London Vauxhall
9 a.m.
April 19th
The DIC checks revealed a fair few ‘hits’ for the name ‘Priory’ in London. There were pubs at all points of the compass, not to mention religious buildings and of course the ‘Priory Grange’ Roehampton, the rehabilitation clinic. Jack Fulton, in the building spot on nine in the morning, thought the intended victim might be there and sent a team to check the list of possible high profile patients. In spite of the high number of possible locations Jack despatched DIC watchers from London locations and took staff off CCTV watch and other duties to visit the pubs, restaurants and religious buildings with ‘Priory’ in the title.
Mason had been awake for an hour and had sat up in the car early in the morning. He was parked in a large car park in the fore court of a building on Benson Court. After waking he put the radio on and heard, amongst other items, news about Cobb. It hadn’t surprised him that Cob had been killed, but the fact that he’d had a suite at Claridge’s, a fact mentioned in the news, was out of place. It crossed his mind, given the speed of security’s arrival and the high profile nature of the hotel that Cobb had been set up. Cobb couldn’t have afforded the suite, Mason reasoned, so it meant that the people hiring them had put him there and if that was the case Cobb had got to the contact point first. So why not put him in a nice quiet place, out of the way, especially given his high media profile after Gatwick. Mason was nervous. He’d had his reservations about the people hiring them and the whole trip south to London.
He got out of the Beetle, walked around the corner to the Priory Arms on Lansdowne Road. The bright blue pub and its little outside ‘beer garden’ frontage was a closed face. He stood outside wondering whether to make a break for it out of the country and forget the whole thing, when someone called his name.
Paul Bentall had been with MI6 for five years. He’d spent the night in the black Honda watching for Mason or Stanton. He had the night shift. Peter on the day shift had it easy sitting in the pub and Bentall looked back on his five years and thought about how he always got the crappy part of any job. He checked the time and seeing it was close to shift change he got ready to report to Pete, when he arrived. They would swap cars and he, Bentall could go get some breakfast and go home to sleep.
He glanced over at the pub and saw Mason walk up and stand outside. It was Mason, he was sure, but he checked the photo just the same. He opened the car door and walked over.
“Peter Mason?”
Mason spun around, his hand on the Sig in the back waistband of his trousers.
“It’s okay Mason. I’m from the buyer. Want to step into the car?”
Mason pulled the Sig from his waistband and put it under his jacket at the front.
“After you.”
They walked over to the car and Bentall got in the driver side, Mason got in the passenger seat. Bentall was nervous. He didn’t dare reach into his jacket for his revolver, a snub nose point three eight Smith and Wesson ‘Night Guard’ special.
“Shame about the others any news on Stanton?” Mason asked establishing the man’s credentials through common knowledge.
“No. Cobb died this morning.”
“I noticed. Did your firm put him in the suite?” Mason didn’t look into his face, but deliberately looked over at the bright blue pub frontage.
“Yes.”
“A bit open wouldn’t you say?”
“No. We wanted him to wait until today and it seemed the least we could do after all he’d been through.”
“Do I get a suite at a top hotel?” At this point Mason did look into Bentall’s eyes.
“No. The job’s on from today, it’s all getting heated.”
Mason stiffened and made his pistol visible, sliding it from under the black leather jacket and resting it on his lap, as Bentall pulled an envelope from under his seat. He handed it to Mason, overtly cautious and casting glances at the automatic aimed at his stomach.
“Easy Mason. There’s the brief.”
Mason struggled to open the envelope one handed, but did so anyway. When the sheets slid out, he dropped them onto his lap, still pointing the pistol Bentall, he scanned the page and looked at the paper clipped passport photo attached to the sheet, his eyes widened.
“Him?” Mason’s voice was the epitome of disbelief.
“What did you expect for a million?”
“But him, that’s not possible! How do you expect me to get near him?”
“That’s your problem. You're to leave that envelope with me, so memorise those five key times and locations which are always the same when he’s at home and give it back.”
Mason read the sheet, put the brief back in the envelope and handed it back.
“Now I take it you’re parked nearby, so you’d better take your equipment and get going.” Bentall was harshly forceful in his tone of voice.
Mason didn’t move though, he had questions now for sure.
Who the hell are you people anyway?”
“That’s secret.” Bentall reached onto the back seat and brought a briefcase forwards. Mason raised the pistol and held his hand further back in response to the sudden movement.
“The equipment and a contact method is in there.” Bentall rested the briefcase on his lap and tapped it.
“Contact method?”
“Disposable cell phone with one number in its memory is the contact method. When the job’s done call and you’ll be taken to safety, a hideout, then a pay off and a well planned escape, any questions?”
“You really expect me to trust you?” Mason looked him in the eyes.
“What else have you got?”
“My wits and my instincts.” Mason said all too suddenly and pressed the weapon to Bentall’s chest and pulled the trigger. There was a muffled bang and Bentall’s face screwed up in agony, he jerked and twisted and finally slumped against the window, his heart having stopped.
