The Kill Zone (43 page)
Authors: Chris Ryan
The Secret Service operative nodded. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, taking the file and standing up, ‘thank you for your time and your cooperation. Bill, you’ll pass the imagery on to my people? And we’ll stay in constant touch between now and when Air Force One flies on the morning of the eighth. You have my cell, right?’
‘Of course,’ Oliver and Colley said in unison.
‘Now if you’ll excuse me, my team needs to recce these routes and arrange our OPs around the President’s stop-off points. Don’t want any big-game hunters taking pot shots at the Beast, huh?’
He winked at them, then turned and left, leaving the two British men to exchange a raised eyebrow before they themselves continued about their business.
Nairobi to London. Nine hours. Jack used the remainder of the O’Callaghan notes to book them into first class, where the safari clothes they’d borrowed from Markus raised some eyebrows, but they were too exhausted to pay any attention to that and just used the flight to sleep.
It was just before 6 a.m. when they emerged through the cloud cover to see the patchwork fields of southern England as the plane made its approach to Heathrow. As the remainder of the passengers waited for their luggage, Jack and Siobhan walked wordlessly through passport control. Out on the concourse, they stood awkwardly.
‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’ Siobhan said.
Jack didn’t need to reply. ‘Get on the next flight,’ he said. ‘Go straight to the flat and don’t do anything until you hear from me. OK?’
‘OK.’ No aggression now. No argument. Siobhan had learned her lesson. He hoped. ‘But don’t go dark on me, Jack.’ She looked up at him. ‘I’m scared.’
‘I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Any problems call me immediately.’ He gave her his mobile number, which she put on to speed dial. Then he handed over her car keys and a crumpled ticket. ‘It’s parked at the airport,’ he said. ‘Your weapon is in the glove compartment. I had to break your kitchen window to get in.’ Jack smiled for what seemed like the first time in days. ‘Sorry about that.’
Siobhan smiled back and he kissed her lightly on the top of her head. The kiss seemed to surprise her, but she didn’t look displeased. She squeezed his hand, then turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Jack watched her go, then followed her from a distance. He watched as she approached the BMI ticket desk; when she turned away five minutes later, she was holding a ticket. She’d booked herself on to a flight and was now heading towards the check-in desk.
Jack walked up to the BMI desk. An attractive brunette with large eyes and full lips smiled up at him. ‘When’s the next flight to Belfast?’ he asked.
She checked her terminal. ‘I can just get you on the ten-thirty. After that, I’m afraid, it’s the three p.m.’
That was all he needed to know. Siobhan would be on the first flight, and he wanted to get to Belfast without her realising. So the 15.00 hrs it was. ‘I’ll take a seat on the three o’clock,’ he replied, handing over his credit card.
Once he had his ticket, Jack headed to the retail area of the terminal where he bought himself a full set of clean clothes before leaving the building and checking in to a hotel for a couple of hours. He showered off the dirt, put on the new clothes and left Markus’s safari gear in the bin. They still had the faint reek of Africa about them. He was glad to be rid of it.
With time still to kill, he lay on the bed, closed his eyes and straightened his head. Everything was so confusing. Upside down. He needed to clear his thoughts and plan his next move.
Maybe he was wrong to pull the wool over Siobhan’s eyes. He admired her for her determination, but now wasn’t the time for her to stop him doing what needed to be done. There was only one lead he could follow. One person he knew of who could give him anything on Khan. That person was Cormac O’Callaghan, and Jack couldn’t be sure that Siobhan wouldn’t try to stop him making contact with the PIRA bastard. She would do anything to find Lily and he could tell she didn’t fully agree with his strategy to go it alone. Truth was, he couldn’t risk her getting in the way. Let the authorities question O’Callaghan and they’d play it by the book. It would take too long. If Jack was going to do anything, he needed to work quickly. Without interference.
