Deathlist (6 page)

They’d moved into position two hours ago, in the dead hours. Something they had learned during their time in the army. The best time to carry out an attack is 0400 hours. Statistically, most people were likely to be asleep then. Too early for the early-risers, too late for everyone else.

Breaking into the building had been easy enough. The Storey Arms was closed over Christmas and the place was empty except for the on-site housekeeper, a balding man in his fifties with a bad leg who got free accommodation in lieu of a salary. He lived alone, in the smaller house to the side of the Storey Arms. Dragan had knocked on the door while Stankovic waited in the shadows to the side, a Glock 17 semi-automatic in his right hand. A knock on a door in the middle of the Brecons usually meant one thing: someone was in trouble on the mountains. So the housekeeper had been quick to answer the door, even at gone four in the morning. He hadn’t suspected a thing. Not until he cracked open the door. Then Stankovic stepped out of the darkness and put the Glock to the side of his skull and pulled the trigger. He’d dumped the housekeeper’s body in the crappy kitchen at the back of the house while Dragan grabbed the keys to the main building and disabled the alarm system. The whole operation had taken less than three minutes.

Then they went to work.

The overwatch team had a simple job. OP the soldiers and relay int to the guys on the delivery team. Movements, timings, anything unusual. They were also looking for the optimum place to park the bomb. It was a job they were ideally suited to. Both Stankovic and Dragan had trained as army snipers back in the day. They had plenty of experience of lying prone for hours on end, doing nothing but observing the enemy. They were four hours in and so far, everything had gone according to plan.

‘Students sitting down on their Bergens,’ Stankovic reported. ‘Distance, thirty-five metres. Time, six-thirty-six hours.’

Dragan made a note and said, ‘What are you going to do? With the money?’

The Tiger had promised each man on the team a reward on completion of the job. Half a million dollars, American. Stankovic took a swig of Red Bull and kept his eyes on the students.

‘I haven’t decided yet. You?’

‘Miami,’ Dragan replied without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’m gonna move to Miami. House on the beach, a boat, pussy. All that shit. Man, I’m gonna live like a fucking king.’

Stankovic nodded but said nothing. He’d heard it all before. Dragan was always going on about moving to Florida. The guy had a peculiar fascination with America. Peculiar, because America was the enemy. But Dragan had found some way to separate it inside his head. He followed basketball and wore Nike Air Jordans and smoked Lucky Strikes. Ever since they’d started preparing for the mission, he’d been obsessed by the whole Miami thing. Personally, Stankovic thought it was dangerous to think too far ahead. They’d planned the attack meticulously, but there was always the chance that something might go wrong. He didn’t want to tempt fate.

The bomb would do the heavy lifting. Some of the guys had been in favour of a gun attack, but bombs were more terrifying and would give the two of them a better chance of escaping unscathed. The car bomb would detonate at 0720 hours, cutting down most of the soldiers. Then the team would switch to the second phase of the attack. Stankovic and Dragan had a stack of weaponry laid out on the tables in the staff kitchen downstairs, all of it sourced from the old Yugoslav army. Half-a-dozen AK-47 assault rifles, Glock 17 semi-automatic pistols chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge, plus a box of hand grenades and six sets of Kevlar body armour.

The weapons had been smuggled into the UK the same way as the C4 explosives, secreted inside a hidden compartment in a knackered old Polish van they had driven over from Rotterdam via the car ferry. Once they’d passed through customs the Serbs had motored west to the meeting point, an old stone cottage outside Crickhowell, several miles due east of the Brecons. No one at the rental office had raised any eyebrows about six out-of-towners renting the cottage for the week. After all, this was rambling country. It wasn’t unusual for groups of hikers to base themselves in a cottage while they explored the mountains. Happened all the time.

Once they had arrived at the cottage, the Serbs had ripped apart the van, retrieving the weapons and the explosives hidden inside the panelling. They’d spent the past three days fine-tuning the plan and recceing the area, running through the plan one last time. The timing was critical, Stankovic knew. As soon as the bomb went off, they’d have approximately eight minutes until the first emergency responders arrived on the scene. There wasn’t a whole lot of margin for error.

