Everybody Talks ...

DoD Photo

Hamza awakened, or at least he thought he was awake. He was restrained in a sitting position. He could move a little bit but doing so caused some pain. The straps holding him down were very tight.

He couldn't see anything, yet his eyes, as far as he could tell, were not covered. The same went for his hearing, he could hear nothing at all, even though he was sure there was nothing obstructing either ear. He thought to make a sound, then realized that whoever was holding him was also probably listening, he didn't want them to know that he was awake.

He tried to remember how he got here, wherever "here" was. He was groggy and he realized that he'd been drugged. Then bits of memory had began to return. The car slowly pulling off the motorway, steam issuing from under the bonnet, Kishiev looking at the dash, then at the road, confused and trying to figure out if they were in any danger.

Aliev in the back was asking what was happening, Hamza had awakened him moments before something struck their vehicle. Aliev was still half asleep but was alert enough to see something moving outside the vehicle.

The man had muttered "What the Hell ..." in Chechen just before the back passenger window nearest the side of the road shattered and Aliev's head snapped to the right as a nine millimeter slug tore through his brain.

Before Hamza could react, Kishiev's window also shattered and the driver's head had bounced off the steering wheel as a slug from the same weapon had hit him in the back of the head. Both of his Chechen bodyguards were down, obviously dead.

Hamza remembered wishing that he was armed, but then a pair of strong hands had reached through his own, now shattered, window. He turned in time to see the syringe stab into his bicep, he felt the sharp sting of the needle, then he felt nothing.

Until he had awakened, restrained, and apparently blind and deaf. For one of the few times in his life, Ditmir Hamza felt fear, absolute, all-encompassing fear.

Wolf turned from the monitor and addressed MacDonald, "With the drugs we've put into him and his current situation, he'll be ready to talk soon."

"What makes you so sure, Mr. Wolf?"

"He's completely restrained, uncomfortably so I might add, he's seen the two people he relied on to keep him safe violently killed right in front of him, he's been snatched out of his vehicle, drugged, and we've made sure that the room he's in has no light and is totally soundproofed."

"What did you give him?" Gordon asked.

"It's a form of LSD, fairly mild but will give the subject hallucinations and make him very paranoid."

"How do you know he'll talk, some men ..." MacDonald began.

Wolf cut him off, "Everyone talks, it's just a matter of time."

Tan Quanyu listened carefully as the police constable detailed the accident on the M8 which had killed two people and, the police believed, had had a third occupant of the vehicle who was now missing. His contact in the Glasgow police was politically motivated, a sincere believer in Communism, especially the variety espoused by the People's Republic of China.

"It looks like a drug hit, but the sophistication of the attack leads us to believe otherwise. A drug gang would have sprayed the vehicle with automatic weapons fire, this car was hit by a single round which disabled the engine and the two dead occupants were each hit by a single round to the head."

Tan asked, "What about the drugs in the vehicle? What about the currency nailed to the driver's head? This seems like a drug thing to me."

"It might be, and headquarters seems willing to write it off as just that, a squabble between drug gangs. But, the circumstances were interesting enough that I thought you'd be interested."

"Hhmm, it may be a simple police matter, but thank you for bringing it to our attention. I'll be in touch PC¹ Huang."

Tan looked at his watch, he needed to get to the communications room at the Consulate in Edinburgh. Ditmir Hamza was overdue, he had expected the man to contact him over an hour ago.

His man inside the Glasgow police did well to contact him. Jason Huang was a true believer, his parents had emigrated to the UK to open a business, with PRC help, and their son had proven to be an asset of very high value indeed. Now it was his job to try and determine if the incident on the M8 had involved his hireling, Hamza.

The pain began in the sole of his left foot and then had radiated up his leg and into his groin. He gasped at the intensity of it, he felt a brief sense of shame as he realized that he had wet himself. Then he realized, he had heard himself gasp, so he wasn't deaf.

