“We can go in this way. They won’t be expecting us.”

  “It’s a tight squeeze,” Will said doubtfully.

  Nolan grinned. He was a big man, but not that big. Fortunately, they couldn’t read the grin behind the mask.

  “You’ll be okay, Will. If you get stuck, we’ll pull you through, like cleaning a rifle barrel.”

  “Fuck you,” he snarled. But there was an amused slant to his eyes behind the mask.

  “Okay, let’s go, I’ll be first down there. Carl, you’re the back marker.”

  The ladder that led down the shaft was rotten, and twice he broke rungs as he put his weight on them. Disaster came when he was twelve feet from the bottom of the shaft, and a third rung broke unexpectedly. When he hit the next one, it broke too. He fell the last ten feet, which would not normally be a problem. But five feet from the bottom a piece of steel stuck out from the side, the remains of some old machinery. He caught his right arm in it, and the arm was stuck for a few seconds. Then he felt something give, and he tumbled the last few feet to the bottom. But he couldn’t use his right arm, the pain shot through him when he tried to move it. Will struggled down next and did his best to examine the arm.

  “I think it’s broken, Chief. You want me to lead them in for the assault.”

  Nolan gave him the go ahead, despite his disappointment.

  So much for the test.

  He swapped with Carl Winters and took the back marker, using his left hand to hold his weapon. In the close quarters of the mine, they all had sound suppressed Sig Sauers. Loaded with blanks, in this case. They came across the Deltas with their backs to them and guarding the entrance to the mine. The rest was easy, and they subdued them, freed the Congressman, and called in the rest of the platoon. Talley and Bryce went with him to the base hospital at Twentynine Palms and watched as his arm was X-Rayed and put into plaster.

  “It’s a simple break, Chief Nolan, so you’re lucky. A couple of weeks, and you can remove that plaster, but you’ll need to be careful for the next few months. If you do anything too active, that break won’t heal properly.”

  “I’m in the middle of a training exercise, Doc. I need to be able to keep going,” Nolan objected.

  “The exercise is over for you, Chief. You’re officially off-duty as from now, so don’t even think about trying to go back.” He looked at Talley. “You’re his officer?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “Lieutenant, this is a direct order. This man is not to go back on active service of any kind until I sign him as fit for duty. Is that clear?”

  Talley nodded. “Got it, Doc.” He turned to Nolan. “Come on, Chief. We’ll get you home.”

  They dropped him off at his house. The kids were with Grace’s parents, John and Violet, at their place, so he had the place to himself. When he walked in, the sound of his footsteps echoed around the house. It was an eerie, empty sound, and almost as if, yeah, as if it was haunted.

  Grace, I need you so much. Look at me, a useless cripple. I’m not even fit to avenge your murder.

  He checked in the closets to see if there was a bottle handy, but his search came up dry. His in-laws were ahead of him. He smiled to himself. Maybe they were right, too. He went into the kitchen and single handed, brewed himself some coffee. Then he sat down, thinking. He was short of the use of his right arm, which was true. But he still had his left, and there were plenty of times he’d used it to shoot with.

  No, I’m fooling myself. Dear Christ, I’m finished!

  “Hi, the door was open.”

  He looked up. Carol Summers stood there.

  Christ, she was pretty. That’s some girl, for a cop.

  “How did you know I was back?”

  “A couple of guys from the platoon called by and let me know. Said you might need someone to make you a coffee.” She looked at the mug of hot coffee next to him. “I guess not, though.”

  “No, but thanks all the same. I can make you one?”

  She smiled. “That’d be nice, thanks.”

  She followed him into the kitchen. “So what are you planning to do next?”

  He got the pot boiling and added the ground coffee. “I don’t know.” He held up the arm, lowering it as the pain overcame him. “How the hell could I take on someone like Gul, surrounded by a small army of mercenaries, and probably mostly former Special Forces trained?”

