Breathing heavily, he turned the first corner in the courtyard to lead Phil into the building. Two other troopers had already entered with two canines, leading the charge to find any gunmen left inside.
Swartz steered Phil to the white alabaster steps that led to the basement below the courtyard. The building plans had suggested that this would be the perfect location for the bomb factory to be. It provided safety and containment for a bomber mixing dangerous chemicals and acted as an underground sanctuary that would most likely be used to control access from prying eyes.
Just as they dropped to the first turn in the staircase, Swartz heard one of the canines barking. He turned the corner into the unlit corridor. Sure enough, right at the end of the corridor, was a dog jumping up and down at a large metal door. The dog could smell the human scent inside – the scent of Sean. Swartz took the lead from the dog’s handler, who gave him a thumbs up. He put his hand on the door, sliding the small flap to its side, revealing a spyhole to look inside. He removed his night-vision goggles to peer through the hole. A night light inside the cell gave enough illumination for him to see Sean sitting in the darkness chained to the wall, eagerly looking at the door.
‘Sean, can you hear me?’
‘I hear you, who is it?’
‘Who the fuck do you think? There’s only one bloke who ever breaks you out of jail, for fuck’s sake.’
Swartz smiled and turned to Phil. ‘All yours now. Make it a clean one.’
Phil pulled out a length of plastic explosive from his chest pouch, moulded a couple of blobs and placed them on the door, close to where the double-locking mechanism latches engaged with the wall. He shouted through the keyhole. ‘Sean. Can you hear me? Keep your head down for two minutes and stick your hands over your ears. Rattle your chains if you heard that.’
A rattle of chains and the fading sound of a barking dog being led up the stairs to the courtyard. Swartz watched Phil place detonators in the explosive gel, fix a wire into the remote-detonating firing device and crouch down, turning his back on the cell some fifteen feet down the corridor. Phil signalled to Swartz to turn away from the blast. Seconds later – boom!
The blast wave engulfed Sean as the door swung violently open, forcing a wave of overpressure down one side of the cell. The cell thundered with the penetrating blast, which rattled the entire foundations of the ceiling structure, and a piece of masonry whistled past his head, splintering into the wall behind him.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Sean spluttered, looking up to see half of the wall blown off where the dual-locking mechanism had once sat, securing the door. He looked behind him to see the pockmarked wall where the masonry had shot into the wall.
‘Sorry about that,’ Phil shouted, as he stood in the doorway silhouetted against the night light. ‘Didn’t want to fuck about with two or three goes. Are you OK?’
‘Just about, you nutcase. That piece of rock nearly killed me, for fuck’s sake. Don’t bloody well use that stuff on these chains. Get a saw.’
Sean sat up, showing his hands to Phil. ‘What’s your plan for these then, eh?’
Swartz walked into the cell and shook Sean’s hand. ‘Another fine mess you’ve gotten us all into mate. Love it when your plans go to shit. I’ve been told to get you out and take you to Prague. You’re late on bloody parade again.’
Chapter 41
Kuwait
Sean winced as Phil ‘The Nose’ began to cut into the metal wrist bands that had shackled him to the wall. It was a delicate operation, using a battery-powered circular saw about the size of a teacup – but with enough power to slice Sean’s wrists right off if Phil buggered it up. He started slowly, with the aim of making just enough of a cut to weaken the metal and then rip it apart using metal shears.
‘You carry a lot of bloody kit Phil. Whatever makes you think you’ll ever need all this stuff?’
‘With you leading us, you never know what’s coming next,’ he said, with his trademark chuckle. ‘Now stay still - this might take a while and I want to know everything you’ve found out so far. Samantha has got everyone lined up for bombs going off across bloody Europe. What the fuck’s going on?’
Sean watched Phil switch on his iPod as he always did when he was dealing with tricky manoeuvres - normally when he defused bombs. Next came the gentle sounds of Bizet’s Pearl Fishers friendship duet. The calming notes of a tenor and a baritone singing of their allegiance to each other until death.