As the pain subsided, Hamza tried to regain control of himself, then the pain began again, this time starting from the sole of his right foot. He cried out and tried to wiggle away from the pain spreading throughout his body, to no avail, the straps cut into his flesh, then the pain stopped and the space he was in was suddenly flooded with very bright light.

He clenched his eyes shut, but the brightness of the light seemed to burn through his eyelids, only to abruptly stop, the room dark again. Then a speaker near his right ear hissed to life and he heard, "Kush është miku yt në Kinë?"²

Hamza said nothing, he knew this for some sort of trick, then the pain began again.

MacDonald shook his head, "Hamza is dead? How?"

Wolf shrugged, "Probably a heart attack, I don't really care. But we got a name from him, a cultural attaché at the Consulate in Edinburgh. A certain Tan Quanyu, he's been at the Consulate for a little under a year. I've got my guys checking on him, see what sort of information we have on this guy. It's a start."

"Shall I pass that along to my superiors? Perhaps they already have some sort of ..." MacDonald asked.

"Sure, if you want the guy to skip town as soon as he hears that he's under suspicion."

"You think that there's a leak in my organization?"

"Until we know otherwise, everything we discover should stay with us. Your team and mine, nobody else."

MacDonald nodded, "Probably a wise move."

Wolf grimaced, "Certainly, not probably."

¹ Police Constable.

² Albanian - "Who is your friend in China?"

Intercept

USMC Photo

"We good?" Wolf was looking over Max's shoulder, watching the feed from the drone hovering near the apartment block where the moneyman was supposedly staying.

"Ya know, we're supposed to have a green strobe on that thing for flying at night, just sayin'." Max looked at Wolf with a grin.

"We'll take care of that right after we register all of these guns and explosives with the British cops."

Max chuckled, then stopped as he sat up straight and began to work the drone's controls. Wolf watched as the picture on Max's laptop zoomed in to focus on three men emerging from the building.

"I think that's our guy. Damn, those Chechens look competent as hell." Max rather wished he was in the field with the two teams Wolf had sent out just before the sun went down.

Fuji sat up when his comms gear buzzed in his ear. He opened the small display and saw a single letter. Turning to his team he said, "Looks like we're in business. Home base saw the package leaving the facility. Max will follow them to give us a good route. MacDonald's intel was good, our boys are heading back to Edinburgh."

Tony started the Ford Transit's engine and waited for instructions, looking down at his navigation display, he asked, "So, think they'll take the M8 to Edinburgh? There are other routes but the M8 is the most direct."

Karl, sitting in the passenger seat of the small van chimed in, "If they don't suspect anything, why not go direct?"

Fuji, after sending an alert to Sally's team, sat in the jump seat behind the driver's position, "If these guys are any good, they'll be damned careful at all times. They might take a longer route, you know, just in case."

"Intel I saw said that these guys have a regular run back and forth between Glasgow and the capital, nine times out of ten they take the M8, the only time they didn't was because of construction last summer. Then they took the long way through Falkirk." Karl had done his homework.

Fuji nodded, "That's what the drone is for, that's why the boss deployed two teams, cover both likely routes. Hey, it's not like this is a really big country, there's maybe ten miles between the two routes at the widest point. Theoretically one team could cover both routes, but we've got both covered without having to stretch things."

Fuji's comms gear buzzed again, he checked the number on the display, "They're on the M8, headed this way. Let's get set up."

Ditmir Hamza was deep in thought as he mindlessly watched the scenery flow by, looking over, he saw that Kishiev was over the speed limit by about ten kph.

"Salavdi, slow down a bit we're in no hurry."

Salavdi Kishiev let up on the accelerator and mumbled, "Megar du."¹

Hamza turned around and shook Abuyazit Aliev's knee, "Wake up Abuyazit! Your snoring is enough to wake the dead."

Aliev grunted and sat up, "Sorry, boss."

Looking to his front Aliev could just make out an overpass, there was a sign beside the road. He was hungry so he asked Hamza, "Think we might stop ahead and get some food?"

Hamza turned to answer, as he did so, something hit the front of the car and it immediately began to lose speed. "What was that?"

