Authors: JT Brannan
STOP AT NOTHING: 'Mark Cole is Bond's US cousin mixed with the balls out action and killing edge of Jason Bourne' Parmenion Books (17 page)
Almost five thousand miles to the south-west, Albright watched Sarah Cole and her two children deplane the jetliner onto the scorching concrete of Miami International’s Runway Three. The kids looked happy, he thought in surprise. Probably no idea what’s going on, he decided. Sarah looked more nervous, but Albright found himself impressed with her composure.
Albright, ensconced in the security command centre of the airport after using his official credentials, saw Sarah finish a visual search of the area, and then watched as she and her children started off for the terminal building.
He knew that Sarah be keeping tabs on who might be watching. It wouldn’t matter though – they would have to leave the airport at some stage, and if they tried to get a connecting flight from within the airport, Albright would pick that up right here in the office.
They wouldn’t get one over on him again.
Sarah had seen nothing that aroused her suspicions, but that meant nothing – she had no idea who the people following them might work for, and therefore no idea how sophisticated their surveillance would be. For all she knew, they might have access to the airport’s own security apparatus. If that
was
the case, she knew that their actions within the airport would be monitored electronically, without them ever realizing.
Sarah’s visual checks were only really to see if there was anything overt to be concerned about. The escape plan accepted the fact that they would be monitored until leaving the airport, and all hinged on the routine they would follow once outside.
But Sarah had been told by Mark time and again that it never hurt to check; if she could identify a surveillance team within the airport, it might make avoiding such a team later on a little easier.
Sarah and her children made their way slowly over to a small restaurant in the main foyer, trying as best as they could to avoid the hustle and bustle of the thousands of holidaymakers and business people that swarmed around the airport like bees in a hive.
Sarah had already visited the American Airlines ticket desk and bought three one-way tickets for San Francisco, on a flight leaving in just over three hours. She had no intention of boarding that flight, a fact that would be obvious nearer the time, but she hoped that the enemy, whoever they were, might waste a few resources setting up surveillance on the other side of the country. At the very least, she hoped that the people undoubtedly waiting and watching outside would allow themselves to relax slightly, making things easier for when they
did
leave the airport.
Taking time out to have a comfortable meal would help the subterfuge, as they looked for all the world like they were just another family killing time before a connecting flight. It would also give Sarah the opportunity to go over their next course of action, as time spent in mental rehearsal was never wasted. Mark had taught her that lesson well.
Once Cole had verified that the men were definitely tailing him, he decided to act quickly, before the four of them had time to regroup and develop a plan of their own. He looked through the window at the view outside the colossal ship. The weather was filthy, rain driving hard against the thick glass.
He turned away and traversed the busy corridor, stopping outside a jewellers to peer through the window, watching the door to the men’s toilets just adjacent to the shop with his peripheral vision. He couldn’t see the two men from the parking sector yet, but assumed they would be waiting, hidden, until called by the others.
Of the second pair, the one Cole had labelled ‘Mr Blue’ due to his blue denim jeans, was watching him surreptitiously from inside the jewellers, whilst the other – ‘John Wayne’, because of the curious, bow-legged way he walked – was about ten feet to Cole’s left, sitting on a plastic bench pretending to read a copy of Newsweek.
Out of the corner of his eye Cole saw a lone man push through the toilet door back into the corridor. Cole knew the toilets would now be empty, and took it as his cue to move. Turning away from the shop window, he started to wander down the wide corridor. Acting as if he had just spotted the toilet sign, he stopped as if wondering whether he needed to go, and then pushed through the door into the bathroom beyond.
He didn’t know if the men would follow, but at least it would let him know what the men’s orders were. If they were merely to observe him, possibly with the hope of arresting him after, they would wait patiently outside until he had finished. If, on the other hand, they had orders to kill him, then an empty bathroom would be too good an opportunity to miss and they would soon be joining him.
