The Long Shot (Stephen Leather Thrillers) Page 4

  “Hey come on, Simon!” yelled the man. His team leader was so close that the shots hurt, even through the overall and vest.

  Simon kept firing, hoping that one of the balls would hit Cramer. Cramer needed one hand to hold the man up in front of him so he couldn’t reload. He pushed his human shield forward onto the barrel of Simon’s gun and then grabbed Simon’s arm, close to the elbow, twisting around to get him in a lock. Simon squealed and Cramer used his hip to throw him onto his back. The semi-automatic fell to the ground and Cramer put his foot on Simon’s chest, pinning him to the ground. Simon was winded and he lay gasping for breath, unable to speak. Cramer’s other victim got to his feet, his chest covered with yellow paint. “You bastard, Simon,” he said.

  Cramer calmly reloaded his gun and aimed it at Simon’s chest. “Game, set and match,” he said quietly, and fired. The paintball caught Simon just over his heart and exploded. Cramer walked away without looking back.

  Preston was waiting for him downstairs by the office with the five members of the Bayswater Blasters he’d defeated earlier. “How did it go?” Preston asked.

  “Piece of cake,” Cramer said, removing his goggles. One of the men handed Cramer five ten-pound notes and he winked and accepted the money. Simon came down the stairs, his helmet still on, and went into the changing room without saying anything. The guy Cramer had used as a shield shrugged as if apologising for Simon’s bad behaviour and followed him inside.

  “Did you see him?” Preston asked.

  “Did I see who?” replied Cramer.

  “The guy who was looking for you. Old guy, said he wanted to see you. I told him you were in the middle of a game and he said he’d give you a surprise. Borrowed a paintgun and a helmet and went in about ten minutes ago.”

  Cramer frowned and spat his chewing gum into a wastepaper bin. “Old guy?” he asked. To Preston, anyone over the age of thirty was old.

  Preston shrugged. “Grey hair, about your height, bit bigger. He didn’t give a name. Said he was an old friend.”

  “I guess I should see what he wants,” said Cramer. He slid the goggles back on and reloaded his Splatmaster. He crept back up the stairs, wondering who his mysterious visitor was and why he wanted to play games rather than meet in the office. The first level was clear but as he passed beneath the rope and trapdoor he heard a footfall as if someone had suddenly shuffled backwards. Cramer smiled. He took the end of the rope and started swinging it, before running silently back to the stairs. It was going to be too easy, he thought. He moved through the first room on the second level, and stood for a moment by the open doorway. He heard a noise in the far right-hand corner and he moved immediately, stepping to the left and sweeping his gun around at chest height, seeking his target. He frowned as he realised that the room was deserted, then his heart sank as he saw the single paintball lying in the corner. Before he could move he felt the barrel of a gun jam up against his chin.

  “Careless, Joker,” said a voice by his left ear. Cramer shifted his weight and brought up his right arm, trying to grab his adversary but the man behind him swayed easily away and swept Cramer’s feet from underneath him with a savage kick. Cramer hit the ground heavily and before he could react the man was on top of him and the gun was once more pressing into his throat. “Very careless.”

  Cramer squinted up at the facemask. “Colonel?” he said.

  The figure pulled off his facemask with his left hand, the right keeping the paintgun hard up against Cramer’s flesh. Cramer looked up at the familiar face of his former mentor. It had been more than two years since he had set eyes on the senior SAS officer. His hair was considerably greyer than last time they’d met, and cut slightly shorter, but the features were the same: eyes so brown they were almost black, a wide nose which had been broken several times, and a squarish jaw that gave him a deceptive farmboy look. Cramer knew the Colonel had a double first from Cambridge, was once one of the top twelve chess players in the United Kingdom, and was an acknowledged expert on early Victorian watercolours. “Good to see you, Colonel,” said Cramer.

  “You’re unfit, Sergeant Cramer,” said the Colonel with a smile. “You wouldn’t last two minutes in the Killing House with those sort of moves.”

  “It’s been a long time, Colonel. I guess I’m out of practice.”

