that all my life, Deacon dear,’ she said in a rugged accent. She removed an M-15 from her bag and deftly pulled back the working parts. ‘I think you asked me the same question that first job I did with you.’ She let the mechanism spring back into place. ‘The high-profile convoy from the Kuwaiti border to Mosul - remember?’

‘Yeah. You were winding up the Iraqis.’

‘They didn’t know what the hell I was when we ran into the first ambush. They pretty much loved me by the end of the second one.’

‘No one’s doubtin’ your fightin’ skills. I just don’t want you weirdin’ out this lot. Some are a bit confused about you already.’

‘They’re only confused about themselves,’ Queen said, applying the safety catch with her thumb and placing the weapon back in the bag.

Deacon shook his head and turned away, heading back to the front of the helicopter. The large red-headed Viking-like man he passed twisted in his seat to take a look at Queen. She pushed her breasts together and gave him a wink. He looked to the front again, his brow furrowed.

Deacon stopped beside a man with short spiky ink-black hair, his nose to the window. ‘Banzi?’

The man looked at Deacon. He was Japanese, his serious expression distorted by a false porcelain eyeball bearing the Japanese flag instead of a pupil, the red stripes of the rising sun disappearing into the surrounding edges of the socket.

Yet another weird characteristic that Deacon could not quite get used to. ‘You happy with the route to the power room?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ Banzi said in an abrupt manner. ‘Make sure the Pirate does,’ he added, jutting his chin with obvious contempt towards the man in the seat in front.

Banzi went back to looking out of the window and Deacon moved forward to the tall slim Somali seated in front, his expression blank as if in a trance. A deep scar ran from his chin, across an eye and into his scalp where it continued to the back of his head through short wiry hair. ‘You happy with the route to the power room?’ Deacon asked. The jet-black man did not respond. ‘Pirate?’

He half looked towards Deacon and gave a solemn nod.

The man’s lack of communication skills had begun to frustrate Deacon but he put it to one side. It was too late to do anything about it, anyway. He’d wanted to leave the Somali behind but the boss had insisted that he should remain with the team, assuring Deacon that he had extraordinary killing abilities. The Pirate’s partner, the Jap, seemed reliable enough.

Deacon went back into the cockpit.

The pilot was on the radio to the oil platform. ‘Roger that, Morpheus. Understood.’ He gave Deacon a thumbs-up.

The Morpheus, one of the North Sea’s biggest oil platforms, filled the windshield as the helicopter drew closer, its series of exposed decks like a massive denuded steel tower block. The main platform, at least half the size of a football field, lay covered by building blocks with workspaces in between and a huge crane on one side. The flame derrick stuck out a long way on the far side. The deck below, like a layer of a thick sandwich, was crammed tight with more box shapes, all the same height but with different widths and lengths. Below that was a collection of large pieces of machinery amid more storage structures. A large heli-deck, with its red circular target, came into view on its own level to one side and on top of the platform. They saw the brightly dressed standby fire crew on the side of the deck. As the helicopter came in they could see workers on the various levels. Deacon had never been that close to an oil rig before but he had studied the Morpheus’s blueprints and knew pretty much all of its facilities and features.

He felt his anxiety levels rise. The days of waiting had suddenly become minutes. Deacon certainly hadn’t done anything like this before. His career had begun with the 2nd Parachute Regiment and had been followed by three years in B Squadron, 22 Special Air Service. He’d missed the Falklands conflict by a couple of years because of his age but had seen some action in the first Gulf War - which was where he’d begun to head down the slippery slope. A combination of boredom with the military life and the discovery of how simple it was to make money illegally had altered his perspective. He had never owned anything of value because he had never been particularly attracted by modern comforts such as fancy cars or wristwatches. That changed a month before the end of the conflict.

Special forces customarily received solid gold coins to take on operations in the desert. They were part of their emergency survival equipment. They could buy assistance if an action resulted in a team member failing to make the pick-up or emergency rendezvous. Nomadic tribesmen, for instance, roamed much of the desert entirely ignorant or uncaring of the battles going on around them.

During Deacon’s last operation, an observation post along with three other SAS troopers, he had decided to keep the gold. He made a joke of it to the others, just serious enough for them to go for it if they agreed in any way - they all had to be a part of the plan for it to work. He mused how it would be such an easy way to make some money, that they deserved to come out of the war with something - the gold Krugerrands were worth around five thousand pounds for each man. The others bit. They agreed to see it through to just before the point of no return. If it looked like they could get away with it they would do it.

They would claim that a threatening enemy presence had caused them to bug out of the position, and that the only escape route headed away from the rendezvous point. Despite them hiding out during the subsequent daylight hours, a group of nomadic Arabs had discovered them and had threatened to turn the patrol over to the Iraqis. They’d had a choice: they could either fight their way out, which might have been costly, or hand over the Krugerrands in exchange for freedom.

It felt sound enough to go ahead with. Deacon warned them that suspicions would be raised but if they all stuck to their guns they would get away with it. No one would be able to prove otherwise.

The point of no return would be when the time came to hide the gold and present the operational report. They would secrete the gold among equipment already packed for the return to Hereford.

And that was precisely what they did. The interrogators questioned the soldiers as a group and individually. They even tried to convince each of the men that another had cracked and revealed the truth. But the technique did not succeed. And despite practically everyone ‘knowing’ that the patrol had stolen the gold, no one could prove it, as Deacon had said, and so they were never charged.

Deacon quit the SAS and the military a few months before the invasion of Afghanistan. Had he known that the regiment was going to war again he would have changed his mind - he liked a good battle. He turned his sights on becoming a mercenary, advertising himself as a former SAS soldier now turned freelance ‘military specialist’. He soon got all the battling he could handle: many of his subsequent experiences were more dangerous than any he might have had with the SAS. The oil platform task, as it was planned, would be nowhere near as perilous as some he had carried out during those years. By the end of the second Gulf War, big money, along with big risks, had become the norm for him. Running convoys from one side of Iraq to the other, and more recently along the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, was the most dangerous mercenary work there was. In the half-dozen years Deacon had been doing it he’d lost seventy-eight men serving directly under him, most of them killed alongside him. Many others had been captured after failing to escape an ambush but they’d faced the same fate.

When the British military pulled out of Iraq and the Americans were preparing to do the same, Deacon wanted to try something else - along similar lines, of course, because he couldn’t do anything different. He had no real idea what that was until the mysterious caller a few months back offered him the task of capturing an oil platform for more money than he had made during his entire time in Iraq and Afghanistan. He hesitated when he learned of its North Sea location: anything in the UK, Europe or the States would have given him pause. It meant taking on sophisticated surveillance and investigative technology and lethal-quality security forces. The money and an assuredly watertight plan brought him on board. Half a million US dollars had been deposited into a Cayman Island bank account in his name. Another half-million would follow on completion of his part in the operation. These people had serious money. The rest of the team were making less than Deacon - half his salary, reputedly - but still a fortune compared with what they were normally paid for far greater risks. The audacity of the escape plan sealed it. Deacon was going to enjoy this.

One thing alone bugged him. He couldn’t figure out the true motive of those who’d given him the job. Many things about it didn’t add up and he didn’t know who the ultimate client was, which was not altogether a surprise. They were obviously expecting a serious return on their investment. Deacon didn’t care enough to stress about it. He was going to make a cool million, tax free, doing something he really enjoyed.

Вы читаете Traitor
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату