by Chris Ryan
‘Take the shots.’
There was no hesitation. Like Danny and Spud’s handguns, Ripley’s HK416 was suppressed, so with the noise of the rain it was barely audible. Danny could only just hear the three head shots, like someone rapping sharply on a wooden door. The three figures crumpled to the ground, one after the other, like a line of dominoes.
A millisecond later, Danny fired. A single shot. It hit his target square in the head. He crumpled to the ground behind the open passenger door.
‘What’s happening?’ A voice from the tech unit.
‘Stay down!’ Danny hissed.
Four targets down to the north, but it wasn’t over yet. There were still three guys hiding behind the cab to the south, almost certainly armed.
Aware, from the corner of his eye, that Ripley had thrown himself to the ground in order to present less of a target to the remaining three shooters, Danny spun round in the opposite direction, semi-protected by the corner of the arch. Now all four soldiers were facing south. They had a few seconds before the three remaining guys realised their mates were down. When that happened, they’d do one of two things: shoot, or run.
They decided to shoot.
It was a sudden, intense burst of fire which lasted about five seconds. Rounds sparked on the cobbles. A couple smashed into the front window of the Bedford van – far too close to the tech unit for Danny’s liking but even closer to Ripley, who was pinned down on the ground.
‘Open up,’ he ordered.
The barrage of fire from the unit’s weapons was much quieter than the shooters’. These were not noisy rounds fired at random to assert anyone’s authority. They were precisely aimed shots from four suppressed weapons. They shattered the windows of the parked-up cab fifty metres from Danny’s position, and flew through the chassis. Danny clearly saw one body slump back from the car, but Barker’s voice in his earpiece clearly told him that he hadn’t seen it all. ‘I’ve got two targets down. No sign of the third.’
‘Hold your fire,’ Danny instructed.
The gunshots fell silent.
No movement from the cab to the south.
Rain.
Then, suddenly, like a frightened animal scampering away from a predator, a third figure broke from behind the black cab. He started sprinting away, firing a handgun randomly backwards from above his head towards Danny and the others.
Barker’s voice: ‘I’ve got him.’
Danny couldn’t see Barker – he had to be taking cover in one of the arches to the south of the mews – but he heard the single round popping from his rifle and he could tell from the way the target fell that the round had entered the gunman’s right shoulder. The force of its impact gave him a little extra momentum: it looked like he was diving as he fell forward and collapsed on the cobblestones.
Silence.
Then Spud, over the radio: ‘Goons.’
‘Ripley,’ Danny ordered, ‘see that the tech unit’s okay. Spud, check Ripley’s three are dead.’
‘He shot them in the head, mucker. Normally does the trick.’
‘Just do it, Spud.’ Danny was already running south, towards Barker’s position. Barker was standing easy, his HK416 lowered. Distance between them, 20 metres. Close enough for Danny to see the adrenaline-fuelled grin on his face.
It didn’t last long.
‘GET DOWN!’ Danny barked.
The final shooter – the one Barker had downed with a single shot of his rifle – had moved. He was on his back, 15 metres from Barker’s position, and the shot that he fired from his handgun was unaimed. But it found its mark. Danny saw a flash of blood spark from Barker’s right arm, and his SAS mate hit the floor.
It was like the flick of a switch. Until that moment, Danny had been calm. Collected. His breathing had been easy, his pulse slow. But suddenly something changed. The red mist. Anger burned through him. He ran up to the bastard, to see that he was bleeding from the groin and torso. But he still had his gun in one hand, and the fingers were clenched round the pistol. He waved it aimlessly. Danny sensed that his target’s vision was going.
It was as if something else was controlling Danny. Some other force. He bent down and forced the gunman’s hand, gun and all, until the barrel was pointing between his lips and into his throat. He squeezed the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times. The body thudded with each shot. Blood spread immediately from the back of the man’s head, and foamed between his lips. Spatter covered Danny’s hand.
