Fortress (27 page)

The other two were now in the room. Tom kept firing low until they, too, were down, in a lake of their own blood. As their legs flailed, they smeared it, like angel wings in the snow. The men’s screams sounded muffled for a moment; it wasn’t until Tom started to move that the volume bounced back up.

Colburn collapsed into the doorway, blocking it, but for now that didn’t matter. All that did was getting the weapons away from reach.

Colburn tried futilely to grab hold of him. Tom turned, brought the pistol down against his thigh and zapped off another round.

That one definitely hit the bone. He heard the thud and crunch. Colburn’s screams drowned out the others’.

Tom grabbed him by the feet and pulled him into the room. The expanse of blood on the floor made it easy. He closed the door.

Don was closest to him. Tom bent down into his face and screamed at him: ‘Why are we all fucked up because of the van?’

All Tom got was a mouthful of blood spat out at him. There was no time for this. Don got another round, this time into his gut, before Tom turned and went back to Colburn.

Colburn had got the message. ‘It’s been seen.’

‘By who? By Jefferson?’

He got a shaky nod.

‘Zuabi? You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? What about Zuabi?’

He didn’t give any indication whatsoever. Tom leaned down again. ‘What the fuck has it got to do with Jefferson? What was his problem with Zuabi?’

Colburn hesitated.

‘Yes, Jefferson’s dead. Want to join him?’

Tom could see it clearly in his face, even if it was screwed up in pain as he breathed in short, sharp pants: message received.

‘Mogadishu – Black Hawk down, man. He lost his brother. Those fuckers cut him into little pieces. Motherfuckers cut him up. And now they’re over here, taking over the country.
That’s
the fucking problem.’

Tom went over to the CCTV and ripped out the hard drive. Some wires were screwed in, some clipped. Leads dangled out of the back, like long, slim dreadlocks.

Then he grabbed hold of the cordless phone as the monitor started to pixellate and threw it through the door to join the weapons in the shop.

Colburn gave a sob and his breath came shorter and weaker.

Tom stuck his head back through the door. ‘If you fuckers tell anyone about what’s happened here, you know I’ll be back looking for you.’

He closed the door, then wiped the handle with his sleeve and headed for the van.

59

Back in his hotel room, Tom showered off the dust and blood, then had a much-needed shave. He put on his lightweight Hugo Boss suit with a fresh shirt and studied himself in the mirror, checking for the moment he turned back into the polite, reasonable envoy from Invicta. There were two missed calls from Rolt, neither of which he had acknowledged. Instead he texted a non-committal
All good so far. Stutz meeting next
. He knew what he needed to do and didn’t want to have to talk to him right now. He went downstairs.

Beth was waiting for him. ‘Howdy! How was your night?’

‘Good. Yours?’

She giggled. ‘Aw, just fine. You have a good time with Kyle? You two go way back, right?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

A slight dilating of the pupils suggested she wanted to know more, but that was all she was getting.

Stutz was in the boardroom, alone, hunched over some documents. ‘Just waiting on Skip. He needs to be here for the formalities. How was your evening with Kyle?’

Tom closed the doors behind him. ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’

Stutz looked up.

‘We paid a visit to Jefferson. Kyle didn’t make it.’ Stutz’s eyes narrowed. ‘But neither did Jefferson.’

Relief spread over Stutz’s face. Tom described the ambush much as it had happened, with a few cosmetic changes. When he was done, Stutz’s expression softened into a grin. He stood up, came round the table and pumped Tom’s hand. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

That confirmed he had arranged it. How far had he expected Tom to go?

‘Kyle was loyal, but he was losing his edge. Good job you stepped up.’

‘You’ll look after his family?’

‘Oh, yeah. You can count on it.’

There was a pause while Stutz returned to the document in front of him. Evidently it was no trouble for him to digest the news about the loss of one of his closest lieutenants. But Tom couldn’t leave it there, couldn’t walk away from two corpses without knowing more about them.

‘So Jefferson was a problem for you – what had he done?’

‘Not what he’d done, what he was going to do. That’s what Skip’s software is all about, catching them before it’s too late.’

‘Who was his target?’

