Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  Wilson reached the corner of the box first and waited. Johnson was with him and they glanced at one another, then eased the rules right up to the microswitches. Both paused a millimetre or so away from the depressed switch itself. Now they had to slide the rule over the switch while easing the pressure a little on the lid.

  ‘You two OK?’ Hewitt’s voice was higher pitched than he would’ve liked. Wilson nodded, glanced at Johnson who also nodded. They began to ease the rules on to the switches, keeping the pressure down, forcing the blades up and over each switch. Wilson’s stuck and he knew he was going to have to raise the lid a fraction more.

  ‘Stuck,’ he muttered.

  ‘I’m there.’

  Wilson nodded, heart in his mouth, and eased the pressure on the lid. He felt the switch give a tiny bit and his eyes balled, then the rule was in place and he pressed it home for all he was worth. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘OK, you can lift the lid.’

  Hewitt used both hands, being careful not to catch any wires. He eased it up and back and it locked itself on a chain by the hinge. Still he held it, glancing from Johnson to Wilson and then back at the box. He saw four grey and black plastic boxes, all with liquid-crystal display clocks mounted on them and the ten-day decade switches. The switches were all at zero. The alarm clocks were set to go off at 7:00 and 6:55 was now displayed on each face. He saw that each TPU was separately armed with a mercury tilt switch. He checked the wiring, the configuration of the circuitry, and decided that the tilt switches were not for additional safety arming, but booby traps. Once those last five minutes had ticked down, the device would go off. Four car batteries feeding the power. Dual integrated circuits on each TPU, red and green wiring. The wires were tied together, then attached with feeders to the separate detonator wiring and fed out through the back of the box. Four and a half minutes.

  Both Wilson and Johnson, still holding the rules over the microswitches, stared into the mass of wiring, battery and circuitry. ‘Batteries booby-trapped?’ Johnson said.

  Hewitt had his head bent, peering closely at them. You could not tell just by looking at them. They might have false bottoms, with separate Semtex charges rolled flat and taped inside. He could see now that they were armed with collapsing circuits, again not definitively evident from the X-rays. If he moved them or cut the wires, they could set the charges off. He looked at the wiring running from the batteries to the TPUs, then at the wiring going from the TPUs to the scaffolding pipes. Under four minutes and four of them to disarm.

  Hewitt looked again at the batteries. The wires were finished by a little metal O-ring and screwed into the terminal heads. ‘I’ll have to disconnect them at source,’ he said, and reached behind him for his tool kit. Selecting a screwdriver, he eased it over the lead terminal and gently fitted it into the screw head. There were eight in all and three and a half minutes on the clock. He finished the first one, prised it away and twisted the wire back over itself. Then he worked on the second. All the time, Johnson and Wilson held their rules in place and watched him. Hewitt gripped his tongue between his teeth and finished number two. Six to go, three minutes left.

  Sweat rolled off him. For a moment, his mask was so restricting he could not breathe and had to think about the depth of each breath. His hand wavered and the head of the screwdriver lost the thread and slithered across the terminal.

  ‘Keep it going, sir. You’re doing great.’ Wilson was helpless, both hands on the rule, keeping the balance and pressure down on the microswitch. Hewitt worked on. Two batteries free now, wires twisted away with no power running to the TPU. Two minutes on the clock. He worked on, again losing the connection between screwdriver and head. He swore under his breath, caught the screw head again and twisted. Three done and only one to go. A minute on the clock. He was soaking inside the suit. He started on the last battery. Johnson stared at his black rubber hands. The first screw was rusty and old and the screw driver slipped yet again.

  ‘Fuck it.’ Hewitt set it once more, twisted and it gave. He sighed, and both Wilson and Johnson heard the long wheezy breath through the respirator. The clock ticked down. First screw out, thirty seconds left. All at once Hewitt was weary, his eyelids were heavy: he blinked hard to see straight, turning his head to one side. The final screw; fitting the head in and turning; turning, turning. Loose, the clock ticking down, only seconds to go. The screw came free and the red digital display died on the face of the final clock.

