Ignatius

Priestley.

Prologue

July 2008

The four soldiers were cautiously approaching an old rice storage warehouse just outside Jinan, in the Shandong region of China.

The assault team leader, Ignatius Winter, spoke to the team through his field radio microphone. ‘Stay alert.’ It was a sentiment spoken out of habit, rather than necessity. All four of these men were the best of the best. They were always alert.

Each one of them was carrying a C8 Carbine as their primary assault rifle with a Sig Sauer P226 handgun as a backup. The air felt unnaturally heavy and Winter wasn’t feeling good about this operation.

The street running centrally through this small village was almost deserted, but they were expecting that. It was an almost derelict village with only a few stubborn locals still choosing to live here.

The properties that weren’t in an unliveable state of disrepair had their window blinds shut. Was this usual here, and just a consequence of trying to keep the heat from the sun out, or was it due to another reason? Winter and his team didn’t know. He wished they’d had more time to prepare, but they didn’t, so they had to carry out the operation using the Immediate Action Plan they had formulated.

Spread out across the street as this was the only viable approach to the warehouse, they were now within sixty metres. Winter caught a movement of shadow out of his left eye’s peripheral vision and instinctively sidestepped to his right. A fraction of a second later a bullet hit the ground three feet behind the space he had just been occupying.

The battlefield opened up. Gun nozzles flashed like cameras at a sporting event, the explosions were deafening and the air was displaced with rifle rounds pouring down at almost 3000 feet per second. It was hell, but these men operated in hell and training kicked in. They moved like ghosts and to the aggressors it seemed that every time they fired a shot, the bullet hit where the Soldiers had just moved from.

The assault team were expecting an enemy of between six to nine, but they were facing a force of thirty-three combatants, who had every tactical advantage. Had they been outnumbered four to one, no problem, but at over eight to one, it was an issue. Despite this, every time one of these four men pulled the trigger a hostile fell down.

As good as they were, the sheer volume of enemy fire meant it was similar to trying to dodge rain, and eventually the bullets started connecting with their bodies. Some were stopped by kevlar body armour, but others hit vital organs and three of the four soldiers had been hit with what would become fatal wounds. Even with the last breaths in their bodies, these three warriors kept putting down firepower.

The enemy combatants had only seen four men approaching, but with the level and accuracy of firepower that had come their way, they assumed that there were at least four times that amount of men. Twenty-five of their own were already dead and they only had eight left, two of whom were badly injured. They had no doubt that more soldiers were on their way, and out of fear they fled via a narrow side alley.

Ignatius Winter lay wounded on the street behind a pillar. He hadn’t heard any gunfire for a few seconds, so he persuaded his body to move over to his brothers in arms and check on them. Two were already dead and one was taking his last few breaths. He sat with him, holding him in his arms whilst he died on a street over five thousand miles from home.

On the sun baked street, Ignatius Winter made a promise to himself and his dead brothers: he would one day find out who had betrayed his team and he would take vengeance.

1

Present Day

May 11th, 1pm

Bambi lay down on the grey, sheet metal, industrial grip pattern plate and found his nest amongst the snaking of cables required to operate a sightseeing boat on the River Thames. He had been on this very boat several times before, in preparation for today.

The boat did multiple daily tours between Greenwich and Westminster and took in historic London landmarks, such as The Cutty Sark, St Paul’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge and most importantly, The Houses of Parliament.

It was a two-tier metal shelled vessel. The first floor had extensive porthole windowing along the sides. The second tier was open-air, and even on a cold London winter day it was still the most popular deck. It had flooring on both decks made of a cheap wooden panelling. This was for aesthetic purposes, but that covered two other layers of flooring on each level; one of which was sound proofing, so that the paying customers were spared the hum of the engines and mechanical workings.

As Bambi lay within the engine room below the first deck, he set to work removing the circular metal hole that he had cut along the side of the boat on one of his previous visits. He had replaced the circular metal sheeting that had initially been removed, using a waterproof industrial glue. He also painted the edging to hide any evidence in the unlikely event that anyone was inspecting the structure.

The boat had recently undergone its mandatory safety inspection, so he was as confident as could be that any inspection of credibility wouldn’t be undertaken. He fired up his hand-held plasma torch and traced the edges of the cut. The heat from the torch would weaken the glue strength enough, without compromising the metal shell. Then using an aluminium suction pad bought from a hardware store for £14.99, he freed the previous cut sheeting while simultaneously sliding a piece of cardboard painted with a metal effect finish to replicate the exterior of the boat. This was a necessity in case someone walking alongside the river suddenly saw a hole appear in the boat.