Their getaway vehicle was a white Ford Transit van parked up at the side of the Storey Arms, with the name of a fake maintenance company splashed down the side. If anyone strolled past and noticed the van, they’d assume the housekeeper had called in the plumbers for an emergency job over the holidays. Once the attack had gone down, they’d ride the van to an abandoned ironworks on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil, ten miles to the south of the Storey Arms. Then they’d change up vehicles, torching the Transit and switching to a couple of Vauxhall Astras with clean plates. From Merthyr it was an eighty-mile drive west to the port at Fishguard and a ferry across the Irish Sea to Rosslare. By the time the security forces were getting their shit together, Stankovic and the other guys would be flying out of Dublin airport.

The rain was now falling in a constant dull rhythm, greying the land. Big drops were spattering against the window, sliding like melted gelatine down the glass. Stankovic looked on as the students sat down on their Bergens in a wide circle in the middle of the car park, twenty metres away from the four army trucks. He smiled to himself.

Everything was going according to plan.

‘Time?’ he asked.

‘Six-forty-five,’ Dragan said.

Stankovic nodded. Thirty-five minutes to go.

EIGHT

0659 hours.

The mist was rolling down like spray from a wave as Porter and Bald tabbed up the mountain. The cold scraped like knives against their faces, tugging at their windproof smocks and needling their bones. Fifteen minutes after they’d set off up the trail and Porter could literally feel the booze sweating out of him. His throat was drier than a Mormon wedding. The thumping inside his skull was relentless. But he kept going. In spite of his heavy drinking he had a decent level of fitness from going on the big runs on the Training Wing, and the old muscles were soon working overtime as the two Blades pushed on up the steep and rugged slopes.

The first kilometre had been steady uphill work, rising on a sharp incline past a densely wooded area to their right before it dropped down to a grassy valley with a small stream running across it. The ground around the Blaen Taf Fawr was scattered with damp, slippery rocks and the air was thick with the smell of fresh heather and churned mud. There was no one else about, Porter saw. Not at this hour. There was nothing but a dull stretch of wet rock and tufts of long, brownish grass.

No sign of Vowden and Skimm.

They’re probably on the top of the Fan. Clansman’s probably shafted. All this way for a poxy radio.

He thought back to McCanliss. He’d have to deal with the chief instructor after the Fan Dance. Porter had already been looking forward to beating the crap out of McCanliss. But now he had an extra motivation to hurry up and get back down to the Storey Arms. Porter would bide his time until the Fan Dance was over.
Then
I’m going to batter the cunt.

Bald was blowing hard. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, his face shading red with the strain. In the Regiment, everyone blows in different ways. There were the greyhounds, the guys who were superfit and lean and could run for hours without breaking into a sweat. And then there were the bigger guys like Bald. The ones who were more muscular, but who struggled more when it came to the runs. But they kept going. They kept pushing. Because they were Blades, not retreads like Bob fucking McCanliss. Because it wasn’t in their nature to quit.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Bald gasped. ‘It’s true what they say. No matter how many times you climb this bastard, it never gets any easier.’

Porter grinned. ‘You’ve been hitting the weights down the gym too hard, Jock. Should’ve worked on your cardio a bit.’

Bald glared at his mucker and caught his ragged breath. ‘That’s rich coming from you, mate. The only thing you’ve been lifting is a whisky bottle to your lips. Christ, I can smell your breath from here.’

‘I had a few jars last night,’ Porter replied.

‘A few shelves, more like.’ Bald snorted and shook his head. ‘Sod it. A few hours from now I’ll be getting shitfaced too. Smudge Staunton is having his leaving do tonight down the Newmarket Arms. Half the Regiment’s gonna be there. I could do with a drink after that shite at the Killing House.’

Porter frowned. ‘What really happened up there, Jock?’

Bald paused again in his tracks. He stared levelly at Porter. ‘It was an accident.’

‘But if something did happen . . .’

‘It didn’t, all right?’ Bald snapped. ‘But that prick McCanliss is right. The top brass are looking for a scapegoat. Someone to hang this mess on. My arse is on the line here, mate.’ He fell silent for a beat as the two Blades moved on up the trail. ‘Maybe I should take a leaf out of Smudge’s book. Get out of Hereford before the CO gives me the boot. Cash in my chips and go on the Circuit.’

