Dark Horizon, page 6
‘Why do you have to be so bloody difficult?’ Teller hissed back at her. ‘Why can’t you hold your nose and do a shitty job for once without complaining about it? You’re not too good for this work, Kate!’
A hard-faced man disappeared into the back of the transport truck, and Kate saw movement behind its reinforced glass windows. His comrades stood around, their hands close to bulges under their jackets. She knew military types when she saw them, the trained-in, action-ready stances, and the feral alertness in their eyes.
‘So it is true. You’re running dark flights,’ she said, finally saying it out loud. ‘Renditions.’
Teller winced. ‘We don’t use the “r” word.’
‘Bloody hell, Brian!’ The gauge of her temper flicked back to the other side of the dial again, from cold shock to hot anger. ‘I knew you were capable of dubious crap, but I never seriously thought you could . . .’ She trailed off, then shook her head. ‘How deep are you in to this?’
Kate knew for a fact that John Price had been on ‘special’ call for night-time trips for a least a year, and she thought about the flights the Hawker had made that no one talked about. How long had this been happening right under her nose? It galled Kate that she knew something was off but that she had never bothered to look too hard at it. Too afraid to rock the boat, she thought.
It could be dressed up in any kind of obfuscating language, excused through whatever loopholes or justifications might exist, but the work of a rendition operation was and always would be dirty and sordid. It was an exercise in the systematic abuse of a person’s legal rights, plain and simple.
At the centre there would be a prisoner. A suspect held by a government, always in a nation that liked to style itself as democratic and righteous, a suspect believed to have information vital to national security or to pose some other sort of threat. By law, that person could not be forcibly compelled to comply with investigators, not in countries where nasty euphemisms like ‘enhanced interrogation’ were prohibited.
But there were plenty of other places where those types of laws didn’t exist. So-called black sites, inside the borders of nations with a much more permissive relationship with institutionalised torture. And all it took to get there was one short plane flight.
Teller let out a sigh. ‘Do you know how much it costs to keep this company going?’ He shook his head. ‘Of course you don’t. But it can’t have escaped your notice that we’re barely running half the flights we did two years ago! COVID, Brexit, climate change . . . you can blame whatever cause you want, the result’s the same. Incoming is way down and outgoings continue to rise. Some brainless influencer posts on social media that a private jet is bad for the environment and all of a sudden I have fifty cancellations to deal with. Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep the wolf from the door.’
‘And you’re doing that by illegally ferrying prisoners to countries with no human rights treaties?’
‘It’s not illegal,’ Teller said firmly.
‘But it is immoral.’ Kate glared at him.
‘Well, sadly noble ethics can’t pay for aviation fuel, servicing, ground fees, your wages and a hundred other bills.’ He shot a nervous look in the direction of the parked vehicles. Some of the men were casting questioning glances in Teller and Kate’s direction. He leaned in and his voice turned low and urgent. ‘Do you want to keep flying, Kate? Keep working?’ Teller gestured at the truck. ‘You think I like being part of this? Of course I bloody don’t! But I don’t have a choice! It’s not like I’m doing this to make myself millions – I’m doing it to stay afloat. It’s not just my neck or your neck on the line, Kate. It’s John and his family, it’s our crews and techs, all the way down to Maggie on the front desk. I don’t take these jobs, we go bust and it means everyone is out on the street, as simple as that.’
Kate blinked as she thought about the plump, efficient, fifty-something woman who ran the phones in the front office. Maggie was a ray of sunshine, the sort of person who always had a smile, always remembered people’s birthdays, who soldiered on despite having an elderly mum with dementia, paying for a care home whose costs ate into most of what the receptionist earned. Without work, her life would collapse. And Maggie was only one of a dozen people in Teller’s employ.
But the alternative was nauseating. She wasn’t naive, and as former military herself, she understood full well that sometimes an aggressive approach was the only solution to a threat. But there was a world of difference between going up against an enemy in combat and torturing someone to within an inch of their life.
