Payback (15 page)

Mid-morning
and he had already reached Rìo On, having barely rested. Seeing the inviting river he at last decided to pause briefly. Taking off the denims, he swam in the clear, cold water before eating some hard and tasteless
pacaya
he found growing wild nearby. The carbohydrate filled him, and he snatched a light sleep. Half an hour later, and he felt completely rested and refreshed. Washing the guard’s blood off the hunting knife, he used it to fashion himself a
lap
-
lap
loincloth from the shirt. Tidying the area to make following him difficult, he carefully stuffed the jeans and discarded strips of material under a rock and continued his journey.

Three
hours later he had crossed the Macal yet again, this time at the Guacamallo Bridge from where he could soon see the Vaca plain beckoning him in the distance, with its dense blankets of rain forest. Beginning the ascent, he was glad to leave the acrid pines and their parasitic orchids and bromeliads behind. He was even more pleased to abandon the Reserve road and paths to begin to strike out on his own, as the Chiquibul primeval womb drew him nearer to a new, safe home.

Chapter Eight

The industrial park was a mile outside Stow-on-the-Wold, just off the A429. The five-person team selected for the raid had arranged to make their own way individually to Gloucestershire, meeting up in the car park at the bottom of the hill, on the village outskirts.

It
was dark and deserted when Lydia drove in, a far cry from the stream of buses and cars which choke the narrow streets on a typical summer’s day. But there are few things more depressing than an out-of-season tourist centre, and the village’s peeling paint and shuttered-up mood hung over all the unit members already there. Parking up, she walked over to Sam Thrower’s mud-spattered Land Rover Defender. It was a long wheelbase 110 County model, with no side windows. Lydia had been ten minutes early, but still the last to arrive.

‘
Now we’re all here...’ Thrower began, unfairly, ‘we might as well make a start. Are you all OK? Know what you’re going to be doing?’ The group nodded back. They were all wearing dark, close-fitting clothes, as instructed. ‘All right then. Tony, you stay here in the Land Rover, and keep in radio contact for when we need you to come running.’ The plan had been for him to remain parked up, and be ready to go through the motions of changing a tyre. Thrower had taken the trouble to have a flat wheel ready for him, in case a passing police patrol stopped to investigate. ‘Chrissie and Joan, you follow behind Lydia and me after a couple of minutes. So. Now. First, switch on your radios. Check they’re working OK.’

Each
put the ear-piece in place, lifting the tiny black, foam-covered neck-mikes closer to their mouths. ‘Beam me up, Scotty,’ joked Tony from the Land Rover, playing around with his volume control. This was followed by a piercing blast of feedback.

Thrower
tore his ear-piece out until it stopped, then glared at him. ‘What we’ll see tonight will be science fact, not science fiction,’ he cautioned. ‘Let me hear the rest of you say something, to test these things.’ Each muttered ‘testing’ in turn. ‘Fine,’ he said, satisfied. ‘Keep in the ear-pieces, but don’t broadcast unless you have to warn us about something. OK? Now. This is it. You all know what you have to do. Let’s do it. Good luck.’

Now
it really was the time to go, the mood changed. The tension was palpable, but Lydia was first to strike out. ‘Come on then, Sam. Lead the way and let’s get this thing over with.’

He
looked at her with a hint of respect, and handed over a black canvas bag. ‘All your toys are in there. If you want me to do it after all, I’d understand. You’ve had the bottle to show up. That’d be good enough for me now.’

‘
I said I’d do it, and I will,’ she replied, acknowledging his peace gesture with a small smile. ‘Let’s see how good a teacher you are.’

They
were walking away from the village and across icy fields to enter the industrial park from the open countryside at the rear. Their reconnaissance had established that one of two security guards would be on duty that night. The younger of them spent much of his time snoozing in the neon-lit Portakabin office by the entrance barrier. When awake he listened to an iPad or rang people, presumably his girlfriend or other insomniacs. He never toured the site, and just about managed to make the obligatory phone call every three hours to his control office in Cheltenham. This was the guard Thrower hoped would be on this night’s shift. The other man seemed to be in his late sixties, and was far more diligent. There was a small TV set in there, and he sometimes watched an old film. But at least three times a shift, and regardless of the weather, he would patrol the park, with its seven tenanted units, the ramrod back betraying a service career sometime earlier in his life.

