Live Fire (39 page)

‘It’s not about face, Mickey,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s about getting the right tools for the job. Kleintank just wants to offload what he’s got in stock – he doesn’t care whether it’ll work or not.’

‘It’s a missile and we need a missile.’

‘There’s missiles and there’s missiles, Mickey. And stop squeezing my shoulder, will you? You’re nowhere near the nerve.’

Mickey took away his hand. ‘If you weren’t interested then why the Q and A?’

‘I wanted to see how much he knows,’ said Shepherd. ‘He said he sold a practice Grail to British Asians who want to shoot down a moving target. He’s talking about terrorists, Mickey. Why else would Asians want a surface-to-air missile? They want to shoot a plane, but you can’t hit a plane without infrared capability or some sort of tracking facility.’

Mickey frowned. ‘Speak English, will you?’

‘Even when it’s taking off or landing, a plane is moving too fast to shoot down without some way of moving the missile in flight,’ said Shepherd, patiently. ‘You have to fire the missile, then tell it which way to go once it’s launched. It can chase the heat of the plane’s engines or it can be radar-guided, but what you can’t do is fire the thing and forget about it, which is all you can do with a practice model.’

‘And?’

‘And I think he sold it to them knowing it wouldn’t do the job and now he’s trying to do the same thing to us. That’s why I’m quizzing him, to see if he’s just stupid or if he’s deliberately trying to pull the wool over our eyes.’

‘But we don’t need IR whatsit because we’re not chasing anything,’ said Mickey.

‘No, but we need a decent explosive charge. The Grail has a warhead weighing just over a kilo. An RPG has a two-kilo warhead. If you’re shooting at a plane or a helicopter then a kilo of high explosive is fine, but we want to blast through a high-security wall and I don’t think a single one-kilo warhead is going to do it.’ He cocked his head at Kleintank. ‘He’s trying to sell us a pig in a poke, Mickey, and even if it pisses you off to hear that I still have to tell you.’

Mickey nodded slowly. ‘All right, mate. So, it’s an RPG or nothing?’

‘Mickey, I think we’re going to need at least three. You saw how it went in Cambodia. We might be lucky and the first one does the job, but we might need more. RPGs are tank killers – that’s what they were designed to do – but metal and concrete are totally different materials. They can blast walls apart, but if we’re talking about a high-security wall it might take two or three goes. I’d be happier with four, to be honest.’

‘The Professor said one should do it.’

‘And he’s probably right. But what if the RPG is a dud? Or what if we fire it and the hole’s only a couple of feet across? We’re going to look pretty stupid either way.’

‘Okay, Ricky, you’ve talked me into it.’ He slapped Shepherd on the back. ‘You did the right thing.’

He and Shepherd went back to where the Dutchman was standing. ‘We’re going to pass, Alex,’ said Mickey. ‘Sorry to have wasted your time.’

‘What?’ said Mark. ‘We’ve come all this way for nothing?’

‘We need RPGs, and that’s the end of it,’ said Mickey. ‘Let’s go.’

Chaudhry backed the van into the storage area – Bradshaw had rented the space for a year, paying in cash and showing his fake driving licence as identification. It had a yellow metal pull-down door and a bare concrete floor. The company that ran the facility offered twenty-four-hour access and was used to people coming and going at all hours. There was a large building containing small units, but Bradshaw had rented one of the largest, double height with space enough to park a dozen cars. It was in a line of units behind the main building, and while there was CCTV coverage of the entrance and the fence around the facility, there was none of individual units. It was a ten-minute drive to Heathrow airport.

Bradshaw was standing behind the van, guiding Chaudhry in, then banged on the side to tell him to stop. He applied the handbrake and killed the engine. Bradshaw switched on the lights and pulled down the door. Chaudhry climbed out of the van. ‘I can’t believe it was that easy,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Bradshaw.

‘We drove missiles into the country and no one looked twice at us.’

‘There’s just too much traffic between England and the Continent,’ said Bradshaw. ‘They don’t have the time or the resources to check even one per cent of what comes in.’ He began to pull out the cases of wine and lager and piled them on the concrete floor. Chaudhry helped him. Once they had removed a dozen, they were able to take out the two missiles. They placed the two large crates carefully on the floor, then put the wine and beer back into the van.

‘Now what do we do?’ asked Chaudhry.

