Dark Winter ns-6

by Andy McNab

  Suzy tapped my shoulder. ‘Good luck. I’m going for the tube.’ As she jogged on up the steps, the other two peeled off and followed her.

  I continued behind the mother with the three-wheeler. She had a large bag over her shoulder and was leaning away from it to get a bit of leverage. Through the Perspex, I could see Suzy hurrying across to the other side of the tracks.

  I caught up with the buggy at the bottom of the stairs. ‘You want a hand with that?’ She flashed me a grateful smile. I picked up the front with my right hand, still clutching DW in my left. The baby looked about a year old, totally zoned out, half of his face covered by a blue plastic pacifier.

  I glanced over the hood before starting to head up the steps. Sundance and Trainers were on the phone again, about twenty paces away, their bags in front of them now, more or less on their chests. They probably wanted ready access in case I dropped DW by accident as I walked backwards with the buggy.

  When we reached the top of the stairs I set the front wheel down and got more grateful thanks from the mother. I smiled, turned to my left, and legged it across the walkway. Through the Perspex I could see my new friend clip Sundance accidentally on the side of the head as she adjusted the bag over her shoulder. He didn’t stop long enough to hear her apology. Glancing ahead, I could see the ticket office and the tube-station entrance beyond it. Ticket machines and turnstiles led on to a wide set of escalators that disappeared into the ground. There was no sign of Suzy or the other two.

  I went straight through and out into the station approach, past a taxi rank, and ran left, making for the main drag about twenty metres away.

  People try subconsciously to get as much distance as they can between themselves and their pursuers, and whether it’s in an urban environment or a rural one they think that means going as fast as possible in a straight line. In fact you need to put in as many turns as possible, especially in a built-up area. Every time you hit a four-way junction, it makes the pursuers’ job more difficult: they have more options to grapple with, a larger area to cover, and have to split forces. A hare being chased in a field doesn’t run in a straight line: it takes a big bound, changes tack, and off it goes again. Just as its pursuers are getting straight-line momentum, they have to change direction too, which means slowing down, re-evaluating. I needed to be that hare.

  I emerged on to what turned out to be quite a big junction. To the left was a couple of hundred metres of straight road, bordering a huge retail park, a large open square lined with all the regulars, B&Q, Currys, Burger King. It was heaving with trolley-pushing shoppers, and vans and cars in search of parking. Loads of confusion, loads of movement, loads of cover.

  I didn’t want to go all the way down to the crossing: that would put me in line of sight with the entrance to the ticket office. Instead I jumped the guard-rail and started to run, dodging traffic. I got half-way across, waited on the hatched lines for a gap, then ran again.

  Sundance and Trainers were doing the same thing as I reached the retail park. I kept to the paved area on the left of the open square, moving through the shoppers to the opposite corner by a carpet warehouse.

  I checked behind me again. They’d split. Trainers was about forty paces back, moving more slowly now I was static. To his right, moving out into the parking area, Sundance was trying to get up level and parallel to me.

  I clutched the DW package in both hands now. No way was I going to drop this shit. I followed the paved area to the right, by the carpet warehouse’s glass doors. Sundance was gaining on me, trying to cut me off, so I turned hard left, into B&Q.

  I pushed through the turnstile and into a space the size of an aircraft hangar, with aisle upon aisle of paint, drills, workbenches, all sorts, stretching away from me. I was already drenched with sweat, my chest heaving. The two boys were moving purposefully towards the front entrance. I had to put in some angles, had to get that confusion going.

  I turned right, trying to get into dead ground, looking up at the signs for a way out. There’d be fire exits, but they’d be alarmed.

  I headed for the rear of the store, looking for loading bays, open windows, anything. I realized too late that it seemed to be one big sealed unit, and they’d soon spot that too. One would keep a trigger on the exit point. The other would be coming in to get me.

  From a corner of the power-tool section, I watched Sundance come in, also gulping oxygen as he moved past laden trolleys and men in cement-covered overalls.

