Assassin (John Stratton) (25 page)

Beyond the wire he could see one end of the airfield. It looked dusty and unused. It was the world’s busiest single runway airport, but aircraft rarely ventured that far. Further beyond, several hundred metres away, he could see the main airport perimeter of HESCO barriers topped with razor wire, and beyond that a vast, open plain of grey sand framed by rolling hills, the crests of which were miles away.

They both changed their dirty clothes for new, nondescript earth-coloured trousers, T-shirts, shirts and fleeces. Before Stratton tossed his trousers, he searched the pockets. There was something in one of them and he dug it out – a large coin on a chain. Chandos’s SBS stone. He’d forgotten all about it.

He put it in a pocket of his new trousers and checked his face in the Toyota’s side mirror. His straggly hair and beard would continue to be useful in civilianising his look. And if challenged for identification, they would also pass as off-duty soldiers.

Stratton watched a big transport aircraft come in over the airfield. Looking at the clear skies, he guessed it was around three in the afternoon, and his watch confirmed it. They’d have to wait till dark before he could crack on with the next phase of the plan. He climbed into the rear seat of the Hilux and lay down. Daytime dozing wasn’t
something he was good at, but the night could be a long one and since there was nothing else to do, he might as well try and get some sleep.

He exhaled and let his body relax, as Hetta climbed into the front passenger seat and reclined the seat as far back as it could go. The air was still. Few sounds in it. They were in a safe place and it was peaceful.

‘Why’d you join the military?’ she asked.

The sound of her voice surprised him, as well as the fact she’d asked him a personal question. He wondered why.

‘You don’t have to answer. I know how it feels when people ask personal questions. I’m not passing the time. I’d like to know.’

‘Quid pro quo?’ Stratton said.

‘I doubt it. Yesterday you sounded like you knew all about me anyway.’

‘I was only testing some theories.’ He thought about her question. ‘Because I’d nothing better to do,’ he said. ‘I was young and lost. So I joined the Marines. The Royal Marines to you Yanks. I’d no idea what I was good at. If I was good at anything.’

‘Didn’t your parents help you with that?’

‘I didn’t have any. And there was no one else close enough to share those sorts of things with. One day I went for a walk in the city, London. I found myself looking at a shop window. A sign was offering careers in the Marines. To this day I don’t know quite why, but I just walked in and signed up.’

‘It was your destiny calling.’

He glanced at her. Her eyes were closed. ‘I didn’t have you pegged as the destiny-believing type,’ he said.

‘I’m not sure if our lives are already written, but I do believe we have a calling in life. There’s something that each of us can do better than most others. We’re all unique enough to have a purpose. Some of us get to discover what that calling is. Most of us don’t.’

He thought about what she had said.

‘You don’t agree,’ she said.

‘Where were you when I was seventeen?’

He glanced at her. Her eyes were still closed, but he thought he could detect the very slightest of smiles on her lips.

‘I take it you had the benefit of good advice when you were young,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘And did you discover your true calling?’

‘No. I was taken to it.’

‘How’d you know it was the right choice?’

‘It was my father who showed me. It had been his calling. And he told me it would be mine too.’

‘Your father was a soldier?’

She hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she said finally.

‘So, where’d you grow up?’

She didn’t answer.

He looked at her again, with her eyes still closed, but her expression had changed. It was one question too many. But it was more conversation than he’d expected from her.

He closed his eyes and did his best to wash everything
from his mind. The high-pitched engines of an aircraft intensified for a few moments as it accelerated along the runway and grew muffled and less intense as it took to the skies.

He heard few other sounds after that. No birds or flies. It was peaceful.

Stratton opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling of the Hilux cab. It was dark.

Hetta had gone.

He sat up, surprised that he’d fallen asleep deeply enough not to feel or hear her leave. He looked around outside through the windows. The stuff in the back looked undisturbed, in particular the device box secured beneath the rug. He saw her silhouetted by the security lights on the airfield perimeter, standing near the razor wire, hands in her pockets, looking into the distance.

