Liberation Day

Chapter 26

As I started to visualize playing Spiderman around the outside of the boat, Lotfi came up on the net. It must have been one-thirty. “Hello, hello, radio check. H?”

Click, click.

“N?”

I pressed twice, and Lotfi finished the check: “Okay.” It was good quick voice procedure, considering we hadn’t worked together with radios before and they were used to babbling off in Arabic over the net.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my chin on them as I watched the silhouettes of the masts and continued visualizing getting onto the boat, moving around to the right-hand side, climbing up the aluminum ladder. I wasn’t happy about it being right next to the cabin window, but at least there was a blind. I imagined that the sea covers were strapped down, so I thought I’d probably have to pull out the hooks from D-rings in the deck before pushing the pipe bomb into the gully where the seat and backrest met, in among the crushed chips, melted chocolate, and spare change.

Lotfi came back on the air at two A.M. and we all had radio check. It was time to stop thinking about it and just get on with it. “That’s N foxtrot.” I was about to start walking.

“L, roger that.”

“H?”

I got two clicks from Hubba-Hubba.

I got up slowly and felt around the towel, brought out the plastic cylinder, still in its garbage bag, then moved along the hedge and exited at the same place I’d come in, and walked down to the car. This time I put the key into the door, to try to cut down on the profusion of electronic signals flying around. High-frequency signals and electric detonators are not a good mix, so the more I could do without them, the better. I had to be quick off the mark, though, once the door was open, as the alarm started to count down with a steady sequence of bleeps. I had to get the key into the ignition and turn it the first two positions before the alarm activated and woke up the whole of BSM.

I got in on the passenger side and put the pipe bomb on the driver’s seat. Then it was on with the latex gloves before opening up the glove compartment to switch on the only interior light I’d left working. I put the device on the drinks tray. Twisting and separating the two halves of the cylinder, I checked the clothespin to make sure the plastic was in place before connecting the batteries.

Hubba-Hubba came up on the net. He was quite casual about it, but he had important information. “Two cars, you have two cars.”

I immediately covered the light with my right hand and lay flat, my cheek resting against the piping of the driver’s seat. I could smell the pick ‘n’ mix candy-store aroma coming from the cylinder as the noise of engines got louder and light bathed the interior of the Mégane. Both vehicles carried on past, and as the sound of their engines died away I sat up again, checked the clothespin and battery plastic yet again, and made sure that the fishing line was still held in place on the outer casing.

I hated this next part.

There was nothing else I could do now; I’d checked everything, but still checked it several times over again. Now I just had to go for it. Besides, if I’d made a mistake, I wasn’t going to know much about it, because I’d be the one in thousands of pieces, not the boat.

I pressed down on the batteries with my left thumb, to keep them in place while I took hold of the plastic safety strip with my right thumb and index finger. I eased out the plastic, without breathing — not that it was going to help in any way, it just felt like the thing to do. Once I had closed and twisted the cylinder tighter, the device was ready to be placed. I’d remove the final circuit breaker once I’d gotten it into position.

I closed the glove compartment and sank back into the darkness.

“L and H, that’s me ready.”

I got an “okay” from Lotfi and two clicks from Hubba-Hubba and waited where I was. After three or four minutes, I saw Hubba-Hubba to my right, his short strides taking him downhill toward the marina entrance.

I let him pass behind me, watching him in the side mirror, and very soon he got on the net. “L, I’m nearly there. Acknowledge.”

Click, click.

Soon afterward I saw headlights up on the high ground as Lotfi started down the hill. The headlights turned into the marina, then disappeared. Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba were moving into their positions, to cover me as I placed the device. Hubba-Hubba was foxtrot and staying near the shops, to warn me if anything was coming from that direction; Lotfi would stay with his vehicle and cover me from the parking lot. They were my eyes and ears while I concentrated on getting the device where it needed to be and not blowing myself up.

Leaving the garbage bag behind, because I still had the gloves on, I shoved the device down the front of my cotton jacket and got out of the car. I moved onto the pavement behind the OP, for some cover between the hedge and the little bit of garden at the roadside, to check myself out. Then, using some of the insulation tape I’d kept in the fanny pack, I taped the earpiece around my ear. I didn’t want it falling off and making a noise, either as it hit the deck or as one of the guys jabbered at me while I was on the task.

I put the tape back in my fanny pack and made sure it was zipped up, then moved it around so it was hanging off my ass. I checked I had nothing rattling in my pockets. The Snickers bars were still there, so I zipped them closed, and jumped up and down to make sure that nothing was going to fall out.

I’d already done this before coming into BSM, but it was part of the ritual for a job, very much like checking chamber and checking the device. Check and test, check and test — it was my lifetime mantra.

Finally I made sure my Browning was going to stay where it was in my jeans and not fall into the water, and checked the hammer. When I’d cocked the weapon, I’d put the little finger of my left hand between the hammer and the pin, then squeezed the trigger so the hammer came forward under control but then stopped in the half-cock position, with the safety off. If I had to draw down, I’d have to make like Billy the Kid in a saloon fight, drawing and whipping back the hammer to its full cock position before I fired. Without an internal holster, it felt safer for me to have it like this as I was clambering around, rather than hanging next to my balls with the hammer back and a safety that could easily be flicked off.

Finally, I pressed each nostril closed in turn, and gave them a good blow. It’s a pain in the ass trying to think and breathe at the same time with a nose full of snot. It would be back soon, it always was on a job, but I liked to start on empty.

As I set off down the road, I got out one of the Snickers bars, undid the Saran wrap, and started to munch. It would make me look less suspicious and, anyway, I was still hungry.