Alex King 18.The Enemy, page 10
part #18 of Alex King Series
King walked through the cross stitch of streets and arrived back at the hire car he had rented under the name Jeff Thomas, a play on his birthname. He stashed the Welrod pistol under the driver’s seat and slipped the sawn-off shotgun into the rear footwell, leaving it wrapped in the towel. He then drove to the harbour in Altea and parked down a side street before returning to the yacht and changing into well-worn jeans and a dark T-shirt. He put on a pair of worn leather desert boots and swapped the Ray-Bans for Oakley wrap arounds with a faint blue tint. They were mere details, but he looked completely different than the smart yachtie walking the promenade before. He bagged the clothes he had worn earlier, along with the sunglasses and running shoes and dropped them in a communal waste bin further down one of the myriads of side streets. He doubled back to the hire car and drove back to L’Albir, first passing the hire car in his own name, then doubling back and parking seventy metres away on the opposite side of the road near the cricket field. The drive by had yielded nothing, and even from his vantage point down the street, he could see that nobody was watching the vehicle. It was now the flip of a coin whether the police or the contractors found it first.
Chapter Thirty
L’Albir, Spain
The woman walked past the first time. On her next pass, twenty-minutes later, she tried the door handle but kept walking. King watched her, realising that on her first pass he had not suspected her, and had only really ‘noticed’ her the second time. She was slim and reasonably tall, her dark hair pulled back in a high ponytail. She wore dark sunglasses that accentuated her proud cheekbones, and her lips were full but not to the extent of a ‘trout pout’ aided by collagen or other horrendous procedures. She was certainly attractive, from what he could see, and he had her down as a runner by her figure. Her fashionably ripped jeans were low cut and the cropped running top displayed faint abs and a pierced navel.
On her third pass, this time on the other side of the vehicle, she stopped walking, checked her phone and while staring at the screen, she slipped a slim tool into the lock and waited just a few seconds before retracting the tool and walking onwards. King watched her walk away, then got out of the vehicle and checked that the 9mm automatic was secure in his waistband. He made sure that his T-shirt covered the butt as he crossed the road and slipped into an alleyway between two apartment buildings. He waited a long hour, almost tempted to move at times, but the wait paid off. The woman returned a fourth time, and this time she opened the door and slipped inside the vehicle.
King moved quickly, crossing the road at a jog, and pulling the driver’s door open. The woman did not have time to move, leaning across the centre console with her left hand inside the glovebox and her right hand on the passenger seat supporting her. He pushed her downwards, hearing her gasp as the handbrake lever dug into her stomach, and jammed the pistol into the back of her skull. “I already know why you’re here and who you work for,” he said coldly. “So, there’s no use in denying it.”
She grunted something inaudible, then shrugged. “Just do it, then…”
“How do you contact your controller?”
“Fuck you…”
“Tough girl,” he commented. He patted her hips and backside with his left hand and retrieved an antique Colt 1908 pocket pistol from her back pocket. King looked at the tiny automatic incredulously. It was in good condition, but in the woefully underperforming .25 calibre. Alright if you got close and emptied the magazine into the target, but quite useless in a running battle with someone firing back at you. He found a spare, six-round magazine in her other jeans pocket and could see that the exposed bullet was a hollow point with hard, wax filling the cavity. “What nasty little surprise is in the bullet?” he asked casually.
“Magnesium…”
“Ouch, very nasty.”
“It’s a nasty trade,” she replied, as King slipped his hand underneath her and continued to search. “Are you getting off on that?” she asked, her English exceptional, but laced with a Spanish accent.
“I’m not sure you’re my type,” he replied. He eased himself up and checked her legs and ankles, removing a small stiletto from a leather sheath strapped to her calf. As he inspected the blade, he asked, “What’s the discolouration on the blade?”
“Resin,” she replied. “Poison Arrow Frog secretion and tree sap to keep it in place…”
“You’re definitely not my type…” He paused. “You keep the frogs?” he asked incredulously.
“Of course.”
“That’s impressive.”
“We should compare notes,” she replied, like it was the start of a date.
“Nothing so elaborate for me. I think we’re in different careers. How many kills do you have?”
“Eleven…” she replied matter-of-factly. “And you?”
King couldn’t respond; wouldn’t have known the answer to within the nearest ten. He stood up and said, “Sit up slowly and put the seatbelt on.” He watched as she complied. “Unlock the central locking.” She pressed the switch and the locks sounded as they opened. He opened the rear door and slipped into the seat behind her and handed her the keys. “Drive,” he told her.
“Where?”
“Around,” he replied coldly. The woman started the car and took off. The vehicle juddered as she fluffed the clutch and gear change, and King could tell that she was nervous despite her bravado and apparent coolness. “We’ve warmed up a bit now, so I’ll ask again. How do you contact your controller?”
“And I told you to…”
King put the blade of the stiletto to the side of her neck and said, “I know what you told me.”
“Please… Be careful. The poison only has to come into contact with the skin to be fatal…”
“That tree sap had better work, then.”
“I know that she’s called Scott,” the woman replied quickly. He eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror and King could see that she was perspiring, and it wasn’t through the heat. “I do not know her first name. She is CIA and works in Langley. A department that the CIA would deny ever existing.”
