A Covert War (17 page)

The man saw it coming and turned and fired at Iverson instead. Now Whelan joined in the fray and came forward with the intention of grappling with the man who had been tossed to the ground by Marcus, but the shot aimed at Iverson caught Whelan on the arm. He cried out and fell on top of the MP, clutching his arm.

Iverson stood up and reached over the desk which was now on its side as the American swung the gun round to fire off another shot. He grabbed the collar of the second MP, swung his arm down on to the man’s gun hand and dragged him over the desk. On the way the MP dropped his gun. Immediately the lorry driver, who until now had been a spectator, picked up the gun and fired a shot into the ceiling.

Everybody stopped. Except Marcus; he gambled on the man not being a gunman and leapt over the top of Whelan who had collapsed and kicked the driver with a classic, straight leg right into the rib cage.

They all heard the sound of the man’s ribs crack, and he dropped into a heap letting the gun fall from his hand.

Iverson picked up the gun and walked round the overturned desk. He picked up the other M9 and handed one to Marcus.

‘Cover them, and try not to shoot anyone,’ he said. ‘I’m going outside to see what’s happened.’

Whelan staggered to his feet. His arm was bleeding from where he had been shot. He looked at the damage caused by the sudden explosion of violence and shook his head.

‘What a fucking mess,’ he muttered to himself. ‘God knows how we’re going to write this one up.’

He then leant down and searched the two MPs until he found his Sig Sauer handgun that had been taken from him outside the compound. He tucked it into his waistband. Using his good arm, he pulled the desk upright and dragged it away from the two MPs and the lorry driver until it was pushed up against the far wall. He then propped himself up against it and looked at the scene in front of him.

The lorry driver was lying on the floor nursing a cracked rib or two. One of the military policemen was lying on the floor too, but he looked as though he had been winded. The other MP was on his knees, but Marcus was standing well clear with the M9 pistol pointing at them.

Whelan took the Sig Sauer from his waistband and held it loosely in his good hand.

‘Marcus, see if you can give Yorkie a hand,’ he asked, ‘I’ll keep an eye on these three.’

Marcus was about to go outside when the door flew open and Iverson burst in. He looked devastated.

‘The bastard’s shot two coppers; one of ours and one of his own.’

‘Where is he now?’ Whelan snapped.

‘Gone,’ Iverson told him. ‘He took the local’s BMW, shot the MP in the gate house. There’s another copper out there, he’s ok though.’

‘Put out an APB,’ Whelan told him.

‘I’m on it,’ Iverson replied, ‘Can you manage here?’

Whelan nodded. ‘Oh yes, we can manage here.’

Thirty minutes later the area around the compound was like a scene from a Hollywood movie; there were several police units, British and American, ambulances from the American base and the local hospital at Thetford, flashing blue lights from stationary police cars and coppers marking off the area with police tape. There were also several American officers of various ranks with very grim looking faces.

The two American MPs who had been involved were in the back of a police wagon along with the driver of the lorry. Grebo was now on the run after shooting Boon and the American MP in the gate house.

Manning had come across the shooting just as Grebo was hauling Boon out of the police car and using it to make his getaway. Boon was not mortally wounded, but the poor unfortunate American in the gate house was dead.

Whelan had been seen by a paramedic and was waiting to be taken to hospital in one of the ambulances. Marcus sat beside him on a chair outside the office which had now been cordoned off as a crime scene.

Inside the bonded warehouse was a team of men, British and American checking the crates, opening each one carefully. It was an unhappy scene, Marcus thought. He knew Grebo had run because he couldn’t see any other way out. In a way that had saved the lives of Marcus, Whelan and Iverson but sadly had cost the life of the poor guy in the gate house. He probably didn’t even know what was going on.

Now the whole world was about to find out as the first of many television vans appeared at the gate; tomorrow it would be on all the front pages and the major news networks worldwide.

And Marcus knew that this time Cavendish would not be able to send a ‘team’ in.

