Don Pendleton - Incendiary Dispatch

He’d seen some really pretty scenery, too. And somehow, knowing he’d be one of the last people to see it in its pristine state for a long, long time, made him appreciate it that much more.

Maybe he would take up hiking for real.

After all, he had invested in these kick-ass hiking boots.

And with all the money he’d just earned for himself, he’d have lots of free time.

London

THOMAS HAMMIL WAS TAKING a risk and he knew it. But if he pulled it off, the payoff would be huge. And he’d be out of this stinking job and out of stinking London and they could all go to hell.

He’d given them a lot of his life and got nothing back.

He’d given to his country. He’d served in the Royal navy, but they’d tossed him out like he was garbage—no money and no rank.

His mates, the boys he’d known since his school days, looked down their noses at him ever since he’d come home from his military stint. They said they believed his version of the story, but they’d been cool toward him. Every once in a while they’d been into their pints and one of them would say something sort of snidelike, and then Hammil would know they really didn’t believe his side of the story at all.

Clara? He couldn’t even remember why he’d married her. She was a shrew, that one. He’d spent seventeen years living in the same disgusting little row house with that woman and he couldn’t take another day of it.

He hated them. The lot of them. He hated bloody England and he hated this bloody company. Been with this bloody company eighteen years and him doing the same job today as when he’d started. Hammil was bossed around by a bunch of little turds ten years younger than him. And just lately somebody had been passing around a printout of one of the little turd’s pay stubs. The little turd—his direct supervisor—was making twice what Hammil did.

BirnBari Expediting Services should have been paying Hammil that kind of money. Hammil should have been getting a check from the Royal Navy all these years. Hammil should have had a wife who wasn’t a sow and a home that wasn’t a pigsty and mates who didn’t call him Hammy to his face—and worse things behind his back.

One thing he had gotten for all his years with BirnBari Expediting Services was a lock on the head expediter position. Not that he got to tell any of the other expediters what to do. He wasn’t a boss. Just highest on the seniority list. What it boiled down to was his pick of the shifts and four thousand pounds per year more than the regular expediters. Not much.

And the company trusted him. He’d done his job right for eighteen years without any major screwups. Nobody watched him anymore. Nobody checked his work.

The whistle told the crew it was lunchtime and the young ones began wandering off of the floor.

“They’re buying us lunch today, Hammil,” reminded one of the other expediters.

“Not for me,” Hammil said, and patted his stomach. For weeks he had been complaining of stomach problems and he’d been skipping meals. His coworkers had been telling him to see a doctor. The playacting had worked. They were used to his skipping meals now. Nobody thought anything strange about it—even on the one day of the month when the company paid the food tab at the pub next door.

Hammil was alone in the large distribution room.

He kept working like normal for several minutes. Just in case somebody forgot something and came back for it. Or whatever. Nobody did. The big warehouse got a kind of feel to it when it was empty of people. The sounds became bigger, in a way.

Hammil darted to the rear, peered out the back and found the lot empty. It took him less than fifteen seconds to retrieve a cardboard box from the trunk of his old Nissan. Then he was back inside. He stopped and listened. No sound. He was still alone. He spent another thirty seconds stuffing items from the box onto the shelves, then he ripped up the box and crammed it into the trash.

He was doing it all the way it was supposed to be done. Exactly the way they had told him to do it.

Next he began making his rounds again. He drove his cart up and down the aisles, grabbing items off the shelves per the manifest in his hand. It was for a cargo flight to Istanbul, leaving at 6:05 in the evening. Hammil knew the flight times by heart, and he knew it was three hours, forty-five minutes to Istanbul.

He had been instructed to follow some very simple rules when choosing the flights. They had to have a scheduled takeoff between six and eight in the evening. They had to be nonstop flights. They had to be three hours or longer.

This one was perfect.

Next came another cargo flight. Departure: 6:45. To Moscow. Again, an ideal fit. One of the packages went into the shipping crate for the Moscow flight.

The packages were in BirnBari Expediting Services boxes. They had official BirnBari bar-coded labels. Inside each box was an identical set of items: a cell phone, nail clippers, an expensive electric toothbrush, two new white button-down shirts, two tasteful silk ties and a bulky tablet computer. It was the kind of package some well-to-do travelers preshipped when they went on a trip to save them time going through security at the airport. If somebody opened this package and glanced at the contents, he’d see nothing alarming.

But the tablet wasn’t what it seemed to be. And it was plugged into the cell phone. And both the cell phone and the tablet computer were in sleep mode. If one of the boxes was opened and the contents examined closely, it would definitely raise suspicion.

Hammil had to hope and pray that wouldn’t happen. And there was no reason it should. BirnBari Expediting Services had a stellar security reputation. Hammil had never been considered a security risk.

The next flight on the manifest was to Paris. Too short. He loaded the cargo crate without adding one of his special packages. The next one was to Glasgow. No way.

The next was to Delhi. It was a passenger jet. A nine-hour flight departing at 7:30 p.m. Christ, it was an A380. You could cram more than five hundred passengers into one of those monsters. He swallowed hard. For the very first time, Hammil began thinking about the true repercussions of what he was doing.

But he loaded up the shipping crate anyway, adding his own special package, and carted the crate to the loading dock, sealed and ready for the aircraft.

Hammil packed nine more crates by the time the day shift began returning from lunch. Six crates had his special packages. Three of those were for passenger flights.

Which left at least six of his special packages still on the shelves in the big warehouse at BirnBari Expediting Services.

Hammil had been instructed carefully. He had been informed that there would almost certainly be more packages than he could ship out. As long as he shipped out most of them, he shouldn’t worry about it.

But now he was worried about it.

“Hammil!” It was one of the young guys on the day crew. Just some brainless bloke with a girlfriend and a bad complexion. “You look like hell! You feel okay?”

Hammil got off the cart and leaned with his hands on his knees. He was supposed to act sick. But he didn’t need to act at all.

“Hey, you want a drink of water or something?”

They were gathering around him now. The blokes on the day crew. Including the young turd who managed the shift.

“Your stomach acting up again, Hammil?” The shift manager, in his tie and jacket, was crouched next to him, looking at him worriedly. “You need a doctor.”

“I’m okay.” But his arms were shaking. That wasn’t a part of his act. “Need to lie down.”

“Take the rest of the day, but only promise me you’ll set up an appointment with a doctor already.”