Wilco- Lone Wolf 14 Read online

  ‘I blame the Islamists myself, they’re everywhere.’

  ‘They are,’ he said, laughing.

  Off the phone, I said to Swifty, ‘Ready for the Wolves?’

  He took a moment, still focused on the TV. ‘When I went fishing ... part of me wanted to quit, get out whilst I’m still alive, limbs in place. But I spoke to a few men fishing - about their lives, dull lives, all of them were complaining, and one night I went into a pub, saw a nice girl – she smiled, then a gang of big louts wanted to intimidate me, and without my pistol under my arm I felt naked.

  ‘I had no choice but to walk out of there, go back to the hotel and sleep, like a coward. Like a normal person. Alternative was to take on six of them, all bigger than you. And if I was out the Regiment I’d be in pubs with men like that. And if I was out ... fuck knows what I’d be doing.’

  I told him, ‘Nothing wrong with quitting, limbs attached, but this is a bit of a shit country. If I was out I’d be abroad somewhere, or anywhere. This is a nation of miserable bastards all being aggressive with each other.’

  ‘You’re right, but it took this week for me to realise it. I’m not twenty-one and about to go clubbing, so ... I’d be a loner and drifter, sat in of an evening watching TV.’

  ‘Like Rambo,’ I told him. ‘Here you’re a somebody, with skills, jetting around the world and jumping out of planes, outside ... you’re a nobody. That’s why so many troopers end up hitting the bottle or in prison. So ... you can handle the Wolves training?’

  ‘Easy, so long as I have a pistol under my arm.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll need threatening...’

  ‘I mean, I don’t want to ever be anywhere without a pistol under my arm.’

  ‘Welcome to my world,’ I quipped.

  The next day I received a call, and I was asked to make a formal statement by the Cabinet Office that I had nothing to with the mishap at The Telegraph.

  Being tape recorded and witnessed, I began, ‘Neither I nor any of my men were involved, I gave no such order to any of my men, and I have no knowledge that any of my men were involved - and you can be dead certain that nothing happens around here without my say-so. Many of my men are off with injuries or on holiday, so I can’t speak for them all, but they would never do such a thing without my consent, however aggrieved they felt about the death of Lesley.’

  ‘And do you have any knowledge of anyone in the intelligence community involved?’

  ‘No, I do not, and they rang me and asked the same questions you’re now asking. My contacts there were worried that I might have had a hand in it.’

  ‘And if Mi6 asked you to ... have a hand in it?’

  ‘Then I would follow orders, as military personnel do. But the cameras here, and the gate personnel, have my whereabouts last night, witnesses bountiful.’

  The Director called me, worried. I told her, ‘Not me or my men, probably a ghost or spectre, you know what London is like for ghosts, what with all those old buildings.’

  ‘And are there any matters outstanding with any ... loose ends?’

  ‘None, in fact the ends are so fucking tight they’ve forgotten what loose means. I would sit back and relax, Ma’am.’

  The following morning the news was good and bad. The BBC were reporting the “attack” upon a free and independent British newspaper whilst listing the damage in the billions, the building uninhabitable, a great loss of computers, typesetting machines and printing presses. The police were investigating whilst refusing to go anywhere near the building, it was a bit smelly.

  And four hundred journalists were trying to scrub the red smelly stuff off hands, faces, and out from hair, the female staff traumatised whilst the Prime Minister promised a far reaching investigation.

  I called Bob. ‘No.1, you’re a little tinker.’

  Bob laughed. ‘I’ve been watching the news, made me laugh for an hour.’

  ‘Try not to enjoy the job and the power too much.’

  ‘Got to have some fun.’

  ‘And the man ... your man?’

  ‘Covered in red stuff and demanding compensation from his employers along with the rest of them. The man who got into the water tanks is in Holland, a bag of cash to aid his travels. He’s off to Thailand for six months.’

  ‘I think he may need a check-up when he gets back.’

  Bob laughed. ‘And a rest, yes.’

  On Saturday afternoon the police arrived after calling ahead, Donohue and Morris from SO13. I led them to the hangar offices, the upstairs common room empty, Tinker in working with one of the Army Intel officers since we always had at least one man manning the phones.

