He looked up to the sky. Fifteen years of planning and he had failed.

  He knew what was expected.

  He pulled his Beretta from the back of his waistband and flicked off the safety catch, then put the gun in his mouth, feeling the harsh cold metal of the barrel, tasting grit and gun oil.

  And he pulled the trigger.

  As people watching screamed, the back of the man’s head blew apart and his body went limp as all brain function was instantly shredded by the bullet. He crumpled and fell back, his body tumbling towards the choppy water beneath him. As onlookers watched in disbelief and horror, the man's body hit the Thames with a loud splash. The current started taking the body downstream immediately as it also started to sink. And within seconds it disappeared out of sight into the oily depths.

  ELEVEN

  ‘How are you doing?’ Jackson asked, as Cobb passed him a cup of coffee, black, two sugars. He had sat down in the empty chair across the desk, the damaged glass behind him and nodded thanks as he took the cup and saucer from Cobb, placing it on the edge of the desk to let it cool.

  ‘I’ll live,’ Cobb said, taking his own cup of coffee from the stand and taking a seat behind his desk. ‘How’d you find me?’

  ‘Saw your report on the television. My assistant pulled an address.’

  ‘I thought you’d be back in Virginia?’

  Jackson shook his head. ‘Not yet. Been in London fifteen years and counting.’

  There was a pause, formalities over. Both men knew what was coming next in the conversation, but neither wanted to address it, as if not speaking about it would make it less real.

  ‘I don’t think I want to know why you’re here,’ Cobb added.

  Jackson looked at him.

  ‘You already do though, don’t you?’

  Another pause. Cobb looked up at the ceiling, cursing under his breath.

  'Jesus Christ.'

  'Earlier this morning, a Metro squad car found a guy strangled in his car outside a strip-club,’ Jackson said. ‘Looks like he got taken by surprise. Someone garrotted him with a wire from behind. And on the way here, I got a call from my secretary that another body has been found in New York City. Apparently someone broke into the guy’s apartment sometime last night and put one between his eyes as he slept. He was working as a bodyguard for an Arab Sheikh, but he didn't show up for work. They sent someone round to check on him and found him in bed, missing the back of his head.'

  Pause.

  'Their names were Jason Carver and Derek Spears. A former United States Marine Captain and an Army Ranger Sergeant, respectively.’

  He paused.

  ‘Ring any bells?’

  Silence.

  Cobb didn’t speak. Instead, he put down his cup of coffee slowly.

  ‘Holy shit,' he said. 'I hoped I was imagining the worst. But that confirms it.’

  Jackson nodded, leaning forward and taking a sip of his coffee. ‘Add their murders to Captain Adams’ suicide and the marks on the glass behind me and a pattern is emerging, I'm sure you'll agree.'

  He leaned forward, returning the cup to the desk but never taking his eyes off Cobb’s.

  'We're in some seriously deep shit, my friend.’

  ‘How is this possible?' Cobb asked quietly. 'I thought they were all in prison?’

  'They must have got out.'

  'So why the hell didn't we hear about it?'

  Jackson looked at him wryly. 'C'mon, man. Places like the jails they were in don't officially exist. They don’t exactly produce a roll call.'

  Anxious, Cobb leaned back and flicked his eyes back up at the television, which was running through the morning headlines. Each one seemed to be related to those in the know, and spelled serious trouble for the two men sitting across from each other.

  ‘Do we have any information on them?’ Cobb asked.

  Jackson shook his head. 'Nothing. I contacted my man in Belgrade on the way here. He's saying the Serbian government are denying any knowledge of a jailbreak. They’re claiming the men don't even exist. And their story checks out. These guys have no records left, no identification. None of them have used their real names in years, and no one knows who or where they are.'

  ‘No files?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Cobb swore, then thought of something.

  ‘But wait a minute,’ he said. ‘How the hell do they know anything about us? No one knew who we were. That was the whole point of the operation. You and I were here in London, for God's sake.’

  Jackson shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, turning and poking a finger at the television. ‘But someone’s been talking to them, Tim. Because they’ve tracked us all down.’

  He paused.

  'And that means you and I are next on that list.'

  At the command post across town, the big man in the darkness was still watching the two television screens with interest. He saw a new Breaking News report of a second suicide on a bank by the Thames and nodded. Good. Like any man of honour, Grub did what was expected of him.

  He had known Grub since he was a boy. They had grown up together, and he was sad that the man had been forced to kill himself. But he had let himself and every other man in the team down. In a unit like theirs, such failure always came at a price. But the big man in the darkness had another bond with his now dead colleague. They had served time as cell mates together in the prison known as Ferri.

  Or in English, ‘The Pit’.

  Fifteen years. Fifteen years he and his seven men had been held there, in the filth and the grime, surrounded by death and fear, a hundred miles from anywhere and with no hope of escape, left to rot. The prison at full capacity held three hundred inmates, all of them forgotten men. Every day was a battle just to stay alive. Prisoners around them were dying every day from dysentery or some other disease, their bodies often left in their cells for days before the guards bothered to remove them, the smell unforgettable, the constant stench of death unavoidable. It was freezing cold in winter and as hot as a furnace in summer. Every man in that prison was sent there to die, and with most of the inmates that was exactly what happened. But in the midst of the total despair around them, the leader of the eight-man group had somehow kept his team going.