  “You’re out of condition, too. A few forced marches across the Brecon Beacons would do you the world of good.” The Colonel stood up and offered Cramer a hand to help him up off the ground. “You sounded like an elephant on crutches, Joker. And you never, ever, enter a room without checking out all the angles. You know that.”

  Cramer rubbed his neck. “I can’t believe I fell for the oldest trick in the book.”

  The Colonel slapped him on the back. “Have you got somewhere we can talk?”

  Cramer took him downstairs and told Preston he was going to use the office for a while. Two more teams of paintball players had arrived and Preston was busy setting up a game for them. Cramer closed the door and waved the Colonel to a chair. He pulled the bottle of Famous Grouse from his desk drawer and held it out to the Colonel, who nodded. Cramer poured large measures of whisky into two coffee mugs and handed one to his visitor. They clinked mugs.

  “To the old days,” said Cramer.

  “Fuck them all,” said the Colonel.

  “Yeah, fuck them all,” said Cramer. They drank, and Cramer waited for the Colonel to explain why he was visiting.

  “So, how long have you been working here?” asked the Colonel.

  Cramer shrugged. “A few months. It’s just temporary, until I can find something else.”

  “Security job didn’t work out?”

  “Too many lonely nights. Too much time to think.” Cramer wondered how the Colonel knew about his previous job as a nightwatchman. He poured himself another measure of whisky.

  “Money problems? The pension coming through okay?” Cramer shrugged. He knew that the Colonel hadn’t come to talk about his financial status. “You ever meet a guy called Pete Manyon?” asked the Colonel.

  Cramer shook his head.

  “I guess he must have joined the regiment after you left. He was in D squadron.”

  Cramer looked at the whisky at the bottom of his mug. If the Colonel had bothered to check up on his employment record, he’d have been just as capable of checking the regimental files. He’d have known full well whether or not the two men had served together.

  “He died a week ago. In Washington.” He held out his empty mug for a refill. As Cramer poured in a generous measure of Famous Grouse, the Colonel scrutinised his face for any reaction. “He’d been tortured. Four of his fingers had been taken off. He’d virtually been skinned alive. And he’d been castrated.”

  Cramer’s hand shook and whisky slopped down the side of the Colonel’s mug. “Shit,” said Cramer. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” said the Colonel, putting his mug down on the desk and wiping his hand with a white handkerchief.

  “It was Hennessy, right?”

  The Colonel nodded.

  “Bitch,” said Cramer venomously.

  “Manyon was a captain, working undercover in the States, on the trail of Matthew Bailey, an IRA activist. We’d heard that he’d popped up in New York so Manyon infiltrated one of the NORAID groups there.”

  “Did he say he’d seen Hennessy?”

  The Colonel shook his head. “No, but considering what happened to him . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get the picture. Jesus Christ, Colonel, the bitch should have been put down years ago.”

  The Colonel shrugged. “She’s been underground a long time, Joker. And she has a lot of friends.”

  “I can’t believe you let a Rupert go undercover against the IRA,” said Cramer. “I mean, I’ve served under some bloody good officers, I can’t deny that, but knowing which fork to use and what month to eat oysters in doesn’t carry any weight when you’re hanging around with the boys. They can spot a Rupert a mile away.”r />
  “He was an experienced officer, Joker. He’d been with D squadron for almost three years.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  Cramer shook his head, almost sadly. “After what happened to Mick Newmarch, I’d have thought the SAS would’ve learnt its lesson.”

  “I know how the NCOs feel about officers, but Manyon was different. His parents were Irish, his accent was perfect and he knew Belfast inside out. His cover was faultless, Joker.”

  “So how did he get caught?” Cramer poured himself another whisky. He offered a refill to the Colonel but he shook his head. The question was clearly rhetorical and the Colonel didn’t answer.

  “How are you these days, Joker?” The Colonel looked Cramer up and down like a surgeon contemplating a forthcoming operation. Cramer wondered if he looked like a man who’d lost his nerve.

  “I get by,” Cramer replied. “Why do you ask? Is Mars and Minerva thinking of doing a feature on me? It’d be nice to get an honourable mention in the regimental journal.”

