The Henchmen's Book Club (26 page)

Somewhere behind Dunbar’s delts, Tempest was shouting at
him to desist and trying to wrestle the Major away, but Dunbar was conscious of
the fact that he hadn’t killed anyone in almost five minutes and that was a
long time for him.

Eventually Rip’s fingers left my windpipe, though he’d
choked me so hard it took me almost thirty seconds to realise this. Stars
popped and floated in front of my eyes, which was interesting seeing as I only
had one, but it was true and I saw with them both. I wondered why this should
be and half thought about asking Dunbar to do it again, but suddenly I was
being shoved into my chair again.

Tempest apologised for his colleague’s behaviour and asked
if I was okay.

“Don’t apologise to that motherfucking killer, he murdered
my buddy,” Dunbar barked.

“Hmm, bad luck old chap,” Tempest replied, although who he
was saying this too – me or Rip – I couldn’t tell.

When I’d finally caught my breath, Tempest warned Dunbar
not to touch me again and fetched some water from the cooler by the door. I
don’t know why people did this. Being strangled doesn’t make you any thirstier
than normal. If anything, it actually makes it harder to drink than if you
haven’t been strangled but I took a sip all the same just to show my gratitude.

“I’d butt-fuck that fucking
mother
to within an inch of his life if it was up to me!” Dunbar
was raging behind Tempest, finally pushing his partner over the edge.

“Enough Major. Enough!”

“Enough? Enough? You come in here and deal with this scum
and you tell me enough, you
mother
!”
Dunbar ad-libbed, straying off the page a beat or two.

“I wish I was your mother, Rip, because I’d wash your
bloody mouth out with soap,” Tempest replied.

“I’d like to see you try, you limey fuckwipe!” Dunbar
invited, stepping up to the plate as Tempest took his turn in the firing line

“Fuckwipe?” Tempest grimaced in confusion. “What does that
even mean?”

“It means my dick up your ass, you goddamn honey dew
faggot, that’s what!” Dunbar barked, making even less sense than usual. I wondered
how Rip went down on first dates. In flames, I concluded.

Tempest looked around for subtitles. “It’s just a
nonsensical stream of Tourettes. Do you even know what you’re saying yourself?”

“Goddamn right I do. You say enough, do you? Well I say enough
too. Enough talking!”

“Shall I come back later when you’re both free?” I
suggested, helping myself to another cup of water.

“Get your ass back in that chair,
eyeball
!” Dunbar demanded, aiming one of his fat, hairy fingers at
my face.

I retook my seat and waited for Dunbar to slap the water
out of my hand, but he was too busy laying into Tempest to concern himself with
the basics.

“This is bullshit! I said from the start that this was
bullshit and when it all blows up because you trusted this piece of garbage,
I’ll skull-fuck your fucking ass!” he insisted.

Tempest just stared at Dunbar for a moment, at a loss to
know where to even begin, before finally conceding the point.

“Fair enough, Rip. You can skull-fuck my bottom if it all
goes wrong,” he agreed, eventually retaking his seat and offering me a
cigarette. “So Mark, why don’t we talk about this book club of yours?”

30.
OPERATION CANDY SNATCH

Three years earlier, while I’d been away in Greenland partying with Rip, the
British Secret Service had been running an operation of its own. Nothing
unusual there, as the various intelligence services around the world are
running dozens of operations at any given time. But what was so special about
this particular operation was that the initial lead had come from me.

X
³
.

That’s right, that tenuously sketchy titbit I’d tossed
Tempest outside the pub in Sussex had led him all the way to Marbella and back
(nice work if you can get it) and right to the very centre of a plot to bury
every sea port on the Mediterranean under twenty feet of sand by engineering a
month-long artificial sandstorm in the Western Sahara. Don’t ask me why.
Perhaps
X
³
had bought shares in Dyson or something. I
didn’t know, but thirty dead scientists and one destroyed storm-maker later,
the Med was once again safe thanks to XO-11 while
Sun
Dju ended up sinking into a bottomless Saharan dune in her somewhat unsuitable
stilettos. Silly cow.

Hooray for Jack Tempest and British
Secret Service. Martinis and medals all round!

There was only one problem “Triple X”, as he’d decided to
call him, had got away. And it was this lapse that would come back to haunt him
three years later with the launch of Operation
Candy Snatch
.

The intention was total revenge. No pay off, no prizes and
no extortion. Just pure and simple satisfaction.

Okay, where to start?

