The Asset: Act II (An Isabella Rose Thriller Book 2) Read online

  ALSO BY MARK DAWSON

  IN THE ISABELLA ROSE SERIES

  The Angel

  IN THE SOHO NOIR SERIES

  Gaslight

  The Black Mile

  The Imposter

  IN THE JOHN MILTON SERIES

  One Thousand Yards

  The Cleaner

  Saint Death

  The Driver

  Ghosts

  The Sword of God

  Salvation Row

  Headhunters

  The Ninth Step

  The Jungle

  IN THE BEATRIX ROSE SERIES

  In Cold Blood

  Blood Moon Rising

  Blood and Roses

  HONG KONG STORIES VOL. 1

  White Devil

  Nine Dragons

  Dragon Head

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  The Art of Falling Apart

  Subpoena Colada

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Mark Dawson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503938199

  ISBN-10: 1503938190

  Cover design by Stuart Bache

  To Mrs D, FD and SD

  Contents

  Prologue

  PART ONE The Nur Mountains

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  PART TWO Al-Bab

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  PART THREE The Syrian Desert

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  PART FOUR Montepulciano

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  PART FIVE Palolem

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  London

  The man they called Mohammed sat in his old Ford Transit van and watched. It was two in the morning. The empty farmhouse was set on the edge of the village, with a fifty-foot garden bordering the open fields to the rear. Mohammed had scouted the property the previous week. It was isolated and remote, half a mile from the nearest property. The owner had died six months before, and it was available at a very reasonable rate thanks to the fact that it was directly beneath a flight path of the nearby airport.

  Mohammed stepped down from his van and made his way onto the short gravel drive and up to the front door. He took latex gloves, overshoes and a hairnet from his pocket and put them on. He had no intention of leaving any forensic evidence that might be used to prove he had been inside the property. His sponsor had made it very clear that this was to be a completely pristine operation, and it would be. Mohammed understood the reason for that very well. He had been scrupulously careful with what had happened at Westminster, ensuring that there were no threads that could be followed back from the bombers to him. The bomber who had failed and lost his nerve had been shot and his body had been dumped into the river. There were no loose ends there, and there would be none here.

  The door was locked, but it was a simple enough thing to pick it. He went inside and waited in the hallway for a moment, just listening. There was nothing, not that he was expecting anything.

  The property was modest. The door opened into a small hallway, which, in turn, offered access to a kitchen, dining room, living room and conservatory. Mohammed checked each room, ensuring that there was no one else in the house. He went back outside again, got back into his van and reversed it up the drive. There was a long transport case in the load area. It was five and a half feet long, made from aluminium and painted in forest camouflage. He pulled the case toward him, flipped it onto its side so that he could reach down for the handles and hauled it out. It was heavy. He closed and locked the doors and carried the case into the house.

  Mohammed rested the case on the floor of the living room, flipped the clasps and opened it. Nestled within the embrace of hard-form internal cradles was a shoulder-mounted 9K388 Igla-S launcher with a single missile. It was a Russian surface-to-air system, designated by NATO as Grinch. Mohammed had sourced the launcher from the same contact in Chechnya who had provided the shells from which he had harvested the explosives for the Westminster operation. It, together with the shells and the fighters who had stormed the Palace of Westminster, had been smuggled into the country aboard a trawler and then driven to London. Mohammed had used the model before. He had checked this one and was confident that it would operate as he expected; he brushed his fingers against the slender missile and then closed the lid of the case.

  He checked his watch: two-thirty.

  A few hours to wait.

  British Airways flight 117 from London to New York was in the latter stages of its departure preparations. The cabin crew ushered the last stragglers into the big Boeing 747, politely encouraging them to hurry with stowing their bags in the overhead lockers so that the jammed aisles could be cleared. The baggage handlers had finished loading the last of the aluminium luggage containers down below; they were sealing the hold doors and retracting their loading trucks away from the fuselage. The two pilots had settled into the flight deck. The scheduled departure time had already passed. They had been delayed because of the increased security around the airport.

  Captain James Wilkes checked the forecast: there was localised low-level mist in the vicinity of the airport, but otherwise
it promised to be a clear and smooth flight. Nice and easy.

  “Walk round was good,” Wilkes said. “Everything where it should be.”

  His senior first officer, Kaye Hosler, acknowledged that. “We have the loadsheet and performance figures. Fuelling is complete.”