  Wilson let go the rule and rocked back on his heels, punching his fist in the air. He slapped his commanding officer on the back and hugged Johnson. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said. ‘Thank you, fucking God.’

  Hewitt was grinning like a Cheshire cat. ‘That was closer than I would’ve liked.’ He looked at the pipes. ‘And we’ve still got thirty-five dets to render safe.’ He pressed the transmitter button on his radio.

  ‘Incident control point from Hewitt.’

  ‘Go ahead, sir.’

  ‘IED neutralized. Repeat IED is neutralized. You can tell the scientists to come up.’

  Harrison moved back to the ladder. The stun grenades would bring down part of the ceiling. He could already feel the trembling in the earth. They wouldn’t need to drag Slusher out to bury him. His mind was cold now, no anger, no rage, just a chilled calculation: ten men had been hunting him and three of them were dead. He climbed back to the Bloodline. Caution when he reached the top; he might meet Jesse or Drake. He paused just before he reached floor level, keeping his head well down. Suddenly a shot rang out and he felt the bullet zing past his shoulder. He ducked, then flipped himself up and rolled along the floor of the tunnel. Another shot and another, bullets bouncing off the stone all around him. He couldn’t tell where they were coming from and he pressed himself up against the ribs. Breathing hard now, the adrenalin suddenly high, he peered into the gloom.

  It had to be Jesse: he must’ve got to the top of the shaft before him and sound had given him away. That made Jesse good. Drake he could take as he had taken Slusher and Wingo, but Jesse was a soldier by profession. The mines would not faze him. He sat against the damp wall and listened. He had trained himself to listen to the minutest sound underground, when all about you was darkness. Water dripped, rolling off the walls with the sound of a loose faucet. He did not move, breathed in silence, clutching the carbine across his lap. Then he heard it, the faintest of noises, somebody moving towards him. Backing away, he raised the carbine. He knew that was Jesse Tate out there and there was only one place he could take him.

  Swann and Tania Briggs were driven down past the common at Shepherd’s Bush and along Holland Park Avenue. London was deserted. After the hubbub of the command control point the streets of the capital were like a ghost town. Swann felt a stone in the pit of his stomach. He was constricted in full NBC gear, rubber-encased fingers resting in his lap. The overboots were laced tight and cumbersome over his shoes. Already he could feel the perspiration trickling into his groin. Next to him Tania sat in silence, the second time she had been ‘suited and booted’ because of Ismael Boese. She thought back to the workshop at Healey Hall Farm: Bruno Kuhlmann’s naked and bloated corpse, the blood in his eyes from the pressure that had built up in his brain. She could see again the way he clutched that length of scaffolding pipe, a silent omen of what was to come. She glanced at Swann, not being able to see his eyes, as he sat with his face towards the floor. ‘You OK, Jack?’ Her voice was muffled, strange in her ears, like on tape. Swann lifted his head. ‘You really sure about this?’

  ‘She was ID’d twice, Tania.’

  Tania looked away again. ‘I don’t understand it.’

  ‘I’m looking for a few answers myself.’

  They were driven through Notting Hill and on to Bayswater, where the buildings were large and expensive. Earlier that morning a group of looters had smashed premises in Kensington High Street, followed by a second group in Oxford Street. The line had been broken a handful of times, but the army presence was massive and the looters were spotted f
rom the air and picked up.

  The United States Embassy, spread eagle on the roof, was silent and grey and empty. Even the grass in the park seemed to have stopped growing. The truck drove round the square and pulled up outside Luxembourg Directe. Swann had been here many times, met in the hall by the frock-coated commissionaire then escorted up three flights of stairs to Pia Grava’s office. Pia, the dark-haired beauty he had met at Jimmy Pierce’s leaving do. Since then a fixture in his life, the woman he talked to, shared a bed with, the woman he told all his fears.

  Tania stood on the pavement with her tool bag. ‘You want me to do a window or the door?’ she asked.

  ‘Better be the door.’

  ‘Alarm?’

  ‘Let it ring.’

  ‘I can probably shut it off from inside.’

  ‘Let’s just get on with it, Tania.’

