And what now? Now?
Dillon wrote:
Assassination — How to assassinate the world’s most highly trained specialist antiterrorist units? Scorpion units are the ultimate weapon against the global terrorist in the twenty-first century — the best of the best. Each operative chosen for specific skills — Assassins, snipers, explosive/demolition experts, tech-weapons/computer experts, and a whole array of other covert and military expertise.
How to assassinate the assassins?
And why?
Scorpion Matrix G8 Comms and Ferran & Cardini mobile smart phones no longer secure: In Cornwall the smartphone and G8 network died, only reactivating when clear of site. Possibility of some kind of jamming device or power drain on both Scorpion and Ferran & Cardini mainframes in London? Somene is remotely accessing system? Possible internal betrayal???
Kirill.
Everything revolves around Kirill. He was the one who tried to kill Dillon, therefore he was willing to throw away his position and the multi-billion pound research and development facility…
Leave the British Government — leave the embrace of such a world-active country, who strives for global peace, which genuinely set out to fuck-up the bad guys?
The British Government, Scorpion, and Ferran & Cardini were betrayed. Set up.
Who better than someone involved with the Chimera project? Kirill, obviously… but he is merely a puppet; he cannot be the one pulling the strings.
So, who else?
And Tatiana… Tatiana knew Kirill; She set up the protection gig in Cornwall in the first place. Sent Dillon to his own execution. How perfect. Whatever this game is, it’s much bigger than I first thought.
Dillon got up and started to pace up and down the living room carpet; pondering the questions he had thrown in to the hat. Like the most frustrating maze, just when he thought he was heading in the right direction, a dead end appeared, and he would have to retrace his footsteps. And so it went, until he slumped down onto one of the sofas.
I don’t know, he thought, closing his eyes.
Outside, the wind howled and Dillon, almost absentmindedly, threw a log onto the fire. It was Kirill who concerned him more than anything — the cold hate filled look in the man’s eyes as the unwavering gun muzzle was pointing straight at Dillon’s head. Something in Kirill made Dillon’s soul go cold. There was something different about the man. Something very strange.
And Tatiana…
Tatiana had pleaded with him to take on the assignment in Cornwall. She had known Kirill a long time, worked closely with him in her capacity as Ferran & Cardini’s liaison officer on the Chimera project.
And if they had wanted him, Dillon, dead, then Tatiana had to have known.
Dillon felt suddenly depressed, and immensely lonely. A sense of vulnerability washing over him, attacking his confidence.
He still loved Tatiana; and knew deep down that she still loved him. But the facts were staring him in the face.
She was part of it. Integral. A cog in the machine. Whatever that was… She had to be…
Dillon knew; he would have to be extremely careful. He would have to be prepared. And he would have to watch Tatiana’s every move — and if she stepped out of line?
Then she would have to be dealt with.
Dillon went to his study. Entering the book-lined room, he moved to his desk and pushed the button located just under the edge of the oak top. Panels slid silently back to reveal the bank of six HD monitor screens behind them. A screen saver moved from one monitor to the next almost seamlessly and then changed theme every twenty seconds.
He sat down at the master keyboard and initialised the operating system. Entering the central hub, he typed in the password and accessed the main house and land defence security systems, and logged in.
Everything looked normal.
He scanned all hidden cameras for a three mile radius and then a one mile radius. Nothing had been tripped or tampered with, the power and voltage monitoring meters had not been broken or hacked into. The system had been built to his exact specification and the software programme written by one of the best hackers in the business, Vince Sharp.
He finished running the scan.
Nothing. He looked at the screens for a moment, and lit a cigarette. The CPU’s purred inside their housings and he decided to randomly flick through a number of other concealed cameras located higher up on the mountain-side, but could see nothing suspicious.
Dillon knew that just because it looks normal, doesn’t mean that there’s not something there.
He was tempted to go and physically check the cameras, which would serve no purpose and be completely unnecessary, given that he had gone round all of them just before he had flown down to Cornwall. He checked his watch. Tatiana would be arriving in a few hours and he would need to be ready.
He walked through the hall and pulled on his boots, lacing them tightly. Then he moved down the stairs to the cellar and placed the palm of his hand on the biometric reader panel; a section of the wall slid smoothly back and he stepped into a brightly lit room.
The armoury smelled of gun oil, and he opened the Armourlite glass fronted security cabinets using a remote control unit. He moved to the first cabinet and pulled free the Glock 9mm automatic. He checked all the magazines and strapped them about his body. Then he picked out a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, and then from the next cabinet the AMSD OM 50 Nemesis 12.7mm sniper rifle, to which he attached an infrared scope to the weapon with a precise click. He checked the magazine, placed a couple of spares in his pockets, then with the rifle slung over his shoulder, he locked the room, and as he walked away the wall panel slid silently back into place.
Dillon locked the front door and using the remote control, armed the security trip monitors and the CS Gas modules that were located at strategic points around the property. He had a bad feeling about Tatiana’s impending visit and wanted to check that she wasn’t being followed by any big men in suits with submachine guns. Then he set off across the grey-lit fields towards higher ground, so free of violence in this far flung part of Scotland, and up past the edge of the woods towards the beautiful view point of Cairn bluff, a craggy outcrop of rocks.
Dillon felt cold to the bone.
His hands, protected by gloves, clasped the stock of the AMSD OM 50 Nemesis sniper rifle and he sat covertly amongst the outcrop of rocks, staring down at the lane. He had a clear view down the hillside for at least a mile straight ahead of him, he targeted the high powered scope, picking out snow laden branches on the trees, and the fluttering of snowflakes falling: and he stole a moment to smile to himself. From his vantage point, he had given himself the best possible advantage, and had chosen the best killing ground, and one reason why he had purchased the small castle in the middle of nowhere. If there was going to be trouble — then he had chosen his spot well.
He heard the engine, drifting up from the valley, before the vehicle came into view around the bend. And when it did come, it was slewing left and right with churning tyres, and then it slammed into the low embankment with metal scraping against the frozen snow, bouncing the back of the vehicle violently around and slamming it across the lane as the engine screamed and tyres eventually found grip, shooting the Mercedes AMG 55 forward at speed.