Avenger (20 page)

Fergus had had two minutes to prepare himself for what he saw as he walked down the ramp into the park.

But it made no difference. He was crying.

Danny was sitting against the inner wall, his head bowed over his raised knees. He didn't look up when Fergus glanced towards him before going over to Elena's body.

Deveraux was by the ramp, her weapon still in her hand. She was watching and waiting in case anyone should wander into the park.

Fergus knelt at Elena's side. Blood was still flowing from the head wound and he was relieved that he didn't have to look at her face. He couldn't have looked at her face.

He wiped the tears from his cheeks and then, slowly and expertly, he began to search for the detonator.

On the ground next to Elena's head he saw the pouch containing her passport attached to a chain around her neck. She had followed all Danny's orders.

Danny hadn't moved since Deveraux had ordered him to sit by the wall, but he looked up and saw his grandfather by Elena's body. 'She'd already disconnected the det.'

It took a long, tense sixty seconds to establish that what Danny had said was correct. Fergus nodded towards Deveraux, who took out her Xda and punched in a number. Then he got up and went over to his grandson.

Deveraux was talking into her Xda: 'Cancel the end ex. I have another job for you right now. I want you and Fran to come and clear up at Columbus Circle. Across from the Time Warner building; just inside the park. We need to dispose of a body.'

Danny's head snapped round towards Deveraux. His eyes blazed with fury but his words hissed through clenched teeth. 'It's not a body,' he snarled. 'It's
Elena!'

Fergus rested one hand on his shoulder. 'Danny,' he said gently. Danny was still glaring at Deveraux. 'Danny,' said Fergus again.

Slowly Danny turned and looked up at his grandfather. There were no tears, not yet. All that registered on his ashen face was pain, and stunned disbelief. 'She wasn't gonna do it, Granddad,' he said. 'She wasn't gonna do it.'

Fergus carefully pulled Danny to his feet. 'Come on, we're—'

'Stand still!' Deveraux's finger was still on the P11's electronic trigger.

Fergus gripped Danny's hand tightly. 'What you gonna do, Marcie? Drop us both?' He shook his head. 'You can't do that. Know why?'

The P11 was pointed at Fergus's head but he continued without waiting for a reply.

'You'd have three bodies to clean up. That's not possible for you and your two mates. One, you might just get away with. But three? No chance. You'll be seen, and then what do you do, Marcie?'

He began to move backwards, still gripping Danny's hand. 'And there's another reason you can't pull that trigger. I have all your Oxford sit reps. We go down and they go straight to the FBI. I've still got a few friends back home, Marcie. They don't hear from me, the sit reps go to the FBI.'

He could see Deveraux's hesitation. Slowly she lowered the pistol, as Fergus pulled his grandson into the darkness of the park.

Some time later . . .

They were living in a small rented cabin on the edge of one of the Great Lakes of Canada. But they were also living a lie.

Fergus was an accomplished liar; it had long been part of his life and part of his trade. Operating covertly in the Regiment and afterwards as a K, he had found that his life had often depended upon his ability to tell completely believable lies.

He had taken on many new identities; they were all fabrications, lies. He had become so good at lying that even when challenged in a life-threatening situation, he almost believed the untruth he was telling.

That ability had spilled over into his personal life. As a young man, he had lied to his wife during their brief marriage. Sometimes it was just easier to tell a lie, as long as he remembered that lie when the time came to tell the next lie. He had lied to his son. He had lied to mates; sometimes it was necessary for their safety as well as his own. And now he had lied to his grandson.

It had always been easy for Fergus to lie because, until very recently, he had never cared enough about anyone for it to bother him too much. But now it did.

They had made their escape, heading north through Central Park, and they didn't stop travelling until they reached Canada. At first Danny was too deeply shocked to even speak. He just allowed himself to be led like a small child by his grandfather. Neither of them mentioned Elena's name.

Fergus rented the cabin and made sure they were secure, and then he contacted Deveraux; he had to – they needed money. He reminded her that if anything happened to himself or Danny, the FBI would get every one of the sit reps he had downloaded from her laptop. A few days later the cash was transferred into the bank account that Fergus had set up.

It should have been a new beginning, but it wasn't.

Spring had moved well into summer, and most days were warm and bright. But now the weather had turned; it was raining and the sky was leaden and heavy.