He climbed out and stretched his legs as he looked around. The camp was well lit by street lamps and every compound seemed to have security lights on its perimeter, as well as internally to illuminate entrances and walkways. The camp veritably glowed in most places.

‘It’s time,’ he said.

‘So you do you have a plan?’

‘Kind of.’

They drove straight to the CAMCO compound and past the main entrance. The large gate was drawn across it, secured by a heavy chain and, like everywhere else, the
place was well lit. But they saw no sign of any security. They continued around the corner and into the machinery park, itself illuminated by the security spotlights along the top of the CAMCO perimeter fence. But the trucks and plant provided many dark areas.

Stratton steered the Hilux between a pair of flatbeds and stopped alongside a mobile crane. He shut off the lights and engine and wound down his window. Several large generators were thundering away, powering CAMCO’s facility. Another line of generators across the road kept the location extremely noisy. While they waited, a truck passed by on the main road, its headlights bathing the machinery park.

The CAMCO compound perimeter was constructed of solid metal fencing three metres tall and topped with a triple spool configuration of razor wire that stretched along its entire length.

Stratton climbed out of the Toyota and went to the fence to give it a closer inspection. Hetta got out and looked around.

‘Why don’t I take a look inside the compound and you wait here,’ he said to her, loud enough to compete with the generators. ‘It’ll be easier for one person alone.’

‘Go ahead,’ she said.

The compounds tended to rely on the military units within the base for security and therefore didn’t always employ guards. And if any Taliban did manage to sneak into the base with a bomb of some kind, there were far more important military targets to hit than a civilian
contractor like CAMCO. He followed the line of the fence in the opposite direction to the main entrance.

When Stratton reached the corner where the minor road followed the length of CAMCO’s perimeter fence on that side, he turned with it and followed the fence. The noise from the generators was greatly reduced. After about forty metres he came to a broad gate chained and locked to its post, made of robust alloy bars and chain-link fencing. He could see inside the compound.

He caught a strong smell of sewage and he could see why. A row of collection tanks stood on the other side of the internal road. That was the purpose of this particular entrance. These compounds tended to have their sewage emptied at least once a day and had a gateway purely for that purpose. It had been banged about by the heavy vehicles that came in and out and when Stratton gently pulled at the gate it twisted on one of its hinges, which was broken. The gate would have to be lifted to open it once it was unchained. He pushed against one end and a gap opened up at the support post, large enough for him to squeeze through.

He eased his way inside, stepping into the shadows to assess things. Sounds came from every direction. A toilet flushed and music drifted from a prefab behind the sewage containers. He headed along the inside of the same fence he had just come up on the outside. As he reached the corner a door opened in the prefab a few metres away and light shone across his front. He stopped dead.

A man stepped out of the door and tossed a bucket of
water onto the ground. He was wearing a white jacket and hat. A cook. Inside the room behind him, Stratton glimpsed lines of steel racks filled with tin cans and vegetable racks. The cook went back inside and it went dark again.

Stratton passed through a narrow gap between the fence and a prefab building and when he emerged the other end found himself in a large parking area, looking at a line of pick-up trucks with their rears to the fence. The main buildings had to be fifty or sixty metres away. The sound of the generators seemed to have got louder again. Someone left one of the buildings, and a broad shaft of light shone through the open door into the car park. Stratton heard the door close and the man’s feet crunching on gravel. Then the creak of another door opening and closing.

Stratton studied the pick-up trucks. Two of them were laden with shipping crates. When he got to the first he could read the cargo labels: ‘Destination: CAMCO Houston’. But the crates looked a little small. He had better luck with the second pick-up, where he found one more than big enough for the warhead. He took hold of the side and tried to move it. It wouldn’t budge even a fraction. He wouldn’t be able to lift it even with Hetta’s help.