He made his way to a urinal on the wall straight ahead, stomach turning at the smell of the place. That was another thing that would never change about ferry crossings, he guessed; toilets constantly blocked with vomit from alcohol and general seasickness, along with diarrhoea from disagreeable food. Holding his breath, he unzipped and immediately started to urinate. If the men did enter, Cole’s apparent vulnerability would make them relax, and possibly be more likely to make mistakes. In addition to which, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been, and he actually
did
need to go quite urgently.
Moments later, he heard the door open behind him. He watched the reflection in the curved metal of the cistern pipes in front of him, and the distorted image showed the two agents entering, the rear man – Mr Blue – placing some sort of jam under the door to stop any unwanted visitors from coming in and spoiling the fun. He’d been right, Cole thought as they approached; their orders were to kill him.
Cole knew the men wouldn’t risk using guns. Silenced weapons could slow the velocity of a bullet sufficiently to negate the telltale sonic
crack
, but ricochets were always a danger, especially in such a confined space. Additionally, gunshot wounds were messy, and the agents surely wouldn’t want to raise suspicions too much. They wouldn’t want it to appear like a professional hit, not in so public a place.
Cole expected knives, at close quarters; something that could be blamed on a robbery, or an argument. Or maybe they’d use a garrotte, and try to strangle him. Or a taser, hitting him with 50,000 volts and causing a heart attack that would only later be determined as unnatural. Whichever method, Cole knew that they would have to get close.
One of the men approached the urinal next to him. From the heavy footsteps he knew it was John Wayne; Mr Blue was hanging back. As Cole started to zip up, he turned to the man stepping in front of the adjacent urinal, and smiled the slightly coy, self-conscious smile that was common in men’s public toilets around the world. John nodded back, and Cole finished zipping, catching the glint of a knife reflected in the pipes in front of him.
John’s hands went down to his trousers as if to unzip, but then he suddenly burst sideways at Cole, in an attempt to grab and pin him whilst Blue did his work with the knife.
Cole’s reactions were quicker. As soon as John moved, he slammed the callused edge of his hand into the agent’s windpipe, crushing the trachea instantly. The man dropped to his knees and Cole dodged sharply to the side as Blue thrust the knife towards his spine.
Twisting round in a close arc, Cole grabbed Blue with both hands – one secured around the man’s knife-arm, the other gripping his hair – and, using Blue’s own momentum from the forward thrust, he yanked him forwards viciously. Blue’s head smashed into the reinforced porcelain of the urinal with a sickening
crunch
, and Cole knew the agent was no longer a threat.
Cole also knew that he couldn’t afford to let either man live and so he leant forwards and jerked Blue’s head violently backwards, breaking the neck cleanly. Cole looked down to the left and saw John on the floor, eyes wide as he struggled in vain to breathe. As Cole reached down, the agent’s eyes were pleading, and yet no words came out of the gargling, shattered throat. A moment later, John joined his partner on the dirty toilet floor, his neck also broken.
Cole picked up the knife from the floor, a folding Gerber; easy to conceal but deadly nevertheless. Cole was glad he hadn’t had to use it; the blood would have been hard to cover up. As it was, he still had two bodies to hide, and he went to work quickly.
He pulled Blue’s limp body through into a cubicle, trying as hard as he could to ignore the putrid stench from the stained bowl. He took off the man’s jacket and used it to secure him in a sitting position atop the lavatory, tying the sleeves off around the pipe behind the dead body, which looked grotesque with its unnaturally erect posture. He then pulled off Blue’s belt and pulled the man’s trousers around his ankles, before going back out and pulling John’s heavy body through into the cubicle. Hoisting him up to a higher position, he used Blue’s belt to secure his old partner on top of him, cinching him in tight so that he wouldn’t slip down.
After checking his handiwork, Cole then locked the cubicle door from the inside and climbed out over the top of the doorframe. Looking underneath the door from the outside, he could see a pair of legs, trousers pulled around the ankles down to the leather shoes, and nothing else. Just another passenger using the facilities. The smell would certainly back that one up, Cole thought grimly.