It
took them just over ten minutes to reach the four-foot-high chain fence which marked the outer perimeter of the park from the surrounding farm. It was in no way a security fence, but there to keep the sheep in. They climbed over without difficulty, heading for the Temple Bio-Laboratories plant one building in, along the private road. There were just half a dozen sodium streetlamps illuminating the park, but Thrower knew that the Temple building had a number of standard security sensors of its own which, if a beam was broken, would flood the place in light.

Exactly
as rehearsed, when they reached the corner streetlamp the two got down on their stomachs and crawled commando-fashion the rest of the way to the side wall of the building. This was something Thrower had tested a week earlier to check out the sensor footprints. Lydia was numb with fear and deeply worried about remembering what to do. And would her shaking hands do what she told them, even if she could remember everything?

Thrower
was in front of her and, on reaching the back delivery door, he took out what looked like credit cards, along with something resembling a small oblong-shaped torchlight. First he ran the torch object very slowly along the top edge of the door starting from the hinge side. When a red light flashed, just a few inches from the opposite edge, he firmly pushed one of the credit card wafers into the gap between the door and the frame at exactly that point. It seemed to stay in place when he took his hand away to continue running the torch instrument down the length of the front edge of the door. No red warning lights came on this time, and he next ran it along the bottom of the door again, from the hinge side. Once again, just a few inches from the opposite edge, and mirroring the top, the red light flashed. Pushing in the second credit card he stood back, looked at the door as if at a sporting opponent, and spoke softly into his neck-mike. ‘You two. Don’t forget to crawl at the streetlamp.’

‘
OK. Just coming up to it,’ said Chrissie.

Lydia
could hear the nerves in the other woman’s voice even in these few words. She had to stop herself from saying something reassuring back. Instead she watched Thrower in action, impressed. He was now working on the lock with a set of skeleton keys. Lock-picking, something taught him by his burglar stepfather, had long been one of his party tricks, as well as a hobby. The skeleton keys had also been passed on to him by his stepfather: tools of the trade which, when married to the apprenticeship he had patiently given the boy, meant Sam need never be poor.

The
lock was a basic pin tumbler. And, to his relief, a cheap Chinese make. This would allow him more clearance between the barrel and body, and with any luck it would also have larger than normal pin holes. Inside it were five equal-length pins, which in their locked mode held the barrel fixed in position. When the correct key was inserted, it would simply force the springed pins—each split at a different point—into line with the outer casing of the inner barrel. This could then turn freely to release the lock. What Thrower had to do was use his special tools to replicate this action, so opening the now hopefully dis-alarmed door.

Kneeling,
he put his lips to the lock and blew hard to free any grit from the mechanism. Then he selected a tension bar from his tool kit, delicately inserting it into the barrel and working it to and fro, judging the pressure needed to imitate the key action in turning the barrel. Next he eased a rake into the keyway, over the tension bar, as far as the rear of the back pin. The tension bar was now supposed to replicate the normal key’s bottom shaft, as the rake, when quickly pulled out, aligned the five pins, so allowing the tension bar to turn the inner barrel and open the lock.

With
a look to the heavens, Thrower applied light tension and whipped out the rake. The lock however stayed stubbornly in place. He knew immediately that he had applied too little pressure, allowing the pins simply to fall back in place. A good mistake though. Too much pressure could have complicated things by binding the top pins. After one more failed attempt, worried, he put his ear to the lock and raked again, leaving the bar in place, listening for the tell-tale sound of a pin sticking. Happily, he heard nothing and so tried once more. A painstaking clockwise turn of the bar brought a smile of relief and pride to his face. But only for a fleeting second. Still kneeling, he knew it was not over yet. The door would now open but—had he properly disarmed the alarm?

Edging
the door fractionally ajar, millimetre by heart-stopping millimetre...it was long, long seconds until he was sure. Then...Yes. Yes! It was safe. Thrower stood up, dizzily gulping air, realising suddenly that in his concentration he had been holding his breath.