  “You sound bitter.”

  “No, not bitter, Colonel. I can’t spend all my time looking back, there’s no profit in that. I just want to get on with my life.”

  The two men sat in silence. Overhead they heard shouts and the sound of running feet. “You should let them try it with live ammo,” said the Colonel with a smile. “See how they like it.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Cramer. “They’d piss themselves stupid the first time they used a real weapon.”

  The Colonel looked at Cramer with unblinking eyes. “What about you? Could you face action again?”

  Cramer started, the question catching him by surprise. He looked at his former boss, wondering if he was joking. “I’m Elvis, Colonel. You know that. Yesterday’s man.”

  “You were right when you said the boys could spot undercover officers, Joker. We need someone who fits in, someone who doesn’t look like he’s just come off a parade ground. You know as well as I do that even when our men grow their hair and slouch around in torn jeans and Nikes, they still look like soldiers. Undercover work isn’t our speciality.” Cramer was already shaking his head. “We need someone who has lost his edge, Joker. No disrespect, but we need someone who doesn’t look as if he can handle himself, someone who has let himself go.”

  “Thanks, Colonel. Thanks a bunch. You’re really making me feel good about myself.”

  “I’m being honest, that’s all. Have you taken a look at yourself recently? You reek of drink, you’ve got broken veins in your cheeks that have been months in the making, and you’ve a gut on you that’d do credit to a Sumo wrestler. No-one in their right mind would ever suspect you of being in the SAS.”

  “That goes for me, too, Colonel. Double.”

  “We want Mary Hennessy, Joker. We want to take her out. A hard arrest, a shoot-to-kill operation, whatever you want to call it.”

  “Revenge.”

  “That’s as good a word as any, Joker. And you’re the man who can get it for us.”

  Cramer finished his whisky and picked up the bottle. It was empty. Completely empty. He dropped it into the wastepaper bin by the side of his desk. “You’re asking me because of what happened to Newmarch, aren’t you? And because of what she did to me?”

  “I’m asking you because you’re the best man for the job. The only man.”

  Cramer shuddered. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “I understand that.” The Colonel stood up and held out his hand. Cramer shook it. “You know where you can reach me, Sergeant Cramer.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cramer replied. The ‘sir’ slipped out naturally and the Colonel smiled. He left the office, leaving Joker deep in thought, staring at the empty whisky bottle.

  Cole Howard caught the morning flight to Washington, DC. As he sat in the front row of the economy section he flicked through the pack of Trivial Pursuit cards he’d brought with him. “You like playing?” asked his neighbour, an elderly woman in a neck brace. “My nephews bought me a set last Christmas. I play it all the time.”

  “I dislike the game intensely,” Howard answered. The woman looked shocked as if Howard had sworn at her and she buried her head in a magazine. Howard began to go through the cards, memorising the answers.

  There was a queue for taxis when he arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport but he took the wait good-naturedly. The FBI laboratories were half an hour’s drive from the airport, during which time he worked his way through another two dozen cards. On arrival, he clipped his FBI badge to his breast pocket and flashed his identification at the security guards at reception. He was told that the lab he was looking for was on the second floor. There he asked for Dr Kim. He wasn’t surprised when a woman came out to meet him, because they’d spoken several times on the phone, but he was surprised at how young and attractive she was. She was Oriental, with waist-length hair which she wore as a single braid. She had razor-sharp cheekbones and a small, delicate mouth and oval eyes which narrowed almost to slits when she smiled. “Dr Kim,” said Howard, as they shook hands. His hand seemed to dwarf hers. It was as delicate as a six-year-old’s, with nails painted a deep red.

  “Call me Bonnie,” she said. “My lab’s this way.” Her high heels clicked on the tiled floor as they walked. Even with the heels the top of her forehead barely reached his shoulders, and Howard was only a little over six feet tall. She took him past several doors and into a long, thin laboratory which had white benches lining the walls and a small cubbyhole of an office at the end. On the benches in the lab were several IBM computers and racks of VCRs and monitors. One of the VCRs had been opened up and she’d been doing something with a circuit board and a soldering iron. The iron was still on and she pulled out the plug.