Kishiev looked at the panel, he saw that the engine was overheating rapidly, "Damn it, I think we took a rock in the radiator. Something came off the road and hit the motor, that's certain."

Jack "Sally" Fields watched as the expensive car pulled off the road, steam was beginning to issue from under the hood, what the Brits called the bonnet. He swung his scope over to the brush beside the road, he could see the other two members of the team moving up to waylay the occupants of the car.

He saw the lasers come on in his NVGs, saw them move around the vehicle, then come to rest, one on the driver's position, the other on the back seat.

The two muzzle flashes were nearly imperceptible.

The Albanian had struggled briefly before the drug hit his system. In the shock of seeing his bodyguards both die within an instant of each other he had frozen. Not that he was trained for combat after all, some rudimentary instruction with a pistol but that was it. The Chechens were the experts and they had been taken out with barely a sound.

The two men, clad all in black, quickly pulled the Albanian into the brush. Dragging him a couple of hundred yards to a small access road, they found Sally waiting for them. They bundled up the moneyman, immobilizing and gagging him, then put him into the back of the dark blue Volkswagen Caddy.²

They were off, headed towards Falkirk, less than a half hour since Aliev had been awakened by Hamza and criticized for his snoring. Something that would no longer be a problem. For anyone.

"Bloody hell, Mac. The police are onto a shooting scene on the M8, just outside of Whitburn. Two dead men, drugs scattered about the inside of the car, one man in front, one in the back. Fellow in the back had a tenner nailed to his forehead. I mean literally nailed."

Gordon put the phone down and began to head for the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Talk to Wolf, this is far too visible, we don't want the police to start ..."

"Start what? Looking for drug dealers who killed two men on the M8? We wanted the Chechens dead, right? I mean that was your bloody idea, send a message and all that."

Gordon stopped, "Well, I guess I just hadn't expected ..."

"Hadn't expected what? That Wolf would be that creative? What were you expecting, two dead Chechens delivered to the Chinese Consulate? Keep it out of the papers?"

Gordon sat down and rubbed his hands over his face, "Bloody hell, I suppose you're right, Mac. But this Wolf fellow ..."

"Knows his business and his people are very effective. I think the Chinese will get the message, after all, they do read the Telegraph don't they? The paper will say 'drug deal gone bad,' the Chinese will know better."

Gordon shook his head, "When can we expect the moneyman to get here?"

"I talked to Wolf, he said within the hour."

"Does the fellow speak English?"

"Yes, he does, and I'm sure he'll pretend not to, I'm sure Mr. Wolf can get him talking."

"I'd hate to be in that bastard's shoes." Gordon muttered.

MacDonald smiled, "Quite."

¹ Chechen for "alright." (мегар ду)

² A compact panel van manufactured by the Volkswagen Group beginning in 1979.

The Moneyman

Source

"Sir, did you say the Chinese Consulate?" Gordon had almost passed that comment by, then it struck him, there was no Chinese Consulate in Glasgow. The Consulate was in Edinburg.

MacDonald looked puzzled for a moment, "Of course, there's no ..."

MacDonald was exhausted, he'd had perhaps three hours of sleep in the last two days, not consecutively either. Perhaps he had said consulate, knowing full well that that edifice was in Scotland's capital.

Gordon was looking with concern at MacDonald, "Look, Mac, we're both tired, perhaps ..."

"No, I definitely misspoke. What I meant to say is that this safe house, it's a flat actually, is in Chinatown in Glasgow. More specifically, they can see the Chinatown Restaurant on New City Road where Dalhousie Street intersects with New City."

"And we're concerned with this restaurant?" Gordon was confused.

MacDonald rubbed his face with both hands, "Not exactly, but where they get their seafood is a concern."

"Sir?"

"Did you see that?"

Wolf nodded, turning to Stewart he said, "The seafood company uses white vans, all marked with a small company logo on the passenger door. That van, while the same make and model, didn't have any logo. Why is that?"