This way, in case an eagle-eyed stroller thought they saw a hole, by the time they did a double take, the painted cardboard from that distance would be indistinguishable from the rest of the frame; and it would be dismissed as a viewing anomaly.

Setting to work on his final preparations before the big show, and more importantly, big pay day, he used an electric screwdriver to remove the screws for a section of the flooring and replaced them by sticking on previously decapitated screw heads that he had brought with him. He slid it aside to check the rest of his equipment was in place. It was.

Putting on a wetsuit in ample space is a pain, putting one on in very limited space, whilst having to be certain not to knock into anything, was just reason enough to hurt someone.

He stripped off all his clothes and put them in his backpack, after removing what was currently in there. The bag had a waterproof compartment to ensure they remained dry. Fully naked, barring the plastic surgical gloves he wore, he put two plastic shopping bags over his feet and used them to slide easily into his wetsuit.

From below the flooring panel, where he had removed the screws, he retrieved his L129A1 Sharpshooter gun. The L129A1 Sharpshooter is a marksman’s rifle that has been fielded, predominantly by UK elite forces since late 2010.

The weapon was procured in order to fill a capability gap identified by experience in Afghanistan, where British infantry units were often engaged by small arms fire from outside the range of their own assault rifles and light machine guns, at ranges between 500m and 800m.

The width of the river at that point is 252m , so the rifle was arguably overkill. But after endless hours on the range, exhausting the weapon, this was what Bambi was most comfortable using for the operation. It was also the best barrel to fit his custom made silencer without compromising the trajectory of 7.62x51 NATO ammunition. He set to work stripping and cleaning the weapon and checking the ammunition as he’d never used this exact rifle before. No one had.

Three weeks previously it had been stolen from a deniable British Military store in Istanbul, which was on hand for Special forces and Security Services use as required.

The building fronted as an industrial cleaning unit and had staff turn up each day to live this ruse. The business, whilst heavily protected by infrastructure had a human presence which was minimal, and stock checking was loose at best. It would take an amount of time, if at all, to realise the weapon was missing. Managing the procurement of these types of sites worldwide was not a priority. Being deniable, even to most senior figures within the UK Government, there was no reporting required.

Timings wise, the boat was four minutes behind schedule, but that wasn’t a major issue. Allowances had been built into the operational planning. He had plenty of time.

The boat slowed to an almost standstill as it was preparing to dock and allow the current passengers off and refill with new customers for another river tour of London. Now, Bambi removed the piece of cardboard from the hole. He was unlikely to be seen from across the river at over 200m, and walk by traffic was non-existent. This was due to the fact he was directly opposite the Houses of Parliament Terrace Pavilion.

The Terrace Pavilion, Bambi knew, was an event venue for larger receptions at the House of Commons with access out onto the Commons’ Terrace. The east front of the Pavilion measures 265m, and is the longest façade of any building in London.

A purpose-built heated marquee provides an ideal venue for all weather conditions. The panoramic glass doors offer uninterrupted views of the river Thames, and open out onto the terrace.

The pavilion had traditionally been used for Members to entertain their guests but was also now available for private hire, assuming you had a healthy bank balance or healthy influence, of course.

Today, it was very much being used by a Member. The British Prime Minister, Mary Henshaw, along with leading front benchers within her cabinet and the shadow cabinet were entertaining guests, and eating a bizarre fusion banquet of Chinese and English dishes.

The reason for what most chefs would consider a culinary insult, was that the Prime Minister was hosting a small but distinguished contingent from China, including Li Jintao the President of the People’s Republic of China, Zhang Jinping, the Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China and the Minister of National Defence, Xu Hua.

Bambi had already entered his trance-like state as he prepared his body once again for the shot. He had removed his surgical gloves as he always did for this part. He didn’t need to worry about any fingerprints as he had covered them and his palm in superglue beforehand.

The surgical gloves were an extra level of protection for DNA leakage. He knew the gloves themselves would have been little use against fingerprint prevention, anyway. Many burglars had been caught out before, not realising that fingerprints can often be transferred onto surfaces whilst using surgical gloves; a thicker weave was needed to hide prints. He had pressed the button to begin the timer eighty-eight seconds ago. There was no need for him to use any device to measure this period of time. His body knew exactly how long each part of this ritual took.

