Apex (Ben Bracken 2) Read online

  © Robert Parker/Lone Willow Press

  Apex

  Copyright: Robert Parker/Lone Willow Press Published: 19th June 2014

  Publisher: Kindle Direct Publishing

  Cover image: Original image URL: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zachd1_618/4851505872/

  Title: Now All I Need Is A Cape

  Photo credit: Zach Dischner / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0

  Used with Creative Commons Attribution License

  The right of Robert Parker to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Other books by Robert Parker

  Ben Bracken: Origins

  The Baby And The Brandy

  Praise forThe Baby And The Brandy

  ‘The Baby and The Brandy is a wonderful suspense-filled thriller by Robert Parker. He expertly unfolds the story of a character who has been pushed into a dark place, yet still has hope. This tale will entice adult readers, along with others who love stories of mysteries, thrillers, and crime novels.

  Though packed with action, Robert Parker is a skillful writer, and so the pacing is easy to follow, and the dialogue is brilliant. The descriptions are rich with detail and stand to enhance the reader’s imagination. Robert Parker goes far beyond expectations with The Baby and The Brandy. This is a strong introduction to the characters, and leaves a wonderful trail to follow for the next in the series. This is a book well worth a purchase, as Robert Parker continues to utilize his brilliant story telling and compelling characters in a way that will leave audiences picking up this book, and others by him, time and time again.’GoodbooksToday.com Reviews

  ‘All the action, twists and turns you could hope for, set in a shady side of Manchester which you hope you'll never see - even if you know the city as well as Robert Parker obviously does.

  ...if you like to hit the ground running and not stop until you've turned the final page - then you just might have come to the right place. It's a good story and I read it in a couple of sittings, keen to know how it would work out.’TheBookbag.com

  For grandparents everywhere, not least my own... Freda, Edmund, Sylvia, Bob and Uncle Selwyn. Love you always.

  APEX

  apex (ˈeɪpɛks)

  — nOUN , pl.: apexes , apices

  1. the highest point; vertex

  the pointed end or tip of something

  a pinnacle or high point, as of a career, etc

  Retrieved from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/apex

  THURSDAY

  1

  I stare at the sky, the fierce cerulean prickling my eyes, but it forces them to squeeze shut - as does the pain, of course, because what I am doing really bleeding hurts. My shoulders burn and my very spine aches in this contorted position. I open my eyes again, at that never-ending blue, and I try to focus on something else, like the azure above.

  Why, as humans, are we so obsessed with the sky?

  It is fickle, changeable, treacherous...

  But it is also a vast harbinger of hope. As long as there is a sky, much like a will, there is a way.

  It’s a thought-process that seems oddly paradoxical, since I am lowering a cheap pine coffin into a giant wooden freight crate. A cargo plane is leaving from Malaga International Airport in an hour, stacked with export goods bound for Great Britain and I want this crate to be on it. This coffin has got to get there.

  The content of the coffin is cargo of the highest importance, and it is tight shut, bound by a security seal hard and fast, the key to which I posted back to England a couple of days ago. It’s on its way to Jeremiah Salix, an Officer in the National Crime Agency’s Organized Crime Command. He alone can open it, and the contents of the coffin are to be appropriated according to his sole discretion.

  Just as I feel the weight begin to overtake me, and my resistance begin to unspool, I hear the clunk below and my shoulders release. It’s amazing how heavy a pine casket is when it contains a grown man. A wanted man. One of Britain’s evil little gifts to the world. And he is not dead, despite it taking a certain degree of discipline on my part not to make it that way.

  I take out my phone, the trusty Samsung I have got so familiar with, and load my favorite app. Custom built by a third party for one user, designed by a promising young fellow in the Philippines. It allows me to call a direct number, but it builds a firewall around the call itself, rendering it untraceable and unidentifiable. You can’t call me back. No caller ID. You can’t get my number. You just get my call, and, for the purposes of my relationship with Officer Salix, that is just fine.

  We call it Cryptocall, and it takes over the phone screen, barely visible in the harsh afternoon sun. I queue up Jeremiah’s number within the app, and make the call. Safe. Neat. Secure.

  I look back over towards the airport terminal, a dusty couple of building blocks backed by mountain peaks, and Jeremiah picks up almost immediately, as if he has been camping by his phone handset.

  ‘Hello?’ he says, reaching out across the static void, his voice sure but searching.

  Our relationship is set, preordained, pleasantries now by the wayside.

  ‘Did you get the key?’ I ask.

  ‘I most definitely did. What it opens has been the topic of much, shall we say, office debate.’

  ‘Let your superiors know something is coming. Tell them it’s from that source of yours. I’m sure you have everything you need at your end already.’

