Renegade, p.2
Renegade, page 2
‘Anything?’ Ryker said.
‘They went left onto Richmond, but they’re out of my sight now.’
Which meant it was all down to Ryker. He pushed a button on the dash and the siren came back to life. The effect on the cars in front was immediate, and a pathway slowly cleared as Ryker pushed his foot down further. He went past forty, then fifty, then sixty miles per hour as he raced toward the next junction – speeds that seemed impossibly fast on the tight inner-city road.
He was only a few yards from the traffic lights when he spotted a police car approaching in the opposite direction – blue lights flashing. Were they after him? No, too soon. The car sped past.
He took the left turn sharply. The two Range Rovers were in view again, stuck side by side in a queue of traffic at a red light further ahead. They hadn’t yet realised they’d been followed, or else they surely wouldn’t have let a red light stop them. But which one had Parker? With them now side by side, Ryker wasn’t sure.
The lights turned back to green just as he approached. The drivers in the queue did the decent thing of squeezing left and right to clear the way for the fast-moving police car. All the way up to the Range Rovers. One of the drivers floored it, scraping past the car next to it to blast through a gap and through the lights. The second Range Rover was in close tow, and Ryker was soon edging past sixty again as he chased the speeding SUVs down. In close unison the Range Rovers took a sharp right, tyres screeching as the drivers battled to keep control. Both did.
They emerged onto the wider, four-lane Hilton Avenue. But on this occasion wider also meant busier. Up ahead was gridlock.
‘What was the plate of the car with Parker in it?’ Ryker enquired.
No response.
He tapped his mic. Asked the question again. No response.
What the hell?
Then the front Range Rover took another hard right, nearly sweeping over a mother with a pram crossing the road. Ryker was set to follow but the other Range Rover veered left instead.
‘Shit.’
Ryker had only a second to make his choice.
He went right.
This street was narrow, one way only. And they were going the wrong way. Which meant that after only a few seconds the Range Rover was heading straight for another two cars which had turned into the street further along.
‘Don’t do it,’ Ryker muttered.
The driver didn’t heed his advice. The Range Rover mounted the pavement. There were screams as pedestrians dived out of the way. The Range Rover weaved left and right through them. It clattered into a wall, then veered back the other way into the side of a car.
A man walking up the street, his back turned, seemed oblivious to the whole thing, but he was directly in the Range Rover’s path. The driver honked the horn. The man finally realised his predicament and darted left. The Range Rover edged to the right and it looked like it would just about squeeze past.
Then the Range Rover clipped a car on the right, and the driver must have panicked. He swerved left. The vehicle jumped up off the kerb. Three tyres left the ground and the driver had no way to adjust the direction as the vehicle flew through the air. It ploughed into the man, smashing him up against a wall. The Range Rover bounced back the other way, rocking on its suspension as the driver tried to regain control of the beast.
He couldn’t, and the veering worsened until the car was perpendicular to its direction of travel. It flipped. All tyres in the air, the two-tonne hulk spun and crashed down onto its roof. Whatever anti-roll stabilisation the car had wasn’t enough and the roof caved from the impact. The vehicle slid along the pavement, upside down, and came to a crashing halt against the front of a parked van.
Ryker slammed down the brake pedal and a moment later was out and racing toward the carnage.
He went right past the fallen man, whose face and clothes were torn and bloodied. He was already being attended to by a kind and luckier bystander. Ryker would have stopped, too, if he’d thought there was anything he could do to help, but it only took one glance to realise the poor man would never breathe again.
Ryker reached the battered Range Rover and slid down to his knees, next to what remained of the front passenger window. There was no one in the seat there. The driver across the way was wedged in place, head pushed back against the broken roof at a horrific angle to his neck. Blood was dripping everywhere.
He was dead, no doubt about it.
Ryker tried the door but it was wedged stuck. So, too, was the rear door, though the glass there remained strangely intact. He pulled back his elbow and clattered it into the window.
