Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,37

hit the jackpot, a CIA employee with access to everything they needed.

Once they’d obtained what they were wanted, after some direct persuasion, they had examined the data closely and realised the team would have to separate to get the job done. If they were systematic, taking down each target over a period of time, the word would surely spread and the others on the list would be alerted, making the team’s job of killing them much harder. At that moment, they still had the element of surprise, the most useful tactic in combat. The men on the list had no idea they were coming.

No idea that they were all going to die.

Once weapons and plans of attack had been arranged, the eight man team was split into two groups, four staying in the United States, the other four travelling across the ocean to the United Kingdom.

And they had begun to work through the list.

The leader had sent Bug to Washington to kill the doorman, the man called Carver. They had a number of options on where and how to do it, but the leader figured late at night outside the strip club was the best choice. No one was around at that time, removing any potential witnesses, and no one would discover his body until Bug was out of the country. Carver should have counted himself lucky. It was a blissfully swift death for him. In other circumstances, the commanding officer would have made it last for weeks.

He had sent Spider to New York City to take out the bodyguard, Spears. That was just as straightforward. The guy had recently put his name down on a lease on a new apartment in Manhattan. He lived alone and had no partner. Spider would do the job late at night, taking the right precautions, then get out of the country after dumping the evidence in the River. And Bird had been sent up to Connecticut to kill the man who owned the software company. Out of some bizarre injustice, the exact same cruelty that had left the eight man team to rot in Ferri for fifteen years, it turned out that the man was now a major success, living a rich and prosperous life. Unlike the other two men, he had a family and a business so he constantly had people around him. Bird wasn’t a marksman, but he was good with explosives, and had rigged up a charge under the man’s car during the night. Once the guy stepped in and put the key in the ignition and twisted, the C4 took care of the rest.

All evidence that the three killers were ever at the scene was either covered or destroyed. Bug and Spider would ditch their weapons, and Bird’s would be destroyed when the car exploded. Right then, all three were already on their way across the ocean to London to reunite with the rest of the group. And once his job was done in DC, the fourth member of the US quartet, Flea, would join them.

However, on this side of the Atlantic, the operation had had mixed success. Adams' suicide was a tick in the box. It had been one of his men's ideas to give the politician no other choice than to kill himself. They could easily have stormed his office or bombed his car, but Worm had wanted him to suffer. Not the physical kind of pain, but mental, the same kind of desperation the group had suffered every minute of every day in Ferri. Out of the eight-man team, Worm was the most inventive at this kind of thing. He liked his enemies to be in pain. If he was going to kill you, he wouldn’t just do it there and then, he’d tell you a week in advance and let you think about it every night before he did it. The leader of the group knew bad things had happened to the tall, gangly soldier as a boy, his father and uncle abusive both physically and sexually, and he guessed the cruelty he possessed as a man had something to with those scars he carried. For most of his men, killing a man was something they needed to do to ensure victory or stay alive, but for Worm, it was a pleasure.

The envelope delivered to Adams’ office had contained a hand-typed letter and two Polaroid photographs taken by Worm, up close, taken in this very room. Worm, Grub and Crow had come for Adams’ wife