The Long Shot (Stephen Leather Thrillers) Read online

  “You asleep, Pat?” an Irish voice asked. Farrell recognised Matthew Bailey’s Gaelic tones.

  “Shit, Matthew, what time is it?” Farrell sat up and scratched his chest. The digits on his clock radio glowed redly. It was one-thirty.

  “You alone?” asked Bailey.

  Farrell looked down at the sleeping body next to him. “Sort of,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Not too far away, Pat, old son. Everything on schedule?”

  “No problems here,” replied Farrell.

  “I’ll be dropping by tomorrow morning, I want to put the Centurion through its paces, okay?”

  “Fine, I’ll have a few bottles of Guinness ready,” laughed Farrell.

  “Eight hours between bottle and throttle, remember,” said Bailey.

  “Yeah,” said Farrell, “right.” The sleeping figure next to him began to stir. Farrell reached down and ruffled the mane of black hair on the pillow. He lowered his voice. “Matthew, everything’s cosy here, but you might have a problem in New York. Do you know a guy by the name of O’Brien? Damien O’Brien?”

  There was silence at the other end of the line for a while. “I know a Seamus O’Brien, but I can’t think of a Damien,” said Bailey. “There is a Damien J. O’Brien, lives in Dublin, one of the old school, but he must be in his seventies now and I never met him. What’s up?”

  “There was a Damien O’Brien asking questions about you in New York a few days ago. Said he was a friend of yours.” An arm snaked through the sheets and Farrell felt a hand crawl across his thighs. He opened his legs and smiled.

  “Seamus is getting on eighty years old and he’s in an old folks’ home in Derry, far as I know,” said Bailey.

  “Thing of it is, Matthew, is that a couple of the boys went round to have a word with this O’Brien, to see what his game was. Police found them tied up in O’Brien’s room, both of them shot dead.”

  “Bloody hell,” whispered Bailey, his voice so faint that Farrell could barely hear him. The inquisitive hand found its target and began to squeeze. Farrell stifled a groan. “What about this O’Brien?” asked Bailey. “Where is he now?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Matthew. He did a runner.”

  “Sass-man, you think?”

  “Dunno, he seemed okay from what I was told. Shorty gave him a job in Filbin’s, and you know that Shorty can smell SAS a mile off. O’Brien was a boozer, damn near an alcoholic.”

  “So what do you think? Was he on to us? Was he trying to find out who did Manyon in?”

  “Manyon?”

  “The SAS officer that Mary got hold of. He was using the name Ballantine, but his real name was Pete Manyon.”

  “O’Brien didn’t mention Manyon, it was you he was asking for.”

  Bailey snorted. “Jesus, Pat, he’d hardly waltz around Filbin’s asking about an SAS officer, would he?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” said Farrell. The hand in his groin was a distraction he could well do without, but it felt so good he didn’t want to push it away. He slid down the bed.

  “You okay, Pat? You’re breathing heavy,” said Bailey.

  “Just tired, that’s all. Maybe this guy O’Brien was working for the Feds, and they pulled him out when our guys got suspicious.”

  “Feds wouldn’t kill our men, surely?” said Bailey. “MI5 would, and so would the SAS, but not the Feds. Not unless there was a shoot-out.”

  “No shoot-out, the guys were tied up and naked, shot in the face and chest. Police reckon it was a gang killing, maybe drug-related.”

  “Fuck!” exclaimed Bailey. “What in God’s name is going on? You think O’Brien knows where I am?”

  “Matthew, nobody knows where you are.”

  “Yeah, that’s right enough. You haven’t seen anyone strange around the airfield?”

  “Come on, you’re getting paranoid,” said Farrell.

  “Yeah, maybe, but I’d feel happier if you kept your eyes open.”

  “Okay, I will do,” said Farrell. The hand between his thighs was becoming more insistent. “Look, I’ll see you tomorrow, I’ve gotta get back to sleep. I’m knackered.”

  “Okay, Pat, old son, get a good night’s kip. I’ll be at the airfield at six. Cheers.”

  The line went dead before Farrell could complain about the early start and he shook his head as he replaced the receiver. He rolled over and looked down at the young man next to him. “Right, you sod, I’ll make you suffer for that.”

  “Oh good,” sighed the man, pulling Farrell down on top of him.

