Hard Landing (44 page)

Armstrong drained his cup and stood up to help himself to more. Gannon knew the men would have preferred mugs, but room service in the hotel just off Piccadilly had supplied cups and saucers more suitable for a lady’s knitting circle than a group of military men brought together for a tactical briefing.

‘Two sugars in mine, Billy,’ said Shortt, as he strode in. He was a stocky five feet nine with a sweeping Mexican moustache. He shook hands with Gannon. ‘Sorry I’m late, boss. Traffic.’

Gannon smiled, but said nothing. Shortt always had an excuse, but considering that just twenty-four hours earlier he had been in the Ukraine, Gannon reckoned he had nothing to complain about.

Armstrong handed Shortt some coffee and the two men took their seats. Gannon dimmed the lights and switched on the projector. He hadn’t bothered with a screen: the wall above the television set was pristine white. A satellite shot of four cross-shaped buildings surrounded by a wall came into focus as he fiddled with the lens. ‘Her Majesty’s Prison Shelton,’ he said. ‘Same design as the better-known Belmarsh in south London. You all know why we’re here, and you all know what we’ve got to do, so there’s no need for a sit-rep. The fact that you’re all here means you’re up for it, so I’m going to run through the operation from start to finish.’

‘Who else is in on this?’ asked Armstrong.

‘Just you,’ said Gannon. ‘After this briefing I’ll have no further involvement, not because I wouldn’t give my eye-teeth to be with you but we can’t afford to have any official connection to whatever happens. You guys are all—’

‘Expendable?’ said O’Brien, with a grin. He tore open a Mars bar and took a bite.

‘No longer on the Regimental payroll, is what I was going to say, Martin. But, in your case, expendable will do.’

‘I don’t want to sound negative,’ said Mitchell, ‘but even I can count, and I make it four of us. That’s one brick against a maximum security prison containing how many guards?’

‘A full complement of a hundred and sixty during daytime hours. About fifty at night. But none are armed.’

Mitchell frowned apologetically. ‘And again, without raining on anyone’s parade, aren’t these places designed to withstand pretty much anything?’

Gannon smiled. ‘That’s the whole point, Geordie. Prisons are designed to keep people in. And they make a bloody good job of it. But there’s one thing they’re not designed for, and that’s what we’re going to take advantage of.’

The four men exchanged confused looks, wondering what the major wanted them to do.

Gannon grinned. He pressed the switch in his hand and another slide flashed on to the wall: a photograph of the main entrance of the prison taken through a long lens. ‘Now, if you ladies would allow me to continue with the briefing, I’ll take questions later.’

The four men settled back in their chairs and listened as Gannon outlined what he wanted them to do.

Martin O’Brien and Geordie Mitchell arrived in Belfast on the afternoon ferry but they waited until it was dark before driving their green Range Rover out of the city and to the west on the M
1
. O’Brien drove slowly, then left the M
1
at Lisburn, checked that he wasn’t being followed and headed for Armagh.

The churchyard was exactly as he remembered it, bordered by a shoulder-high stone wall festooned with ivy, the grass well tended and the gravestones weathered by centuries of Irish wind and rain. There was a noticeboard at the entrance, detailing times of services and a phone number on which the priest could be reached, twenty-four hours a day. O’Brien smiled when he saw it was a mobile number: there was something amusing about a priest using new technology to keep in touch with his flock.

There was a half-moon overhead and a relatively clear sky: enough light to see by. O’Brien nodded at Mitchell and pushed open the wooden gate. It creaked like a rheumatic joint. The church was in darkness, the nearest house a hundred yards down the road. The two men had sat in the Range Rover for thirty minutes until they were satisfied that no one was in the vicinity, no late-night lovers or insomniac dog-walkers to stumble across them as they moved aside the two-hundred-year-old gravestone and dug into the hard earth with their spades.

They worked in silence and were both breathing heavily when they uncovered the first package. It was wrapped in polythene and O’Brien slowly peeled it back to reveal an oily cloth package. Inside he found a Chinese automatic pistol, with rust on the handgrips. He showed it to Mitchell, then put it aside and picked up a bigger package, almost three feet long, handed it to Mitchell and pulled out another. Both contained Hungarian 7.62mm AKM-63 automatic rifles, copies of the Soviet AK-
47
, with plastic socks and handgrips. ‘These’ll do,’ said Mitchell. The weapons were serviceable but, more importantly, they looked the part.

