EIGHTEEN
Across town, former British Army Corporal Nick King was panicking.
The bonus of working nights at the shopping mall meant he had his days to himself. He had the luxury of sleeping in, typically waking up around noon, and had settled into a routine of heading out to the gym for a workout before he came back and enjoyed a late lunch around 2:30 pm. That Thursday morning had begun like any other. He'd woken, climbed out from under the covers, used the bathroom and brushed his teeth, then pulled on some tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie and headed out the front door to the gym fifteen minutes away. He liked to hit the weights before he put in an hour on the treadmill, some resistance training, then a chance to blow his lungs out on a steep incline. He'd seen a lot of his peers, guys who used to serve in the army slack off once they left the service, but he refused to let that happen to him. Just turned thirty six years old, he still had the body he'd had when he was twenty two, and he refused to let age dictate how his physique looked in the mirror.
He’d been about half-way through his cardiovascular workout on the treadmill, working hard, when the two o'clock news began on the screen mounted on the wall in front of his machine. Seeing as it was a pretty upmarket gym, the television screens all had cable with the one directly in front of him tuned to CNN.
Judging from the opening montage of news-clips, it seemed that it had been a pretty chaotic morning both sides of the Atlantic. The headlines were dominated by reports of two suicides by the Thames and a car-bombing in the US, as well as the discovery of two other men found dead, one in his car and the other in his apartment, in DC and New York City respectively. The last clip and headline from the opening montage showed that there had also been some kind of full-on gunfight at a counter-terrorist police station across town. Working hard and upping the incline by pushing one of the buttons on the panel in front of him, King had watched the television closely, curious, wiping sweat from his forehead as the newsreaders began with the main headlines.
When he realised that one of the suicide victims was Charlie Adams, his old friend from the service, King had stepped off the treadmill immediately, staring up at the screen. He couldn’t hear what the reporter was saying. All of the televisions were muted, dance music from the gym pumping out of the speakers instead, but he read the teletext and got the gist. A single gunshot wound to the head, the text said. Unexpected and tragic. It damn well was. King had served with Charlie for almost eight years, and he was the best officer he had ever served under in the army.
But then the reports had moved on to cover the dead men found across the East Coast in America. Their names came up in white letters one-by-one on the black teletext.
Derek Spears.
Jason Carver.
David Floyd.
Under the cool blast of the gym’s air-conditioning, King suddenly felt ice cold. All three names and Captain Adams’ suicide were setting major alarm bells off in his head. They instantly took him from the cold cardio room in the posh London gym to a dark barren plain in Kosovo fifteen years ago. His worst fears were confirmed when he saw a dark-haired man giving a report at the police station where the gunfight had taken place. His name and position came up under the shot.
Tim Cobb, Director of the ARU.
Adams. Spears. Carver. Floyd. Cobb.
Five names, random and meaningless to probably everyone else watching the report, but with a chilling significance to King.
Everyone involved in that operation was being taken out.
He had stepped back, the treadmill beside him still whirring as the running strip continued to rotate round and round. He’d glanced around the gym, suddenly full of fear to see if anyone was watching him. He’d left the building instantly and driven home as fast as he could, trying to stay calm and work out a plan of escape.
Arriving back at his home, he’d raced through the lobby of his apartment building, frantically pushing the button for the lift. Eventually it arrived and he made his way up to his apartment as quickly as he could, making sure no one had followed him, checking that no one was waiting for him either side of the corridor when he got up on the 8 floor. Seeing no one, he’d eased his key into the lock of his apartment, quietly turning it and edging open the door. He stood still for a moment, watching and listening, trying to see if he could sense a presence, anyone hiding in there waiting for him. The place felt empty.
Shutting the door behind him, he’d quickly checked the entire apartment and to his relief there was nothing unusual, nothing disturbed, no one there. He’d found a bag and packed as quickly as he could, grabbing the most essential things and leaving everything else. He needed to get out of London immediately, lay low and hide out until someone explained what the hell was going on and got him some protection.
But just as he'd started packing, the phone on his bed-side table started ringing, making him jump, short-circuiting his already wired-up nervous system.
Standing still, his heart racing, he looked over at the phone as it rang.
Its shrill sound echoed around the silent apartment.
Like a warning siren. Or an alarm.
He stared at it.
Maybe it was the police.
Or maybe it's someone else.
Maybe they were waiting for him to answer. Maybe there were explosives hidden somewhere in the apartment, hooked up to the phone line.
He ignored it and continued to throw everything he needed into the bag, while the phone continued to ring. He finished packing, then looked quickly around the room, grabbing his wallet and passport from the top drawer of a desk in the living area. He had enough money to leave the country for a few weeks, and with every passing second that was looking like an attractive option. He moved through the apartment quickly, checking he had everything he needed to disappear, then headed to the door, still dressed in his tracksuit bottoms and hooded sweatshirt, his t-shirt underneath damp with sweat from a combination of his workout and fear.
He pulled open the door and stepped outside slowly, checking the corridor left and right.
It was empty.
He moved out, locking the apartment quickly, then turned and realised he had a choice to make. The lift or the stairs. He went with the lift. He was on the eighth floor, and it would be faster. Then he could get the hell out of here, go somewhere he couldn’t be found, far away from any danger. An old friend of his from the service lived in Spain on the coast, leasing out boats. He could stay with him for a while. He walked quickly down the corridor, his bag over his shoulder, his mind racing through his options as he arrived at the lift. He went to press the button, but as he did it dinged in front of him, already arriving at the floor.
