Traitor (6 page)

Mike averted his eyes, as if Stratton had hit on something.

Stratton read it like a poster on the wall. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘No. But I do wonder if you might be getting complacent. It’s not so much that you’ve lost your edge as that the edge has lost you.’

Stratton could not deny that Mike might have a point. It would explain his feelings of late. It wasn’t boredom, as he sometimes thought. But whatever it was, complacency could well be a symptom.

Mike leaned forward and softened his voice to hammer the point home. ‘You’ve done more of these kinds of ops than anyone. You’ve flown too close to the sun too many times, my friend. Maybe it’s time to be honest with yourself. I’ll believe you if you tell me you’re fine. But just take a while to think about it. You know better than anyone. Compare yourself, your enthusiasm now, with your glory days. And don’t let laid-back and blasé become confused with experienced. We both know the difference.’

Stratton considered this. He didn’t believe he was so far gone as to risk screwing up an operation. But his cynicism had increased over the years. And this wasn’t the first time accusations like these had been levelled at him. Either way he couldn’t bully his way out of it. If people thought he was losing it they had to change their own minds. He would not be able to do it for them. Even Mike obviously had his doubts, and he knew Stratton better than most. Stratton reckoned he had two choices. He could throw his teddies out of his pram and get all upset about it or he could toe the line. Perhaps he needed a new perspective on things. He didn’t think that visiting those twats in Sixteen would help any.Yet something positive could come out of it. He might even be able to prove the recorder was faulty and not him. And London might look favourably on him for going up there. Better than moping around in Poole.

‘When do you want me to go?’ Stratton asked.

Mike wondered if it was an admission of some kind or if Stratton was just playing the game. ‘You plugged in that crockpot of yours?’

‘Yes.’

Mike smiled. ‘Take a few days off, then. How’s the shoulder?’

‘Fine.’

‘Go for a long run . . . a couple of long runs. I’ll tell ’em you’ll be up there first thing Monday morning.’

Stratton got to his feet and went to the door.

‘Everyone has dips and bumps, Stratton. Don’t take it so hard.’

‘This isn’t a rugby club, Mike.’ He opened the door and walked out.

Mike had to ask himself whether he would give Stratton a call if a special landed on his desk tomorrow morning. For the first time he wondered if he would.

A white and red Super Puma Eurocopter thundered across the blue-grey waters of the North Sea into the Beryl Oil Field, midway between the Shetlands and the Norwegian coastline. Without a cloud in the sky the sunlight reflected off the sea like the glittering of a million crystals.

Eight people wearing dark green overalls occupied the two dozen cabin seats, spread about the craft as if they did not want to know each other. Of different races and complexions they all had one thing in common - they looked like thugs. At first glance they appeared to be typical roughnecks but a closer inspection revealed more sinister characteristics. Each bore some kind of scar or other mark of past hardship or hostility. An observer could have seen it in their eyes, too.

A robustly built man sitting in the frontmost passenger seat got to his feet, opened the cabin door and looked between the pilots through the windscreen. He had mousy hair cropped short, his European features disfigured by a pudgy, broken-looking nose. He focused his gaze below the horizon on the only solid object in view. From a couple of miles away it looked box-like, as though dozens of giant containers had been piled randomly on top of each other and balanced on four gigantic cylindrical legs that rose from the ocean. A bright orange flame burned on the end of a derrick high up and out to one side of the main structure.

The pilot glanced over his shoulder. ‘We’ll touch down in less than six minutes,’ he said.

‘Any problems?’ the man asked, his accent from somewhere close to London.

‘None,’ the pilot assured him. ‘We’re looking good, Deacon - don’t worry.’

Deacon ignored the man, stepped back into the main cabin and regarded his motley crew. They had been together as a team for almost two weeks and he was still not used to the sight of the strange collection of individuals. When Deacon had mentioned it to the bosses the first time he’d seen the assembled team they’d told him that it was intentional. Deacon never really understood why, beyond the obvious theatrical value, and he didn’t enquire further. If they were as able as they were odd-looking he did not care. He was used to working with different nationalities, just not so many in the same team. ‘We’re approaching the target,’ he called out above the sound of the engines.