‘We get the vehicle we need,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Something like an old furniture van, something where we can remove a section of the roof so that we can fire the missile, and big enough to allow the backblast out. I know of a car auction where they sell commercial vehicles. I’ll see what they have.’

‘And then we’re ready?’

‘The van will have to be modified but, yes, then we’ll be ready.’

Chaudhry’s eyes blazed with enthusiasm. ‘It’s going to be bigger than anything anyone’s ever done here, isn’t it?’

‘Far bigger,’ said Bradshaw. ‘It’ll change this country for ever. It’ll change the world. Once we show what we can do, we’ll have the power to make changes. They’ll have to listen to us.’

Chaudhry grabbed Bradshaw impulsively and hugged him so hard that the air was squeezed from his lungs. ‘We will be heroes, brother. Our names will be remembered for all time.’

Bradshaw released himself gently from Chaudhry’s grasp. ‘For all time,’ he repeated.

Shepherd rubbed his belly as he got into the lift with Mickey and Mark. ‘My guts are playing me up,’ he said. ‘I feel like shit.’ He winced and leaned against the lift’s mirrored wall.

‘Come on, Ricky, we’re heading out later,’ said Mickey. ‘There’s a brothel on the outskirts of the city that’s got great Latvian hookers.’

‘How the hell would you know that?’ asked Shepherd. ‘You said it was your first time here.’

‘The power of Google,’ said Mark.

‘I can’t go,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m gonna have the runs real bad – I can feel it.’

Mickey grimaced. ‘More information than we need,’ he said. ‘You stay in bed, sleep it off.’

The lift stopped at Shepherd’s floor and he got out. ‘Sorry to be a wet blanket,’ he said. As soon as the lift doors closed behind him, he straightened and went to his room. He opened the door and hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the outside, then went back along the corridor and waited for the next lift down. He walked through Reception and headed outside to the nearby taxi rank.

The first driver was a man in his fifties with a sweeping handlebar moustache. ‘I hope you speak English,’ said Shepherd.

‘I speak Canadian,’ said the man, ‘which is almost the same.’

Shepherd laughed and climbed into the front passenger seat. He explained to the driver that he didn’t know the name of the road he wanted to go to, but he did know how to get there. The driver switched on the meter and followed Shepherd’s directions while he told him his life story. He and his wife had fled the city six months after the siege began, paying a Serbian people-trafficker twenty thousand dollars to get them out of Sarajevo and into Canada, where they claimed asylum. They were given residency and eventually citizenship, but had returned to Sarajevo. After fifteen minutes the driver pointed out that they had doubled back but Shepherd told him not to worry and just to keep the meter running. The driver tossed him a street map but it was no help, and Shepherd had no choice other than to retrace the circuitous route that Kleintank’s driver had taken.

He had the taxi driver drop him a couple of hundred yards from Kleintank’s warehouse, paid him and walked the rest of the way, keeping an eye out for any surveillance. The Toyota that had been parked outside had gone, and so had the stretch Mercedes. A coach drove by and Shepherd lowered his head so that no one could see his face. Once it was out of sight, he walked up to the warehouse and along to the side entrance. The Toyota was there, parked next to a black Porsche Cayenne SUV with Croatian plates. Shepherd heard voices inside. He hesitated, wondering if he was doing the sensible thing. He wanted to talk to Kleintank, to find out what else, if anything, the Dutchman knew about the three Brits who had bought the Grail missile, and he wanted to do it without arousing his suspicions. It was going to be a difficult line to tread but Shepherd knew he had to try. In an ideal world he’d be going in with a gun but he wasn’t armed. He smiled at the thought that there were thousands of weapons just a few yards from where he was standing.

His best chance of getting information from Kleintank was to ask him about the arms dealer in France. He would spin Kleintank a line that it would be easier for them to take delivery in France and offer him a commission on any arms he bought from the second dealer. He’d just have to hope that word didn’t get back to the Moores, but if it did he could claim he had been trying to help by coming up with an alternative supplier. He took a deep breath, knowing he was over-thinking the situation. He was always at his best when he thought on his feet, when he allowed his natural instincts to kick in. He eased open the door and walked inside.

