Liberation Day (24 page)

It was twelve-thirty-eight when I approached the stores. Hubba-Hubba should be nearing the OP. I decided to wait a few minutes to give him time to check the position and drop off my gear, before I moved up the concrete steps and checked out the front of the OP for myself on the way back to the road.

I stood against one of the louvered doors of one store and listened to the gentle hum of a generator, feeling the heat seep through the slats as I had a good look at the top of the
Ninth of May
and worked out how I was going to get the device on board.

At twelve-forty-three I walked up the stone steps to the flat roof and the fuck bench, following the pathway that led to the main drag. Once on the main road I turned right, and saw a lone figure on my side of the road, heading toward Monaco. I knew it was Hubba-Hubba because he took small, jerky strides, almost as if he were wearing a pair of punk bondage pants.

By the time I was past the Mégane he had disappeared into the darkness. I spotted the Coke can sticking out of the hedge, and, picking it up as I passed, I moved along the hedge about four or five yards before climbing over at what I thought was the same point I’d come out of on Wednesday.

Scrabbling on my hands and knees, feeling in front of me, I got to the bundle. I made sure I had eyes on the boat as I unknotted the towel. The
Ninth of May
was packed in among all the other boats like a sardine, but even in the gloom it was easy enough to spot, simply because I knew it was there.

The priority was to sort out comms; nothing was going to happen without them, apart from a fuck-up.

I wished we could have just used one of those antennae sticking out of the warship as a relay board. With that sort of help, we could have communicated safely and securely with anyone, anywhere in the world, even George. But you don’t have that kind of luxury when you’re deniable: you have to rely on e-mails, brush contacts, and the Sony Corporation.

I turned the volume dial to switch on the radio, then peeled back the strip of duct tape that covered the illuminated display, to check it was on channel one. The channel dial was also covered with duct tape, to ensure it didn’t move. Hubba-Hubba would have checked all this before leaving the safe house, but it was now my radio, and time to check again. I slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket, and put on the earpiece of the hands-free set. The next item I retrieved and checked was the insulin case, before it went into my fanny pack.

A truck thundered past, heading east toward Monaco, as I checked the spare radio and the pipe bomb. It was still in its garbage bag, to keep it sterile. Then I made myself as comfortable as I could against the hedge, making sure I could see the target through the V-shaped palm in front of me before getting a Snickers bar down my throat and checking traser. There were six minutes to go before the first radio check.

I watched the boat and generally sorted myself out by shuffling left and right to make a small dip in the earth. It was going to be a long night. Then, checking the time once more, I unzipped my jacket and hit the radio pressle. “Morning, morning. Radio check, H.” I spoke in a low, slow, normal voice. These radios weren’t like military sets, which are designed to be whispered into. I’d only end up repeating myself, as the other two tried to work out what the mush in their ear was all about. I’d be wasting power and time on the air.

I let go of the pressle and waited until I heard a voice. “H. Okay, okay.” Then it went dead. I hit the pressle. “That’s okay to me. L?”

“I can hear you perfectly.”

“Good, good. Okay, then. Everything is how it should be, the OP is set. I’ll call you when I’ve worked out what I’m going to do. H, have you got that?”

I got two clicks.

“L?”

Click, click.

“Okay.”

I zipped up my jacket and looked out at the boat, thinking hard about my options. It didn’t take me long to work out that I really only had one. Swimming would be more covert on the approach, but once on the boat I would leave sign, and I couldn’t guarantee it would evaporate by the morning. They might even come out during the night and see it. So it looked like the towel was out of commission tonight, which was good. I hadn’t been looking forward to a dip anyway.

I decided simply to walk to the back of the boat, climb on board, and go for the padded seats on the top deck. At this time of year they wouldn’t be used: the weather, and the reason for the visit, would encourage the Romeos to keep a low profile. The position wasn’t perfect: the inside of the boat would contain the pressure wave of the high explosive as it detonated, just for a nanosecond, before it ripped its way out, shredding the superstructure, and whoever was on board, into thousands of tiny pieces. Even so, planting the device on the top deck would be good enough to take out the whole of the cabin, and the driver’s seat below. If the blast didn’t kill them, the shards of wood, metal, and fiberglass flying through the air at supersonic speed would. I wasn’t sure it would do enough damage to sink her, but no one inside would survive and the money would be shredded—and with it my fantasy of it washing ashore at my feet.

