Michael Parker: A Covert War

Marcus glanced quickly at David. ‘What we do now is tie him up, and then we leave with Susan.’

‘What about Abdul’s men. Where are they?’

‘One is dead and the other is tied up.’

‘You?’ David said without finishing.

Marcus shook his head. ‘No, one of Abdul’s faithful minders killed the other one. I watched him do it.’

Abdul’s expression clouded over when he heard what Marcus had said. He began to sit up but Marcus shoved him down again. ‘Stay there!’

‘Why are you lying about my men?’ he asked.

Marcus shook his head. ‘I’m not, believe me. One of your men is a traitor to you. He killed his friend.’

He handed David his AK 47.

‘Watch him while I tie him up.’

Marcus spent a couple of minutes making sure Abdul could not move. Then he took the AK47 back from David. He was about to say something to David when suddenly there was a crash and a scream. Marcus spun round and made a quick sprint for the door.

He got out into the passageway and stopped. At the far end, now reasonably light because of the dawn beginning to seep into the sky, he could see Susan. She was struggling fiercely trying to free herself from the man who was holding her.

In the man’s other hand was a gun. He lifted it and pointed at Susan’s head. Then he called down the corridor to Marcus.

‘Put your gun down, or I will shoot her.’

Marcus felt his whole body slump in despair and disbelief. He knew the voice of the man who had just spoken to him.

It was Maggot.

Cavendish was standing in McCain’s office. It was just after four thirty in the morning and McCain had woken him by phone to tell him there was a signal waiting for him. Cavendish had asked that he be told the moment his signal came in, no matter what time of day or night it was. He apologised to McCain for inconveniencing him. McCain simply shrugged.

Cavendish read the coded transmission from MI6 in London. He thanked the Security Officer for his help and took his leave, hurrying back to his sparse accommodation where he could decode the message safely.

What Cavendish had asked his office in London for was a list of all the suspects, dead or alive that he had on the file marked ‘Mission’. The list was not extensive but it included Grebo, Faulkner and James Purdy, the British Cabinet Minister. It also included the names of Rafiq Shah and Lieutenant Dale Berry.

Cavendish knew the last name as Chuck Berry, now on the Reaper flight, and the other as Maggot, long- time friend of Marcus.

He thought seriously about the association between Marcus and Shah, wondering if Marcus had indeed been pulling the wool over his eyes and was in fact working for The Chapter.

If that was the case, Cavendish believed his master plan was in tatters. All he had wanted was David Ellis’s release because Ellis carried in his head an enormous amount of human intelligence, so vital to the security forces in Afghanistan and their battle against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, that to lose it would seriously jeopardise the outcome of the war.

Ellis had worked undercover in Afghanistan for two years before coming to the Mission where he believed his remit would end. What the young man could not have known then was that he had been compromised, and almost certainly by the CIA, which meant Hudson. And it was this that had led to his attempted murder, and the murder of Shakira, Cavendish’s other agent.

All this confirmed to Cavendish something he had suspected for a long time: that the CIA were eavesdropping on British Intelligence Security Traffic for their own, duplicitous reasons. It meant that Hudson would almost certainly have known the names of his deeply embedded operators, and it was this that led to the attack on Shakira and David. But not for American security reasons but simply to protect the massive smuggling operation run by The Chapter.

He then thought about Abdul Khaliq’s fortuitous kidnapping of Ellis from the hospital. Was it good fortune, luck or did Abdul know the real value of someone like Ellis? If that was the case then Cavendish owed Abdul Khaliq something and could afford to cut him some slack; to listen carefully to his demands and find a way of accommodating some, if not all of them.

But rather than think of him as a very clever conspirator, he preferred to think of Marcus as a loose cannon, rather than a skilful agent working for Hudson’s CIA. He had to because his reputation and possibly other people’s lives depended on it.

He didn’t need the list now; there were only two people he needed to watch very carefully, and he would need to take McCain into his confidence. So before tearing the list up and flushing it down the toilet, Cavendish knew he would have to show it to the lieutenant.

He picked up the phone and dialled Lieutenant McCain’s private quarters.

Randy Hudson, the CIA chief received a call at the same time. Once again the CIA liaison officer had something for him. Hudson dressed and hurried across the domestic compound to the CIA office on the technical site. He had no vehicle so had to put up with a fairly lengthy walk. It was very early in the morning and, thankfully for Hudson the air was just cool rather than freezing as it often was during the winter months.

He reached the CIA office and showed his pass to the MP at the door. There was a turnstile entrance which the security man opened electronically from within his pigeon-hole office.

Hudson hurried through and found the liaison officer waiting for him.

‘I have these co-ordinates for you,’ he told Hudson.

The CIA man took them from him, read them and nodded his head in obvious satisfaction.

‘Are they there now?’ he asked.

The liaison officer said they were. ‘We picked them up on the Reaper. My guess is they’ll be there a few hours yet.’

Hudson thanked him and folded the note on which had been written the co-ordinates to the farmhouse where Abdul had taken Marcus and Susan. He checked his watch; it was a little after five o’clock. He smiled ruefully; once the figures had been passed on to Chuck Berry the farmhouse would be utterly destroyed on the next Reaper pass. He only wanted to take out Abdul Khaliq, but the collateral damage, meaning whoever was with him, would be perfectly acceptable to a man like Hudson.

He stepped out of the building, a light spring in his step. The dawn light was bright enough now to pick out the silhouettes of the F15E Strike aircraft and the Apache gunships lined up on the pan. Ground crews were out early preparing the aircraft for the coming day’s operations. Tractors towed generating sets out to each airplane, and ammunition trolleys were on their way to fill the jets and the gunships with their deadly loads.

None of this attracted Hudson’s attention as he hurried over to Reaper flight, intent on a strike of his own. Within one hour he reasoned to himself, Abdul Khaliq would be dead.

Cavendish apologised to Lieutenant McCain for the second time that early morning and asked to see him again. McCain agreed, telling Cavendish that he hadn’t bothered going back to bed. Cavendish grinned as he put the phone back in its cradle.

He came out of the accommodation block in which he was housed and once again hurried across to the Base Headquarters. McCain was there before him, which pleased Cavendish. He wasted no time in showing McCain the list with the two names on it that he had highlighted. One of them was Lieutenant Dale Berry.

‘Is there any way in which you can put Lieutenant Berry out of action?’ Cavendish asked the security officer.

McCain shook his head. ‘We need every damn last sonofabitch here, fully fit and working, Sir Giles. Unless you can give me a cast iron reason for excluding Lieutenant Berry from his work, I’ll have to say no. Besides which the Base Commander would expect me to give a damn good reason.’