Assassin (John Stratton)
Read Assassin (John Stratton) Online
Authors: Duncan Falconer
The Hostage
The Hijack
The Operative
The Protector
Undersea Prison
Mercenary
Traitor
Pirate
Non-fiction
First Into Action
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 9780748122240
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Duncan Falconer 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
To my dearest Francesca
1
Stratton lay on a sleeping bag on a bunk bed in full desert combat fatigues. A windproof jacket covered him like a blanket, with only his boots sticking out at the bottom.
It was dark. Cold. His breath was turning to vapour as he exhaled easily before the dry and flaking mud walls of the hut.
His face was coated in broad dark-green, brown and black stripes. He held his grubby hands intertwined across his abdomen, inside soiled, thin black leather gloves from which he had removed the fingertips. His bright-green eyes stared at the stars through the gaps in the mud and straw roof.
A camouflaged Colt assault rifle was leaning against the wall by Stratton’s head. It had a sophisticated scope attached to the top. A full magazine loaded into it and bits of dark, frayed cloth tied on in places to break up its shape. Beside it lay a bulky, nylon harness system with pouches full of munitions and combat equipment.
A low, hissing noise filled the small room, slightly louder than the sound of the chilly air whistling through the cracks in the walls. It was the carrier wave from a military
radio sitting upright on the floor within arm’s reach. A distant voice occasionally broke through, speaking English. Soldiers somewhere, passing information. Questions and replies. Nothing frantic. All was calm and controlled in his world at that point.
Stratton was taking a moment to relax before heading out into the night. The task was scheduled to last into the morning, depending on how successful it was. Rest when you can. The SF soldier’s mantra.
He closed his eyes and tried to switch off. He hadn’t heard from London in almost ten months. Military intelligence could usually be depended on for rescuing him from the mundane, repetitive tasks on offer in special forces. He hoped something would come along soon that had some real meat to it, and not in Afghanistan like his present operation.
He exhaled slowly and focused on letting his limbs grow heavy, reducing his heart rate and blood pressure. He was usually good at relaxing in hostile environments. Soon his breathing grew deeper and his mind emptied. And then, as if in a dream, he heard his name. Someone calling him faintly. Summoning him from a faraway place.
He crawled back to consciousness as he realised it was coming from the radio.
‘Stratton, this is Ops,’ a voice repeated.
He reached for the device and brought it to his mouth. ‘Stratton.’
‘Can you come to Ops?’ the voice said.
‘On my way.’
He sat up and stretched his back. Typical, he thought. Just as he was nodding off. They call.
He got to his feet. Lifted his heavy webbing onto a shoulder, picked up the assault rifle and went to the hut entrance. The door had long lost its hinges and leaned against the opening. He moved it to one side and walked outside.
The mud hut was one of a dozen in a dark, abandoned village. Situated on the side of a steep hill, it was surrounded by a thick, high wall that the rain and wind had attacked over the years until it was crumbling away in places. The village had been evacuated during the Russian invasion some twenty-five years earlier. It hadn’t been repopulated, for whatever reason, after the Soviets had been ousted, and Stratton’s squadron had made it their temporary HQ, once it had been declared free of booby-traps or mines by the advance reconnaissance team. Thirty SBS operatives, along with an HQ element, had moved in a couple of days ago. They would be gone soon.
Stratton walked between the ugly mud structures that housed the other teams. There were no lights anywhere. Everything was shades of grey to black. The enemy was miles away, but it was possible they might conduct a night patrol in the area. Although the village was on a route to nowhere in particular, military target-wise, as far as the Taliban were concerned. But there was no point in taking the risk. The lads could manage without lights anyway. They could warm their food in the huts. The smell would dissipate
in the mountain winds long before any enemy would notice it.
Stratton stepped through a gap in the perimeter wall and headed towards the operations HQ tent, wondering why he’d been summoned. Perhaps there’d been a change in plan.
As he neared the camouflaged tent, which was specially designed to prevent any light escaping from within it, he could hear the barely perceptible hum from an otherwise silent generator tucked among the rocks metres away.
He saw three men standing outside the tent’s airlock entrance. One was Captain Burns, the squadron commander and leader of the operation. Stratton had never seen the other two before. They were dressed in American-style combat fatigues. On the ground beside them sat a couple of small packs, with an assault rifle leaning against each. The strangers hadn’t been at the site earlier in the day and had evidently just arrived. Even though it was so remote, no helicopters were permitted at the forward location and only a couple of vehicles had been allowed up to bring the heavier equipment and they would remain in situ until the camp was dismantled the following day. That meant the two men had yomped in on the rocky track. It was seven miles to the last permitted point for operational vehicles, at least in the past twenty-four hours. And they’d done it in darkness. They must be keen, he thought.
‘That you, Stratton?’ Burns called out.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied as he closed in on the group.
‘Sorry to disturb your slumber,’ Burns said in his usual verging-on-sarcastic manner.
Stratton was used to it. He’d known Burns for several years and liked and respected him. He eyed the two other men, who were looking at him. Or more like examining him.