His strategy was clear. Raid the O’Callaghan lock-up for a weapon, then hit some of the bars of Belfast that were once Republican hang-outs. If he asked the right questions of the right people, he’d soon be able to track O’Callaghan down. And he didn’t mind admitting to himself that once he had the bastard in his hands, he’d almost enjoy the process of extracting every last bit of information from him. Cormac O’Callaghan might hold the key to preventing a major terrorist attack; he might give Jack a lead on where his daughter was; but when it came to answering for his crimes, he had a lot of back payments to make. Jack was perfectly happy to act as banker.
He looked at his watch. 12.30 hrs. Siobhan would have landed now. With any luck she’d have taken his advice and headed home to lie low. Unwanted, the question she’d asked him back at Markus’s popped into his head. About them getting together again. He put it from his mind. When this was all over, when he had held Lily in his arms and seen that she was safe, maybe he could think about it. But until then . . .
Jack left the hotel then returned to the terminal to check in.
Siobhan walked across the concourse of Belfast International in a daze. In a corner of her mind she remembered what Jack used to be like when he came home from ops. Distracted – like the world he had just left was the real one, and this was a fake. In her dazed state she took a while to find her car and she drove on autopilot. She couldn’t think right and she needed to sleep. To recuperate. Jack had told her to go home, and she planned to do exactly that.
It was chilly back at the flat because of the broken window, but she was too overcome with exhaustion and emotion to do anything about it; instead she headed straight for the bedroom, plugged her mobile phone in to charge, then climbed, fully dressed, into bed. She was asleep in seconds.
It was the mobile that woke her, painfully puncturing her sleep like a knife piercing flesh. She rolled over and fumbled with it. ‘Yeah . . . hello . . . who’s this?’ It was a chore just to get the words out.
‘It’s me.’
She shook her head and tried to place the voice. Male. Surly. She recognised it, but her exhaustion got in the way of pinpointing who it was.
‘I know a lot of “me’s”,’ she murmured.
A pause. ‘And there was me thinking I was important to the pigs.’
‘Kieran?’
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’
‘I’ve been out of town for a bit,’ Siobhan said, sitting up on the side of the bed. ‘What’s up?’
‘Clever old Kieran’s got something for you.’ He sounded terribly pleased with himself.
‘What?’
‘Not on the phone.’
Siobhan shrugged, even though there was no one to see it. ‘All right then. The usual place.’
‘No,’ Kieran said quickly. ‘Not there. That’s no good. I’ve got something to show you.’
She stood up. ‘What?’ she demanded.
But Kieran remained enigmatic. ‘You want Cormac,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you Cormac. On a fucking plate. You only have to meet with me. Once I’ve shown you what I’ve got to show, I won’t need to look at your ugly pig face ever again.’
‘All right, all right.’ She felt uncharacteristically wrong-footed. ‘Where are you now?’
She listened carefully as he gave her directions to the outskirts of Crossgar, a village thirty miles to the south of Belfast. ‘There’s an old farm there,’ he said. ‘Deserted. I’ll be waiting for you in the barn. I think you’ll have a nice surprise when you get here.’
Siobhan hesitated for a moment. ‘Forget it, Kieran,’ she decided finally. ‘If we’re meeting, I name the place.’
‘The place,’ Kieran replied, ‘is the important thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
There was a pause. Siobhan half imagined Kieran looking over his shoulder. ‘It’s a stash,’ he said quietly. ‘Dug into the ground. Street value a couple of hundred G. And the barn’s Cormac’s. You can trace it to him. He’s got sloppy.’
Siobhan paused, turning it over in her mind, trying to think several moves ahead. Cormac was their only lead to Khan. Frankly she didn’t care about the drugs any more, but if she could use Kieran’s info as leverage, maybe she could find out something about Lily . . .
‘I’ve heard whisperings they’re moving it tonight,’ said Kieran, ‘and the chances of Cormac fucking up again—’
‘All right,’ she heard herself reply. ‘I’ll be there in an hour. This had better be worth it, Kieran.’
