THE TUNNEL: A Ben Hope Story Read Online Free PDF

they ever open another inquest, it’ll be just the same old rubber stamp job. As far as anyone’s concerned, you got away with it. And as for the Increment, they never existed.’

 
    4
    The Increment. Inside the secretive walls-within-walls of UK Special Forces, Ben had always believed they were more myth than legend. What the verifiable facts said was . . . nothing. Because nothing about the Increment was, ever had been, or ever would be, verifiable. What the rumours said, and had repeated persistently for years, was that the Increment was the name given to an ultra-covert black ops organisation that worked invisibly under the auspices of the British Ministry of Defence, so low in profile as to be known only to an élite core of individuals. It was whispered that the unit was composed of secretly-selected recruits from the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and MI6, and existed to provide military and intelligence services of the kind that could quickly and easily be denied by officialdom, in the event of such covert operations becoming compromised.
    In other words, the Increment was an illegal paramilitary assassination team. Employing only a certain breed of operative, possessed of the necessary qualities above and beyond those of normal Special Forces soldiers. Above and beyond, not in terms of their physical or mental ability, but in terms of their moral flexibility and willingness to accept missions so dirty that normal men couldn’t be asked to carry them out, or trusted not to speak out in protest at what they were being asked to do. For that reason, the very existence of the Increment was kept hidden even from the closest comrades of the men within it.
    That was, if you bought into the rumours. Ben never had, because wild speculation and crazy conspiracy stories had forever buzzed around the closed world of SF like flies trying to land on a foil-wrapped turd.
    But now he knew differently.
    Falconer coughed. He wiped red from the corner of his mouth. The colour was arterial bright. ‘Who said they did exist?’ he rasped.
    ‘Jaco Lennox did,’ Ben replied. ‘He was one of them. You should never have trusted him, Liam. The problem with hiring men of loose morals is that they tend to have large appetites. To keep them happy, you have to pay them a hell of a lot. But the likes of Jaco Lennox don’t believe in stashing it away for a rainy day. Once he’d drunk himself into a hole and the money ran out, you should have known that he’d fall apart. He was a loser who was guaranteed to burn out and start blowing his mouth off. If it had been me, I’d have kept a closer watch over him.’
    Falconer let out a bitter, resigned-sounding laugh, and his shoulders sagged. ‘We had our suspicions. But we couldn’t mount constant surveillance. We didn’t have the resources.’
    Another piece of the puzzle slotted into place in Ben’s mind. It was all beginning to make sense.
    ‘I wasn’t the only one Lennox blabbed to, was I? Talking to me was what broke the dam. My guess is that soon afterwards, he started making calls. And I’m also guessing that MI6 were listening in. That’s when they realised Lennox was going into serious meltdown and drinking heavily. How were they to know who he might talk to next? What if he went to the media? What if some idealistic reporter locked him down and sobered him up and got the whole story out of him? It would have been unsurvivable. He had to be silenced before the worst happened. Another little job for the Increment. How am I doing so far?’
    Falconer said nothing. Which was the same as saying everything. Ben knew he was right.
    ‘A drunk like Lennox couldn’t have been hard to pick up. The usual method. A dark street, no witnesses. One guy comes up to ask the time. The other steps up behind and puts a bag over his head. Then they cuffed and stuffed him into a van, drove him out into Epping Forest, popped two in his head for good measure and then strung him up with