A man was standing by the crates at the left of the door. He was in his late forties with grey hair cut short and thin, unsmiling lips. He was wearing a weathered leather bomber jacket, beige trousers and dark brown loafers with tassels. He heard Shepherd’s footsteps, and as he turned, he pulled a Glock semi-automatic from a shoulder holster. Shepherd froze and his jaw dropped. It was Richard Yokely, an American who had once worked for the CIA but who was now employed by a black-ops group called Grey Fox, which Shepherd knew was nothing less than a presidential assassination squad. They had met in London, Iraq and Northern Ireland. Yokely was a government-sanctioned killer and one of the most dangerous men he had ever met, the last person he’d expected to see in an arms warehouse in Sarajevo.

Yokely grinned but he kept the gun aimed at Shepherd’s chest. ‘Spider Shepherd, as I live and breathe,’ he said.

At the far end of the warehouse two men were standing over Kleintank. They were both in their mid-thirties with hard eyes, close-cropped haircuts, denim shirts, jeans and heavy workboots. One had a broken nose, the other a scarred lip. They were in the process of stripping Kleintank of his clothes but they had stopped when they heard Shepherd walk in. Broken Nose straightened up and took a silenced semi-automatic from a shoulder holster. Shepherd realised it was the man he’d seen sitting outside in the Toyota during his first visit to the warehouse, the man he’d assumed was Kleintank’s lookout. Broken Nose and Scarred Lip both gazed at Yokely, waiting to find out what he wanted them to do. ‘It’s okay, I know him,’ said Yokely. The two men relaxed and Broken Nose put away his gun. They went back to stripping off Kleintan’s clothing. Shepherd couldn’t see if the Dutchman was dead or unconscious.

Yokely walked towards Shepherd with an amused smile. ‘You do turn up at the most inconvenient times, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘What the hell are you doing here, Richard?’

‘Tidying up some loose ends,’ said the American. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to go now, Spider.’

‘I can’t do that,’ said Shepherd.

‘Yes, you can. You turn around, you walk away and you don’t look back.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Not yet,’ said Yokely.

‘You’re going to kill him, right?’

‘Not your business, old friend.’

‘We’re not friends, Richard. We’re just guys whose paths cross from time to time.’

‘You owe me.’ Yokely’s finger was still on the trigger of his Glock but the barrel was now pointing at the floor.

‘I owe you a favour. I don’t owe you a man’s life.’

‘Not just any man,’ said Yokely. ‘But that’s not the point. You owe me. You owe me big-time. So turn around and walk away. You’re right, we don’t have to be friends but I’m going to do what I have to do, no matter what.’

‘You did me a big favour, I’m not denying it. But there’s a hell of a gap between a debt of honour and being an accomplice to a cold-blooded murder.’

‘I don’t need your complicity,’ said Yokely. ‘I just need you to go.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t want you here.’

‘I mean, why do you want to kill him? What’s he done?’

The gun moved. Now it was pointing at Shepherd’s knee and the American’s finger was still on the trigger. ‘You’re making this very difficult for me, Spider.’

‘You think murder is easy?’

Yokely snorted. ‘If it was anyone else but you . . .’

‘What, Richard? What would you do? Would you shoot me, is that what you’re saying?’

The gun didn’t move but the finger tightened on the trigger. Yokely shook his head slowly. ‘I’ve got a job to do. And you’re in my way.’

‘This is Sarajevo, way out of your jurisdiction.’

Yokely grinned savagely. ‘I represent the United States of America, which means the whole Goddamned world is my jurisdiction. And it’s like George W said – you’re either with us or you’re against us.’ He gestured at Kleintank with the gun. ‘Him, he’s against us. What about you, Spider? Which side are you on?’

‘There’s no sides in this,’ said Shepherd. ‘There’s just you and me and the guy you’re threatening to kill.’

Yokely took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. He stared at Shepherd, his lips a tight line. The barrel of the gun moved slowly until it was aimed at Shepherd’s stomach. ‘You heard about the plane that crashed leaving JFK?’

Shepherd nodded. ‘Engine failure, they’re saying. It crashed into the sea.’

‘Yeah, well, they’re saying what they’ve been told to say,’ said Yokely. ‘The real scenario is being kept under wraps. Islamic fundamentalists shot it out of the sky. And they shot it out of the sky with a missile supplied by that piece of shit. So he made his choice and now it’s time for him to pay the piper.’

‘What sort of missile?’ asked Shepherd.

‘A Stinger.’

‘Evidence?’

‘This isn’t a court, Spider. And you’re not judging me.’