Assassin (John Stratton) (11 page)

He tried to pull the magazine out but it wouldn’t release. He began to panic, then realised he wasn’t pushing down the release button hard enough. He pushed it forcefully and the magazine popped out and fell from his hand to clatter across the hallway floor. He ripped another from his pocket and slammed it home. Snatched back the breech block and quickly aimed along the corridor, ready once again. His jaw clenched. ‘Come on, scum,’ he muttered. ‘I’m starting to like this.’

No one was coming. He moved along the corridor to the cellar door at the end, passing a flight of stairs that led
to the floors above. The cellar door was wide open. Stairs led down into darkness. He looked up the stairs, also in darkness. Sounds filtered down. Voices. A TV perhaps. His information had warned that there could be as many as thirty people in the house at any one time. Possibly more.

The sound of movement came from above. A creak. Maybe on the stairs. He stepped through the cellar doorway and went down into darkness. The stairs were made of concrete and were soundless. He put a hand out in front of him, afraid of banging his head. The hand found a wall. The stairs turned a corner. He touched another surface – a door. Halfway down he found a handle, turned it. The door opened. He felt around the sides near the frame and found a switch. He flicked it down and a red bulb glowed instantly inside the room.

It was a storeroom. Lots of boxes with black stencilled lettering. Some were open. Weapons were everywhere, some wrapped in grease paper. Boxes of hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, mortar shells, belts of linked machine-gun bullets, and plastic explosives. Stacks of C4. Exactly what he wanted. Also bags of fertiliser and gallons of diesel fuel. Enough to manufacture thousands of pounds of Anfo – low explosives. It was the mother lode.

Chandos put down the weapon, removed his backpack and opened the top. He pulled out the plastic lump with the long fuse, ripped off the lighter and ignited a flame. He touched it to the end of the fuse. The fuse crackled to life. He checked his watch. The second hand was at the top of the hour. He didn’t know too much about explosives
but all members of the SBS had carried out a basic course on the subject. He guessed that the fuse gave him about a minute before it would burn down to the detonator and ignite it. Which in turn would set off the explosives. And which in turn would detonate the contents of the room. He had seen the devastation caused by a 500kg bomb. There must have been two or three times that amount in this room. It would be hard to imagine any of the building left standing after the explosion.

He put the bundle on top of the stack of plastic explosives. Picked up his gun and looked up the stairs. He thought he could hear voices above the sizzle of the burning fuse. He gripped the weapon and made his way up. As he neared the top, a figure passed the cellar door. Whoever it was had not paused to look down the stairs.

He stepped through the doorway into the corridor. Movement to his right. He swivelled and saw a man and fired. Several rounds hit him in his chest and he fell back, a pistol clattering from his dead hand onto the floor. Chandos turned towards the back door at the opposite end of the corridor from where he’d entered the building. His exit, hopefully. People started coming down the stairs. He fired up at them, spraying the walls and the stairs. He heard a shriek. Someone fired a gun down at him, the sound deafening.

He headed for the back door, but as he grabbed the handle, a crashing sound came from behind. He turned to see the front door burst open. A figure stood in the doorway. All he could do was stare at it. The bomb had only seconds
left. He pulled the back door and the wind rushed in, forcing it wide open.

His eyes remained on the front door. The figure held a gun. Was raising it up, aiming at him. Then suddenly a man landed in the corridor between them, a gun in his hand. He must have jumped down the stairs. Bad timing. As he raised the gun a silent bullet hit the back of his head and came out his eye. The man fell forward and Chandos turned to dive out of the building. He was halfway through the door when the burning fuse reached the detonator.

The explosion was enormous. Staggering. The crack and boom like thunder. The poorly constructed wood and brick building shattered into millions of pieces. The guts of it went skyward. The roof and every wall, floor, stair and stick of furniture disintegrated. Thirty-eight Nigerians were ripped to shreds instantly or sent into the night sky.

The houses either side also got smashed and levelled. Every pane of glass within hundreds of metres was shattered. The shockwave blew in doors and smashed the windows of vehicles in the street, filling the sky with debris for a kilometre upwards. When it came back down, it struck vehicles and roofs blocks away. The raining debris lasted several minutes as the lighter objects floated to earth.

The explosion was heard across much of the city. When it subsided, a huge crater filled with shattered wood and rubble occupied the space where the house used to be. A fire burned.

It was morning before the first emergency services arrived at the scene. That was due to the fact that once the address
was known the police were afraid to investigate for fear the explosion was the start of some wild attack by the Islamic revolutionaries. They wouldn’t approach the site until the Army had been brought in to support them.

The building wreckage was still smoking when the sun came up. There had been several injuries in the neighbourhood. The serious ones had been taken to the nearest hospital by friends or relatives. What was left of the destroyed house had already been looted by scavengers, young and old. Anything of value had been taken. Not that there had been much left.

Once people realised that the house had been occupied by a good number of the terrorist gang when the detonation occurred, many concluded that the incident had been an own goal. Clearly an accident. However, a couple of witnesses came forward later in the day stating that they’d seen an armed white man outside the house not long before the explosion.

That piece of information significantly disrupted the earlier conclusions. But since no one could find any evidence of any nationalities killed in the blast besides Nigerians, it was placed to one side. A white man outside the house minutes before sounded odd, to be sure. But it didn’t necessarily mean he was responsible for what had happened.

The Blue Honda Civic, badly damaged and half buried, was eventually examined and the holdall and weapons bag retrieved. The British were invited to examine the evidence. Scotland Yard sent their findings to the Ministry of Defence. It included evidence of explosives in the small backpack.
The Nigerian government never received any details of the man they knew only as Berry Chandos who had entered their country that day and several hours later was last seen armed in the immediate vicinity of an Islamic fundamentalist headquarters that was blown to smithereens.