Mason looked around. There was no-one to be seen. He began searching the car. He was damned if he’d do the job before he knew who he was working for. The glove compartment was locked, but Bentall had the key in his trouser pocket. There was a nine millimetre Browning pistol with silencer and a spare clip and Bentall’s identification, clearly showing he was with MI6.
Bentall had been told not to take ID with him, but he was sure he’d be spotted by someone whilst he was sitting outside the pub all night every night for at least three days and wanted something to show any police who might show up.
Mason smiled. So the secret service wanted ‘him’ dead. There was a turn up for the books. He checked the case and found a bomb with a timer and the cell phone. He switched on the phone and rang enquiries to get a taxi firm number. He ordered a taxi for twenty minutes later, went back to the Beetle and got his sports holdall. After ten minutes with Bentall’s pass and his own photo he’d made up a passable MI6 badge for himself.
He knew how he was going to get to the target. This was a historic hit. He wasn’t going to trust them after he’d done it, but he knew who they were and where to find them and they’d know that too. They wouldn’t mess with him and he’d get the money and get himself out. Him, no wonder it was a million.
He left Bentall’s body in the Honda, putting the bomb and cell phone in his holdall. He went to meet the taxi around the corner. As he jumped in with the briefcase and gave the address a DIC watcher was driving past him on route to the Priory Arms. Sharp eyed as ever the watcher passed, noted and turned his car around in the car park on Benson Close, to follow. He called Euston Tower on his satellite phone as he followed, alerting DIC.
A DIC duty team was despatched to follow, but not to intervene until Mason had got to his destination. Jack Fulton made it very clear that he wanted to know where Mason was going, it might reveal the people hiring or the target.
Neither Mason, his taxi driver nor the DIC man, in his car, noticed the Nissan Micra following them. Peter Brook had arrived at the Black Honda to relieve Bentall seconds after Mason had walked around the corner. He’d found Bentall dead, the case on the passenger seat, the brown envelope with the target and details, bloodstained on Bentall’s lap, but the bomb and the phone gone. He’d run to corner of Benson Close to see Mason get into the taxi. He had taken the envelope and followed and he too had made a phone call.
The three car ‘convoy’ went up Lansdowne Way and turned right onto the Wandsworth Road. Traffic was thick and it was slow going.
In his office Sternway took the news badly. He’d just sat down and ordered his coffee when the phone rang.
“Sir? It’s Brook. I’m following Mason in a taxi going up the Wandsworth Road. He’s killed Bentall, taken the bomb and he’s headed the right way for the job.”
“Killed Bentall?”
“Yes. One shot to the chest, so he didn’t torture him. There seems to be no reason.”
“Did he take the envelope with the hit details?”
“No sir. I’ve got that with me, covered in Bentall’s blood.”
“Right keep following. He’s not doing that and getting away with it. I don’t like anyone killing my men for no reason. Get ready for extermination and see if you can pick a spot on the route. I call in three minutes to confirm that E order. Clear.”
“Yes Sir.” Brook reached into his glove compartment and took out gloves, he slid them on. He was one of the better skilled men from ‘dirty tricks’ and had carried out a few E orders, mostly abroad. Bentall had been a good colleague and Mason was going to pay.
Sternway put the phone down and stared at it. He’d liked Bentall, a good solid man he’d always said, never complained and always did the nasty stuff really well. Sternway was about to give the execution order for Brook to carry out when he had a better idea. He called Joe from the outer office.
“Mason killed Bentall at the meet point. Brook is tailing him in a taxi up the Wandsworth Road, so you know where he’s headed. Make a call to the Sun newspaper, use a disposable cell phone and whilst you’re at it get rid of this, I mean crush it to pieces.” He threw a lime green Bic disposable cell phone across the desk. It was the only thing to link him to Mason. They had stacks of them, used for one off contact.
Joe picked up the phone and went to the outer office. He sat down and called the Sun newspaper and when he was done he took the cell phones down to the boiler room and threw them in the furnace.
The Sun news desk workers were delighted when they got an anonymous call describing Mason, his route and direction. They despatched a photographer on a motorbike and called armed police. Armed police called DIC as a matter of protocol, but cars had already left Euston Tower. Armed police units sped, lights pulsing, sirens blaring to the junction at the north end of Vauxhall Bridge. All the vehicles converged on the Vauxhall Bridge exit.
Unaware of the gathering problems around him Mason prepared for the taxi to stop a street away from his target’s address. The taxi made slow progress up the Wandsworth Road and the Sun photographer arrived at the bridge exit in time to see the junction surrounded. It was ten in the morning.
The London cab rolled onto the bridge, the red railings flashing past and the two towers on the far side looking like sentinels. The driver was suddenly struck by the lack of traffic coming from the other side.
“Might be a contra flow for some reason; I’ve never seen it this empty.”
Mason looked ahead and saw the blue flashing lights. He looked back and only three cars were following, a large empty gap behind them stretching back across the Thames to more flashing lights at the south entrance.
When the police had sealed the northern exit they waited and sprang into place cutting traffic off at the south entrance. They’d been unable to stop the three cars; directly behind the cab was DIC, a civilian car and then Brook from MI6.