  There was a gardening area through a big hole in the wall to my right. I ducked into a world of fencing and lawnmowers, pre-packed sheds and stacks of paving stone. I felt immediately better being outside: I could kid myself I had a better chance of escape. A forklift truck vanished through a gap about twenty or thirty metres ahead of me. Maybe a storage area – or, better still, a customer pickup point.

  I looked behind me again. No sign of Sundance. I joined the trolley pushers heading for where the forklift had disappeared but, shit, it took me nowhere: it was just another cul-de-sac, blocked off this time by lines of rubber plants and small trees. The sprinklers were working overtime here, and the concrete floor was wet.

  I turned to go back out again, but Sundance was on to me, his eyes fixed on mine. I moved towards the corner, edging past a small group of shoppers with unsteerable trolleys. Maybe I’d be able to get through the fence. I didn’t run: on top of everything else, I didn’t want to attract the security guards. I might already be in the shit, but it could only get deeper if the real world got involved.

  It wasn’t going to happen. I brushed aside a potted palm and hit the fence, but there was no way out. Sundance was closing in.

  I turned to face him, holding up the bag. ‘I’ll throw it.’

  ‘No, you won’t, boy.’ He opened his jacket to show me a revolver in a hip holster. ‘Give me the bottles or I’ll drop you here and now.’ He took another couple of steps, then stopped as the tannoy announced that assistance was needed in the paint store. I was cornered, my back to the fence. We were no more than three or four paces apart. He held out his hand. ‘Gimme.’

  Beads of sweat glistened on his scalp before tumbling down his face. I held the bag even higher. He moved his hand slowly to his short and drew down on me. It was suppressed. He kept the weapon low, his eyes never leaving mine. He brought back the hammer with his thumb. ‘It’s worth the risk . . .’

  I couldn’t tell if he meant it or not, but the look on his face worried me. He had Suzy’s kind of excitement in his eyes. I leant back against the galvanized steel with the DW in my right hand, and slid down to place it on the wet floor. The sprinklers pattered on the duty-free bag and I could feel my jeans getting wet. The forklift speeded past, the other side of the row of palms, beeping its hooter to clear some trolley-pushers out of its path.

  What next? I knew he wouldn’t want me to move past him so he could pick up the bag. We’d get too close in the narrow aisle, and he couldn’t guarantee we wouldn’t land up fighting. He needed to control me while he took control of the bag.

  ‘Open your mouth.’

  I would have done the same.

  As I let my bottom jaw drop, he took a final step and moved the weapon up from his waist towards my face. My eyes were glued to its muzzle, my brain shrinking by the nanosecond. The sounds around me blurred and receded as it neared my mouth.

  I didn’t want to take a breath, I didn’t want to move my eyes. The hammer was still back, the pad of his first finger on the trigger, the suppressor almost brushing my face.

  I shot my hands up to the point where my eyes were fixed, grabbed the barrel, turning it up and to the left.

  He swivelled to punch me with his free hand. I didn’t have time to dodge the blow. Pain exploded in my temple and my eyes blurred.

  The weapon was just inches from my face, pointing into the air. I wedged a little finger in front of the hammer and turned him so his back was against the fence. He pulled the trigger and the hammer slammed into my skin. Locking my ben
t arms tight, I brought his wrist so close to my face that I could feel the fat barrel alongside it, then I collapsed my full bodyweight on to the ground.

  The yell I gave as my knees crashed into the concrete was almost as loud as the one he did as his arm was pulled out of its socket.

  He went down like a bag of shit. I clung to the weapon, twisting it out of his hands, sticking my finger in front of the hammer once more to squeeze off the action and keep it at half-cock. He grabbed at DW, saliva flying from his mouth. ‘Fuck you, fuck you.’

  He knew what was going to happen next, and I wasn’t going to disappoint him. I gave one well-aimed kick to his face, and left him writhing on the floor as he tried to protect his right arm and not breathe too hard through a mouthful of broken teeth.