  He sat on the kerbside, craving a cigarette, and listened to the silence of the streets. A few minutes later, he heard the bell start ringing and looked round. Tania was standing there with her arm wide and the oak front door standing open. Swann got up, and they went into the marble-floored hallway.

  ‘Jesus, what a place,’ Tania said.

  ‘Loads of them like this round here. Some are permanently empty.’ Swann stood with one hand on the bottom of the banister and looked up.

  ‘Sort the alarm if you can. It’d be nice if they don’t know that we’ve been here.’

  ‘I can turn it off, but not reset it.’

  ‘That’ll do. Third floor, when you’re done.’

  He climbed the steps on his own, rubber boots making a soft sort of squelching sound on the stone. He took in everything he saw, as if he was seeing it for the first and last time: the pictures of some Luxembourg dignitaries, the wall covering, the velvet curtains on each of the landing windows. On the third floor he paused outside the suite of offices and caught his breath. It was not that warm a day, but the heat in the suit was stifling. Inside, he saw her desk, the smooth-polished wood and the high-backed leather chair. At that moment, he thought of her sitting in Amersham, glued to the news like everyone else in the country, the children playing on the floor or reading upstairs somewhere. Thank God Caroline was there. He had not spoken to Pia since he got back from Paris. He would have to play a part for a while.

  He sat in her chair and looked at the silent computer screen. Her desk diary lay on the leather-bordered blotter, and he began flicking through the pages. Paris, he noted the entry a few weeks ago. It didn’t say who she was seeing. He looked further back and found an entry which said Nevada. Then one for New York and one more for Baltimore. Nowhere was Salvesen’s name mentioned.

  He sat where he was for a moment and thought. He could not access her computer without some technical people to get over the password, but there must be paper files. They had evacuated as quickly as everyone else and he doubted they would have shipped much paper. The filing cabinet was locked, but it only took him a few minutes to pick it and he slid the drawers open. He shuffled through the papers, looking for a file under S, but found nothing. Then he saw one marked ‘BVI trusts’. He slipped it from its holder and set it on the table. Tania appeared in the doorway and Swann jumped. He had not even heard the alarm stop ringing.

  ‘Find anything?’ she asked him.

  ‘Still looking.’ He opened the file and began to turn the pages. He didn’t understand much of it, trustees and bankers and companies all over the place. Then he found what he was looking for and lifted the single sheet of paper. A letter from Jakob Salvesen, thanking Pia for the property investments she had made on his behalf and confirming a meeting in Paris.

  He switched on the photocopier and as it warmed up he selected more correspondence, stuff from Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, money shifting here, there and everywhere. He noted some cash transactions, one of them for £18,200. It rang a bell and he looked at it more closely. Just a note on a sheet of paper, handwritten in pencil. Then he realized, it was the full six months’ rent on the property in Queen’s House Mews. He photocopied everything in the file and replaced it in exactly the order he found it. Tania did the copying while he passed her the sheets and collected the fresh ones. When they were done, he closed the drawer and it locked.

  He tried the top drawer of her desk. It was locked. He watched while Tania picked it. She was so much better than he was; had a good tutor in Webb. She stood back then while Swann looked through the drawers. Everything was typically Pia: orderly, in its rightful place, barely a crease in any of the pages. He found a bundle of cellphone bills all clipped together. Maybe he would not have to request subscriber information after all. One by one he went through them and Tania copied the ones he selected. He scanned the numbers, but none stood out. There were a lot of international calls; a lot of calls to mobiles. He copied them all and replaced them in the drawer.

  Chief watched Salvesen walk away from the entrance to Magdalena with a hunting rifle in his hand. Another armed man was with him, two more seemed, to be guarding the portal. Chief eased back the bowstring and set an arrow in place. He had parked the car on the dirt road and hiked the rest of the way. Despite his size he was an Indian, and had forgotten none of his ancestors’ silence. He moved up to the saddle, skirting his prey in a circle. He would let them get only as far as the top. He moved more quickly now; they were making a lot of noise and were talking. At the saddle, he settled himself behind a rock and waited. It was dark, but the moon was high and the two men stood out clearly against the skyline. Chief rose up from behind the rock like some great black shadow and levelled his bow at Salvesen’s chest.

