Absence of Mercy Read online

  “Ain’t gonna happen. This is strictly a British affair and we won’t have time to hold CIA hands…”

  Horgan moved across to the table and slammed her gun down on the surface. “This is not about holding hands and you know it. What if a similar list has been drawn up against members of the FBI, CIA or Homeland Security? We can’t take that chance, and neither can you. If I call this in, my boss is going to get onto his boss and somewhere down the line someone with enough clout is going to start rattling your cages. Why not save us all some time?”

  Devon was about to argue, but decided against it. The last thing he needed was scrutiny from Whitehall. If any calls were made from the CIA it was likely they would be routed first to MI6 who weren’t exactly known as team players when it came to national security. One of the reasons Devon’s agency existed was to bypass the internal squabbles, throw the rulebook out the window, and get the job done without worrying about oversight. This thing needed to be kept in-house. He would rather deal with the CIA than have MI6 gatecrash Charterhouse Street.

  He turned to Horgan. “Okay, but we do it my way. First, let’s clean house. I’ll empty the contents of the safe and rummage about down here for anything of interest. You take upstairs.”

  “Am I looking for anything in particular?”

  “Just grab any computer, laptop, mobile phone or other electronic device you come across. We’ll take everything back to our techs in London and let them get to work on recovering any information that might help us track down these bastards.”

  Horgan grabbed her weapon and moved quickly towards the front hall of the building, shouting as she went. “Hope you’ve booked extra luggage for the plane ride.”

  Devon responded without lifting his head. “No need. Everything we get will be left with our people in Hungary. They will have it in an overnight diplomatic bag that will probably be waiting for us when we get back.”

  Chapter 5

  IT TOOK LITTLE MORE THAN an hour of daylight for Alan Doyle to figure out the last period of Dave Carpenter’s life. The phone call with Mike Devon had unnerved him, knowing that he needed to find quick answers otherwise his team would have to look over their shoulders for God knows how long.

  Doyle began his crime scene walk-through at Carpenter’s abandoned car, noting the bouquet of flowers lying across the back seat, and the opened compartment on the passenger side of the dashboard that showed his colleague had reached for the field binoculars before he exited the vehicle.

  Doyle looked at the trampled-down grass and followed the wavy trail toward the crest of the field. From there, he gazed down at the abandoned blue Mercedes and the crumpled piece of tarpaulin that had been used to cover Carpenter’s body. Something about the scene didn’t seem right.

  He scrambled out of the field onto the tarmac and began walking the length of the runway, stopping only at blackened tyre tracks about three hundred yards from the Mercedes. Satisfied he had learned all he could, he turned back to the waiting group of men standing against the hangar door.

  Doyle motioned at Carlisle to meet him in the open space. As an afterthought, he called the senior policeman to join them.

  “The way I see it,” Doyle told them without emotion, “Carpenter followed his killer to this spot. As yet we don’t know why, or if he was somehow lured here, but it seems to have been an impulse thing.”

  Fellowes cut in. “Forgive me, but what makes you think he was following the killer?”

  “That’s a no-brainer,” Doyle replied. “We know that Carpenter knocked off early and was in a hurry to get home to celebrate his wife’s birthday. The flowers in the back of his car confirm that he took the time to stop at the florists, not exactly an errand he would make time for if he was acting on previous information or a tip-off. Something happened after he left the florists, something to make him break his journey to go off on a wild goose chase that cost him his life.”

  “Could it be,” Fellowes suggested, “that he was working a case on his own and decided to make a call here before heading home?”

  “No. The way his car is parked in the field points to the fact that he was following the Mercedes, but didn’t know where he was going. When the target drove down the laneway Carpenter couldn’t risk being spotted in vulnerable terrain so he pulled over and decided to explore ahead on foot.”

  Doyle watched for signs of acknowledgement from the others before continuing. “I can’t yet figure how the bastard got the drop on Dave. We used to rib him about being a desk jockey, but he was a highly-skilled operative with a lot of mission miles in his tank before he came to work for us. He would have taken every precaution and he had the reflexes of a cat. Something tells me he came up against a rather special type of individual, someone who is well versed in our line work. There’s no doubt we are dealing with a pro of the highest order.”

  The others nodded in agreement and waited for Doyle to finish his briefing. “One thing that’s been bothering me is why the Mercedes was abandoned. No doubt it will turn up as a stolen vehicle, and you can bet it has been wiped clean, but why leave it here? We’re in the middle of nowhere, so how did the perp leave the area?”

  Carlisle cut in. “Obviously someone was waiting here for him and they made off in a second car. Perhaps that would explain why Dave was taken out. He walked into an ambush.”

  Doyle seemed to think about the remark for a few seconds, but when he spoke again his voice carried a new conviction. “You could be right, up to a point. There are tyre marks farther down the runway, but they only seem to start a few hundred yards away. I’m betting they were caused not by a vehicle but by a light aircraft of some kind. If that’s the case it opens up a whole new scenario.”

  “How come?” The question was from Fellowes.