Satisfied, Cole moved towards the exit. From the banging on the door, he could tell someone was impatiently trying to get in, their entry blocked by Blue’s door jam. He wondered if it was one of the other agents, but quickly discounted the possibility. They wouldn’t be trying to get in; they’d be observing off to the side, waiting for their colleagues to come out. The banging door would just be a normal passenger, he decided, probably desperate for a piss. Pulling the jam from the bottom of the door, he decided to play it that way.
He yanked the door open, as if he’d been struggling to do so for some time. Cole acted suitably surprised as the door finally opened and came hurtling towards him at speed, taking a defensive step backwards. The move would also give him a chance to react if he’d been wrong about the person on the other side of the door. Cole had been correct in his initial assumption however, and the passenger stumbled forwards from pushing against the door, surprise written plainly across his own face.
‘Sorry mate,’ said Cole breathlessly, pretending to try and regain his composure, ‘bloody door must have got stuck!’
The other man was trying to regain his own composure, and smiled back at Cole in a mixture of embarrassment and confusion. ‘No worries mate,’ he replied, moving past Cole into the bathroom, ‘I’m just desperate!’ Cole smiled in return, and moved past the man into the corridor.
Although he hadn’t seen the faces of the men in the parking zone, he recognized them instantly now, standing across the passageway, their backs to the outside window. It was the eyes that did it, as always. Neither of them could conceal the surprise, the confusion, the fear.
Cole moved off instantly down the walkway to the left. He would have to care of these two somewhere else.
Albright followed the Cole family in the impromptu surveillance car he had earlier hired from the Hertz rental desk. Another of Hansard’s own agents, who was on liaison duty in Miami and had introduced himself as Andy Cragg, drove the vehicle, but there were just the two of them.
His targets had left the airport suddenly, just minutes before they were due to board the domestic flight to San Francisco, and jumped into a waiting taxi outside the terminal. Albright had expected some sort of trick, not really believing Sarah would do something as obvious as catching a connecting flight from the same airport, and had waited in the foyer with Cragg.
There had only been two other of Hansard’s men who’d been able to get to Miami in the time available, and they had boarded the plane ahead of the targets. When Albright had seen Sarah race with the kids out of the terminal, it was too late. Out of radio contact, the other half of his surveillance team were now on their way across continental America.
Hansard had instructed him that he was to keep a low profile with the local authorities; the mission wasn’t something he wanted people to know about.
As the taxi ahead of them took a left turn, Albright cursed his bad luck. Three cars would have been ideal, although even just two would have been better than what he had. But he would just have to cope. The taxi up ahead, its dark windows glinting brightly in the hot sun, was turning left again. As Cragg changed lanes and indicated left, Albright couldn’t help but wonder what their plan was.
In the back of the taxi, Sarah was playing a game with Ben and Amy. Her nerves were shredded, but she knew on an intellectual level that the plan was sound. So why wasn’t she calm?
Sarah knew all too well why she was panicking – this was a different world to her, and going through drills and exercises was inherently very different to the real thing, where there were real lives at stake, including those of her children.
She was, however, quickly getting used to hiding her feelings of fear, and was now able to play I Spy out of the cab windows without Ben and Amy realising anything was amiss.
The last half an hour had revealed that they were being followed. The driver, at Sarah’s request, had followed a circuitous route, doubling back twice in a deceptive circle designed to trap a surveillance car into giving away its position.
The fact that the same silver Chrysler Voyager was still there, four cars behind them, indicated that there was only one car tracking them. If there had been more then they would have been in radio contact, swapping around at regular intervals to disguise their movements, and Sarah would have never spotted them.
The realization warmed her immensely – it meant that the opposition’s forces were limited, and would make the next step of the plan just that little bit easier.
Albright was angry with himself. It was only after the third turn that he’d recognized the counter-surveillance technique, and by that time it was too late; he knew Sarah would have already spotted him.
Damn her!
It was only because Albright hadn’t wanted to let the woman out of his sight that he’d let himself fall into the trap. If only he hadn’t lost the two men on the aeroplane, they would have had that second car and he wouldn’t have been caught like that.
No matter
, Albright decided finally. The die had been cast now, and he’d just have to do his best with the limited resources he had. Sarah might know he was there, but there was no point calling off the chase; Albright would keep following them to the end.