  ‘Stand still,’ he said.

  The other man lifted his gun and Chief shot him through the chest. He grunted and stumbled back, the gun clattering away from him. He lifted both hands, then fell to his knees, before toppling on to his belly. Salvesen shot Chief in the left shoulder. Chief felt it shatter and gasped. He dropped his bow, staggered but did not fall. His left arm hung limply at his side and he looked at the blood spilling in a dark swathe over his jacket. His eyes dimmed, then focused and then he thinned them to all but nothing and stared at Jake Salvesen. And then he began to snarl, starting low in his chest, rising in pitch until it exploded in a roar like a grizzly. He took two loping strides. Salvesen raised the gun and fired a second time. The gun jammed, spat flame, and he dropped it. Chief was in his face, four inches taller. He reached out with his right hand and gripped Salvesen round the throat. For a moment he tensed, looked in his eyes and then lifted him clear off the ground. He held him, one-handed, a two-hundred-pound man with his feet flailing beneath him.

  Chief was squeezing the life out of him. Salvesen’s eyes bulged red in their sockets and then Chief dropped him. Salvesen crashed to the ground with a cry. Chief stepped over him, grabbed him by his hair and dragged him through scrub and rock and finally threw him against a boulder. Quivering now, he bent for the dead man’s gun and cocked it, one-handed. Salvesen was breathing hard, holding his hands to his throat. Chief held the gun at waist height, then dropped to a sitting position, all the strength gone out of him.

  In the EOD lorry, Webb listened to Major Hewitt and momentarily closed his eyes. He picked up the radio to Colson. ‘IED is neutralized, sir.’

  ‘I heard, George. It’s bloody excellent news.’

  ‘Is Swann there?’

  ‘No, he’s up at Grosvenor Square.’

  ‘Is he. What for?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when you get back. But we’ve found Brigitte Hammani.’

  Together with the men from Porton Down, Webb went upstairs and found the EOD operators carefully dismantling the pipes. ‘We decided to take out all the explosives here,’ Hewitt told the duty officer from Porton Down. ‘I want this fully rendered safe before we leave.’

  ‘That might disturb the solution.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The inner seal looked pretty stable in the X-ray pictures. I think it’s best. Then the pipes are all yours.’

  ‘
OK.’

  They took apart the bottom seal on the pipes and withdrew the detonators first. Each one had its wires clipped and then twisted together and set to one side. Then the Semtex was scraped out. Webb organized it all into separate nylon evidence bags. The Porton Down men were busy with the dirty room.

  At the BBC building in White City, the Antiterrorist Branch were in high spirits. Garrod sat smiling at his desk and Colson took a bottle of whisky from his bag and poured them each a large measure.

  ‘Give a shot to the boys and girls, Bill,’ Garrod told him. ‘They deserve it.’ He picked up the phone and dialled the direct line to the Prime Minister.

  ‘John Garrod, sir,’ he said. ‘The bomb is rendered safe.’

  ‘Excellent, Commander. That is wonderful news. Congratulations.’

  ‘Under a minute to spare,’ Garrod went on. ‘The EOD operators did a brilliant job.’

  ‘I’m sure they did. Please pass on my appreciation to their commanding officer. I shall speak to him myself as soon as I get the chance. When can we get back to normal?’

  ‘Now, sir. IED’s safe. The Porton Down men are conducting their tests, but so far there’s been all but negative contamination.’

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful news. Well done, Mr Garrod. The nation can be proud of you.’

  ‘They’re taking the explosives out of each tube now, sir. Should take about half an hour. Then we’ll airlift the pipes to Porton Down for analysis. You can bring the people back.’

  Garrod hung up and went out into the other room. The team were in uproar. Colson had dished out the Scotch and everyone was backslapping and hugging one another. Louis Byrne shook hands with them all and everyone wanted to kiss Cheyenne. Only Swann sat on his own, reading through some papers. Colson went over and handed him a drink.