  Cole Howard looked down on the lights of the Capitol as the helicopter descended out of the clouds. Washington was breathtaking at night, the national monuments illuminated in all their splendour while the drug dealers and hookers carried out their trades in the dark places in between. Crack cocaine, AIDS, murders, Washington had more of them than almost any other city in the world, but from the air none of that was visible and Howard looked down as entranced as a sight-seeing schoolboy.

  It wasn’t his first trip in a helicopter but he was still a little uneasy. He could never forget that the whole contraption depended on a whirling rotor which was held in place by a single steel nut. Even with the headphones on he could hear the roar of the massive turbine of the JetRanger helicopter and his buttocks tingled from the vibration. It was difficult to imagine that the machine could hold itself together, even though he knew that flying in a helicopter was a hundred times safer than driving on the roads below.

  The pilot’s voice came over the intercom, and even it was vibrating. “Folks, you should be able to see the White House down there on the right. I’ll make one pass over the grounds and then we’ll go in for a landing. The winds are gusting up to twenty knots so it might be a bit bumpy, but nothing to worry about.” Sitting next to Howard was Don Clutesi, a cheerful, portly man with slicked back hair that glistened with oil whom he’d liked the moment they’d been introduced. His handshake had been damp as if he sweated a lot, but the grip was firm, and he spoke with a nasally Brooklyn accent, like a gangster from a B-movie.

  Howard looked down to the right and saw the home of the President, impossibly white amid the bright green lawns. Clutesi had seen it, too, and he gave Howard a thumbs-up and nodded. Behind the building Howard saw the white H in a circle, denoting the helicopter landing-pad, and some distance away a fluorescent orange wind-sock, swinging in the wind. As the pilot swung the JetRanger around Howard thought suddenly of his wife, and how upset she’d been when he left. He’d tried calling her from New York but the line was continually busy. Either she was punishing him, or she was on the phone to her father, pouring her heart out. Now it was almost two o’clock in the morning. He wondered if it was too late to call her.

  The helicopter levelled off and before Howard realised they’d touched down the skids were rested on the landing-pad and the rotor blades were slowing. When the rotors had stopped turning the co-pilot slid open the door for the passengers and Howard, Mulholland, Clutesi and O’Donnell filed out, ducking their heads even though there was no danger. Howard supposed it came from seeing too many war movies where the grunts jumped out of their Hueys with the rotors still turning, bent almost double with their Ml6s at the ready. Mulholland went out of his way to shake the hands of the pilot and co-pilot and congratulate them for a good flight.

  A Secret Service agent was waiting for them, and Howard was amused to see that, even though it was the middle of the night, the man was wearing sunglasses. He either knew Mulholland or had been well briefed because he went straight up to him and welcomed him to the White House before introducing himself to the rest of the FBI agents. His name was Josh Rawlins and he looked as if he’d only recently left college. He told the agents that their luggage would be taken care of and took them through a back entrance where they had to show their FBI credentials to an armed guard, and along a corridor to a staircase. Small watercolours in gilt frames were hanging on the wall to the right of the staircase and the carpet was a deep bl
ue. It was, Howard realised, a far cry from the offices he worked out of in Phoenix. “We’ve come through the West Wing into the Mansion,” Rawlins explained. “The President’s private apartments are here, and our offices.” At the top of the staircase was another corridor off which led several polished oak doors. Bob Sanger’s was the third along. Rawlins knocked on the door and opened it. A young secretary, brunette with piercing blue eyes which were enhanced by the blue wool suit she wore, smiled and told them to go straight in. Rawlins said goodbye and went back down the stairs.

  Sanger was sitting at his desk, his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his pince-nez eyeglasses perched on the end of his nose as he perused a stack of papers. Through the window behind Sanger, Howard could see the floodlit lawns stretching out towards Pennsylvania Avenue. Sanger looked up as if surprised by their entrance, but Howard was sure the head of the Secret Service’s Intelligence Division would have been informed that their helicopter had arrived. Sanger stood up and walked around his desk to shake hands with Mulholland. He greeted Hank O’Donnell next, and then Howard, leaving Howard in no doubt as to the pecking order of the investigation. Don Clutesi was the last to have his hand shaken. Sanger’s office was three times the size of Jake Sheldon’s in FBI headquarters in Phoenix, with oil paintings on the wall, a thick pile carpet the same dark blue as that covering the stairs, and solid antique furniture, all highly polished dark wood and gleaming leather. Sanger’s secretary came into his office and helped to arrange four chairs in a rough semi-circle facing the desk and the FBI agents took their places.

