Crisis Four (24 page)
Authors: Andy McNab
The birds were well into their morning chorus. There was a slight wind, causing a bit of rustling in the trees, but that was only welcome if you were hiding in an OP because it hid noise. The main problem was that, where there was wind, rain would surely follow. In the meantime, as long as the rain kept off it would be almost idyllic.
An hour or so later I heard the first man-made noise of the day, the gentle chug of a small outboard. The big-game fishermen were on the lake, chasing the early fish. I couldn’t see anything, but I could just hear it behind me somewhere near the entrance to the creek.
In the background the
putt-putt
got louder then stopped, and I heard the splash of an anchor. The fishermen were close by. I could even hear mumbles now and again on the breeze.
putt-putt
got louder then stopped, and I heard the splash of an anchor. The fishermen were close by. I could even hear mumbles now and again on the breeze.
A curtain twitched on the first floor. I guessed they were checking out the fishermen, but if you were up and about and you could hear it, why not just throw them back and have a proper look? This was significant; maybe no trip back to DC after all. My finger tensed on the cable release in case a door opened.
There were shouts from across the lake. Maybe someone had had a bite. But still no-one moved the curtains to see what it was all about.
At about eight o’clock the front door opened and two men came out.
I had just four or five seconds in which to act. I couldn’t wait for perfect poses because they mustn’t be allowed time to get acclimatized to the outside environment. In the first few seconds after leaving the house they’d still be tuned in to whatever was going on indoors, maybe the sound of a washing machine or the television, mixed with their own walking and talking. Once they’d been outside for anything more than four or five seconds they would be listening to the noise of the trees rustling and the movement of water on the lake. Before that happened, I had to act, then keep very still again, so the only things that were moving would be my eyes. I squeezed the cable release, taking about five or six pictures. Thanks to the digital camera, I didn’t have to worry about the noise of the rewind and shutter.
That done, I had time to study the two men with my own eyes. It was obvious they hadn’t been awake that long. One of them had a pair of leather boots on, laces undone and a rumpled blue sweatshirt which hung out over creased, faded blue denim jeans. It looked as if they were the clothes he’d been sleeping in. His jet-black hair was sticking up, and he had a few days’ growth on his face. He was in his thirties and didn’t look too much of a threat: he was only about five feet five inches, and very slim. As Josh would have said, he was too slight to fight, too thin to win. The most striking thing about him was that his features were distinctly Middle Eastern.
The other guy had the same skin tone, but was just over six feet and broader in the shoulders. He was wearing trainers, a
Men In Black
T-shirt under a dark-green fleece jacket and a pair of black tracksuit bottoms. He, too, seemed the worse for wear, with a cigarette in his mouth which flopped down the left-hand side of his face. He had a string of prayer beads, which looked very much like a Catholic rosary, looped over the middle and index fingers of his right hand. He was flicking them so that they closed around his fingers, then flicking them again to unwind them.
Men In Black
T-shirt under a dark-green fleece jacket and a pair of black tracksuit bottoms. He, too, seemed the worse for wear, with a cigarette in his mouth which flopped down the left-hand side of his face. He had a string of prayer beads, which looked very much like a Catholic rosary, looped over the middle and index fingers of his right hand. He was flicking them so that they closed around his fingers, then flicking them again to unwind them.
They stood by the door looking out at the lake, and there was mumbling between them as the taller one put his right hand down the front of his tracksuit and started to scratch. The inflection and cadence of the mumbling sounded Arabic to me. They sauntered outside, closing the door and walking past the washing line towards me.
I froze, allowing myself just short, shallow breaths. Their footsteps sounded like Godzilla’s.
They gazed out at the lake as they walked, probably watching the fishermen. They weren’t aware, but I had to accept that I could be in the shit. I was sure the fuckers would see me; I looked to my right, where the bow was lying no more than four inches away from my hand. No movement; calm down and wait.
My body was tensed, ready to react. But how would I get myself out of this? Fight – that was the only answer. I could hardly just smile and claim to be lost. If I was quick enough, and didn’t get entangled in the cam net, I could threaten them with the bow. No, that wouldn’t work. I would just make a run for it and hope they weren’t carrying. I mentally checked that all the important stuff was in my pockets.