  ‘Is it the one we discussed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It is a relatively new routine, but homely like a fifteen year old sweater. Jeremiah lets me know what is of interest in my vicinity. That is, if I haven’t already sourced my own target. And if everything seems cool, and the planets align, I go to work.

  I’m out, about and mobile. I am trained and motivated. I am doing Great Britain’s dirty work, even though it doesn’t know it, nor would want it me to if it even knew. I am Ben Bracken.

  I would say that usually, I am tramping the streets and hillsides of dearest Britain, with redemption the sought end of my personal rainbow. But five months back, I pulled out the biggest fish in Manchester’s criminal pond. Well, pulled out isn’t the word. He wasn’t safely returned to the water, let’s put it that way.

  It ended bloodily, in Manchester Airport baggage reclaim, and since I was holding all my worldly possessions when the deed was done, I decided to grab the next cheap flight out of there. A 9AM budget airline flight to Malaga, and I was the soberest man on the plane. Brits abroad like to start early.

  After the cold Manchester breeze of November, and the cacophony I left behind, the Costa Del Sol sounded idyllic. A place to warm bruises away. Plus, I knew that if the Costa Del Sol was involved, so would an errant selection of Great Britain’s more curious exports. The expats. With careers over, and pockets laced with pension cash, they flock to the affordable, sun-graced pueblos and enjoy a life of sunburn and sangria.

  But not all of them. And one of them is in the coffin below me, respiring heavily and sleepily with breathing apparatus nestled between his knees, connected to a mask over his face. He i
s restrained in place, and should be comfortable enough. He’ll probably piss himself, but you can’t have everything.

  This particular costa is a honeypot for men fleeing British shores in the name of something more criminal. Lives left behind. Criminal charges abandoned. Bail terms abused. With kilos of organized crime cash, they head to the costa to seek solitude and escape. New lives to enter.

  I know just how that feels. I too, for the last five months at least, have been a temporary expat, my own secret cash keeping me afloat, my own nefarious deeds left behind, my own fabricated identity sheltering me. My passport, a slick, solid forgery, says that I am Sean Miller, a parting gift from an avuncular old criminal mastermind right before I put a bullet through his cranium. I’m not usually that caustic. But he had been a very naughty boy indeed. OK, maybe I am that caustic. I am supposed to be in prison after all.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ I ask. The line goes quiet for a good few seconds. ‘Jeremiah?’ I prompt.

  The beat of silence is as revealing as any word. There is more.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ says Jeremiah, after a couple of seconds. ‘There is a situation brewing here that’s, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, not really my department anymore. It was my department, but now I think it is straddling a number of different ones.’

  ‘Sounds delicate.’

  ‘It is. Very much so.’

  ‘I just... Something about it doesn’t sit right with me. The department is on standby, but we don’t really know what for. We are usually fairly autonomous, but there is a real governmental interest here.’

  ‘You sound suspicious.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I don’t know where I can fit into this for you,’ I say. Revealing myself to the authorities is a massive no-no for me. I’m supposed to be behind bars, and I don’t really want to draw any excess attention to myself.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t either,’ replies Jeremiah, ‘Save for the fact that I think a man outside of an official channel may have more of a chance to get to the bottom of things than one of us here fumbling about doing something we’ve been specifically asked not to.’

  That has snagged my interest a little. Jeremiah simply wouldn’t mention it if it wasn’t important. He is very well placed considering his position in the National Crime Agency’s hierarchy, not to mention, as far as I can tell, pure and loyal to the cause. However, he will embrace the unconventional to ensure the job gets done. That’s why I like working with him, for I am that very sprinkling of the unconventional.

  ‘Can you elaborate?’ I ask.

  ‘We had been working on something, which I can’t speak of over the phone -’

  ‘You’d be safe if you did,’ I interrupt, trying to ease him into spilling.

  ‘This topic is extremely sensitive. I can’t take any chances with this one.’

  I let it be. He continues.

  ‘Let’s just say we put the groundwork in on something, and then out of nowhere we were warned off it by a very high authority.’

  ‘How high?’

  ‘Of the Westminster variety.’

  Government. Interesting. Even more reason to steer clear. The tendrils of our democracy creep deep all over the country, and involving myself in that would be mission suicide.

  ‘Again, I don’t think I can help you,’ I reiterate.

  ‘What we were working on had huge implications. We were working on the basis that it was of national security.’

  That word ‘national’ echoes in my head and strikes a chord. I don’t know whether Jeremiah knows of the value I place on that word and words like it. It ignites a primal beacon in the pit of my stomach. A desire to protect and serve. The ultimate call to arms.

  If you say England or Great Britain, I think of a self-serving bitch bickering along on the redundant, spluttering fuel of its own historical importance. But you say ‘nation’, I’m all in. For the green grass of home. For the people I lay my life on the line to protect. For My Great Britain. I broke out of prison to serve, and I’m not going to let anybody down now. I’m a man that delivers.

