Deadly Intent Read online

  Deadly Intent

  Iain Cameron

  Copyright © 2019 Iain Cameron

  The right of Iain Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright owner.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  To find out more about the author, visit the website:

  www.iain-cameron.com

  For Roberta, your courage and determination are an inspiration to others.

  Homeland Security Agency (HSA)

  HSA is a UK security services organisation established by the Home Office, the brainchild of HO minister, Sir Raymond Deacon. Its unofficial motto is: ‘Fight Fire with Fire.’

  It was set up to combat the changing threat faced by UK security forces from terrorists, organised criminal gangs, ruthless businesses and individuals. Terrorists who no longer appeared in the open but integrated themselves into local communities, criminal gangs using open borders and the web to traffic guns, drugs and people, and rich organisations and individuals who believed they were above the law.

  The agency is located at a secret address in London. There, HSA agents have access to a shooting range, computers with access to all law enforcement systems, incarceration facilities, interview rooms and overnight accommodation.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  About The Author

  Books By Iain Cameron

  The Pulsar Files

  Chapter 1

  Kamikaze flies buzzed and whirred around the lantern before the heat from its chimney sucked at their wings and fried them. They would have survived electric lights, but with no power in the surrounding villages for months, thanks to the Syrians bombing the local electricity sub-station, kerosene lamps did a good enough job.

  The air in the tent felt heavy, clawing at the negotiator’s neck. In this place, it was hot in the day and just as hot at night. No bloody wonder he hated it. He was a Belfast boy, used to the feel of a fresh sea breeze whipping into his face, bringing with it the tang of Belfast Lough. Even in summer, with the pavements of the Ardoyne baked, the air still felt damp.

  Sayid was talking. He was always talking, but as the leader of a well-equipped army of almost twenty thousand men, he could talk all he liked. If he wasn’t condemning the Assad regime, he would turn on their conniving friends, the Russians. Now and again he would criticise the lily-livered Americans, but moderated it knowing he was biting the hand that was feeding him.

  ‘Why do the Americans care so much for their gutter-sniping press, and why are they so concerned about body bags? Do they not think we mourn our sons and daughters too? Of course we do, but we believe the cause is mightier than mere flesh and blood. The Americans do not understand this, but our friends from Ireland do.’

  All the beards of the regional leaders around the table turned to face the Negotiator and his companion. Their faces had the look of rough leather, dark as walnut and wrinkled, their eyes dark as night. Only the guy on the end looked different. He had been caught in a chemical bomb attack which had left his cheeks scarred, marked, and as pink as an Irish new-born.

  Sayid continued in a mixture of Arabic and English and the Negotiator tuned out. He pulled at his collar again, trying to release the hot air collected inside his shirt. He felt uncomfortable, partly from the heat but also from the situation he found himself in. He was an experienced businessman with extensive Middle Eastern contacts, but this was the first time he’d tried brokering an arms deal. His financier, Pat, joked there was a first time for everything, even negotiating with anti-government rebels to buy weapons.

  Sayid said something in Arabic and then picked up his glass of oily black liquid. When all the beards reached for theirs, so did the two Irishmen. It smelled rank, like the poteen his grandfather used to make in a still in the byre, evil stuff which he’d coerced his fourteen-year old grandson to drink. Chateau Cow Shite, his father had called it.

  He took a sip. Christ! It burned his throat. By the strangled expression on his face, his companion was having the same problem, but when the beards all threw the contents of their glasses back in one go, they had to do the same.

  Whoa. For a moment he felt quite giddy; the room, the wizened desert-grained faces moving in and out of focus, Sayid at the far end of the table, rising up like a ghostly spectre. When the Negotiator’s vision cleared, Sayid had indeed moved out of his seat and beckoning them to come with him. This was the Negotiator’s moment of triumph, the time when he would see what the long journey over a hot and dusty landscape had all been for. Instead, he felt like throwing up.

  He took a deep breath and stood. He indicated to his companion to do the same. They bowed to the beards who looked back inscrutably, their dark faces revealing neither empathy nor animosity, and made their way out of the tent.

  He expected to feel a sudden clamminess from the cool, evening air after the sauna-like conditions inside the tent but instead was disappointed to find the humidity and temperature felt the same. They followed Sayid past a maze of tents: women cooking outside on primitive gas stoves, children playing, men standing smoking, all stopping to stare at the two strange white men from another world.

  The Negotiator’s eyes were drawn towards the night sky, to a magnificent panoply of stars, the like of which he had never seen since spending a summer with his grandmother in Kerry.

