The Rock (9 page)

‘We don’t have much time,’ Land continued. ‘Killen’s out there. That bastard’s going to try to intercept Bald by hook or by crook, and we can’t let that happen.’

‘Bald’s in hiding. How will Killen know where to look for him?’

Land snooped out of the hotel window. Main Street was quiet.

‘That plunge in the water has dulled your senses a tad, mmm? Think about it: Gibraltar is crawling with police. The border with Spain is on high alert for a crazed gunman on the loose, namely Shai Golan – the man whose acquaintance you made at the King’s Hotel. Given that kind of police presence, Bald isn’t going to risk smuggling the cocaine across the border. And he’d never get the stuff past airport security. So that leaves only one way off.’

‘By boat.’

Land clicked his fingers. ‘He
has
to leave via the marina. Our sources indicate that a man matching Bald’s description reserved a cruiser yacht called the
Defiant
two days ago. All Killen has to do is show at the marina and wait for his chance.’

Gardner recalled something from Rio.

‘John can’t pilot a boat. That’s why he called me to Brazil.’

‘Either he was telling fibs, or he’s got help. Whichever it is, Bald simply has no choice but to go old-school and ship out his drugs. And MI6 needs him to succeed. Once he’s on the boat we’ve got him red-handed and your mission will be over. This is it, Joe. One more step.’

Gardner searched his eyelids. Just this last job. ‘If I do this,’ he said, ‘I want be back in the Regiment one hundred per cent.’

‘Impossible. I told you so a week ago.’

‘I’ll do whatever undercover work needs doing, but I’m fucked if I have to report back up to some rich prick in a suit with a semi-detached in Fulham. No offence.’

‘Plenty taken. But no one can do what you’re asking.’

‘Talk to Major Josh Oliver.’

‘I hardly think the new Commander of 22 SAS is going to be a sympathetic ear.’

‘Just talk to him.’

Major Oliver. Just plain old Josh back when he and Gardner fought alongside each other. Worked his way up the old-fashioned way, with grit and determination. Promoted to Staff Sergeant, 2iC and then D Squadron’s OC before taking the top job. An old friend and, in Gardner’s eyes, the only decent rupert in the business.

‘All right. A quiet word, once this is over. But I’m making no promises.’

‘Deal.’

‘Then it’s settled. I suggest you head down to the marina immediately if you’re to stop Killen from taking down Bald.’

‘The
Defiant
, you say?’

Land nodded.

‘Topped up and ready to sail, according to the owner.’ Land handed Gardner a photo.

‘I’m going to need firepower. And no offence, mate, but that thing you’re packing is about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest.’

Then Gardner had an idea. He went to the bath, dragged back the curtain and patted the pockets on Stone’s 44-waist jeans. Found a polymer pistol grip jutting out of his back pocket. The grip was attached to a Kel-Tec PMR-30 semi-automatic. It was a newcomer to the weapons block but Gardner had heard a lot of buzz about its capabilities. He snatched the pistol out of Stone’s pocket and held it as if shaking hands with an old friend.

‘You won’t be needing this,’ he said to the back of Stone’s head.

‘Now, you have my permission to do whatever it takes to protect Bald’s safe passage. But for God’s sake try to keep it covert. I can cover your tracks to a certain extent, but if you go shooting up half the town my job becomes a lot more difficult.’

‘Where’s John at the moment?’

‘We’ve had eyes on the marina for the past few hours. He hasn’t yet shown there. Leaving it until the very last minute, I presume.’

Gardner made for the door. Pistol in his jeans, Bald on his mind.

‘You’d better be telling me everything you know,’ he said, then slammed the bullet-riddled door before Land could reply.

0355 hours.

Gardner hit Queensway and circled south around the marina’s edge. Nearly four o’clock and night was surrendering to dawn. The sky was a cobalt dome. Whitewashed apartment blocks shaded violet. He banged a right into Queensway Quay, passing a row of five villas and a giant lead anchor slanted over a manicured lawn.

