A Piece of Blue Sky - Volume I of The Operation Jigsaw Trilogy by Mark Hayden

Author:Mark Hayden [Hayden, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Thriller
Publisher: Paw Press
Published: 2014-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Vinnie’s ring sat next to the laptop on her breakfast bar. Or should that be Conrad’s ring? Kate felt that she was no nearer an understanding of what had happened to Vinnie than on the day that Captain Ratcliffe had broken the news of his death. She doodled on a notepad some of the things she had learnt:

Vinnie works a job with Conrad and Wade in Bastion.

Vinnie gets in a helicopter with Conrad, Wade and Madox.

Conrad and Wade had something to do with that load which doesn’t make sense.

Vinnie had a ring in his pocket which was originally bought by Conrad.

Madox crashed the helicopter.

Wade says he had a fight with Vinnie in the chopper which got Vinnie killed

Wade commits suicide?

She stared at the jottings and tried to see the gaps. It was what you did with intelligence. Everyone in the media had howled with laughter at Donald Rumsfeld’s Known Knowns and Unknown Unknowns but the Intelligence community had just shrugged and said Welcome to our world. A good Intelligence officer knew where the gaps were and made judgement calls accordingly.

Underneath the facts she wrote:

How / When did Vinnie get the ring from Conrad?

Where was Madox during the transfer of the load from the Chinook to the Hercules?

What was Wade really up to?

The more she stared at them, the more she realised that the only person alive who could answer any of those questions was Conrad Clarke. The fact that he was alive now became an issue. Was he supposed to have died as well? If so, was he in on something or was he an innocent bystander?

It wasn’t just clothes and bedding she had brought back with her yesterday: she had also picked up a few pieces of equipment from her secure locker at DISC. One of them was a security grade modem/router for the broadband access she now hoped was working in her flat. She connected the router at both ends and opened the monitor on her laptop. Everything looked normal until she explored the bandwidth of the connection. Abnormal carrier wave detected.

She looked round the flat to reassure herself that she was in London and not in the field. That sort of response only happened when there was another signal on the line, but she was the only person in the flat — in the building — who was using it. Filing it away as a puzzle for later, she entered the notes she had made into Notepad (seriously underrated as a piece of software in her opinion). When she had phoned Conrad from Helmand, the call had been routed by the duty Signaller. She had no idea where Clarke was actually located. There was only one thing for it: ask the RAF lads in Bastion.

She messaged her friend in Signals and he patched her through to RAF Control in Afghanistan. She identified herself and got straight to the point:

KL> Anyone heard from Sqn Ldr Clarke?

RAF> In Rehab

KL> Where?

<pause>

RAF> Deggsy says Hampshire. Somewhere called Valley Edge. When U coming back KT?

KL> Not this tour.

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