by Will Jordan
Chapter 23
‘Talk to me, Sanchez,’ Hawkins barked into his radio as he emerged into the street, ignoring the strobe-like flash of blue lights and the crowds of onlookers behind police barricades, their smartphones recording everything. He had pulled on a balaclava to hide his face.
Smoke billowed up from the basement of the pub, leaking through windows damaged by the blast. The clean-up operation was going to be quite an undertaking, but that was for someone else to worry about.
Hawkins’ only remit was to find Drake, no matter the cost.
‘Air assets are on the case, sir,’ the voice of his communications specialist crackled in his ear. ‘GCHQ are working every camera in a half mile radius.’
‘Fuck that, they’ll never narrow it down fast enough,’ he said, striding towards the SUV that Sanchez was operating out of. Away from prying eyes now, he ripped off the cloying balaclava and fixed his comms specialist with a hard look.
‘Their exit would have to be underground,’ he decided. ‘Something to get them outside a police perimeter.’
‘A tunnel,’ Sanchez agreed.
The entrance to such an escape route would be well hidden to prevent discovery. Locating such a concealed portal could take days, and Hawkins had no time to waste. Every second that passed was a second wasted.
‘Pull up a schematic of the area and look for underground construction. Sewers, subways, anything that could have been accessed from the Vault.’
Sanchez was hard at work on his computer, sifting through the reams of data streaming in. London in the twenty-first century sat atop a complex warren of old tunnels, disused sewers and abandoned subway and maintenance lines, many laid down before Hawkins’ grandparents had walked the earth. Some had never even been catalogued, discovered only when the foundations of newer buildings were being excavated.
‘Seconds count, Sanchez,’ Hawkins warned.
‘Working on it.’
He didn’t look up, utterly focussed on his task as he scrawled through subterranean blueprints and ordinance survey maps. Then his face lit up.
‘I’ve got something!’ Turning the laptop around, he indicated a tunnel that bisected the street they were now on, running almost directly beneath the Vault. ‘Looks like a section of access tunnel for a planned subway station just east of here. The station never opened and the tunnel was sealed off.’
A smile began to spread across Hawkins’ face. The smile of a predator closing in on its prey. ‘Find where that tunnel terminates and get GCHQ on it now.’
* * *
Drake and Jessica were hurtling eastbound on the main drag, cutting left and right to gain ground in the heavy traffic. Their hastily chosen course was taking them out of Fitzrovia and into the Farringdon district of the city. Drake was hoping to reach the comparatively downmarket and crowded East End of London, with its sprawling docklands and loosely policed council estates. The kind of place they could disappear.
Drake was well aware that speeding might attract police attention, but the need to put as much distance as possible between them and the besieged Vault was even more urgent. The force hunting them had access to the full apparatus of the UK security services. It was by no means certain they would escape it.
‘Where are we heading?’ Jessica asked, clutching the overhead handle as Drake swung them hard right, cutting across an intersection and narrowly missing a delivery van.
‘Anywhere that isn’t here,’ he replied, though he was obliged to lean hard on the brakes when traffic in both lanes slowed, blocking the road with a river of red lights.
One thing that no amount of determination or driving ability could overcome was the perils of central London traffic.
* * *
‘We’ve got him!’ Sanchez declared.
Hawkins looked up. ‘Talk to me.’
‘GCHQ just called it in. A black BMW was spotted leaving a parking garage right above the termination point of the tunnel. They’re backtracking camera footage right now, but the vehicle was confirmed heading east.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Three, maybe four minutes.’
‘Vector in all available air and ground assets, and coordinate with GCHQ. I want that son of a bitch boxed in.’ With his instructions issued, he leaned in to speak with the operative behind the wheel. ‘Get us moving! We’re going after him now.’
* * *
Drake saw the distant flicker of blue lights in his rear-view mirror. There could be little doubt that they were for him. Whether through bad luck or bad judgement, they’d been spotted. The net was closing in, and their options were narrowing by the second.
Jessica had seen it too and reached the same conclusion.
‘Ryan…’
‘I know.’
‘They’re coming this way.’
‘I know!’
To sit here motionless would be suicide, while their chances of escaping on foot were virtually zero. They had to find another way out. Considering the situation for a second or so, Drake suddenly swung the wheel over and stomped hard on the accelerator, performing a high-speed U-turn into oncoming traffic.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Jessica cried out, wincing at the horn blasts sounding behind them as Drake accelerated away.
‘Getting us out of here.’
‘You’re taking us straight towards them! Are you insane?’
Spotting a one-way side street up ahead, he went for it without hesitation, turning hard left and disappearing from the main road with tyres screeching as they fought for purchase on the slick tarmac. He could feel the car’s traction control system working hard to keep them from spinning out of control.
‘You know that sign said No Entry, right?’
‘Hadn’t noticed,’ he lied, barely scraping past a car heading in the opposite direction and ignoring the obscene gestures from the driver as he powered away.
* * *
‘Target has changed course,’ Sanchez reported, bracing himself as the SUV accelerated hard, making full use of their lights and sirens to part traffic in their way. ‘Now heading south towards Waterloo Bridge.’
