The Storm Protocol (46 page)

‘Gun!’ shouted one of the marines.

‘No!’ shouted Major Reid, as he heard three
further shots ring out.

He felt a fine spray on his face; he could taste the iron and salt from the blood.

#

It was exactly one month since the shooting. It had been an up and down journey; in a way he felt totally to blame. It was his careless words that had triggered the series of events of that evening; events that ultimately led to someone’s death. Nothing that anyone had said to him since could change that.

But with acknowledgement of accountability comes freedom to change. Nobody had been prepared to discuss Sergeant Kelly’s death. The more he dug, the more he found inconsistencies and untruths. He was determined to get to the bottom of what had happened on that fateful day on a lonely and isolated Afghan hillside.

He still loved writing, but he tempered the power of the pen with a wiser head. He had realized that in his position he had a responsibility; a duty to fulfil to both his living and fallen comrades. Today was a case in point. He shaded his eyes and scanned the topmost sections of the stark Sandstone monument. He could just make out the freshly etched letters after the name – Sergeant Sean Kelly MC; Military Cross. It was the least he could do; maybe driven more by guilt than anything else
, but a start nonetheless on his road to re-humanization.

He thought Sergeant Kelly’s mother would approve; he hoped so anyway. He was making real progress at last; he had persuaded someone to talk to him off the record. Something was emerging about a shadow operation that was being run out of the US 101
st
Airborne Division based in Iraq, but carried out by British troops from One Rifles in Helmand province.

He saw a glint of metal from a hillock on the far side of the monument; odd. As he shaded his eyes to catch a better glimpse, a third one appeared in the centre of his forehead. He teetered backwards and fell with a thud, dead before the sound of his fall echoed off the bleak sandstone walls.

22
nd
May 2011 – Twelve days after the Storm.

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

He held a photograph in one hand and a mirror in the other. He was working himself up to the moment; the unveiling of the enemy. His initial glance at the surveillance intelligence they’d received had burned into his retinas, like the feeling you getting looking directly at the sun. He hadn’t been able to pluck up the courage to have a second look, so he’d handed the envelope full of photographs back to Dave to enable him to brief the intercept teams.

When he’d come home from work that same evening, he’d found the bundle sitting on his desk like an unwelcome guest, silently highlighting and accentuating his cowardice.

As he’d busied himself in the kitchen, preparing his evening meal, he’d felt its malevolent presence, calling to him and repulsing him in equal measure. Now, here he was, stuck in a quandary, unable to take his eyes off the mirror.

It had been a stupid idea; comparison.

What was he trying to prove?

He studied his own reflection dispassionately. He wore his black hair long, swept proudly back from his high forehead. There was no parting, and a lot of hair cream was required to sculpt it into position. His face was tanned and surprisingly unlined for someone with as chequered and stressful a career choice. His lips were full, with an almost perfect cupids bow shape, and his chin was strong and resolute; a face with hidden depths, a face with character.

He quickly flicked his eyes from the mirror to the photograph and back. He saw nothing except a blur of grey. He would just have to suck it up.

Eventually, he just flicked his eyes across to the photo and anchored them there. Once he’d focused on the image, as he’d known would happen, he found it impossible to tear his eyes away from it.

He noticed with grim fascination the tight buzz-cut armed forces hairstyle, in stark contrast to his own luxuriant mane. The image had pale smooth skin with no wrinkles or worry lines, but the lips were full, with the same distinctive shape, and his eyes were the same. Not in colour, as Eoin’s were grey and the image had eyes of a piercing blue, but they both burned with the same intensity of purpose.

I
t wasn’t any of the physical characteristics that surprised Eoin, though. The photograph he was looking at on the surface was essentially of a fit looking man in his mid forties, nothing more. No, the thing that surprised Eoin, shocked him even, was the overall feeling he got when he studied the photograph. There was an all pervading sense of purpose about the person, a supreme self confidence. They were comfortable in their own skin, but also exuded an aura of an individual not to be trifled with.

He could almost smell a whiff of aggression, a
whiff of menace. The face was different, but he saw that self same attitude every day. It faced him in the mirror when he shaved.

‘Hello Brother.’