The glass shattered on the third strike. Ryker gazed inside. Two occupants in the rear seats. Just like the driver, one was clearly dead. The other was close to it, the blood around his nose bubbling softly with each faint breath.
Ryker roared in anger and frustration. Not just at the bloody trail of carnage that had been left in his wake across the city, but because it was clear, looking at the lifeless faces, that he’d chased the wrong vehicle.
And now Parker was gone.
3
Ryker made a quick exit from the scene. A scene that should never have occurred at all, and one that he should have been nowhere near. At least not officially.
How had what should have been a simple surveillance operation gone so badly wrong?
The time was edging past 5pm when Peter Winter finally arrived to meet Ryker at the bench near Southwark Bridge on the bank of the Thames. Office workers trawled across the pavements heading to the nearest Tube station, joggers were out in force taking advantage of the warm, dry weather, and bars and restaurants were filling even though it was a Monday.
Winter was as ever smartly-dressed – a pinstripe suit and jacket over a cotton shirt. In his late thirties, he was only a few years younger than Ryker, though he looked fifteen years younger. The difference between a life behind a desk and a life in the field, Ryker guessed. Though the job had taken a physical toll on Winter: he still had a noticeable limp – the most obvious reminder of a bomb blast that had nearly taken his life.
‘I told you I didn’t like working with that guy,’ Ryker said as Winter sat down next to him.
‘Kaspovich? You’re hardly going to try and pin this on him, are you?’
Ryker sniffed. The set-up had been wrong all along. But it wasn’t his gig. MI5 had been in charge of the operation to ensnare Parker and Yedlin. Ryker had been called in by Winter as a favour. An experienced hand, but not really one of them. Not anymore. But more often than not, Kaspovich had ignored Ryker’s input, including his advice on how to plan the op that day.
‘Any word on Parker?’ Ryker asked.
‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me something about that.’
Ryker shook his head. ‘Nothing. I don’t know who those men were.’ Though he hoped he now had the means to find out. But he wasn’t about to let on to Winter or anyone else that he’d pilfered the phones from the men in the Range Rover before he’d scarpered. ‘Yedlin was nowhere to be seen. I don’t think they were his crew.’
‘You’re sure about that? He could have been in the other car. No one had eyes on the insides of those vehicles.’
‘You think he suddenly got an entire security detail we’d never before seen? Young guys with tight T-shirts and tattoos?’
‘What’s the alternative?’
Ryker didn’t have an answer to that one. ‘I made a few calls before you got here. Both vehicles were using fake registrations. ANPR picked up the second Range Rover, the one with Parker in it, but lost it again after it left the M25 heading north past Watford.’
Winter sighed. ‘I heard the same. What about the dead men?’
‘In the car?’
‘Yes, in the car. I already found out about the pedestrian obliterated on his way to lunch. He was twenty-three years old. A Belgium national working for a big bank. He only flew into London on Sunday night. Was due to be home this time tomorrow.’
Ryker held his tongue. Something in Winter’s tone suggested that he held Ryker at least partly responsible for the death of an innocent. Ryker wasn’t sure yet if he felt that was justified or not.
Was he responsible?
‘Anyway, I meant the three guys in the Range Rover,’ Winter said.
‘So none of them survived?’
‘No. One of them nearly made it to hospital still breathing but not quite. From what I understand no ID was found for any of them. A little bit of cash. No phones either. What they did carry was weapons. Three handguns in the car.’
Winter paused as though waiting for Ryker to add something.
‘And fingerprints pulled up nothing,’ Winter said.
‘My best guess is none of them were British nationals.’
‘A guess? That’s the best you’ve got for me right now?’
Ryker said nothing.
‘I’m not sure where this leaves us,’ Winter said.
‘Us?’
‘You and me. The JIA. This op turned into carnage on the streets of London. There’ll be some heads rolling in MI5 over this, but we’ll stay out of their internal politics as much as we can. For now... why don’t you–’
‘I can help find Parker.’