  “You feeling sorry for yourself, Kyle?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the way you asked that question. Why not turn the emphasis around?”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “What I mean is, ask yourself the question. How would you do it?”

  He looked at his arm. “It’s impossible with this.”

  “So you’ll just sit here and get bitter and start drinking all over again.”

  “No!” He grinned to take the sting out of the single, shouted negative. “What I mean is, I’m past that.”

  “Right. Gul’s coming to San Diego, and he’s due in two days time. You didn’t call, and I thought you’d want to know.”

  He didn’t answer at first, couldn’t answer. Just hearing the name sent him into a killing rage. He finished brewing her coffee and led her through to the living room.

  “Tell me about it.”

  She nodded and sipped the coffee. “There’s a shipment coming in. We gather it’s huge. Only problem is that we don’t know where it’s coming from, only that his distributors are on the alert to pick up at least twice their normal amount of product. There’s so much money at stake that Gul wants to be here to oversee it, and make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “How will he get here, which airline will he fly?”

  She smiled. “You’re joking, this is Mohammed Gul. He uses his own Gulfstream. He’ll land at San Diego, and his people will escort him to the main distribution point. And no, we don’t know where that is, so we won’t be able to make arrangements to ambush him.”

  “What about your department, are they planning to follow him?”

  She shook her head. “San Diego PD, the DEA, none of them is interested. They say they have a watch on his known contacts, but so far he’s done nothing to warrant a major bust. There’s no probable cause to swear out a warrant, he keeps himself clean. ”

  “That’s crazy! Don’t they know what kind of thug this is? He’s a walking one-man crimewave. Drugs, terrorism, you name it.” He looked at her hard. “And murder!”

  Carol Summers grimaced and shook her head. “Not according to the databanks. He doesn’t show as any kind of criminal, nothing proven, anyway. And you know how State and Government departments work. Strict rules of evidence, and in the case of Gul, there’s not much of that. In fact, there’s none.”

  Nolan nodded. “Okay, thanks for the heads up. I guess I’ll take it from here. What’s his ETA at San Diego?”

  She smiled. “Oh no, Mister. No way. If you’re going after Mohammed Gul, I’m going with you. You’ll need help, and I’m not about to see you killed.”

  “You’re a cop,” he objected. “You could lose your badge if anything goes wrong.”

  She looked him in the eyes. “And if anything goes wrong, I could lose someone who’s starting to mean a lot to me.”

  He stared at her. “I told you, Carol, it’s much too soon.”

  She smiled wearily. “Look, we’ve been through this. It’ll happen when it happens. I assume you do like me?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. I feel that same way. In the meantime, let’s try and keep you alive.”

  In the end, Nolan surrendered. He needed her information, which was true enough. And he also needed her added gun. He was without the use of his broken arm, yet there was no time to wait for it to heal. They agreed to meet at her house in two days time, at eight in the evening. They’d just have to play it by ear and follow Gul to wherever he was going. After that, well, they’d see. As she left him, she gave him a friendly peck on the cheek.

  “That’s just one on account. There’s more later if you play your cards right.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then I’ll handcuff you, and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

  He felt himself redden, and she left without another word.

  Forty-eight hours later, he parked in the street and knocked on the door of her house, a Craftsman style bungalow in one of the older suburbs of San Diego. He walked into the living room and received a shock.

  “Hi, Chief. How’s the arm?”

  Vince Merano, his sniper and opposite number, was just walking in from the kitchen with a mug of coffee. Lieutenant Talley was sitting on the couch, and Will Bryce, Dan Moseley, Zeke Murray, and Dave Eisner were sprawled around the room.

  “What are you up to? What’s going on?”

  Carol Summers took his arm and explained. “I called them, Kyle. I hope you don’t mind, but we couldn’t do this with just the two of us.”

