Hunter Killer

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Keep radio contact,’ Danny said.

  He pulled a thin, bright Maglite from his bag and shone it down the stairs. He heard interference over his earpiece. The signal was bad down here. There was a large room, the size of both ground-floor receptions put together, with a long trestle table set up in the middle.

  Weapon primed, Danny descended. His breath was hot behind the paper mask and he could feel his own pulse: not fast, but pumping hard . . .

  He shone the torch towards the four corners of the cellar. Nobody there. He directed the beam at the trestle table. It illuminated what Danny immediately recognised as two old artillery shells. They looked like bullets, rounded at one end, pointed at the other. But larger: a good couple of feet in length. He wondered where they originated from. Eastern Europe, maybe? These things were two a penny after the Bosnia conflict. Either that or the Middle East. Not that it mattered much. What was important was that someone had carefully cut away the base of each shell and started to scoop out the contents – military-grade high explosive. It was accumulated in three small piles between the shells. It didn’t look like a lot, but no doubt the process of evacuating the shells wasn’t yet complete. And even that small amount of explosive could do a lot of damage in the wrong hands.

  Danny paused for a moment, and gave serious thought to hiding out in the flat, waiting for the target to come home and simply killing him. But that wouldn’t do. Hammerstone had been very clear: it had to look like an accident.

  Danny touched nothing. He moved back out of the cellar and up the stairs, extinguishing his torch but keeping his weapon at the ready. Back up on the ground floor he pushed the cellar door closed with one latexed hand, then headed towards the gloomy, unlit kitchen. There were dirty plates in the sink and crumbs on the worktops. The tiles on the floor were scuffed and sticky. A door to his right looking out on to the scruffy garden. There was a key on the side – presumably to open the back door. And there was a second door at the far end, which he thought led to the bathroom. It was slightly ajar.

  Danny stepped up to the door and slowly pushed it open. It creaked. He stepped inside.

  He needed his torch again. There was only one window in here, overlooking the unkempt garden. But it was covered with a blackout blind that completely blocked the daylight. It didn’t take Danny long to work out why. Galaid needed privacy. The bath was stained with rings of limescale. It contained three plastic bottles filled with a clear liquid. He undid each one of them in turn and smelled the contents. They each gave off the unmistakable aroma of nail varnish. Acetone. Danny felt sure that if he nosed around the flat a bit more, he’d find bottles of hydrogen peroxide. Acetone peroxide wasn’t as explosive as the military-grade gear in the basement, but it was a hell of a sight easier to make, with a couple of easily bought chemicals and some instructions from the internet.

  The Hammerstone quartet were right. There didn’t seem much doubt that this bastard was planning another spectacular.

  A crackle in his ear. Spud. ‘We’ve left Tesco. I think he’s heading back.’

  ‘Keep on him.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Danny, what are you doing? Did you find any bomb-making gear?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Then get out. We’ll wait until he leaves the house again, then set something up.’

  ‘Keep on him!’

  Danny turned his attention back to the contents of the bathroom.

  There were enough explosives in this place to kill a hundred extremists. But Danny knew better than to use any of Sarim Galaid’s gear. If he came back and noticed anything out of place, he’d be gone. Hammerstone had lucked out knowing this kid’s exact location. If Danny gave him any sense that the authorities were on to him, he’d go immediately underground.

  Maybe he should leave now.

  Or maybe he should grab this opportunity while he had it. Galaid might not leave the house again for another two days, or longer. Spud would be pissed off, but he’d get over it.

  Whatever Danny did, it had to be subtle. Covert. Something the terrorist would never expect until it was too late.

  He turned his attention to the toilet.

  If Galaid was buying bog roll, that was likely to be his first port of call when he got back.

  He spoke into the radio. ‘What’s your status?’

  ‘We’re three minutes away.’

  ‘I need five minutes minimum. Keep the radio open. I need to know what’s happening.’

  A pause.

  Under his breath, Spud whispered: ‘Jesus Christ.’ But then, over the open radio, Danny heard him call, ‘Hey, you, mate! You got a ciggie?’