  ‘I’ll be back on home soil in 14 hours,’ I say. ‘I’ll call you then.’

  ‘OK. If you get a chance to pick a part of the country to aim for in particular, head to the south west.’

  ‘Will do,’ I reply, closing the phone. I don’t have a clue what I’m heading back to, only that I know I must be careful. I’m relieved to be going nowhere near Manchester, or anywhere back up north for that matter, where wounds are fresh from a string of my more combustible moments.

  I would rather just go about things quietly, but the chance to do good has whetted my appetite, so back into the fray I must go. I look below. The coffin containing Wes Finnegan, a degenerate expat slime-ball from the UK Most Wanted top 10, is nestled alongside some vacuum packed rattan garden furniture in the huge packing crate. They couldn’t get a fix on him, but then again, they don’t work like I do. And when they open the packing crate at the other end, and nobody appears to pick up their dear dead relative who kicked the bucket on their holidays, the coffin will set off alarm bells. They’ll check the serial number on the delivery tag and I made sure that’ll lead straight to the NCA’s own Jeremiah Salix.

  I drop down to the tarmac, and head back to the terminal, hoping a budget airline will be kind to me and offer a quick route back home.

  FRIDAY

  2

  The return flight was cramped, and there was an overwhelming stench of vomit wafting along the cabin from the toilets at the back. Our vacationing representatives had clearly flown the Union Jack in lurid earnest once again. Brits abroad. There’s truly nothing like them.

  That feels a world away from my current setting, even though I am merely hours on from that very flight. I sit in a pub called jauntily The Jube, a Staffordshire bull terrier at my feet with a mangled tennis ball in its mouth, with a pint of cold, golden lager in front of me. I’m allowing myself just the one, but I do feel a little swept up in the holiday spirit of my location.

  I sense movement over my left shoulder, but it’s only the pub manager who had served me before, this time bringing me some food. A jacket potato smothered by chili. To me, my routine and habits, that is a plate of heaven.

  ‘Here we are, mate,’ he says, in a voice that sounds familiar. It seems I can’t quite leave Manchester behind, and neither can this friendly barman, such is the giveaway of his intonation. I thank him, and he leaves, the dog glancing over to him in a non-committal fashion, happy to stay with me in case any chili finds its way onto the floor.

  I tuck in heartily, watched by my new furry friend, the tennis ball still lodged in its jaws tight. Pub dogs were always my best friends growing up, as I traveled the pubs of Sheffield, playing at my dads feet. Every place had one. It was an endless supply. And when Dad was on a bender, which was pretty often, the dogs were always my favorite part. They would hoover up lost crisps and nuts from the floor, and I would do the same. It was an interesting childhood.

  The last hours have been a blur. When I got off the plane at Heathrow, gulping fresh air finally, I called Jeremiah for an update. What he told me galvanized my purpose and set me on another journey. I was to head to Barnstaple, a town in North Devon, which hides, among idyllic bike trails and surf shops, an army base. Devonshire kicks out from the left foot of England, as if the United Kingdom were to be dipping its toe carefully out into the Atlantic. It is the south west of the country and it is wild, soft and green, encircled by beaches, cliffs and blue sea. I am learning it is a most beautiful place.

  Jeremiah had told me to head to Woolacombe, a small seaside holiday village on the western coast of Devon, and to await instruction. It is about 10 miles as the crow flies from Barnstaple, and Royal Marines Base Chivenor. The coastal helicopter rescue services operate out of RMB Chivenor, answering callouts twenty four seven. It has an air strip, and sometime in the next few days, a plane will be landing. A plane that will be carrying th
e cargo that is integral to this situation that Jeremiah has unveiled. My instructions are to sit in Woolacombe, and wait for Jeremiah’s signal. It will be sometime, he envisages in the next few days. All I can do is get here and prepare. So, rather naughtily and true to form, I treated myself to a pint. The village is full of holiday-makers and gift shops. There is a beautiful golden beach between the village and the sea, the sand to which looks warm, clean and very inviting. I didn’t know Britain could offer such a thing as this, and as a kid my family didn’t do seaside holidays. I find myself more than a bit seduced. It’s taking a little effort not to go out and buy a bucket and spade.

  Usually, I am a slave to preparation, but I think on this occasion, I am very early, and can afford to take things a little slower, if only just for this evening. I was always a stickler for pubs, and, at one time, found grim solace in alcohol. Not any more. I missed the taste, so I enjoy alcohol as refreshment now, not as an ever-blurring cloak in which to wallow in uncertain thoughts. So I sit in this pub, in the middle of the afternoon, enjoying the beer and the dream of the British seaside holiday. And damn, this chili is good.