Dominic Conlon - Silent Warpath

Dinsdale’s face drained of blood. ‘You couldn’t do that!’

The PM shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can do anything I want Martin. If you ever so much as threaten to let this particular secret out, I will have you killed.’

In the moonlight from the window, Sean watched as her back arched and she gave a moan of sheer pleasure. She fell forwards onto him and he held her close, the realisation coming quickly. His hand came away, sticky with her blood. The sound of tinkling glass registered and Sean knew with a dull certainty she had been shot.

He pushed her off the bed, away from the window. Crouching low he ran to one side of the window and looked out. There was nothing. He would only have a minute before they came for him. He crouched and ran back to Natasha, pulling the sheet from the bed and fashioning a tourniquet around her upper arm.

He pulled on his jeans and ran to the kitchen, picked up the wooden block of knives and ran to the hallway.

Police Sergeant Evans scanned the apartment from his car. Like Sean he heard the glass breaking, but there was no obvious source. He waited, unsure whether to investigate or stay put. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed movement. His patience in staking out the apartment was about to pay off. He saw a tall man in a long overcoat approaching the front door. He held a rifle in his right hand and his left arm was in a sling.

Evans unclipped his revolver and prepared to move.

Sean heard the lock as it shattered from the impact of the high velocity round. Again there was no sound of firing, so the man was using a silencer. The front door burst open. Sean caught a glimpse of the man’s silhouette in the light from the street. ‘Schaeffer’ he breathed. He let fly with one of the kitchen knives and was rewarded with a cry of alarm. The wood in the door surround splintered only inches away from Sean.

Sean withdrew into the living area. Seconds later he heard Schaeffer trip over Natasha’s bicycle in the hallway. Sean picked out another knife and balanced it in his hand. This might be his last chance. Sean hefted the knife. It was the longest one he had. He had to decide whether to throw it and risk it not connecting, or to deliver it personally. There really was only one choice after all.

Sergeant Evans pushed the door wide open. There were no lights on in the apartment and it was difficult to see what was going on. ‘Police, freeze!’ he shouted. A second later the round penetrated his stomach, blowing him backwards into the street.

Sean heard the front door again and the shouted command to freeze. He launched himself at Schaeffer in the darkness of the hallway, having to guess exactly where he might be. With his left hand he felt the man’s coat. He twisted and drove the knife deep into Schaeffer’s chest just as the rifle went off.

Racing back to Natasha, he switched on the bedside light. The tourniquet had staunched the blood, but Sean discovered another wound below her shoulder on her back. He made a pad with the rest of the sheet before reaching for the phone.

The view from the hideaway was beautiful. For the most part heather covered the hill, sweeping down until it met the bracken. The slope then gave way to grass. Some sheep grazed below a well worn path overlooking Gare Loch. There was a bench just off the path facing the loch and on the bench sat Lomax.

Sean breathed in the damp air that held the chill of the coming winter. He had spent the night in a shallow depression amongst the heather and he was numb with the cold and mist. The wound on his lower ribcage had started to throb painfully in the damp air. Even so, the day promised some sunshine and Sean felt good to be in touch once again with nature.

From his hide, Sean used his binoculars to scan the loch and the surrounding area. He was satisfied Lomax was alone and he tucked the binoculars out of sight. He crawled out under cover of the heather, standing slowly to examine the scene. Carefully he turned and checked back up the hillside. The whole area was deserted except for Lomax and himself. He removed his gillie suit and walked quietly to stand ten metres behind the bench.

‘A beautiful day.’

Lomax turned round, his face impassive. If he heard Sean’s approach he gave no sign. He turned back to face the loch bringing the binoculars back to his eyes. He started to scan the water again, swinging first left and then right.

‘Any sign of Cetus?’ Sean asked.

‘Not yet’ Lomax replied.

‘You may never see her’, remarked Sean.

‘She has to surface before going into dock.’

‘I heard there was an almighty furore when the Americans discovered their sub had gone missing again. I suppose you engineered it to make it look like the sub had lost its tow.’

‘Something like that’ said Lomax, vaguely.

‘Was it worth it?’

‘Worth what?’ asked Lomax.

‘Worth coming back to the Agency?’

Lomax let the binoculars fall with a sigh. Sean moved round to the front of the bench so he could see him better. Lomax gestured to the empty seat beside him. Sean sat and looked out over the water. ‘That was why they took you back, wasn’t it?’ Sean carried on. ‘You were a burnt out case. I don’t know what happened, but your last job got to you. You needed a lot of time to recover. I can only imagine what you must have gone through to get to that stage — someone like you. You were one of their best men.’

‘It wasn’t pretty’ replied Lomax.

‘No’, reflected Sean. ‘But out of all the people they had on the books, they chose an agent who had retired on the grounds of ill health.’ Sean glanced sideways at Lomax. ‘But there was a price, wasn’t there Lomax?’

Lomax remained still.

‘They made a bargain with you and you accepted.’ Sean looked squarely at Lomax. ‘Am I right?’

Finally Lomax nodded his head.

‘They offered you promotion, provided you carried out all your orders. Especially the orders you didn’t tell me about.’

Sean looked back to the loch and saw a tiny fissure appear in the water. He pointed it out to Lomax.

‘All for that’ he said. As they watched, the fissure grew bigger and revealed itself as a bow wave from the radio masts on Cetus. Slowly the conning tower came into view and then the black tubular shape of the submarine. It rose steadily, gently broaching the still surface of the loch.

‘Why did you shoot Dennis Clarke?’ Sean turned to look at Lomax. ‘Orders from London?’

‘I should have shot him earlier.’ Lomax said the words so quietly that Sean almost failed to hear him.

‘I remember he checked his watch’, said Sean. ‘He must have thought that Cetus had already kept its appointment with Kougar , so there was little point in preserving the knowledge on how to stop it.’

Sean leaned back on the seat. ‘You know Lomax, most of the time I didn’t know who I could trust. So I had a little talk with DD.’

He saw a frown appear on Lomax’s forehead.

‘DD was very reluctant, but in the end he told me about your order to provide another virus.’

Sean turned to look at Lomax. ‘You were told to engineer the theft of the project.’

Lomax continued to stare into the distance.

‘But you needed more time to make the switch’ Sean said, more as a statement than a question. ‘That’s why you killed Clarke. You had to have time for DD to program the new virus. Then you had to switch Natasha’s memory sticks for the ones DD programmed.’

Sean looked out at the loch, trying to calm his rising temper. ‘You risked starting a war between Russia and the States, just so our scientists could get a peek at the technology.’ Sean watched as two tugs approached the submarine. ‘Was it Andrews?’