  Pushing his short down the front of my jeans, I picked up the duty-free bag, got back into the store proper and headed for the opposite side. I kept my eyes on the exit, waiting for Trainers to appear.

  In he came, moving towards the garden section, shoving his cell back into his pocket. Sundance can’t have been speaking too clearly, but Trainers had certainly got the message. His eyes scanned every aisle.

  I started towards the front of the hangar, not running, trying to remain casual. People behind me were starting to mutter about something going on, and they weren’t talking about the offer of the day.

  The tannoy sparked up, a young man’s slightly strangulated voice asking for the duty first-aider to go to the garden section.

  I left the building, passing an Indian security guy in an oversized shirt collar and a peaked hat balanced on his ears. Thank fuck just one of them had come in after me. If they both had, or if I hadn’t been quick enough with Sundance, it might have been a different story.

  57

  Kelly’s eyes stared out at me from the Polaroid as rain pounded the tarmac and drummed on the roofs of the parked cars. It looked like the storm was back, and here to stay for the night. I was sheltering in the doorway of an expensive shoe shop just off Sloane Square, surrounded by scaffolding for the building works next door. A row of skips blocked the kerb, laden with sodden plaster and old, very wet bricks.

  Traser told me it was eleven sixteen as I slipped the creased photo back into my bumbag, alongside Sundance’s Brazilian Taurus .38 revolver and suppressor. I peered out towards Sloane Square tube station. It was closed. In fact all the tube stations I’d seen on the way here after about eight o’clock had had a couple of bored-looking policemen standing in front of their gated-off entrances. White marker boards told pissed-off travellers that there’d been a power failure affecting the whole system. Something to do with the wrong kind of rain. London Underground was closed until further notice.

  I hoped Suzy was around here somewhere, waiting like me, standing off until the RV time. If not, my options in the next fifteen minutes were going to be limited. I’d have to try to use the fact that I didn’t have her two bottles to my advantage: I’d tell the source I was only handing over three, that the other two would come when Kelly was released. Not that it would do me any good. That kind of threat only worked in Hollywood. If I was the source, I’d take my chances with the ones I’d got, and drop both of us anyway.

  The foot traffic at this time of night was busier than I’d have expected, maybe because of the tube shutdown. At least the taxis were enjoying themselves. There was a never-shrinking line of umbrellas at the rank on the square.

  I was dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a Fila nylon jacket to match the Fila baseball cap that was hiding my face from CCTV. The outfit was rounded off with a new pair of trainers, already wet and dirty after my trudge through the City. The DW was next to me in a Nike daysack, nestling inside my rolled-up leather bomber and jeans. I’d got a no-insurance, no-licence minicab about a quarter of a mile away from B&Q. The driver spoke just enough English for me to direct him south as the ancient Rover’s clapped-out exhaust rattled below us. He’d dropped me off at Bethnal Green, where I’d gone shopping in the Indian discount clothes shops before hitting the tube at around the time the Yes Man must have decided the situation could no longer be contained in-house. I’d only gone two stops before we were all chucked off at Bank and the station was closed.

  My eyes were glued on the bus stop, but none of the people waiting under their shiny wet umbrellas, or sheltering against Smith’s windows, looked remotely like her. I checked traser again, and at twenty-six past, head down, daysack over both shoulders in case I had to do a runner, I ventured out into the rain. Two minutes later I had my back pressed against Smith’s windows and the daysack between my feet, keeping under the four-inch ledge to help kid myself I was out of the rain. About thirty metres to my right, the other side of the crossing, one male and one female police constable stood outside the closed tube gates, already bored, but probably pleased to be under more cover than I was, and certainly happy about the overtime. The pair of them had a good laugh about something the woman had said. If they’d known what was really happening, there wouldn’t have been any jokes.

  Two men walked past from right to left, still in their office clothes, carrying briefcases and contorting themselves beneath one small fold-up umbrella. My eyes followed them towards the Kings Road, then switched to a woman coming in the opposite direction. Thank fuck for that. She might have her head down, but it was definitely Suzy.

