Gray Vengeance (20 page)

Chapter 28

16 December 2014

‘Len, ever heard of a Michael West?’

Gray handed his phone to Smart, who studied the image on the screen. ‘Can’t say the face rings a bell. Name’s not familiar, either.’

Sonny had a look, too, but came away shaking his head. ‘Why are we interested in him?’

‘Andrew emailed it to me. Wants to know if we’ve come ac
ross him.’

Gray took the phone back and tapped the screen a couple of times. ‘According to the bio Andrew sent, West was regiment. Served two years before he got dishonourably discharged over an incident in Afghanistan in 2010. Last seen in Kano, Nigeria five months ago.’

‘Which is home to DSA,’ Smart said. ‘Is he linked to these bombings?’

‘Looks like it,’ Gray said. ‘Andrew thinks that he’s one of a dozen ex-soldiers who might have been recruited through an agency like ours, and wants me to put the feelers out.’

‘Then let’s get started,’ Smart said.

Gray powered up his laptop, and once the desktop appeared, he went to the online storage folder where the company documents were kept and entered his user details. Within minutes, the list of high-end security companies had been divided up, and all three of them were on the phone, trying to track West down. Gray took the kitchen, while Sonny had the living room and Smart sat in the dining room.

‘Hi,’ Gray said, when the first of his calls was answered, ‘my name’s Kevin McDonald and I’m calling from Haslo International.’ He explained that the company specialised in advanced mineral extraction and was sending a team out to central Africa to work up a potentially lucrative deposit that had been recently discovered. He needed a security detail, and a partner firm had recommended the services of Michael West.

‘Is he available for a one-year contract?’

‘Sorry, we don’t have anyone on our books with that name.’

‘Oh, I must have been given the wrong information. Sorry to trouble you.’

The next call went much the same way, but he hit the jackpot on the third.

‘I’m afraid Michael is currently on assignment,’ the security company’s representative said. ‘He won’t be available until March next year.’

‘That’s fine. The job won’t begin until the end of April. I’ll need a dozen men altogether, preferably people Michael has worked with before. Initially it will be a one-year contract.’

Gray knew that such a deal would cost almost two million if Minotaur performed it, a figure that was not to be sniffed at. ‘I’m also going to need the names and addresses of everyone he’s contracted for over the last eighteen months, for reference purposes.’

‘I’m afraid we don’t normally divulge that information.’

It wasn’t what Gray had been expecting. His company required customers to evaluate his contractors both during and after every job, and a clause in the agreement allowed Minotaur to pass on their details to other prospective clients for just such purposes. This kind of transparency helped him stand out from the less respectable operations that cared more about money than
reputation
.

‘I understand,’ Gray gambled, ‘but we’ve been burnt by previous agencies sending us substandard people, which is why we insist on doing our own checks. I’ll try another firm. Have you had any dealings with Minotaur Logistics?’

He could almost hear the sales rep’s panic at the thought of such a big catch slipping the net. ‘Bear with me a moment.’

Gray knew he’d hit the mark. He was ready with a pen and paper to take down the information, but it wasn’t forthcoming.

‘The best I can do is to contact Michael and ask if he agrees to me sharing this information.’

‘No need,’ Gray said. ‘From our brief conversation, I’d say your company has something to hide, and that’s not the kind of relationship we like to engage in. I’ll take my business elsewhere.’

He ended the call before there were any further objections. The last thing he needed was West being warned about someone delving into his previous work, even if it were a prospective client.

Gray left the kitchen and informed the others of his find, and then sent a reply to Harvey’s email.

Harvey uploaded the latest sets of mugshot images and sent them to the chief constable of West Midlands Police. Using the same technique he’d applied to identify Roberts and the other passengers on the flight to Nigeria, he’d found just short of two hundred people who’d made similar journeys at around the same time.

Now that the forces had names and faces to go along with the locations of the devices, there was less chance of any cell members slipping through the net—a net that was closing rapidly.

His phone beeped, and he saw the incoming email from Gray. After scanning through it, he placed a call to Veronica Ellis.

