The Kill List (23 page)

“Sure, I know him. He’s a good guy.”

“Do you have his private line?”

The attaché scrolled through his BlackBerry and dictated the number. Seconds later, the Tracker had the man he sought, a British major general, and asked for the meeting.

“My office. Nine o’clock.”

“I’ll be there,” said the Tracker.

The office of the director of Special Forces of the British army is in Albany Barracks, Albany Street, in the elegant residential district of Regent’s Park. A ten-foot-high wall shields the cluster of buildings from the road, and the double gates are sentry guarded and seldom opened to strangers.

The Tracker was in civilian clothes and arrived by cab, which he dismissed. The sentry studied his embassy pass, which gave his army rank, made a phone call and then ushered him through. Another soldier led him into the main building, up two floors and to the office of the DSF at the back.

The two men were around the same age and there were other similarities. Both looked hard and fit. The Britisher was two ranks higher than a lieutenant colonel, and though he was in shirtsleeves, a jacket on a peg in the corner bore the red lapel tabs of the General Staff. Both men had the indefinable air of those who had seen hard combat and rather a lot of it.

Will Chamney had started in the Guards then transferred to the Special Air Service Regiment. He had survived the grueling selection course and spent three years as a troop commander with D Squadron, 16 Troop—the free fallers.

In the regiment, as it is simply called, an officer, or “Rupert,” cannot opt to come back for a second tour; he has to be invited. Chamney went back as a squadron commander just in time to take part in the liberation of Kosovo, and then the Sierra Leone affair.

He was with the SAS team that, with the paras, rescued a group of Irish soldiers captured alive by a mob of limb-chopping rebels at their base deep in the jungle. The West Side Boyz, as the drug-fueled insurgents called themselves, took over a hundred casualties in under an hour before fading into the bush. On his third tour at SAS base, Hereford, he had commanded the regiment with the rank of colonel.

At the time of the meeting, he controlled the four declared units of Special Forces: the SAS, the Special Boat Service, the Special Forces Support Group and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.

Due to the extreme flexibility of officer deployments in the Special Forces, he had, between three assignments at Hereford, commanded Air Assault (paratrooper) units in the UK and in Helmand, Afghanistan.

He had heard of the Tracker, knew that he was in town and knew why. Though TOSA was in the lead, destroying the Preacher had long been a joint op. The man had provoked at least four murders on British soil.

“What can I do for you?” he asked after handshakes and the usual greetings.

The Tracker explained at some length. He wanted a favor, and security clearance was not an issue. The DSF listened in silence. When he spoke, he went straight to the core.

“How long have you got?”

“I suspect until dawn tomorrow, and there are three time zones between here and Somalia. It is just past midday there. We take him out tonight or we miss him again, and probably forever.”

“You’re tracking him by drone?”

“As we speak. A Global Hawk is right over him. When he stops, I believe he will overnight. They have twelve hours of darkness down there. Six to six.”

“And a missile is out?”

“Absolutely. Riding with him in his entourage is an Israeli agent. He has to be extracted alive. If he is wasted, the Mossad are going to be displeased. Putting it mildly.”

“Not surprised. And you don’t want to upset that lot. So what do you want from us?”

“Pathfinders.”

General Chamney slowly raised an eyebrow.

“HALO?”

“I figure it’s the only thing that might work. Do you have any Pathfinders presently within that theater?”

Probably the least known or heard-of unit in the British armed forces, the Pathfinders are, with just thirty-six badged operatives, also the smallest. They are drawn mainly from the Parachute Regiment, already rigorously trained, then retrained almost to destruction.

They operate in six teams of six. Even with their support unit, they are no more than sixty, and no one ever sees them. They can operate miles out ahead of the conventional forces—in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, they were sixty miles ahead of the American point units.

When on land, they use stripped-down, strengthened Land Rovers, in desert pink camouflage, called pinkies. A fighting unit is just two pinkies, three men per vehicle. Their specialty is to drop in by parachute, high altitude, low opening, hence HALO.