  “Hey, just because of my arm, don’t…”

  “Chief,” Talley interrupted. “We’re your family. When you go into harm’s way, anywhere there’s a clear and present danger, we go with you. That’s the way it works. Besides, this Gul character was behind that trouble in Afghanistan. If we don’t stop him, he’ll just do it all over again. And you know what that means. His drug money gets a lot of our boys killed.”

  Nolan looked at their faces. All he saw was calm resolution. And determination.

  “You’re all crazy, you know that. You could all lose your careers, your pensions, everything.”

  Talley nodded. “We know what’s at stake. But we’re going, and that’s an end to it. So let’s get down to the bottom line, how are we going to play this?”

  Nolan sighed and nodded. “Okay, thanks for all your support. Gul’s Gulfstream is due to land at eleven thirty tonight, San Diego International Airport.”

  “Right opposite our base on Coronado Island,” Vince grinned. “That’s as good as sending out a challenge.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Nolan went on. “The problem is that we don’t know where he’ll go from there. We do have one lead. Carol found out that he recently bought a yacht, one of those millionaire’s floating booze palaces. He has it moored in the yacht harbor at San Diego. Again, that’s opposite Coronado. If he stays on the yacht, and it’s a fair bet that he will, we’ve got a good chance of taking him.”

  “I took the liberty of bringing along a chart, showing the exact mooring spot,” Detective Summers told them as she produced a large nautical chart. “I’ve made a notation to show where she’s tied up. I thought it might be useful. There’s something else I picked up too, a plan of his boat which we managed to purloin from the ship’s architect. It’s amazing what just a mention of the Patriot Act will achieve.”

  They looked closely at the large-scale chart.

  “It’ll be straightforward if he goes there,” Talley nodded, pointing at the harbor. “Any ideas on the number of his bodyguards?”

  “Usually ten,” Carol replied. “There’s no reason to suppose this time will be any different.”

  “Hold it,” Nolan interjected. “You’re forgetting something. If he doesn’t go there, we’ll need to trail him.”

  “I think PO1 Merano has got some ideas on that score,” Talley told him. He looked at Nolan’s fellow sniper. “Vince, tell him.”

  “It’s a gadget they’ve been working on. Basically, a tracker that’s fitted into a small missile and fired from the 40mm AG-C/GLM grenade launchers we fit to our HK 416s. The round hits the target vehicle at low velocity and sticks to the bodywork. I’ll find a good stand close to Gul’s hangar, and as soon as I see which vehicle he’s using, I’ll fire the tracker. So wherever he goes, we’ll not be too far behind.”

  “That’s great. Just one more thing, when we do corner him, he’s mine. Clear?”

  They all nodded at Nolan. Lieutenant Talley spoke for all of them. “He deserves what he get’s for all the bad things he’s done, and you deserve to take him out for Grace. We’ll just be there as backup, Chief.”

  “It’d be better if you ran the operation, Boss. More like the way we usually handle things. Let’s keep it business as usual.”

  Talley nodded. “I’d be glad to do it that way. Okay, here’s the way I see it. There are eight of us, including Detective Summers.”

  “Carol,” she emphasized.

  He nodded. “Sorry, Carol. In the event that they go to the yacht, and it’s a good bet, I want two men to get into the water off Coronado and swim to the boat. They can approach from underwater and secure the vessel from the rear. Zeke, Dan, you men okay on that?”

  “Sure thing.” They both nodded.

  “Good. That leaves six of us. We’ll follow in two cars. I’ve got my Jeep Cherokee here, but I reckon the Chief’s Camaro is a bit conspicuous for this job.”

  “I’ve got a Chevy Suburban out front,” Will told him.

  “That’s great. We’ll split three men to a car for now,” he looked at Carol. “Sorry, two men and a…”

  “I’m okay with being one of the guys, Abe,” she grinned.

  “Right. Three men to a car, and we can follow Gul’s car to wherever he’s going. We can use a simple Smartphone app to monitor the tracker, nothing special there. I suggest we move into position. It’s dark now, and we’ll be able to work undetected.” Talley started to collect the documents together.