‘Why the music Phil? You never did tell me after you defused that bomb around Melissa’s neck in France.’
‘Ah, well music is in my blood, in my veins and in my soul. I’m a Welshman, remember?’
‘Keeps you calm then?’
‘Yup. Now shut up and stay still. This is a tricky bit I need to cut.’ Phil revved the saw up a notch or two, turning his music up even louder. ‘You see, this is my favourite duet. Bloody good sing-song. It’s about a chorus of men singing of the dangerous tasks that lie ahead - Sur la grève en feu. And a few rituals to drive away evil spirits. What evil lies ahead now then Sean?’
Phil was an explosives legend. He was only five foot eight inches tall but well built, with a very distinctive boxer’s nose, wide shoulders and a trademark number one haircut. He was the font of all knowledge on bomb disposal and technical surveillance and had received many bravery awards during his distinguished career in the British Army.
‘Bombs. Plenty of them, by the looks of it. The Iranians have been set up as proxies by the Russians to set fire to Europe.’
Phil held his shears in his mouth and stopped drilling momentarily. Sean saw the eagerness in his eyes as he looked at Sean with an unusually serious face. ‘Do we know where? How many?’
‘We’ve got tracking devices on most of them but can’t be sure it’s all of them. But, worst of all, they’re putting together INDs. They have uranium.’
‘Fucking hell. Improvised nuclear devices. That’s massive. Jesus.’
Phil sat down, crossed his legs and took a break. Sean saw the shock in his eyes.
‘Listen Phil. This is the building where the bloke put the devices together, but they’ve moved everything across the continent separately to assemble them just before they select the targets. We think there’s enough uranium for two devices but I’m not sure if they acquired any more from someone else. We need to search the bomb-making factory, which is down here somewhere. It’s probably booby-trapped from what I heard yesterday.’
‘OK, I’ll have a look once we get you out of here. Hold on, nearly done.’
‘The bomber is ex-British military – guy called Wilson Hewitt. Do you know him?’
‘Fucking hell. Any more shockers you want to tell me about? He was kicked out of the army about fifteen years ago. He was before my time, but a real idiot from the tales I’ve heard. He was an ammo-technician sergeant and got kicked out for using cocaine. He went nuts, went rogue if you like. He made a load of remote-controlled IEDs that he placed around army barracks in southern England. Although he was never found guilty, that’s the story that’s been told. That it was him. He used anti-open, anti-tilt and magnetically sensitive booby traps on them all.’
‘Shit. That’s not good – he knows what he’s doing then.’
‘Yup, and he knows his plutonium from his uranium rather well so he’s a bloody dangerous bomber capable of anything. This could be a long job dealing with the bomb factory.’
‘We need as much forensics as we can Phil, and we don’t have much time to muck around. We need to find out the targets quickly.’
‘There. You’re done. Let’s go and have a look at this room next door then, eh?’
Sean explained to Phil what they had found in the buried caches in Turkey and how the suitcase bombs looked as if they were ready to be adapted into dirty bombs. He described the ruse in Armenia that had been used to try and lure and turn Nadège. A ruse that involved Jack providing an artillery shell to the Iranians, whose transmitter was still transmitting from the room
that they were now stood outside.
Phil used his small torch to inspect the door fittings. There was no window. He lay on the ground to look under the door. No lights on inside. He then stood up and looked at Sean pensively.
‘Tell me if I’ve got this right Sean.’
‘What?’
‘You mean to tell me we gave the Iranians a nuclear shell…’ A pause whilst Phil grimaced. ‘…a shell full of uranium and we’ve gone and lost it?’
Sean didn’t want to answer that, it was Jack’s bag.
Swartz chipped in matter-of-factly. ‘That’s exactly right Phil.’
‘And we now have an expert bomber on the loose?’
‘That’s about the size of it, yes,’ Swartz answered again, this time sheepishly.
‘Jesus fucking Christ boys.’