Or they can enter a war zone by HAHO (high altitude, high opening) deploying the chutes just after leaving the aircraft and flying the canopy mile after mile into enemy territory; silent, invisible, landing like an alighting sparrow.

General Chamney turned a computer screen toward him and tapped for several seconds at the keyboard. Then he studied the screen.

“By chance, we have a unit at Thumrait. Desert familiarization course.”

The Tracker knew of Thumrait, an air base in the desert of Oman. It had figured as a staging post in the 1990/91 first invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He did a mental calculation. In a C-130 Hercules, the Special Forces aircraft of choice, about four hours to Djibouti. A huge American air base.

“What kind of authority would you need to lend them to Uncle Sam?”

“High,” said the DSF, “way up there. My best guess, our Prime Minister. If he says go, it’s go. But everyone else would simply pass it upward.”

“And who could best persuade the PM?”

“Your President,” said the general.

“And if he could persuade the PM?”

“Then the order would come down the chain. To the defence secretary, to the chief of the defence staff, to the chief of the general staff, to the director of military operations, then to me. And I do the necessary.”

“That could take all day. I don’t have all day.”

The DSF thought for a while.

“Look, the boys are heading home anyway. Via Bahrain and Cyprus. I could divert them via Djibouti to Cyprus.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s about one p.m. in Somalia. If they take off in two hours, they could land in Djibouti around sundown. Can you fix for them to be made welcome and refueled?”

“Absolutely.”

“On the house?”

“Our tab.”

“Can you be there to brief them? Pictures and targets?”

“Personally. I have a company Grumman out at Northolt.”

General Chamney grinned.

“It’s the only way to fly.” Both men had spent many hours on rock-hard seats in the back of pitching transport planes. The Tracker rose.

“I must go. I have a lot of calls to make.”

“I’ll divert the Hercules,” said the DSF. “And I won’t leave the office. Good luck.”

The Tracker was back at the embassy thirty minutes later. He raced to his office and studied the screen showing the pictures being recorded at Tampa. The Preacher’s technical was still bucking and rolling over the ocher/brown desert. The five men still sat in the back, one with a scarlet baseball cap. He checked his watch. Eleven a.m. in London, two p.m. in Somalia, but only six a.m. in Washington. To hell with Gray Fox’s beauty sleep. He put through his call. A sleepy voice answered on the seventh ring.

“You want what?” he yelled when the morning’s events in London were explained.

“Please, just ask the President to ask the British Prime Minister for this little favor. And authorize our base in Djibouti to cooperate in full.”

“I’ll have to rouse the admiral,” said Gray Fox. He was referring to the commanding officer of J-SOC.

“He’s been roused before. It’ll soon be seven a.m. with you. The commander in chief rises early for his fitness regimen. He’ll take the call. Just ask him to speak with his friend in London and grant the favor. It’s what friends are for.”

The Tracker had more calls to make. He told the pilot of the Grumman at Northolt to draw up a flight plan for Djibouti. From the car pool in the embassy basement under Grosvenor Square, he required a car for Northolt within thirty minutes.

His last call was to Tampa, Florida. Though he was no master of electronics, he knew what he wanted and that it could be done. From the cabin of the Grumman, he wanted a patch through to the bunker controlling the Global Hawk over the Somali desert. He would not get a picture, but he needed constant updating on the passage of that pickup truck across the desert and its final stopping place.

In the communications center at Djibouti base, he wanted direct communication, sound and picture, with the Tampa bunker. And he wanted Djibouti’s complete cooperation with himself and the incoming British paratroopers. Thanks to the clout of J-SOC right across the U.S. armed forces, he got the lot.

• • •

T
he President of the United States took the call from the commander of J-SOC after he showered after his morning fitness session.

“Why do we need them?” was his query after listening to the request.

“The target is one you designated in the spring, sir. The one designated back then simply as the Preacher. He has inspired seven assassinations on U.S. soil, plus the slaughter of the CIA staff on the bus. We now know who he is and where he is. But he will probably light out at dawn.”