  Donohue began, ‘We’ve made good progress with our teams, but the new Home Secretary is stalling a few things. We’ve got almost a year’s experience of firearms use on London’s streets, no major screw-ups so far but plenty of complaints and enquiries – they always complain and there’s always an enquiry.’

  ‘Same with the SAS when they fire a weapon on UK soil,’ I noted as I made the tea.

  ‘The second batch of coppers you trained are all mature on the trigger,’ Donohue pointed out. ‘After Sierra Leone they all think they’re fucking Rambo anyhow.’

  ‘They did well out there, survived a harsh environment, fired in anger,’ I pointed out.

  ‘We use The Factory a great deal, and a place in Essex, old factory.’

  ‘And the reason for this visit..?’

  ‘Home Secretary has no intention ... of handing us a hostage siege or terrorist job.’

  ‘It’s early days yet, and I’d not be in favour of your lot going at terrorists. But the chances of a large group of terrorists arriving on these shores are remote. And besides, they’d be coming for me.’

  ‘Our boys all rotate here, and they all get the thousand yard stare afterwards!’ Morris said with a smile. ‘They say that Sierra Leone was tough, but that here their nerves are tested. They say: 99% playing cards or walking the dogs, 1% bloodbath.’

  ‘I’ll have to stop upsetting people,’ I quipped. ‘So what are you really after?’

  ‘Our own hostage team, or at least a move towards it.’

  ‘If it’s a bank job gone wrong then I see no reason to call in the SAS, so long as it’s two men with pistols or sawn-off shotguns,’ I told them. ‘But let’s get your men up to speed on opposed entries, then I’ll write to the new Home Secretary – assuming he’ll listen to me. Not met him yet, but I have met the new Defence Secretary.’

  ‘What have the Telegraph got on you?’ Donohue asked.

  ‘Not sure, but we do know they got a dossier, so you might be sent to arrest me.’

  ‘I don’t think we’d get any volunteers to try and arrest you,’ Donohue noted. ‘Would you … come quietly?’

  ‘I’d disappear and go work for the Yanks.’

  ‘That mishap the newspaper suffered...’ Morris nudged.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Same thing happened in Nigeria, to the company that attacked you in Senegal...’

  ‘I was not involved with either, but I can’t speak for Mi6 obviously.’

  With guests departing, Bob Staines called. ‘I was doing some digging, found a man who knew a man at The Telegraph, and ... I sent Max at The Sun a fax that is untraceable. Seems that the newspaper’s building has some serious structural faults kept from the insurers and that the owners wanted to shut down those offices and move to new premises, but the cost of the old building was too high to fix and to sell on.’

  ‘No.1, I’ve said this before, but you are a world class shit.’

  ‘I know. Thanks.’ And he meant it.

  The next day the shit did not just hit the fan, it knocked the fan clean over, the owners of the paper now facing a criminal investigation, my silly grin fixed to my face for most of the day as the BBC murdered the paper and its owners.

  Paul MacManners called at midday. ‘Can you pop up in three days? Big pow-wow with the CIA and French Intel.’

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; ‘Boss - Mac, just tell me I need to be there and I will be there.’

  ‘I maintain the pretence that you don’t work for us. Helps me sleep better.’

  I smiled. ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘And ... some intel from Georgia came across my desk. Belchov-the-step-brother is alive, but was badly burned in some house fire, some forty percent burns, fingers removed, ears, left leg removed, so I guess he’s not actively involved in gun running at the moment or ... pretty much active in anything other than pissing through a tube. Police there found the bodies of his family and bodyguards, as well as an unnamed British man.

  ‘They’re cooperating to keep the British man from the press, his body to be flown back for DNA testing, what’s left of the poor chap.’

  ‘Sounds like these men got mixed up in a bad business. Those that live by the sword...’

  ‘Indeed.’

  After the call I walked to the new recreational centre, next to the lad’s huts. It displayed metal clad walls, yellow-magnolia on the outside, a high roof of about ten feet, and plenty of space. The builders were applying insulation and plasterboard, not needed if this had simply been for stores, but it was needed to keep men warm during cold British winters.