"We think that MSS¹ is using the seafood company to hide in plain sight, as it were. Same type vans, who's going to notice that the logo is missing? The men from the fake vans wear the same jumpsuits as the company's employees, very nice cover without having to actually coopt the seafood company."

"Does MSS have an office in this building?" Wolf watched as two men unloaded two crates from the van parked across the way onto a dolly, then wheel it into the opening between the two businesses. Apparently it provided access to the China Town market behind the two store fronts.

"The market back there has a number of stalls and storage areas, place is a bloody maze. One of our chaps went in there and said that there are any number of places to hide back there."

"Why would the Chinese want to foment unrest in the UK?" 

"Why wouldn't they? Unrest in the West allows the Chicoms to operate with less worry in places like Africa and those parts of Asia where we Brits used to have a very deep interest in having everyone stay calm."

"India? Pakistan? The Belt and Road Initiative?" Wolf was beginning to see the big picture.

"Precisely."

Back at the farm, Wolf huddled with his men and explained what was going on. He explained how it was in the Chinese Communist Party's interests to keep the West confused and off balance.

"Where do we fit in, why are we here, boss?" Fuji's question caused a number of heads in the room to nod in agreement.

"Back home the Congresscritters are scared shitless of the Chicoms. They think that if we push back on anything, then nuclear war will break out." Wolf explained.

"Doesn't mean they're wrong though, does it?" Max's deep voice rumbled as he spoke.

"Nope, they could be wrong, they could be right. But one thing is certain, if we don't attempt to stop them, we can kiss Western Civilization goodbye. Forget the Dark Ages, what would follow from a Chinese Communist takeover of most of the world economy would cause societal collapse. Those bastards have learned nothing since their Great Leap Forward."

Max shook his head, "Commies always think that the things that didn't work before could work if only the right people were in charge."

Fuji sighed, "My family lost a lot during that time period. It's one of the reasons my Mom and Dad fled to Hong Kong."

"And then the Brits gave that away."

"Yup, so we went to Australia, and when that went to shit, we moved to Los Angeles."

"Always on the run, yeah?" Peter Goldstein spoke up, "Try being a Jew."

"But now you stand and fight back," Fuji pointed out.

"Yeah, we learned that going along to get along would just get us killed in the long run. It's about time the United States woke up to that."

MacDonald looked better than he had in days, a good night's sleep can work wonders if you can manage it. He handed Wolf a slip of paper.

"That's an address in Glasgow. It's a small flat, three men are staying there. We believe that they are funneling money to the rioters making trouble in southern Scotland."

"Funneling the money from?"

MacDonald paused, then decided to share what he knew with Wolf. "Well, Mr. Wolf, we strongly believe that the Chinese Communist Party has an interest in keeping the UK in turmoil. We don't have any firm proof, but ..."

"Those three guys in the apartment might provide that proof, right?"

"Exactly. But we don't need all three."

"We'll bring you one of them, the one that is probably the brains hopefully."

MacDonald handed Wolf a photograph, "We think this is the lad we want."

Wolf studied the photo, "Guy doesn't look Chinese ..."

"He's Albanian, the other two are Chechens, we think. They provide the muscle, the Albanian provides the funds, which we're pretty sure originate in China."

"Bring back the moneyman, you got it. What we do with the Chechens ..."

"Might be better if they don't live to tell tales." MacDonald said in a low voice.

"That's what I was thinking." Wolf nodded then turned to go.

"When do you think ..." MacDonald began.

"Tonight, it will happen tonight. Bring the moneyman here when we're done?"

"If possible, if not, contact me," MacDonald handed Wolf a burner phone, "the number of my burner is the only one on there. Best of luck to you chaps."

"Doesn't hurt, but if we do it right, those guys won't know what hit them. Skill trumps luck."

¹ The Ministry of State Security (MSS) is the principal civilian intelligence and security service of the People's Republic of China.

