by Andy McNab
In less than a minute the fire-fighters, roused from their chairs and bunks by the howling siren, jumped aboard their custom-built truck and roared across the compound.
Deep in the tunnel, the HGV Shuttle was losing power and speed. Smoke and flames still belched from the steel latticework at its rear, despite the automated rainstorm doing its best to dampen them down.
Sambor and his men began clambering down from the roofs of their containers, using the lattice bars like the rungs of a ladder. Sprinkler water ran down their hair and faces.
The narrowness of the gap between the train and the tunnel wall forced them to assemble in single file beside the track. Sambor did a cursory head count, and led the way towards the front of the train.
Although his control panel was lit up like a Christmas tree, the driver had not panicked. He was reaching for the brake lever to bring the train to a controlled halt when Sambor blew the lock to the rear entrance of the cabin.
He kicked the door open, stepped into the cab, brought up his weapon and shot the man dead with a double tap to the head. His ceramic rounds were designed for fighting at close quarters on ships and planes, where there was a danger of ricochet. They fragmented on impact with the man’s skull and pulverized his brain without exiting his head. The only thing to hit the windscreen was a fine mist of blood.
The driver slumped over the controls. Even without power, the train’s momentum kept it moving forward, still trailing smoke, until his lifeless body slid to the floor and the dead man’s handle braking system brought the train to a juddering halt.
43
DELPHINE HAD RECOVERED from what she’d thought might be another bout of sickness as she felt the Eurostar begin to slow.
Tom appeared at her side and she reached for his hand, enclosing it in hers. ‘What’s happening?’ she breathed. ‘Surely the French can’t be stopping the train. You said that they need—’
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘They’d never stop the train in the tunnel. Something else is going on.’
He leaned out into the aisle and peered up the carriage. The lights flickered and died, then came back on in dimmed emergency mode. The train was still moving, but painfully slowly. Finally, with a squeal of brakes, it came to a complete stop. There were moans and groans from the passengers, frustration and a hint of anger rather than fear. There had been so many breakdowns over the years, stories of passengers being delayed for hours . . .
Delphine tightened her grip on Tom’s fingers because she knew differently. He knelt closer to her and brushed her cheek with his lips, then eased his hand gently from her grip and locked his gaze on hers. ‘I’ll have to leave you here a while longer.’ His voice was little more than a murmur. He placed her hands on her lap. ‘I want you to do as I say now, and stay here. No matter how noisy it gets, you stay put.’
‘Noisy?’ Delphine said.
‘There may be some shooting, but even if you hear gunfire or an explosion, do not get off the train. Just take cover behind your bags, keep low and stay exactly where you are now. It’s the safest place, and I’ll know where to find you.’
‘If there is danger here, wouldn’t it be better to get off and run back along the tunnel?’
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘I don’t know what’s out there. In here, you’re safe for now. Keep anything valuable with you, in your jeans. We may have to move fast.’
Her skin tingled as he reached out and touched her cheek. ‘Give me your mobile,’ he said.
Delphine handed it to him. ‘But it won’t work in the tunnel. I don’t have any reception . . .’
Tom didn’t glance up as he tapped the keys. ‘Bluetooth still works. I’m pairing it with mine.’ He handed the phone back and got to his feet.
‘Do you have to go?’ Delphine looked up at him as he leaned down once more.
‘I need to make sure that whatever is happening out there doesn’t happen in here, to you.’
Their lips touched. Despite herself, Delphine liked how it felt.
44
LASZLO WAS A couple of coaches ahead of him, working his way towards the front of the train, when an Englishman in a pinstriped business suit caught sight of his Eurostar uniform and stood up, blocking the aisle.
‘Why have we stopped?’ he demanded. ‘Why has there been no announcement? Don’t you people know anything about customer care?’
‘An announcement will be made shortly.’ Laszlo’s smile was as polished as any Eurostar smile-trained employee’s. But his eyes betrayed the fact that he couldn’t care less. ‘Meanwhile, please remain in your seat.’
He tried to move past the irate passenger but the man grabbed his arm and held him back. ‘This is simply not good enough,’ he said. ‘I have an important business meeting. I deserve an explanation.’
‘Then I shall give you one.’
Laszlo drove his knee into the immaculately tailored groin. As the passenger doubled up, Laszlo grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his nose on the edge of the table. When he released his grip, the man sank to his knees, his face a mask of blood.
‘Thank you for choosing to travel with Eurostar today,’ Laszlo muttered.
The shouts and screams of the other passengers pursued him as he moved on along the train.
Tom heard the screams ahead of him and, abandoning caution, began to run through the carriages. A dazed businessman, blood pouring from his nose, was being helped to his feet by another passenger.
‘An attendant . . . assaulted me.’ The pinstriped suit was as blood-stained and rumpled as its owner, who was now radiating more embarrassment than pain. ‘He hasn’t heard the last of this. I’ll make sure he never—’
‘Tall guy, with a beard?’
He nodded, spilling a fresh gobbet of blood-stained mucus on his lapel.