THIRTEEN

Sir Giles Cavendish went ballistic; or his version of it anyway. Sitting alone in his office with the first editions on his desk he felt extremely angry that decisions he had made, and those made by others had resulted in such a woeful outcome. He couldn’t really fault any one person for causing what the red top tabloids were describing as a shootout at the OK Corral, but each person in the chain was culpable. And being at the head of that chain, Cavendish felt responsible for having a coach and horses driven through his careful, methodical investigation into the corrupt practices of some people in very high positions of authority.

He felt he had reached a crossroads and didn’t know which way to turn. His investigation was now dead in the water and common sense told him that those people involved in the vicious trade he had been looking into would close ranks, and probably lie low for a while. The trouble with that was that he needed them to be active so he could penetrate their organisation and reach the head. He swore and called down curses on those people who dealt in misery, violence and death.

The phone rang. It was the prime Minister.

‘Good morning, Sir Giles. Could you come over to Downing Street right away?’

There was no ambiguity in the Prime Minister’s request; he expected Cavendish over there immediately.

‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes, Prime Minister,’ Cavendish promised, and put the phone down.

He had two guesses: one was a conference, the other was dismissal. Not that being dismissed would be so terribly painful, he mused. After all, he would pick up a gold plated Civil Service pension. A statement on his retirement would be couched in prosaic terms and he could retire to the country where he could tend his roses or whatever it was retired civil servants did. And meanwhile men in high places would continue to pursue their misguided foreign policy and feather their own nests with millions of dollars drawn from the pain and suffering of the victims of their obsessive lust for wealth.

And men like him would know the truth but never be allowed to reveal it either through stealth or any other means. To do so would have meant no more tending of roses, no more gold plated pension, and no more of anything.

He arrived at Downing Street and was shown into the Cabinet office where the Prime Minister was waiting. With him was Andrew Butler, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, and James Faulkner, the director of SOCA. SOCA was the Serious Organised Crime Agency; Britain’s equivalent to the American FBI.

‘Ah, Sir Giles, take a seat.’

It was clear from his body language that the Prime Minister was keen to get on with the meeting and dispense with any niceties.

‘I’ve no need to apprise you of last night’s events,’ the Prime Minister began, ‘But I would like your take on it.’

Cavendish had just about made himself comfortable, but responded immediately. ‘My take on it, Prime Minister is that a huge hole has been blown in my investigation; one from which I cannot see us recovering.’ He helped himself to a glass of water. He took a sip and put the glass down on to a small table. ‘At the moment all I can think of is damage limitation and trying to keep the Press out of it.’

‘Was your investigation the reason we ended up with a shootout, as the papers put it, at an American depot?’ the Police Commissioner asked him.

Cavendish gave it a moment’s thought. ‘I wish it wasn’t but, yes, that was the reason there was a shoot out.’

Butler frowned. ‘I find that a little flippant,’ he told Cavendish. ‘There must be a convincing reason why you were there. And why on earth were the Americans involved?’

Cavendish bridled at Butler’s assertion that he was being flippant, but held his tongue; the last thing he wanted here was a slanging match and point scoring over other security departments.

‘The reason my men ended up at the American depot was because they were following a suspicious cargo which we believed contained drugs.’

Faulkner butted in. ‘What on earth was your department doing investigating drugs?’ he asked testily. ‘We have a dedicated drug squad for that very purpose. Why weren’t we informed?’

‘It wasn’t so much as the drugs we were interested in,’ Cavendish replied, ‘but the result of where those drugs were going, and who is behind the operation.’

Faulkner made a guttural sound in his throat. ‘Hmmph! Come to my office, Cavendish and I’ll give you a list of known dealers a mile long.’

‘Do they deal in arms as well?’ Cavendish put to him. ‘And do they deal in child pornography, trafficking young children for the delectation of men in high places? Do they put this country’s security as risk because they are involved in one of the vilest, vicious, demonic and lucrative operations?’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ Butler asked; his mouth twisted into a grimace.

Cavendish glanced at him and then back across the table to the Prime Minister.