The glass doors on the Terrace Pavilion were built using P4A armoured glass sourced from a company in Germany. Although it wouldn’t have been difficult to find and use ammunition to pierce the glass, it might cause the flight of the bullet to deviate. This wasn’t an issue for Bambi, because as promised, the doors on the Terrace had been slid fully open, which wasn’t unusual on a warm day of May.

The target was clearly in his sights for a full two seconds before he pulled the trigger on his L129A1. Almost instantaneously he saw the pink mist that confirmed he had hit his target’s centre forehead whilst the target looked out onto the river from the Terrace balcony. Additional confirmation came in the form of the target collapsing to the ground like a discarded jacket. Within a second of the bullet impacting bone, the button that he had pressed ninety-seven seconds previously, set of a low-level flash bang on the third floor of the building, south side of the river opposite the Houses of Parliament.

Bambi didn’t hang about admiring his work. He glued back in place the removed pane of metal, stripped down the weapon and put everything, that wasn’t previously part of the boat, in his rucksack. He moved the loosened panel so that half the width was open and slid under it into the bilge of the boat, then reached above his head to slide it back in its place.

He was now in a cramped metal triangle where he had spent most of the time on his previous visits. Awkwardly, he put on his flippers and goggles and slid the mouthpiece of his breathing apparatus into his mouth. This was attached to a small tank of oxygen, giving him approximately thirty minutes breathing time, which on top of the comfortable eight minutes he was able to hold his breath, gave him enough time for what he needed.

Collecting the last parts of his equipment, he put a door handle on the centre part of a piece of the metal frame, pressed a button to engage the magnet and pulled. What seemed to be a single sheet of metal folded inwards opening a gap on the bottom of the boat, so he could shimmy into the water after he pressed another button on the handle to disengage the magnet, freeing it and taking it into the water with him. He then engaged the magnet on the outer shell and pulled again to close the hole into the boat. This had taken a matter of seconds, but inevitably had let water into the boat. However, this would spread along the whole length of the boat and would be unnoticeable on performance or use of the boat for the immediate future.

Bambi positioned himself so that his head was pointing towards the bed of the river and used his flippers to kick down and towards the centre of the river. At this tide the Thames was between twenty to twenty-one metres deep. Bambi just needed to be below seven metres to ensure that his silhouette or heat signature wasn’t visible from any passing boats, nosy drone or other aircraft that might be flying overhead.

Bambi used an Oceanic OCI personal wrist dive computer to measure his depth and maintained it once his dive computer showed him at ten metres. It was when he was at this depth that he activated his last bit of equipment for this part of the operation. The TUSA SAV-7 EVO3 Scooter Diver Propulsion Vehicle. The underwater propeller once brought to life, towed Bambi along at six knots.

Just after twenty minutes later, Bambi pulled up alongside a wall on the south side of the Thames at approximately three metres deep. During the journey, which was the equivalent of two and a half land miles, he had discarded the equipment that he no longer required, including the weapon which had been stripped to parts; and he’d discarded each part sporadically along the journey.

It would take nothing short of a miracle for anyone to recover every bit of the gun and link them together as one weapon. Even if they did, it didn’t matter. It couldn’t be traced back to him, or anyone for that matter, but there was no point making things easier for people.

He took out his pliers and cut the zip ties that were holding a metal grate in place. The grate covered a wide pipe leading into a larger structure. A week previously, Bambi had used an underwater torch to cut free the metal grate and had secured it in place with the zip ties that he was now cutting.

Once he’d released the grate, he sunk the rest of the equipment he’d no longer need, including his propeller, dive computer and weighted wetsuit.

Naked bar his rucksack, he used a mixture of swimming and crawling along the pipe until he reached an exit part of the piping that led into an underground and unused store room. In the room he shook excess water off himself and opened his rucksack to reveal completely dry equipment inside the waterproof compartment.

Using a towel, he was sure to dry himself thoroughly, before putting on his clothes: some cycle pants and a cycle jersey, as undergarments. Then, over that, some black trainers that looked like smart shoes at a glance when covered with trousers. They were also practical for high levels of activity. Next, some black non-descript trousers, a black shirt and finally a thin, black waterproof jacket that had the insignia of a local catering company.

