Snow Rush Read online

  Snow Rush

  James Easton

  eBook edition Published in 2020 by JM Sands Publishing Limited

  Copyright © 2020 James Easton

  James Easton has asserted his rights under ‘the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988’ to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission from the author.

  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.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  PROLOGUE

  Six weeks earlier, outside Madrid

  She was about to be arrested. They all were.

  There was no way out. They were in a narrow, windowless room, halfway to the back of a terraced house. And nobody was ready. The men on the sofa opposite her were relaxed, lulled by the negotiation moving back and forth between the men around the table.

  It was better they weren’t ready because half of them were armed. Which made this dangerous. She’d heard a strap buckle hitch outside one of the doors, the guard being taken down. Ordinary cops couldn’t do that. It was Grupo Especial de Operaciones. GEO. That meant cool heads. But it also meant submachine guns. Warning the men with her now, the way some of them were, might get them all killed.

  She got ready to do what cops would expect any startled gun dealer to do in a bust. Stare, and raise her hands. Be resentful, but passive. She tuned back into the conversation, looking at the brand-new FN P90 on the table - nine-hundred rounds a minute, matt black - and the bags of down payment cash on the floor.

  Ramone Muka, with a long beard and a bald dome of a head, said, “Two-hundred pieces like this. Same condition. You can do it?”

  Her eyes slipped off Muka’s hands, with the heavy gold ring and the leather wristband, onto the sliding door in the wall behind him, about forty-five degrees to her right. It was small. You would have to stoop going through it. It made her nervous because it was an unknown quantity.

  The guy from her side of the deal, talking to Muka, said, “We can do it, but not one load.”

  Then wood splintered left and right and latches pinged and clattered on the floor. Two teams of four men in black combat gear and masks came in, MP5s high and ready, covering the whole room in a second. The leader spoke loudly, no shouting, all control. “Armed police, armed police, show your hands, show your hands.” This over a rush of noise. Obscenities in four different languages, and chairs and metal table legs screeching on the tiles.

  Then silence. And pulses and sweat. She held her hands up. Her skin prickled when she saw the shoulder cams. It was all being sent to a control centre. They’d be looking at her there. Scanning her image with the tech.

  The leader spoke into a mic.

  “Six men, one woman, FN P90 secured, money in bags under the table. Cuffing all suspects in situ. Confirm Muka here.”

  They hadn’t made them lie on the floor. There wasn’t the space. She waited her turn. The GEO man to her left had his weapon trained on the wall by her hip, ready to snap onto her if he needed to. She didn’t look him in the eye.

  They were cuffing Muka and the man he’d been negotiating with. The principals first. Four GEO men stood around the table, in front of the sliding door. One of them took a SIG 226 from the waistband of the man opposite Muka. He paused for a second, maybe because the 226 was a standard police weapon, then passed it to a colleague before sliding a cable tie up the man’s wrists.

  Muka moved. Edging to his left. She wanted to warn them about the door, but it would look like she was helping the police.

  One of the GEO guys then moved past Muka, covering the door with his MP5. Good. His colleague was there a second later, crouching and sliding it open.

  Something metallic and cylindrical clinked as it rolled out. Muka threw himself prone. She closed her eyes, and turned her head.

  White light and percussive sound exploded. Stun grenade. Her vision went from black to silver to red behind her eyelids as her ears voided into a searching ring. She opened her eyes and looked.

  Everyone was reeling, blind and deaf. She was only deaf.

  Move. Now.

  She slipped off the chair, moving to her right in a crouch, looking around the GEO guys with her hand down by her ankle holster. An assault rifle nosed out of the doorway, the shooter’s hand under the barrel. He fired. It was like a hammer drill through the ringing in her ears. A GEO guy went down.

  She drew as she came up, fired at his hand, and saw a knuckle cave in and the rifle dip. She moved left and forward, seeing more of him, crouched and bringing the rifle up one-handed to spray the room. Her vision tunnelled. All she could see was the shooter. All she could feel were her hands. She was freezing up. Stop him. She fired three rounds into his chest. He rocked back, his eyes wild and the rifle still up. She shot him in the mouth, the brainstem. He fell back, slumping against the back wall.

  Her vision was all honeycomb blotches and sharp, bright lines. She made herself register his vacant eyes and his blood. He was dead, and the rifle was down. He wasn’t holding it any longer. She put her SIG 232 on the floor and raised her hands.