O’Brien used his spade to lever more polythene-wrapped parcels out of the soil. One contained ammunition for the AKM-63s. Another contained half a dozen Second World War revolvers. He wouldn’t want to risk live firing those.

The arms cache had been put together by the Real IRA in the late nineties. The organisation was poorly funded in comparison with the Provisionals and they had a tendency to buy whatever weaponry was offered to them. Most of the consignment buried in the graveyard had come from a Bosnian gangster, who had travelled from Sarajevo to Belfast to arrange the shipment. Special Branch had the man under surveillance from the moment he’d landed on British soil and MI
6
had followed the shipment from a warehouse outside Sarajevo to a beach on the south coast of Ireland, from where it had been driven up to Belfast. Unbelievably, MI
6
had lost the truck in Belfast and the consignment had vanished.

O’Brien had been working undercover in West Belfast and had penetrated a Real IRA cell that had been authorised to withdraw a number of weapons from the cache to use in a building-society robbery. He and three terrorists had removed several handguns. O’Brien hadn’t passed on details of the cache to his handler. It had been a flagrant breach of procedure, but he had seen too many cock-ups to put his life on the line by revealing what he’d seen. If his bosses had decided to go in and neutralise the arms, it wouldn’t have taken the Real IRA high command long to work out where the information had come from.

O’Brien was supposed to have driven the getaway car for the three robbers, but there’d been a change of plan at the last minute and he had been told that his services wouldn’t be required. The raid had ended in disaster – not through action by the security services but a road accident. The replacement driver had gone through a red light on the way to the building society and a bus had side-swiped the car. The petrol tank had exploded and all four were killed. The following day the Real IRA executive who had organised the purchase of the arms had been assassinated by a Unionist death squad, and O’Brien realised that he was the only man left who knew the location of the arms. It was a secret he’d kept even after leaving the army. The only person he’d ever told was Gannon, and the major had recommended he kept the information to himself. Until now.

O’Brien unwrapped another package: a Polish Onyx short assault rifle with a folding stock and two curved thirty-round magazines. The gun was a copy of the Russian-made AKS-74U submachine-gun, capable of firing 725 rounds a minute. An excellent bit of kit. ‘I’ll have this,’ he said.

Mitchell picked up a small package and opened it: a Polish Radom, a heavy 9mm pistol. ‘Why would they buy this crap?’ he asked.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said O’Brien. He pulled apart another small package, and whistled softly. It was a brand new SIG-Sauer P-228, a compact Swiss pistol with a thirteen-round magazine.

‘I’ll have that,’ said Mitchell, reaching for it.

‘My arse you will,’ said O’Brien. ‘Finders keepers. Anyway, you and Billy are using the AKMs.’

They worked through the cache. The prize was at the bottom: a wooden box the size of a small suitcase that had been wrapped in a dozen black rubbish bags. O’Brien grinned. ‘Bullseye,’ he said.

Jimbo Shortt paid off his black cab, then headed west along the King’s Road, checking reflections in shop windows before crossing the street and heading back the way he’d come, checking for tails. When he was sure he wasn’t being followed he crossed the road and headed for a black door between an antiques shop and a hairdresser’s. To the right was a small brass plaque inscribed ‘Alex Knight Security’, a bell button and a speaker grille.

Shortt pressed the button and was buzzed in. He headed up a narrow flight of stairs. A striking brunette had the door at the top open for him. ‘Jimbo, I didn’t know you were in London,’ she said, giving him a peck on the cheek.

‘Flying visit, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Is he in?’

‘Ready and waiting for you,’ she said.

Alex Knight was sitting behind a pile of electronic equipment and a stack of manuals. The walls of his office were lined with metal shelving stacked with boxes and more manuals. There was a single chair on Shortt’s side of the desk but it was piled high with unopened Federal Express packets.

‘Can I interest you in a sat-phone scrambler, Jimbo?’ asked Knight. ‘State-of-the-art from Taiwan. I can do you a deal.’