Sean couldn’t hide his exasperation. ‘What do you mean you lost it? How?’
‘Cock-up on surveillance.’
‘But Jack had all the US assets at his disposal, right?’
‘Yup. Too big a job if you ask me. Too hard to control properly. Not sure what Jack’s playing at to be fair.’
‘Where did it go then?’ Sean asked, flabbergasted by what he was hearing.
Swartz took a moment. ‘Well, only one vehicle has left this location. We tracked it until it entered a Kuwaiti Army barracks right in the heart of Kuwait City.’
‘Bloody hell. This has turned into a right fiasco,’ Sean said, shaking his head before doing a palm slap on his forehead. ‘Phil, can we get inside and have a look inside here? Let’s get on with it, eh?’
‘Maybe. Hewitt would have known how to extract the uranium so I’m guessing we’ll find the shell inside here and the uranium gone. That is, if he has the right kit to shield himself from the radiation, which would debilitate him if he handled it without any shielding.’
‘Best we have a look then, eh chaps?’ Swartz chipped in. ‘Let’s get this job done, eh?’
‘Not so bloody fast big boy,’ Phil said, holding his hand up firmly. ‘This place could easily be booby-trapped so I’m on a go-slow for this job. One bit at a time. And I want total quiet from both of you. You might as well sit down. This will take a while.’
Sean watched Phil place his rucksack on the ground and pull out a small endoscope. ‘Here, push this under the door while I grab a look on the screen.’
Sean took the long wiry piece of equipment with a video camera as its probe. A strong beam of light within the lens allowed Phil to look into the room as he pushed it gently under the door. Sean heard more opera. This time Phil had switched on Borodin’s Prince Igor.
‘Up a bit. I can’t see fuck all. This chorus is just like our own bloody opera. Trying to save the homeland - again.’
Sean twisted the head of the probe, allowing Phil to have a better angle to look inside.
‘Fuck,’ Phil said, looking over to Swartz. ‘Here. Have a look at this mate. Is it what I think it is?’
Swartz had a look. Nodded. Then turned the screen to show Sean. A body slumped on the ground. A man. The face of the bomber. Sean looked back at Phil. ‘What now?’
‘Well if that’s our bomber it probably means we have a nuclear bomb or two making its way across Europe without him. He’s done his job and they’ve slotted him.’
‘Nadège slotted him,’ Sean said knowingly. ‘The place might not be booby-trapped now then?’
‘Not sure. But certainly less of a chance now. Let’s have a look.’
Sean watched Phil and Swartz kick the door in. Two boots powered onto the lock did it. Phil leant through the doorway to switch the lights on, which confirmed the gory scene inside. Sean could see the body of Wilson Hewitt lying in a pool of blood, with what looked like a couple of shots to the back of the head. Behind him lay a highly technical laboratory.
‘Stay here while I have a look around,’ Phil said. ‘I need to make sure it’s safe before you loons come in.’
Ten minutes later, Sean wandered around the laboratory. Wilson Hewitt’s bomb factory. What he saw astonished him. This was a well-financed operation that had delivered state-of-the-art machinery, hi-tech componentry, laboratory sinks with bottles of chemicals cooling in water and a plethora of electronic equipment. He gazed at the workbenches covered in pliers, electrical wire, duct tape, electrical tape and the odd calculator sat next to two laptops. A state-sponsored outfit and a hive of intelligence that would take days to exploit. But Phil would take care of that. What he needed now were some clues, anything to find out where Nadège had gone and where her targets were. He certainly hoped Jack was following her. Satellites maybe? What was Jack’s plan?
He walked the length of the room, inspecting all the materials and equipment without touching anything. He needed the big clues though. Something that told him about the types of bomb that had been made. Sean made his way to where Phil was stood – next to a large glass box with a set of gloves inside it. The glass box was seven foot long and stood on a huge bench, the gloves providing access inside it. The artillery shell was inside the box. Cut open. A long fuse, a lining of high explosives within the casing, a plunger to initiate the shell and a copper baseplate that had been separated from the main shell.