Most of the others looked up at him, though not all appeared to understand fully.

‘Five minutes,’ he shouted, holding up five fingers. ‘Comms check,’ he mimed, reminding them that the five-minute warning indicated a prearranged order.

Each had a large bag. Those that had not understood Deacon saw the others opening them to retrieve a radio and earpiece and caught on, doing likewise.

Deacon produced a radio from his pocket, turned it on and placed an earphone with a microphone attached into his ear. ‘Onetwo, one-two. If you can hear me loud and clear raise your hand,’ he said slowly.

All of them put up a hand.

‘Good. Final weapons check,’ he said, holding up an old Armalite M-15 carbine and extending the short plastic butt that locked into place.

The others removed the weapons from their bags and did the same.

‘Put one up the spout,’ he shouted, making sure the gun’s magazine was firmly in place before snapping back the cocking mechanism and releasing it to allow the heavy internal spring to slam a round back home.

The sound of several weapons being cocked.

‘Apply the safety catch and put them back into your bag.’

Each man obeyed, except one.

Deacon walked down the aisle to the end row and stopped to look at a familiar enough sight that he could never quite get used to. It appeared to be a woman, or at least that was a possibility. She had the athletic build of a man - angular shoulders, thick neck and muscular arms and hands - yet her complexion and make-up belied this: her unblemished Indonesian skin cared for, her eyebrows plucked to form a thin curving line, a ring of pale blue pencilling around the eyes. She was adjusting her make-up using a small mirror.

‘Queen?’ he said.

She sighed and ignored him.

‘Is that really necessary?’

She finished what she was doing, put the lipstick away and snapped the compact closed. ‘I’ve been asked that all my life, Deacon dear,’ she said in a rugged accent. She removed an M-15 from her bag and deftly pulled back the working parts. ‘I think you asked me the same question that first job I did with you.’ She let the mechanism spring back into place. ‘The high-profile convoy from the Kuwaiti border to Mosul - remember?’

‘Yeah. You were winding up the Iraqis.’

‘They didn’t know what the hell I was when we ran into the first ambush. They pretty much loved me by the end of the second one.’

‘No one’s doubtin’ your fightin’ skills. I just don’t want you weirdin’ out this lot. Some are a bit confused about you already.’

‘They’re only confused about themselves,’ Queen said, applying the safety catch with her thumb and placing the weapon back in the bag.

Deacon shook his head and turned away, heading back to the front of the helicopter. The large red-headed Viking-like man he passed twisted in his seat to take a look at Queen. She pushed her breasts together and gave him a wink. He looked to the front again, his brow furrowed.

Deacon stopped beside a man with short spiky ink-black hair, his nose to the window. ‘Banzi?’

The man looked at Deacon. He was Japanese, his serious expression distorted by a false porcelain eyeball bearing the Japanese flag instead of a pupil, the red stripes of the rising sun disappearing into the surrounding edges of the socket.

Yet another weird characteristic that Deacon could not quite get used to. ‘You happy with the route to the power room?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ Banzi said in an abrupt manner. ‘Make sure the Pirate does,’ he added, jutting his chin with obvious contempt towards the man in the seat in front.

Banzi went back to looking out of the window and Deacon moved forward to the tall slim Somali seated in front, his expression blank as if in a trance. A deep scar ran from his chin, across an eye and into his scalp where it continued to the back of his head through short wiry hair. ‘You happy with the route to the power room?’ Deacon asked. The jet-black man did not respond. ‘Pirate?’

He half looked towards Deacon and gave a solemn nod.

The man’s lack of communication skills had begun to frustrate Deacon but he put it to one side. It was too late to do anything about it, anyway. He’d wanted to leave the Somali behind but the boss had insisted that he should remain with the team, assuring Deacon that he had extraordinary killing abilities. The Pirate’s partner, the Jap, seemed reliable enough.

Deacon went back into the cockpit.