Mason was stunned. Then he became angry. They’d grassed him. It was a trap. He pulled out the Sig and shot the glass between himself and the driver, who hit the brakes.
“Drive on or you’re dead.” The cab driver felt the muzzle of the gun against the side of his face. He drove on.
“Speed up.”
“Are you crazy?”
“No. There’s a road block ahead and they will be armed. You think they’ll give a damn about you when they open up with those rifles and sub machine guns. If you don’t floor it I’ll kill you and if you do floor it you’ll be going fast enough for them not to want to fire at you. Now do it.”
The cab sped up and the DIC operative slowed down, the car behind him also slowed. Brook was about to put his foot down and drive past them, but thought better of it, he slowed too.
At the north entrance police were told not to open fire until the cab had stopped and they had a good clear shot at Mason so as not to endanger the cab driver.
Through the windscreen Mason saw the two police Volvo 440’s blocking the road, the heavy black cab accelerated towards them like a tank and Mason and the driver braced for the crunch. Policemen behind the cars moved away at the last second as the taxi crashed through, smashing the front of each Volvo.
Metal screeched and the impact took the speed out of the cab. Mason was thrown forward, his torso pushed through into the front of the cab. As the damaged cab headed towards Bessborough Gardens a sniper, tracking the car through his scope, saw Mason full body from his side of the road. Mason pulled himself back through the gap just as the round was loosed and the Enforcer round punched the window shattering it, ricocheted off the steering wheel and grazed the cab driver’s forehead, knocking him unconscious.
With his heavy foot on the pedal, dead weight, and his body sliding the wheel to the left, the cabbie unconsciously drove the cab into Bessborough Gardens, smashing into the iron railing gates, where the cab came to rest.
The Sun journalist was positioned opposite the park and his high powered zoom lens honed in on the details of the scene as the rapid shot setting on the camera captured the round stunning the driver, the cab’s passage and the cab crashing. He took shot after shot of police running forward.
Through the lens, on the digital screen, the camera saved the images of Mason rising from the cab’s floor well in the back, the flashes from the Sig220 instantly matching two policemen knocked to the ground as the rounds slugged their way into, but not through, their body armour. Finally the camera caught Mason’s face as three sets of high velocity armour piercing Enforcer rounds penetrated the cab door at chest height, puncturing both lungs and heart. Mason grabbed the door handle and in desperate pain struggled out the door. He fell to the ground on all fours and was knocked onto his back by a kick from a policeman pointing an MP5 at his prone body.
Ambulance men came over, paramedics bearing stretchers. News teams arrived and though held back were able to get shots of the scene from behind the now powerful police cordon.
The cab driver was carefully extracted from the wrecked cab and rushed to St Thomas’ hospital near Westminster Bridge. They checked Mason, but he was dead. He was stretchered to the ambulance and taken away.
The police searching the cab found the case with the bomb in it. It took fifteen minutes to evacuate the entire area including all the buildings surrounding. Press, news teams, police and anyone else in a quarter mile radius was evacuated. Bomb disposal arrived, they used a controlled explosion to destroy it and had they not done so a strange fact would have been revealed, which might well have raised interesting questions at the time, but it was thought safer to blow it up under safe conditions.
The cab, of course, was a wreck. Bullet ridden, dented, glass shattered, ripped apart inside and charred all over with twisted metal pointing out at odd angles, embedded in iron railings. It sat like a gargoyle memorial to yet one more of the hired killers and a testimony to their desperate fatal struggles to remain un-captured.
Traffic was backed up along the Thameside roads as the Vauxhall Bridge was closed at both ends. Traffic on the embankment on both sides took until night time to get flowing again and even then the taxi had not been moved.
Back at the DIC centre, Euston Tower, Jack Fulton and many members of the team watched the scene in awe from live CCTV footage from the numerous cameras in the area.
For a few seconds the whole building sat in silence, all work stopped as the scene was brought up on every screen in every office.
When the shooting was done Diane Peters was standing at Jack Fulton’s side.
“What a mess!”
“Yes it is. Is the taxi driver dead?”
“You want me to find out?”
“Yes. If he’s alive and can talk he can say where Mason was going, the address he’d been given. It might tell us the target of these assassins.” Fulton rubbed his chin in thought.
“I’ll find out and let you know.” Diane replied and strode away with purpose.
Jack noticed Tony Deany by his side.
“Four down one to go boss.” Tony said too brightly for Jack’s liking.
“Very true, aren’t you seeing Else today?”
“Yeah,” Tony looked at his watch, “In about ten minutes, Ellie’s having her session first.”
“Good Else will be off down to Dover to see David tomorrow.” Fulton said reflectively.
Everything had stood still at Euston Tower. Then when the shooting had stopped, some began watching the news footage, but most went on with their searches, knowing that it was their work that had brought down Spencer and Wheeler, and, as they thought at the time, their work alone that had ended the lives of Cobb and Mason. Pride swelled in the building as the teams of watchers knew that they had stopped four of the most murderous assassins the country had ever seen. They all focussed on finding the last man, Trevor Stanton.