Teller was silent for a moment, and then his manner shifted. He drew himself up, becoming formal and distant. ‘I don’t have to justify myself to you. I won’t lose what I have worked for years to achieve, do you understand me? This is the situation: you are going to fly the Hawker. You are going to do as you are told. And that will be the end of it. If you refuse, if you step out of line . . . If you make me do this, I will sack you on the spot and your career really will be over. For good this time.’ He didn’t blink as the threat unveiled itself in all its potency.
‘If I make you do it?’ Kate echoed his words. ‘You nasty little prick.’ She wanted her reply to be cutting, but she heard the fight fading from her own voice as the weariness set in. For a moment, she thought about threatening to go to the press, and dragging this into the daylight. But if she did, it would be Maggie and the other staff who would ultimately suffer the consequences.
It didn’t matter if Teller’s claims he had no choice were true or not, he had taken away Kate’s agency and left her with nothing but an escalating series of worsening options.
She couldn’t look at him any more. Feeling sick inside, Kate snatched up her flight bag and stalked away, marching back towards the waiting Hawker.
SIX
‘This is him,’ said Finn, from the corner of his mouth, as a man approached them. ‘Teller, the owner.’
‘Right.’ Breeze took a breath and stepped up to meet him beside the hangar’s open doors. ‘Mr Teller. We ready to go?’
Teller paused, fingering the folder in his hand. He looked between Breeze and Finn, having clearly expected the MI6 agent to be the person in charge. He recovered quickly and offered a thin, perfunctory smile. ‘You’re a bit early.’
‘Does that present a problem?’ Breeze gave him a solid, unswerving look.
‘Not a problem. Just . . . we have to re-calibrate the timetable.’ His smile widened, but it didn’t meet his eyes. ‘There are procedures we have to follow. We can’t take off whenever we like.’
‘Yeah, I know how it works.’
She read the man, taking the measure of him. It was a skill Breeze had honed through her years of experience as a case officer; the ability to take a mental snapshot of a person and judge in moments as to whether they would make a useful asset. She equated it to having a radar in her head that could pick up the blips of human frailties so they could be exploited.
This guy exhibited a few tells that Breeze knew she could take advantage of. He had a way about him that suggested a core of arrogance that would respond to flattery, and a needy streak that could be controlled through greed. But better than that, he seemed desperate, as much as he tried to hide it. That was the button she’d push to get what she wanted from him.
Breeze nodded at the Hawker jet. ‘That’s our ride?’
‘Pre-flighting as we speak,’ said Teller. ‘If I can ask you to be patient . . .’
‘Then who the fuck is she?’ Breeze indicated the woman moving around inside the Hawker’s cockpit, visible through the canopy windows. She had the white shirt and shoulder boards of a pilot, and she was definitely not the man that the Brits had vetted to handle the flight. ‘Where the hell is . . .’ Breeze had forgotten the pilot’s name, and shot a look in Finn’s direction for a cue.
‘John Price,’ said the MI6 officer.
‘Price,’ repeated Breeze.
Teller’s colour faded. ‘John is . . . currently unavailable. I made the decision to substitute him with one of my other personnel. Katherine Hood.’ He offered her the folder. ‘A good pilot, also former military, although she was Royal Air Force whereas John was a naval aviator. I assure you, she’s highly competent, very professional.’
Breeze smelled a lie in there somewhere and filed that away for later consideration. ‘You made a decision? Without informing us, you did that?’ She closed the distance between them, and Teller retreated a step. ‘It was obviously not communicated to you that you do not have the authority to make last-second crew changes.’ She plucked the folder from his hand, giving Hood’s personnel file the briefest of glances before handing it off to Finn, who leafed through the pages, scanning the text intently.
‘Where is Mr Price now?’ Finn’s question was terse. If anything, he sounded more annoyed about it than Breeze. ‘He should be here.’
Teller equivocated, and she knew he was trying to dig himself out of the hole. ‘I’m afraid he didn’t come in today. I haven’t been able to reach him, and I was aware of the urgency of your needs. That was clearly communicated to me. So I brought in a replacement.’