The pilot was on the radio to the oil platform. ‘Roger that, Morpheus. Understood.’ He gave Deacon a thumbs-up.

The Morpheus, one of the North Sea’s biggest oil platforms, filled the windshield as the helicopter drew closer, its series of exposed decks like a massive denuded steel tower block. The main platform, at least half the size of a football field, lay covered by building blocks with workspaces in between and a huge crane on one side. The flame derrick stuck out a long way on the far side. The deck below, like a layer of a thick sandwich, was crammed tight with more box shapes, all the same height but with different widths and lengths. Below that was a collection of large pieces of machinery amid more storage structures. A large heli-deck, with its red circular target, came into view on its own level to one side and on top of the platform. They saw the brightly dressed standby fire crew on the side of the deck. As the helicopter came in they could see workers on the various levels. Deacon had never been that close to an oil rig before but he had studied the Morpheus’s blueprints and knew pretty much all of its facilities and features.

He felt his anxiety levels rise. The days of waiting had suddenly become minutes. Deacon certainly hadn’t done anything like this before. His career had begun with the 2nd Parachute Regiment and had been followed by three years in B Squadron, 22 Special Air Service. He’d missed the Falklands conflict by a couple of years because of his age but had seen some action in the first Gulf War - which was where he’d begun to head down the slippery slope. A combination of boredom with the military life and the discovery of how simple it was to make money illegally had altered his perspective. He had never owned anything of value because he had never been particularly attracted by modern comforts such as fancy cars or wristwatches. That changed a month before the end of the conflict.

Special forces customarily received solid gold coins to take on operations in the desert. They were part of their emergency survival equipment. They could buy assistance if an action resulted in a team member failing to make the pick-up or emergency rendezvous. Nomadic tribesmen, for instance, roamed much of the desert entirely ignorant or uncaring of the battles going on around them.

During Deacon’s last operation, an observation post along with three other SAS troopers, he had decided to keep the gold. He made a joke of it to the others, just serious enough for them to go for it if they agreed in any way - they all had to be a part of the plan for it to work. He mused how it would be such an easy way to make some money, that they deserved to come out of the war with something - the gold Krugerrands were worth around five thousand pounds for each man. The others bit. They agreed to see it through to just before the point of no return. If it looked like they could get away with it they would do it.

They would claim that a threatening enemy presence had caused them to bug out of the position, and that the only escape route headed away from the rendezvous point. Despite them hiding out during the subsequent daylight hours, a group of nomadic Arabs had discovered them and had threatened to turn the patrol over to the Iraqis. They’d had a choice: they could either fight their way out, which might have been costly, or hand over the Krugerrands in exchange for freedom.

It felt sound enough to go ahead with. Deacon warned them that suspicions would be raised but if they all stuck to their guns they would get away with it. No one would be able to prove otherwise.

The point of no return would be when the time came to hide the gold and present the operational report. They would secrete the gold among equipment already packed for the return to Hereford.

And that was precisely what they did. The interrogators questioned the soldiers as a group and individually. They even tried to convince each of the men that another had cracked and revealed the truth. But the technique did not succeed. And despite practically everyone ‘knowing’ that the patrol had stolen the gold, no one could prove it, as Deacon had said, and so they were never charged.

Deacon quit the SAS and the military a few months before the invasion of Afghanistan. Had he known that the regiment was going to war again he would have changed his mind - he liked a good battle. He turned his sights on becoming a mercenary, advertising himself as a former SAS soldier now turned freelance ‘military specialist’. He soon got all the battling he could handle: many of his subsequent experiences were more dangerous than any he might have had with the SAS. The oil platform task, as it was planned, would be nowhere near as perilous as some he had carried out during those years. By the end of the second Gulf War, big money, along with big risks, had become the norm for him. Running convoys from one side of Iraq to the other, and more recently along the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, was the most dangerous mercenary work there was. In the half-dozen years Deacon had been doing it he’d lost seventy-eight men serving directly under him, most of them killed alongside him. Many others had been captured after failing to escape an ambush but they’d faced the same fate.