“I recall him, Admiral. But dawn is almost twenty-four hours away. We can’t get our own people there in time?”

“It’s not dawn in Somalia, Mr. President. It’s almost sundown. The British team happens to be in the theater. They were on a training mission nearby.”

“We can’t use a missile?”

“There’s an agent from a friendly agency in his entourage.”

“So it’s up close and personal?”

“The only way, sir. So says our man on the spot.”

The President hesitated. As a politician, he knew that a favor creates a marker and markers can later be called in.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll make the call.”

The British Prime Minister was in his office in Downing Street. It was one o’clock. It was his habit to take a light salad lunch before going across Parliament Square to the House of Commons. After that, he would be out of contact. His private secretary took the call from the Downing Street switchboard, put his hand over the receiver and said, “It’s the U.S. President.”

Both men knew each other well and got on at a personal level, which is not vital but extremely useful. Both had stylish wives and young families. There was the usual exchange of greetings and inquiries after the near and dear. Unseen operators in London and Washington recorded every word.

“David, I have a favor to ask.”

“Ask away.”

The President took no more than five sentences. It was a strange request and took the Prime Minister by surprise. The call was on speakerphone; the cabinet secretary, the senior professional civil servant in the country, looked askance at his boss. Bureaucrats hate surprises. There were possible consequences to be thought through. Dropping Pathfinders into a foreign country could be regarded as an act of war. But who governed the Somali wilderness? No one worth the name. He wagged an admonitory finger.

“I’ll have to check with our people. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes. Scout’s honor.”

“This could be very dangerous, Prime Minister,” said the cabinet secretary. He did not mean dangerous for the men involved but for international repercussions.

“Get me, in order, the chief of the defence staff and the chief of Six.”

The professional soldier came on first.

“Yes, I know the problem and I know about the request,” he said. “Will Chamney told me an hour ago.”

He just assumed the Prime Minister would know who the director of Special Forces was.

“Well, can we do it?”

“Of course we can. Providing they get a damn accurate briefing before they go in. That’s down to the Cousins. But if they have a drone overhead, they should be able to see the target clear as day.”

“Where are the Pathfinders now?”

“Over Yemen. Two hours short of the U.S. base at Djibouti. That’s where they’ll land and refuel. Then they’ll be fully briefed. If the young officer in charge is satisfied, he’ll tell Will at Albany Barracks and ask for a green light. That can only come from you, Prime Minister.”

“I can give you that in the next hour. That is, I can give you the political decision. The technical one is up to you professionals. I have two more calls, then I’ll be back in touch.”

The man who came on from the SIS, or MI6, or just 6, was not the Chief but Adrian Herbert.

“The Chief is out of the country, Prime Minister. But I have been handling this case with our friends for some months now. How can I help?”

“You know what the Americans are asking for? To borrow a unit of our Pathfinders?”

“Yes,” said Herbert, “I know.”

“How?”

“We do a lot of listening, Prime Minister.”

“Did you know the Americans cannot use a missile because there is a Western agent inside the bastard’s entourage?”

“Yes.”

“Is he one of ours?”

“No.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“By sundown there will probably be a Swedish merchant marine officer, a hostage, a few yards away as well.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“It’s what we do, Prime Minister,” said Herbert. Mentally, he made a note to put in for a bonus for Mrs. Bulstrode.

“Can it be done? Extraction of both men? Wipeout of the target?”

“That’s a military question. We leave that sort of thing to them.”

The British premier was not a politician without having a keen eye for benefit. If British Pathfinders could pull the Swedish officer out of there, the Swedes would be rather grateful. The appreciation might go right up to King Carl Gustaf, who might mention it to Queen Elizabeth. No harm done, no harm at all.

“I’m giving the green light, subject to the military’s overriding judgment on feasibility,” he told the chief of the defence staff ten minutes later. Then he called the Oval Office back.

“You got it,” he told the President. “If the military say it can be done, the Pathfinders are yours.”