Richard Wiseman - To Kill Or Be Killed

He sat on the bench, the vision of a travelling backpacker. He was a tall good looking man, dark hair and blue eyes. He’d not shaved and had let his usually neat hair become unkempt. He opened the worn rucksack and took out a flask and sandwiches. Breakfast was overdue and the swim had made him hungry. The train got into Inverness around ten a.m. and then he had some thinking to do.

Plockton Marina

7-45 a.m.

April 17th

Charley Cobb, the ‘smoker’ whose match flare had alerted Dewey to the illegal entrants to the united Kingdom, took the boat keys from the Harbour master at Plockton harbour, an unhappy man for being dragged from his house all too early, but knowing that Cobb, or ‘Mr Jake Howard’ as Cobb had been ‘labelled’ for the mission, had money behind him and you didn’t turn that down these days.

They exchanged sea and boat related comments in a casual, small talk manner as they looked over the boat. It was a small ocean going cruiser, a little on the scruffy side, but suitable for the task. Cobb held his cover as an American tourist easily though in reality he was an ex Navy SEAL with a global criminal underworld reputation as an outstanding ‘hit man’. He had a stocky build and short cropped, blonde hair, dressed in the kind of all weather gear American tourists typically bought for such tourism.

Charley had done his homework and his paperwork for the boat and his ability to sail it into the ocean were impeccably faked. Everything had been brilliantly arranged and Charley thought that the influence behind this job was second to none. Even the fact that there were five of them, so that at least one would get through was pretty stunning. Even more stunning was the use of a British submarine and the fact that the Royal Navy captain had thought they were on a Navy exercise.

Charley checked over the boat, turned the engine and ran over the charts. He drank some strong coffee and delved into his ‘Luckies’ soft pack twice for comfort, while the engine warmed. An hour after he’d got into the country he headed out into the western coastal waters planning to use the boat as far as Liverpool at least.

‘Caravan Air Strip’ Plockton

7-45 a.m.

April 17th

Marco Spencer, the third of the illegal entrants that Dewey had spotted, sat on a bench outside Plockton airstrip, in a suit and expensive Crombie. The suit and coat had been folded carefully in a rigid suit carrier to give his change of clothes a fresh look. Under the coat his trousers had wet spots from the sea water and his shirt was damp next to his skin. With a briefcase in his hand he waited for the chartered helicopter to arrive. It had been pre-arranged through a third party to keep his cover. He would be first into Inverness, via the airport. He was seriously thinking about a plane from there, possibly London, though Exeter was a thought. Overshoot and come back just to check for trailers. He knew there were agencies that would be looking for anyone unusual, but he and the others probably didn’t show up on the usual profile radars of the domestic protection services, they were stretched looking for terrorists. He knew of a certain agency that had a UK wide network, but so much more secretive than MI6 that it was hard to know where they were. What he did know was that it was a million for the hit and the first to the contact point got the job. They had no idea who the target was nor had they any idea who had hired them, though for his mind it looked like big business.

The airstrip was empty and if anyone on the helicopter asked him he was just to say he was a rich business man looking at land buys in that area of Scotland; obviously not the thirty year old veteran of MI6 field work; a consummate and cold blooded assassin of the first order.

Drumbuie

7-45 a.m.

April 17th

It was unlucky for Martin Wheeler, the fourth of the men that Dewey had actually seen in his binoculars in the pre dawn gloom, that his pre-prepared transport, the 500 cc Honda was parked within sight of Michael Dewey’s house. Michael had asked about the bike at his local pub, the night before. Doing the logic link on the morning arrivals Michael made a point of watching it when he got home.

Sure enough a moving blur walked into focus in the view finder of his Nikon digital SLR not twenty minutes after he’d got home. Michael watched the man unlock the bike. Stow the padlock, do a quick check over and straddle the bike and ease it away noisily out of the small narrow street.

Michael Dewey had already tapped into the DIC system and used three minute’s worth of live satellite link up to look at Duirnish rail station and the airstrip. He was allowed the satellite link for short periods, given the remoteness of his location, but it was expensive and he had to account for every second. In this case he knew DIC would be happy with his use of it. He called the harbour master at Plockton and unsurprisingly found him awake and glad to talk about the unhappy reason for his ungodly awakening hour, that being an American tourist. The possibility that the four men might use a boat was one that Michael had to explore, but he had been a little surprised at finding out that they were splitting up and taking different routes and modes of transport.

He had four of them ‘tagged’ and had sent the information at high speed via the secure internet connection available to DIC operatives wherever they lived.

Sadly and unknowingly he had missed Stanton and was still thinking there were only four inbound ‘illegals’ when he sat down to thick cuts of bacon, creamy scrambled eggs and crunchy golden slices of toast.

Within two hours of arrival the five men were on their way into the United Kingdom mainland, via different routes, none of them aware that they had be seen and were now being tracked by the watching machine that is DIC.

Scotland A87

8-10 a.m.

April 17th

Still on the A87 in the passenger seat of the refrigerated truck he’d hitched a lift with, Trevor Stanton, the one assassin Dewey hadn’t seen at the coastal arrival point, wasn’t best happy with the turn of events that had unfolded in the truck. When the conversation had lulled in the truck he and the driver had fallen into silence. Stanton had drifted off into a heavy doze as the truck rolled easily along the highland roads.

Stanton had woken to find the truck stopped in a lay-by to find the truck driver with his hand emerging from Stanton’s bag with three fake passports and matching credit cards.

On the driver’s lap Stanton’s Russian made PSS pistol sat accusingly. The PSS was small and looked unsophisticated and almost home made. It had been chosen as the weapon for the assassins on this mission because it is silent and deadly up to twenty five metres. It fired a bullet from a cartridge which stopped gases coming out the barrel and the addition of a two part barrel made the recoil virtually noiseless as well. This silent pistol with no muzzle flash was the ideal weapon for an assassin and 5 of them had been stolen to order for this mission from Russian an anti-terrorist forces armoury. Each assassin had been given two six shot, single stack clips of the silent piston drive 7.62mm x 42 cartridges.

For a moment the truck driver looked confident and triumphant, waving the items in a finger wagging style. The moment passed as Stanton’s right hand, edge first in a chop action swept past the waving passports and struck the driver’s throat, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. The unfortunate man slumped fatly against his driver’s side window, a rasp of now dead air wheezing from his lifeless lips.

Stanton checked the windows and mirrors. Not a living thing in sight, but knowing that this might change, he worked quickly and with collected calm. The driver was somewhat overweight and therefore would be hard to handle. Stanton went to the back of the truck and opened the doors on the refrigerated containment. The cooler wasn’t on as this was the return trip. Stanton opened the driver’s door and luckily the height of the cab allowed him to drop and shoulder the heavy body. Already the muscles were relaxing and fluids had begun to seep out. Stanton quickly staggered the body to the back, and hefted it in. He climbed in afterwards and secured the corpse to the inside of the van with straps.