Breeze turned and strode over to the SUV, where Chester sat waiting. ‘Marty! Look alive.’
As she reached the vehicle, Finn stepped closer to speak so his voice would not carry. ‘This is highly irregular. Price’s undergone a full evaluation. Whenever Six has used Teller’s company, he’s been the pilot. The man’s a known quantity. We can’t swap in someone else at the last second.’
‘I know that!’ Breeze shot back. ‘Damn it, this is the last thing we need tonight.’
‘So, what gives?’ Marty stepped up, his brow furrowing. ‘Do we scrub the whole flight?’
‘Of course we fucking don’t,’ Breeze retorted, and bit down on her next thought before it slipped out.
Teller was more right than he knew – there was a real urgency to this whole operation. Only Breeze and Knox were aware of it, but there was an additional piece of time-critical intelligence that the CIA had chosen not to share with the British.
Intercepted cell phone chatter gathered through the agency’s PRISM listening network had isolated an uptick in communications between known al-Sakakin affiliates. There were plans in motion among the extremists’ network for a new terror strike that would go beyond their recent targets in Europe and Asia, and into the United States.
The prediction was for a chemical attack, or possibly another truck bomb. Hard details were thin on the ground. The weight of a lot of expectation rested on Breeze’s shoulders, and she had pulled in many favours to be the one to take charge of Yusuf’s interrogation. She had to get results, and get them quickly. But Price’s sudden disappearing act was ringing a lot of alarm bells.
‘The asset can’t stay here,’ she said firmly. ‘We already booked him a suite with a view of the beach.’
Marty glanced at Finn. ‘What about your guy? You brought a co-pilot, right? Can’t he fly the plane solo?’
‘Ray?’ Finn shook his head. ‘No. That’s a . . . bad idea. Not to mention against aviation law.’
The other man looked around, surveying Ridley Hill’s runway. ‘OK, then can’t we get someone else up here who is cleared? Or swing a, I dunno, a military flight?’
‘That would take too long, and too many questions would have to be answered,’ said Finn, before Breeze could reply. ‘And it widens the circle of information.’
‘What he said,’ she added. ‘And don’t say fly commercial, that’s about as dumb as putting the asset in a box and shipping him by FedEx.’
‘So it’s this or nothing.’ Marty folded his arms. ‘OK, I can run the replacement’s name through the agency grid, see if anything pops. What did that guy say her name was?’
‘Katherine Hood,’ said Finn, watching the female pilot through the canopy. He handed the file to the other man. ‘Take this. I’ll talk to her and make an assessment.’
The by-the-book option was clear. If they were going to follow that, the next step was for Breeze to contact Langley and call off the whole transfer. That would most likely end up with some black helicopter wheeling in to scoop up the asset and re-disappear him, and she’d never get a hand on Yusuf again.
Breeze’s shot at cracking al-Sakakin’s weak link would be gone forever. She’d be back in Washington DC by day’s end, doubtless to be called on the carpet as to why some minor snafu had derailed the entire operation.
And God help her if, in the meantime, Nasir and Hamid set off something horrific on US soil. The blame for that would fit nicely round her neck, and there was no shortage of people in the agency who would line up to put it there. In the intelligence community, one either became a hero or lived long enough to be the scapegoat, and Breeze had plenty of enemies inside the Beltway.
‘Fuuuuuck.’ She pinched the bridge of her nose and drew out the swearword into a long, exasperated exhalation. ‘I do not need this shit today.’ Without looking, she waved her hand at the two men and nodded. ‘OK, yeah. Both of you, get to work.’
Finn strode quickly across the apron, sparing Miles a sideways look as the other agent got out of the car. He could see Ray in the back seat, poring over a map of the proposed flight plan.
‘There’s a problem.’ Miles was perceptive when he needed to be, and it didn’t take a genius to guess from Finn’s tight expression that the evening was not going smoothly.