The United Nations, that wondrously powerless organisation
that was meant to foster peace and prosperity in the wake of World War Two, but
in fact oversaw one of the bloodiest half centuries on record, came up with yet
another “winning idea” when it charged the kiddy branch of its outfit, UNICEF,
with the task of organising the PR stunt to end all PR stunts. The idea,
obviously dreamed up over a bowl of cornflakes, was stunningly lame in its naivety;
every world leader with a child under the age of eighteen was to send their
offspring to represent them at the “United Nations Children’s Summit”, which
was basically a weekend-long jolly with jelly, ice cream and six-thousand
special forces bodyguards. I think the basic idea was that all the Kings and
Presidents would see their little darlings playing happily alongside one
another and go all Coca Cola on their neighbours, prompting a new dawn of
unprecedented peace and reconciliation.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly.

Anyway, everyone got very excited about the idea, not least
of all the kids when they found out there’d be X-Box, and astonishingly
thirty-one world-leaders sent their little sweethearts along to the newly
constructed UNICEF compound in Provence.

France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Denmark,
Norway, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, the
United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Libya, Gabon, Niger, Mali, Zambia, Argentina,
Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Canada and New Zealand.

China.

Russia.

And of course, Britain and America.

Where elderly statesmen or women didn’t have kids under the
age of eighteen, they sent other relatives, or in the case of Ireland, a
competition winner off the telly. The President of the United States sent his
granddaughter, while the Presidents of both China and Russia sent their
nephews. Britain, officially recognised as the most gullible country in the UN,
sent the Prime Minister’s youngest daughter, born just four weeks before the PM
took office and at only six years old, the youngest of all the delegates.
Naturally, her mother travelled with her, but she stayed out of camera shot
with a dozen other proud mothers while their VIP cherubs put the world to
rights and ganged up on Peru for his pocket money.

Well everything went swimmingly that first day and
proceedings were televised, if not watched, around the world. All the kids
mingled, newspapers were filled with pictures and a small army of bodyguards
got to enjoy the easiest assignment they’d ever known.

At least until the gas bombs went off.

For hidden amongst the fixtures and fittings of the UNICEF
compound were dozens of canisters of a nerve agent that rendered everyone
inside unconscious. Kids and ex-
Spetsnaz minders dropped
to the floor and slept like babes-in-arms, while those that were able to escape
the suffocating clouds stumbled clear to raise the alarm.

Maybe a couple of hundred UNICEF and
security personnel stationed around the perimeter avoided the trap, but with
barely a hundred gas masks in the entire place and all of them held at fire
stations within the compound, they were powerless to help the others.

That’s when things began to stir within
the clouds.

See, also hidden amongst the fixtures and
fittings were several black figures, bedecked in breathing apparatus and cold
suits, they’d avoided the extensive pre-summit security sweep with guile and
technology. How long they’d been hibernating in their hidey-holes was anybody’s
guess but like snakes waking after a long cold winter, they slithered out of
cracks in the furniture and began silently and meticulously gathering up the
young.

Right at the centre of the compound, in an open-air
courtyard between the buildings, stood a collection of life-sized plastic play
vehicles: a fire engine, an aeroplane, a dumper truck and a helicopter. The
most popular of these had been the brightly coloured helicopter, with its blue
and yellow bodywork and bright red rotor blades. The kids had played on this
all the previous day, pressing buttons and stirring the rotors. Now one of the
black figures climbed aboard and inserted a missing chip underneath the yellow
dashboard. The plastic helicopter suddenly roared to life, shaking off its
garish red and yellow bodywork to reveal black steel beneath. The pilot huffed
and puffed to throw out all the colourful plastic interiors while the others
loaded the rear and soon a fully laden UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter warbled away
in the centre of the playground.

“That’s it, let’s go,” the pilot said when the final child
had been loaded on board and a moment later they took off.

Security personnel and UNICEF staff watched in dismay as
this alien aircraft, with ugly crossed Tarantula legs liveried on its side,
rose into a crimson sky. Several guards opened fire but were quickly wrestled
to the ground by the others who realised what it was carrying.

The helicopter turned south, casually dipping its nose and
moseying away to head out over the Mediterranean.

A few miles away, French and Italian Air Forces were
scrambling birds into the sky to make after the Black Hawk and radar and spy
satellites were following its every move, but the Black Hawk was in no rush. It
didn’t want to lose its pursuers or drop off the map. Quite the contrary in
fact. It wanted to be followed. It wanted to be seen. It wanted the world to
take notice of what was about to happen.

Ten miles out to sea, the door slid open and Habib Touré,
the seventeen-year-old middle son of the President of Mali, was pushed out. He
screamed as he fell, dropping a thousand feet to within touching distance of
the waves, before a tiny parachute opened. It cushioned his fall as he crashed
into the water and the life vest tied around his shoulders automatically
inflated to take him back to the surface but the message was clear – get
too close and the next one leaves the helicopter
au naturelle
.

The pursuing helicopters dutifully backed off and after an
hour’s uninterrupted flight, the Black Hawk reached its final destination.