  Muka was looking at her with disbelieving hate. The GEO guys were communicating, in control again. The other gang people were still stunned and compliant. Hands grabbed her arms and pulled them behind her. She felt the plastic on her wrists.

  Outside, there were patrol cars and an ambulance, and uniforms had cordoned off the area with tape. She was still pumping adrenaline, and her heart w
as haywire. They let her get through the shakes, read her rights to her, and left her in a police van.

  Later, the GEO leader came to talk. He took his mask off.

  “You didn’t know it was today?”

  “Not for certain.” Her body felt like lead. She rested the back of her head against the van wall.

  “You can hook up with your guys at the station. And from me and the team, thank you for saving our backsides.” He smiled. “You always use a 232?”

  “Often. Not always. Your guy is OK?”

  “Yeah.” He touched his ribs. “Bruised, but the armour worked. Tell me, had you been watching that door he came out of?” Wanting to know how lucky they’d all been.

  “I’d seen it.”

  “Of course, you had.” He seemed to want to know more about her but did not ask out of professional courtesy.

  She was armed cover for tactical operations, National Police. She was twenty-five years old, and this was her last day on the job. Her name was Carolina Carrasco Cortés.

  CHAPTER ONE

  London, Monday evening, nine o’clock. Robin King walked into the Langham Hotel and made a call to her boss.

  “Farquar.”

  “It’s me. Where are you?”

  “FA Media thing with a load of politicians in the ballroom. I put your name down.”

  “I’m not arsing around with them.” she said. “There isn’t time.”

  “I’ll get a room. You can arse around with me.”

  “Julian…”

  He hung up. And called back after about thirty seconds, briskly supplied the room number, and hung up again. Robin sighed.

  Julian Farquar, Current Affairs Editor at NewSpan Global, had a bottle of Condrieu chilled and open when she arrived at the junior suite a few minutes later.

  “That was quick,” she said, nodding at the wine. The door closed behind her with a soft thud.

  Julian could pour by touch. It allowed his eyes to slide over her before locking onto her dark auburn hair. He shook his head. “Christ, you look like you could burn down the hotel.”

  She had a flash memory of him twisting her hair around his hand. One of his favourite games whenever she’d let him do it. Which had last been two years ago.

  “I told you this was about work,” she said.

  “We can have a drink, can’t we? It’s not as though we aren’t friends.”

  “Which is why I’m cutting you some slack over manoeuvring me up here.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “You did.”

  Five-eleven in her boots but still feeling small in front of the six-three Julian, Robin slipped off her coat and accepted a glass of wine. They clinked.

  “So, work,” he said. “What’s this all about?”

  “Jean Haim.”

  Julian shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “He was the most wanted man in France until three years ago.”

  “What happened to stop him being the most wanted man in France?”

  “Twenty years in prison.”

  Julian grunted, seeming unimpressed, and looked Haim up on his phone. “It says he’s intelligent, high functioning. Ran a heist gang drawn from, and operating in, France, Spain, Italy, and Romania. Good looking bastard as well. Went down, again, three years ago. What’s the score?”

  Robin flattened her voice out of a vague hope it would get the next part through unnoticed. “I met him in Cannes, at the film festival, before he was imprisoned. He asked me to make a documentary about him. And the guy I spoke to tonight said he liked what I did on Morocco last year.”

  “What we did on Morocco, you mean?”

  Robin raised an eyebrow. “Yes, what we did except it was my idea, my research, my interviews, and my narration, Julian.”

  “And my getting the funding and permissions.”

  She climbed down, playing to him. “It worked well, yes.”

  “So what was a heist merchant doing in Cannes?”

  “He was a technical advisor on a Depardieu film showing at the festival. Trying to go straight. We met at a party.”

  She saw Haim in her mind’s eye, the way it had happened, across a glittering room, before a crimson sunset. Rough, beautiful, and lost. Sheer filth.

  Julian frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me about this at the time?”

  “There was no need.”

  He looked at her, waiting.

  “And I shagged him.”

  He was blank for a second, then threw his head back and roared out a laugh. “My God Robin, a bank robber on the bedpost at twenty-four? Woof!” He finished it with a long, pitying shake of his head.

  “Armed robber. Not just banks. And I was twenty-five.” She said, looking a little guilty, watching Julian’s eyes go to her mouth, her hair. She swallowed.

  He broke his gaze and flexed his right hand, topped Robin up then filled his own glass, sank half of it, filled it again. Looked at her and bobbed his chin.