They found no evidence of a second white man.

Stratton, in workout gear, ran hard along a residential East London Docklands street, turned a corner into a road lined with apartment blocks of various sizes and went in through the entrance to one of them.

He jogged up a flight of stairs, reached a front door on the fourth floor out of breath, and supported himself with his hands on his knees while inhaling deeply. He took a key from his shorts, opened the door and entered the hallway, closing the door behind him. He switched on the TV, before getting down onto his back on the carpeted floor and proceeding to do some sit-ups.

The news channel was playing a report about an alleged missing Pakistani atomic weapon. The Americans were accusing the Pakistan military of failing to report a missing nuclear weapon. The Pakistan military were insisting that no such incident had occurred and that the Americans had created the story to discredit Pakistan and its military.

Stratton had little interest in the news, as per usual. He received daily international intelligence updates by email produced by military intelligence analysts. The reports included conflict analysis, as well as general governance
news. The more salient points. The only interest he had in televised news reports was the occasional video coverage. The media tended to get their hands on eyewitness material before intelligence organisations could.

He stretched his hamstrings and lower back, carried out a series of tension releases and took a moment to relax and clear his head. He sat up to look out of a ceiling-to-floor window. He watched an old wooden boat head slowly along the Thames, its sails puffed out by the wind. It must have been a couple of hundred years old, Stratton thought. Majestic. He fancied the idea of spending a few weeks on board something like that. Working hard, purely for the fun of it. He wondered when he would ever have the time for such things.

He went into the small, modern and well-equipped kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. The apartment was owned by the Ministry of Defence, for the purpose of temporarily housing members of military intelligence and other short-term visitors to the city. As essentially a non-commissioned member of the Special Boat Service, based in Poole, Dorset, Stratton wouldn’t have qualified to use such lavish premises – but he was also a part-time Secret Intelligence Service operative. It was one of the rare perks of the business. This particular apartment, which was quite luxurious and in an expensive area, was far above his SIS pay grade too. It was supposed to be for the use of the equivalent rank of colonel and above only. But the old Army quartermaster responsible for running and maintaining the MoD apartments in the city had a bit of a soft
spot for Stratton. From their first meeting Stratton treated the old boy kindly and with respect. And therefore he was always assured plum accommodation whenever he stayed in London, if one was available.

He had arrived in the city for an MI6 communications and coding refresher course. It had been a good excuse to get out of Poole after his tour of Afghanistan. There had been nothing much going on after the hamlet-clearing operation. On completion of the comms course he was looking forward to taking some leave. But he hadn’t been able to get his old boss off his mind. Most frustrating was not being able to get in contact with him. Stratton wanted to know how he was getting on. It had been less than two days since their meeting. Obviously, if Chandos was concerned about an assassin monitoring him, he was unlikely to have an open line of communication with anyone.

Stratton stirred his tea. He took a sip as he tried to put Chandos out of his thoughts. Burns had recommended him for leave after the op. It would be nice to take a girl-friend somewhere. But there was a minor problem with that idea. He didn’t have one. No old flame came to mind who he might call either.

He went into the bedroom to get out of his PT kit and take a shower. As he reached to turn on the shower, he heard a faint beep come from his laptop which he’d left open on the living room table. He chose to ignore it for the moment. If the SIS or SBS wanted him urgently, they would call or send a coded pin message to his
mobile phone. That was a tone he’d usually respond to right away.

Ten minutes later, he stepped from the bedroom wearing a shirt and a pair of casual trousers and returned the empty mug to the kitchen. The TV in the living room had changed from news to sports and he paused to watch an excerpt from a recent rugby game. His computer on the desk gave a reminder beep. It was a distraction he couldn’t ignore for long.

He went over to it and touched a key to bring the screen to life. The subject message to the email window was profound and to the point.

CHANDOS DEAD

He didn’t recognise the email address. Stunned, he tapped a key to open it. A message appeared:
DOWNLOAD Z-CRYPT SOFTWARE – OPEN Z-CRYPT FILE IN SECURE, OFFLINE ENVIRONMENT
. There was an attachment. Its extension showed it was a Z-Crypt file. Whoever sent it didn’t want to risk it being read by anyone else.

His secure memory stick was on the desk and he plugged it into the computer and typed in the password. He accessed the browser and found the Z-Crypt software. He downloaded it. The secure stick allowed him to access any internet site and read the data without leaving a trace on his laptop.

He looked at the message again as the software installed itself and wondered who could possibly have sent it. The
software opened and invited him to select a file. But there was no password on the message. He examined it again, wondering if he had missed something, and the laptop pinged again.

Another email from the same sender. He opened it but all it contained was a series of numbers, letters and symbols. The missing password, Stratton presumed.

He copied it into the password window and hit enter. The attachment promptly opened. It was a letter addressed to him. He sat down in front of the computer as he read it.

Bullfrog. The codename Chandos had given to him regarding a trusted friend. Stratton sat back, shocked by what appeared to be confirmation of Chandos’s death. There was every possibility that it was misinformation. But he suspected he was clinging to a false hope.

He wondered how the man had died. Until he heard
otherwise, he would assume Chandos had been killed by the assassin. He looked at the email again. The address and details. He wondered if the invitation was a trap of some kind. Perhaps it was from those behind Chandos’s death, cleaning up anyone he was associated with. If they were so smart, they would have known he had met with Stratton that day in the pub. But then, why would they want Stratton out of the way? Chandos had told him nothing of any significance.