He startled himself when he realised he’d said the words aloud; trying them on for size.

Half
the reason why he hadn't wanted to look at the photographs was because he hadn’t wanted any visual memories. He just wanted to wipe that part of his life clean. But having now seen his brother in the flesh, so to speak, he was surprised and a little pleased to note that putting an identity to his hate had not changed the underlying emotion. He really was as heartless and ruthless as he believed. In a strange way he felt vindicated. He looked back to the mirror again and a serene smile pushed up the corners of his mouth.

He put down the mirror and flicked a switch on the side of his desk, plunging the room into darkness. He still had the imprint of the image burned into his memory, and he drank it in, relishing the final moments of his three
long decades of torment.

After years of resentment and bitterness, he could finally release his father from the mental chains he had inhabited for the last thirty years. His family would be re-habilitated; the happy memories would be remanufactured to plaster over the void.

He reached across the desk, his hand falling straight to the object he was looking for. He caressed it for a few moments, marvelling at the sleekness of the design, and the cool smoothness of the marble, wonderfully at odds with its primary purpose.

He spun the wheel quickly with his thumb. He could see the miniature sparks as they jumped toward the flammable liquid, impatient for conflagration. And then, the delicious moment when spark and liquid combined, the whoosh as ignition became fire.

Like all his lighters, it was set for the largest flame, and it danced and flickered like a beacon. His breathing made it shudder rhythmically, in tune with the rise and fall of his chest.

Eoin studied the photograph in the flickering artificial twilight. Exposure: the amount of light that was allowed to fall on a photographic image. It was how this picture had been made, the process by which it had come into being and had then, as a finished product, found its way into his possession.

But it had also exposed his feelings, given him the emotional tools he needed to cast off the legacy of the past and move into the unknown territory of a future, potentially without rage or hate.

The thought filled him with uncertainty. Was that a good thing? He didn’t know, maybe he need
ed a new focus point; only time would tell. But for the here and now it was definitely what he needed; to reclaim the past and to reclaim his family.

He moved the picture close to the flickering glow. He turned it onto one side
, so that the corner was pointing down at an angle, and moved it toward the tip of the flame where the heat was starting to dissipate; the point where the orange of fire became the white of smoke.

He could see that self same
smoke starting to blacken and obscure the image, and then, all of a sudden, the fire took hold of the picture. Large areas of the paper started to tear open and crackle. There was a pungent whiff in the air, as the chemicals were released from their slumber, reacting with the heat, smoke and flame.

He dropped the burning pile into the large crystal ashtray on his desk, the circular one
. As he watched, the picture warped and constricted until the paper had been converted into nothing more than a pile of smouldering ash.

‘Goodbye, Brother,’ he said softly, before extinguishing the lighter
and switching the lights back on.

He blinked at the sudden intense assault on his eyes. He waited until the white spots dissipated.

He went to pull the ashtray forward. It bogged down on the leather and then jerked toward him, leaving a trail of ash in its wake across the blotter. He smiled; his cleaner was always complaining that she had nothing to do, so at least she could earn a little bit of her money this week.

He pulled the waste paper basket out from under his feet
, and tipped the contents of the ashtray into it in one clean fluid motion. Finally, after thirty years, he could say goodbye to the past and say hello to the future.

His fingers trembled with excitement as he fumbled the keys out of his pocket, dropping them with a clatter on the floor in his haste to extract them. He stooped awkwardly while he picked them up. He flicked through the keys until he came to the one he wanted; cut speci
fically for a single purpose all those years ago.

To his right hand side, above the three drawers, was a thin strip of wood veneer with a keyhole set into it. It looked too thin to be a drawer and people confused it with the blanking plate for the locking mechanism, which had been the original intention.

He turned the key a full-turn and then a quarter more. Using the body of the key, he pulled out the hidden drawer until it protruded about an inch and a half.

He removed the key and placed it back on his desk. He’d been waiting for this moment for so long, he wanted to savour it for a while. He closed his eyes for
what seemed like an eternity, and then opened them again as he realised it looked like he was praying.

I
n a sense he was.

