Alex Shaw - A Jack Tate SAS Thriller

‘On my way. Officer Kent, please escort Mr Tate back to his holding cell. He won’t be any trouble, will you, Tate?’

‘None at all,’ Tate said flatly.

Camden, Maine

Oleg Sokol gazed out over the waves and breathed in the fresh sea breeze. Camden was so different to his native Sochi, but the sea air smelled the same. He saw birds soar on thermals and smiled at the sound of their excited calls. Oleg’s surname “Sokol” meant falcon in Russian, and he too wished he could fly carefree and enjoy the beauty of the bay and the August sunshine, but alas, this was neither the time nor the place. Oleg’s time in Maine would abruptly end with the coming attack. Many innocent people, of course, would perhaps perish in the aftermath and although he did feel for them, there was nothing he could do, so it was not his concern. His concern was whether the technology he had helped design in the laboratory would work in the field.

He watched a yacht out in the bay, its crew delightfully unaware that in thirty-eight hours the world as they knew it would vanish. Vanish for how long he did not know. Could the US rebuild, re-plug and reboot in six months, a year? He shook his head, as the vessel tacked to head south along the coast. Perhaps thirty-eight hours was all the crew had left.

‘Good afternoon.’ The voice that interrupted his thoughts was cheery.

‘Good afternoon,’ Oleg said.

‘Is that a Russian accent I detect there?’ the elderly woman asked.

‘Yes, it is.’ Oleg had once been a naturally friendly person. As a student learning English he had longed to meet native English speakers so he could practise, explore new words and improve his understanding. That Oleg would have been overjoyed to be overseas in the US. He would have been chatty and gregarious and engaging, but that was not the Oleg of today. He had a mission to conduct, and talking to anyone could put that at risk. He looked down at the old woman; her hair was ice white and immaculately styled. She wore a vivid pink blouse over equally bright, lime-green slacks, a sturdy pair of hiking boots, and a day sack on her back.

‘And what brings you here?’

Camden was a town of only five thousand permanent residents, and each summer up to ten thousand more took up places in vacation homes and rentals. Yet even at the height of the tourist season it was all but impossible not to draw attention to himself. The locals were, like Oleg, naturally friendly people.

‘I am here just to relax for a while. I work in Washington, so it is nice to get away from the city.’

The old woman smiled. ‘I love it here – in the summer, that is. In winter I go down to Florida or go on cruises.’

Oleg smiled. He liked cruises and had once taken a train from Moscow to Kyiv, then cruised down the river Dnipro to the Black Sea resort town of Odessa where he’d proposed to his wife. He felt a sadness, and then didn’t want to say anything more.

The old lady carried on talking, unaware of the distant grief behind his smile. ‘Hill walking is what I love. Give me a good hill and I am happy. Tomorrow a group of us are walking down to Rockport and back. The weather forecast says that it’ll be clear skies and sunshine. Well, goodbye.’

‘Good luck and goodbye,’ Oleg said as he watched the woman walk away. He noticed a cuddly panda keychain hung off the back of the day sack. He took a further five minutes to enjoy the scenery before trudging back up the path towards his Tahoe. It would be interesting to see how many yachts and other vessels arrived after the attack and how, if at all, they were affected. He pulled his encrypted sat phone out of his trouser pocket and read the message sent from his employer. The plan was unchanged. His team was to monitor the aftermath of the attack before falling back to the regional operating base six hours after the event.

Oleg checked his watch; he had time for one extra supply run. He’d drive past the inn, turn up Conway Road and go to Hannaford Supermarket. He may even buy a few bottles of Wild Turkey to take back home; they’d skyrocket in price once the stock in stores ran out and production ended.

Camden Police Station, Maine

‘How’s the coffee?’ Donoghue asked.

‘Good. Thanks,’ Tate replied, four hours after the last time he’d faced the chief.

‘I thought you Brits drank tea.’

‘That’s just the women; real men drink coffee.’

The police chief nodded. ‘See this?’ He pointed to a couple of sheets of letter-sized paper on his desk. ‘This is all we got from running your prints through the system. Now the first sheet here is what I was meant to see … mundane details about your entry into the US and movements, et cetera. But the second is what I managed to see after I called an old buddy of mine who owes me a favour, and that’s what took the time.’

‘Am I still a person of interest, Chief?’

‘You are an interesting person, Mr Tate. You were in the SAS.’

Tate frowned. ‘Was I?’

Donoghue nodded. ‘That’s why I couldn’t get much on you. It was classified, but the three lines I did eventually get from my buddy, who is connected, really opened my eyes.’ Donoghue looked down at the paper for effect. ‘You joined the Parachute Regiment straight from school and then three years later passed SAS selection. After seventeen years you left the army and took a job with Hush Hearing. And that is as much as I got. So the question I still have is this, why is a former member of an elite Special Forces unit in my town at the same time as a gunman?’

‘Happenchance.’

‘You see, Tate, I still have an issue here. The tracker on your Tahoe says you were near the scene of the Piper shooting. Care to explain?’

‘This morning I drove from Bangor to Camden.’

‘And did you stop anywhere?’

‘Yes. I needed a piss.’

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘I hope not; I was pissing in the bushes.’

‘You think this is funny, Tate? Some type of joke?’

‘No, I don’t.’ Tate fixed Donoghue with his steel-grey eyes. ‘But I do think that your belief I had anything to do with this is hilarious. I insist that you call the British Embassy in Washington and notify them that I am being held, without charge.’

‘Now you’re giving me orders?’ Donoghue folded his arms in an attempt to curb his irritation. ‘OK, we’ll do as you say and call them, like you were a US citizen with constitutional rights.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Who do you really work for?’

‘Ask for Simon Hunter; he’s the Commercial Attaché. I met him on a trade mission last year. He’ll vouch for me.’

‘I’m sure he will.’ A thin smile appeared on Donoghue’s lips. ‘You see, I looked at your tracker data twice, in fact, after it was brought to my attention that you were near Piper’s place and that you did stop. But then I realised that you couldn’t be the shooter, as you were stationary for less than a minute.’

‘I see.’ Tate was annoyed; Donoghue had been fishing and now knew about Simon Hunter.

‘And then, of course, your tracker had the SUV outside a pizza parlour thirty miles away at the time of the first shooting.’

‘First shooting?’ Tate said, surprised.

Donoghue ignored the interruption. ‘We contacted the restaurant and sent them your mugshot. They confirmed you were there eating the entire time the tracker shows the Tahoe as stationary.’

‘That’s because I was.’ Tate was terse. ‘How many shootings have there been?’

‘Two. One yesterday and one today with the same MO – a single .338-calibre round. You see, whilst you were cooling your jets in my holding cell we got the second round identified. It’s a confirmed match to the first. Not a .50 cal, as you said, but a .338, and still big enough to all but split the victims in two.’ Donoghue shook his head. ‘No one ever gets shot in Maine, but now we’ve got a maniac on the loose with a Magnum calibre rifle.’