Danny sat against a tree trunk, getting little shelter from the rain. He reached into his jacket and took out the alias passport Fergus had got for Elena. He always kept it with him. Her name would have been Elena Higgs, according to the passport. But names didn't mean a thing. He opened the back page and looked at her photograph, and then he let his head tilt upwards against the tree trunk so that the raindrops could mingle with the tears running down his face.

When he got back to the cabin, Fergus was brewing coffee on the stove. He put two mugs and the coffee pot on the wooden table and then sat in the chair opposite his grandson.

'We need to talk, Danny.'

Danny looked hard into his grandfather's eyes. 'Do we?'

'It's about. . . the future. What we do. We can't stay here for much longer and the money we've got won't last for ever.'

The rage that had been building inside Danny suddenly exploded like a bursting dam. 'The future! How can we talk about the future when we've never talked about the past?'

Fergus looked bewildered. 'What?'

'Why didn't you tell me Deveraux killed Joey? You owed it to me, and you owed it to Elena.'

It was out in the open. At last.

'I . . . I didn't know until near the end. It was too late to do anything about it then and it didn't make any difference as far as the—'

'As far as the mission was concerned!' yelled Danny. 'Is
that
what was most important?'

'No! Keeping you and Elena safe was what mattered most!'

'Well, you failed in that, didn't you?'

Danny grabbed one of the coffee mugs, stood up and hurled it with all his strength at the wall behind his grandfather's head. It shattered and coffee dripped down the wall.

Fergus hadn't moved a muscle. 'How did you know?' he said quietly. 'About Deveraux?'

Danny slumped back down onto his chair. 'Black Star told Elena, and Elena told me just before Deveraux killed her.'

They were silent for a few moments, both deep in their own thoughts, and then Fergus got up, fetched another mug and filled it with coffee.

'I'm sorry. When it was over, I should have told you. But I thought there was no point in you knowing now. Sometimes it's better to . . .'

'Lie?'

'To . . . to just not tell the truth.'

Danny shook his head. 'Yeah. And look where it's got us.'

'We've got to move on, Danny. Not to forget about Elena—'

'I don't wanna talk about Elena!' said Danny his face furious again.

'But we have to talk about the future. About what we're going to do. I can't be certain we'll be safe here. We need to work, get jobs.'

'What jobs? Another burger bar? What else could you do? And what could
I
do? All you've ever taught me is how to lie.'

He grabbed the coffee and took a gulp. 'Oh, yeah, and I also know a lot about killing now.'

Danny pushed back his chair and it scraped noisily across the floor. 'I'm going for another walk,' he snarled. 'It'll give me time to think about my career options.'

Fergus knew there was no point in arguing. They would talk more later, when Danny had calmed down. He watched his grandson go to the door, open it and step outside, leaving it open.

The cabin stood at the end of a long mud track, which rose gradually for about a hundred and fifty metres before descending again and winding on towards the town.

As Danny left the cabin, he glanced to his right. At the top of the rise in the track sat a stationary black 4×4. Danny could just hear the throb of its running engine.

'Granddad,' he said quietly, without moving back into the cabin. 'We've got company.'

THE END

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Read an extract from the next thrilling
adventure in the Boy Soldier sequence:

ANDY
McNAB
and ROBERT RIGBY

MELTDOWN

Glasgow

The thirty-minute team made the best use of the shadows as they approached their entry points and prepared for the attack. Close by, on the river Clyde, two tugs passed in opposite directions, their stubby bows pushing through the inky-black water.

The four snipers were giving cover with their 7.62mm suppressed longs from fire positions 200 metres from the target building, a single-storey warehouse. They watched all sides and the roof, ready to give warning instantly if they saw movement from within the target that would compromise the assault team as they made their entry.

Sniper one could see all four entry points and the assault groups moving in on them. He was giving constant updates to the entire team and the team commander, who was at the rear of the target with his signaller. He was the link between the team, the heli and London.

'Sierra One has no change. No light, no movement.'

Three of the four assault groups reached their entry points, and each MOE man carefully began attaching two 10×15cm pads of explosive to the doors by their adhesive undersides. The brick-sized rubber door-entry charges were stuck close to the door hinges inside the frame.

'Sierra One. No change.'

The calm, reassuring words gave the team confidence: everything was OK and someone had eyes on them as they continued with their work.