‘I’ve got a lead on one of the people who provided the training in Nigeria,’ he told her. ‘I’d like to follow it up.’

‘What have you got?’

‘A name. Michael West, ex-SAS. He contracts through an agency called Bicknell Security, but we don’t have a current location for him.’

‘Good work. We’ll deal with him later, but for now we’re two hours away from launching our operation. Focus on that for now.’

The line went dead, leaving Harvey frustrated that he would have to wait a little longer to chase up the overseas connection. Nevertheless, they had a good starting place, and by the end of the day he would be visiting Bicknell Security to find out exactly which client West had been working for.

His phone rang again. It was Lancashire Police, wanting to notify him that they were set to go at seven in the evening, the time that had been agreed. Over the next ninety minutes, more and more confirmations were received, until the last force in th
e country
gave the thumbs-up.

He decided to grab some food while he had the chance, and he went to the kitchen where he loaded a plate with cold cuts, cheese and buttered bread before returning to his station. Thompson saw him, and two minutes later appeared next to him, similarly stocked up, but with two ice-cold sodas as well.

She handed one to Harvey. ‘I’m glad it’s nearly over,’ she said, taking a sip of her drink. A thin film of moisture cl
ung to
her lips, and as she slowly licked them dry, Harvey began t
o su
ffer an acute case of localised high blood pressure. He tried to cast such thoughts aside, but her proximity meant h
e co
uld smell the perfume she favoured, a heady scent he found
intoxicating
.

‘You’ve done some good work over the last few days,’
Thompson sa
id.

Harvey nodded coolly, not trusting his voice under the circumstances. He took a few mouthfuls of food before clearing his throat. ‘So what’s the plan when this is over?’ he asked. ‘Resume the search for James Farrar?’

‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘I think it should be a lot easier with Brigandicuum to help us. He’ll be ours in no time.’

‘And after that, for you? Back to Six?’

‘I guess so,’ she said again.

She rested her chin in one hand and looked at Harvey.
‘I me
an it—you did some really good work. I’m sorry about my behaviour since I arrived at Five, but there was a lot of pressure to bring
Farrar
in, and I guess it got to me. I’m not normally such a
pompous bitch.’

Harvey couldn’t help but laugh, and Thompson’s face lit up, too. She was truly captivating, and he was so caught up in the moment that he didn’t notice his phone ringing until Thompson pointed down to it with raised eyebrows.

He answered it, and Thompson stood, placing a hand on his shoulder for just a second before walking back to her desk.

His eyes followed her all the way.

Chapter 29

16 December 2014

Tom Gray placed the bowl of spaghetti Bolognese and two serving spoons in the middle of the table and told Gill and Smart to dig in.

An anxious Gill had accepted his offer to stay for a couple of days, grateful not to have to spend the rest of the week alone in her flat. Although trouble seemed to follow Gray around, being next to him was usually the safest option in a crisis, and when Harvey’s armed guard rang the bell and introduced himself, she clearly felt safer still. A couple of large vodkas and tonic had completed the transformation, and the earlier events were forgotten as Gill tucked into the offering on the table.

Gray headed back to the kitchen to fetch the garlic bread, then spooned some food into Melissa’s bowl, using a pair of kitchen scissors to cut her pasta into manageable pieces.

‘I checked through everyone on our books to see if any of them was in Afghanistan at the same time as Michael West,’ Smart said. ‘It looks like three of our guys might know him.’

‘Give me their details after dinner. I’ll have a word with them.’

Once the plates were cleared away and Melissa was tucked up in bed, Gray joined Smart at the laptop. The three names were highlighted on the personnel spreadsheet in yellow.

‘Mackenzie knows him?’

‘Looks like it.’

Gray dialled Mackenzie’s number.

‘Paul, it’s Tom Gray. How’s things?’

‘Good, boss. What can I do for you?’

‘Ever heard of Michael West?’ Gray asked.

‘Westy? Don’t get me started on that prick. He’s not applying for work, is he?’

‘No, but someone recommended him to me,’ Gray lied.