  Hosler had loaded the pre-planned route into the aircraft’s navigation database, including their initial track out of Heathrow. They had been allocated a WOBUN 3F departure. The route had been confirmed to the pilots via a digital message from air traffic control, along with their transponder squawk code: 3762. Hosler busied herself and checked the switches, setting the correct configuration for the aircraft’s electrics, the auxiliary power unit, the pressurisation system and the fuel system with its multiple tanks and pumps.

  The senior cabin crew member stepped onto the flight deck and confirmed that the cabin was ready for pushback. Wilkes closed and locked the flight deck door.

  Hosler keyed her radio transmit button. “Heathrow ground, good morning. Speedbird 117 on gate 535, request push back.”

  “Speedbird 117, good morning to you. You are cleared to push and start off stand 535, face north.”

  Wilkes keyed the intercom and told the external ground crew below that they were ready to go. With their push and start clearance relayed to the tug driver, the brakes were released and the aircraft lurched back as the squat vehicle commenced the push back. The pilots started the engines. As the tug was driven clear, the ground handler turned and indicated by way of a hand signal that the aircraft was ready to taxi.

  “Ground, Speedbird 117 request taxi,” Hosler called on the radio.

  “Speedbird 117, taxi via Bravo and hold short of Echo.”

  Wilkes released the brakes, squeezed a trickle of power with the thrust levers and commenced the taxi.

  “Full flight today,” Hosler said as they went through the preflight checks.

  “Glad we’re away. Security was a nightmare.”

  “You see the terminal?” she asked. “Chaos.”

  “See what was outside?” he said.

  “The soldiers?”

  “No, the tank! There was a bloody tank parked in the taxi rank.”

  They were cleared all the way to the runway holding point.

  “They expect another attack. That’s what they’re saying. ‘Keep your eyes open, report anything suspicious.’ Scary.”

  The captain slowed as they approached Alpha 3 holding point, just short of the runway, and brought the 380-tonne jet to a gentle stop.

  Hosler keyed the radio. “Tower, Speedbird 117, ready for departure.”

  “Speedbird 117, behind the departing Virgin 747 now on the runway, line up and wait runway 27 Right.”

  Wilkes looked out of the flight-deck window. It was a damp and foggy morning. He could see the office buildings and hotels along the Bath Road to the north, all of them wreathed in mist, the lights reduced to a fuzzy glow that bled through the moisture. He heard the sudden roar of engines as the Virgin 747 ahead of them powered down the runway, the jumbo streaking away. The air pressure dropped over the top of the 747’s wing, and the water vapour condensed out as a cloudy mist that almost enveloped the entire aircraft.

  He allowed his 747 to roll forward again.

  “Speedbird 117, runway 27 Right, cleared for take-off, surface wind 220 degrees, four knots.”

  Wilkes lined the aircraft up on the runway centre line and, as they straightened out, he steadily advanced all four thrust levers.

  “Setting thrust.”

  The engines grew louder and the plane picked up speed, the acceleration pressing the pilots back into their seats. Wilkes held a gentle forward pressure on the control column to keep some weight on the nose wheel and played the rudder pedals with his feet to keep the aircraft straight.

  “Thrust set,” called Hosler. “Eighty knots.”

  The aircraft continued its acceleration. Wilkes released the pressure on the control column, allowing it to find its neutral position.

  “V1,” Hosler reported.

  One hundred and fifty-five knots. If they tried to abort the take-off now, there would be no guarantee that they could stop the aircraft before it reached the end of the runway.

  The aircraft ate up tarmac, almost four thousand metres of it rapidly disappearing beneath them.

  “Rotate,” called Hosler.

  Wilkes slowly pulled back on the control column and the nose lifted up. The nose gear cleared the runway, its wheels now spinning freely in space as the whole fuselage started to rise from the front. The tail dropped as the main undercarriage followed the nose and lifted off the tarmac.

  “Positive climb,” Hosler confirmed, checking the vertical speed indicator.

  “Gear up,” replied Wickes.

  British Airways flight 117, with three hundred and thirty-three passengers, twelve flight attendants and two flight crew, was on its way.

  Mohammed received a text message from an anonymous number to tell him that the jet was about to take off. He quickly prepared the Igla, opening the case and removing the launcher from the foam inserts. The Igla comprised the missile round within the launch tube, a separable grip stock and a battery unit. He inserted the coolant unit into the missile round and took the launcher outside.

  A second text message arrived. The target was airborne.