  “So, what does this Jean Haim want?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Central Madrid, ten p.m. Carolina Carrasco arrived at the Interior Ministry building on Calle de Guzmán el Bueno. The place always seemed like it didn’t want to be noticed. That evening, it succeeded. Rising in the icy drizzle to be lost above the dull glow of street lights. An anonymous hulk.

  She showed her National ID at the lesser of the two entrances. A few weeks earlier she would have shown her police pass. This change gave her a slight emptiness as she walked across the quad to her meeting, which she wasn’t looking forward to.

  The call had felt like a summons. Pablo Boba, a senior police intel analyst and Carolina’s friend, had only told her it was with “a Defence Ministry big fish. Might be a job.”

  It sounded like the last thing she needed in her life. And she knew exactly how she’d got here. One: shoot some psychopath assholes on the job. Two: leave the police service, for unrelated reasons. Three: get summoned to a meeting with a MoD big fish about ‘a job.’ Also known as a badly paid, off-the-books, military intel spook gig.

  A steward put her in a frosted glass meeting room with coffee on the table. She took off her scarf and shook out her hair. Last night’s straightening had held.

  How to get out of this?

  It would be ok, she thought, to say no on the basis of money. She had a job to go to, and that was fine. Her new commercial mindset would take some getting used to. But she was not obliged to anyone or anything, including the Spanish government. She had made her decision. Carolina had people to help.

  The door behind her opened, and she had to stand up before she’d quite sat down.

  “Carolina? I am Eva Pérez de Miranda. Call me Eva, please.”

  Her business card said, ‘Ministry of Defence. Director. Procurements.’ Carolina took in the suit, her wavy brown hair, the overwhelming presence as they sat opposite each other. Eva Pérez looked about forty-five. Not very old for someone with that kind of position, thought Carolina. Eva poured coffee for her. It was a gracious gesture, and a neat little distraction while Eva studied the scars on Carolina’s left hand.

  Eva saw Carolina looking, and hit the subject right away, “You are the best-known military driver in MoD files.”

  “Not for my driving, I guess.”

  “The surgeries went on for a while, I saw. Are you still troubled by it?”

  “No. Except the scars are distinctive. That was the only problem over the last years. Not great for undercover work.”

  Only ricochet damage was visible on her hand. The bullet holes – filled and grafted over, but obvious to anyone who knew about such things - were higher up.

  Eva was undeterred and put on a business face.

  “I’ll get right to it. I know something of your police operational background, and I am satisfied about your quality. I would like to discuss a job with you. Off the books. You may, in fact I am sure you will, find some aspects of the work unusual.”

  Off the books and unusual. If this woman
asked her to take someone out, Carolina would tell her where to go.

  Eva raised her coffee cup and paused.

  Here it comes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Julian sat on the bed. Robin sat on the desk chair and pulled it opposite him, close.

  “Haim has contacted me, through an intermediary. He wants to meet me in prison for an extended interview.”

  He scoffed, “In the conjugal cell?”

  “Julian, please.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “His life, his exploits, everything. But as well as that, he has some kind of secret to tell me, involving the French state. His guy said it’s explosive.”

  Julian rubbed a hand over his chin.

  “How would a guy like him get anything of importance? Was it in a vault he turned over?”

  “No. Audrey Channon. She’s a former interior minister’s niece. They were involved.”

  Julian refilled his glass. “As if you weren’t enough. So I’m to believe an armed robber shagged a state secret out of the interior minister’s niece?”

  “Their relationship was in the press. She’s a singer. Very left wing. There’s a kind of cultural thing in France. People like him have sometimes been seen as rebels. It’s almost glamorous there.”

  “In the 1970s maybe. Who else has he notched up?”

  She ignored that and Julian snapped out of the sulks, abruptly. You could see when his work brain engaged. “What did you work out?”

  “I go to Paris tomorrow to discuss details with his people.”

  He jabbed a finger towards her. “This could be massive for you, you know. At the least, you get an extended biopic interview with a desperado stud that we can sell in France. And maybe, just maybe, you get something big on the French state. That could go anywhere.”

  Robin felt a glow. She loved hearing things like that.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked. “Meeting his people like this.”

  “It’s just a conversation with his lawyer.” That wasn’t true. She didn’t know who it was with. A lawyer sounded more organised and formal, and she didn’t want Julian delving into why she trusted Jean. There wouldn’t be anything to say. She just did.