Honour Bound (27 page)

Thank
God, he thought, it's to keep cars out not keep them in. He slowed to a walking
pace, waiting for the barrier to sink low enough for him to drive over it. It
was not as low as he would have liked when the first shots slammed into the
back door of the van. A second volley shattered the rear window and punched two
star shaped holes through the windscreen.

"Shit!"
He stamped down on the accelerator, grip tightening on the steering wheel. The
wing mirror disintegrated into a cloud of buzzing fragments as a bullet smashed
through it before gouging a furrow across the bonnet. The van rocked alarmingly
as the front wheels hit, then leapt over the barrier. The rear wheels banged
into the sinking metal and screamed for purchase. The tyres, billowing with
smoke, finally found a grip on the smooth metal and flung the van forward and
to one side. He was jolted violently sideways in his seat, shaken like a rag
doll as the thin metal side screeched along the brick pillar of the gateway.
Then he was free. He sped away, tortured rubber squealing as it fought for a
grip in the headlong dash along the High Street. He switched the lights on only
when he had turned out of view of the warehouse and was heading north towards
the Highway.

-45-

"Fuck
it." Peter Greaves swore in the direction of the fast disappearing van. He
put his gun away, turned on his heel and ran into the reception area. The
guard, still unconscious on the floor behind the desk earned no more than a
casual glance as Greaves stepped over him and picked up the telephone, punching
an internal extension.

"
Keiran
," he said, when the call was answered,
"meet me in the dock in five minutes, it's urgent."

He
replaced the handset without waiting for a reply and walked to the lift, his
mind running over the events of the last half hour.

Keiran
O'Connell was
waiting, sitting on the power pack of a forklift when Greaves entered the dock.

"Hello,"
he said, "shit hit the fan has it?"

"You
could say that," Greaves replied, still angry with himself for allowing
the intruder to get
away.                  

There'll
be a bollocking coming for this, he thought, Mr. Holmes won't be a happy
chicken, and it's my throat he's going to dump down.

To
O'Connell he said, "I want you to organize the drivers and get the trucks
out of here. Go and pick up the equipment up from the depot, and get it all to
the RVP."

"Were
not supposed to be there until half seven."

"I
know that, but I don't know if this geezer's going to be back with a busload of
filth. What we don't want is for the trucks to be stuck here and the equipment
stuck at the depot. If this operation
get's
fucked up
because I didn't do anything after letting him get away, I can see myself
modelling a new line of carpet slippers. The sort with fucking anchors."

"Okay,
will do," O'Connell said suppressing a grin he thought would be taken the
wrong way. "I don't suppose the
risk'll
be any
worse if we're there for an extra couple of hours."

"Good
man. By the way, your instructions are to stay at
Holflight
,
that's where Mr
Holmes'll
be staying until the kick
off. He was quite impressed with the way you handled the Tower Bridge
operation. He wants you on his bodyguard team."

“A battlefield promotion eh!”
O’Connell said,
“I suppose I should be flattered.”

"Flattered
be fucked," Greaves said, "
think
of your
back pocket. His boys do very well for themselves." 

O'Connell
jumped down from the forklift. "Right then, I'll get about earning my
money. I'll see you sometime tomorrow."

"Oh!
One other thing," Greaves said, "get one of those anti tank rockets
from upstairs. What's his name, Nash, worships that
Barret
and he swears it'll do the job. To be on the safe side I want something a bit
heavier and a bit closer. If we can't stop that tracking signal we'd may as
well advertise what were doing on the telly."

"The
last I heard that had been taken care of."

"You
didn't believe that shit about everything running smoothly and according to
plan did you?"

O'Connell
made a face and shook his head.

"I
thought not. The part of the operation to take out the satellite tower was
compromised, don't ask me how, I wasn't privy to that. All I know is that
version two relies too heavily on the accuracy of a fifty-calibre rifle, hence
the rocket launcher."

"Okay,"
O'Connell said, turning towards the lift, "I'll bring one along. Which
vehicle do you want it in?"

"Put
it in mine, the cone carrier."

Greaves
watched O'Connell disappear into the lift before entering the dock manager’s
office.

"Shit
and shag it," he said as he sat in the manager's chair. "Let’s get it
over with." 

He
picked up the secure telephone, tapped in a number and eyed the naked charms of
the current month's calendar girl while he waited for the connection.

There
were several short clicks on the line, and from experience, he knew the call
was automatically routing from the
Holflight
depot to
the phone in Holmes' car. The phone rang once.

"Yes."

"Mr.
Holmes," Greaves began, trying not to sound as worried as he felt,
"there's been some trouble at the warehouse."

There
was a long pause on the line and he could imagine the look that must now be
crossing his boss' face.

"What
happened?" The voice in his ear was cold and remote.

"We've
had an intruder. Flattened a couple of the blokes and killed another. He stole
one of the vans and got away. He was discovered just after you left."

Another
pause before Holmes said, "What did he look like?"

"I
only caught a glimpse through the window of the van he nicked, but he was
white, fair haired and looked well built. That's all I've got."

“I
know who the shit is even without a description.” Holmes said, “What action
have you taken?”

Greaves
thought he heard a tone of resignation in Holmes' voice but instantly dismissed
it as a quirk in the telephone’s reception.

He
said, "I've ordered the backup trucks out to the depot, I couldn't see the
point in leaving them here. The
team'll
be at the RVP
early but I thought that was the best thing to do, just in case he comes back
with the law."