A minute later she was walking out of the flat. On the street, the old bag lady was there with her supermarket trolley. Her eyes were bloodshot and wary; she spoke, but Siobhan didn’t hear what she said as she strode round to where her car was parked.
She sat behind the wheel, one hand on the ignition keys, and stared through the windscreen. It was late afternoon and everything around her was grey: the tower block, the pavement, the stooped old man walking towards her. Through her dazed numbness she heard Jack’s voice.
Go straight to the flat and don’t do anything until you hear from me
.
Go straight to the flat and don’t do anything until you hear from me
.
She should go back. She knew it. God knows how many SOPs she was breaking. But somehow she couldn’t make herself do it. Call it arrogance, call it determination, call it desperation, call it what you like. Siobhan could no more ignore a bite like this than she could stop breathing. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t take precautions. She found her M66, which Jack had left in the glove compartment, then pulled her phone from her jacket. She held her finger on the number 1 and speed-dialled Jack. There was no ringing tone as it clicked automatically on to his voicemail.
This is Jack, leave a message.
This is Jack, leave a message.
‘Jack, it’s me. It’s Siobhan. I know you told me to stay at home, but something’s come up. I need to visit my O’Callaghan tout . . .’ She recited the directions Kieran had given her. ‘Just in case, you know . . . you need to find me. And Jack . . .’ She paused, then spoke quickly. ‘Jack, I meant what I said. I want you to come back. I want us to try again.’
Siobhan hung up immediately and felt her heart racing, her skin flushing. She tucked the phone back into her jacket, turned the key and pulled away.
Kieran’s directions were good. She took the A7 south of Belfast and it was a little before 5 p.m. when she pulled off a country lane on to a track marked ‘Not Suitable for Vehicles’ and stopped about 100 metres from a cluster of disused farm outbuildings. She switched off the engine.
Silence.
Through the windscreen she could see an old tractor missing one of its wheels, and she had a sudden flashback to the rusted vehicle she and Jack had used for cover in Somalia. Apart from that, just beyond it, there was only one other car – a silver Alfa Romeo that positively gleamed in comparison with the mud-caked outbuildings as the setting sun glowed against its paintwork.
Siobhan stepped out of the car with the firearm in her right hand and scanned the area. No sign of anyone. If that was Kieran’s car – and she had to assume that it was – he must be inside one of the buildings, and she recognised the ramshackle barn from his description. She started to walk towards it.
Siobhan stopped by the old tractor and looked around again. Still no one.
A rook called somewhere nearby, shattering the silence.
Siobhan stepped out from behind the tractor and approached the entrance to the barn.
The big door was open – not fully, but enough for her to peer into the gloom inside, and it took a moment for her eyes to adapt. The first thing she saw was Kieran. He was alone, standing in the centre of the large open space, wearing his strangely unfashionable clothes – a patterned jumper and ill-fitting jeans. He hadn’t noticed her yet, but he looked anxious as he stepped from one foot to the other and blew into his hands even though it wasn’t all that cold. The barn itself was full of junk – old tyres, tractor attachments, rusting bits of farmyard machinery and hand tools, even a few bales of hay – and it was immediately obvious that nobody had paid this place any attention for a very long time.
Siobhan raised her gun.
‘This had better be good, Kieran,’ she called, and the tout appeared to jump. He looked in her direction; the moment he saw the gun he put his hands in the air.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sure. I think it’ll be good. For everyone, you know.’ He licked his lips and looked at the gun. ‘There’s no need for that, now is there?’
Siobhan hesitated. There was something about him. Something different. It wasn’t just that he was on edge – that was to be expected. It was something else. Siobhan’s senses screamed at her to abort.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said.
‘
I don’t think you are, now.
’
I don’t think you are, now.
’
The voice didn’t come from Kieran. It came from behind, and it caused all the warmth to drain from Siobhan’s blood just as she felt something hard at the back of her head.
‘Drop the weapon and kick it away.’
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