Porter looked at his mucker. ‘That’s what Smudge is going to do?’

‘Too fucking right,’ said Bald. ‘He’s got himself a gig down at Templar, the lucky sod.’

Porter listened keenly. Templar. The name vaguely rang a bell. He’d heard of them somewhere before. A secretive PMC based down in swish Mayfair, headed up by an elusive former CO of the Regiment by the name of Marcus Keppel. Templar was big money. Or so Porter had heard.

‘Ten grand a month,’ Bald said between erratic draws of breath. ‘That’s what Smudge reckons he’ll be on at Templar. Think about it, mate. Ten large. That’s some proper wedge. Way more than we’ll ever earn if we stick around Hereford.’

Porter cast a doubtful look at Bald. ‘You’d really turn your back on the Regiment?’

‘For that kind of money, I’d turn my back on my own mother.’ Porter opened his mouth to reply but Bald quickly threw up a hand. ‘Before you get started, don’t give me all that crap about loyalty. The top brass don’t know the fucking meaning of the word. I should know, after what those pricks did to me in Belfast.’

There was a dangerous gleam in his cold blue eyes as he spoke. Porter nodded and said nothing. He knew about Belfast. All the Blades did. A few years back Bald had crossed the Irish border, risking his life to rescue an MI5 handler who’d been kidnapped by the Notting Squad, the IRA’s internal security unit. The illegal crossing had very nearly triggered an international incident, and instead of being congratulated on saving the handler’s life, Bald had been severely reprimanded by the head shed. His actions had turned him into a pariah and almost cost him his career.

‘Maybe I’ll join you at Templar,’ Porter said with a smile. ‘Maybe it’s time for us both to get out.’

‘You’ll have to sort your breath out first,’ Bald said. ‘Jesus, mate. You could strip the paint off the Sistine Chapel with breath like that.’

Porter looked away. Hated to admit it, but Bald was right. His drinking was out of control. He’d hit the bottle soon after Beirut. The CO had ordered him to take six months’ leave. Officially it was to allow Porter to decompress and recover from his injuries. Unofficially, he was being blackballed. On his return to Hereford there had been a clear-the-air meeting and Porter had been exonerated of any blame. Killing children was against the Geneva Convention and there was nothing the top brass could do. But that didn’t stop the accusing looks from the other Blades in the Hereford boozers. Guys he’d once counted as good mates giving him wary glances. Porter knew what they were thinking. He could see it in their eyes.

We can’t trust this guy. No way. When push comes to shove, Porter won’t have our backs.

He could have left the Regiment, but being a soldier was all Porter knew. So he carried on, a Hereford outcast with the blood of his muckers on his hands. Then the nightmares started, and he turned to the bottle. At first it was a few liveners first thing in the morning, just a little something to help him get through the day. Then it turned into a bottle of Bushmills every day, washed down with a crate of Stella. Diana found out about his drinking. She threatened to walk out on him if he didn’t stop. Porter drank more. Then one day he came home to find a handwritten note on the kitchen counter.

I’ve leaving
, the note had read. The words were stencilled in his mind.
I’m sorry, John, but I can’t take it any more. I’m taking Sandy with me. Please don’t try to contact us. Take care. Diana.

Sandy. His daughter. She was seven. She had hair the colour of sunshine and eyes as big as poker chips, and a laugh so infectious it belonged in a government laboratory. There was no bond like that between a father and his daughter. Some of the other guys in the Regiment struggled to bond with their kids, but Porter had never had that problem with Sandy. She had all of her mum’s good looks and none of her old man’s cynicism. She was the one person who made life worth living.

And now she was gone.

He had nothing left. He wasn’t even a true soldier any more. The closest he’d ever get to combat again would be instructing the students on how to assault a building six months from now. His stint on the Training Wing was to be his last posting in the Regiment. What will I do then? Porter wondered. Knock on the door at Templar and ask them to give us a job? He smiled in amusement. One phone call to Hereford and they’d laugh me out of the building. No. The only job I’ll be able to get will be working the doors at a dodgy Romford nightclub.