Tarantula

THE MAFIA in that part of Italy called him Tarantula. A tattoo of a spider decorated his face. The abdomen of the insect was on his right cheek, covering it from the cheekbone to the line of his jaw. The eight legs spread up to his eye, his forehead, towards his ear and down to his throat and the corner of his lips. His head was shaved and the rest of his skin was decorated, too. There was a pistol and a grenade. A neat line of cursive script above his right ear declared, in Italian, “La vita è dolore.”

Life is pain.

Tarantula had become his
nom de guerre
. He was a hunter, just like the spider, and just as deadly.

This morning, Tarantula was nestled down in the undergrowth in the cliffs outside the pleasant coastal town of Castellabate. His vantage point afforded him a perfect view down onto the narrow cliff-top road that led from Agropoli to Marina di Camerota. The road was spectacular, even to his jaded eye, with a steep climb to the east and a vertiginous drop to the azure blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. He could see for miles. The sky was beautifully clear with not even a hint of cloud. The weather was capricious here, but there would be nothing to disturb his task this morning.

The man was a careful planner and he had chosen his position with his usual diligence.

The road followed the line of the cliff, bending in a slow and gentle curve. It was fenced for much of its length but this span of a half a mile or so was unguarded, with a steep drop that terminated in deep waters fifty feet below. The unfenced part came at the apex of a sharp hairpin. It was necessary for drivers to slow right down to make the turn, to thirty or forty miles an hour maximum, before they could increase their speed again for the straight run ahead.

That was important.

The sight lines were clear and unobstructed, long enough to ensure that he would have plenty of time to sight his target.

That was important, too.

Everything about it was perfect.

The man glassed the road carefully. He had an excellent pair of binoculars and the images leapt at him sharp and crisp, almost close enough to reach out and touch. The inland side of the road terminated with the sheer cliff face, buttressed with a stone wall. A wire net had been fastened to the cliff to prevent dislodged boulders from falling onto the cars below.

The long gun laying in the rocks next to the man was an SVD, the Russian Dragunov sniper system. It was a semi-automatic gas-operated rifle with a short-stroke gas-piston system. The barrel was not typically rifled over its entire length, but the man had paid to have this one adapted, with additional rifling to increase the twist rate and, thus, the accuracy.

The man settled behind the rifle. He felt the tension in the trigger, found his stockweld and slid up to the eyepiece, staring into it and seeing the ridge and the trees and the vegetation through the mil-dot-rich reticle. He made a minute adjustment to the focus ring, creeping it around until the last remnant of blur was gone and he could see the leaves on the fir tree at five hundred feet distance.

He took out his Leica handheld laser and ranged the spot where he knew his quarry would emerge. Next, he took out a small weather station and noted the wind, humidity, and temperature. The trees were rustling a little in a light breeze that was running in off the sea. He noted the data in a small notebook and calculated the firing solutions he would need. He dialled the first into the scope of the rifle, making adjustments for windage.

The folding bipod was mounted onto upper rails above the barrel and the adjustable horizontal front grip was mounted on the lower rails, under the barrel. The rifle had an adjustable stock and cheekpiece. The barrel was protected by a ventilated aluminium hand guard and was fitted with a muzzle brake, useful when firing full-power magnum loads like this.

He saw the car approaching from the north and swept the glasses up to it. It was a hire car, a Mercedes S-Class, the tinted windows and the smooth silver paintwork glittering as it caught the sun’s early rays. The man watched as the car started to slow for the sharp bend.

He settled down, relaxing his body and breathing easily. He laid the crosshairs on the car.

He shut everything out except for the scope and the images that it presented to him. He concentrated on the feel of the Dragunov against his chin and shoulder, the smell of the cleaning fluid that had been used on its metallic parts, the cold touch of the aluminium eyepiece against his eye socket. He felt the chill of the fibreglass stock against his cheek. He held the rifle steady, still, and waited until the target nestled at the confluence of the crosshairs.

Three hundred and eleven feet.

Wind, one minute, left.

The car slowed a little more.

The man nudged the sight a fraction to the right until the windscreen filled the scope. He fine tuned just a little more, aiming for the faint outline of the driver through the darkened glass.

The trigger was two-stage.

The man filled his lungs and then exhaled slowly. He squeezed the trigger once, and then again, more tightly, squeezing straight back since even a millimetre pull to the left or right could effect the accuracy of the shot.

The rifle fired, a sharp and keening report as the bullet streaked away. He could see the disturbed air trailing the projectile. It ate up the distance to the target in an instant. The windshield went milky white as the round punched straight through it, the hole made so fast that the rest of the glass remained intact. The car jerked across the road, crashed up against the cliff face and bounced back towards the unfenced drop. The front wheels left the asphalt and found nothing to replace it, the car powering into space, angling quickly downwards and then falling into the void.

The man’s view was blocked by the angle of the cliff but he heard the clap and the splash as the flipped-over car slammed into the water roof first, then the sound of the whining engine as the wheels continued to spin, a series of gulps as water surged into the cabin, and then nothing.

One shot.

That was enough.

The man they called Tarantula collected the spent casing and dropped it into his pocket. He broke the long rifle into its constituent parts and placed them into the foam lined carrying case.

He closed the lid and picked up the case. A lorry from a bakery in Naples rumbled around the bend and continued north towards Salerno. It made him think of breakfast.

The man pushed a pair of Ray Bans over his eyes and retraced his steps towards Castellabate. He would drive down to a café he knew on the water at Capitelo. He would order a cappuccino and pastry, read the newspaper and look out to sea.