Visit to Glasgow

Source

"You should have seen it two days ago," MacDonald had trouble keeping his anger down. The rioters had trashed the square around the Cenotaph, Glasgow's memorial to her war dead. Protest signs, trash, why was the so-called Left, so allegedly concerned about the environment, such pigs when they gathered in crowds?

Wolf looked the scene over, the rain continued to fall, as if the very heavens wept for the times they were facing. Then he spoke in a low tone to the man paying the bills.

"Pro-immigration? Open borders?"

MacDonald turned and looked at Wolf, "Yes, I'm sure you've seen this before."

"Yes, people who mean well but with little common sense. Manipulated by those who seek power by any means necessary. I suppose it's always been this way."

"Yes, I suppose it has." MacDonald hesitated for a moment, then asked a question that had been on his mind for some time.

"Where are your people from? Originally, I mean."

Wolf grinned, "Originally? Well, one school of thought suggests we all started in Africa, but I'm assuming you want to know my family's more recent origins."

MacDonald looked uncomfortable for a moment, "I don't mean to pry Mr. Wolf, it's just that you don't look ..."

"White, Mr. MacDonald? Is that what you're driving at?"

"Well ..." MacDonald was starting to regret asking the question.

"I suppose you could say that some of my ancestors came from the Mediterranean, we're not really sure where, perhaps north Africa, maybe Italy, which might explain my dark eyes and complexion. Eventually they wound up in North America, somewhat south of the Rio Grande. The beauty of that is that I can blend in almost anywhere. Except sub-Saharan Africa and much of East Asia. But at a distance? Put a keffiyeh on me and I can pass for the average Arab, grow my beard out and slap a pakol¹ on my head and I can pass as an Afghan."

"I suppose that must be useful in your line of work." MacDonald started walking, they needed to get out of the rain and back to the safehouse.

"Oh indeed, it is."

Wolf had spent the day with MacDonald down in Glasgow, now he was back with the rest of his team on a farm outside Falkirk. It was big enough for them to be comfortable and was isolated enough for them not to draw any unwanted attention to themselves. It also provided easy access to both Glasgow and Edinburgh.

"Have you got our comms established yet, Charlie?" Wolf asked.

The man called Charlie, which wasn't his name, he'd picked up the nickname due to his uncanny resemblance to the late Charles Bronson, answered. "Up and running, boss. I made contact with the sub about an hour ago. They'll be raising their mast every two hours on the hour if we wish to talk to them. If they want to talk to us, they can do that anytime, we'll be monitoring the comms around the clock."

"Good, we all squared away?"

One of the men, they called him Fuji, again not his real name, asked, "So what's the job, boss? Are we here to provide security for someone or are we here to make trouble?"

"From the briefing I got before we left the States, our mission is kind of open ended. The man who gave us the contract said, 'Do whatever they ask, as long as it's in reason and won't drag the United States into war.' So yeah, that's a pretty broad tasking."

"And pretty f**king vague as well," the man who spoke stood up, he had to stoop over as the ceilings in this old house were very low. Not really designed for someone well over six and a half feet tall.

Wolf turned to look at Max, "It is. We might wind up doing nothing, we might wind up going after the people in country who are behind all this recent rioting. The guy paying us doesn't want the UK to go under, but some of it may slide into chaos, much like France and Greece and to some extent, Poland. But he wants to keep Scotland in the game."

Max pointed out that he'd seen news reports that a lot of immigrants, legal and otherwise, were heading south, into England proper. "I guess the Scots would rather they were elsewhere," he said.

Wolf added, "Yup, their benefits are drying up, seems the Scots are tired of paying for their uninvited guests. As one of their MPs said the other day, if London wants them, London can pay for them."

Fuji spoke up again, "You didn't answer my question, boss. What's our role here?"

"MacDonald and the President are old friends apparently. The big bossman told me that MacDonald could be trusted. If he asks us to do something, then it's something that absolutely needs doing."

Max nodded, "Got that Fuji? Sounds like a 'blow shit up and kill people' sort of mission."

Charlie looked up from his comm gear, "My favorite kind."

Gordon was looking over MacDonald's shoulder, "Are we absolutely sure about this?"