Tom checked the toilet signs at both ends of the carriage. ‘Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know . . .’ the injured passenger said, from behind his hands. ‘I was on the fucking floor. I’d just been assaulted!’
Tom turned to the other passengers. ‘Where did he go?’
A group of four lads-on-the-piss sat at a table piled high with Stella cans, not bothering to hide the fact that they’d quite enjoyed the show. The logo on their sweatshirts told him they worked for London Underground and their expressions made it clear that they knew how it felt to be accosted, abused, poked in the chest and treated like dirt in the course of a working day.
The only one without a baseball cap pointed towards the front of the train and Tom took off at a run.
45
SAMBOR AND HIS men jumped off the Shuttle, as it ground to a halt near the midpoint of the tunnel, and prepared for phase two of their operation. So far everything was going to plan. They had been trained well, and years of experience had honed their skills. Fighting, killing and dying was the only life they knew.
Sambor located the nearest CCTV security camera and, hugging the wall, used the curvature of the tunnel and the pall of smoke to conceal his approach to it. Reaching up, he hacked into the cable feed with his knife. One of his team swung a backpack off his shoulder, fished out a steel probe and pushed it against the wire core. A torrent of sparks burst from the camera housing above their head, and from all the others, the entire length of the tunnel. He’d sent an electromagnetic pulse surging through the system.
Sambor shouted for his men, motioning them across the track in front of the train to a green metal door set in the concrete wall that connected the UK-bound tunnel with the service tunnel. He opened it and signalled to his men to follow him out of reach of the sprinkler system.
One hundred metres away, separated from his brother by the thickness of the tunnel wall, Laszlo clambered down from the motionless Eurostar and crept back along its flank, using the dim glow of the emergency lights from the carriage windows a metre above him to find his way through the darkness.
He soon saw a green metal door in the wall ahead. He ran to it and slipped into the service tunnel where S
ambor and his men were waiting in the gloom. Sambor grasped him in a bear hug and planted a kiss on both his cheeks. Laszlo was just as pleased to see him. It wasn’t only because of the plan they had made: the siblings were close; they trusted each other with their lives – and had done so many times.
‘Little brother!’ Laszlo returned the affection, happy to be talking in his mother tongue once more. It was always a relief. During their youth as ethnic Slavs living in South Ossetia, they had been constantly pressured by the dictatorship to refer to themselves as Georgians, and to speak Georgian. Georgia controlled their country, but they never forgot they were Ossetians, that Russia was their motherland, and Russian the language of their ancestors.
Laszlo and Sambor had been raised in a lawless nation that had descended into a constant state of conflict after the South Ossetians had declared their independence from Georgia in 1990. Their parents had tried to protect their sons by keeping their heads down and muddling through as best they could. Just finding enough food was a constant battle.
It had been clear from an early age that Laszlo was a gifted student, and his parents had known that the only place for him to further his education and be clear of the violence was with their fellow Slavs in Russia.
Sambor had had to stay at home: he wasn’t bright enough to follow in Laszlo’s footsteps, and they couldn’t afford to send both boys. But there was no bad feeling between the two. Laszlo was the leader; he was mentally strong, just like their mother, the one who would lead the family out of poverty. Until then, they would carry on keeping their heads below the parapet and trying to survive.
Laszlo had not let his family down. He had achieved a PhD in physics, with a dissertation on gas-pipeline engineering; he had emerged from Russia a fervent nationalist. Given the poverty and death that he’d witnessed in South Ossetia under Georgian control, his fervour had its roots in genuine concerns.
Upon his return home, he had been unable to find work despite his skills. The few jobs available went to the ethnic Georgian minority. It was then that Laszlo had decided to follow a different path from the one his parents had planned. He had taken Sambor with him. They would keep their heads below the parapet no more.
‘You kept your promise.’
‘Of course.’ Sambor held his brother at arms’ length, but only so he could admire Laszlo’s new facial hair. He hadn’t seen him like this since the old days. ‘Did you ever doubt it?’
‘Not for a moment.’
‘Are you ready to greet some of our old friends?’ Sambor gestured towards the two men closest to them, both carrying belt-fed machine-guns. They stiffened proudly as Laszlo cast an eye over them and the rest of the warriors he had commanded when they were all Black Bears.
Sambor presented the grab bag to his brother, as if it were a coveted award.
Laszlo checked that its contents were still intact, then put the strap over his shoulder. ‘Thank you, brother.’ From this moment, it would not leave his side until the triumphant conclusion of their operation.
46
TOM WAS STILL making his way towards the front of the Eurostar, moving fast but scanning every passenger’s face and checking each toilet as he came to it. Most of the passengers he passed had yet to feel there was any cause for concern: they sat with bored, indifferent or mildly irritated expressions as they waited for the train to start moving again.
The public-address system burst into life. ‘This is the head steward speaking. We apologize for the delay. We hope to be moving again shortly. Meanwhile, please remain in your seats. The carriage doors will remain fastened for your safety. Thank you for your patience.’
The announcement created hardly a ripple of complaint among the passengers: Colin had done an excellent job, keeping everyone in ‘fucking typical’ mode.