‘Avoid him like the plague, boss. The guy’s a psycho.’

Mackenzie went on to explain that both men had taken part in Operation Moshtarak, a joint offensive against the Afghan town of Marja, Helmand Province. They’d been tasked alongside US Navy SEALs with capturing Taliban leaders, and after a couple of raids yielded no results, their patrol had come across an Afghan in h
is forties.

‘This guy was shitting himself, and Westy thought it would be fun to wind him up. He kept screaming that the guy was Taliban, making like he was gonna shoot him. The guy suddenly started getting angry when he saw Westy laughing at him, and he spat in Westy’s face. The next thing you know, guy’s got a round through his head.’

‘That sounds bad,’ Gray admitted, ‘but I always like to hear both sides of the tale. Have you got a contact number for him, or know anyone that has?’

‘Personally, I don’t care if I never hear from him again, but I’ll ask around.’

Gray thanked him and hung up. He tried the other two numbers, but neither man had any contact details for West, both taking the same view as Mackenzie.

‘Not a popular guy, Michael West,’ Gray told Smart. ‘I guess all we can do is pass what we know to Andrew and let him crack on with it.’

An hour and a half after the nationwide operation started, almost two-thirds of the suspects had been arrested and another sixty had been killed or had taken their own lives. Seven suspects remained at large, having abandoned their phones and laptops once their part of the mission had been completed, but armed with names and photos, the police were confident of catching them in the next few hours. If they didn’t, the images would be given to the news outlets.

That left two—one in Bristol and the other in Leicester—who were currently involved in armed standoffs. The situation in the Midlands was the one that caused Harvey most concern: the suspect had taken refuge in a youth club and was holding thirty
kids hostage.

Thompson came over to his desk to inform him that three more of the fugitives had been apprehended, leaving only six. ‘Any news from Bristol?’

‘Still trying to talk him out,’ Harvey said. ‘The SAS are on standby, but hopefully we won’t need them. What did you find at the warehouse?’

‘Deserted,’ Thompson said. ‘It was rented out at the start of the year, cash up front, but the name they gave turns out to be an eight-day-old who died back in the sixties. We’ll need Roberts to meet the Etch-a-Sketch people and come up with E-FITs of the people he met there.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Harvey said. ‘Roberts said he was given a bundle of cash and some pre-paid credit cards. If all two hundred of them got the same, that works out at a hell of a lot of money. You’d then have to pay for the training, explosives and all the other equipment they needed, which means someone put some serious funding into this.’

‘We suspect DSA had financial backing from AQIM,’ she said.

Harvey didn’t buy that. Algerian terror group AQIM, or
Al-Qae
da in the Islamic Maghreb, had reportedly earned around fifty million dollars through kidnapping and extortion in the last decade, which probably wasn’t even half the money DSA would have needed to pull off an operation of this magnitude and complexity. The research he’d done on the group while trying to identify their new leader, Takasa, didn’t indicate th
at th
ey had access to any other major funding. So exactly who had
financed it?

‘We’re talking about forty or fifty million sterling,’ he said. ‘That’s far more than AQIM made in ten years, and they wouldn’t have given DSA every single penny.’

‘I agree, that needs to be looked into, but for the moment we need to sort out the men on the ground. Let’s get them locked up, and then we can go after the people who organised this.’

Thompson rose and walked back to her own station, but this time Harvey’s eyes didn’t follow: he was more concerned with who was ultimately behind this, and the more he thought about it, the more the explosion in Kano seemed a little too coincidental.

It was just after one in the morning when word came in that the last of the suspects had been rounded up, and if Harvey hadn’t been so tired he would have joined in the celebrations. High-fives abounded, along with whooping and cheering as the staff in the control centre were finally able to vent the tension that had consumed them all for the previous two days.

Thompson sidled up to him armed with another couple of sodas, but he declined the offer. ‘I just want to hit the sack. I need a few hours before we follow up on Nigeria.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ she said, stifling a yawn. ‘Sadly, I’ve got a couple of things I need to finish up. No rest for the wicked.’

