Fair Game

Also by Stephen Leather

Pay Off

The Fireman

Hungry Ghost

The Chinaman

The Vets

The Long Shot

The Birthday Girl

The Double Tap

The Solitary Man

The Tunnel Rats

The Bombmaker

The Stretch

Tango One

The Eyewitness

Spider Shepherd Thrillers

Hard Landing

Soft Target

Cold Kill

Hot Blood

Dead Men

Live Fire

Rough Justice

Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thrillers

Nightfall

Midnight

Nightmare (January 2012)

To find out about these and future titles, visit
www.stephenleather.com
.

FAIR GAME

Stephen Leather

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Stephen Leather 2011

The right of Stephen Leather to be identified as the Author of the 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 without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN: 9781444708332

Book ISBN: 9780340924976

Hodder and Stoughton Ltd

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

CONTENTS

Also by Stephen Leather

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

It was a. . .

About the Author

Special Offer

For Juliet

It was a big bomb, a mixture of fertiliser, diesel oil and aluminium powder with industrial detonators and a mobile phone trigger. It had been three days in the making and now took up most of the back of the white Transit van. The explosives had been packed into aluminium beer kegs, each with double detonators. They had been stacked into the van, two dozen in all. Hundreds of six-inch nails had been duct-taped around the kegs to add to the lethal shrapnel. The wires from the detonators led to a central trigger unit which was connected to a Nokia mobile phone. It was a big bomb and a deadly one, designed to destroy its target and kill or maim anyone inside.

The bomb had been carefully constructed by a fifty-year-old man who had driven up from Limerick. The bombmaker had been making explosive devices for the best part of three decades and had been taught by experts. He had been involved in the London Docklands bombing in February 1996 that had put an end to a seventeen-month ceasefire, and had helped build the bomb that had devastated Manchester city centre just four months later. When the IRA had lain down its arms in 2005, he had joined the Continuity IRA but within a year had switched to the Real IRA, whose Republican views were more in line with his own.

Once he had finished putting the bomb together he had driven back to Limerick, and if all went to plan he would be sitting in front of the television with his wife and three daughters when it exploded.

The man who was going to drive the van to its target was a sixty-year-old farmer from Warrenpoint, on the northern shore of Carlingford Lough. Willie Ryan was a committed Republican, like his father and his grandfather before him. He had left the Provisionals long before the peace process had begun because he was dissatisfied with the way things were going, and he had immediately joined the Real IRA.

The van had been stolen from Galway and driven across the border to Ryan’s farm. The plates hadn’t been changed. There was no need – the next meeting between the Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland to discuss stolen vehicles wasn’t scheduled for another two weeks.

Before he had driven back to Limerick, the bombmaker had explained to the four men in the cell how to detonate the bomb. It wasn’t rocket science. The phone had to remain switched off until the van was in place. Then, and only then, was the phone to be switched on. All it took was a call to the number and the moment that the call went through to voicemail the detonators would explode.

‘Are you all right, then, Willie?’ asked Seamus Maguire, the leader of the cell, and at twenty-six the youngest. He was dark haired and fair skinned, wearing a Trinity College sweatshirt and cargo pants.

Ryan nodded as he pulled on a pair of black leather driving gloves. ‘I’m fine,’ he said.

Maguire put a hand on the older man’s shoulder. ‘I’m not going to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, but stay below the speed limit. If anyone stops you, stay calm and we’ll take care of it.’ He nodded at the other two men, Gerry O’Leary and Ray Power. They were hard men in their thirties, and they were both checking their weapons, brand-new Glocks. ‘Gerry and Ray will be behind you all the way. You’re not going to be stopped but if you are you sit tight and let them handle it. No playing the hero, OK?’

Ryan smiled without warmth. ‘Like I said, I’m fine.’ He finished putting on the gloves and cracked his knuckles. ‘Fine and dandy.’

Maguire checked his watch. It was time. ‘Right, guys, let’s do it,’ he said. It would take thirty minutes to drive to Old Park police station in North Belfast, by which time it would be getting dark. The plan was for Ryan to get into the car with O’Leary and Power and drive away while Maguire stayed behind to detonate the bomb.