Stutz smiled. ‘Let’s just say he was a threat. Better you don’t know. It’s less complicated that way.’

There was an air of finality to his reply, and in the interest of keeping in with him, Tom changed the subject. ‘The presentation last night, the whole digital fortress concept, Skip really blew me away.’

Stutz grinned. ‘Drives me nuts, but the kid’s a goddam genius.’

‘Other than taking them out, like we did Jefferson, what happens with all the others? When you’ve run your checks on the individuals you’ve decided are a potential problem.’

Stutz got up and indicated the huge picture window. Forty-five floors down, office workers criss-crossed the plaza, oblivious to the ambitions of the man looking down at them.

‘See those folk down there? We’ve not done right by them. We’ve spent their taxes on two expensive wars supposedly to protect them. We’ve failed to win either, and we haven’t made those people any safer. We owe them, big-time.’

Tom waited for him to go on.

‘What’s happening in Britain right now, the same could happen here, maybe even worse. But our government’s hands are tied. After Nine/Eleven we should have pulled up the drawbridge, built the fortress. Instead, we send our best people, men like you, like Kyle, God rest his soul, to risk their lives in yet more costly and futile conflicts we’re still kidding ourselves we’re gonna win – you get what I mean?’

He looked at Tom, to gauge his reaction.

‘Yeah, I follow.’

‘And down there, they’re all still looking around, watching their backs, wondering if they’re standing next to a jihadi. There are people right here in our midst who want holy war, want terror, want a caliphate, want revenge for Iraq and Afghanistan, want to take us back to the Dark Ages. So we’re gonna find someplace else for them to live.’

There was an alarming messianic zeal in Stutz’s expression.

‘How will you do that?’

He grinned. ‘Simple. We have money, we’ll do deals with those countries, pay them to take them back. One payment. Job done. Imagine freedom from fear, at a fraction of the cost of Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, even Enduring Freedom.’

Tom kept his composure. The sincerity behind Stutz’s vision would have been laughable if the implications weren’t so shocking – and naïve.

‘So, no more “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses …”, then?’

Stutz nodded. Evidently the prospect of sweeping away the fundamental principle on which his nation was founded was not keeping him awake at night.

‘What about the moderates? The guy running a café or driving a cab? Or his cousin, who wants to come here and open a shop? Won’t they get caught in the net?’

Stutz tilted his head and pressed his lips together in a way that implied both regret and finality: a man of integrity just telling it like it was. ‘We got a full house. America is closed.’

And yet you had Jefferson killed because he was threatening an imam
. This still didn’t add up, not by a long way.

‘Now, you tell me, son. Do you think Invicta’s up to the job?’

It was clear there was only one answer he wanted to hear. Tom had come this far, he might as well keep playing the game.

‘Absolutely. You bet.’

‘God bless you. Britain and America should stand together. We’re done with being the world’s policemen, sending our best people to be blown apart. It’s way too costly in money and lives – and it doesn’t work. Let them put their own houses in order. We need to protect our borders, conserve our resources.
This
is what this century needs. The world’s changing. We got our own gas and oil now. We can cut ’em all loose – the Saudis, the Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans. All of ’em.’

Tom looked at him steadily, letting none of his revulsion show. ‘Your backing will make all the difference.’

Stutz put an arm round his shoulders. ‘You know, Tom, I had a good feeling the minute I set eyes on you. I don’t warm easy to people, but we put you in the line of fire and you came through. And you’ve been straight with me. I’m proud of you, and it makes me sick what you went through at Bastion.’

He bent forward so his mouth was close to Tom’s ear. ‘That fuck Qazi, you say the word, he’s gone.’ He nodded gravely. ‘I mean it. One word, and it’ll be done.’

From anyone else it would have been ridiculous bravado, but Stutz gave a convincing impression that in his world nothing was beyond his reach. Perhaps Stutz had another Kyle right there in Bastion, on standby, ready to do the job and not ask any questions. ‘Thank you. I’ll bear it in mind.’

But behind all the talk, what was he actually planning? Never mind Qazi. What insane horrors were these people planning to unleash? Tom put on a calm smile. ‘So, what are the next steps?’