‘I know you could. But why not wait for the shit to blow over before you go wreaking any more havoc.’
Ryker glared at Winter but kept silent and the conversation took a pause.
No matter what events the two men went through together, the dynamic always came back to this. Winter still saw Ryker as his employee. Someone he could give orders to, and rebuke when those orders weren’t carried out to his satisfaction.
Ryker hadn’t signed up for that.
Winter had still been at school when Ryker had first joined the secretive Joint Intelligence Agency in his early twenties. Set up just a couple of years before that, in the wake of 9/11, the JIA had originally been funded jointly by the UK and US governments, and created to combat terrorism by operating even further under the radar than the CIA and MI6. Ryker had been brought into the fold by his old mentor, Mackie, and the two of them had worked closely for years. Worked closely? No, it had been more than that. Mackie had acted like a father figure in Ryker’s eyes, though in reality over the years he’d moulded a troubled teenager into a machine-like black ops agent, carrying out orders regardless of what they were. Ryker wasn’t that man anymore. Years later, tragedy and trauma had finally reawakened him and, after Mackie’s untimely death in a Russian op gone wrong, he’d left the JIA for good.
Winter, Mackie’s assistant by then, had assumed his old boss’s role as Commander of the JIA, but the last few years had been tumultuous for all involved. The US government pulled out of the operation altogether when a new administration took over, and slowly funding from the UK government was being pulled too. Yet the JIA continued to operate, and despite wanting a life away from the chaos and violence that went hand in glove with his old employer, Ryker kept getting pulled back in.
Like for this operation, which he’d been brought into by Winter who was having a hard time working with MI5 to crack open what they believed to be shady dealings between Clint Parker – a senior executive at a multinational bank – and Yuri Yedlin – the outspoken frontman of an ultra-right-wing Israeli political group. Intelligence had suggested the meeting due to take place earlier in the day would formalise further significant funding for the group, but Yedlin had never shown. And now Parker was missing.
Ryker would have liked to have said he’d done his bit. Winter was asking him to stand down – or at least pause – and he should have been more than happy to go back to his private life until Winter – the world? – needed him again.
But as much as he wanted to be, Ryker wasn’t that guy. He was involved now. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he’d figured out who’d ambushed the meeting, and where Parker and Yedlin were.
Winter got to his feet.
‘How’s Moreno doing?’ he asked.
‘She’s fine.’
Winter stood over Ryker, staring down at him expectantly as though waiting for an expanded answer. Was he really interested?
‘Why don’t you go and spend some time with her,’ Winter added. ‘Put your feet up. I’ll call you when I need you again.’
‘I have no doubt you will.’
Winter turned and hobbled off.
4
It took Ryker thirty minutes to reach the South Greenwich Hospital – a private clinic in an ominous-looking, blue-brick Victorian building. He’d never liked this place, and longed for the day that he’d finally be able to turn his back on it for good. While Sam Moreno remained here though, Ryker would come to visit.
It was over a year since the events in Africa which had nearly cost Moreno her life. Over a year of mental and physical toil for her. A year inside a hospital with barely a visitor except for Ryker. Ultimately those events in Africa had cost her the lower part of her left leg, and a significant amount of mental trauma that perhaps remained a bigger scar than her physical ailments.
Africa. Just another in a long line of operations that had left a devastating impact on countless lives. Moreno – an MI6 agent – and Ryker had been part of an elite close protection group sent to work alongside – and spy on – the ailing government of Chabon. The operation had ended with civil war and Moreno and Ryker nearly being blown to bits.
Because the UK government had significantly strengthened its interests in the resource-rich nation following the civil war, the operation was considered a success. Ryker wasn’t so sure Moreno agreed. He also knew she hated this hospital as much as he did. If MI6 hadn’t been footing the bill for her twenty-four-hour care then she would surely have left long ago. But day by day she was regaining more of her old self, and Ryker knew she’d be out of there soon, ready to pick up her life.
