James Barrington - Overkill

Friday

Gascony

The roads were nothing like as bad as Colin Dekker had feared, and the three Renaults were able to hold their speed at well over one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour for most of the time. Richter claimed he was still half-asleep, which was not much of an exaggeration, so he navigated from the roadmap while Colin Dekker drove.

Like most of France after about seven in the evening, the villages that the convoy swept through appeared deserted, doors firmly closed, shutters secured, no lights showing. Léguevin, L’Isle-Jourdain, Gimont and Aubiet. Auch was different, simply because it was bigger, and they saw couples and small groups of people walking the streets. Then they were through the town and back on the empty country roads. St-Jean-Poutge, Vic-Fézensac and through Dému, and then an almost arrow-straight road to Manciet.

‘According to this map,’ Richter murmured, as Dekker pushed the speed up to just over one hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, ‘this is an attractive country road with spectacular views to the south over the valley of the River Douze.’

‘Fascinating,’ Dekker replied. ‘More to the point, how far have we got to go?’

‘About six kilometres to Manciet, then another two up to St Médard. Eight clicks in total, which is just about five miles.’

Fifty-five minutes after driving out of Blagnac Airport, almost on the stroke of one, the three cars swept into the village of Manciet, headlights blazing, and immediately turned hard right onto the D931, north towards Eauze. St Médard lay two kilometres in front of them.

Le Moulin au Pouchon , St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Like Sadoun Khamil in Saudi Arabia, Hassan Abbas had left his computer switched on, waiting for the decision from al-Qaeda. Abbas received at least thirty emails every day, and eight times since he’d sent his message to Saudi Arabia he’d rushed back into the rear bedroom when he’d heard the warning announcing the receipt of an email. He’d checked, and then deleted, them all.

The ninth message was different, not least because its apparent origin was Germany, and Abbas scanned it swiftly, looking for the tell-tale ‘corrupted’ section of text. He found it about halfway down, highlighted and copied it, then ran the decryption routine to unscramble it. The plain text appeared on the screen and Abbas leaned forward to read it, simultaneously pressing the ‘Print’ button which would send a copy of the text to the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet. He read Sadoun Khamil’s instructions, and the copy of the message from the al-Qaeda leadership, with increasing satisfaction. Then he read the whole email again, twice, just to be certain. ‘Allah be praised,’ he murmured, and stood up.

He removed the single sheet of paper from the printer and took it down the stairs and into the living room, where Jaafar Badri and Karim Ibrahim, two of his three bodyguards, were sitting watching a French game-show on the television. The fourth bodyguard – Saadi Fouad – was asleep upstairs.

‘My friends,’ Abbas said, his words ringing with the monumental significance of the announcement he was about to make, ‘tonight we will strike a blow at the infidels from which they will never recover. Our leaders have instructed me to implement El Sikkiyn immediately. Within hours, America and Russia will be smoking ruins. Allah be praised.’

Abbas smiled in satisfaction as his companions echoed his prayer, then turned back to the stairs and the task he was going to perform.

St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Le Moulin au Pouchon took some finding, not least because, as appeared to be common practice in France, most of the streets didn’t appear to have names and the houses lacked both names and numbers. Presumably the locals knew where they were going, and visitors just had to ask a local – easy enough at midday, but impossible after midnight.

The information from France Telecom had included a set of directions originally supplied by Abdullah Mahmoud, Abbas’ alias, when he had applied for the landline to be installed. Though somewhat ambiguous, at least in the dark and silent village streets, the directions did eventually lead Richter and Dekker to a narrow, winding road that snaked away up the hillside. In the distance they could see a single light burning, but even through the night-vision glasses it was impossible to tell if it was from an uncurtained window or was simply an exterior light some farmer had forgotten to switch off.

The last thing they wanted to do was alert their quarry, so as soon as Ross was reasonably sure that they had identified the correct road, he ordered the three Espaces parked in a layby about a quarter of a mile from the village. Everybody climbed out and gathered round Ross and Dekker, who had the laptop open again and was re-checking the directions supplied by France Telecom. ‘Any idea what the opposition strength is likely to be?’ Ross asked.

Richter shook his head. ‘At least one person, but we have to assume that there will be a team of people to support him. I’m guessing, but it could be anything from two or three to a round dozen. Obviously at least some of them, possibly all of them, will be armed.’

‘Assault tactics,’ Ross said, ‘will have to be left until we see the location itself. All we got from France Telecom was the address of the house. We have no idea whether it’s a new two-bedroom villa or a three-hundred-year-old six-bedroomed maison de maître . But it’s fair to say that in this part of France old houses greatly outnumber the new properties, so the chances are that it will be an old stone property with solid doors and fairly small windows, none of which is good news from our point of view.’

‘What about weapons?’ Richter asked. ‘I can see the Hocklers, but have you got anything heavier in case these comedians are living in some sort of fortified manor house?’

‘We’ve got half a dozen G60 stun grenades left, plus one M79 launcher and three high-explosive grenades.’

Richter nodded. ‘Excellent. That should make short work of any French front door.’

‘The M79 is still in the car,’ Dekker said.

‘Get it, please,’ Ross said, and a trooper trotted away obediently.

Richter glanced round at the faces of the SAS troopers. ‘The weapon on the Anton Kirov was dangerous enough,’ he said, ‘but it was only one bomb, albeit a big one. This time we’re playing for much bigger stakes – if this Arab decides to carry on where Trushenko left off, he could quite literally start a Third World War, effectively destroy America and return western civilization to the Stone Age. We don’t mess with him. We have just one chance to do it right, and we have to stop him – permanently.’

Hammersmith, London

Baker still had the connection open to the Krutaya mainframe and had been working on the system ever since Richter had left the suite. He had been alternating his efforts between trying to locate Dernowi’s backdoor code and getting into the Weapon Control module with Administrator status. Unfortunately, he had got precisely nowhere with both tasks.

Just after midnight, local time, he watched impotently as Dernowi used his backdoor code to get into the system again.

St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Once they had all checked their weapons and equipment, Ross divided the men into two groups and led them silently up the twisting road towards the single light they’d seen from the edge of the village. All around them the countryside was dark and totally silent, as if nature herself was holding her breath.