"I don't think Weaver
knew he could morph at all. Even Kinnery doesn't know how good he is at it."
"Yeah, but our biker friend won't believe that, will he?"
Mike pulled up a chair. "I'm not sure that call puts Weaver in the frame."
"Does it need to?"
"It would be handy to have something solid to lawyer up with."
"Look, let's worry about Bike
r Boy first. It's clear he saw Ian morph. He still knows what he knows, even if Weaver calls it off and forgets it. And where's his backup, and that van?"
"
If he's keeping this to himself, he might be cutting accomplices out of the deal as well as Weaver," Mike said. "He's been told that Ian's just a mule. He's seen for himself that it's way more than that. There's a market out there and he knows it. It's probably not Weaver we need to worry about. It's whoever else the biker offers Ian to."
"How does he think he's going to get Ian out of here, though? And why call Dru?"
"He must still be watching. He realises we haven't called the police, because he's seen no activity. He knows we don't want attention."
Rob didn't like guessing, but they had nothing else to go on. "H
e probably thinks we're scared, too, and Dru's a way of testing the water. He's still working out the rest. Just like we are."
"
I doubt he's aware of you. He knows I live here, though."
"
But if he knows you're minted, he probably thinks you're soft and useless. So he'll underestimate what he's up against."
"He'll still need to make sure I don't have a security detail. If I were him, I'd assume there was one."
Rob watched a deer tiptoeing through the trees to the rear of the house, clear as day in infrared. "He'll need to get close to the house, then."
"So we watch and wait for him to come to us. Because he hasn't got forever, either. He'll watch to see if we try to move Ian. There's only one way out for a vehicle."
"Then what?"
Mike started going back through the day's recordings. He'd made up his mind to do something. Rob knew that look. The only way he could describe it was that Mike looked resigned to being someone else for a while, the Mike he didn't seem to like very much.
"I don't think I'll be buying him off," Mike said.
Rob could only nod in agreement. Whatever Mike had in mind, Rob was now committed to going along with it.
CHALTON FARM, WESTERHAM
0155 HOURS, SUNDAY.
It was nearly 0200, and Mike found himself on the point of calling Dad to ask him to bring the full weight of his wrath to bear on Shaun Weaver. The house had been in complete lockdown for nearly 36 hours. He'd had enough.
But the moment passed, and he snapped back to normal. This was the result of his own decisions, and he'd deal with them himself; beds, once made, had to be laid upon. He'd chosen to give Ian a home and now he had to live with the consequences. It was just fatigue and a disrupted body clock talking, making him cold and hungry despite a warm house and a stomach still full of last night's dinner.
I used to be more resilient than this.
He varied his sweep of the security monitors to keep himself alert; left to right, then up and down, then a diagonal pattern. When he heard quiet footsteps, he looked up expecting to see Ian. But it was Rob. He put two cups of tea on the narrow console.
"We shouldn't both be up, Zombie," he said. "There's nobody to relieve us. Stick to your watch."
"It
is
my watch. You're the one who's up early."
"So I am." Rob produced up a packet of cookies. "At very least, he's got to watch the drive to see if we
panic and try to move Ian."
"
And he knows we've got something to hide and that we're constrained by it. Everything we
don't
do confirms to him that we can't act."
Rob glanced at his watch. When he didn't have car mirrors to watch, he fell back on checking the time. "Nearly thirty-six hours since the contact. You think he'd be worried that we could play dirtier than him, what with your dad and everything."
"The longer he sees nothing happening, the more sure he is that he's got a chance."
Rob sighed. "He's doing what we're doing, Mike. He can't tell anyone else what he's up to, his plans have gone to rat-shit, and he's trying to come up with a new plan on the fly."
The switch from
Zombie
to
Mike
was usually a significant pointer to Rob's mood. Mike couldn't war-game this any longer. They'd just have to assume the worst and react accordingly. But he was sure of the one fixed point the biker had to plan around. If he lost track of Ian, the guy had nothing. So he'd still be watching.
Slip out the back? He knows we don't have a rear vehicle access
.
It's easy enough to check on a sat map.
Ian came downstairs around 0230 and stood watching the monitors with them for a while. Mike reached behind his chair to prod him.
"Go back to bed, buddy. Nothing to see here."
"I can't sleep."
"Then read. But go back to bed."
Ian trudged off again. Rob drummed his fingers on the console.
"He morphed into Tom, didn't he?"
That explained the use of
Mike
. "Does that piss you off?"
"A bit."
"I'll have a word with him when this is over."
"I'm not knocking him. He's a good lad. He gets stuck into a fight and he keeps his head."
"He's what we made him, Rob."
"And what Maggie made him." Rob fidgeted. "Tom said he only went for the GCHQ thing because he couldn't be like me."
"No shit? Wow."
Maybe that was Rob's real issue. It was a heavy responsibility. Mike knew how it felt to be an adoring son who felt he wasn't capable of following his father.
"If he doesn't like the job, will they let him leave?"
"It's not a life sentence, Rob. Even real spooks get to resign. He's an IT man."
"Just checking."
Mike called up the map of the estate on one of the monitors and re-checked lines of sight to the driveway and front door. He was thinking about the calls he'd have to make on Monday to set up transport, finance, and a new job for Dru when one of the movement sensors blipped. Rob pounced on the camera feeds closest to the sensor and put the images on the screens.