‘Rock and roll!’ said Power, punching the air.

They all jerked as they heard a vehicle drive up outside. ‘Are you expecting anyone, Willie?’ Maguire asked.

Ryan shook his head. ‘Could be a friend of the wife’s.’

‘Gerry, have a look-see,’ said Maguire.

O’Leary reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a gun. He walked on tiptoe to the barn door.

Maguire gestured at Power and he also pulled a gun out from under his jacket.

O’Leary eased the door open and slipped out. Power and Maguire crept over to the door. Time crawled by but they heard nothing. No shouts, no gunshots, no footsteps. Just the cawing of crows in the distance and the sound of a tractor in a far-off field.

‘Gerry, are you OK there?’ shouted Maguire.

There was no answer. Ryan came up behind Maguire. ‘If it was the cops, they’d have blown the doors off by now,’ muttered Power.

‘Gerry?’ shouted Maguire. ‘You OK?’

O’Leary appeared at the door, scowling.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Maguire. ‘What is it?’

‘Father bloody Christmas,’ said a voice, and the door was kicked in by a man in a ski mask and a knee-length black leather coat holding a sawn-off shotgun. A second masked man burst into the barn, holding a Glock. The man with the shotgun kept the twin barrels pointing squarely at Power’s chest. A third masked man wearing a brown leather bomber jacket pushed O’Leary into the barn and then pointed his handgun at Maguire.

‘Drop your gun, sunshine. However this plays out you’ll be dead if you don’t,’ said Leather Coat.

Power looked over at Maguire, screwed up his face as if he was in pain, and threw his gun down to the floor. The masked man with the Glock walked over, picked it up and stuffed it into his belt in the small of his back.

Leather Coat reached into a pocket and pulled out a cloth bundle. He tossed it to the ground in front of Maguire. ‘There’s four hoods there, put them on and then stand with your hands behind you.’

‘Who are you?’ asked Maguire.

‘I’m the guy who’s telling you what to do, and if you don’t do exactly as I say I’ll shoot you in the legs and then put the hood on you myself. Now do as you’re fucking well told.’

Maguire bent down and picked up the hoods. He handed them to Ryan, Power and O’Leary and one by one they hesitantly pulled them down over their heads and then stood with their hands behind their backs.

The two men with Leather Coat walked behind the hooded men and used plastic tags to bind their wrists.

‘Now listen to me and listen good,’ said Leather Coat. ‘We’re going to walk you outside and put you in the back of a van. If you try to run I’ll shoot you in the leg and put you in the van. If you shout or even say anything I’ll shoot you in the leg and put you in the van. So however this pans out, you’re all going in the van. And if I do have to shoot you, we won’t be swinging by Casualty.’

The four hooded men were herded outside and one by one pushed into the van. They lay on their backs as the rear doors slammed and the van drove off. An hour later they reached their destination and the rear doors were opened.

‘Right, out,’ shouted Leather Coat. The two men in ski masks bundled the four hooded men out and pulled off their hoods. They were standing in an empty metal-sided factory unit, the oil-stained concrete floor suggesting that it had once been home to heavy machinery.

Leather Coat held up a small stainless-steel box the size of a packet of cigarettes. There were three aerials of varying lengths sticking out of the top and a small red light glowed on the side.

‘Anyone know what this is?’ Leather Coat asked.

‘It’s a mobile phone jammer,’ said Maguire.

‘Well done you,’ said Leather Coat. ‘You’re not just a pretty face. Just so you know, this has been on for the last thirty minutes and so it’s been blocking all mobile phone transmissions. If any of you are hoping that you’re being tracked through the GPS in your phones, you can think again.’

‘No one’s tracking us and anyway our phones have been off all day,’ said Maguire. ‘They have to be off while we’re around the bomb.’

‘The cops have phones that transmit sound and position even when they’re powered off,’ said Leather Coat.

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Maguire. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m the man asking the questions here, that’s who I am.’

‘A name would be nice.’

‘Yeah, well, a night in bed with Angelina Jolie would be nice, but that ain’t gonna happen. You’re Maguire, right? The so-called brains of this outfit?’

Maguire nodded. ‘What the hell’s going on? Who are you? Are you cops?’