He found Moreno in her room on the rehabilitation wing. Although there was nothing that could be done about the clinical feel of the many corridors and wards and waiting areas within the sprawling complex, some of the modern live-in spaces were more like swanky city-centre apartments. Moreno’s space was like a one-bed studio, with its own lounge area, kitchen, and private bathroom, and there were enough personal touches around the place to make it clear this was hers. She even had a decent view of the skyscrapers of central London. The only difference marking this as something other than a private dwelling was the raft of medical equipment spread about the place.
‘Long time no see,’ she said to him when she opened the door, a crutch held under her left armpit. She didn’t have her prosthetic attached and was propped on one foot, grimacing from the effort of holding herself up.
‘I was here two days ago!’
‘That’s a bloody long time when you’re cooped up in here on your own.’
She turned and was about to struggle back to the sofa when Ryker stepped in and shut the door before grabbing her under the arms to assist her. She struggled for only a second – an obligatory show of defiance – before she let him help her back to her seat.
The widescreen on the wall was showing the BBC News channel. Not surprisingly, centre stage was the chaos in central London from earlier in the day.
‘It’s got James Ryker written all over it,’ Moreno said with a cheeky smirk.
She’d no doubt meant it in jest, but it still riled Ryker.
‘I recognised your baseball cap straight away.’
As she spoke a grainy CCTV image of Ryker jumping into the police car played on the screen. He rolled his eyes. In his line of work he was always careful not to get his face plastered all over the news. At least that was one part of the day that had gone successfully. Though it was surprising that MI5 hadn’t already got the footage of the chase pulled from the news networks. They may not have been quite so secretive as the JIA, whose very existence was unknown to most, but they still wouldn’t like the national news showing such detailed coverage of an operation – particularly one gone wrong.
He looked down at Moreno on the sofa. Her short, dark hair was freshly washed, her face free of make-up and she was wearing baggy joggers and a hoody. She looked good, even if Ryker knew that behind the ever-present tough exterior Moreno was still struggling with how her life had turned out. The mental impact of what agents like her went through was another of the reasons why MI6 were so keen to keep her in a facility like this. If she’d been on the NHS she would have been home eleven months ago, but the sad fact was that a horrifyingly high percentage of agents like her – and him – spiralled into self-destruction: alcoholism, drug addiction, self-harm, suicide. Their secretive lives meant agents were often isolated from friends and family, so when trauma struck, they were on their own and could sink fast without support.
Despite the sexual chemistry which had been between them in Africa, he and Moreno weren’t a couple. Ryker wasn’t sure that would ever happen now, though he liked to think that his presence in her life over the last year was one of the reasons she’d stayed so strong. The other reason was that she was a natural fighter.
Could Ryker have loved her under different circumstances? Possibly, but the reality was he couldn’t afford to love anyone anymore. There’d only ever been one person who fit that bill: Angela Grainger. An FBI agent, he’d met her during the darkest days of his life, a few months after he’d very nearly been executed by a psychotic terrorist who he’d been trying to bring down. That moment had been Ryker’s reawakening. Or Carl Logan’s reawakening, as he’d been called then. For years before that he’d been the JIA’s and Mackie’s machine, but the trauma he’d suffered at the hands of Yousef Selim had given Ryker a new sense of life, a new outlook, a new sense of loyalty and morality.
Grainger had come into that life, in her own troubled way. They’d fallen in love. They’d killed for each other. He’d left the JIA for good for her. They’d started a new life, new names, new location far, far away. It was perfect. Until Ryker’s demons had caught up with them. Grainger had been murdered by those demons. With little else left to call a life, Ryker had been drawn back into the JIA since, never officially, but always intent on putting bad guys where they belonged: in the ground. But he’d never properly moved on from Grainger, and wouldn’t ever fully recover what he lost with her death.