‘This is where he cut into the shell to extract the uranium.’
‘How?’
‘Super-fast saw, a bit of grunt and a final transfer to another shielded container – into his explosive device.’
‘How the hell did he manage that without killing himself from the radiation?’
Phil shrugged his shoulders. ‘Looks to me like he’s transferred the uranium to another container whilst it was inside this box – he could work on the material and be shielded all the time.’
Sean wandered around the rest of the workshop as Phil inspected the workbenches, taking photographs of everything he saw, inspecting componentry.
‘How on earth did he plan to transport the bombs?’ Sean shouted out across the room.
‘Over here mate. Look at this,’ Swartz chipped in, stood next to a dishwasher.
‘I see it,’ Phil said, eagerly making his way across to look inside it. ‘So that’s his plan. Hide the device in a dishwasher, freight it in lorries or shipping containers and the job’s done.’
‘Shit, do you think one machine or a few?’ Sean asked Phil.
‘Just a hunch, but I think only one. I don’t think he had enough uranium for any more.’
‘Do you think it’ll be on a ship then?’
‘I’d say it’s probably heading for a ship, yeah. It would be bloody hard to move these through borders in a road vehicle and there would be much less of a chance of it being detected on a ship. So yes, ship it probably is.’
‘Giving us a good bit of time to find its destination, right?’
‘Well a week at least if it’s destined for Europe. That would be my guess.’
Sean wondered what Nadège’s final solution was? Where was she headed? He wandered over to the corpse of the bomber. Sean checked his trouser pockets, then turned him over to check his shirt pocket. He checked his belt, and rummaged around, checking for a wallet or a phone. Nothing. Sean looked at Hewitt’s boots. A pair of Caterpillars. He took a few moments to unlace them before taking them off to inspect them. Didn’t seem like anything untoward. A small cavity in the sole. Then he saw the leather had been parted on the top of the boot. Just a small void but big enough for a piece of paper to be concealed. Sean ripped open the leather and retrieved a tiny piece of paper.
It was a map. A map of the British Isles with the shipping forecast areas. Thirty-one areas, with odd names such as German Bight, Biscay and Trafalgar. The shipping forecast areas that Nadège had been using as codewords to verify the agents that had been recruited for her by the Russian GRU. Exactly as Colonel Sergei had told Sean back at The Court’s operational base at RAF Bentwaters. Sean had been told to memorise every single forecast area and which ones were adjacent to them. Hewitt had kept the piece of paper on his person to memo
rise them.
The difference though was that Hewitt had now drawn on the map a few additional shipping forecast areas for the Atlantic. Only one of those areas was shown in capital letters. The name CANTABRICO.
Chapter 42
Essex Countryside
In a secluded and obscure piece of farmland in the Essex countryside, far away from any local villages and an hour from London, a woman unlocked a rusting metal door that led to an underground bunker. A special bunker built for the cold war, the only indication of its provenance being a battered sign above the door with three letters in red on a black background: ROC.
A man in handcuffs and a white forensic suit sat inside the Royal Observer Corps bunker, one of 1,563 that had been built across the country to warn people of a nuclear attack during the cold war. The bunkers were built underground to a standard design, with a four-metre entrance shaft which gave access to two rooms: one containing a chemical toilet, and a larger, monitoring, room which was furnished with chairs, a table, shelf and cupboard space and a bunk bed to sleep two. The bunker was fitted with a ground-zero indicator: a pinhole with four holes facing outwards in north, south, east and west directions. A piece of photographic paper would become exposed in the event of an atomic blast, with one or more of the pinholes indicating the direction of the blast.
Petra Novak entered the bunker, switched the yellow lights on and secured the door. She was dressed in rambling gear, sporting a brown waxed jacket, blue jeans and a pair of scuffed Scarpa boots. She placed a small black rucksack on the square table, unzipped the opening and took out a grey paint can with perforations dotted around it.
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