  He went outside. There was a table with four chairs and a barbecue covered with a green tarpaulin. The lawn hadn’t been cut for several weeks, and the grass reached up to his ankles as he walked out beyond the edge of the conservatory to the three-bar fence that marked the start of the fields beyond. It was cold, with a dense mist clinging to the ground. The sky above was clear, though, with the moon still visible above the tree line on the far side of the field beyond the garden. Mohammed looked away from the moon and blinked to clear his vision, and then turned in the direction of the airport. A jet was approaching. He could see the steady navigation lights on the leading edge of each wingtip—red on the left and green on the right—and the brighter white lights on the trailing edges.

  He had been provided with a dossier of information as he had prepared the operation. Chipperfield was directly beneath the flight-line of aircraft that had just taken off from Heathrow heading north. Jets passed over the village at between three and four thousand feet. The Igla had an effective ceiling of up to eleven thousand feet, so the approaching jumbo would be well within its operational parameters.

  He rested the fibreglass launch tube on his right shoulder, took the grip stock in his right hand and moved his head so that his right eye was pressed to the sighting assembly. He stepped directly toward the target with his left foot and leaned very slightly in that direction. The aircraft was approaching quickly on a track that would bring it almost directly over the house. Mohammed sighted the aircraft in the range ring and tracked it.

  He activated the missile. It took six seconds for the IR seeker to cool, the gyro to spin up and the electronics to activate. He tracked the jet and made continuous size estimates, using those to determine when the target was within range of the missile. He pressed and held the uncage switch to activate the seeker. The detector logic locked onto the jet’s infrared source and a buzzer sounded, quickly becoming louder and steadier.

  He adjusted his aim for superelevation and lead, and then held his breath for three seconds. Then he squeezed the trigger. Two seconds later, the launch rocket shot the missile out of the launch tube. The forward fins and tail fins extended, and after a short coasting period that took it over the fence and a safe distance away from the launcher, the launch engine fell away and the missile’s solid rocket ignited.

  The projectile curved upwards and then carved a straight path directly at the approaching jet.

  The 747 was climbing through four thousand feet. Wilkes took a moment to look out his side window. He could see the low-level mist amongst the trees and the fields. England was beautiful. He was about to turn his attention back to his instruments when he saw a fla
sh of light from the murky gloom of the countryside below them. There was a bright flare of light and then a yellow-white streak that came toward them across a fast diagonal track. It took him half a second to process what it was and then another to accept the awful prospect that it really was what he thought it was.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  Wilkes tried to convince himself that he was wrong. But he wasn’t wrong: the little speck was moving at a horrific speed, climbing up straight towards the 747. He snatched the control column and violently rolled it to his right, disengaging the autopilot and giving him direct control of the aircraft.

  “Missile!”

  The aircraft started to bank. Wilkes slammed the four thrust levers back against their idle stop position at the same time as he pushed forward on the control column, still holding in the right bank. The aircraft was big and cumbersome, slow to respond and unable to out-climb the missile; their only hope was to try to duck below it. The missile’s rate of climb might mean that it would scream past and above them, unable to adjust its own trajectory quickly enough.

  He stole another quick glance back over his left shoulder and through the window, hoping that maybe he had made a mistake.

  He had not.

  It was still there, hunting them, dropping below his line of vision as the aircraft rolled to the right. The jumbo nosed over into negative G, Wilkes becoming momentarily light in his seat but held down by his seat belts. The bank angle increased as Wilkes held the turn.

  “What are you doing?” screamed Hosler. She hadn’t heard him. She reached for her own control column, her natural instinct to correct Wilkes’s erratic input.

  The attitude indicator was showing a fifty-degree bank and the nose was dropping rapidly.

  “It’s a missile,” he yelled. “There’s a fucking missile!” His voice was almost drowned by the autopilot’s warning horn and then the altimeter alert as they descended below their cleared altitude.

  The jet was not built for snap manoeuvres. The engines groaned from the sudden stress as the jet bent away from its flight path.

  There came a sudden explosion from behind and just below the plane.

  The aircraft jolted and the noise level raced up. There was the scream of rushing air and Wilkes felt instant discomfort in his ears. The pressure hull had been breached. The vibration was violent, the whole aircraft shaking viciously. The shaking was so severe that there was no way to read the engine and flight instruments. Red warning lights blurred and flashed, accompanied by the cacophony of the engine fire bell warnings. Wilkes needed to arrest the sudden descent and pulled back.