  Stay alive, he’d said. Hold on to whatever will stop you from giving up. Every morning you wake up is another night you survived.

  Another day closer to when we will escape.

  And another day closer to when we get even.

  Over the years they had tried to come up with an escape plan. For a host of different reasons, none had been feasible. Other inmates had tried, but none of them were ever returned to their cells. They were taken into the exercise area in the middle of the dark cell block and shot in the head, the guards leaving the body there for a couple of days for the other inmates to see. They got the message. Any attempt at an escape would only end one way, your body left on that patch of ground to be picked at by the birds. A man only ever had one chance to break out of Ferri.

  The place was remote and well-guarded and the prisoners were deliberately kept malnourished and weakened to reduce the chance of any form of resistance. It had broken most of the other inmates. The majority of them died. And the ones who managed to stay alive often went insane. It had almost broken the man sitting there in the dark command post. Most mornings they would wake up and find another inmate being dragged from his cell, a length of fabric tied around his neck in a makeshift rope, his body quickly disposed of. Another man who gave up. The option of suicide was always there, and they would all be lying if they said the thought hadn’t crossed each of their minds.

  But finally, just over three months ago, they had escaped. From his cell the leader had co-ordinated a mass riot. It had taken time and patience, but he'd got the word out and it had quickly spread. His reasoning was that the prisoners had absolutely nothing in their favour except one thing. Weight of numbers. If the other inmates did as they were told, together the mob could overrule the guards and have a chance at freedom. For too long every man in there had been looking out for himself, trying to escape alone or in a small group. There was strength in numbers.

  If they all worked together, it was possible.

  And it had worked. There were no showers in Ferri, so once a week, twenty prisoners at a time were walked out of their cells and taken to a dry wall where they were given one piece of soap between five of them and hosed down for just over a minute by a guard, two other guards standing there with sub-machine guns. It should have been eight prisoners at a time, but the guards had become lazy, eager to get it over with so they could head back to the comfort of their mess room. They were complacent, figuring the prisoners were too physically weak and demoralised to be a threat.

  But the leader and one of his men, Spider, had taken the guards by surprise as they led them from their cells. Mustering all their strength, the two men killed them both with their bare hands as two of the others worked the mechanisms to open all the other cells. A mass riot had followed, the remaining guards beaten to death or hanged by the baying mob as the place was set on fire.

  Leaving the other prisoners to wreak havoc in the prison, tearing it apart, the leader had gathered his men and headed straight to the guards hut, raiding their clothing stores and stocking up on food and water. The prison was a five day walk from anywhere, and it would be freezing cold at night. If they didn't prepare, they would die out there on the plains, and every day they had survived inside that prison would have been for nothing.

  And so, almost fifteen years after they had arrived, the eight men had escaped.

  They made their way across the biting cold of the valleys and plains towards Belgrade. The leader of the group had planned ahead. It was the main reason why he was still alive. Before they had all been imprisoned he had accumulated a significant amount of money, which he had stored in a secure bank account no one knew about. After they got to the capital, the leader worked out a deal with a hotel owner on the outskirts of town, paying the man a handsome bonus on the condition that he tell no one, not even his own family, that the eight men were staying there. The leader and his men had spent the first month eating and slowly regaining their strength as best they could and living like human beings again. They had recovered fast, the benefits of good nutrition, plentiful water and soft sheets to sleep on, and before long all of them were at a level of fitness which was sufficient for what would come next, all of them fuelled by a burning desire and appetite for revenge.

  Once they’d eaten and slept enough, their bodies nourished and cleansed of the evils of Ferri, the leader had gathered his men and told them of his intentions. He still had a small fortune saved in that anonymous bank account, untouched in over fifteen years. It was enough to supply them with everything they could need to execute his plan. Food, clothing, weapons, fake documentation, plane tickets. He outlined what he was going to do personally, and had asked them if they were willing to follow him on the path he was taking, giving them the opportunity to leave and move on and enjoy a second chance at life. But it was a redundant question. Every man in the room had instantly said yes. They had entered that prison as comrades, but the fifteen years of hardship and ill treatment in Ferri had forged them into brothers.

  The next step was acquiring information about the men who had ruined their lives, which had actually been relatively simple. Once they had fake passports and eight plane tickets, they had flown to Washington DC and from there taken a bus out to a town called McLean in Virginia. Laying low and scouting out an information source, a few weeks after they had arrived they hit the jackpot, a CIA employee with access to everything they needed.

  Once they’d obtained what they were wanted, after some direct persuasion, they had examined the data closely and realised the team would have to separate to get the job done. If they were systematic, taking down each target over a period of time, the word would surely spread and the others on the list would be alerted, making the team’s job of killing them much harder. At that moment, they still had the element of surprise, the most useful tactic in combat. The men on the list had no idea they were coming.