  “Isabel, can you call down to Rick Palmer, tell him and Andy Kim to come up?”

  Sanger waved his hand over the papers on his desk. “This Carlos is one mean son-of-a-bitch,” he said quietly. “What the hell are we going to do about him?”

  Mulholland folded his arms across his chest. He quickly explained their plan to pursue the two IRA terrorists, Bailey and Hennessy. Sanger nodded as he listened, scrutinising Mulholland over the top of his spectacles. Mulholland went on to describe how the FBI planned to run a fake story on a TV crime programme about the two Irish terrorists being wanted for a drug-smuggling operation in Florida. Mulholland had managed to get hold of his producer friend before they’d caught the helicopter and he’d received a guarantee that the item would be broadcast in two days’ time.

  “Why don’t we just put Carlos on the Ten Most Wanted?” Sanger asked.

  Howard realised that Mulholland had been right, that Sanger would rather frighten Carlos off than try to apprehend him. Mulholland stood up, walked around his chair and rested his forearms on it. “Bob, at this stage we think we have a real opportunity to capture the entire cell: Carlos, Hennessy, Bailey and the three snipers. It’s unlikely that they know that we have identified them, or that we know they are on the East Coast. If we play this just right, we could bag them all.”

  “But from what you told me about the Lou Schoelen telephone call we only have two weeks. By the way, Cole, the Star Trek lead was good work.”

  Howard smiled at the recognition. He looked over at Mulholland and nodded almost imperceptibly, acknowledging that the FBI chief had kept his word – he had obviously told Sanger that it was Howard who had broken the case open.

  “Schoelen said that it should all be over within the next two weeks,” agreed Mulholland.

  Sanger sniffed as if he had the beginnings of a cold. He took off his spectacles and began to slowly polish them with a red handkerchief. “So put Carlos and the snipers on the Most Wanted list and get all your agents looking for them,” he said.

  “We don’t have the time, and if we mobilise the FBI in total, we’ll have to go public,” said Mulholland. “It means posters up on Post Office walls, police precincts, the whole bit. If we do it through television, we can be economical with the truth.”

  Sanger nodded. “So we let the great American public do the FBI’s job, is that it, Ed?” He smiled, looking over the top of his spectacles.

  Mulholland smiled back. Howard had the feeling that the two men had a history together and that they took a perverse pleasure in winding each other up.

  “We know it’s going to happen within the next two weeks, and we know it’s going to be on the East Coast,” said Mulholland. “Your men must be doing the rounds, checking the President’s itinerary and running down the watch list and the quarterlies. Why not give your men photographs of Carlos and the rest, and get them to show them around as part of your security sweep? Your agents are going to be checking all the hotels anyway, they can kill two birds with one stone. We can use FBI manpower to try car-rental companies, stores, filling stations, and the rest. But we confine the search to only those places on the President’s itinerary.”

  There was a knock on the door and Sanger’s secretary showed in Andy Kim and a young man with a military haircut and pock-marked skin. Kim saw Howard and went over to shake his hand while Sanger introduced the other man as Rick Palmer, a Secret Service programmer.

  “Rick, could you give us a briefing on the progress you’ve made so far in identifying possible venues for the assassination?”

  Howard saw Kim visibly stiffen and he knew that the news was not good. He gave the Oriental an encouraging smile. Palmer scratched his right cheek as if the scars there were itching. “We’re up to the end of August, and so far nothing has matched, not in the ninety percentile which is the level we agreed on,” he said. “About half a dozen have come close, one was as close as the eighty-six percentile.”

  Sanger didn’t appear surprised by the news and Howard had the feeling that he had asked for the situation report for Mulholland’s benefit rather than his own. “Are any of the half-dozen on the East Coast?” Sanger asked.

  Palmer looked across at Kim, who pushed his hornrimmed glasses higher up his nose and cleared his throat nervously. “One is in Boston, and another, I believe, is in Philadelphia,” he said, his voice shaking.