"Good.
Get rid of the body where it won't be found, clear up any mess and get the rest
of the team out to the rendezvous point."

"That's
all in hand Mr. Holmes."

"Between
you and me," Holmes said, "this intruder is being fed info and
there's only one source it can be coming from. Tomorrow there's going to be a
slight change of plan. After you get rid of the truck, I want you and the team
to wait at the depot for further instructions. You'll hear from me after the
chopper's
dropped its load."

"Right-o
Mr. Holmes I'll be waiting for your call."

Greaves
replaced the receiver and breathed a sigh of
relief,
the short shrift he had expected had failed to materialize. He left the office
with a smile on his face thinking Lady Luck had been nice to him.

-46-

Norton
abandoned the battered van in a lay-by outside
Limehouse
police station before crossing the road to the car park where he had left the
hired Ford. He put the shotgun in the passenger foot well and sat behind the
wheel in darkness while the events of the last few days tumbled through his
mind. Getting to Holmes, he thought, was becoming a chore. He had been unable
to do anything at the car showroom other than watch him walk away, and tonight
missing him by a matter of minutes at the warehouse. The only consolation, as
long as the guard was telling the truth was his likely destination. The
gathering of the clans so to speak at Langdon's house, both rats caught in the
same trap. It had a pleasant sort of appeal. Langdon Manor would be his next
port of call. Starting the car, he drove towards London Bridge and the A3
heading South.

Just
after leaving the sprawl of the outer suburbs, he’d pulled into a rest area and
used the hire car's courtesy map to plan his route. Due to the early hour, he
had only seen three cars on the main road, which allowed him to keep his speed
up, and nothing at all since he turned on to what was little more than a
country lane. Fifty minutes after leaving the rest area, Norton drove past the
gated entrance to Langdon Manor. He kept going for a further half mile, before
turning off the road into a firebreak snuggled between two dark masses of
trees. A few yards along the dirt track, he stopped the car, turned off the
lights and took the night vision glasses from the pocket in his body armour. He
put them on, adjusted them for comfort, then with the lights still off, drove a
further four hundred yards along the track until he was well out of view of
anyone who happened to use the road. He returned the glasses to their pocket,
picked up the shotgun and quietly closed the door before setting off into the trees.

Vaporous
ladders of moonlight filtered through the thick network of branches that
supported a leafy canopy high overhead. The trees had been planted in more or
less straight lines so the only obstacles to free movement were the odd fallen
branch or the occasional sparse bush. Even the first twenty feet of the thin
trunks were devoid of foliage due to the lack of sunlight reaching ground
level. He walked at a steady pace on the soft, spongy ground keeping to the
alley formed by two adjacent rows. Small animals scurried out of his path to
take refuge in the scant undergrowth that was their home and an owl, which
seemed intent on following him, hooted every so often as if to let him know he
was not alone in this dim wooden world.

At
the edge of the trees, he knelt down and put the night vision glasses back on,
setting the zoom to maximum to survey the area in front of him. Langdon's
house, if you could call it that, he thought mansion was more apt, was still a
quarter of a mile away across flat and well tended lawns. Apart from a single
light over the main entrance, the building was in complete darkness. The huge
black mass occasionally relinquished some detail, as the clouds allowed the
weak light from the moon to caress it.

He
scanned the tree line first to the left, then to the right. It extended in what
appeared to be a large circle that encompassed the house and a sizeable lake,
the only break in the tree line that he could see, was where a road snaked from
the house, through the trees, towards the main gate.   

He
laid the shotgun on the ground and sat down, resting his back against the tree.
Take a leaf out of Vance's book and think this one through Sam, he said to
himself. He put the glasses back in their pocket and closed his eyes, the back
of his head against the rough bark. For this operation to have a successful
conclusion, he thought, I need Langdon and Holmes permanently out of the way.
The gang hired to do the robbery needs to be stopped, and things need to be
made safe for Sarah. That would be the ideal solution. In an ideal world, I
could call for back up, but who would come, someone to help or someone to
hinder. Just how far has Langdon's influence spread within the Unit? I've got
to sort this mess out myself, which is far from ideal.

His
mind clicked a gear, a decision made. The robbery team would have to be the
first priority as most lives are at stake if that goes ahead. Langdon and
Holmes come next and once Holmes is out of the way, Sarah should find things
easier.

He
thought of Sarah and smiled. She had tried again to talk him out of going after
Peter Holmes. She had realised that his word, given to the memory of a dead
friend would not, could not be broken. So she had tried to help, and in doing
so eased her own fears with the belief that the more he knew the safer he would
be. All the time he questioned her about Holmes and his organization, he found
it difficult to concentrate on her answers. There was something about her, in
the way she looked, the way she spoke, that attracted him. It felt right when
he was with her, he felt whole. Her presence filled a space within him that had
been empty for too long. He wanted to talk to her, make her laugh, and hold her
if she cried. He wanted to know her, to be her friend, to be someone she could
trust, someone she could turn to. He hadn't felt this way about anyone for such
a long time, longer than he cared to remember. It was as though she were a
magnet, pulling him inexorably towards her. It was a feeling, more, a sensation
he did not want to resist.

Sitting
in the quiet of the trees, he knew what had to be done, during the next
twenty-four hours, one way or the other everything would be resolved. He stood
up, the shotgun hanging like an extension from his hand. Okay Sam, he said to
himself, back to the car for a kip and then go find a likely spot for a bullion
robbery. He smiled. No big hardship there.