Another door opened beyond the car park and someone stepped outside. Stratton kept still and watched the person, confident he couldn’t be seen in the darkness from that distance. Footsteps on the gravel indicated the person was heading away from him. He heard a door close and all went quiet again. He could detect no signs of sentry activity, which was good. But the main gates were still locked.
Contractors had very regulated lives in camps like this. They worked long hours during the day and rarely worked at night, when everything was usually locked up. If they weren’t working or eating meals, most would confine themselves to their rooms, where they had satellite TV, DVD and game players, and internet connections. So there would rarely be movement within the compound during the small hours.

The obvious solution was to drive the CAMCO pick-up with the larger crate on it out, place the nuclear device in the crate and then drive it right back to its start point in the compound. But that would require a lot of movement and opening and closing of gates. He doubted he’d get away with it without disturbing someone. Another option would be to remove a panel in the fence perhaps, but that was too big a job. Cutting a hole was another possibility.

He saw a length of plastic cable on the ground by his feet. He picked it up and tossed it up onto the razor wire directly above him. It would mark the spot at least while he tried to figure out a solution.

When he got back to Hetta she was leaning against the Hilux waiting for him. He stopped in front of her, looking at her but deep in thought. He looked beyond her, then above her. He walked past her to inspect the crane, climbed up onto the platform and looked inside the cab. Several heavy trucks went past along the main road, bathing him in light. He ignored them. No one except the owner of the crane would question his interest in it, and he expected the odds of that person showing up to be slim.

The cab was open and he checked the controls, which looked simple enough. He set about pulling the wires out from beneath the dashboard. Stratton wasn’t experienced in hot-wiring vehicles but an MI6 course he’d taken on the subject a year before had explained the theory. It took several experiments before the dashboard lights came on. He pushed the starter button and the engine turned over and burst into life.

Now he looked through the window at the fence and the cable he’d thrown up that was hanging over the razor wire, about ten metres away. He applied the clutch, crunched the mobile crane into gear and pressed down the accelerator, and the engine stalled. ‘Handbrake, idiot,’ he said to himself. He released the brakes and fired up the engine again and this time the heavy vehicle moved forwards.

He carefully moved the crane to within a few metres of the fence, leaving the engine running as he climbed out. He took a moment to assess the noise. He could hardly hear the crane over the racket coming from the generators around them, so he went to the arm controls at the back. A period of study and experimentation was required to operate the various controls.

Hetta came over to look at what he was doing.

‘You know how to operate one of these?’ he asked her.

She shook her head.

‘Well, pay attention. You’re going to be operating this one in a minute.’

He pulled a lever and studied the steel arm above him.
The main arm started to rise up. He kept it going until it was at what he judged to be a good angle. He pulled another toggle and the arm turned. He stopped the move as it wasn’t what he wanted at that moment. It would come in handy shortly.

He pulled another lever and the main arm began to extend like a telescope. He activated the winch and the hook descended. He halted it a metre off the ground and went around to the side of the truck where the strops were stored. He found a canvas one with loops on both ends, carried it to the hook and draped it over the crescent.

‘OK,’ he said loudly. ‘I need you to raise me over the fence. That piece of cable hanging on the wire is the marker.’

She looked at him and then at the controls. After a brief study, she pulled on one of them and the arm started to rise up, the strop along with it. Stratton hurried over to the hook and placed his feet in the strop’s loops as it came off the ground.

He ascended majestically. As the inside of the compound came into view he had a good look around it. He couldn’t see anyone and he felt pretty sure the contractors wouldn’t hear the sound of the crane’s engine. He only needed to avoid being seen.

Hetta was a quick learner and yanked the correct lever and he moved towards the fence. She extended the main arm and the pick-ups came into view and he indicated her to move him to the right a little. He watched the top of the razor wire as he moved over it with inches to spare.
When he was the other side, he held up his hand. The crane arm came to a halt. He was directly above the pick-up with the larger crate in it.