The moon spotlighted the quay. West of his position the quay abruptly ended, giving way to the Strait. Three hundred metres to the south, across his left shoulder, stood the dockyard where HMS
Lizard
would be going through her final checks and repairs before setting sail. He thought about the Wren, about her mashed-up face.

He paced for two hundred metres to the western edge of the quay, where the road arrowed north and nine apartment buildings stood on a rectangle of reclaimed land, bordered by a rocky shoreline.

Gardner paused and scoped out the marina.

There’s got to be a hundred boats in dock, he thought. He counted two-seater cruisettes, fifty-foot luxury cruisers and commercial fishing ships, tied up at three concrete piers. He looked at the shot of the
Defiant
. She was a sizeable beast, thirty-eight feet, with a distinctive blue-and-white striped hull and a stern sleek as an arrowhead. Suddenly he spotted the cruiser yacht at the far end of the middle pier. But he didn’t move in just yet. He was waiting for Bald or Killen to show. So far, no sign of either.

Four in the morning and Gibraltar was a ghost town. Two until four was Gardner’s favoured time of attack. Soldiers called that period the dead hours – when most people were in a deep sleep.

He scanned the apartment blocks. Every window and balcony bay was encased in darkness. He imagined people tucked up in their nice beds, while he knuckled down to the business of killing men.

A thought gnawed at him. While Stone and Gill were dumb as shit sandwiches minus the bread, Killen was different. Cunning. No doubt he’d be figuring out the best approach to the
Defiant
. So Gardner had to be alert.

He backtracked east along the quay, resolving to patrol the larger marina a hundred metres to the north.

A silhouette shifted along the middle pier, thirty metres from the
Defiant
.

Gardner froze. The dark could play havoc with an operator’s vision, conjuring up shapes and movement where there was none. He ran his eyes around the silhouette, putting a distance equivalent to the size of his fist between the object and his line of sight. He looked away from it for several seconds, and let his eyes return to the shape. It had moved. His brain wasn’t tricking him.

He retreated up the quayside towards Queensway. Between each block of flats he risked a brief glance down to the waterfront, where he spied the figure shuffling along the pier. He was slow and deliberate, wanting only to keep an eye on Bald and assessing the surrounding area for threats. Any sudden noise might alert Bald to his presence.

Past the anchor again, Gardner hurried north. Two hundred metres further along the deserted Queensway, he turned left past a large Genoese-style development, all turquoise shutters and terracotta roofs. The pavement coughed him up at the northern pier. Palm trees and cannons lined the walkway. The middle pier was eighty metres south, and the silhouette was nearing the
Defiant.
Closer up, it took on definition. A man, tall, solid build. It had to be Bald. He held a torch in his right hand. His left gripped a black object. A pistol, Gardner guessed.

But where was Killen? If he planned to jump Bald at the marina this was his prime opportunity. And yet there was no sign of him.

Instinct – not even instinct, more like a clotting fear that fired from the base of his spine to the back of his skull – told him to glance back inland. He scanned the blanket of darkness swirling over the foliage. Shit! That’s it. He’d assumed Killen would be going for the up-close and personal approach. In doing so he’d ignored the widest vantage point of all.
That’s fucking it.

The Upper Rock. The steep, jagged rock dominated the Gibraltar skyline.

Gardner surged towards the middle pier. John Bald was walking into the ideal spot for a sniper on the Upper Rock.

I’ve got to get John out of the line of fire, Gardner thought. But your cover will be blown.

If I don’t, he’ll be killed.

The hollow sound of Gardner’s feet pounding hard on the planks alerted Bald, who had stopped at the
Defiant
.

Twenty metres, and Bald was spinning around, torchlight searching the pier. Gardner fixed on the black object in his right hand. Bulky-looking thing, some kind of a gun. He had time enough to think how shit it would be to die at the hands of the corrupt ex-Blade he was trying to protect.