‘Stay on him,’ Hawkins commanded.
‘We’ve got him on aerial,’ the comms specialist confirmed. ‘Choppers and drones have visual contact locked in. No way he’s losing us now.’
‘What about ground assets?’
‘We’ve got police mobile units closing in from all sides. He’s boxed in.’
Hawkins smiled. ‘Time’s up, Ryan.’
* * *
Knowing the main roads would be too busy to negotiate, Drake was forced to fall back on London’s network of narrow residential streets, many of which were integrated into confusing one-way systems that he promptly ignored.
He was maintaining a generally south-east course, hoping to get out of the congested city centre and into the sprawling suburbs beyond, where CCTV was less concentrated and lighter traffic would allow him to gain speed.
But first he needed to lose their ground pursuers, who were closing in despite his best efforts.
‘How are they still with us?’ Jessica asked, glancing over her shoulder. ‘There’s no way they should be able to see us.’
‘They’ve got us on aerial surveillance,’ Drake admitted. ‘No way to shake them off.’
Jessica craned her neck to survey the sky above them, but there were too many buildings and too much light pollution to see much.
‘Then what do we do?’
Snatching his cell phone from his pocket, Drake punched in a number and waited for the call to connect. Fortunately, it was answered almost immediately.
‘Frost.’
‘Tell me you’re at your computer,’ Drake began, slowing only marginally before surging across a main road and into another side street beyond.
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘Listen carefully. I need you to—’
‘Ryan!’ Jessica shouted, bracing herself against the dashboard.
Drake slamme
d on the brakes as an SUV appeared at the end of the street, blocking their path. The BMW skidded to a halt as the other vehicle’s door popped open and a man leapt out, a Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle in hand. A man whose face was lit with malicious glee as he took aim.
Jason Hawkins.
‘Get down!’ Drake cried, pushing Jessica down into her seat as the assault rifle spat a short, vicious burst at them.
Drake tensed up as the stream of rounds impacted the windshield, expecting them to punch straight through and tear into him.
No such thing happened. Instead there was a tight series of hollow thumps, and Drake flinched as a trio of small cracks appeared in the glass. Beyond it, Hawkins’ look of sudden confusion mirrored his own. It took him a second or so to realise the car had been reinforced with bulletproof glass.
Hesitating no longer, Drake threw it into first gear and stamped his foot on the accelerator. The powerful engine roared and the BMW rocketed forward, heading straight for the man standing dead ahead.
Hawkins opened fire on full automatic, aiming at the vehicle’s engine block. Drake ignored the rounds now ricocheting wildly off the car’s bodywork, striking buildings and parked cars as he cycled up through the gears, tearing towards his target.
‘What are you doing?’ Jessica yelled. ‘You’re going to crash!’
‘Stay down!’ he replied, his eyes locked on Hawkins as they closed in rapidly, their speed climbing with every second. He imagined the dull thump as they impacted, the crunch of bones shattering against steel, the agonised cry as the life was crushed out of his enemy.
The firing ceased as Hawkins’ weapon ran dry. With no time to reload, he turned and leapt aside. At the same moment, Drake swung the wheel over, aiming for the rear end of the SUV blocking his way.
‘Hold on!’ he cried, bracing himself against the wheel.
An almighty bang, the crunch of buckling plastic and the tinkle of broken glass rang out as the front quarter of the BMW slammed into the rear of the SUV, spinning it aside like a downed bowling pin so that it collided with a parked car nearby.
Jerked painfully forward against his seatbelt, Drake managed to keep his foot on the accelerator, praying the BMW’s drivetrain had survived the impact. Miraculously, the engine carried on running, and though the steering now felt distinctly heavier, the car seemed to be in running order.
Screeching around a corner at the end of the street, he powered away as fast as the damaged vehicle would allow.
‘How the hell did we survive that?’ Jessica asked, staring at the bullet-scarred windshield.
‘They gave us a fucking good car,’ Drake replied, feeling around for his cell phone on the floor at his feet. The call was still connected, and Frost was none too pleased about what she’d just heard.
‘Ryan, talk to me, you son of a bitch!’ her voice blared out of the phone’s little speaker. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Long story, bad news,’ he replied, wedging it against his shoulder. ‘Right now, I need your help.’
‘Shit, what else is new?’
* * *
In their wake, Hawkins picked himself up from the trash-strewn gutter and surveyed the damaged SUV. The crash had spun it around and caved in the entire rear quarter, buckling the wheel and probably snapping the rear axle. The driver was rubbing his neck and struggling to get the door open.
Clenching his jaw in barely restrained frustration, he reached for his radio.
‘Tell me you still have them on aerial.’
A couple of thousand feet overhead, an Airbus H135 lightweight chopper assigned to the National Police Air Service swung left in a wide arc to pursue the BMW. Its powerful downward-looking surveillance array was locked onto the target vehicle, automatically tracking and rotating to keep it in sight.
‘Copy that,’ the pilot responded. ‘Air One has them in sight. Target now heading south towards Victoria Embankment.’
