Diamondhead (59 page)

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Authors: Patrick Robinson

Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Political, #Thrillers, #Weapons industry, #War & Military, #Assassination, #Iraq War; 2003-

BOOK: Diamondhead
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He dismantled his pillow and opened the Perrier. He drank almost half the bottle in big gulps. And then he rearranged the package and lay down, flat on his back, and tried to relax, thinking only of Tommy and Anne. This time his dreams were sweeter, and he had them both in his arms, saving them, protecting them, as he was sworn to do by the creed of the SEALs—
to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
 
He was awakened at around four when there was noise from a lower floor. He vaulted down from the shelves and moved, light-footed, to the window. The guardhouse was undisturbed, and below him the noise was not growing any louder. Finally, he heard the front door of the warehouse slam, and he could see three men transporting two large packages on steel carts, heading back to Drydock 2, the one with all the lights.
 
Mack reclimbed the shelves, but was unable to sleep again, and he spent the next two hours before the rising sun contemplating the immediate future . . .
If I should die today, what will happen to Tommy and Anne? There should be enough money, with my pensions and Harry’s second million. But no one will ever know who I am, and I will be buried here in some French prison yard. An unknown murderer.
The idea made him shudder, as it would make any U.S. Navy SEAL shudder. One of their proudest traditions is that no SEAL has ever been left behind on the battlefield, dead or alive. The prospect is anathema to SPECWARCOM, an unspoken dread among the fighting men of the Special Forces:
that I will somehow be left behind, with no headstone back home in the USA, nowhere for my family and friends to remember me, to think of me, to know what I tried to do for my country.
 
Mack, however, understood how thoroughly he had covered his tracks, how no one in the whole of France had the slightest idea who he was. And if Foche’s guards, or the police, should gun him down, right here in this shipyard, as they surely would, given half a chance, who would ever come to claim him? No one. Because no one knew except for Harry, and he’d never come, not if he had any sense. Which would leave him, Lt. Cdr. Mackenzie Bedford, United States Navy, murderer, buried in the yard of some foreign prison. Because no one would come. Except perhaps, down the years, one person. Tommy Bedford. Yes, somehow Tommy would find him, and he would come. Tommy would bring him home.
 
Still,
he thought,
the bastards haven’t got me yet.
And once more he tried to sleep, but he dozed only intermittently, right through the six o’clock shift change that he never even noticed, as hundreds of men changed places in the buildings around the yard. Mack was finally awake when, at quarter of seven, the spotlight of the sun streamed rose-pink out of the east, straight into his rear window, the one above the harbor.
 
Mack climbed down and used the empty Perrier bottle the only way it could now be used. He shoved it out of sight, under the shelves on the far side of the room. Then he glanced outside and made himself some French breakfast, slicing the salami with his fishing knife and eating it with a slice of cheese on buttered baguette. He had to admit, it was probably the best pillow he had ever tasted. With no radio, no television, no phone, not even the newspaper, Mack felt strangely desolate. For a start he had no idea what had happened to the Red Sox, and of course there was Tommy and Anne. How had things progressed in the Nyon Clinic? Had the operation been completed? Was it a success? How was Tommy? Would he live?
 
The questions rattled through his mind, and he knew if he allowed them to continue they would probably drive him nuts, cloud his judgment. So he shut them out, concentrated on his task today, the one that would, in a sense, set him free, set his family free, set Harry free, set the whole goddamned town free.
 
Once more he focused his mind, and he stared out at the podium, knowing there was an eight-hour wait before the action. Well, he hoped it would be that long. But as he stared out at the main gate, he sensed that things might move more swiftly than he wished.
 
Shortly before nine a black limousine pulled up at the guardhouse. The driver spoke briefly, and the car was waved through and parked on the far side of the podium. Three men climbed out, two of them smartly dressed—suits, jackets, and ties. The other was wearing black trainers, casual pants, and a black windbreaker. This third man carried a submachine gun, and looked as if he might know how to use it. Mack did not recognize the arrival of Henri Foche’s new head of security, Raul Declerc.
 
Neither did he realize the second man out of the limo was Brittany’s chief of police, Pierre Savary. The third man was Detective Inspector Paul Ravel, the policeman who had grilled and prized the truth out of Monsieur Laporte. Savary had considered it politic to invite Paul to the shipyard, since he was the detective in charge of the hunt for the killer of the two men on the beach of Val André. The shipyard at Saint-Nazaire was the most likely place for him to appear.
 
Mack watched the three men walk slowly down to the waterside, staring up at the drydock, wandering down toward the jetties, deep in conversation. He had a clear suspicion they were talking about him. But he was cocooned in this warehouse room, out of touch with the rest of the world. He wished he could somehow flick on a car radio, just to hear what was going on. But he had no such luxury.
 
If he had possessed a radio and tuned to any channel in the entire free world, any channel in Great Britain, even the local FM in Maine, he would have heard the following. Or something very like it:
A nationwide manhunt is taking place in France, according to the front page of the most important French newspaper,
Le Monde
. Following the murder of his two personal bodyguards, police fear for the life of Monsieur Henri Foche, who is favored to become the next French president.
 
At this moment the search is intensifying around the city of Saint-Nazaire, where Monsieur Foche is to give a major political speech on behalf of the Gaullist Party later this afternoon. On the orders of the French president, an extra one thousand armed security guards have been drafted in.
 
Officials now believe the killer may be part of an international cartel, possibly linked to al-Qaeda, which plans to murder Monsieur Foche, in response to the arrest of four Muslim extremists in Algiers last month.
 
French police believe they will catch the man, who is believed to be a Swiss national. They say he is tall with a black beard and may answer to the name Gunther.
 
