Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021), A BATEMAN [urban books to read TXT] 📗

as Caroline. But it wouldn’t be that easy for her. And Caroline was damned if she would make it so. She glanced at the pair of crutches beside her. “Did you bring the box?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s in the back. I’ve got the parcel tape and bag you asked for as well,” Flymo replied as he gained height and headed for the alpine range of snow-capped mountains ahead of them.

Caroline smiled. Big Dave had met with Flymo further south on the lake and handed him the original box the crutch had been sent in. Thorpe’s DNA and fingerprints were on the crutch as well as the box, and especially the tape she had used her nail on to cut a slit in whilst opening the box. The woman had thought in helping Caroline unpack it, she had taken up the offering of an olive branch, but Caroline had been in the game long enough to remain a step or two ahead. She’d give Thorpe a call when she landed and let her know that the weapon used in an assassination had her prints and DNA all over it, and that the box had her prints on, too. CCTV at the post office would show Thorpe collecting the parcel, while the CCTV at Fortez’ villa would show a woman of athletic build - the same height, weight and build as Thorpe - the colour of her hair hidden by a headscarf. Pertinent to these facts, Caroline had not handled either the weapon or the box without the thin pair of linen gloves she now wore. Once they landed at Geneva, she would slip the box in a parcel bag and seal it, and then Flymo would take it to the storage facility just outside the airport and store it in the locker she had paid for and would continue to pay for monthly on her credit card. Just twenty euros a month for complete peace of mind.

Chapter Forty-Eight

 

Barents Sea

 

The feeling was slowly coming back to him, his limbs burning as they warmed and his lungs feeling as though he’d been hung up and turned into a punchbag. He looked at Rashid, resting in the same manner as himself, sitting in the hull of the boat with his back propped up against the bolster of the seat.

“I bloody hate swimming at the best of times,” said Rashid.

“I’m going off it a bit as well…” King replied. “Thanks, by the way. That felt a bit too close…” He twisted around, caught hold of the seat and pulled himself up. It seemed to take all of his strength and energy. He took two of the chemical handwarmers that he had bought back in Longyearbyen out of his pocket, snapped them sharply to start the chemical reaction and handed them to Rashid. They were already hot in his hand by the time Rashid gratefully took them from him. “It’s come to me, now.”

“What has?” Rashid shrugged it off and pulled himself up as well. He tucked the handwarmers inside his jacket and watched as King snapped two more and tucked them into his inside pockets. He then turned his attention to the case beside him and carefully lifted out the charges and underwater detonation cord. He was warming quickly, the marvellous devices feeling like two hot water bottles inside his jacket.

“That man Newman.”

“You know him for sure?”

King nodded. “Last year, the whole Cole thing, the fallout from the Willard Standing affair. That guy was with Rachel Beam in the CCTV taken from the service station. He slotted Cole and then he killed her, too. A nice tidy end for the CIA to get us all back on side again.”

Rashid nodded. “What are you going to do?”

King shrugged. “I set Beam up good and proper to get to Standing, but she shouldn’t have been killed over it. Newman must have fooled her into helping him get to me, but in fact he was hunting Cole all along to draw a line under the tit-for-tat between us and the CIA.”

“He doesn’t have an engine, he’s not going anywhere.” Rashid shrugged. “The ocean is a dangerous place, especially at these temperatures.”

“We’ll see. I don’t particularly want to spark another thing between us and the CIA again, but I don’t like the way that man Newman works.”

“Some would say the same about you, my friend,” Rashid paused. “You aren’t exactly subtle.”

“We have a clear signal,” Madeleine announced. “One-hundred and fifty metres depth, twenty-knots and heading North-East.”

Grainger looked at the depth finder on the console. “We have an undulated seabed and two-hundred metres of depth in total. That’s why the sub’s kept to that depth. I know that three miles north-east of here, the depth goes way down. There’s a deep channel that funnels various currents, including the Gulfstream into a tremendous current through the Northern Sea Route.”

“How deep does it get?” asked King pensively.

“Beyond the scope of that tracking device,” Grainger replied glibly. “Whatever you’re going to do, you’ve got less than three miles to do it in…”

Rashid picked up a charge and studied it. It was heavy, five kilogrammes and the size of a family-sized cereal box. “These are not standard,” he commented.

“They have been prepared by Royal Ordnance. The wrapping is waterproof and the det cord is for underwater demolition use,” King informed him. “The charges have a non-return rubber seal through which to feed an RDX detonator and cord.”

“Initiation?”

“Electronic timers. They have a waterproof housing but unless we get the calculations right, then we could miss by a hundred metres or more.”

“The anchors are approximately five kilos in weight,” said Madeleine. “Grainger and I have worked out sink rate of those, adding five kilos will be relatively simple to calculate. It’s more to do with mass than weight when calculating how something sinks.” She took out her smartphone