  The floor was hardboard over a metal frame and it felt solid under foot, blue carpet tiles being stapled down. As I stood near the doorway there was a kitchen on the left, a toilet on the right being plumbed in, but the lads did not have far to go to use their own hut toilets.

  The main room was perhaps eighty yards wide and twenty yards long, big enough for Echo lads to relax in, and they would not all be in here at the same time. But we would soon have resident veteran Wolves and the Wolf recruits, both British and American, and when those British lads had finished their training they would be based here, a doubling of our size at least.

  Outside, I checked my watch and called Sasha.

  That evening, on the outskirts of Chisinau, Moldova, Sasha and his team snuck up on a dated orthodox church that had been purchased under questionable circumstances and turned into a nightclub. If the church’s original sponsors could have seen the naked ladies dancing they would have turned over in their graves, resting places that had been covered in concrete and tarmac to create the new car park.

  Sasha glanced at the brilliant white walls, the blue rounded spires lit now by floodlights, the gold-covered spires, and he was impressed with the decor of this nightclub – till he realised that it was a church that had been taken over.

  ‘This was a fucking church,’ he whispered to Casper.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’m a Christian, and this is sick.’

  ‘You go to church, eh, pray for those you kill?’ Casper scoffed.

  ‘No, but I was raised a Christian, and I’d not use a church as a nightclub and brothel.’

  ‘Then this is divine retribution, no.’

  Sasha smiled. ‘Yes, it is I suppose.’

  Casper threw a switch, a car catching fire, an expensive Mercedes. It took a minute for anyone to notice, security soon running out, wrists spoken into, earpieces held, the fire brigade called for.

  From a balcony placed between two spires, furnished with a blue-tinted glass wall to one metre in height, Polchok stepped out with two bodyguards and peered down at the burning car in his car park.

  ‘Fucking amateur,’ Casper cursed as he took aim. Shoulder strap wrapped around his left forearm, the rifle butt moulded into his cheek, he peered through his sights, and at this range he could have shot an ear off without killing Polchok. The thought crossed his mind for a moment, making him smile.

  A gentle squeeze of the trigger, and Polchok’s head exploded, the white walls spattered with blood and brains. Cracks sounded out, the security men killed, large holes left in bodies, the team soon withdrawing as it started to rain.

  An hour later, and an hour’s drive north of the club under a light rain, the team got ready. Black fatigues on, webbing, pistol holsters on thighs like an SAS breach team, rifles checked, and they walked to the rear of a large hangar in covering pairs, the airstrip now quiet, the gate guards quite dead.

  A painstaking fifteen minutes were used to get position on a warehouse already studied in great detail, the guard numbers and positions known. Standby signal issued, go signal counted down, quiet cracks soon sounded out, guards bent-double or sent flying, bodies double-tapped, an aircraft mechanic in the wrong place and working some overtime on the wrong day; his extra pay would never be collected.

  Rushing into the vast hangar, Sasha fired into the wing tank of an An12 waiting some attention, fuel soon leaking. Rushing around to the other wing, his teammate with him, he fired again, fuel again leaking. To the hangar entrance he ran, a look down the dark apron to see shadows moving around an An12 sat getting damp.

  A flash, and that aircraft’s fuel was alight. Sasha ran back in and tossed his French-style flashbang into the pool of fuel, soon fleeing, his peripheral vision catching the flash.

  ‘Come to the end building! There’s a hostage!’ came over the radio.

  Sasha glanced at the dark outline of his teammate as they ran. ‘Hostage?’

  They ran past the second burning An12, past several large sheds, and to a small building with lights on. Casper stepped into the light just as Sasha reached the room, two guards dead and making a mess on the floor, crates scattered around, a woman perhaps in her thirties tied to a chair, her face bloodied, her clothes ripped, her breasts exposed, the women barely conscious.

  ‘What do we do with her?’ one of the Russian-speaking agents asked.

  ‘Leave her, they find her,’ Casper suggested.