  A guy in his twenties came to share my ledge. He still had his NatWest suit on, collar up, logo on the breast pocket. He lit a cigarette: the smoke drifted the few feet between us and I smelt the alcohol on his breath.

  I looked left again. Suzy had pushed her hair up into a ball cap, and her jeans jacket and baggy cream cargoes were soaked. She’d slung a large leather bag across her shoulders.

  As she got closer, I lifted my head so she could see me. She was all smiles. ‘Hello. How are you?’ She gave me a friendly kiss on both cheeks.

  ‘Fine. Enjoying the weather. Just on my way home.’

  ‘I’m parked round the corner. I’ll take you.’

  It would have been unnatural to go back the way she’d just come, so we carried on towards the tube, taking the junction right that led south towards the river. We followed the bend in the road until we were in dead ground from the police.

  About half-way towards the next T-junction, Suzy’s head lifted just enough for me to see her lips move under the dripping peak. ‘You seen all the closed tubes?’

  I nodded. ‘Got kicked off one at Bank. Power failure, my arse. It’s just like when they’re moving nuclear weapons along the motorways. All the junctions get closed off at three in the morning because of some mysterious accident further on, which suddenly clears as soon as the convoy has passed.’

  Her lips curled into a wry smile. ‘Looks like the boss had to come clean with Number Ten after all. Fair one. I wouldn’t take any chances now – would you?’ She gave a slightly surreal giggle. ‘Bet Tony’s flapping big-time. Can you imagine the spin that’s going on in there?’

  ‘They’ll never keep it buttoned. It’s going to be a nightmare this time tomorrow.’

  She glanced quickly behind her. ‘I spent the first half of the evening in the lobby of a Marble Arch hotel to keep out the way, but I got kicked out. They thought I was a hooker. So I did a quick couple of laps round the shops, got changed and here I am.’

  ‘I almost got caught in the B&Q the other side of the station. Sundance? Fucker drew down on me. Anyway, we’re here.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘I’ve got to make the call.’

  We arrived at the T-junction. Victoria station and Pimlico were signposted left, but we didn’t want to go there. I knew a right and a left would take us past Chelsea Barracks and on to the bridge.

  There was a lot of activity on the other side of the wrought-iron main gates, behind the Gore-Tex-covered, SA80-carrying MoD police guards. Trucks were lined up on the vast parade square, lights on and engines revving.

  Chelsea Bridge came into view, and so did a phone box. We
dug around in our pockets and between us came up with about four pounds in change. Squeezing into the box beside her, I got the Polaroid out again to phone the source. Suzy took it from me and studied it.

  Three police vans packed with uniforms screamed towards us from the other side of the bridge. It was nearly midnight, maybe time for a change of shift. She handed Kelly back. ‘It’s going to be a fucking sight slower tomorrow, when everyone gets to know about this shit.’

  The Cabinet Office, at number seventy Whitehall, had a suite of rooms for the use of government ministers and officials referred to as COBR, Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms. They were lettered rather than numbered, and emergency meetings tended to convene in room A. They’d be having one right now. The Chief of Defence Staff, heads of the intelligence and security services, the Met and fire service, every man and his dog, would be sitting round a table in crumpled shirts, working out what the fuck to do about these five bottles of Y. pestis on the move around the capital, while at the same time trying to keep everything looking as normal as possible for as long as they could. With Tony presiding, the Yes Man would be trying to explain his way out of the shit. That boil on his neck would be glowing nicely by now. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

  I dialled the number, picturing the chaos in the rooms adjoining A: phones ringing, people running around with bits of paper, others instructing the military to stand-to, but not explaining why just yet, others still trying to get the official yes or no on their actions-on for bio attack.

  My phone rang three times before the source answered. I didn’t give him a chance to speak. ‘It’s me. I’m back. Where do you want it?’

  He was trying to sound calm. I heard him take a breath, and made out the voice of a TV announcer. ‘Do you have all five?’