  Taking his eyes off the path, even for a second, was dangerous with so many obstacles littering the way: AK47s, bedrolls, cooking pots, and groups of men sitting cross-legged on the ground smoking. A gap in the tents appeared and Sayid turned, heading towards a canvas-covered truck.

  Sayid lifted a flap and leapt on to the tailgate with surprising alacrity for a big man. He folded the cover back and said, ‘This is what you came here for, no?’

  To the Negotiator, weapons were a means to an end, but to his companion, an armaments expert, they were things of beauty. They climbed aboard and his companion opened one box and pulled out a rifle. The Negotiator could see it was modern, not some relic from the Afghan
War abandoned by the Russians, which another faction had tried to sell him.

  ‘It’s an M4 carbine,’ his companion said almost to himself. ‘New and unused. I can still smell the oil.’ He put it down and picked up another. ‘Same.’

  To the Negotiator, the guns looked like something Rambo would use; black, short barrel, ribbed stock. Unsettling just to look at.

  His companion opened more boxes, uncovering sniper rifles, grenades, handguns and loads of ammunition, all new, all American-made, donated to Sayid’s group by the CIA. His companion opened another box from the last pile and extracted an RPG.

  His companion didn’t smile, but the Negotiator did. This was the game changer. Even if the Brits deployed Scorpions or reinforced Land Rovers, nothing would protect them from this.

  ‘Sayid, you’re a good man,’ the Negotiator said, smiling at last. ‘We’ll take the fuckin’ lot.’

  Chapter 2

  Matt woke with a start. No, no one was trying to break into his house or attack him with a drill, as his dream had suggested; it was a motorbike with a dodgy exhaust turning into his road. He rolled over, reached for the bedside clock, and pulled it towards him: eight-thirty. It took several moments for the neurons in his brain to connect. There was no need to scramble around looking for the least dirty and crumpled clothes. He wasn’t late for work, he was still on leave.

  He’d been shot in the shoulder by a man he and other agents within the Homeland Security Agency had been hunting, and as a consequence, he’d spent some time in hospital. When he came out, he couldn’t return to active service with only one arm operational, and rather than give him a desk job where he could tap away at a keyboard at half-speed, they’d given him time off instead.

  For normal people this would’ve been an opportunity to turn the garden into something to be displayed at the Royal Horticultural Society flower show, or undertake house repairs their wife had been nagging them for ages to fix, but Matt Flynn wasn’t like normal people. For a start, his partner had been murdered and the house they’d once shared, a place he could no longer live in, was being sold and he was now living in a grotty rented flat.

  The flat hadn’t been grotty when Matt first moved in, but he was a lousy cook and the kitchen was often littered with takeaway cartons, and empty bottles of beer and wine could be found in every room. He’d initially had the excuse that his arm had been in a sling, but now that it wasn’t, he couldn’t be bothered either way and after a time the mess ceased to annoy him.

  Ten minutes later, Matt left the flat and walked along Hamilton Road, heading over to Ealing Broadway to a shop selling bread and milk. He could compromise on many issues, but black coffee wasn’t one of them. He liked this part of London. No matter what time of day he found himself heading home, there were always plenty of people about. Ingatestone, where he used to live, was a small town in Essex and he believed at the time that he had adapted to the tranquillity of the place. When he’d first moved back to London, the noise got on his nerves, but now the sheer energy about the place always seemed to give him a lift.

  The walk seemed to be doing him some good. The beer he’d sunk in the pub last night and the shots back at the house of a neighbour had created a thick fog which was slowly lifting. Instead of heading straight to the shop, he took a left and walked towards the Common.

  It was the start of the week on an overcast day, warm for June, but not a sufficient temperature to see anyone lying on blankets reading, or chucking a ball for a youngster. In any case, house prices in this area were beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, and those who chose to live here couldn’t waste their time lounging around in a park.

  His companions at this time of the morning were a couple of joggers and two homeless guys on a bench. The pair on the bench were spread out, trying to draw some heat into their bones from the morning sun, and free their minds from a fog that would be way more serious than the one affecting Matt.

  With time to spare, and the murder of Emma unresolved, no one would have been surprised to discover that he spent most of his waking hours thinking about it. The murder of Matt’s partner hadn’t only affected him. The head of HSA, Director Templeton Gill, was her uncle, and he wanted her killers brought to justice just as much as Matt did. However, the boss also had the running of HSA to consider, and while he supported Matt in his pursuit of the murderers, he’d told him in no uncertain terms that HSA priorities needed to come first.