MacDonald stepped back from the maps on the table, "Yes, my source in Whitehall say that these bastards are paying for all of this unrest. And they're in this house in Glasgow, sitting pretty and feeling rather untouchable. They can see the Chinese Consulate from their bedroom windows!"

"And?" Gordon looked worried.

"I think we should ask Mr. Wolf and his lads to pay those chaps a visit."

"Won't that raise a stink?"

"Rather what we want, isn't it? Let the other side know that we're not playing."

Gordon nodded, he almost felt sorry for the people MacDonald was going to target.

Almost.

¹ A soft, round woolen hat with a rolled brim that can be pulled down over the ears in cold weather. Originally from the Hindu Kush region, it is widely worn by Tajiks, Pashtuns, and Nuristanis.

Ashore

U.S. Army Photo

It had been a rough ride in, but the entire team made it, along with all of their equipment. Wolf was nervous, nothing had gone wrong yet. He always expected something to go wrong, when it didn't it felt like the pending catastrophe had just been pushed down the line a bit. Something always went wrong, at least that was his experience and he had a lot of that.

He had left the Army when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had wound down, garrison life wasn't for him, too much chickenshit to be honest. He was a soldier, he wanted to be in the fight, not languishing at some Stateside base under some career lunatic who only cared about his next promotion.

So he'd got out, the existing security companies didn't suit his style, so he started his own outfit. It wasn't long before he'd secured a number of contracts and a reputation for getting things done.

Security for senior businessmen and politicians traveling to dangerous areas of the world was one thing, this mission was something else altogether.

"They move well, don't they?"

Alistair Stewart handed the night vision set to his colleague, Seamus MacDuff, who surveyed the area of the beach below their position atop the bluff.

"Indeed, they have excellent noise discipline and it's bloody obvious that this is not the first time they've done this. Shall we make contact?"

"Paddy Riley's down there. Wolf is expecting someone to meet him on the beach, Paddy is there for just that purpose."

MacDuff was surprised to see the boats the men had come in on head back out to sea after unloading. Certainly saved them the trouble of hiding the small craft. That had been one aspect of the plan that had worried him. The beach was very open, almost no vegetation to be seen. They would have had to haul the boats off somewhere or leave them to be found by some beachcomber. Seemed that Wolf had really thought this through.

Wolf saw the winking light through his NVGs, he readied his weapon as he walked toward the light.

"Albatross," he hissed into the night.

"Ancient mariner," came the proper reply.

In the dim starlight Wolf could see that the man who stood up to greet him was a rather large fellow. Had to be at least six foot five or more.

"You Wolf?" the man's voice rumbled from his chest.

"The same, you are ...?"

"Paddy Riley, I'm the welcoming committee, my boss and his 2IC are up on the bluff."

Wolf heard "two aye see" and realized that the man meant the second in command, what he'd call the XO, that whole 'separated by a common language' theme seemed to be in force.

"Transport?"

"Yes, couple of lorries stashed nearby."

Wolf nodded, fortunately he'd worked with the Brits in the past so he knew what a lorry was. Why couldn't they just call it a truck?

Wolf's team of fifteen men were riding in the two trucks, heading for Edinburgh. He was sitting in the cab of one vehicle with the man who was his employer's liaison with Wolf's team. Guy's name was Stewart and Wolf looked at him expectantly.

"I suppose you want the details of why you're here, Mr. Wolf."

"That would be nice, fifteen men isn't enough to overthrow a government but it's enough to make a lot of trouble in a country where everyone has been disarmed."

"Well, not everyone, but yes, your average citizen is not going to take up arms. Can't even own a bloody kitchen knife without the proper sort of license. You're not here to overthrow a government, you're here to help establish a new country. Well, to assist in the rebirth of an old country to be exact."

Wolf shook his head, "Scottish independence? Is that why we're here?"

"In a nutshell, yes. But the government in London isn't the only obstacle to that."

"Your rather large population of 'refugees' is another I take it." Wolf had practically spit the word refugee out of his mouth.