He made his way up some tight spiral stairs used for trade and slid unnoticed into a large room with a hive of frantic activity going on. He was in the industrial kitchen of Battersea Power station, which was currently hosting a high-end lunch for over sixteen hundred guests with over a hundred and fifty staff on site, working in a variety of capacities. Since the power station had been decommissioned it had been used successfully as an event venue, whilst its long term future was being argued over.

He was by the indoor dustbins and went about emptying two of them, one which was almost empty and one which was half-full. He took them outside and headed towards the vast trade bins. No one even gave him a second glance. As soon as he’d entered the room, he’d put his backpack in the almost empty bin bag, before tying it up. Now outside and confident he was out of sight of anyone, he opened both bins bags and emptied the half-full one into the other bag to cover the rucksack and then put the now empty bin bag on top of that before tying it up to look like one full bag. He disposed of the full bag into the industrial hired event bins outside, which he knew were being collected at 6am tomorrow morning.

He walked around the side of the bins, which rested against the back of some old and vast store rooms that had once been used to store fuel for the power station and were now used to store a multitude of equipment. They were secured with a padlock which took Bambi less than a minute to pick. Inside, he moved aside some spare plasterboard and pulled off a dust sheet to reveal a bike with a logo heat bag attached to the back, inside of which was some Sushi that had been sitting there for over twenty-four hours now. It wasn’t a snack that he had any intention of tasting.

He removed his jacket and reversed it, before he put it back on. His black jacket was now a green and grey jacket and he had a grey cycle helmet. To anyone who saw him, he was a Deliveroo cyclist courier for fast food. The success of the company, meant that they were a regular sight around London, which helped make them effectively invisible, in the same way a road worker is.

From Battersea Power Station, it was an 8.8 mile ride to West Croydon Rail Station. On average the cycle time would be close to fifty minutes. As he was cycling out of the power station, he very nearly crashed into a site security guard, who yelled some form of abuse at him as he carried on, but he was too far away by this point to hear or care what was said. He had a pretty good idea though what was the gist of the message.

Bambi pulled into West Croydon Rail Station within thirty-five minutes, without any further incident. He walked into the toilets with his bag and took of his outer clothes and put them in the bag, so he was now wearing his cycle pants and jersey.

He peeled of the logo he’d added to the bag, so it was a non-descript black bag. One of the reasons he’d chosen West Croydon Rail Station was due to the fact that it was currently undergoing extensive maintenance and building work as well as the issue that Deliveroo cyclists would only deliver to a restricted radius. A Deliveroo cyclist too much further south of Croydon, would turn from being invisible to being suspect, hence why he had now taken on the persona of amateur but keen cyclist. He casually waited until one of the many skips was free and discarded his bag in one, which he buried under heavy rubble from the ongoing works.

The final part of his journey was certainly for him the most relaxing, although for most it would be physically taxing. He had a thirty-one-mile cycle ride to Mannings Heath, a village on the outskirts of Horsham in West Sussex. The journey took two hours and fifteen minutes, which was a quite leisurely pace for him.

He pulled up to the farmhouse in Mannings Heath at 4.43pm and entered his humble room in a converted barn where he had been living in for the past six months.

2

It had been eight months since Bambi had first been contacted about this job via his agent.

Bambi didn’t know what path in life you had to follow to become a broker for mercenaries but he wasn’t exactly one to talk, and wasn’t here to judge. His agent wasn’t typical of agents in other industries. He was simply used as a means for potential contacts to get in touch with Bambi with a job request. The requests weren’t overly varied. He only offered one service: death.

The service was categorised from A – D. Category A was a high-level public figure with influence and resource, which meant the fallout from the job would be significant. Category D was cheating-spouse-type level with limited fallout. The agent would contact Bambi with the request, timeframe and money offered. From there Bambi would decide if he would speak with the client. Even just to speak to Bambi, he charged five thousand US dollars with no guarantee he would take the job. At this stage, he usually only accepted around twenty per cent of the jobs offered.

The job offers were few and far between, but that was no reflection on the service offered. Even amongst the world of people who would hire an assassin, the vast majority had never heard of Bambi and for those that had, most didn’t believe he was actually real.

The security services with any credibility throughout the world were convinced of his existence, but there was debate between them, whether it was a ‘he’, a ‘she’ or a ‘them’. The only information that had repeated itself about him, to the few people who believed they might have had contact, was the rumour that when he was a child his mother had been shot.

The intel suggested that this was a serious cause