Close Quarters

TWENTY-FIVE

After an hour’s hard driving I pulled in to the side of the road and gave the Isuzu a careful going-over. I didn’t know the female shooter’s status or if she had other colleagues in the area. But I found no bugs, no tracking devices or unusual little electronic boxes beneath the hood or in the trunk, nothing to tell me that I might soon have a backup team all over me like a rash.

The back seat in the extended cab had a sleeping bag where I figured the second shooter had been asleep while the woman drove. There were two bags containing a change of clothes — one small female, one larger male — and some basic field-type rations typical for the kind of track-and-stop operation they had been on, and which wasn’t expected to take more than a day or two. The woman’s bag held extra magazines for the OSV and the Grach, which I pocketed. The man’s held a spare magazine for his rifle. I left that there but took a hat with ear flaps and dumped the rest behind some bushes. Then I took out my cell phone and keyed the speed-dial for Callahan and waited.

A woman’s voice answered. ‘Go ahead, Watchman.’

‘I need to speak to Callahan.’

‘Sorry, he’s not available right now. You can report to me and I’ll see he gets it soonest.’

‘You’ll take it to him yourself?’ There’s an etiquette regarding operatives in the field; they get top priority no matter what. It’s the nature of the game. If their prime nominated contact — and for me that was Callahan — isn’t available, they get handed to the next in line, usually another duty officer of similar or appropriate rank. It’s how decisions that might involve life or death situations get made promptly and nobody gets left hanging.

Being left hanging is a form of slow torture.

‘If I have to. But I’m your primary communications link from here on in. I’m recording, so please speak when ready.’ Her words were crisp and confidant with no superfluous chatter. She’d been well trained.

‘What’s your name?’ It probably wasn’t approved procedure, but neither time nor circumstance were in abundance. I needed this faceless woman on my side, and having a name — even a temporary one — would help us both establish a professional rapport.

‘Lindsay. With an “A”.’

‘First or last?’

‘First.’ Something about the way she had said it told me it was real. But I like to check. Most of us use our own names with a faint hesitation, unless you’re a call-centre operator and hitting numbers eight hours a day trying to sell finance or auto wax. Then it’s just another word. I did the job once working undercover. Never again.

‘Nice name.’

‘My mom thought so. Dad not so much.’ The hint of humour made me wonder if she knew anything about where I was right now and what I was doing. I knew she would have been thoroughly briefed, but the level of information given out about operatives and assets depended a lot on the ops officer and his trust in the people he was using. And Callahan had told me they would be using someone off the trainee program.

I gave her a summary of the run-in with Ivkanoy and the two shooters he’d sent after me. I left out the fine details; it wasn’t necessary and bragging about a kill ratio isn’t cool. If Callahan wanted to know more I’d tell him later. For now it was over and done with.

‘Are you free and mobile?’ She meant was I in one piece.

‘I am.’ The one thing a comms officer has to know is the condition and viability of an operative in the field. I confirmed my approximate position and direction of travel, and she listened without interruption. I could hear the soft rattle of a keyboard in the background as she made notes.

When I finished she said, ‘What’s your position relevant to Travis?’

‘I’m an hour behind him. He’s being taken to the first hand-over. That’s if it hasn’t already been raided.’

‘I understand. We’re having them checked out independently. Do you expect any interference from the two from Donetsk?’

She was asking if the shooters were likely to pose an imminent threat to me keeping an eye on Travis. She had a sharp ear for detail, and I was relieved; having someone on the other end of the line who was focused meant I didn’t have to repeat myself.

‘That situation is resolved.’ It was as oblique as I could manage and as vague as she was going to get. I wasn’t concerned about anyone listening in so much as not wanting to give out details I might later come to regret.

‘Can you confirm any ID?’ She was covering all the bases, just in case Callahan wanted to run a check through local contacts to make sure the field wasn’t being flooded with opposition forces or cops on the look-out.

‘One was named Olena Prokyeva — a freelance pro. It was a local thing; gang-related. Nothing to do with our situation.’

That wasn’t entirely correct, and Callahan would know it. The fact of my passing through the region was now on the board, even if known only by a local ticked-off gangster. As far as the troops in Obluskva Street knew, I was an unknown quantity who’d got in the way and snatched Travis from under their noses. I’d left no footprint, so I didn’t think that was serious. But sooner or later somebody would happen on the Toyota and the two shooters, drawn by the sight of smoke in an otherwise open landscape. What happened after that was anybody’s guess.

‘I’ll get her checked out,’ Lindsay said. ‘And the other person?’

‘He wasn’t saying.’

She didn’t miss a beat. It showed remarkable cool and I admired her for it. Even the mention of a woman shooter in opposition hadn’t surprised her.

‘I understand. Anything else?’

‘Just one thing. I know you’ve got approved speech procedure. But we should keep it casual.’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘The terminology. If there’s a monitoring station in the area, they could pick up and recognize key words.’

Key words: the bane of anyone wanting to stay off the grid, yet forced to use technology for what it was. Government agencies use key words for information searches and listening in to phone calls — even encrypted ones. All it needs is one — among the biggest are ‘terrorist’ and ‘bomb’ — and electronic tracking does the rest. The US has the National Security Agency (NSA) and the British have the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). But they’d be foolish to think they were the only ones using such powerful, high-tech systems. Russia has a reputedly much-diminished Third Directorate, which does similar work, but nobody assumes they’re anywhere near powerless.

At least, I don’t.

‘I gotcha. Will that do you for now?’

I laughed. Lindsay with an ‘A’ caught on fast.