‘Stay there,’ Finn told him. ‘I’m sorting it.’
‘You want me to call in to Control?’
Finn shook his head. ‘This operation is under a blind. No contact once active.’ He sounded more confident than he felt. The whole plan for tonight revolved around certain factors being in the right place at the right time, and one of those was John Price’s backside in the captain’s seat. Without him, the night’s work could fall to bits before it even started.
Finn hesitated at the foot of the steps leading into the Hawker’s cabin and looked away, in the direction of the service road leading down to the airfield’s main entrance. All would be well if Price’s Porsche suddenly appeared – as if it was just a matter of the man turning up late, delayed by traffic or something else trivial – but all Finn saw was a police car zipping past on the main road.
He felt a vibration in his breast pocket. He had an encrypted sat phone hidden there, and not the standard Ministry-issue device used by his colleagues from Six. Careful to conceal the action from any observers, Finn walked behind the plane, putting the fuselage between him and everyone else, before removing it to check the message.
What he read there made the blood drain from his face. Finn considered his situation for a long moment and sighed.
Adapt and advance, he told himself. It’s that, or nothing. He typed out a quick text message in reply and sent it, before secreting the phone again.
The MI6 officer boarded the plane and studied the interior. The main cabin was stripped down, lacking the opulent leather-clad and wood-inlaid detail of a typical executive jet. There were four seats arranged club style – two facing two – an open area behind them for cargo, along with a simple enclosed toilet and a basic galley. At the head of the aircraft, the vestibule leading into the flight deck had been retrofitted with a security door, the same as one might find on any airliner. Typically, jets of the Hawker’s tonnage didn’t even have a curtain to partition off the two areas, but the jet’s modifications spoke to an understanding about what the aircraft could be used for.
Finn entered the cockpit without asking permission, and that earned him a severe look from the auburn-haired woman in the captain’s seat. ‘Mind if I join you?’
‘You’re not my co-pilot,’ she replied, evaluating him in a single glance. In the middle of running a sequence of pre-flight checks, she deftly ran her fingers over levers on the central console, then worked at the battery switches on the panel above her head.
‘I am not.’ Still, he moved toward the other crewman’s position. ‘You’re Katherine, I believe?’
‘Cargo goes in the back,’ she said, in a commanding tone that he ignored.
‘I don’t doubt it.’ Finn clambered awkwardly over the console between the seats, grabbing at bits of the dashboard panel to steady himself.
‘Watch where you put your hands,’ said the pilot. ‘Don’t touch any of the switches.’ Even as she said the words, Finn inadvertently did precisely that, setting off a trilling alarm that the woman reset with a low grunt of annoyance.
‘Sorry,’ he offered.
‘This isn’t a rental car,’ she said testily. ‘Whatever you’re paying doesn’t allow you to sit up front.’
‘Your plane, your rules – is that it?’
‘Yes, exactly.’ She made a dismissive motion. ‘Please go away, I have to concentrate.’ The pilot moved from button to button, muttering the names of their functions under her breath like a quiet litany.
‘I will, in a moment,’ said Finn. ‘This won’t take long. We need to ask you some questions.’
‘We?’ She leaned back to toggle a switch on a panel behind her and a warning bell rang, quickly followed by the low whine of the jet’s auxiliary power unit starting up. ‘Who is we? Whatever private mercenary contractor you run with?’
Finn raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’m employed by His Majesty’s Government, Ms Hood. As I understand you once were.’
She looked away, and he saw the scar of an old wound there. ‘Not for quite some time.’ The pilot returned to the main panel, her hands continuing to move from point to point as she went through the series of start-up procedures.
Finn noted she didn’t once glance down at the checklist crib sheet taped to the side panel. She knows her stuff, he thought. ‘I’ve always liked working with former military, I have to say,’ noted Finn, keeping his tone conversational. ‘They understand the need-to-know. They get the job done.’
‘And they don’t ask questions.’ She plucked the rest of the statement out of the air. ‘That must save you a lot of trouble.’
