. There’s something going on here.’

  ‘Agreed, out.’

  I passed the headphones back to the tech and turned to Suzy, putting my mouth right into her ear to pass on what the Yes Man had said.

  Her face lit up. ‘She was probably checking in to say she made it OK.’ Suzy was actually getting off on all this stuff.

  37

  Sunday 11 May, 00:04 hrs

  The glow of London bathed the horizon, and before long the huge towers of Canary Wharf cut into the skyline, their navigation lights strobing through the low cloud.

  The clean-up team probably accounted for one or more of the sets of headlamps below us, heading out of the city on their way to King’s Lynn. Their job would be to sterilize the place before first light, on the pretext of investigating gas leaks or whatever. They wouldn’t have a clue what had happened, and they’d never ask – the body would be taken away, then they’d throw the Immigration boys into a wagon and eventually introduce them to Simon. The chopper pilot and Frodo the tech would join them later. No way would any of them be let loose until this was over.

  The pilot had some chat into his headset and we kicked right. It wouldn’t be long now before we were landing at RAF Northolt in West London. For a moment I wondered if we’d be taken to the command control centre for a briefing, as I had been during the Kosovo and Bosnia campaigns. It was like something out of a James Bond film, big screens all over the place and everybody being very busy and efficient as they hit keyboards and drank coffee out of polystyrene cups. But I somehow thought that wasn’t going to be for us today. Our shirts just weren’t crisp enough.

  Soon we were over the A40, the busy dual carriageway cutting into London from the west, and minutes later were starting our approach into the darkened military airfield that bordered it. Rain began to spatter against the Perspex and the pilot gave the wipers a quick burst.

  We were coming down near two saloon cars and a van, all parked with their headlamps on. In the orange strobe of our navigation lights I could see the shapes of the people inside them, dodging the downdraught from the rotors and the rain. One of the cars was one-up, the other two were both two-up.

  Our skids settled on the hard standing and the rotors lost momentum as the whine of the turbo engines gradually subsided. The pilot turned, gave me the OK to pull the door handle, and I clambered out. The heat from the exhaust, the rotor wash and the stink of aviation fuel meant I hardly felt the rain. Suzy pushed out our two ready bags, then followed.

  As we ran towards the vehicles a figure emerged from what looked like a Mondeo, and I realized it was Yvette, pulling up the hood on her Gore-Tex. She stayed by the driver’s door as the rotors came to a halt.

  Two men in jeans and sweatshirts jumped out of an unmarked white Transit and ran towards the aircraft. As they got closer I could see it was Sundance and Trainers, ignoring me as they went past. Yvette beckoned to us. As we crossed the pan, she was busy opening a large aluminium box down by the nearside wheel. We could only just hear her voice. ‘Please, the canisters in here.’

  I squatted down with my ready bag. The two crew were led towards the back of the van. The pilot was flapping big-time and looked to me for support. ‘What’s going on here?’

  I shrugged as one o
f the guys in jeans replied for me: ‘Don’t worry, everything’s fine. Just hop in the back, mate.’ The way Sundance and Trainers were gripping them, they didn’t have much choice.

  ‘And could I please have the Peugeot keys so we can clean up in Norfolk?’

  Suzy put her ready bag down and fished in her jeans while I went into mine. I pulled out the carrier-bag, smeared with dry blood, that contained everything we had taken from the woman apart from the phone, and put it into what looked like a cool-box, except this thing was fastened with four latches to keep it airtight.

  By the look on Yvette’s face, she was starting to get a noseful of the contents of Suzy’s bag as she handed over the key.

  ‘It’s in the racecourse car park.’ Suzy’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet, maybe trying to mimic the Golf Club. ‘By the sports centre.’

  Yvette nodded a thank-you. ‘You need to call him for an update. There are antibiotics in the glove compartment and a complete new set of NBC protection in the boot for you both.’

  The back doors of the Transit slammed shut and it pulled away. I closed the lid on the container and saw a smile appear under the Gore-Tex hood. ‘Well done, both of you. Over to your right you can just see a flashing blue light where the van is going. Head for that and you’ll be let out of the airfield. Good luck.’

  She picked up the box and carried it to the back of the other car, a dark Vauxhall Vectra. The engine turned over as soon as the box was strapped in place with a seatbelt. The driver spun the vehicle and drove off towards the flashing blue light as soon as Yvette was in the passenger seat.

  While Suzy took the ready bags to the back of the Mondeo and started to scrape out her vomit, I pulled out the moan-phone, turned it on and dialled the Yes Man. The phone rang twice this time but, as normal, the Yes Man had no time for ceremony.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Northolt. We have the car.’

  ‘Well, get mobile. The source says he knows nothing about King’s Cross. He will call but doesn’t want to get involved. He feels he could be compromised.’