  No idea that they were all going to die.

  Once weapons and plans of attack had been arranged, the eight man team was split into two groups, four staying in the United States, the other four travelling across the ocean to the United Kingdom.

  And they had begun to work through the list.

  The leader had sent Bug to Washington to kill the doorman, the man called Carver. They had a number of options on where and how to do it, but the leader figured late at night outside the strip club was the best choice. No one was around at that time, removing any potential witnesses, and no one would discover his body until Bug was out of the country. Carver should have counted himself lucky. It was a blissfully swift death for him. In other circumstances, the commanding officer would have made it last for weeks.

  He had sent Spider to New York City to take out the bodyguard, Spears. That was just as straightforward. The guy had recently put his name down on a lease on a new apartment in Manhattan. He lived alone and had no partner. Spider would do the job late at night, taking the right precautions, then get out of the country after dumping the evidence in the River. And Bird had been sent up to Connecticut to kill the man who owned the software company. Out of some bizarre injustice, the exact same cruelty that had left the eight man team to rot in Ferri for fifteen years, it turned out that the man was now a major success, living a rich and prosperous life. Unlike the other two men, he had a family and a business so he constantly had people around him. Bird wasn’t a marksman, but he was good with explosives, and had rigged up a charge under the man’s car during the night. Once the guy stepped in and put the key in the ignition and twisted, the C4 took care of the rest.

  All evidence that the three killers were ever at the scene was either covered or destroyed. Bug and Spider would ditch their weapons, and Bird’s would be destroyed when the car exploded. Right then, all three were already on their way across the ocean to London to reunite with the rest of the group. And once his job was done in DC, the fourth member of the US quartet, Flea, would join them.

  However, on this side of the Atlantic, the operation had had mixed success. Adams' suicide was a tick in the box. It had been one of his men's ideas to give the politician no other choice than to kill himself. They could easily have stormed his office or bombed his car, but Worm had wanted him to suffer. Not the physical kind of pain, but mental, the same kind of desperation the group had suffered every minute of every day in Ferri. Out of the eight-man team, Worm was the most inventive at this kind of thing. He liked his enemies to be in pain. If he was going to kill you, he wouldn’t just do it there and then, he’d tell you a week in advance and let you think about it every night before he did it. The leader of the group knew bad things had happened to the tall, gangly soldier as a boy, his father and uncle abusive both physically and sexually, and he guessed the cruelty he possessed as a man had something to with those scars he carried. For most of his men, killing a man was something they needed to do to ensure victory or stay alive, but for Worm, it was a pleasure.

  The envelope delivered to Adams’ office had contained a hand-typed letter and two Polaroid photographs taken by Worm, up close, taken in this very room. Worm, Grub and Crow had come for Adams’ wife and the kid last night at their home, just before 11 p.m. They had restrained and gagged the two, the boy pissing himself with fear, then brought them back here and tied them to two chairs. Worm had snapped a Polaroid of each, and scrawled in his best English a letter ordering Adams to kill himself, or his family would die. He told him why this had to happen. And the threats that followed were extremely specific and detailed. Surgery would be performed on the boy, and they would send Adams Polaroids during the long operation. Then the same would happen to his wife, an extensive, long procedure, documented with photographs that would all be sent to Adams in a neat pile, showing him all the pieces. And if he told a soul, especially the cops, or let anyone else see the letter and the photographs, surgery on the kid would begin regardless. He would never find them in time. There was only one way this was going to end.

  Worm had given the letter, the photographs and envelope to Crow and told him to handle the rest. Crow had sealed them all inside then delivered the letter to Adams' office late last night, knowing he was upstairs. The message inside the envelope was very simple.

  If he wasn't dead by 8am, surgery on the boy would begin.

  The commander of the group was somewhat taken aback when the man had gone ahead and killed himself. He was expecting him to put up some sort of fight or at least contact the police. But he was pleasantly surprised, and would congratulate Worm when he saw him next. Worm’s predictions had proved correct. It gave the leader of the group great comfort to know that Adams died in agonising mental anguish, still not one hundred per cent sure his family would be safe. No bullet from an enemy would be more painful than one the man fired into his own head.

  So Adams had killed himself but Crow and Grub had screwed up at the police station. They had let the man called Cobb escape. An operational setback, but not a disaster. Both men had paid the ultimate price for their failure. The remainder of the team would get it done and kill the man, but it would take some extra planning now that Cobb knew there were men after him, much as it would with Jackson. Jackson’s assistant had called ahead earlier to what she thought was the Syrian ambassador’s office but was in fact speaking to Worm, and she had asked if they could reschedule Jackson's noon appointment, seeing as something had come up today.

  She had unwittingly saved her boss’s life.

  So Cobb and Jackson were still alive for the time being through sheer luck. But they would die soon. He was as sure of that as he was that the sun would go down at the end of the day. At some point in the next forty-eight hours, Director Tim Cobb and CIA agent Ryan Jackson would both be killed. In a way, it would be even sweeter revenge as now they both surely knew it was coming.

 

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