  She poured him a cup of coffee from a percolator and sat on a swivel chair facing one of the monitors. She opened a drawer under the bench and handed him a pale blue file.

  “These are prints of what I’ve been able to achieve so far,” she said. “But I wanted you to see the video with me, too. I have some suggestions which might help.”

  Howard sipped his coffee as she started the video. By now he knew every second by heart, and he could watch it without emotion. He no longer grieved for the dying family, and he could listen to the woman’s last words of comfort to her son without cringing inside. They watched it together, in silence.

  “This is the original video,” she said, “the same version you’ve seen in Phoenix. I’ve taken the signal on the tape and programmed it into the computer, then used it to boost the definition several-fold. To see it we’ll need a very high-definition television monitor, this one here.” She flicked a switch on a console and the video played again on a wider television screen. Howard could see the improvement immediately. Bonnie kept her hand on the pause button and as the camera panned to the ground below she pressed it. The frozen picture was much sharper than on a standard video-recorder, too; there was no fuzzy line or flickering. On the screen was one of the towers, and Howard could clearly see a figure with a rifle. The face was still blurred.

  “The quality is much improved, but there are limits to what we can do with analog methods,” said Bonnie. She let the video play on. “We can get better results by digitising the video and storing it on a CD.” She patted one of the computers, an unimposing white box. “This is our image processor, which takes the video signal and digitises it. We call it a frame grabber. It can digitise images in real-time – about one-thirtieth of a second each – and save them into storage. Then we use a computer to handle and process the data. Once we’ve processed the images and cleaned them up, we can choose the frames we want on the monitor, and print them on a film recorder. That gives us much better definition. That’s what’s in the file – computer-generated pictures.”

  Howard opened the file and looked inside. There was a stack of more than twenty glossy eight-by-tens. He went through them. There were photographs of the towers, and close-ups of the snipers.
None was clear enough to make out their faces, however.

  “That’s the best I can do with my equipment,” Bonnie said as she saw his face fall. “Not much help, I’m afraid. Though you can see that they’re better than the images we had on the screen.”

  “What have you done to them?” Howard asked.

  “I tried neighbourhood averaging first, but that wasn’t too helpful,” she said. “Those pictures are after I used a technique called median filtering. I could probably enhance them more if I used pixel aggregation, but that’s going to take me more time.” She smiled as she saw the deep furrows appear on Howard’s forehead. She took a sheet of paper and a pencil, and drew a square box with deft strokes. “Imagine this is a tiny piece of the screen,” she said. “That unit is as small as you can go. It’s indivisible. We call it a pixel. The camcorder in the plane was a Toshiba TSC-100, with a Canon 12:1 servo zoom lens, and it records 410,000 pixels with seven hundred horizontal lines. That’s a lot more than the average camcorder, some have fewer than 300,000 pixels on the image sensor. He had some pretty specialised equipment.”

  Howard nodded. “He was a real-estate salesman, he used it to make videos of properties he was selling.”

  “Ah, that explains it,” said Bonnie. “We’re lucky he had it, because anything less powerful and we probably wouldn’t see half the details we have. You can make that pixel as large as you want, it’ll still be one unit. You’ll just have a big pixel. What neighbourhood averaging does is to smooth out the image by taking an average of the colour and brightness of individual pixels in a predefined area. There was an improvement in the clarity of the images, but the edges blurred and we actually lost some detail, which was to be expected. Median filtering is a similar computer technique, but it uses a median value instead of an average value. It’s a small difference, but a significant one. I ran through a three-by-three neighbourhood and then a five-by-five, right on up to a nine-by-nine. For the worst areas I’d like to use the technique I mentioned, pixel aggregation. You choose a pixel which has properties you can clearly identify in terms of colour or texture and then you gradually move outwards, adding to it pixels of matching qualities, until you grow a defined region. That produces clusters of matching pixels, which can then be highlighted. I’m afraid it’ll take me quite a while with the equipment I have.”