 
 
But Mack did not have a radio. And he knew less than almost anyone in the world about the powerful dragnet that now surrounded him.
 
Down on the jetties, Paul Ravel had drifted off to conduct his own thoughtful investigation of the area. Raul was laying out his initial strategy for the shipyard. “Pierre,” he said, “there’s not the slightest use in us deploying highly trained men into the buildings that surround the concourse. It’s too early, and we probably won’t find anything anyway. However, the time scale is important. We could deem a building clean between now and noon, and by 4:30 an assassin could be inside, ready to strike at Henri. Therefore, we should not conduct any full-scale search of the closest buildings until the last minute. We don’t want them clean now. We want them clean at 4:45 this afternoon.”
 
“I agree on that,” said Pierre. “And we’ll have buses coming in very soon. Do you have a view about mass deployments as soon as the guys arrive?”
 
“I think we should take a half-mile radius from the center of the concourse,” said Raul. “And start working out on the perimeter. Heavy-handed searching, lots of guys, lots of yelling. That way, if we either disturb or discover our man, he’s got two choices, either to run for it, away from the datum, or to move in closer. If he runs, well, we at least saved Henri’s life. If he closes in, gets nearer, we’ll have a hell of a chance of catching him by sheer weight of numbers.”
 
“You’ve done this a few times before, my friend,” said Pierre.
 
“A couple. Both times with Middle Eastern royalty. But this should be easier, because we are operating on a very concise time frame. And Henri’s not just wandering around the shipyard waiting to get shot.”
 
“So you think a mass deployment to the outer areas as soon as the guys start to arrive?”
 
“Absolutely,” said Raul. “And then I’ll use my guys as sentries. Two on the main doors of each building that faces right onto the concourse. The police should concentrate on the area around the podium as soon as they start. I mean, get under it, sweep it for explosives, climb all over the fucking thing. Then check the outside walls. I already noticed a man out in the street could climb that wall and pump a bullet straight into the back of Henri’s head.”
 
“It’s already a ‘no parking’ area. You want it ‘no walking’ as well.”
 
“Absolument!”
replied Raul, ever anxious to establish his French credentials, especially to a policeman of any nationality. “And while you’re at it, Pierre, make it ‘no driving’ as well. We don’t want some kind of a ram raid to break out . . . you know, machine guns from the roof of a van.”
 
“Consider it done,” replied Pierre. “I’ll have the entire street cordoned off.” He removed his cell phone from a jacket pocket and murmured instructions into it.
 
“Christ, I’m glad you’re here, Raul,” he said. “And remember one thing—this is serious for you, but my whole career, my whole life, is on the line. If we find and eliminate this bastard, the credit’s all yours. You were the first to hear of the plot, you acted quickly in the interest of the French Republic, you told Foche, and when there was trouble, you flew in and took over Henri’s personal security. You’ll be a hero. But if this bastard shoots Henri, they’ll blame me.”
 
“In my opinion,” said Raul, “we want to make bloody sure he doesn’t shoot us as well.”
 
The French police chief nodded, and just then the first four buses pulled in, each one carrying fifty armed, uniformed, trained security troops—half-military, half-policemen, but experts in their field. They disembarked in good order, then formed ten lines of twenty men, and stood to attention.
 
Pierre spoke briefly to the four commanders, told them of the intended half-mile radius from the concourse center, and instructed them to move out to the perimeters and begin a tough, noisy search. “Lots of shouting and yelling,” he ordered. “We want to unnerve this bastard if he’s in here. You have the full police description of the man, I believe?”
 
“Yessir. Big guy, tall, black curly hair, and a black beard. Description corroborated by the British police, French coast guard, Brittany police, and garage witness in the town of Val André. Suspect answers to the name Gunther.”
 
“I wouldn’t put your life savings on that last one,” advised Pierre. “It was almost certainly a false name.”
 
“But he is Swiss, sir?”
 
“Maybe,” replied Pierre. “Start the deployment. Anyone you find with a firearm, you may shoot on sight.”
 
“Yessir.”
 
Thirty minutes later, in a minibus direct from the airport, Raul’s five ex-French Foreign Legion combat troops arrived in company with the two former SAS veterans, both from South Wales, both ex-paras, midthirties. They were deployed in three groups, with one man detailed to comb the area around the podium, a kind of frontline storm trooper, to back up the French police if things got really rough. It was Raul’s opinion that if someone was trying to shoot Henri Foche, there was a 50 percent chance they would get as close in as possible. A suicide assassin was not out of the question, particularly if al-Qaeda was connected.
 
At two the eight-hour shift changed again. The men who had begun work at six began to stream out of the yard. Mack was having his lunch at the time, and there was not a huge variation in the menu, just a slight adjustment in placing the excellent cheese slices right on the buttered baguette and then adding the salami, which he again sliced with his fishing knife. On reflection he slightly preferred this to the direct hit of salami on baguette that he had engineered for his breakfast. He leaned on the wall beside the window, chewing thoughtfully and watching the long lines beginning to form at the main gate.
 
There were two police cruisers parked at the entrance, and the incoming workers were being shepherded through a line of six guards, all of whom were checking the IDs of the men who built the ships. No one could remember being asked for ID at Saint-Nazaire Maritime, not in living memory.
 
Mack, who was of course still out of contact with the world, could not make up his mind whether they were on to him, aware of his possible presence in the shipyard, or whether this was mere routine, the usual procedure for a major political speech.
 
Monsieur Foche would not be the first politician to address this particular workforce. The only difference was that for years, the other speeches had been decidedly left-wing, urging the workers to rise up against the establishment that exploited them.

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