And then, like the switch had been flicked once more, Danny was himself again. Leaving the bleeding, brutalised corpse at his feet, he stood up and spun round. Barker was still on the ground, but moving. Danny sprinted over to him to find his mate writhing on the wet cobblestones.
‘The cunt!’ he shouted. ‘The fucking cunt got me in the arm!’
He was clutching his upper right arm with his left hand. He’d be fine, though Danny could see that the rain was washing significant amounts of blood away from the wound and over the cobblestones.
‘Stay there,’ he told Barker. ‘We’ll get you to a hospital.’
‘Did you put the dickhead down?’ Barker demanded through gritted teeth.
Danny looked back at the recumbent body, then at the stubborn bloodstains on his right hand. For an unpleasant moment it was as though he saw himself from above, forcing his victim’s gun into his mouth, taking the shots. He looked like some sort of animal, crouching in the rain.
Danny put a reassuring hand on the shoulder of his wounded mate.
‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘Yeah, I put him down.’
Two
23.47hrs
Tessa Gorman, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, stood at the open door of Number 10 and looked out on to Downing Street to see that it was still raining.
Not that it made much difference to her. As Home Secretary, she had the benefit of a chauffeur who even now was trotting up the steps with a black umbrella. He ushered her to the ministerial car. She was still quite dry when she slipped into the back. Her driver had turned the seat-heaters on, so the soft leather was rather comforting.
If only the same could be said for the meeting she’d just left. They’d all been there: the PM; Michael Mears, her opposite number at the Foreign Office; Tim Atkins, the PM’s head of communications, whose bald head and hairy eyebrows made him look more like a clown than the power behind the throne. Three men, each of them greasily shifting responsibility for the decision they had all just made on to the one woman in the room. She had a reputation for taking a hard line in matters of national security, and those three bastards had just hoist her with her own petard. Mears especially. He’d been feeling the heat ever since the Syrian situation had escalated. The Russians seemed to have one over him in every negotiation. He was clearly glad for the spotlight to fall on someone else for once.
‘Home, Secretary of State?’ her driver asked as he settled behind the wheel.
She shook her head. ‘Thames House, please, Robert. I’m afraid it’s going to be a late one.’
The drenched officers at the entrance to Downing Street – her husband would insist on calling them ‘the plebs’, like it was the funniest joke in the world – nodded respectfully to the Home Secretary as they let her out. Their numbers had been bolstered by four soldiers who carried their weapons overtly and stood with grim, expressionless faces in the rain. Bloody good job you could rely on your armed forces at a time like this, she thought to herself. She was on the verge of rolling down her window to offer them a few words of encouragement, but she shivered at the thought of the rain sluicing in and decided not to.
As the car crawled through Whitehall, Gorman flicked through the front pages of the following day’s first editions that were piled next to her. The usual fodder. More photos of the devastation at Paddington on the broadsheets, while the tabloids had run with pictures of the nation’s current favourite hate figure, the radical cleric Abu Ra’id, one finger raised as he preached outside the
Holy Shrine mosque in north-west London. She shared the PM’s frustration that every time they tried to deport this awful man, the courts got in their way. And all the while his dreadful wife – the papers liked to call her the White Witch – was living on benefits in a large three-bedroom house in Ealing . . .
Ten minutes later, they were pulling up outside the archway that formed the entrance to Thames House. Robert parked the car and opened her door. The Home Secretary stepped out to find an efficient-looking young woman in a well-cut trouser suit waiting for her.
‘This way, Home Secretary,’ she said. The young woman ushered her into the building and towards an open lift. Once inside, she pressed a button for the third floor and they silently ascended. As the doors hissed open, the greeter stepped into the corridor. ‘May I fetch you a coffee, Home Secretary?’
Gorman shook her head briskly. ‘No thank you. I need to see Victoria Atkinson right away.’
The young woman inclined her head and led her down the corridors of the third floor without another word. She stopped outside a door and knocked.
‘Do come in,’ said a male voice.