The light above the door lit up.
He stood there, checking either side of the corridor again, and waited for the doors to open.
Back at the ARU's headquarters, Jackson had left Cobb and his family to some privacy and had just connected to one of the two agents headed to pick up Fraser in Washington DC. It was still mid-morning over there and Fraser would surely be in his office. The phone held to his ear, Jackson stood behind the tech team in the ops room, fidgeting and on edge, pacing back and forth. Saving this man's life meant a lot more to him than Cobb and his team realised.
'Hello?' a voice said.
'Agent Wallace?' he asked. 'This is Operations Officer Ryan Jackson. Where are you?'
'We just entered the building, sir. Mr Fraser works on the fourth floor. We'll be up there as soon as the lift arrives.'
'You don't have time. Take the stairs. And stay on the line.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Are you armed?'
'Yes, sir. We both have our side-arms.'
'Good. Be ready to use them.'
Across the city, First Team made it to Angel fast, Porter getting them there with typically impressive speed in one of the back-up Fords from MI6. They pulled up outside the apartment building on Holloway Road as Nikki gave them details of the man over the hands-free phone hooked up to the car.
'He lives in Apartment 8B,’ she said. ‘Blond, six-three, distinctive. He's probably seen the news, so be prepared. If he’s there, he’ll be twitched or just won’t answer the door. He’s not picking up the phone, so we might have missed him.'
The four men nodded and stepped out of the car. They slammed the doors shut, Porter pressing the button on the key and locking it, and all four moved quickly towards the apartment building. As they pushed open the main doors, Archer saw a tall man coming the other way towards them.
Archer checked him out, but saw the guy had dark hair, not blond, so it wasn’t King. This man had a harsh face, a beak of a nose and slicked, jet black hair over angry eyes. Archer stepped to the side to let him pass, but they still bumped shoulders, the man turning and glaring at Archer. They held each other's gaze for a brief moment, then the man looked back to the street and walked off, disappearing out of sight.
Inside the building lobby it was quiet. No one was about. Porter turned to Chalky and Archer, who had just joined them.
'Take the stairs.'
The two men nodded and Archer moved across the marble floor, pulling open the door to the stairwell as Chalky moved through it, his weapon in the aim. The two men disappeared, sprinting up the stairs as Fox pushed the button for the lift. It was already there on the ground floor and once the doors parted the two officers stepped inside, Fox pushing the button for 8 and then hit the button for the doors to close.
Inside the Washington DC office building, former Staff Sergeant Matthew Fraser was indeed at his desk. He worked as a software analyst, a reliable if tedious job, a world away from his past life, but it provided a regular and stable pay-cheque and meant his family had a good standard of living. He'd left the United States Army Rangers in 2010 and in all honesty was struggling to make the adjustment from military to civilian life. Back then, he'd taken it for granted, but the places he'd been and the times he'd had, even in combat, had been some of the greatest of his life. He'd mistakenly figured it would all last forever.
But it hadn't. His wife had become pregnant the year before and although they’d been expecting just one child, they’d had twins. After a decade of being absent and away on operations with the Rangers overseas, she’d begged him to leave the military. She told him she needed him around to help her with the two babies, but he also knew that she wanted her boys to grow up with their father, not just look at images of him in photograph frames or ultimately at a wooden coffin lifted off a plane from some foreign country, an American flag laid across the top as a brass trumpet played on the runway.
He’d relented and mustered out in December, saying goodbye to his fellow Rangers and a career he’d spent sixteen years building. He’d applied and been accepted for the job in this office, offered a reasonable salary and no healthcare. Considering the responsibilities he’d used to carry, like taking on rebel forces in Iraq or performing covert hostage rescues in Kosovo, reviewing software specifications paled in comparison.
He had arrived just over an hour ago, Thursday, two days before the weekend, and was at his desk examining some emails on his computer, most of them from disgruntled customers asking a question about the company products or claiming something didn't work and demanding action. He reached over and picked up a cup of coffee by the screen, taking a sip and hoping that the more he read the complaint on the screen the more he would end up giving a damn about it.
As he leant back, bored already, he caught a glimpse of some movement in the long window running down the upper half of the door to his office. Leaning right, he saw two men in suits talking with one of the workers out there. The two men both looked his way and then started heading straight for his office, spotting him through the glass. They looked official, definitely government men, and in a hurry, one of them holding a cell phone to his ear and talking into it, keeping his eyes on Fraser. The former US Ranger could have picked them out in a crowd. CIA, or maybe NSA. Square jaws, clean shaven, pistols in pancake holsters hidden under their suit jackets. He took a long pull from his cup of coffee as they approached wondering what they wanted, secretly thankful for the break in his monotonous routine. He felt his pulse quicken, for the first time in a long time, that old rush, like a junkie scoring a fix.
Finally, some excitement.
Suddenly, there was a smash of glass as something hit the window of his office.
The bullet hit Fraser in the side of the head, shredding through his skull and brain and exiting the other side in a bloody spray, killing him in an instant. He was dead before his cup of coffee hit the desk. The mug hit the table side-on, the hot liquid spilling out over the keyboard and the dead man’s thighs. Fraser dropped from his seat, the spattering of his blood and brains a harsh red on the clean white of the far office wall.
The two CIA agents in suits saw all this through the window and rushed forward, barging open the door. Looking down at the dead man, they both pulled their pistols, shouting back at everyone else on the level to get down as they tried to see where the shot had come from.