‘I want to introduce you to a couple of visitors who’ll be joining us on the operation,’ Burns said. ‘Jeff Wheeland and Mike Spinter.’
‘How’s it going?’ Wheeland said, holding out a hand, a smile on his wide face.
Stratton kept his glove on as he took Wheeland’s hand. The man had a strong grip that matched his square jaw. He was American, no doubt about it. Stratton thought he sounded Midwestern. Both men were dressed like soldiers but Burns hadn’t given them ranks. That would have been unusual for military personnel. Which suggested they weren’t. And if they weren’t military and they were attending a special ops task, and they were American, then he figured they had to be Central Intelligence-type animals or spooks of some kind. Any one of a myriad of agencies under the US Homeland Security umbrella.
‘Pleasure,’ Spinter said. He sounded West Coast American and looked far more serious than his partner. Neither was he as solidly built, though he looked athletic. Stratton put both men in their early thirties. There was a similar intensity in the way they were looking at him.
‘It wasn’t mentioned in the briefing,’ Burns said. ‘But these guys are sponsoring this operation. You’ll personally be babysitting these gentlemen, Stratton. Their focus will
be the ops section of the main building. I’ve got a few things to do before we head out so why don’t you get acquainted? We’ve got a little over an hour before we form up. I’ll see you then.’
‘Thanks for everything, Captain Burns,’ Wheeland said.
‘No problem,’ Burns said, and went inside the tent, leaving them to stand out in the cold.
Stratton didn’t have much small talk at the best of times, but he felt he ought to say something. ‘If you’d like a cup of tea or coffee I could knock up some inside my hut,’ he said. ‘We’re all on self-catering up here. No mess tent, I’m afraid.’
‘We’re good, thanks,’ Wheeland said. ‘We just had a cup of coffee in the HQ tent with your squadron commander.’
Stratton got the feeling that Wheeland was the boss of the two.
‘Winter seems to be early this year,’ the American said as he took a cigar wallet from a pocket.
‘You spend a lot of time in Afghanistan?’ Stratton asked.
‘On and off over the years,’ Wheeland replied, offering a cigar to Stratton, who declined. The American took one out for himself. ‘You a health nut too?’ he said. ‘Spinter here is purer than mountain water.’
‘Not exactly. I’ve not matured enough for cigars,’ Stratton said.
Wheeler took a lighter from his pocket and opened his coat to light the cigar. Spinter opened his own coat and added to the protection against the wind. It was an immediate and well-practised act.
‘Been looking forward to meeting you, Stratton,’ Wheeland said as he puffed on the cheroot to get it going. ‘I’ve heard a little about you. Quite the tough guy.’
‘Must be another Stratton.’
‘So you’re not the Stratton who broke into Styx. The underwater prison. And broke out of it as well. That was quite a feat.’
Stratton wasn’t the boastful type. And since Wheeland apparently knew all about it there was nothing for him to say anyway.
‘Your parent unit’s the Special Boat Service but you do a lot of work for the Brit SIS,’ Wheeland said. ‘You could say you’re my opposite number. I started life in the Navy SEALs. Then one day I got the call and went over to the dark side.’
Stratton wondered if Spinter was going to say anything.
‘I said to Burns, “I wanna be in the frontline of the assault,”’ Wheeland said. ‘“Then you wanna be with Stratton,” Burns said. “Would that be John Stratton?” I asked. “That’s the one,” he said.’
Stratton wanted to impress upon Wheeland how important it was not to get in the way of his team when they moved on the target. But he decided against it. The American would probably resent it. Stratton would leave it until they got on the ground. Maybe Wheeland wouldn’t interfere anyway. Maybe he was all talk and would stay back when the action kicked in. Stratton couldn’t quite make him out.
He decided he’d served protocol enough by talking as
long as he had to them. ‘I’m going to sort out my kit for the task,’ he said, lying. His kit had long since been organised and ready to go. ‘I’ll meet you back here in an hour. You can keep warm in the HQ tent. It’s the only place around here with heating.’
Stratton walked off. He thought he could hear a chuckle as he climbed through the gap in the mud wall perimeter. Typical spook arrogance, he thought. He had to wonder what they were doing here and why they wanted to join the operation. It wasn’t entirely unusual. He had carried out entries for intelligence operatives in the past, both Brit and US, usually some boffin, some whiz-kid who needed hand-holding through the most hazardous phase of the mission, or delivering to their objective and sometimes bringing back on completion. But this particular job had been briefed simply as a hit on a Taliban commander and his men who’d been causing a lot of grief in the region, planting roadside bombs, building suicide vehicles and terrorising any local towns and villages whose people showed signs of tolerating coalition forces. That had been the essence of the brief at least. It was not a strange target by far and Stratton and the boys had done several like it on their current tour. Why this bunch of Taliban was of greater priority than any other was not obvious. Not that any of them gave much of a damn. One target was as good as another.
From experience, Stratton knew the only reason spooks would get personally involved in the actual fight was if they needed immediate access to someone or something
on target and didn’t want it delayed or contaminated by post-operational procedures. Or if perhaps there was something they didn’t want to be seen by other personnel or agencies.