26

A
s I started to visualize playing Spiderman around the outside of the boat, Lotfi came up on the net. It must have been one-thirty. “Hello, hello, radio check. H?”

Click, click
.

“N?”

I pressed twice, and Lotfi finished the check: “Okay.” It was good quick voice procedure, considering we hadn’t worked together with radios before and they were used to babbling off in Arabic over the net.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my chin on them as I watched the silhouettes of the masts and continued visualizing getting onto the boat, moving around to the right-hand side, climbing up the aluminum ladder. I wasn’t happy about it being right next to the cabin window, but at least there was a blind. I imagined that the sea covers were strapped down, so I thought I’d probably have to pull out the hooks from D-rings in the deck before pushing the pipe bomb into the gully where the seat and backrest met, in among the crushed chips, melted chocolate, and spare change.

Lotfi came back on the air at two
A.M.
and we all had radio check. It was time to stop thinking about it and just get on with it. “That’s N foxtrot.” I was about to start walking.

“L, roger that.”

“H?”

I got two clicks from Hubba-Hubba.

I got up slowly and felt around the towel, brought out the plastic cylinder, still in its garbage bag, then moved along the hedge and exited at the same place I’d come in, and walked down to the car. This time I put the key into the door, to try to cut down on the profusion of electronic signals flying around. High-frequency signals and electric detonators are not a good mix, so the more I could do without them, the better. I had to be quick off the mark, though, once the door was open, as the alarm started to count down with a steady sequence of bleeps. I had to get the key into the ignition and turn it the first two positions before the alarm activated and woke up the whole of BSM.

I got in on the passenger side and put the pipe bomb on the driver’s seat. Then it was on with the latex gloves before opening up the glove compartment to switch on the only interior light I’d left working. I put the device on the drinks tray. Twisting and separating the two halves of the cylinder, I checked the clothespin to make sure the plastic was in place before connecting the batteries.

Hubba-Hubba came up on the net. He was quite casual about it, but he had important information. “Two cars, you have two cars.”

I immediately covered the light with my right hand and lay flat, my cheek resting against the piping of the driver’s seat. I could smell the pick ‘n’ mix candy-store aroma coming from the cylinder as the noise of engines got louder and light bathed the interior of the Mégane. Both vehicles carried on past, and as the sound of their engines died away I sat up again, checked the clothespin and battery plastic yet again, and made sure that the fishing line was still held in place on the outer casing.

I hated this next part.

There was nothing else I could do now; I’d checked everything, but still checked it several times over again. Now I just had to go for it. Besides, if I’d made a mistake, I wasn’t going to know much about it, because I’d be the one in thousands of pieces, not the boat.

I pressed down on the batteries with my left thumb, to keep them in place while I took hold of the plastic safety strip with my right thumb and index finger. I eased out the plastic, without breathing—not that it was going to help in any way, it just felt like the thing to do. Once I had closed and twisted the cylinder tighter, the device was ready to be placed. I’d remove the final circuit breaker once I’d gotten it into position.

I closed the glove compartment and sank back into the darkness.

“L and H, that’s me ready.”

I got an “okay” from Lotfi and two clicks from Hubba-Hubba and waited where I was. After three or four minutes, I saw Hubba-Hubba to my right, his short strides taking him downhill toward the marina entrance.

I let him pass behind me, watching him in the side mirror, and very soon he got on the net. “L, I’m nearly there. Acknowledge.”

Click, click.

Soon afterward I saw headlights up on the high ground as Lotfi started down the hill. The headlights turned into the marina, then disappeared. Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba were moving into their positions, to cover me as I placed the device. Hubba-Hubba was foxtrot and staying near the shops, to warn me if anything was coming from that direction; Lotfi would stay with his vehicle and cover me from the parking lot. They were my eyes and ears while I concentrated on getting the device where it needed to be and not blowing myself up.