‘Not this time, Alex.’

Knight came round from behind his desk and several inches of bony wrist protruded from his dark blue blazer when he stuck out his hand to shake Shortt’s. He was tall and gangly, with square-framed black spectacles perched high on his nose.

‘So, what can I do you for?’ he asked.

‘Scanner that’ll key me in to police frequencies,’ said Shortt.

‘Ask me something difficult,’ said Knight. ‘You can buy them at Argos.’

Shortt chuckled. The sort of equipment Knight sold was most definitely not available on the high street. ‘This’ll do the trick,’ he said, pulling a box off a shelf and examining the label. It was a model he hadn’t seen before. ‘And I need a mobile-phone jammer. A biggie.’

‘Illegal in this country, of course,’ said Knight.

‘Of course,’ said Shortt.

‘How big?’

‘How big have you got?’

‘I’ve got hand-helds that can block all signals up to a hundred feet,’ said Knight.

‘Bigger,’ said Shortt.

‘There’s a model just in from Hong Kong that can shut down all signals in a building, pretty much.’

‘Bigger,’ said Shortt, grinning.

‘Jimbo, why don’t you just tell me what it is you want shutting down?’

Shortt’s grin widened. ‘You don’t want to know, Alex, but let’s say it’s the size of a football stadium.’

Knight went back behind his desk and tapped away on his computer. He frowned, and tapped again.

Shortt continued to walk along the shelves, picking up the occasional box and examining its contents. Some of the equipment Knight had was so cutting-edge that even Shortt wasn’t sure what it was supposed to do.

‘What frequencies?’ Knight asked.

‘UK only,’ said Shortt.

‘Sale or lease?’

‘I was hoping you’d lend me one, Alex.’ Knight raised an eyebrow, and Shortt laughed. ‘I’ll need it for a couple of days.’

‘I can let you have one for a week at five grand, but I’m going to need a deposit. This is expensive kit. When do you need it by?’

‘Yesterday,’ said Shortt.

Shepherd was in the corner of the exercise yard doing vigorous press-ups when his name was called. It was Hamilton. He got to his feet and went over to him, brushing his hands on his jeans. ‘Legal visit,’ said Hamilton.

Shepherd followed him off the spur and along the secure corridor to the visitors’ centre. Hamilton said nothing during the long walk and Shepherd didn’t want to start a conversation. He hadn’t requested a visit from Hargrove. If the superintendent had discovered what had happened to Liam, it was all over. Shepherd forced himself to relax as he was shown into the glass-sided room.

Hargrove shook his hand. ‘How’s it going, Spider?’

Shepherd sat down. ‘Slowly.’

‘Hadn’t heard from you for a while so I thought I’d drop by and see how you were.’ Hargrove took his seat. His briefcase was on the floor.

‘Soon as there’s something to report, I’ll be on the phone.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You look a little tense, that’s all.’

‘I’m in prison, for fuck’s sake,’ Shepherd snapped. He saw the look of concern on Hargrove’s face and held up his hands. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just that being Bob Macdonald twenty-four seven isn’t easy.’

‘Anything I can do?’

Shepherd shook his head.

‘Anything taped we can use?’

‘I’m only wearing the recorder when there are officers around. That way he can’t start searching me if he gets suspicious. Problem is, with the officers around he’s not going to say much. I want to get him talking in his cell but I’m not in there often.’

‘We need something, Spider. You know how important this is.’

‘I can’t push it any more than I’m doing or he’ll back off.’

‘And he hasn’t said anything we can use?’

‘He’s not stupid,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s in here because he was set up by pros, and he’s keen not to make the mistake again.’

‘You don’t think he suspects anything?’

‘I’m being careful.’

‘Carpenter’s got a remand hearing in a couple of days. Might give you something to talk about.’

‘I’ll give it a go. He’s not going to get bail, is he?’

Hargrove grinned. ‘Not a snowball’s chance in hell. He might have torn holes in our case but the judge is aware of what’s going on and he’s a safe pair of hands.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ said Shepherd.

‘I know you are, Spider. Do you want me to go and see your boy?’

‘Best stay away until it’s all over.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure.’