That sounds familiar, thought King. “And what about Newman?”
“I don’t know who that is!”
King studied her in the rear-view mirror. He believed her. He knew enough about people to know when they were lying. It was unfortunate, though, that it had taken so long to learn. “How do you get in contact with her?” She did not reply, and King recognised the belligerent look on her face. He pressed the blade of the dagger more firmly against her soft skin. It had the desired effect.
“I don’t! She contacts me!”
“And what if you return the call or the text or the email… however it works?”
“Text,” she said. “There’s never a reply. She has my number and text messages me. I reply with a letter ‘N’ or a letter ‘Y’. I have tried to follow up, but my messages always remain unread. Each time she contacts me it’s from a different number and I have tried calling and the line goes dead.”
“Then, how do you know about her?”
“We met once, in person. She recruited me.”
“Then why no first name?”
“The man she was with referred to her as Ms Scott. It must have been a slip of the tongue because she was not pleased with him. I listened to her conversation at another point, and she said she was looking forward to going home. He asked if she had to drive far, and she said she always used an Uber. I thought that meant that she lived in Langley.”
King did not respond. Langley had no international airport. The closest was in Washington, but it still wasn’t far away. Ten miles, tops. He doubted ‘Ms Scott’ lived in Langley. “What did she look like?”
The woman shrugged. “I suppose she could be classed as attractive. Mid to late thirties, medium height, and build. Dark, shoulder-length hair.” She could have been describing a million women in the Washington area. “Her eyes were very blue, though. Brunette hair and blue eyes isn’t all that common. Not when the eyes are such a striking shade of blue.”
“In what way?”
She shrugged again. “Deep ocean blue.” She paused. “Very glossy. The whites were extremely clear and white… like porcelain.”
King nodded, but it wasn’t a detail that would help him much. Not unless he came face to face with her. “Was she married or engaged? Did she wear a ring on her left ring finger?”
“Please, that tree sap will loosen with my body heat…”
“Answer the question, then.”
The woman thought for a moment, then said, “No. But she had a big gold ring with a blue stone. A bit, how would you say, gaudy, or tasteless?”
King gnawed at his lip, a habit he had when he was deep in thought. “Did it have writing around it?”
“Yes, an inscription,” she shrugged. “But I don’t know what…”
King thought it sounded like a military class ring. It was a US tradition with officer training academies such as Westpoint and Annapolis having specific designs like fraternity rings, although more grandiose. It was something to go on, and he would message Ramsay to look further. From King’s recollection, it sounded like a Naval Academy ring, and the CIA had a long tradition of recruiting from naval intelligence. If Scott was the woman’s real name, and if she was in the military before joining the CIA, then Ramsay would soon put a picture to her and with a picture, his own AI image search would soon have a name. The search for finding out where the woman lived would slowly unravel.
The woman slowed for a pedestrian crossing as a family crossed over the road equipped for the beach. She waited for them to reach the middle, then floored the accelerator and pulled the seat recliner. The mother and two children bounced up onto the bonnet and over the roof while the father was cannoned into a parked car on the side of the road. The woman punched upwards catching King in the throat, and he started to choke and splutter, and she snatched the 9mm pistol out of his left hand. King swiped at her with the knife but missed. Still struggling for breath, he dropped the dagger and reached for the tiny .25 pistol that he had captured from her and put in his pocket. The woman backed out of the car and King fired, forcing her to duck. King fired again, the first bullet deflecting off the inside of the windscreen and shattering the passenger window. The second bullet punched through the windscreen and the third went out through the fist-sized hole. The woman shuddered, went to aim the 9mm, then realising she had been hit, backed away and sprinted across the road. King struggled out of the rear seats, the reclined driver’s seat trapping his legs. He was still smarting at the woman’s precise and brutally efficient blow, and when he finally got out of the vehicle, he was met by screams of panic, and pain. Bystanders were flocking to the scene and smart phones were recording King as he pushed his way through the building crowd. There were shouts in Spanish and Dutch and English and he pushed a man aside who was attempting to stop him from leaving the scene. King saw the children moving, but the mother was lying eerily still as two women started first aid running through the ABCs as the husband limped over in tears. King didn’t hang around. There was nothing he could do for the family, but he could stop the woman and exact some retribution for her callous actions.
Tracking the woman was simple. There were blood spots every ten feet or so for the first hundred metres, then the distance halved and after another hundred metres the blood spots were around a pace apart. That accounted for the shoulder wound, the blood taking time to run down her arm. Now, her increasing heartbeat was pumping the blood even faster. There was a gunshot and as King rounded a street corner, he saw a man lying in the road. He was wearing an open-faced motorcycle helmet and the woman was getting onto a small motorcycle. King sprinted hard as the woman struggled to get the motorcycle in gear. The tiny .25 bullet had hit her left shoulder, and likely become stuck against the bone or ligament, which was affecting her grip on the clutch handle. She finally accelerated away as King got within a few feet from her. The motorcycle hummed and whined as she managed to change up a gear and lurched faster towards the end of the road and another crossing. The sea glistened in front of her, and when she turned sharply left, she overshot the bend and careened down the pavement of the promenade, scattering joggers, roller skaters and slow-moving parents or toddlers.