‘
Are you all right?’ Lydia asked, worried.

He
nodded, flushed. ‘The lock’s open. Before we open the door though, pray the sleeves hold that I put over the alarm contact sensors. These things can be bloody unreliable.’

‘
What? Those credit card things?’

‘
Yeah. The theory is they mirror back the contact on the door edges, so that when we open the door the circuit stays intact. And the theory also is that the electromagnetic field holds them in place.’

‘
The theory...And how well tested
is
this theory?’

‘
I’ve had a success rate of about seventy per cent.’

Now
you tell me, she thought to herself bitterly. ‘So we have a three in ten chance of the alarm going off, here and at the police station?’ she whispered.

‘
Worse than that. That seventy per cent was just my bench-test results on them reflecting back the contact. There’s also a one in four chance of the magnetic field being too weak to hold the top one in place,’ he replied matter of factly. ‘Ready?’

She
glowered at him in disbelief, then watched with a kind of fatalistic, detached fascination as his hand, still on the handle, began to inch the door open. Her headache was now in danger of turning into a blinding migraine. Then suddenly, there was a loud electronic howling filling her head and she screamed outloud, dropping the bag.

The
blow nearly broke her nose, but the searing pain cleared her head like smelling salts. Opening her eyes to focus, she saw Thrower mouthing silent obscenities in her face. His hand came back to slap her again, but she caught it in time. The electronic howl, she now realised, was simply radio feedback from her ear-piece. Still snarling at her, he pushed the door wide open and in the same flowing movement gaffer-taped the cards in place.

The
security alarm was silent.

‘
What happened...?’ she whispered.

Pulling
her roughly inside, he closed the door behind them and put his back against it. ‘You screamed, you stupid cow! And you dropped your toys.’ His face was thunderous with anger. ‘Detonators in or not, you
don‘t
drop fire-bombs on the bloody floor!’ Then, turning his head away in disgust, he spoke into his neck-mike. ‘How loud was that scream? Did you hear it, Chrissie?’

‘
I’ll say! What happened?’

‘
Never mind that. Get out of view, quickly, before the guard comes to check it out. Do it. Now! And if you see him, whisper to me where he is and what he’s doing. We’re now inside.’

Lydia
slumped to the floor in the darkness, furious with herself for justifying all his ‘stupid cow’ stereotyping of her. Her confidence shot to pieces, she felt she could do nothing right any more.

‘
Sam!’ she heard Chrissie bark in her ear-piece. ‘The guard. He’s on his way over!’

‘
Which one is it? An old guy or the other?’ Thrower demanded.

‘
He’s old-looking.’

‘
Shit!’ he spat. He knew the type. Old school, knew his job, took his responsibilities seriously and had the irrational courage to execute them to the letter.

Lydia
hugged herself miserably as she felt Thrower’s eyes boring into her through the blackness. It had all gone wrong because of her. Because of her! And it was not over yet...

*

The helicopter pilot looked over at Bolitho. ‘Ready?’

‘
Hit it.’

They
were in the ancient Bell Ranger regularly chartered by Temple Bio-Laboratories for ferrying people and freight to and from Belize airport. Its owner, or rather the man trying to pay off the monthly lease payments, was a late-middle-aged Lancashire man, an ex-RAF pilot. As a Flight Lieutenant he had completed four standard seven-week tours in the late seventies flying helicopters in the then colony, loving every minute. Mostly it had been in the large transport helicopters, the Pumas, delivering supplies to Gurkhas and Queen’s Infantry units—the main run being to and from the airport camp at Belize International and Rideau Camp. Sometimes he had been up in the smaller Gazelles and night-flown wiry, tight-lipped SAS men to their map references for routine exercises, although on other occasions, and especially when he dropped them near the Guatemalan border, he had known this was not just training, but covert ops.

The
pilot activated the ignition switch and immediately the starter motor whined to life, kick-starting the turbine. Having checked his gauges—exhaust gas temperature, oil pressures for engine and transmission, torque—the blades now spinning invisibly above them, he pulled at the collective pitch control lever and lifted off. Once airborne, he pushed the left pedal then moved the cyclic stick to the left, carrying them south towards the Vaca plateau.