As Tom entered the last carriage, he saw a red light blink above one of the carriage exits. A well-worn and seriously badged-up rucksack was preventing the door locking. Tom climbed down onto the concrete track bed and crouched, more out of instinct than anything else, his gaze sweeping in every direction.
The track was empty.
He scanned both sides of the train, checked the roof, then crouched low to peer beneath it. As he straightened again, he heard the smallest of noises, a barely audible mechanical hum behind the green metal door.
He began to move towards it.
47
LASZLO AND HIS cadre in the service tunnel also heard the noise. But for them it was louder, and they knew what it was: they had been waiting for it. He smiled as the noise turned into a clearly identifiable engine note and they saw the glow of lights approaching. ‘Right on time.’
His brother was in command of the fighting men and Laszlo would never usurp him. He stood to one side. At Sambor’s instruction, they all faded into the shadows, fanning out along one wall of the tunnel.
Sambor himself remained at its centre, facing the approaching French fire truck. Caught in the glare of their headlights, he raised his hands, miming the appropriate degree of panic-stricken gratitude. The leading appliance screeched to a halt and the two behind soon followed suit.
Sambor headed for the front wagon, babbling in Russian, trying to explain what had happened. The brigade commander could only reply in French. ‘Where is the fire? What has happened?’
The rest of the crews clambered out and began to unload their equipment.
Sambor got within two paces of the commander, stopped, legs apart to ensure stability as he pulled aside his leather jacket with his left hand, exposing the suppressed pistol tucked into his belt. He drew the weapon down with his right hand. There was a faint thud as the round left the barrel. It made contact with the skin immediately beneath the fireman’s nostrils and took out his brain stem a fraction of a second before it emerged from the back of his skull, taking fragments of yellow helmet with it, and shattered against the appliance’s bodywork.
There was a faint movement in the shadows and more South Ossetians stepped into view. Their weapons made barely a sound as the working parts moved to eject the empty case, reload a fresh round, and propel it from the barrel. They mowed the firemen down, one by one, with double taps into the centre of their body mass. Tufts of fibre from their uniforms puffed outwards like thistledown as they crashed to the ground.
48
TOM REACHED THE green metal door and moved into the service tunnel. Laszlo, Sambor and their cohorts had their backs to him as they completed the slaughter of the unarmed French firemen.
One of the insurgents stopped firing and clipped a fresh mag into his weapon. Tom sprinted forward, keeping low. His target didn’t even have time to turn his head as Tom grabbed the working-parts cover of the sub-machine-gun and, using his momentum, pushed down.
Partly through shock and partly as a result of the strength of the attack, the weapon fell from the assassin’s hands. Turning it quickly and reaching for the pistol grip, Tom fired. The safety catch was on single shot, so Tom put another round into him as he fell, then dropped onto the concrete and used the body as cover.
He dropped two more of them before the rest realized that something was wrong. Laszlo, Sambor and those closest spun round, momentarily confused.
Only one fireman remained standing, bleeding profusely from his wounds. He took advantage of the distraction to dive for the wall and smash a dimly illuminated glass panel. Another volley tore into him, but as he fell, his hand hooked around the lever beneath, triggering one of the series of giant steel fire screens to crash down on the French side of the service tunnel.
Tom spotted the dim glow of another glass panel on the UK side, just before the green door. In the darkness, he couldn’t spot the precise location of the next safety barrier. Would he seal himself in with Laszlo? He was about to find out. He made a run for it, firing in bursts to keep the enemy’s heads down.
As his rounds slammed into the concrete around them, Laszlo’s crew finally identified the threat. Braving the ceramic hailstorm that was now aimed
in his direction, Tom dived for the panel. Smashing the glass with his fist, he forgot about the incoming, focused completely on pulling down the lever.
A second fire screen began to descend, threatening to cut him off from his escape route.
He sprayed the rest of his magazine at his pursuers then rolled under the rapidly descending barrier. As it fell to the ground, he lay for a second or two, listening to the staccato drumbeat of enemy rounds on the other side of the steel barricade, then the rattle and bang of their vain attempts to force it open.
49
TOM HEARD A muffled shout. Pressing his ear to the metal, he could make out Sambor’s yell in Russian: ‘Who the fuck was that?’
And Laszlo’s growled response: ‘What does it matter? We continue.’
The sound of heavy magnets being clamped onto the barrier a few seconds later echoed down the tunnel. Tom turned and hobbled towards the safety door, keeping close to the wall, away from the centre of the pressure wave and high-velocity secondary missiles that the imminent detonation would catapult his way.
Moments later, the area behind him erupted. The copper liner charge cut a rectangular hole through the steel as easily as if it were wet paper. The pressure wave jolted Tom’s body and hurled him – his internal organs shuddering, the fillings in his teeth vibrating – through the doorway into the Paris-bound tunnel. Debris rained down, burying him beneath a pile of dust and rubble.
As the ringing in his ears subsided, he began to hear the screams and shouts of the Eurostar passengers. He could also hear Laszlo, Sambor and their men advancing towards the breach in the fire screen, picking their way through the cloud of noxious smoke billowing from the site of the explosion.