  Danny’s paper SOCO suit whispered as he bent over and removed the heavy ceramic lid from the top of the cistern. He laid it gently on the tiled floor, then shone his torch into the cistern and examined the flush mechanism. It was caked with limescale, but looked to be in working order. He lowered his rucksack on to the toilet seat and felt inside. The constituent parts of his MOE kit were exactly where he’d stowed them. He withdrew the shaped charge, the silver detonator, the roll of coated wire and the battery pack.

  Spud’s voice: ‘What’s your fucking problem, mate? I just asked for a ciggie!’

  A faint reply: ‘I ain’t got no ciggies. Leave me alone.’

  Spud: ‘Touchy bastard. I was only asking. What are you anyway, a fucking Paki?’

  Danny gave a grim smile. If the best way to delay a target was often to pick a fight with them, Spud was extremely good at it.

  Quickly, he went to work.

  He looked at her half-eaten Egg McMuffin, sitting unappetisingly in its wrapper. She obviously didn’t want to finish it, and now he’d spent most of his money so he couldn’t offer her anything else. Even worse, he was panicking that he didn’t have enough cash to buy her a tube ticket back to his house. He’d forgotten all about that. This wasn’t going anything like as well as he’d hoped.

  But then she put her hand on his and smiled at him again.

  ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  They stood up and headed to the exit. Lots of people stared at them. He knew why: such a beautiful woman with such a strange-looking man. But he was used to people staring, and she had, after all, gone out of her way to find him. That made him feel very special.

  Outside McDonald’s he noticed that the sky had turned black. He half wished it would rain, because that would be more romantic. He looked at her suitcase. ‘Allow me,’ he said very politely, and he took the handle.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She took hold of his free hand. Her skin was so soft. His own hand was sweaty and clammy. He hoped she didn’t mind. He wanted to squeeze her hand affectionately, but felt shy of doing it. So he kept it limp as they sauntered up Lower Regent Street, the suitcase trundling along behind them.

  The charge itself was a block of plastic explosive backed with a strong adhesive: he had to peel back a strip of waxed paper to reveal it. You could stick one of these to the hull of a boat in high seas and be confident that it wouldn’t shift, so there would be no problem fitting it to the inside wall of the cistern. He inserted the detonator into the charge. He cut two pieces of wire, each about ten inches in length, then stripped an inch of plastic coating from each of the four ends. He attached the end of one piece of wire to the detonator, the end of another to the battery pack. When the two free ends touched, the charge would explode.

  Voices in his earphone: muffled curses. Danny zoned it out. Spud was giving Galaid some proper aggro. That was all he needed to know.

  He turned his attention back to the cistern. With a single finger he flushed the chain. The water was noisily sucked down into the pan, but he lifted the dark blue float ball to stop it refilling. With his free hand, he picked up the charge and stuck it to the wall of the cistern. The front wall – not the back. The presence of water behind the charge would encourage it to blast forwards. The ceramic of the cistern would explode violently. He was, in e
ffect, creating an enormous, static Claymore mine.

  A mine that he hoped the victim would detonate with his own hand.

  The charge held fast to the front wall of the cistern, even though it was damp. Danny carefully coiled the free end of the wire round the flushing mechanism. Still holding the float ball to stop the cistern from refilling, he picked up the battery pack. It was waterproof, so he knew there was no problem getting it wet. He tied the adjoining wire round the flush mechanism, making sure that – for now, at least – there was no risk of the two bare ends touching.

  ‘He’s running away,’ Spud said in his ear. ‘You’ve got two minutes, no longer. I’ve got some have-a-go hero eyeing me from the other side of the road. If I go at him again, I’ll cause more of a distraction than I want.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘What are you doing in there, mucker?’

  Danny didn’t reply. He released the float ball and the cistern started to refill.

  It was painfully slow. The water pressure was bad. A full minute passed before the cistern was full again.

  Danny felt a prickle of urgency down his spine. But he couldn’t rush. Carefully, gingerly, concentrating on keeping his hands steady, he bent the two bare ends of the wires so that they were above the water line, but just millimetres apart. He gently let go. They shook somewhat, but didn’t touch. But as soon as someone pressed the flush . . .