  This gave Matt a dilemma and more than once he’d considered going it alone. These thoughts often arrived part-way through a bottle of wine, borne out of frustration at the lack of progress by the murder squad responsible for pursuing her killers, and also his own inaction. By morning, sense often returned. Working as an agent within HSA, Matt had access to fantastic research facilities, the strength of trained colleagues to back him up, and the protection of the law as he was entitled to carry and use a weapon, all of which were denied to the lone assassin.

  The occupants of Ealing Common had nothing to fear that morning from a gun-toting, booze-infused figure moving among them. One who might have taken exception to the cackling of the homeless pair, or the shuffling old guy ahead of him, suspecting he could be up to no good. He wasn’t armed. He wouldn’t get his gun back until he proved himself physically and mentally fit.

  From a physical standpoint, he wasn’t in bad shape, despite the late-night boozing and questionable diet, as every day he went to the gym. The personal trainers and instructors all knew him, but he was sure the managers hated the sight of him. Their most profitable clients were those who signed up and never ventured near the place, not someone who came every day and availed themselves of every facility.

  His mental state was a different story. The time he’d spent away from work had recharged his batteries, but far from allowing him to come to terms with Emma’s murder, he felt more determined than ever that despite Gill’s warnings, when fully fit, he would go after the bastards who’d shot her.

  By the time he’d rounded a large part of the Common, his pace had quickened, and his heart was beating its slow regular rhythm without the annoying palpitations that often accompanied a hangover. He walked back the way he’d come and as he got closer to houses and shops, the familiar background rumble of the city returned.

  At the mini-market he bought some bread and milk and, even though the proximity of so many outlets for food and drink to his flat didn’t do much to encourage forward planning, he added a lasagne for his evening meal. Handing over his credit card reminded him that he needed to pay the bill and also to square his finances, as he always seemed short of money. Despite not working, he was still drawing a salary from HSA. However, he now had the additional expense of his flat in Hamilton Road while still paying the mortgage on the Ingatestone house. This was all without the contribution from Emma’s salary. The last he’d heard, the house was under offer, the estate agents confident the sale would go through, and the compensation payable for Emma’s death in service was somewhere in the pipeline. When it had all worked its way through the system, he would be in a position to buy his own place, but for the moment he was living from week to week.

  He walked back to his flat. When he got close, he slowed his space and scanned the road and the gardens of neighbouring houses. Perhaps his inactive state had left him feeling more vulnerable than normal, but it was also good street craft. In their business they targeted terrorists, organised criminals, drug dealers and even crooked businessmen. Who knew if one of their friends or associates would try and get their own back?

  He turned the key and walked inside. His flat was on the ground floor of a large converted house, not one of the purpose-built blocks on either side. It often felt unnerving to come back and find everything, just as he’d left it, but it was helpful from an operational standpoint. It made it easy to spot the signs of an intruder. When living with Emma, he would return at night to find the dishes he’d deposited on the worktop were now in the dishwasher, the coat he’d dropped in a rush w
ould be hanging on a peg, and on the nights she wasn’t away on a job, the house would be warm with the television or the radio playing.

  He made a coffee and some toast and, when ready, took the mug and plate into the spare bedroom. It was a fair size for a second bedroom and big enough to accommodate a king-size bed and a wardrobe, but not much else. It contained neither; instead the walls were covered with newspaper cuttings and computer printouts, while the floor was scattered with papers and notes in Matt’s handwriting. To the uninitiated, it might look like an untidy shrine to his murdered partner, but to a cop or HSA agent, it resembled a mini Ops Room.

  Most of the reports had been sourced from the East London Serious Crime Team, the outfit investigating Emma’s murder. The information hadn’t been freely given by empathetic detectives happy to have his input, as they regarded his constant calls and questions a bloody nuisance. Instead, his source was a Detective Sergeant on the murder team who sympathised with his situation but risked suspension if anyone found out.

  Some might have expected Matt to liaise with Emma’s former work partner in the Drugs Unit, Detective Inspector Jack Harris, as he’d taken part in the same drugs raid as Emma on the night she was killed. They had been targeting a Spice laboratory owned by Simon Wood, London’s biggest drug dealer, but Matt didn’t trust Harris further than he could spit. He couldn’t place a finger on his apathy, suffice to say his opinion of the man hadn’t altered since the first time of meeting him.

  Matt picked up the Incident Report for the night in question and re-read it for perhaps the sixth time. Emma had been found in Epping Forest with two bullets wounds. They had been fired from a 9mm handgun from a range of approximately two metres. She hadn’t been killed in the forest, but moved there post-mortem. With such scant information, the report could be describing any number of murders that had taken place in the UK over the last few years, and therefore the hope of the murder team lay with forensics or evidence supplied by a ‘grass’.