Authors: John Connor
The Ice House
Title Page
THE
ICE HOUSE
John Connor
Contents
He wore hooded, black, sterile overalls, nylon galoshes and a filter face mask that covered his mouth and nose. A small, lightweight pack went under the disposable outer layer, and he carried the gun in a long, padded bag, slung over his shoulder. It was an L115A3, a British-made, bolt-action sniper rifle fitted with a suppressor, firing .338 magnum cartridges that
c
ame in five-round magazines. He’d been very careful only to handle it with gloves, whilst wearing the overalls – the intention was to discard it later. It weighed nearly seven kilos and was over 1.2 metres long. It wasn’t what he had asked for, but it was good. A soldier firing one of these in 2009 had reportedly killed two Taliban machine gunners at a range of 2,475 metres. It had taken nine rounds to get the range, a luxury he wouldn’t have. As a sports shooter, in an altogether past life, he had hit targets at just over half that distance. His objective now was to locate a good position, in cover, about five hundred metres from the road.
Earlier, in a parallel valley with a dirt track, he had sat in the car and attached the suppressor, set up the gun and the sights, so that he didn’t have to fumble around in the dark. It was nearly 2 a.m. as he got over the ridge and into the valley. There was a moon, but enough cloud to conceal it and make progress slow. He moved without a flashlight, as slowly as necessary. There was no rush. He had about four hours before daylight. In that time he would need to dig himself in and set up the gun so that it was stable and pointing in the right direction, then get comfortable. After that he didn’t intend to move until after he’d taken the shot, which, if all went to plan, would be mid-afternoon. So there was a lot of waiting ahead.
It wasn’t ideal. The more he rested in one place the more
DNA
he would shed, despite the precautions. But the arrangements had forced him out of his normal routines. The money had transferred in the usual way, two weeks ago, but it was twice the amount he was accustomed to. With care he could live on it for two years. No objection to that. But other changes had left him exposed.
Normally the contact initiating a contract was at a distance. There were complex and laborious procedures to transmit the details, a supposedly anonymous notification system limiting the paperwork and information trail that gave him funds and a target. But this time he’d been informed there was to be a team involved and to coordinate it he would need to meet someone in person.
He knew enough about law enforcement to guess that nearly every precaution he could take was a waste of time and money if they were
already
looking at him, but on the assumption they weren’t, he’d spent the better part of nine years taking meticulous care to minimise his traces. He kept up to date with forensic science developments, court cases and police techniques. The most crucial prophylactic measure, throughout the nine years, was not being on any
DNA
databases. But all this was farcical if he then had to meet someone face to face. If the security was that compromised then why not go cheap – hire an Albanian for five hundred quid? The whole point of his service was the guarantee of invisibility. For this reason he had wasted almost two days of his preparation time querying the arrangements, but to no effect. This was how they wanted it.
The designated contact called himself Philip Jones. The meet with him had gone down five days ago, in London, without apparent hitch. At the time he had no idea who Jones was, no way of verifying the site used was clean, no way of knowing that Jones wasn’t undercover police, or, more likely, just someone earning a sideline by selling info to some agency. Jones had looked genuine enough – clean-shaven, dark hair cut neatly above his ears, blue eyes, angular face, very pale skin, dressed in the usual suit, about thirty years old, trim physique, an ex-soldier’s build and bearing. No scars, twitches, odd mannerisms, nothing conspicuous. He had spoken with confidence and experience, as if the work was very familiar to him. They had met in the Chelsea Club, a private health and social facility attached to the back of the Stamford Bridge development.
But appearances were rarely reliable. So here he was in the middle of the night, determined to get in early, to wait, to watch. Jones had told him that key local police were on the payroll, bought off, and that there were six in the team, dealing with other targets in the same area. If true, that would make it the most complicated and well-funded job he had been involved in. But the more people used, the greater the risk. If there were others in this valley then he wanted to know their positions
before
he squeezed the trigger.
He had looked at maps and photographs of the terrain. He knew roughly where there were a range of suitable positions. In the past he might have used the
GPS
he had in the pack to locate them, but he had recently learned of a case where police in America had got a court order and gained access to records of
GPS
location searches, proving an interest in a key building in a murder case. Spain – where he was – might not be quite so advanced, but he wasn’t certain of that, so he was feeling his way around in the darkness,
GPS
and phones switched off.