  ‘Are you still in there? Fuck’s sake, buddy, he’s thirty seconds away . . .’

  The most dangerous part: Danny lifted the cistern lid and replaced it incredibly gently. He was, he realised, holding his breath, and when ceramic met ceramic he winced, knowing that too much force would shake the wires into contact. But they remained separate. Danny carefully lifted his gear from the toilet seat and stuffed it into the rucksack.

  Time to get out. IEDs had a habit of going wrong. Danny didn’t want to be in the vicinity when it exploded. He stepped out of the bathroom and hurried to the kitchen door, grabbing the key that he’d noticed on the side. He needed to get out into the garden.

  He put the key in the lock. It didn’t fit. He looked round for another one. Nothing.

  ‘He’s turning into Dalewood Mews,’ Spud reported.

  Danny suppressed a moment of panic. He edged out of the kitchen . . . into the reception . . . the front room . . .

  Shit! He realised he’d left the bathroom door open, wider than it had been. But he couldn’t go back, because there was a scuffling sound at the front door. Galaid was back. He had his key in the lock.

  Danny’s pulse was racing. There was no place to hide, other than under the extended sofa bed. He quickly chucked his rucksack underneath it.

  The door started to open.

  He fell to the ground and, his paper suit rustling against the grimy carpet, rolled under the bed. He held his breath. Any movement would make a noise, and if this bastard found him here it would be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

  And even if he didn’t, Danny was about to find himself trapped in a flat he’d just booby-trapped.

  Footsteps. A slamming door.

  ‘Fucking . . . fucker!’ Sarim Galaid’s feet appeared to Danny’s left. They were heading into the second reception room, but he suddenly turned round to face the door again. ‘Fucking FUCKER!’ he screamed. Danny realised he was yelling at an imaginary Spud. ‘You’re the worst of them! I hope you get fucking done over next time. I’ll put a bomb in your mother’s house! I’ll put a bomb in your fucking mama’s crib!’

  Galaid switched from English to Arabic and continued spewing a stream of obscenities at the front door. Danny breathed out very slowly, feeling his breath hot and wet under the paper mask. Stay still. Stay calm. Trust that you’ve set the charge correctly. The blast won’t reach you in here . . .

  After thirty seconds, his target fell silent. The feet changed direction again. Danny saw the bottom of a plastic supermarket bag swinging as Galaid finally walked out of the room.

  Danny’s body grew even tenser. From the kitchen, he heard the sound of units being opened and slammed shut. Galaid barked another word, again in Arabic.

  Silence.

  What was he doing? Pouring himself a glass of fucking soya milk? Or was he moving into the bathroom? Danny pictured the bare wires of the device in the cistern. There was a chance that he’d detonate the whole thing simply by sitting down.

  Or perhaps he was staring at the bathroom door, wondering why it was now open when he had left it closed.

  He gripped his weapon a little harder. If it came down to it, and Galaid twigged that something was up, Danny would have to deal with this the old-fashioned way.

  Hammerstone wouldn’t like it, but Hammerstone weren’t on the ground . . .

  A noise. Liquid. Gushing. It took a couple of seconds for Danny to understand what he was hearing. It was the sound of Sarim Galaid pissing thunderously against the porcelain.

  Danny silently cursed. From the sound of it he was taking a piss, not a shit as he’d expected. There was always a chance that the filthy fucker wouldn’t flush.

  A burst in Danny’s ear. Spud. Pissed off. ‘Mucker, what the hell’s going down?’

  Danny didn’t reply.

  The gushing stopped.

  Five seconds passed.

  ‘Mucker, you need to respond or I’m coming in.’

  Ten.

  What was happening?

  Danny felt his breath trembling. He tried to picture the scene in the bathroom. Was Galaid still in there? Maybe Danny should just burst through and throw him against the toilet, let the impact do its work . . .

  It would put him in the line of the blast, but Galaid would surely absorb the shrapnel . . .

  He started to move.

  The paper suit rustled again.