Ten. Gardner ducked like a sprinter at the finish line. The Upper Rock was eight hundred metres away. Clear night, full moon. No wind to distort the shot. If Killen got his shot off, it was all over.

Five, and Gardner caught the faint
crack
of a rifle. He lunged at Bald. The torch blinded him. Gardner knocked them both to the pier floor, the torch dropped into the water and the
Defiant
reeled with the smack of a bullet into her hull.

Gardner blindly grappled with Bald. He couldn’t see shit. He dragged Bald away from the boat. Bald struggled. Gardner brought an elbow down against his skull. Jesus fucking Christ, John, he thought. Bald’s grip was stronger than he remembered
.

Scarcely able to see ahead of him, Gardner moved as quickly as his legs and Bald’s weight allowed. Another
crack
and the plank in front of him exploded. Splinters speared his forehead.

He ducked behind the remnants of an old fort. Weathered stonework now shielded them from the Upper Rock. Gardner gathered his breath and peered around the corner of the fort. The Upper Rock was jagged and dark as a lump of charcoal.
Fuck
, he told himself. Without a viewing aid, he had no way of getting a fix on Killen’s location.

Bald tried standing. He was unsteady on his feet. He reached into his jacket pocket.

‘Not this time you don’t, mate,’ Gardner said, smacking him in the middle of his back with the butt of the PMR-30. Bald grunted, dropped and rolled on to his back.

Then Gardner noticed a dull, sticky stain on his knee.

Moonlight splashed across his face. He stared at Gardner from behind a pair of black Ray-Bans. Blood gleamed out of a fresh gash on his jaw, where Gardner had struck him on the pier. The man’s features were coated in the grainy film of night, but they were clear enough.

‘You’re not John,’ he said

Mr fucking Crowbar.

0423 hours.

‘Where the fuck is John Bald?’ Gardner said, aiming the PMR-30 at the big man’s chest.

‘I would think carefully about your next move, if I were you,’ Golan, aka Mr Crowbar, said. His accent was foreign, the bastard offspring of French and German.

‘Only you’re not me. You’re the fucker with the gun in his face.’

Gardner noticed the elbows of the guy’s jacket were smeared with blood and dirt. Wherever he been in the five hours since Gardner had introduced him to a steak knife, it wasn’t the local A&E.

‘You’ve got about six seconds to tell me who you are and what you know.’

‘Kill me and you’ll upset a lot of very important people.’

‘Fucking talk,’ Gardner said as he pushed the PMR-30 hard to Golan’s temple. The polymer housing dug into his flesh. One click, he was thinking, and a .22 Magnum cartridge, powered by two hundred joules of muzzle energy, would carve open his skull. Like a boot through soft snow.

Golan must have sensed that Gardner was ready to back up his threat because he gritted his teeth and glowered, as if steeling himself for the bullet. Gardner couldn’t see his eyes through the shades, but he got the impression that Golan was an unflappable son of a bitch.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘My mission is simple,’ Golan said, talking to the barrel of the PMR-30. ‘My people instructed me that no harm must come to the mark.’

‘The
mark
? What are you on about?’

‘The man I was sent here to protect.’

Gardner burned up like diesel. ‘Terry Gill?’

‘That is not the name I was given.’

The realization struck Gardner like a boomerang.

‘John.’

‘John Bald,’ Golan said. ‘Yes. He is the one.’

Gardner inched closer to his face. He wanted to tear off his shades and go eyeball to eyeball with this arsehole. He had the sense he was only dimly aware of the full story surrounding his old Regiment mucker
.

‘Who sent you?’

‘That I cannot say.’

‘Mossad?’ His finger tensed on the trigger. ‘You’re Israeli, I know that much.’

Golan grinned at the barrel, like he was fucking flirting with it. ‘If I told you who sent me – well, I’d have to kill you.’ He laughed, then went on:

‘Oh yes, your superiors gave you weak information. They told you Bald would be departing from the marina. On the
Defiant
, yes? They are badly mistaken.’