They couldn't afford to cock up. Bringing in special forces to take action against non-terrorist targets on UK soil is a big deal, and permission for such action can only come from the very highest level.

The terrifying extent of the Meltdown crisis, with its threat to national and international security, had been kept from all but a very few. The mission to seek out and destroy the drug factory was urgent but it had to remain totally secret.

So when intelligence came in giving the location of a suspected DMP, immediate action had to be taken. The PM was consulted and asked for permission to 'stand to' the SAS counter-terrorist team from their base in Hereford. He gave the go-ahead.

The members of a thirty-minute team have to be able to reach camp within half an hour of being paged. As soon as the messages came through, just like volunteer firemen, they stopped whatever they were doing and got on the road.

At the same time a Chinook helicopter took off from its RAF base to pick up the team. By the time the guys had arrived at the camp and come into the crew room, where their gear was packed and waiting, the commanders were already writing down instructions on white marker boards.

The most important piece of information about the job appeared in big red capital letters:

HELI PICK-UP
COVERT OP UK

The team knew instantly that it was a civvies clothes job, in boots and jeans, and that once the job was done, it would never exist on any database; they would act as if it had never happened.

Within thirty minutes the team, along with two Range Rovers, was airborne in the Chinook. Each member was armed with an MP5-SD, the suppressed version of the machine gun, and wore earphones and a mic so that their commander could relay orders for the attack as they flew north.

The Chinook landed three miles from the target area, on a desolate stretch of mudflats downstream. The wagons were swiftly unloaded, and within minutes the team was on its way to an area of abandoned warehouses and dockyards.

The whole operation to get the team to the target had taken less than four hours, and now three of the four groups were ready to attack, with sniper one keeping the commentary going.

'Sierra One has Red One, Two and Three ready.'

Red Four was taking the entry point furthest from their start position; slowly they crawled under the final window to reach the fire-escape door where they were going to make entry.

The MOE man moved to the right-hand side of the door and started to place the charges as the other three got into the assault position. Number one was just thirty centimetres away from the charges, with numbers two and three pressing up behind him. They had to be packed close together so that everyone was through the door as soon as possible to take on the x-rays inside.

The MOE man started to unroll the firing cable from the charges so that he could stand on the left-hand side of the door. He attached the electrical firing device to the cable and nodded to number one.

Only one thing remained to be done before the attack could begin. The final group's number two pulled the pin on an aerosol-can-sized 'flash-bang'. It was a grenade that exploded with blinding flashes and bangs, designed to attack the human eardrum and eyes so that its victims collapsed on the ground in agonizing pain. The assault groups had to go in at the same time as the flash-bang kicked off or they would lose the initiative. They had trained with the grenades over a long period of time and were now almost unaffected by flash-bangs.

The number two pushed his arm forward so that the flash-bang was in front of his number one's face; he knew everyone behind him was ready to go.

Sniper one could see that the final group was in position.

'Sierra One has Red Four ready. All groups ready.'

The team commander wasn't about to waste any more time or risk compromise by the third party or however many x-rays were inside the target.

'Hello all stations, I have control. Stand by! Stand by! Go!'

The four MOE guys pushed their buttons: ear-shattering explosions instantly blew away the doors. The teams stood their ground as wooden splinters were thrown into the air by the force of the charge, and the number twos threw in their flash-bangs as the number ones barged their way into the target.

The torches on the extra-thick suppressed barrels of their MP5s penetrated the smoke and brick dust as flashes and bangs sent shock waves through their bodies, and the rest of the team followed them in. They kept their mouths open to stop their eardrums from bursting as the pressure waves from the flash-bangs filled the building; meanwhile their eyes hunted out targets.

There were none. Not a single x-ray.

And there was no sign of any manufacturing plant – the building looked completely empty.

Then, as Red Four moved further into the haze and the flash-bangs stopped, their number one came across a dead body. Well dead.

The guy looked as though he was in his early twenties. He lay flat on his back in a pool of blood which had burst from his mouth, eyes and ears. His face was bloated and contorted into a twisted mask of agony and fear.

Number one reached into his pocket and pulled out a camera. He took some photos of the blood-soaked body, then grabbed it and began to drag it from the building.

Within seconds, news of the failed attack had been relayed to London and a decision was taken.

It was time for a complete change of tactics.