Harvey left her to it and made his way upstairs to the room they’d been allocated. The folding camp bed felt like a majestic four-poster when he climbed in, but when he closed his eyes he found that sleep wouldn’t come. His mind wouldn’t let go of the idea that DSA’s leadership were gone.

The Nigerian government’s official stance, as reported on the news, was that the leadership had been building a device when it went off by accident. That struck Harvey as highly unlikely, as that kind of thing was normally left to foot soldiers, not generals. Which meant the only real alternative was that the entire DSA council had been killed by a hostile party that didn’t want to claim responsibility. That in itself seemed improbable, because acts of terror were designed to heighten fear of a particular group, and he couldn’t recall a single incident where the terrorists hadn’t demanded recognition, especially when one group struck a blow against a r
ival outfit.

Despite the quandary, he drifted off, the long day finally catching up with him. His dreams were filled with visions of explosions, at first from afar, but then closer and closer. He found himself standing outside a building when the façade began to bubble outwards, the blast happening in ultra-slow motion. He was lifted from his feet and thrown backwards to the ground, where he lay helpless as masonry flew at him. A chunk the size of a suitcase arced towards his chest, and a crushing sensation enveloped him.

Harvey jolted awake but was unable to move, the weight still pressing down on him. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw Sarah straddling him, her mouth inches from his. Before he could say anything, their lips met, and she moaned as her tongue sought his. Harvey’s hands played down her back to her bare buttocks, and she writhed deliciously on top of him, stirring him upwards. Thompson slid down him and pulled down his boxer shorts, revealing his arousal. It was Harvey’s turn to moan as she gently kissed him, before sliding onto him like a velvet glove. She rode him, gently at first, her firm breasts heaving as she gained intensity, and he met her pace, their breath coming as one until both were spent.

Thompson collapsed next to him, her head on his chest as she stroked his stomach.

‘Not that I’m complaining, but—’

Thompson turned to look at him and put a finger over his mouth. ‘Shh.’

She lowered her head again, and within a minute Harvey heard her purring as she fell into a deep sleep. He joined her soon after, and this time he found his dreams to be significantly more pleasant.

When Harvey woke, he found himself alone. He stretched, recalling the dream he’d had about Thompson, then caught the scent of her perfume on the bed sheet. Realising it hadn’t been a dream, he looked over to her bunk, but saw nothing except for a pile of clothes. His watch told him he’d slept for eight hours, more than he’d had for a long time, and he decided to walk down the hallway to take a shower before heading downstairs for breakfast. He wrapped himself in a towel and was about to open the door when Thompson walked in, similarly attired.

‘Morning,’ she smiled, walking past him. He watched her stop at the bed and remove the towel, wrapping it around her head. When she turned to face him, completely unabashed, he felt the stirrings of the previous night return with a vengeance.

It didn’t go unnoticed.

Thirty minutes later, Thompson headed back to the shower, leaving Harvey to wonder what had brought about such a change in her. It was probably the relief of wrapping up such a massive operation so quickly, he decided. Victory as an aphrodisiac and all that. Whatever the reason, he wanted more of the same.

Thompson had awoken something in him that had lain dormant for a long time. In the past there had only been one special lady, but his work patterns soon put an end to any hopes of that relationship blossoming. Since then, he’d had a couple of flings, but none had left him feeling like a schoolboy experiencing his first crush.

He wondered absently if this could ever turn into something more serious, or if it were merely a celebratory round of sex, releasing the stress of the last few days. Sarah was, after all, a beautiful woman, and he imagined she must have a string of suitors, men with a lot more to offer than a middle-grade operative.

Harvey realised that he was already feeling the first pangs of jealousy, even though he had no idea where Thompson wanted to take this.
Grow up
, he told himself.
Go with the flow, and enjoy it while it lasts.

Thompson returned from the shower, the smile still in place, and he gave her a peck on the cheek before going to complete his own ablutions. On his return, he found her dressed and running a comb through her hair.

‘I just spoke to my boss,’ she said. ‘I’ve been called back t
o Six.’