Leaving the garbage bag behind, because I still had the gloves on, I shoved the device down the front of my cotton jacket and got out of the car. I moved onto the pavement behind the OP, for some cover between the hedge and the little bit of garden at the roadside, to check myself out. Then, using some of the insulation tape I’d kept in the fanny pack, I taped the earpiece around my ear. I didn’t want it falling off and making a noise, either as it hit the deck or as one of the guys jabbered at me while I was on the task.

I put the tape back in my fanny pack and made sure it was zipped up, then moved it around so it was hanging off my ass. I checked I had nothing rattling in my pockets. The Snickers bars were still there, so I zipped them closed, and jumped up and down to make sure that nothing was going to fall out.

I’d already done this before coming into BSM, but it was part of the ritual for a job, very much like checking chamber and checking the device. Check and test, check and test—it was my lifetime mantra.

Finally I made sure my Browning was going to stay where it was in my jeans and not fall into the water, and checked the hammer. When I’d cocked the weapon, I’d put the little finger of my left hand between the hammer and the pin, then squeezed the trigger so the hammer came forward under control but then stopped in the half-cock position, with the safety off. If I had to draw down, I’d have to make like Billy the Kid in a saloon fight, drawing and whipping back the hammer to its full cock position before I fired. Without an internal holster, it felt safer for me to have it like this as I was clambering around, rather than hanging next to my balls with the hammer back and a safety that could easily be flicked off.

Finally, I pressed each nostril closed in turn, and gave them a good blow. It’s a pain in the ass trying to think and breathe at the same time with a nose full of snot. It would be back soon, it always was on a job, but I liked to start on empty.

As I set off down the road, I got out one of the Snickers bars, undid the Saran wrap, and started to munch. It would make me look less suspicious and, anyway, I was still hungry.

27

T
here were too many boats blocking my view to make out the
Ninth of May,
and no sign of Hubba-Hubba as I continued past the stores and into the parking lot, hands in my pockets, sweating inside the plastic gloves. I took off my Timberlands and left them behind a wheeled garbage bin at the end of the promenade. The last thing I wanted when I got on the boat was them squeaking all over the deck and leaving telltale dirty marks.

Following the marina around toward the second pier, I checked my fanny pack to make sure everything was zipped up, then checked the Browning yet again to make sure it was good and secure. I walked casually but with purpose, a boat-owner going back to his pride and joy. I wasn’t looking around me because there was no need: Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba were covering me, and if there was a problem, I’d soon know about it in my left ear.

I spotted Lotfi’s Ford Focus nose-parked in a line of cars facing pier nine. I caught a glimpse of his face, illuminated by a flickering marina light, as I turned toward
Ninth of May,
then my brain started to shrink and focus completely on the target and surrounding area.

Light spilled out around the sides of cabin blinds to my left, and I heard the sound of German TV and real-time laughter once more.

I was no more than a few yards away from the target when a vehicle approached from the Nice end of the main road. But it wasn’t coming my way. Its engine noise dwindled and its lights faded as it headed on toward Monaco. I checked the device yet again, then the Browning and fanny pack, and risked one good look around me before crouching down behind the boat’s utility stand. The meters ticked away like the crickets in Algeria.

All the blinds were still down, and I couldn’t see a single light. It looked as if the Romeos had turned in.

It’s pointless sitting around once you’re on target—you’re there, so you might as well just get on with it. Sitting on the edge of the pier, my hands gripping the base of the utility stand, I stretched my right foot across to the small fiberglass diving platform that overhung the propellers. My toes just made contact and I dug them in to get a decent purchase. I let go of the utility stand and extended my body like a circus gymnast, slowly pushing myself off the pier and transferring my weight onto the ledge. Every muscle screamed with the effort of controlling my movements so precisely that I didn’t slip or bang into anything. The boat was large enough to absorb my weight; it wasn’t going to start rocking just because I was messing around on the back end. The only thing I was worried about, apart from one of the Romeos suddenly deciding to take a breath of fresh air, was the noise the device or the Browning would make if they dropped into the water or clattered onto the deck.