  “Well, for a start, it would make these people heavily resourced. You don’t just whistle up a Cessna at a moment’s notice. My original thought was that Dave could have stumbled onto something big, like drug smuggling or gun-running or…..” Doyle’s voice trailed off.

  “What is it?”

  Doyle had been pondering about how much he needed to let the policeman know. There were a lot of negatives to telling him too much, but right now they were being outweighed by the simple fact that he needed Fellowes’ help. “Dave didn’t stumble onto anything. He was the intended target all along? He was manoeuvred into this chase with the express intention of taking him out?”

  Fellowes eyed him with suspicion. “I sense there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Doyle gave him an abridged version of the call from Austria. “We now know from whatever Devon stumbled across in Austria that this was an attack on LonWash Securities, an attack on all us?”

  The remark threw a blanket of silence over the group. It was finally broken by Fellowes. “It would help to know just exactly what you guys do, and why you would be a target for professional hitmen.”

  Doyle draped his arm over Fellowes’ shoulder and edged him away from the others. He had to decide how far he could go with divulging sensitive information. “Don’t go down that road, Inspector. It’s enough for you to know that we are a clandestine anti-terror group, and everything about us must remain under wraps. Do not go poking around for information, do not ask questions in the wrong places, and above all do not reveal the extent of the conversation we’ve just had here. If you do any of these things you’ll find yourself back directing traffic on Fulham High Road.”

  “Now look here….”

  “Please, Inspector, I don’t mean to be offensive or overly dramatic. I’m a good judge of character, and my impressions of you are that you are a highly competent police officer. You are someone I would feel comfortable working alongside, and believe me I don’t say that lightly. The thing is that you are now in the middle of something I would rather you were not involved in. That leaves me with two choices, either I jettison you totally, or ask for your help.”

  Fellowes waited a moment before responding. “As you’ve hin
ted, Mr Doyle, I’m not a fresh-faced kid who doesn’t know how to tread lightly. I’ve already got an earful from on high, and the kind of carte blanche I’ve been told to give you is way beyond anything I’ve encountered before. You guys must be big players in the grand scheme of things, so you can take it as read that I won’t be rocking any boats. Now, what can I do to help?”

  It was the kind of response Doyle had hoped for and expected. He held out his hand and accepted a firm handshake. “Okay, I need to use your resources. I want every possible inch of CCTV footage examined for any signs of these two vehicles. You have the number plates and I will provide you with the route Dave Carpenter took from the moment he left our offices until he stopped at Gloria’s Flowers in Kensington High Street. That’s the name on the bouquet in the back seat of Dave’s car and I’m betting that at some time shortly before or immediately after he made that pick-up his car will be seen in close proximity to the blue Mercedes.”

  Fellowes whistled lightly through his teeth. “It’s just the thing I would have suggested, but there will be a lot of camera outputs to trawl through. It could take some time.”

  “If you need more resources I’ll see that you have them. We don’t have the luxury of time so you let me know how many officers you need and they will be put at your disposal. We might get lucky with a facial image of whoever drove that Mercedes. In any event I need to know what went down in the centre of London and what took Dave off into the suburbs.”

  Fellowes was unequivocal. “Consider it done. Might I ask what you will be doing?”

  “That’s easy,” Doyle replied. “I’m going to find out what kind of light aircraft was in the skies even remotely close to this location over the past twenty-four hours.”

  Chapter 6

  THE GROUP THAT ASSEMBLED IN Charterhouse Street was a solemn bunch. The death of a colleague will do that to most people. Heads were bowed as the details of the last moments of Dave Carpenter’s life were being laid bare in a round-table briefing provided by Alan Doyle.

  Devon and Chelsea Horgan had grabbed an early-morning flight out of Hungary and taxied straight to the imposing five-storey building not far from one of London’s landmark areas near the Houses of Parliament.

  General Sir John Sandford was waiting for them as they stepped off the lift. “There’s a full team briefing already underway, but first we need to talk about what Agent Horgan is doing here.” The General turned and marched back to his office, leaving it clear that he meant the duo to follow him.

  Devon nodded at his colleagues as he tracked the General. He could see the hurt in their eyes, the determination evident in the hard set of their faces. Someone was going to pay dearly for what happened yesterday.

  Inside the General’s office Devon motioned Horgan to a seat, but remained standing as he addressed his boss. “As I explained in my phone call from the airport I had no alternative but to include Agent Horgan in this. She already knows everything that’s going on from our escapade in Austria and, as she so delicately put it, we would start getting a lot of unnecessary attention if we shut her out.”

  The General leaned forward to rest his elbows on a square foot of space on the large mahogany desk that served as his altar. The rest of the space was cluttered with files and loose papers. “Quite so, but there’s one thing you should know, Agent Horgan, and that is that I don’t take kindly to gatecrashers. While you are a guest here you will play by my rules.”

  Horgan treated him to one of her expansive smiles. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Sir John. I’m only here to protect the interests of my agency. And please call me Chelsea.”

  Devon could see the old man was smitten. He watched as the General relaxed in his chair, his scowl fading into the beginnings of a smile. “Very well, my dear, I mean Chelsea, you are welcome to learn what you can, but I need to brief you later about some… shall we say sensitive areas… of our operations.”