‘I’ll take it from here,’ said the Home Secretary. She opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was very ordinary. As a student of history, she had always imagined that important decisions were taken in important rooms, with chandeliers and frescoes. Now she lived in the real world, she knew the opposite was true. Life-and-death decisions got made in bland, corporate rooms like this one in MI5 headquarters. A man was sitting behind a desk. He was extremely handsome – the spitting image of Hugh Grant, Gorman couldn’t help thinking – and he had a friendly, open smile.
‘Where’s Victoria Atkinson?’ she asked.
‘Unavoidably called away,’ the man said. ‘A family crisis. Something to do with her youngest . . .’ He smiled. ‘I’m afraid kids are no respecters of national security. I’m Buckingham. Hugo Buckingham, on secondment from MI6.’
‘You’re one of the Hammerstone team?’
Buckingham nodded gently. ‘I am, Home Secretary.’
Gorman nodded, then took a seat opposite him. ‘Buckingham?’ she said, as though trying to place the name. ‘Sounds familiar. Weren’t you our man in Syria for a while?’
‘In a manner of speaking, Home Secretary, yes. A lively place.’
‘So I hear.’ She looked around. ‘The room is secure?’
‘It is.’
‘Right then. I’ve just come straight from Number 10. The PM’s been informed you have a lead on the perpetrators of the Paddington bombing. We made the decision not to convene a meeting of COBRA. Too many loose tongues, if you understand my meaning.’
‘I understand entirely, Home Secretary.’
Gorman found herself warming to this young man. He seemed sincere. A safe pair of hands.
‘The PM feels that the public no longer have the stomach for more terrorists abusing the legal process. We’re a laughing stock as it is. The Hammerstone team gave the PM a second option . . .’
‘The pre-emptive option, Home Secretary?’
‘Call it what you will. Obviously there is no way he can officially condone such action, and we don’t need to know the identity of the individuals involved. But I’m here to tell you that if the pre-emptive option were taken, Her Majesty’s Government would not investigate the matter too closely. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly clear,’ said Buckingham. ‘I shall inform my three Hammerstone colleagues of the gist of this conversation immediately.’
‘Obviously . . .’ Gorman started to say.
‘. . . this conversation never happened.’
The politician and the spook locked gazes. A silent acknowledgement passed between them. Tessa Gorman stood up and outstretched her hand. Buckingham did the same.
‘Family crisis, you say?’ The Home Secretary was unimpressed.
‘So I understand. Something to do with . . . chickenpox?’
‘Hard to do this job well if you’re running off to mop little Johnny’s fevered brow every five minutes, I’d have thought.’
‘Not for me to comment, Home Secretary.’
The door suddenly opened. Gorman and Buckingham looked across the office to see a short, slightly plump woman bustle in. She wore a flowery blouse and sensible trousers that didn’t flatter her figure. Her mousy hair was wet and bedraggled. She carried a sopping raincoat over the crook of her arm. Her cheeks were red and she was out of breath.
‘Sorry . . . late . . .’ she gasped, then tapped her chest several times in quick suggestion. ‘Something going on in Lewisham . . . police everywhere . . .’ She blinked at the other two. ‘Have you started?’
‘Actually, Victoria,’ said the Home Secretary, ‘we’ve just finished. I’m sure Mr Buckingham will fill you in. ’
Victoria flushed, and she drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t very high at all. ‘He certainly will fill me in,’ she said, her voice suddenly more prickly and authoritative. ‘My son . . .’
‘Plenty of brownie points,’ Gorman interrupted her, ‘if you bring this business to a successful conclusion.’ She directed her words towards Buckingham rather than Victoria. ‘I can promise you that. Plenty of brownie points.’ She scraped back her chair and walked towards the door. Then she stopped and looked back at Buckingham. ‘I’m obliged to leave the details up to you,’ she said. ‘I trust you have somebody in mind capable of carrying out an operation like this?’
‘Yes,’ Buckingham replied coolly. ‘As a matter of fact, a couple of names do spring to mind. If Victoria approves, of course.’