They stopped. They exchanged a few more words, then Men In Black took a last drag on his cigarette, dropped it on the ground near his feet and stubbed it out with the toe of his trainer. He obviously hadn’t read the signs asking him to leave only footprints.
They turned right about ten metres short of my position, moving uphill towards the track. They were taking the easy route as the ground right next to the house was steeper. Too Thin To Win led the way.
They walked up onto the track, and I realized that they were checking the ground. They were looking to see if there was any sign left by anyone during the night. They moved off the track and downhill, but stopped short of the house and didn’t move any closer to it. I wondered why, and then I realized: there must be proximity alarms. As well as the motion detectors, which would trigger the lights, there must be sensors that informed them of movement outside. Judging by the route the two of them took, I worked out that the proximity alarms were probably covering an area about twelve to fifteen metres out from the house.
MIB lit up again as they went back onto the track, then disappeared behind the house, still playing with his beads. I used the time to check the cam, the bung behind me and that my pockets were done up.
After four minutes I watched them emerge from the opposite side of the house, the lake side, and walk towards the boat on the trailer. They clambered aboard and started up the engine, revving it until I could see the blue two-stroke smoke pumping out of the exhaust. Then, just as suddenly, they killed it, and jumped out with lots of talking as they disappeared through the gap between the garage doors. I heard the wagon start up. It wasn’t going anywhere because the boat was in the way. It meant these boys were good: they were checking everything, including their getaways, in the event of a drama.
The vehicle engine cut and there was silence. They didn’t re-emerge.
I now knew there were at least two in the house, and I also knew that there must be access to the house from the garage.
That was it for another couple of hours. I just lay there, watching, resting one eye at a time. Now and again I could hear a
putt-putt
on the lake, and a couple of times the sound of a toilet flushing. Occasionally there was the far-off screaming of kids, possibly in a boat or playing in the water, but otherwise nothing unusual.
putt-putt
on the lake, and a couple of times the sound of a toilet flushing. Occasionally there was the far-off screaming of kids, possibly in a boat or playing in the water, but otherwise nothing unusual.
At ten fifteen I watched as Mom, Dad and kids from the other house started to push another boat towards the lake; that was probably them out of it for the day. Well, until it rained anyway.
After that, nothing at all happened. It was pizza and Mars bar time.
At about eleven thirty I started to get movement from the garage doors. Still nibbling at the last bit of my third Mars bar, I moved my thumb over the cable release.
MIB came out. I watched him and slowly swirled the camera to the right, wishing I had a wider lens. He walked to the front of the trailer and stopped near the hook-up point. He seemed to be waiting; sure enough the wagon sparked up.
Sarah walked out. Gotcha! She was wearing blue jeans and a blue sweatshirt with the Quiksilver logo on the back. I knew her gait, I even recognized her walking boots. She stopped to look at the sky. Yes, it was going to rain. I hit the cable release and hoped I’d got her. If so, the job was just about over. It felt so strange, seeing her after so long, and in this way. She still looked just like the picture in her apartment, but without the smile. It gave me a strange sense of power over her by being hidden, watching.
As the boat was in the way, the garage doors couldn’t open fully. She and MIB twisted the boat so that it was parallel to the water, then they opened the garage doors fully and out came a black Ford Explorer. One up. It was Too Thin To Win, and going by what I could see of his top half, he’d smartened himself up – probably had a shit, shower and shave.
The engine revved as he came screaming towards me, then uphill towards the track. I craned my head in an attempt to catch the registration. I couldn’t get any detail, but it definitely had a North Carolina plate with the ‘First In Flight’ slogan and a picture of the Wright Brothers’ aircraft on a white background.
My eyes jumped back to Sarah. She was helping to turn the boat round so that it faced the water again, ready to go. This was an escape route, for sure. Once they had done that, they went inside and the garage doors were closed fully behind them.
Very weird shit. It seemed that London were right to worry about her after all.