  “I look forward to that. May I ask that I get access to a telephone? I haven’t yet briefed my people and they will be wondering what’s happened to me.”

  The General rose from his seat. “Feel free to use this space. We are starting a meeting soon and you may join us as soon as you’re finished.”

  It was the first time Devon could remember Sir John letting anyone use his office. Amazing what a young voluptuous woman with a winning smile can achieve!

  He followed the General out of the office and across to the conference room where Alan Doyle was waiting to begin his briefing. Doyle spread a series of crime-scene photos on the table. No-one wanted to look at the close-up shots of Carpenter’s bloodied body sprawled on the tarmac. The gaping hole in the centre of the dead man’s forehead was particularly hard to take, even for men seasoned by violent death.

  Doyle launched into a detailed summary of what was proposed for the rest of the morning. “We will let the Met police deal with the CCTV surveillance. Their Inspector Fellowes knows what's needed and I’m confident he will come through by the end of the day. At the moment it’s our best lead, but not the only one. I have a two-man team down at Air Traffic Control to see if we can get a line on any light aircraft in the area around the time of the incident and forensics are trying to get a match for the bullets taken from Dave’s body.”

  Devon rose from the table and walked across to a tea trolley. He filled a large mug with black Earl Grey and turned back to Doyle. “How confident are you with running down the aircraft?”

  “My guess is that they were probably flying low, off radar, by the time they touched down at the disused airfield, but I’ve told our people to list every private flight within two counties. We intend to interview anyone who filed a flight plan, no matter how innocuous, within a hundred miles of the shooting location. I don’t care if that means scrutinising every crop duster or air taxi in the South East of England. We will look everyone in the eye to make sure they weren’t involved in this.”

  Alfie Cheadle cut in. “What if they didn’t file a flight plan? Seems to me we’re dealing with the kind of people who wouldn’t make things easy for us.”

  It was Devon who answered. “It doesn’t work like that. To get started on a flight, no matter how short, it needs to be filed. As soon as an unregistered flight is detected it would raise flags that would draw attention to it and that’s something that would leave a trail for us. No, it’s better to file a seemingly harmless flight and then drop below radar long enough to land at that airfield, pick up a passenger, and continue on the original course. Most times these low-flying activities are of little concern, but at some point they have to rise into scheduled flightpaths and it would make Air Traffic Control very nervous if they didn’t know about them beforehand.”

  Doyle nodded in acknowledgement. “That about sums it up. My guess is that somewhere among the list of flights we’ll find what we’re looking for. Our only problem is that what with Flying Schools and private charters we will probably have hundreds to sift through. It might take some time.”

  “What about forensics on the spent casings?” The question came from Bob Mortimer.

  “I won’t be holding my breath on that one,” Doyle answered. “The chances of matching with previous ordinance on the records of any agency are pretty remote. There are not too many pros who like to leave their signature, but we’ll go through the motions on the off-chance.”

  “Maybe I can get our people to check their records.” All eyes turned to the door where Horgan stood. Devon motioned her forward and introduced her to the team before nodding to Doyle to continue.

  There was an awkward silence as Doyle stared at the redhead. Devon thought he could detect a definite blushing of the cheeks. The big man was hooked!

  Doyle looked away and glanced down at his notes before eventually picking up the thread of his briefing. “Okay, next up is to trace Dave’s movements for the past week or so. We know what he did yesterday, but we need to find out where he’s been on his time off for the past seven to fourteen days. It could be he
was simply shadowed from the office yesterday but we need to look at the possibility that he unwittingly came into contact with his killer before then.”

  There was a bit of shuffling and a few murmurs before Doyle held up his hand. “I know Dave was a bit of a home-bird, but we can’t take the chance that he hasn’t been under surveillance for some time. Let’s just track his movements and see where it takes us.”

  The briefing lasted another twenty minutes before the General signalled an end to the discussion. “I think we’ve covered enough ground for today. We seem to be chasing down all the right leads, but I don’t need to remind you people that finding Carpenter’s killer is just the tip of the iceberg. We need to know the bigger picture. It’s paramount we find out who has targeted this agency and why. Maybe it has something to do with one of our previous missions or maybe there’s a reason that’s not yet obvious why someone wants us out of the way.”

  He paused before continuing. “One more thing. So far we’re assuming this is confined to this office, but what if there’s a similar list covering our American operations?”

  Devon warmed to the old man’s words. Not for the first time he was grateful for the experienced insight that was nurtured by a lifetime of service in the shadows. “Agreed. We’ll let them know right away.”

  The General acknowledged Devon’s reply before moving from the table and striding towards the door. He stopped and faced the group again. “Remember we have a new rule. Starting right now we move about only in pairs. We know someone has pinned targets on all our backs, so let’s not make it easy for them.”

  As the group dispersed, Devon made his way to Doyle. The two had been through a lot in the past ten years, including an infamous shoot-out with an IRA squad in Dublin that had cost Doyle his right arm. He now wore a prosthetic that he had learned to operate with such precision that few people could tell the difference.