  ‘Wait,’ she called in Russian, her head low. ‘I have ... valuable ... information.’

  Sasha said, ‘Maybe she knows about Polchok’s operation.’

  ‘Bring her. Quick,’ Casper reluctantly agreed, the woman untied and dragged out, hardly able to stand.

  As they passed through a hole in the fence Sasha called me. ‘We set fire to Polchok’s two planes here, killed his guards, but we found a woman tied up and beaten, we have her with us. She says she has information.’

  ‘Get her some help, question her, she might know something about Polchok we don’t.’

  At the cars, Sasha handed the woman a jacket. It was way too big but it would keep her warm. Driving off north, a glance back at a burning plane, Sasha noticed the lady asleep.

  An hour later, at the safe house - gates closed behind the cars, the lady was carried inside, the old couple running the safe house handed the task of first aid, and of cleaning up their guest as the team placed kit into trunks. With all items that may be of interest to the police in the trunks, save a few unregistered pistols, the trunks were driven off through the dead of night by a well-paid local.

  Sasha sat down as the woman - their guest now in someone’s borrowed jumper - nursed a coffee. ‘You worked for Polchok?’

  The woman stared back through a black and blue face, eyes swollen. ‘Two of your men are not Russian, maybe British speaking Russian.’ She waited.

  Sasha also waited. ‘We can help you if you know something.’

  ‘Who are you working for?’

  ‘Does it matter? You’re alive and free, so assist us.’

  ‘For someone in this line of work you have a kind heart, maybe ... a woman waiting for you at home.’

  Sasha took a moment. ‘And you? Someone waiting for you?’

  ‘No one special.’ She glanced at Casper was he walked past. ‘Interesting scar he has on his top lip.’

  Sasha glanced after Casper. ‘Any more insights like that and you get a shallow grave ... whether I have a kind heart or not.’

  ‘He’s not Petrov, is he...’

  Sasha took in the woman’s bloodied face. ‘No.’

  ‘You answer that question like you know for sure, so you know the real Petrov. What does GL4 mean to you?’

  Sasha cocked an eyebrow and suppressed his grin. ‘It is where we live.’

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nbsp; ‘Then I’m safe, and you’d not put me in that shallow grave. Tell Wilco I need extraction.’

  Sasha grinned and took out his phone. And called me. ‘The lady we rescued, she knows who we are, and who you are. I put you on.’ He handed over the phone.

  ‘Hello?’ came down the phone in English.

  ‘Talk quickly,’ I told her.

  ‘I work for Langley.’

  ‘Do you always start a conversation with a lie? Try again.’

  ‘How would you know where Langley places its people?’ she challenged.

  ‘If they were as good as all those novels suggest I’d be out of a job. But they’re not that good, and you’re not CIA, and the Americans know little about Polchok. So tell me why I shouldn’t have my men shoot you.’

  ‘On a spring morning I like a walk along Kensington Palace Gardens.’

  ‘Ah.’ She was Mossad. ‘Put the man on.’

  ‘Hello?’ came from Sasha.

  ‘Help her, give her money, get her over the border then cut her lose somewhere public. Make sure she’s not harmed.’

  ‘OK. Wait, she wants to talk to you again.’

  She began, ‘Is Polchok dead?’

  ‘Ask the man in front of you.’

  I could hear the chat in the background.

  She finally said, ‘You screwed up ten years worth of operation, asshole!’

  ‘If you’re going to call me names, we at least need to date and break-up first. And as for your operation, have your bosses send my bosses a list of active operations and we’ll avoid you.’

  ‘Ha. Idiot.’

  ‘Be thankful we rescued you before they killed you, amateur.’ I cut the call just as she swore down the phone, and I hit the numbers for David Finch.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Wilco.’

  ‘Problems?’

  ‘Rumour has it that this chap Polchok got his head blown off, his planes set on fire, but that a lady was rescued from his clutches, badly beaten and being held at the airstrip. Turns out she’s Mossad, and really pissed off that someone killed her mark.’

  He sighed loudly. ‘I feel a great deal of gentle complaints and nagging biting at my ankles already.’