‘I want all bridges in that area locked down,’ Hawkins ordered.
With a top speed of 170mph, the H135 could easily outrun and outperform any ground vehicle in existence.
Visual tracking data from its cameras was being automatically downloaded to GCHQ, and cross-referenced against CCTV number-plate recognition on the ground, creating a digital web that had silently ensnared the fugitive vehicle.
A web which was closing inexorably around them.
* * *
Drake meanwhile was rocketing through the heart of the city, passing the ancient fortified walls of the Tower of London, the floodlit towers and elevated walkways of Tower Bridge, and the sleek, ultra-modern skyscrapers of Southwark beyond.
He paid these iconic landmarks no heed, pushing the car as hard as he dared, caring nothing for the stop signs or traffic in his way. Time was running out. If he was to put his plan into action, it would have to be now.
‘I see lights up there,’ Jessica said, spotting the flashing strobe lights of an aircraft shadowing them. ‘They’re following us.’
‘Police chopper,’ Drake replied, eyeing the temperature gauge on the dashboard. It was climbing rapidly. The crash had likely compromised the engine coolant system. It was only a matter of time before the whole thing seized up.
His cell phone was now on hands-free mode. ‘Keira, we’re almost there. Are you ready?’
‘Give me a few minutes,’ the young computer specialist replied testily, as she often did when working against the clock.
‘We don’t have a few minutes.’
‘Well, fuck me. Would you like to swap places?’
‘Gladly,’ Drake snapped.
Entering a one-way road with liberal use of the horn, he sped through a junction in the shadows of a train station and turned hard right. Within moments, concrete retaining walls rose up on either side as the road descended.
‘Christ, I hope this works,’ Jessica whispered, bracing herself.
‘Keira, I’m gonna lose signal in a few seconds,’ Drake cautioned. ‘It’s now or never.’
There was no response. Up ahead, a massive brick portal rushed towards them.
‘Keira, talk to me.’
Drake thought he might have heard the young woman’s voice before their car disappeared into the tunnel and the signal cut out.
* * *
Though London is well known for the many bridges, old and new, criss-crossing the River Thames, there are in fact a number of tunnels bored deep beneath it. Most of them carry rail traffic for the city’s Underground network, but a small number were intended for road users.
Including the Rotherhithe Tunnel, connecting the borough of Tower Hamlets with Southwark. Laid down more than a century earlier, when motor cars were only just beginning to appear, it had since become a busy route for commuters in the eastern districts.
Today it would become an escape route for Drake and his sister.
‘Air One, target just entered Rotherhithe Tunnel, heading south,’ the chopper pilot reported.
‘Copy that,’ Hawkins confirmed. ‘Be ready to intercept on the south side.’
‘Roger, Air One is en route.’
Banking left, the chopper circled towards the southern exit of the tunnel, which was disgorging a steady stream of traffic. Its infrared cameras were locked on, automatically cataloguing each vehicle as it appeared. And yet there was no sign of the BMW. The seconds ticked by, but still the car didn’t emerge.
‘Where is he, Air One?’ Hawkins demanded. ‘Give me a sitrep.’
‘Air One, no sign of him. Standing by.’
‘He should be there by now. What’s going on?’
‘Air One is on standby.’
Suddenly another voice crackled over the radio net. ‘All units, this is command. We have a verified traffic cam sighting at the north end of the tunnel, heading east.’
‘Say again, command?’ the pilot requested.
‘Cameras picked up the target vehicle at the north end of the tunnel.’
‘Son of a bitch doubled back on us,’ H
awkins snapped, realising Drake’s attempted ploy. ‘Move in, Air One. Do not lose him!’
‘Roger, Air One is moving north.’
Banking hard, the aircraft roared back over the river, the surveillance package mounted beneath its airframe automatically reorienting itself, eagerly searching for a target.
Meanwhile on the ground, police units closed in from all sides, blocking off potential escape routes. The pilot took note of the flashing lights converging from multiple directions. The trap was sprung.
And yet, the one thing missing in all of this was the target vehicle itself. Bringing the aircraft into a hover about a thousand feet above the scene, the pilot scanned left and right, looking for the damaged black BMW and finding nothing which resembled it.
‘You got anything?’ he asked his co-pilot.
‘No visual hits,’ the man replied, urgently scanning. ‘Where the hell is he?’
‘Command, confirm target location.’
‘We have a confirmed camera ping directly below you.’
‘We’re not seeing it. And there are ground units everywhere. Please advise.’
Confused silence greeted his urgent request.
* * *
A thousand feet below, a trio of police cruisers screeched to a halt at the busy road junction. Leaping out, the officers moved in with tasers at the ready, scanning the rows of cars that were now boxed in.
Frightened and confused drivers stared back at them, but the officers paid them little attention. They were looking for a damaged black BMW, and the fugitive behind the wheel.
Yet as they moved from car to car, their confusion and disbelief grew. There was a Ford, a Vauxhall and a pair of Volkswagens, ranging in colour from silver to red. But no BMW.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ one of the officers asked, glancing around in bewilderment. ‘Why are we not seeing him?’