  “Boss, there’s just one thing we’re not clear about.” Vince Merano waited for him to stop and look back at him.

  “What’s that, Vince?”

  “As I see it, the Chief is going to nail this Gul character.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “What’re the RoEs for the rest of them, these bodyguards, I mean,” he looked at Carol. “We’ve got a cop along and all. We need to be sure.”

  “I’d like to answer that,” Carol Summers answered him. Talley nodded for her to go ahead. “As far as I’m concerned, these people present a major threat to US security. I wasn’t entirely joking when I mentioned the Patriot Act. I gather that Mohammed Gul is financing terrorism in Afghanistan, I assume that would mean the insurgency?”

  “That’s right, Ma’am,” Talley replied.

  She grinned at the ‘Ma’am’. “In that case, they’re legitimate targets, all of them.”

  “Carol, in this kind of mission, we’d call them by a different name,” Talley said to her. “If what you’re saying is what we’re thinking, we call them kills. Then there’s no room for misunderstanding.”

  She thought for a moment. Then she nodded. “They forfeited all rights when they colluded with Gul to kill US servicemen. I agree, they’re kills. No argument.”

  “That’s it then, no more questions?” Talley looked from man to man. “Right, we have weapons and equipment in my Cherokee. Will, you got anything useful in your Suburban?”

  Will Bryce smiled. “Yeah, I brought along some ordnance, thought it might be useful, a few HK416s and plenty of clips, and a couple of spare grenade launchers with a batch of missiles. We’re all carrying our sound suppressed Sig Sauers, so I reckon we’ve got enough ordnance for the job.”

  “Good. Let’s do it.”

  A half hour later, they were parked close to San Diego International Airport. Zeke Murray and Dan Moseley were at the Seal base on Coronado Island, ready to swim across if Gul went to his yacht, or to jump in Zeke’s Corvette and follow if Gul went someplace else. All they needed now was the main player to arrive on stage.

  At eleven thirty, right on time, the Gulfstream G100 touched down and taxied to the private hangar at the far end of the airport. Gul had arrived.

  Chapter Eleven

  They climbed out of the vehicles and Vince went under the perimeter wire. He carried the HK416, fitted with the grenade launcher. It wasn’t a job for the SWS sniper rifle. Instead of a lethal grenade, the launcher was loaded with the tracker charge. He found a stand close to the hangar and adopted the stillness that is the mark of the successful sniper. In effect, he became one with his surroundings so that the camo net that covered his head and rifle, and the ghillie suit, looked no different from the long grass he lay in. In the day, he was impossible to detect at more than twenty yards. At night, he was totally invisible. He watched the steps unfold from the executive jet, and four men came down them. They were all armed, and each man carried an HK MP5K, the short machine pistol that was deadly at close range. They would all carry hand weapons under the coats, that was a given. He touched the mic button to call the main party outside the wire.

  “Parties disembarking. Four men, carrying MP5Ks.”

  “Roger that.”

  Then Gul came down the steps. He was a man of about forty years old, fit and tough looking. On his arm he had a young girl, maybe sixteen years old. She looked to be Oriental or Asian. She was tiny and beautiful.

  The fruits of crime, Vince reflected.

  Gul wore a five thousand dollar overcoat. The night was slightly chilly. The girl wore a silk suit that hugged her figure as if it had been hand made for her by a Paris couturier, which it probably had. Six more men followed him down, all armed with the same MP5Ks as the first four bodyguards. Vince called it in and then waited to see how they’d drive away. Two cars came around the corner of the hangar and stopped, a Mercedes stretch limo and a Jeep SUV, obviously a chase car for some of the bodyguards. Just before they halted, the scream of a passenger jet howled across the field. It was a perfect cover for the tiny noise his tracker would create when he fired. He pulled the trigger, and even though he was right next to the launcher, he had trouble hearing it over the scream of the jet. He keyed his mic.