11
I slowly got out the 3C and slid open one of the ports, inserted a flash card from my jeans pocket and turned it on.
A flash card stores information in much the same way as a floppy disk does for a PC. What came up on the screen from this one was a selection of about 200 words or phrases, each with a five-figure sequence of numbers beside it. The letters of the alphabet were also encoded, so that uncommon words could be spelled out. To compose my message, all I had to do was scroll through to the word or phrase I wanted and write down the corresponding five-figure group on my notepad with a pencil. I preferred pencils to pens because you can write with them in the rain. I always used one that was sharpened at both ends, so that if one lead broke I could still use the other.
The first parts of the message I was going to send were standard and didn’t need the codes. My PIN was 2442, but since the numbers had to be in groups of five for the code to work, I made it 02442. I followed this with the time/date groups: 02604 (26th April). I had a look at Baby-G and wrote down 01156 (1156 hrs; times are always local). It was then just a matter of scrolling through the codes to make up the message.
The first I looked for was ‘tgt loc. 6 fig grid’. I gave the map sheet details, plus the six-figure grid reference of the target. Just to make it clear, I told them that it was the easternmost building of the two.
My message continued: ‘
ECHO ONE
(Sarah)
LOCATED WITH TWO BRAVOS
(males)
MIDDLE EASTERN. ARE AWARE. NO WEAPONS. MAC DOWN. WAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
’
ECHO ONE
(Sarah)
LOCATED WITH TWO BRAVOS
(males)
MIDDLE EASTERN. ARE AWARE. NO WEAPONS. MAC DOWN. WAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
’
I ended the message with my PIN again – 02442 – and that was it. It worked out that I had twenty-one groups of numbers.
I put the second flash card into Port B, took out A and put it back in my jeans pocket. I could run the Psion with both cards in, but I didn’t like doing it; if there was a drama and I was caught, it meant the whole system would be accessible all at once. At least with them separated I had the chance to hide or destroy a key part of it.
The second card held a series of numbers, also in groups of five, called the ‘one-time pad’. Devised by the German diplomatic service during the 1920s, the OTP is a simple encoding method consisting of a random key used only once. There are a few variations on the OTP theme. The Brits first started using it in 1943. Still widely used by the intelligence services of all countries, it is the only code system that is unbreakable, both in theory and in practice.
I started by writing down in my notebook the first group from the OTP under the first group of the message, my PIN. I carried on until all twenty-one groups had another set of numbers from the one-time pad under them. What I had to do then was subtract 14735, the first group of the OTP, from 02442, my identification code, and came up with 98717 – not because my maths was shit, but because in spyland sums, you don’t carry the ten over, you lose it. Bloody typical.
At the London end, they knew the message would start with my PIN, and groups are always used in the order they are laid out in. It would be easy for them to add the groups on their corresponding OTP from the groups that I’d transmitted, and they’d come up with the original set of numbers again, because they would also do spyland sums. Referring these back to the code book, they’d produce my intended word or phrase. Once used, those groups would never be issued again.
I did my spy-type sums one more time to confirm my arithmetic, and was ready to send. I turned on the phone, tapped in the PIN code and waited for a signal. I tapped out ‘Kay’s’ on the Psion to retrieve Elizabeth’s number; I hadn’t got round to learning it after all. After two rings a recorded message from a synthesized but happy-sounding female voice said, ‘Please leave your message after the tone.’ Two seconds later, there was a beep.
I tapped out the message of twenty-one groups on the number pad, then pressed Hash and listened for the auto-acknowledgement. ‘Thank you for your’ – there was a pause, then a different electronic voice – ‘twenty-one group’ – then the original voice ‘message.’ It cut off and so did I.
I put the flash cards back in their separate jeans pockets. I wrapped the piece of paper up in a sheet of clingfilm and tucked it under a branch in the mud. I didn’t want to get rid of it yet, because I didn’t know if I was going to need it. If London came back and told me they couldn’t work out my message, it might be because I’d fucked up the encoding or spy sums. The system can be time-consuming, but used properly it works.
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