"Indeed. They are why Scotland wishes to break away, there's a reason why London is now known as Londonistan. The mob rules down there and in many of the major cities. We have the problem in Glasgow but the further north you go the fewer of that lot are about. The United Kingdom is turning into a third world country and we, in Scotland, want no part of that."

Wolf nodded, "So we're hired guns, muscle you can use to intimidate the bolder of those who might oppose you?"

"Oh dear, Mr. Wolf, not at all. We don't want you to intimidate them, we want you to kill them."

A Rainy Night in Scotland

Source

MacDonald nodded and said, "I see. Well, thank you for letting me know."

Setting the phone down he walked over towards the fireplace, the man sitting on the sofa looked at him, one eyebrow arched. The man wanted to ask, but knew better than to break the silence.

MacDonald sat heavily in the armchair and looked towards the night outside. Rain was still falling, occasionally the wind would shift and drive that rain hard against the window panes, as if someone had just thrown a handful of pebbles at the glass.

"They said no."

Gordon sighed and sat back against the sofa, "No? Just like that, no. I don't suppose ..."

"There is no argument I could make which would change the man's mind. You know what he's like. That business in the Gulf has them tied down for the moment. They've just squeaked through another contentious election and he's got a lot of house cleaning to do. He can't spare the money or the resources to help us."

Gordon stood up and began to pace, "Sure, we've made our bed and now ..."

"At least not publicly ..."

Gordon stopped in midstride, "What are you saying?"

"What I'm saying is technically treason, but it's the only chance we've got. The only choice really."

"What in God's name are you talking about, Mac?"

"Mercenaries, men we'd have to pay for ourselves, but not right away. The man said that he'd front us the money to get, as he put it, the party started."

Gordon shook his head, he had never gotten used to the way the Americans phrased things. Most of their upper leadership spoke the way a European would, nuanced and polite on the surface, but the man in charge over there now was something of an anomaly. His predecessor had been a bull in a China shop at times but he knew how to conduct business. The new fellow was altogether something else.

Gordon allowed himself a slight grin, "So the man's a cowboy after all?"

"It would seem so."

The boat surfaced some ten miles to the west-northwest of the Fife Ness Lighthouse. There was virtually no chance of being spotted by the Royal Navy, what few ships they had left were in port or in drydock. The nation which once ruled the seas barely controlled the approaches to London these days.

The captain had wanted to stay submerged, "All we need to do is raise the radio mast, there's no need to expose my boat to ..."

The passenger had overruled the captain, "I understand, Sir. But my boys need to get a feel for the seas and the wind. It's a bit of a haul in our small boats from ten miles out. If the signal comes in and it's a 'go,' we'll be on our way and you can slip beneath the waves. But if the weather is shite, I'll need to see that first hand."

The OOD let the captain know that the lookouts were in place on the sail, "Heavy swells, light rain, but not a lot of wind. Manageable for our visitors, barely."

"Con, radio," came over the speaker near the captain's head.

"Captain here, report."

"Signal received, dogsbody is a go. Repeat, dogsbody is a go."

"Understood."

Before the captain could say another word, his passengers were in motion, getting their gear topside and making preparations to head for land. As their commander brushed past him, the captain reached out and grabbed the man's sleeve.

"Godspeed."

Special operator Martin Wolf (a pseudonym), nodded and said, "Thanks for the lift." Then disappeared through the after hatch.

"Sir, what the hell is going on?" the XO sounded pissed off, he had not liked the mission when it had been explained to him two days out of Norfolk. He liked it even less now that he realized that they were putting armed men ashore on the coast of their closest ally, without their knowledge.

"The less you know the better, Mike. Prepare to get underway as soon as our passengers have departed."

"Aye, Captain, but ..."

"Enough Mike, talk to Chaps, I've heard enough. I'll be in my cabin."

Author's Note: Bit of an experiment really, we'll see where this goes. The idea has been camped out in my head for a few days now, time to get on with it I suppose.