‘Hereford Regiment?’
‘Yes, Home Secretary. Hereford Regiment. But as you say, probably best to leave the details down to us.’
00.02hrs
There was flashing blue neon at either end of the street. Two members of the police armed response unit had arrived to get Barker on his feet and away to the nearest hospital. He hadn’t let them help him, and insisted on walking unaided to the unmarked squad car parked just outside the lock-up. The five guys in the tech unit were a gibbering mess after their ordeal in the Bedford van, but they were alive and unharmed.
Danny’s earpiece was a torrent of voices. The Met’s command room had been patched in, and so had Hereford. The instructions were clear. The Regiment boys were to make themselves scarce. SCO19 would mop all this up, and no doubt claim the credit for seven dead dealers, a sizeable seizure of cocaine, and none of their guys down. And that was fine by Danny and the boys. For them, anonymity was the name of the game.
They stood together by the cab at the south end of the street.
‘He going to be all right?’ Ripley asked, pointing at Barker’s receding silhouette.
‘Flesh wound,’ Danny told him. ‘Might have to use his left hand to spank the monkey for a while, that’s all.’
Spud looked meaningfully over at the corpse of the man Danny had wasted. ‘You gave that fella’s mouth a good rinse out with his nine-milli,’ he said. ‘What was all that about?’
For an uncomfortable moment, Danny remembered the rage that had taken him over.
‘Bad breath,’ he muttered. ‘Got a thing about it.’
Spud raised an eyebrow at the insufficient response, then nodded towards the arm of Danny’s North Face jacket. ‘You’ve still got a piece of the bastard’s brains on your sleeve,’ he said, as if he were pointing out a ketchup stain to a kid.
Danny shrugged. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The headshed want us out of here. Let’s go.’
They put their heads down, and walked silently away from the flashing lights and the scene of devastation they’d created. Their own vehicle was an unmarked white Transit van parked up two blocks away. Three minutes later they were climbing into the back, their coats dripping rainwater over the metal floor. They each had a holdall with a change of clothes, so they stripped out of their wet gear and pulled on dry jeans and T-shirts, leaving the wet, bloody garments sprawled over the
vehicle’s floor.
Ripley took the wheel. Spud sat next to him in the middle seat, with Danny by the passenger window. They eased slowly away. After a couple of minutes they came to the police cordon, but the armed officer recognised their vehicle and waved them through. A minute later, they were driving down Lewisham High Street. Danny wiped the condensation away from the inside of his window and stared out.
The pavements were empty, but it wasn’t just because of the driving rain. There was unease on the streets. He’d been in London after 7/7, and there’d been a similar feeling then. If anything, it was worse in the wake of the Paddington bomb. The death count had been higher – last thing Danny heard, the number of fatalities had exceeded a hundred – and people were scared. Everyone knew someone who knew somone who’d been affected. Barker had a good mate in A Squadron, young bloke called Hancock, whose brother had been on the train and hadn’t made it. Hancock had been offered compassionate leave but had turned it down. Wanted to be around to do his bit as and when the time came. As they passed Lewisham station, Danny saw a group of four armed police guarding the entrance. The sight was supposed to put the public at their ease. Danny wondered if it didn’t have the opposite effect.
Spud switched the radio on. ‘Bat out of Hell’ by Meatloaf blasted out of the speakers. Spud turned it up even louder. ‘I fucking love this one!’ he shouted over the music, and he started singing along tunelessly. If there was tension on the streets, the inside of the Transit was a little cocoon of released adrenaline. It didn’t matter how many times you found yourself in a firefight, the heady mixture of relief and exhilaration when it was over never got old.
Meatloaf’s final chords died away. There was a chirpy Radio 2 jingle that grated on Danny’s ears, then a news bulletin. ‘The number of fatalities from the bombing at Paddington station last Friday has reached 107. Buckingham Palace have today confirmed that Orlando Whitby, fiancé of Princess Katrina, is among the dead . . .’