One hundred and fifty miles south of St-Tropez and seventy
miles west of Corsica, a scragg of weathered rock jutted out of the sea. Unlike
most Mediterranean islands,
Île de Roc
boasted no sandy beaches or raucous nightclubs, just a few old pillboxes and
broken antennas left over from its time as an Italian observation post during
World War Two. Abandoned in 1947, the tiny island had been forgotten by all but
nesting gulls for almost sixty years until a lease had been taken out two years
earlier. The paperwork said it was to become a marine research centre, but if this
was the case it was to be the most heavily fortified marine research centre in
the world.

The rocks parted as the Black Hawk settled on its plateau.
The sides fell away and the basalt flat sank, sucking the helicopter into the
island as the pilot killed the engine.

French and Italian pilots circled overhead reporting back
all they saw until a cluster of sea-to-air missiles erupted from the water,
chasing them through the skies and silencing them one-by-one.

And as the final few scraps of debris rained down, the
rocks closed over the Black Hawk’s blades, protecting the helicopter from
reprisals and sealing the children inside, so that once again
Île de Roc
looked barren and lifeless.

“I see, yes, that’s certainly a tricky one. Those poor
kids,” I agreed. “So what’s in it for me?”

“You don’t give up, do you, Jones?” Tempest snorted. “Here
we are talking about the lives of thirty innocent children and all you’re
concerned about is what’s in it for you.”

“What’s your point?” I double-checked.

“I told you, Tempest, he’s scum. And scum like him only
think of themselves,” Dunbar growled from the wings.

“Hey, ladies, I’m here until I croak and it’s a seller’s
market so let’s talk windfalls,” I said.

“You’re not getting out of here,” Tempest reiterated.

“Then neither are those kids,” I reminded him, which wasn’t
a very nice thing to say but I refer you to my indictment sheet.

So why me? Why had Tempest and Dunbar come to see me? What
did I have to do with this sorry mess?

The Italians had tried to assault the island. Twenty-four
COMSUBIN frogmen had approached by submarine and swam the last mile under cover
of darkness. They’d barely hauled themselves out of the water when the guns had
opened up. In less than three minutes they’d been torn to pieces, partly due to
the fact that there was no cover on
Île
de Roc
, and partly due to the fact that the island’s defenders had been
planning for just such an assault for more than two years. Some of the guns
were automated while others were manned but all were mercilessly effective.
Only seven frogmen made it back into the water and only three of them back to
the sub. The assault could not have proved more catastrophic. And not just for
the military failure. But because now there was a penalty to pay. Though it
wouldn’t be the Italians who’d have to pay it.

At just eighteen-years-old, George Wilson was the eldest
child to have attended the summit. The son of the New Zealand Prime Minister,
he was intelligent and bright, popular and sporty; just how all good Kiwis
should be. He was also wearing four pounds of high explosives in a vest around
his waist. Again, just how all good Kiwis should be.

George was pushed out of a concealed steel entrance just
below the helipad and the door slammed shut behind him. It soon became clear to
the watching spy satellites that George was following orders, because he moved
away from the entrance and climbed up onto the salty rocks until he was
standing on a ridge just above the helipad. He unravelled a white banner along
the rocks, on which was written a single word.

POENA

George then disappeared.

“What’s poena?”

“It means penalty, or punishment, in Latin,” Tempest told
me. “It was a reprisal for the raid.”

“Why not blow up the Italian kid?”

“This is more divisive. Half the nations are already at
each other’s throats so when the nephew of the Russian President can be
publicly executed in retaliation for a botched American rescue mission, that’s
the sort of nightmare scenario that gets the rest of the world ducking under
the table.”

“Hey fuck you, Tempest!” Dunbar suddenly snapped. “If
anyone’s gonna botch a rescue mission it’ll be you fucking tea-humping Limeys.
We bailed you out of every war you’ve ever fought in so don’t talk to me about
botching rescue missions,
mother fucker
,
because you’re the fucking pussies.”

“See what I mean?” Tempest said.

“Yes I see. It’s a dilemma,” I agreed. “Which brings us
back to a dilemma of my own, namely, what’s in it for me?”

“
Motherfucker
!”

Actually, I think I misled you earlier when I said that
X
³
had made no
demands, because he had. But it wasn’t for riches or power or recognition or
real estate, it was purely personal. In exchange for the safe return of the
children, he asked for one thing and one thing only; that thirty of the most
prominent intelligence agents currently operating be handed over to him for
summary execution. This was punishment for the death of Sun Dju, who it turned
out had been his fuck buddy as well as his personal bodyguard. They had
thirty-six hours. Failure to comply would result in the pitter-patter of tiny
shell casing every half hour until the island was messy with kids.

Now
X
³
wasn’t just
going to let the UN quickly groom a load of tramps for the exchange. He had a
list of names all drawn up and this list was like a who’s who of international
super-spies; top ranking XOs, undercover SEOs, expert computer hackers, deep
cover moles. Basically, everyone who’d ever got in the way of a half-decent
operation in the past.