He reached down to pull open the drawer, noticing with a detached disinterest that his hand was shaking almost uncontrollably.
It slid soundlessly out, revealing a sea of green baize. Fixed to the front of the baize was a black leather tab. He used this to lift the lid, which exposed the hidden compartment underneath. Nestling within this padded environment was a picture frame.

This was not an ordinary picture frame however. The rear of the frame had been manufactured from the finest bog oak. Fastened to this had been a skin of pure platinum, so thick in places that the jeweller had jokingly recommended
that he double his house contents insurance.

He lifted it reverently and turned it
over slowly in his hands, careful not to cause smudge or burnish marks. The compartment had done its job. It was as clean and dust free as the day it had been interred all those years ago.

He turned it over, pulled out the awkward looking leg on which it stood, and set it down in the middle of the blotter. There was a blank area of his desk that had always looked slightly incongruous. He slid the picture back into this opening, making sure to centre it and line it up perfectly.

Mother, father, son; an excursion to Cobh one summers evening. The sun was shining; all of them were smiling, and he was in the middle, at the centre of the family where he had always belonged.

Home at last.

He didn’t know how long he stared at the picture, but the next thing he remembered was the whir of the lift motor outside. Dave was back. Eoin waited in silence, purging his mind of distracting personal emotions; now it was time to focus.

There was a discreet knock on the door. Bl
ack Swan didn't answer; he rarely did, and after a polite interval the door swung open and Dave walked in. He was grim faced but Eoin smiled inwardly. Dave was always grim faced, even if he was happy.

‘So what did you find out for me?’ asked Eoin.

‘Well, number one,’ said Dave, ‘it's definitely McCabe and Collins. I heard through one contact that David has moved to Clonakilty permanently.’

‘Into the holiday home?’ asked Eoin.

‘So it would seem,’ said Dave. ‘They are in the IDA technology campus; about five minutes drive from McCabe’s place. The manufacturing facility they have acquired down there is pretty large. I managed to get some surveillance footage from the same contact.’

He threw another brown envelope onto the desk in front of Eoin, who smiled wryly at the irony of the action. He slipped the photographs out and studied them one by one. It was a typical IDA industrial unit, stoutly built with steel cladding and a flat steel roof. Adaptable to a number of uses, and yes, given the perspective in the picture, it was very big indeed.

‘You’ve got to admit, it is pretty brilliant,’ said Dave.

‘What is?’ asked Eoin.

‘Well, think about it,’ answered Dave. ‘Just look at how big Pablo Escobar got in Colombia. That was no accident. The reason he managed to grow so big, so fast, was that he was ruthless, plain and simple. He controlled pretty much all the supply. If you control it all, the rewards are enormous.’

‘To be honest, even though it is McCabe, I have to grudgingly admit it is a masterstroke,’ said Eoin. ‘Especially when you think we are coming into a recession. Any hint of an investment
, any hint of job creation is going to be welcomed with open arms. Liquidity checks, financial checks, background checks, they are all going to be that little bit less stringent and thorough than they were before.’

Dave laughed.

‘Not only that,’ he said, still chuckling, ‘but they will probably get financial assistance from the state too.’

‘So
, how do I stop them?’ asked Eoin. ‘I don't particularly care about his partners; McCabe is the one I want. I don’t care what it takes, but David is not getting a red cent out of this venture, if it kills both him and me in the process.’

‘It may well do that,’ replied
Dave dryly. ‘We’ve got two avenues we can go down, as far as I can see. The first is the legal route; take all the information we have and give it to Ryan and his boys in the drug squad; anonymously of course.’

Eoin shook his head.

‘Apart from the fact that I probably need to be further away from those guys than McCabe does, they’d just fuck it up. What’s the other alternative?’

‘Well, I’ve already got the place staked out,’ said Dave. ‘So we watch and we wait and we see what happens. To be honest, I think it's a great opportunity. At some stage, pretty much all of McCabe’s organisation is going to be in that one building. If we can assemble a large enough force, I think we can do some serious damage.’

‘So what are we waiting for? Get a team together.’

Eoin paused, as though the words he’d spoken had jogged something deep inside his memory.

‘Which reminds me,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’

He looked pointedly at Dave. He noticed the downward glance and the shuffling of feet and the slight reddening of the complexion.