CONTROL’S SECRETARY had called John Milton and said that his presence was required. Milton had been hoping to find the time to work on his fitness but knew better than to keep his commanding officer waiting. He had driven across London to the anonymous office near to the MI6 building that advertised itself as the headquarters of Global Logistics. That was a front. The building was the home to Group Fifteen, the off-the-books kill squad that was sent in to resolve the problems of Her Majesty’s government when diplomacy and other means had failed.

Milton drove into the underground car park, left his car in his usual space and took the elevator up. When he arrived upstairs, Control looked in a bad humour.

“Sir?” Milton said.

Control was in late middle age, his face framed by heavy eyebrows that seemed locked into a perpetual frown. A sheaf of papers was scattered on the floor around his desk. Milton had seen his rages before and could guess what had happened: something in the papers had displeased him and they had been propelled at the poor executive who had brought them to his attention.

He looked up at him and spoke tersely. “You haven’t had anything for a couple of weeks, have you, Number Eight?”

“Nothing substantial, sir.”

“What have you been doing?”

Milton wondered if he was about to get one of Control’s legendary dressing downs. “I’ve been training, sir. On the range. It’s been a while since I got my eye in and I don’t want to get rusty.”

“No, quite. But no mission?”

“No, sir. Not since Sarajevo.”

“Sit down, Eight.”

Milton did as he was told.

“When’s the last time you went to Italy?

“I don’t know, sir. It would’ve been for a holiday. Tuscany. Florence. Ten years ago. Maybe more.”

“You’re going tomorrow. Naples.”

“What for?”

“We’ve got a problem and you can help fix it.”

There was a bundle of files on the edge of Control’s desk and he reached over and pushed them so that they fell into Milton’s lap.

“A little light reading, Eight.”

“What is it?”

“We’ve been working with the drug squad. There’s a particularly nasty branch of the mafia that operates down in Naples. The normal mafia is bad enough, obviously, but this lot make them look like choir boys. Have you heard of the Camorra?”

“Only anecdotally. A film, I think.”

“Nasty bastards, particularly ruthless. The Italians can’t get to grips with them and so they’ve given up. From Naples all the way down into Calabria, they practically run the state. They run the port of Naples especially. They’ve gone into business with one of the Mexican cartels and they’ve been shipping their cocaine and heroin into Naples and then all around Europe, including here. Tonnes of it.”

“And the government wants it stopped?”

“Of course they do, Milton. The police have done the legwork. There’s an organisation in Liverpool, criminal family, Curtis Patterson and his brothers. Looks like they take care of distribution once it gets over here. There’s been some cooperation with the Italians and we know precisely who we need to go and have a quite word with.”

Milton was familiar with Control’s euphemisms, and his curious reluctance to spell out in explicit terms the business of the Group that he headed.

“The details are in here?” Milton said, tapping the file. He was keen to get out of the office.

“Hold on, Milton. I’m not finished yet.”

Milton settled back down again.

“We want to attack this problem at both ends.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And you’re not the first agent we’ve put onto this. Number Three went over three weeks ago. We know a little about the mafia but not enough. We don’t know who we need to speak to, for one. Three has been undercover. Playing as the representative of another criminal organisation, this one in London. His orders were to ingratiate himself with the locals, find out as much as he could about the operation down there, and then report back.”

“He hasn’t done that?”

“He’s gone missing, Eight. We haven’t heard from him for a week.”

“Missing?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And you suspect foul play?”

“What do you think?” he said caustically. He indicated the file. “Everything you need to know is in there. Most of it is from the Yard. The Drug Squad, plus organised crime experts. Take it away and read it. There’s plenty there. And then tomorrow you fly to Naples. Find out what happened to Three. If he’s been killed, find out who did it and make an example of them. And then go after the big men. Understand?”

Milton said that he did. The source of Control’s bad mood became obvious to him. He was fastidious about the effectiveness of the men and women who formed the Group. His target was absolute perfection. His agents were to be angels of death who appeared at the operative moment, carried out his orders with scrupulous efficiency, and then disappeared back into the shadows from which they had emerged. The thought that one of them might have fallen during an operation, particularly at the hands of something so grubby as organised crime, would have been anathema to him. He would demand retribution and Milton would be his means of bringing that about.

“Is there anything else, sir?”

“No. Read up on it. Find out what happened. Make it right. Dismissed, Milton.”

MILTON LOOKED out of the window of the British Airways 747 as it descended through the clouds and lined up on approach to Naples. He saw the huge mass of Vesuvius, not the dun colour one would associate with volcanoes but a vast green mantle of vegetation. The city spread out from the water’s edge and stretched out until it faded into a hazy, polluted horizon. Nearer the plane, and directly below it as the undercarriage lowered with a judder, was the port itself. It was detached from the city, a confused, disordered jumble of ships and containers. The freighters were mostly Chinese, bearing the clothes and shoes, the toys and technology that would feed the appetite of the continent from Scandinavia to the borders of Russia. Goods unloaded here could be in the boutiques of Barcelona or Bonn two days later. The ships were enormous, almost too big to credit, gigantic leviathans that edged cautiously alongside jetties that seemed flimsy in comparison. The ships were ministered over by cranes, truck cabs and the tiny figures of stevedores and longshoremen in orange and yellow. The wharf held a multitude of containers, a grid of walls to keep the city out. Naples was surrounded by merchandise. It was almost swamped by it. It was easy to see, elevated at ten thousand feet, the scale of the opportunities that must have been available to those with the inclination to take advantage of them. He watched as big eighteen wheel trucks edged out into traffic and wondered how much of the freight they were dispersing was legitimate and how much bore the stamp of the Camorra.