"Wait for it to pass the next one," he said.
It took a few minutes before another sensor was triggered. Mike plotted the camera positions and the direction of movement against the sight lines. The NV filter gave a brief glimpse of a human shape moving, but the infrared showed very little, just the hint of a hot spot at head height. The position was less than a couple of hundred yards away.
"So he can't wait any longer," Rob said. "He's getting in bloody close."
"Can you see a weapon?"
"If he's got anything bigger than a pistol, it's under his jacket. He must have some thermal barrier. It didn't look like a clean outline to me."
"Foil blanket with cape over the top. I've done that."
They couldn't see anything now. The next camera and set of sensors didn't catch the guy, so he'd either stopped within that area or moved off his predicted path.
"Well, we know roughly where he is," Mike said. "Wait one."
He trotted off to the utility room to pick up his plates, jacket, and radio. His Glock and his AR-10 were already out of the locker and loaded. With NV goggles and handheld thermal imaging, he could move around quietly and easily. When he got back to the security room, Rob was marking up a sheet of paper.
"I think he's in this square," Rob said. "I'm going to kit up now."
Mike checked the camera positions again. "No, keep an eye on the monitors and talk me through it."
"You better leave this to me. Stay here and protect the house in case he's a decoy and he's got mates on standby. He's not going to try again without some extra precautions."
"No. I've got this."
"If anything goes wrong, your dad's going to get the blowback."
"I can buy my way out of anything. But if you get pulled in, then it's still on file and it could catch up with Tom one day."
"Don't make me say that I'm better than you at this shit."
"I don't care if you are. This is my responsibility."
"This isn't about your hang-ups, Mike. It's about getting a fucking result."
"I said you're not doing this."
Rob ignored him and lifted his sweater to tap his ballistic vest. "I've already got my party frock on. Take the roof and watch for backup vehicles."
He got up to go, but Mike blocked his path. "You're not listening to me. My problem. I'll deal with it."
"Come on, stop dicking around, mate." Rob wouldn't listen. "Move it."
He just caught Mike with his shoulder, a friendly shove with a little insistence behind it, nothing he wouldn't have done on deployment. Mike reacted blindly. He pinned Rob flat against the wall. He regretted it instantly.
"Whoa, steady, mate," Rob said.
"Relax."
"Sorry." Mike
was mortified. He let go, embarrassed. "Leave this to me. Take the roof."
Rob looked bewildered. Mike had never done anything worse than swear at him and then apologize immediately. He didn't even think he had the physical edge to take Rob. If he'd been anyone else, Rob would have flattened him without a second thought.
"Come on, why not just call the cops and get it over with?" Rob asked, all quiet reason. "He's on your land. We've got enough."
"No. The bastard's
seen
Ian. I'll deal with it. Stay on the radio and update me. No phones. Got it?"
Rob held his hands up. "Okay, mate. Keep your kecks on."
Mike adjusted his earpiece and slipped out through the side door before putting on his NV goggles. He'd deal with it, all right. This wasn't going to escalate. This wasn't going to continue one more goddamn day. It was going to end here and now.
He had to think what he'd do in this guy's situation. A pro might have the same equipment as him – night vision, thermal imaging, the works – and set up alarm trips to protect his back, even if it was
just beer cans. He could have marked an escape path through the trees with IR light sticks. Mike would have to skirt all the way around and approach at an angle from the side to conceal his position, working from tree to tree.
"Got e
yes on yet, Rob?"
"Yeah. I keep losing him in the trees, but he's getting bloody close to the power box."
The main power supply came in about a hundred yards from the house. Yes: that was Mike would have done – cut the power first. The emergency generator would eventually kick in, but the guy wouldn't know about that. Either way, Mike was pretty sure that this was no longer surveillance. The biker was getting ready to break into the house.
Mike paused by one of the security cams and swapped his NV goggles for his hand-held thermal optics to check again for
the guy's backup, but there was nothing. He held his breath to listen for movement to make sure.
"I think he's going for the power box, for definite," Rob said. "I would."
Mike switched back to his goggles and kept moving towards the power box one tree at a time. "Stand by to distract him before he cuts the power. Garage doors open, lights on."
"I'll start the Jag on the remote. He'll think
we're shifting Ian. I'm moving down
now
."
Mike still couldn't see the
biker. He shifted position using the power box as a reference point and tried the thermal again
.
Got him.
A patch was moving slowly between the trees. It was the partial outline of a face. The guy might have had a thermal lining to disguise his outline, but he hadn't used anti-thermal camo cream to obscure exposed skin. The small patch of heat was enough to give him away. Mike could see him in context now, ahead and to his right on a diagonal line from behind, and switched back to his NV goggles to leave his hands free.
He couldn't see a weapon. But he knew from the set of the guy's shoulders that he was holding a rifle.
But I want a reason. I need a reason
.
The man
headed for the power box, stopping intermittently to check out the house. He'd probably cut corners on the anti-thermal cream because he hadn't planned for anything like this. He might have been tasked to just observe for few days. Then he realised he hadn't been told the whole story. Mike moved forward until he was level with the guy and sighted up from about sixty yards.
The man was
checking out the power box with a faint light. It would take him a few minutes to get it open and cut the power without zapping himself. Mike watched him crouch to slip off the cape or whatever he'd draped around his shoulders and ease a daypack off his back.