  Sanger nodded. “Cole has two pieces of information which may help you,” he said. “First, we now have reason to believe that the assassination is being planned for sometime in the next two weeks.” Andy Kim’s face fell as he realised that if that was the case, his model must have missed the venue already, or there was a fault in his programming. Deep creases formed in his forehead and he looked as if he was in pain. “Secondly, the snipers appear to be in the Baltimore-Washington area, at least for the moment. In view of the time-frame, I don’t think it likely they will be moving too far. I think we should go back to the start and recheck all the venues in the east of the country for the upcoming fourteen days.”

  Palmer was also frowning, and he looked at Kim, who shrugged. “We’ll start right away,” said Palmer.

  “I wonder if maybe we should be looking at the possibility of other targets,” said Howard.

  “For instance?” said Sanger.

  “The Senate, and the Pentagon. I can think of several high-ranking military officers who would be high up on an Iraqi hit list. I also have a list of visiting VIPs from overseas.”

  Palmer and Kim both expressed surprise at the mention of an Iraqi hit list and Howard realised that neither of the computer experts was aware of how far the investigation had gone. They were still treating it as a mathematical problem rather than a criminal investigation.

  Mulholland and O’Donnell were nodding in agreement and Sanger looked from one to the other as if gauging their reaction. “Widening the search will take more time, more people,” he said. “I suggest we concentrate on the Presidential venues for the next two days, if they still come up negative, we run the program through venues where the President isn’t expected but where we know other possible targets will be. Ed, when do you expect the pictures of Bailey and Hennessy to go public?”

  “Two days,” said Mulholland. “Tuesday evening. If my producer comes through.”

  “He’d better,” said Sanger. “The following week could be too late.” He pushed his handkerchief back into his trouser pocket and looked a
t his watch. “Gentlemen, it’s now almost three o’clock. I’ve had rooms arranged for you at a hotel nearby. There are cars waiting to take you, and they’ll collect you first thing so we can make an early start.” The door opened and his secretary appeared. Howard wondered if Sanger had pressed a concealed button because he hadn’t touched his desk intercom or telephone. A young man stood behind the secretary, carrying a Polaroid camera. Sanger explained that their photographs would have to be taken for their White House passes, so one by one they stood with backs to the wall as the camera flashed and whirred.

  When they’d finished, Sanger asked his secretary to show them to the cars. “And make sure their luggage hasn’t gone astray,” he added. He looked at Mulholland and shrugged. “Sometimes it happens,” he explained.

  Joker’s internal alarm clock woke him at five o’clock in the morning. His mouth tasted sour and there was a thick coating of something unsavoury on his tongue. He swallowed, but his throat was so dry he almost gagged, so he lurched to the tiny bathroom and drank from the tap. He showered and wrapped a thin towel around his waist, then went back into the bedroom and bent down by the side of the bed. From under the mattress he pulled out the gun and silencer. The SIG-Sauer P228 appeared to be brand new; there was scarcely a mark on it and the silencer had never been used. There were thirteen cartridges in the clip, which Joker recognised as 147 gram Hornady Custom XTP full metal jacketed hollow point loads. Joker was no stranger to the gun or the ammunition. He knew that XTP stood for ‘extreme terminal performance’. The bullets had no exposed lead at the nose and the hollow points meant the bullets would mushroom out on impact, increasing their penetration and the amount of damage they did. They were real man-stoppers and because they were big bullets they came out of the gun at a relatively slow 978 feet per second. Joker had smiled at the number of bullets the clip held. He knew that another SIG-Sauer model, the P226, actually held even more bullets – sixteen – but even thirteen was too many. If he ever got himself into a situation where that number of bullets were necessary, he’d be dead. The ‘spray and pray’ method beloved of the paintball amateur warriors didn’t work in real life. It was drilled into the SAS recruits from their first day in the Killing House – two shots per target, both to the chest. If you had time then maybe a third in the head to make one hundred per cent sure, but in a hostage situation with handguns it was two – bang-bang and then onto the next target. And if you were up against more than two targets you’d made a big mistake because no matter how many bullets you had in the clip you were outgunned. Only an amateur firing almost at random would need thirteen rounds. And when it came to killing, Joker was not an amateur.