‘People on the front line, in command – at Langley, in the Pentagon, all over DC and in Whitehall too, for sure. Vernon’s got a lot of people quietly moving in the right direction. Quietly and determinedly. You can be sure of it. But we need to speed up the process, one more outcome that’ll be the tipping point.’

Woolf’s claims, which had seemed so outlandish a day ago, were starting to look less and less far-fetched.

Tom was about to probe for more on the ‘outcome’ when the door opened and there stood Skip, the rings round his eyes even greyer. ‘Hey, guys, we ready to close the deal?’

60

Tom declined the offer of a driver and walked back to the hotel, a lone figure on the sun-blasted sidewalk. The hot Houston air felt unexpectedly cleansing after the oppressive atmosphere in the Oryxis boardroom. Stutz had made the call to Rolt but Tom didn’t get to hear what was said. Now Rolt was calling him.

‘This is it! We’re on our way. I owe you, Tom.’

‘All I did was trot out a few old war stories and shake their hands.’

‘Stutz told me you did a lot more than that. I’m proud of you, Tom.’

There was a beat while Tom absorbed this. But Rolt was still talking.

‘He says you passed with flying colours. He says you’re a great asset.’

So that was what it took. It might as well have been an initiation into a Hell’s Angels’ chapter. Kill to order to get to the next level.

‘Well?’

‘It’s very flattering. I don’t know what to say.’

He was in. Right under the wire. Woolf had put him there and he had come good. But where was Woolf now?

‘Look, give it some thought on the way home. You coming back tonight? We certainly need you. The bombing has raised everybody’s game.’

Right now all he could think of was sleep. ‘I’ll keep you posted. It’s been a long twenty-four hours.’

Tom dropped his phone back into his pocket. He was on the forecourt of his hotel, just a few feet from the revolving doors, when he was halted by an unfamiliar voice.

‘Tom!’

He turned to see a stunning young black woman, dressed impeccably, if a little warmly for the weather.

‘Alicia. UNHCR, Baghdad. Remember?’

She had a British accent and a beautiful smile: not the sort of combination a man would easily forget. He smiled back. ‘I’m sorry – who?’

She laughed. ‘You really don’t remember me?’

She was moving towards a side-street. As he rifled through all the faces he might have remembered from Baghdad, and that was a lot of faces, he followed her. She turned and came up very close as if she was about to kiss him, and as she did so her expression changed. Something made contact with Tom’s thigh and he heard the sigh of compressed nitrogen. He couldn’t do anything except take the pain as the Taser barbs embedded in his flesh and the force of the electric shock slammed him into the ground. Apart from fifty thousand volts, the only thing that went through his mind was the idea that he should try to curl up and protect his head as he tumbled off the kerb.

As he tried to retake control of his legs, a blacked-out MPV screeched to a halt at the kerb and two men jumped out.

They bundled him into the vehicle as easily as if he were a child and accelerated away.

Tom had no energy left for any of this – whatever it was. ‘Look, it’s been a long day and I’m fresh out of moves. Could we just cut the foreplay and I’ll call you in the morning?’

Tom turned to find himself in the centre well of the MPV. The memorable Alicia sat up front with the driver, and with their backs to them, facing the rear, sat two compactly built young bloods in shades, with blandly inoffensive faces, like shop dummies but with less personality. They looked alert and fresh from a good night’s sleep; just gazing at them made him feel weary.

‘Buckingham, listen up. Look at me.’

Opposite them was the talker, a tall, patrician man with neat silver hair, the sort who might have been a prefect at his old school.

‘You are Tom Buckingham?’

Tom struggled. ‘Who wants to know?’

The patrician bent down and thrust his face close to Tom’s. ‘Don’t be tiresome, Buckingham. We’ve had the FBI on our backs, wanting to know why you’re here. They seem to know things we don’t and that’s not how we like it.’

‘Sorry, I can’t help you.’

‘They know all about Bastion.’

‘Yeah? Apparently so does everyone. Have you honestly got nothing better to do than swoop out of nowhere with – Ant and Dec here and bother a private citizen on his holidays?’

The shop dummies looked at each other; clearly they’d been called worse things.

‘The FBI are concerned you may be seeking some kind of revenge.’

‘In Texas? That’s a bit paranoid even for them.’