The Becket Approval by Falconer Duncan (best big ereader .TXT) 📗

that far. A couple of minutes before the drop, the doors’ll open. Pull this toggle here and the harness’ll disconnect you. Position yourself on the wheel, which will be here. The pilot’ll give the wheel a jerk a minute before you reach the drop zone. Your backpack is clipped to the parachute harness as per normal HALO jumps. When you’re over the drop point the pilot will give the wheel another jerk. That’s your signal to release. Don’t hang about. Every second is about two hundred and fifty metres off your landing point. Six seconds a mile. He will’ve allowed for wind speed and direction so that wheel jerk will be three seconds from smack above your landing point. Is that all good for you?’

‘So, from the second wheel jerk I’ve got three seconds to fall out,’ Gunnymede said.

‘Thousand and one, thousand and two, thousand and three,’ the engineer said as he tightened the straps and made a final check of everything using a flashlight. ‘You got your ear defenders?’

Gunnymede held them up.

‘That’s your harness release toggle.’ He pointed to a strap above Gunnymede’s face. ‘Right then. You’re good to go. Good luck. Safe journey.’ The engineer struggled to give him a smile as if that was all he could offer. He was clearly concerned yet also impressed with the stranger and could only wonder who he was and what his mission was. He removed the ladder and walked away with it.

Gunnymede made himself comfortable. His only view was the ceiling. He heard vehicle doors close, engines gun to life and drive away. A few minutes later the floodlights came back on. It was business as usual for the aircraft.

Gunnymede closed his eyes. It was comfortable if nothing else. Butterflies flew around inside his belly but not as badly as before. He was handling it. Kind of. Half an hour later the beam of the pilot’s flashlight fluttered above him. The man had no idea what to expect when he shone his torch up into the darkness. He knew someone would be up there but nothing else. He was uncomfortable knowing someone would be hanging beneath him for several hours and that he’d drop him away at thirty-six thousand feet while they were doing six hundred miles per hour. And like the MI6 engineer, he could only wonder who the person was and what they were going to do when they landed in Russia.

Thirty-five minutes later, the plane taxied towards the runway. Gunnymede looked down at the tarmac. The engines roared to full power and he jolted in the harness as the aircraft accelerated. Turbulence filled the cavity with increasing ferocity. Something was flapping madly at Gunnymede’s feet. The aircraft rumbled along. From his perspective the runway surface was surprisingly uneven. The wheel structure bounced violently at times, finding dips and bumps as the aircraft picked up speed. When the wheel left contact with the tarmac it continued to spin. The hydraulics immediately kicked in, there was a loud clunk as the suspension elbow disengaged and the wheel supports folded inwards and rose up towards him.

The wheel stopped a few inches short of Gunnymede’s back and the double doors began to close. As the gap got smaller the turbulence, which had reached hurricane proportions, reduced proportionally. The sprinklings of lights on the ground were gradually shut out until, with a final clunk, it went completely dark and the wind abruptly ceased.

It wasn’t as loud as Gunnymede thought it might be, to the extent that he didn’t use his earplugs, the hooded part of the stealth suit providing enough protection. He couldn’t see a thing at first, but within minutes, his eyes adjusted to what little light there was coming from various LEDs dotted about, not that there was much to look at.

He felt a vibration in a trouser pocket. His phone. With some contorting he managed to retrieve it and checked who it was. Bethan.

‘Hello,’ he said, closing the top of the stealth suit to reduce the noise.

‘Have I caught you at a bad time? I can barely hear you.’ She was at her desk, one of the few at work.

‘I’m at an airport?’

‘Will you be coming back to London any time soon?’

‘I’ll give you a call.’

‘I look forward to it.’

The signal suddenly dropped. Gunnymede jolted around in his cocoon as the aircraft hit a pocket of turbulence. The hammock setup was actually soothing. He closed his eyes and concentrated on relaxing, a practice he’d perfected in prison. Within minutes he fell into a light sleep.

Mahmoud sat in one of the little cafes in the lower level of the Galata road bridge that connected old and new Constantinople. He’d been there for almost an hour. When his time was up, which would be soon, he’d head back into the old town near the railway where he shared an ISIS safe house with several other young men. They all seemed to be waiting to head into Syria, unlike him who was waiting to head further west, but to where he had no idea. His orders were to go to the cafe at 9pm where he was to wait to be contacted. If no one showed by 10pm he was to go back to the house and repeat the procedure every evening until his contact arrived.

Each time someone entered the cafe he looked at them in the hope they were the one. This was the third night of the routine. He was bored in Turkey and wanted to get on with his life. He had been assured that as soon as this deception was over he’d be reassigned, which probably meant going back to Syria. One of his concerns was that his passport was not really his. He didn’t think he looked much like Saleem although he was enough, it seemed, to convince the Turkish border guards.

An Arab man entered the cafe