It took nearly an hour to get down to the level of the road. The hillside was a mix of knee-high grass, dense bushes and scattered groves of small, stunted trees, with knurled bark, all interspersed with boulders and rocks of varying sizes. He had to go very carefully. He thought it would have taken him fifteen to twenty minutes to cover the same ground in daylight.
Once at the road he crouched for a while considering the options, trying to get a clear picture of the angles. To his right was the house Jones had briefed him about, where the target lived, though from where he was he couldn’t see it. The next nearest house was roughly two kilometres back down the valley. He looked in that direction but could see no lights. The night around him was still and warm, filled with the rasp of crickets and the scent of wild rosemary. He could smell it even through the mask. There were dogs barking every now and then lower down, but a long way off, maybe even as far as Marbella. That was the next big town. Between the dark, jagged shapes of the hills he could see a lighter area that he assumed was the sea, and somewhere way out in that, twinkling gently, lights that were probably over the straits, in Africa.
He moved back up the hill, looking for flatter ground, counting his paces until he was about three hundred metres back. This would be an optimal range, he thought, but yesterday, seventy kilometres further in land, in deserted scrub, he had zeroed the rifle and scope for five hundred metres, so now he worked his way a couple of hundred metres higher. The shot would be marginally harder, but it was a shorter distance back to the car after he’d fired. He found an area effectively screened with the thick bushes, a little overgrown ledge above some boulders. He crawled under and got out the spotting scope, checked the field of fire. He saw no one, heard no cars. When he was sure he’d found the best position available, he started to dig a shallow indentation with a small, lightweight trenching tool.
The soil was dry and loose, once he got the roots away, and he worked quickly. By 4.30 he was settling in with the rifle positioned, foliage pulled over him, thinking about whether he could risk dozing for an hour. He calculated he was so well hidden that you wouldn’t know he was there until you tripped over him.
If everything Jones had told him was true then the shot would be relatively easy. Certainly smoother than the last time he had done this. That was only about eight weeks ago. The target then had been a man called Barsukov, a Russian. When he had finally laid the sights over him he had been on the patio of a house near a Black Sea resort, lying on a sunlounger beside a pool. There was a woman with him, on the next lounger, and a child, a little boy, running around between them and the pool. On that occasion his position had been seven hundred metres away, in woods.
He had lined up three times, but each time the little boy had come over and stood right in the cross hairs, at the side of the lounger, his head or upper body blocking the shot.
The first three times he had paused and waited. But the fourth time he had started to compute the thing, keeping the aim steady. Seven hundred metres with the bullet travelling at near enough one thousand metres per second. A clean, sunny day, no head wind, perfectly still air between his position and the target. He reckoned the bullet would enter the child’s head through the back, exit through the face and still be accurate enough to take down the target, who was lying just the other side. It was even possible the round would still be supersonic as it hit. So it was a solution.
Or he could wait, and go through his set-up again.
Time had been limited. He was actually within the grounds of the house, and there was a security presence – albeit a sloppy one – to be factored in. As he went through the options his finger was on the trigger, his breathing controlled, everything ready. He had watched the child’s head bobbing around, giving him an intermittent view of Barsukov. Barsukov was laughing at something the kid was saying, perfectly relaxed.
In the end he hadn’t fired, because he wasn’t sure about the parameters of the contract. Back in London his brother had been working to get past the anonymity. They had discovered the company behind the money, but hadn’t got behind the company yet. For all they knew the woman lying next to Barsukov had placed the hit. And if the child was hers – as seemed likely – then she wouldn’t be happy, which would be bad for future business.
So he had waited and taken his shot about five minutes later. Then paused whilst the child had run off screaming in fright, watching to see the security reaction.
It wasn’t quite the same as this job, but nevertheless Jones had found it necessary to provide him with some specious justification: they had picked him because that way it would be more humane, he had said. They – the others in ‘the team’ – were not to be so clinical in their methods, it seemed, but this way, with a clean shot from a high-powered rifle, the death would be quick. A concession to humanity. Jones had thought he would need that rationalisation as he fitted her face under the cross hairs.