King reached the end of the road, heaving for breath as he reached the promenade. He looked around for a vehicle, then with no other option, he pulled a teenaged boy off an e-scooter and shouted an apology as he twisted the ‘Twist N Go’ accelerator and took off at a surprising speed. King had never had a scooter as a child, but he had used a few skateboards that he either borrowed or bullied off kids on his estate, and the concept of the e-scooter was easy enough, and he shot along the pavement with his feet tucked in and his knees bent with all the grace of an inline skater. Progress was swift, with the woman scattering the pedestrians, leaving the way clear for King in his silent, somewhat surreal pursuit.
At the point where the towns of L’Albir and Altea met on the seafront, the road became a single lane controlled by a traffic light. The light had been on red for a considerable time before the woman overtook the row of waiting cars and shot the light. Inevitably, she met a vehicle head on and was unable to swerve in time, the motorcycle crumpling into the bonnet of a small hatchback and catapulting the woman over the roof, where she landed heavily on the road in front of another car. The car braked and sounded its horn, but the woman staggered to her feet and limped into the entrance of the marina.
King swerved through the gathering crowd and when he could go no further, he abandoned the e-scooter and pushed his way through the throng of people inspecting the hatchback and the wrecked motorcycle. People were pointing in the direction of where the woman had disappeared, and mobile phones were being dialled for the emergency services. King took the small automatic out of his pocket and kept it hidden from view within his clenched fist, and as he entered the marina, he looked all around for the woman but could not see her anywhere. His attention was drawn to the noise of an outboard motor. A common enough sound given his surroundings, but it was the way the engine sounded that had piqued his interest. An instant hard rev upon starting, the engine straining for all it was worth. Nobody drove a boat like that inside a harbour. Not after the harbour master or port authority came after you with fines and threats of expulsion. He followed the sound to the water’s edge and saw the woman behind the tiller of a small inflatable tender with a small, but athletic outboard engine making a strong wake behind them. King pocketed the pistol and searched for another boat. The woman was making good progress and had cleared part of the harbour, with just the breakwater wall remaining. Another fifty metres and she would be in open ocean. King saw the fisherman putting on an oily open-faced helmet beside his motorcycle. The old Honda 250cc was on its side stand and he spotted the keys in the ignition. King ran over and gave the fisherman a shove, sending him staggering to the dirt. He swung himself into the saddle, righted the machine and started it, the clutch natural in his left hand, the drop of the gear lever with his left foot sinking into first gear with a solid ‘clunk’. King accelerated away, the rear wheel slewing on the loose surface. He got the machine back under control and changed up a gear as he gained speed along the harbour wall. The boat had just cleared the breakwater and was riding bow high as it met the open swell. The woman had already steered to portside where she would likely head into Altea or beyond to the cove speckled cliffs and the town of Calp beyond. Ahead of King, a chest-high set of iron railings loomed, the boat another twenty metres beyond. King flipped his toe up into third and gave a full twist of throttle, then stood up on both foot pegs. Timing would be everything. Releasing his grip, a full second before impact, King was hurled high and far as the motorcycle was spat into the air, spinning wildly before hitting the water with a tremendous splash. King held a flat dive for what seemed an impossibly long time, then entered the water ahead of the boat. Upon impact, he somersaulted under water without any choice in the matter, his arms almost tearing from the sockets. Clawing for the surface, he broke free as the prow of the rubber craft hit him, and he clawed for purchase on something – anything – and found it on a single fender line that the woman had failed to take out of the water. King heaved himself half out of the water and the woman, unable to hide her surprise, was reaching for the 9mm which she had pushed firmly down the front of her jeans. King had the .25 Colt in his hand a split second before she could pull the weapon clear and he fired three shots in quick succession, leaving three little red marks across her left breast. She winced and seemed to struggle for breath, before her eyes looked upwards, and she slumped forwards into the boat.
King dropped the pistol and heaved himself out of the water. He checked the woman’s body, finding only her mobile phone, which he pocketed before setting the tiller to starboard. He tossed his own 9mm over the side. It had innocent lives connected to it now. He then wedged the tiller in place using a buoy line, lowered the revs to around half, then calmly slipped over the side. When he surfaced, he watched the small craft heading towards the lighthouse on the edge of the vast headland, then turned and started his swim towards Altea.
Chapter Thirty-One
Seamus Donovan smiled as he watched King swimming through the pair of powerful binoculars. He had been close to making his move in the carpark on the headland when King had blown the Frenchman away, but it hadn’t felt right. King had been too aware. When he made his move, it would be a bullet through the back of the man’s unsuspecting skull. Anything else was simply too risky, and he had learned from painful experience. Donovan was one of the best watchers in the business. He had followed MI5 and Det officers all over Belfast while they in turn had been following his IRA brothers, and he had surveyed targets in London and Manchester before the bombings. He was a ghost, a chameleon, and the MI5 officer with the CIA contract on his head had been blissfully unaware of his existence.