‘This is not a drug cartel that smuggles drugs into our country for the sake of making money,’ he said sharply. ‘This is an organisation that trades under the protection of very powerful men who hold positions of authority in politics, the armed forces and terrorism.’ He was holding their attention now. ‘They bring drugs into our country, sell them on and use the money to buy arms which they ship out to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They use young girls as ‘sweeteners’ so that these twisted men can use them for their own purposes.’

‘Where are they buying the drugs from?’ Faulkner asked. ‘We’ve just about destroyed all the poppy fields in Afghanistan.’

Cavendish gave him a withering look. ‘The drug harvest in Afghanistan is extremely healthy. The annual crop is worth about one hundred million pounds. A lot of that funds the weapons traffic.’

‘I was under the impression, Sir Giles,’ interrupted the Prime Minister, ‘that we had all but secured those provinces where we operate and halted all drug production.’

Cavendish looked askance at the Prime Minister. ‘Then you sources are unreliable, Prime Minister. Perhaps your information is deliberately false. This continuous rotation of drugs and guns is a fact and is kept going by men in high positions of authority.’

‘Preposterous,’ declared Butler. ‘We would know about it immediately. Our men out in Afghanistan are without question the most dependable and reliable.’

Cavendish looked at Butler, but before replying he stole a quick glance at the Prime Minister. Directing his eyes back to the Police Commissioner, he said, ‘Our soldiers in Afghanistan are underpaid, under- equipped and undermanned. They rely heavily on human intelligence in the field which comes from some Taliban commanders, when it suits them,’ he added, ‘and from local Afghan tribal chiefs. Our soldiers cannot be in several places at once, and they are often led to believe that the poppy field they destroyed a year ago is no longer producing when the fact is the farmer is still growing the poppies and the drug factories are making pure heroin.’

‘What you are implying, Cavendish,’ Faulkner said, ‘is that there are corrupt men at the top of the chain. Do you have any proof of this?’

Cavendish shook his head. ‘Unfortunately I cannot always deal in proof; it’s something that our department sees very little of. Even with facts, we often have to use them in trade-offs; tit for tat exchanges. Promises made by one party to another. Someone wants his name kept out of it so is willing to sell his soul. We can only stop this corrupt practice by getting at the heads of the chain and cutting them off. That is what we were trying to do at the American depot at Feltwell when the whole thing blew up in our faces. And I assure you gentlemen, it was no-one’s fault but mine.’

‘There’s no need to fall on your sword, Sir Giles,’ the Prime Minister told him abruptly.

‘Why did this have to involve the Americans?’ Butler asked Cavendish.

‘Because the Americans are involved,’ he replied simply. ‘It’s really them who are calling the shots.’

‘What do you mean the Americans are calling the shots?’

‘They have the scope and the size to hide an operation like this within the parameters of their own, legitimate operations,’ Cavendish told him.

‘But you’ve no proof.’ It was a simply stated fact, and the Police Commissioner seemed confident now that Cavendish’s explanations were based largely on supposition and wishful thinking. ‘And they could only run a clandestine operation with the knowledge and connivance of some very, well placed men.’

‘Precisely.’ It was all Cavendish said because the Police Commissioner had simply reiterated what he had been trying to tell them all along.

The Commissioner realised what he had just implied and the expression on his face changed. It was like he finally understood the solution to a problem that had been dogging him for some time, only in this case it wasn’t a problem that he alone could solve.

‘Sir Giles,’ the Prime Minister said, breaking the slight impasse. ‘I am seeing the American Ambassador later today along with Commodore Deveraux, the Military Attaché. I need something to tell them, but I also need something to ask them. If you cannot furnish me with something positive, it looks like they will be asking the questions and I will have to provide the answers.’

Cavendish shrugged his shoulders. ‘In that case, Prime Minister I can only ask you to tell them what you know.’

‘Which is precisely nothing without facts,’ the Prime Minister commented.

Cavendish nodded. ‘Exactly, but you could labour the point about Chief Master Sergeant Danvor Grebo going missing after wounding one of our police officers and shooting dead one of his own American comrades.’

‘I must say that’s hardly a senior rank to be considered as a man in high authority,’ Faulkner put in. ‘I understood from what you have been saying, Sir Giles that you were looking for men in high places.’