  He emerged from under the bed, and for a moment saw a silhouette pass in front of the floral curtains.

  Spud?

  ‘Stay away,’ Danny hissed. ‘It’s under control . . .’

  No reply.

  ‘Stay away!’

  And then, without warning, it happened.

  The explosion was a short sharp crack. Loud, certainly, but there was no boom or echo. Danny felt the floorboards beneath him vibrate with the detonation. He heard a shower of shrapnel pelting the walls of the bathroom. A shock wave almost topped him and a lump of plaster fell from the ceiling a metre to his right.

  Then silence.

  Danny felt for his rucksack. If everything had gone according to plan, he didn’t want to trail bloody footprints back across the flat. He pushed himself to his feet, shouldered the rucksack and held his gun firmly with two hands. Just because the device had exploded, it didn’t mean Galaid was there when it happened. There was a thick cloud of dust in the second reception, and Danny could hear a high-pitched hissing sound. He could still see the door frame of the kitchen, but inside was dark and obscured. He edged forward. The hissing sound grew louder. In the kitchen, the floor was damp. The paper shoes of his SOCO suit crunched over shards of porcelain. The glass pane in the kitchen door had shattered outwards. The bathroom door was open. Danny lit his torch again and looked inside.

  His makeshift Claymore had worked like a dream. Through the darkness and the smoke, Danny saw that the cistern itself was completely destroyed. The hissing noise came from the twisted inlet pipe that was spurting a tight jet of water up on to the ceiling. But the real devastation was on the floor.

  Sarim Galaid had clearly been facing the cistern when it blew. Now he was on his back, feet at the toilet end, head at the door end. At least, what was left of him was.

  The exploding cistern had ripped out the core of the bomber’s groin and abdomen. Where there was once a stomach, there was now just a bleeding cavity. A thick, jagged shard of ceramic jutted out of where the corpse’s bollocks once were, and although the heart had clearly already stopped, a thick slurry of blood, gastric juices and semi-digested food oozed from the catastrophic wound. Water from the spraying inlet pipe
caused rivulets of pink to smear over the tiled floor.

  Galaid’s face was unrecognisable. Shrapnel had peppered it, and proximity to the explosive charge had burned away the skin. The eye sockets were weeping blood. His hair had been burned away. He was nothing more than a smouldering, bleeding piece of meat.

  Danny stared at him for a moment. For some reason he found himself thinking about Clara. About finishing with her because he knew that in the days that followed, death would be his constant companion. Looked like he’d been right.

  He’d seen enough. He trod carefully back into the kitchen where he started to remove his SOCO suit, though for the moment he kept the gloves, mask and hairnet on. As he shoved the paper suit back into the bag, he heard a thumping noise from the front door – neighbours, probably, wanting to find out what had happened. He spoke into the radio. ‘Spud, is that you?’

  ‘Negative,’ Spud replied tersely. ‘I’m at the end of the street. You’ve got two coppers and a neighbour banging on the door. You need to get out of there, mucker.’

  The thumping on the front door grew louder.

  ‘RV at the car,’ Danny said.

  He trod over to the kitchen door, checking over his shoulder that he hadn’t left footprints. All clear. He clambered through the shattered pane of the kitchen door and jumped outside into the garden. Only then did he remove the remainder of his SOCO gear. He stuffed it in his rucksack, then ran down the overgrown garden.

  There was a rickety, two-metre-high wooden fence at the end of the garden. Several panels damaged. Danny scaled it with ease and landed with a thump in a weed-strewn, litter-strewn alleyway. He looked both ways. Deserted. He ran north. Thirty-five metres to the end of the alleyway. Thunder cracked overhead. Heavy droplets of rain started to fall.

  He reached the end of the alleyway and found himself in the road where, several hours previously, he’d collected pizza flyers from the parked cars. He caught sight of Spud, standing on the opposite side of the street, his expression darker than the sky. Danny nodded. From the direction they needed to go came the sound of sirens. Instinctively, Danny and Spud walked the opposite way. After thirty seconds, Danny crossed the road and fell in beside his mate.