by Roger Pearce
The door flew open a nanosecond before the knock. Donna was followed by Melanie Fleming, still dressed in the combat pants and boots, T-shirt and denim jacket she had been wearing for her undercover operation in Hackney.
‘Don’t just crash in without . . .’ began Weatherall.
‘Melanie says this can’t wait,’ interrupted Donna, as if she hadn’t heard, then turned and left the room, closing the door behind her. Melanie approached the desk. ‘Ma’am, I need to speak with Mr Ritchie and Mr Kerr about the operation.’
‘And who are you?’
‘DS Melanie Fleming, ma’am.’
‘Red Two,’ said Kerr, ‘works with Jack Langton.’
‘Then I’m surprised you have the nerve to show your face in here,’ Weatherall said, unscrewing the water bottle again.
‘It’s very urgent, ma’am. I’m here to pick up some equipment and I really need to get back to the plot. Jack’s waiting for me.’
‘So let’s all hear it.’
Melanie looked at Kerr. ‘It’s about Zoom in Leyton. Jack took a call in Pepe’s. He went on the move about the time we were taking Jibril off the street. With a camera case and tripod.’
‘‘‘Zoom”?’ interrupted Weatherall. ‘Who the hell is that?’
‘Osama bin Laden used him in Pakistan to produce his videos after nine/eleven,’ said Kerr, without taking his eyes off Melanie, ‘according to the Americans.’
Ritchie looked at Weatherall. ‘I briefed you last week. They found his prints on the stuff taken from bin Laden’s compound.’
‘We think he’s on the way to make another one. Propaganda or suicide,’ said Melanie.
‘How can you possibly know that?’ said Weatherall.
‘Al Qaeda don’t do weddings,’ snapped Kerr.
‘He caught the sixty-nine up Hoe Street to Walthamstow Central, then walked,’ said Melanie. ‘Jack’s guys followed him to a block of flats off Fielding Road. Whole journey took him less than fifteen minutes. Sixth floor. Could be a safe-house or bomb factory. Jack and Justin are already on scene. I’m setting up the OP with Alan Fargo.’
‘Where?’ said Kerr.
‘We’ve commandeered a bus, actually, for now.’
‘You’ve what?’ spluttered Weatherall.
Kerr guessed his team must have scrambled from Pepe’s as soon as he’d left for the Yard. ‘What’s the rendezvous point for surveillance?’ he said, already halfway to the door.
‘Jack’s using the car park next to the health centre in Prospect Road.’
‘So let’s move.’
‘Wait.’ Kerr turned to see Weatherall with water in full flow. She placed the bottle carefully on the desk. ‘Make sure you clear this with your MI5 counterpart. And if I invoke Andromeda again today I don’t want one second of hesitation. Is that clear?’
Ritchie was already following Kerr, and positioned himself between Weatherall and Kerr’s look of disbelief. ‘Let’s go, John,’ he said quietly.
Nine
Thursday, 13 September, 11.13, Fielding Road, Walthamstow
By the time Kerr reached Walthamstow a light drizzle was falling and, although it was still mid-morning, the light was shut out by a bank of grey cloud. In his race to north-east London he felt a surge of relief that he had kept surveillance on the film-maker while Jack Langton was pulling units away to follow Ahmed Jibril.
In May 2011, when US Navy SEALs had stormed Osama bin Laden’s compound in Karachi, Pakistan, they had recovered seven videos showing a younger bin Laden rehearsing his propaganda broadcasts, stumbling over his words through sometimes four or five takes. The same set of fingerprints was found on all the video casings, but this took the investigators no further forward: there was no match on any terrorism database.
It had fallen to CIA interrogators to extract more information from one of bin Laden’s former couriers detained in Guantánamo. According to this prisoner, the man they wanted was in his late fifties, walked with the aid of a roughly hewn stick, and worked in a 7-Eleven in London, not far from a dog-racing track. He was a producer of jihadi videos, but had never engaged in active service himself.
Three days before Ahmed Jibril’s arrival in London, working on a radius from the site of the old Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium, closed since 2008, Alan Fargo’s 1830 team traced the owner of the fingerprints to a vegetable store in Leyton, east London. They identified him as Fazal Shakir, a fifty-nine-year-old Pakistani raised in Karachi only a few streets from bin Laden’s hiding place. He had lived undetected in London since escaping there in 2007.
MI5 wanted no action against Shakir until they had clearance from their Washington counterparts, but John Kerr had had him watched anyway. Jack Langton’s operatives had tagged their target ‘Zoom’ because of his skill with a camera and slow progress on the street. And because Kerr had followed his better judgement, there was now a real possibility that the ageing Pakistani would reveal the bomb factory they had been seeking for months.
The address he had led them to this morning was Barrington House in Walthamstow, to the south of the old dog stadium. Fielding Road ran east to west, with a cemetery to the north and a leisure centre at the western end near the junction with Blackhorse Road. It was a mix of residential and low-rise business premises, part industrial, mostly retail. Directly opposite Barrington House lay a tacky 1930s parade of shops with flats above. There were kebab, pizza and chicken joints, a pawnbroker, two bookmakers and a couple of shops offering best prices for gold and foreign-exchange currency.
The block itself was council-owned and twelve storeys high. Built in the 1950s, it was set back fifty metres from the road, separated by a rough stretch of treeless green with a fenced area to the left containing dilapidated swings, a broken slide and a ‘No Dogs’ sign. To the casual observer the whole area looked barren. In Kerr’s eyes it was a no man’s land offering minimum cover for an assault from the front. He noted two worn tarmac footpaths crossing the green diagonally from Fielding Road and a narrow service road leading to a car park at the rear of the block.
Kerr had reached the scene from the Yard in seventeen minutes and parked up on a double yellow out of sight of the flats. Very soon the whole area would be sealed off but, for now, traffic was heavy, obstructed by the commandeered bus. Shoppers ran their local errands unaware they were in real danger of being shot or blown up on the street they had walked along for years.
Kerr grabbed his BlackBerry and sprinted along the front of the parade. The top deck of a London bus is not a bad site for a makeshift control post until the sourcing guys come up with something more permanent. Seven or eight disappointed passengers were still hanging around on the pavement, anticipating an imminent return to normal service, while the rat-faced, hi-vis-jacketed driver drew on his cigarette and shouted into his mobile.
Melanie had ridden pillion with Langton again, and Kerr found her on the top deck at the rear of the bus, already working with Alan Fargo. Already they had most of the comms up and running. Despite the cold, Fargo’s face glowed red and his shirt was dark with sweat as he set up the remote surveillance and recording gear. He looked as though he had jogged all the way from Pepe’s Place.
Kerr squeezed between them and peered through the side window. They were parked around a hundred and fifty metres from the building, half hidden by a beech tree. ‘So, what are we looking at?’
‘Shakir went to 608,’ said Melanie, ‘halfway up. Couldn’t be worse.’
The block was covered with ugly grey cement cladding and had old-fashioned metal windows; the main entrance was a pair of double doors, dead centre, with a rough strip of tarmac along the front connecting the two diagonal paths and leading behind the block to the car park. There were no balconies. Kerr counted the windows from the ground. ‘The one with the dirty net curtains, yeah?’
‘They’re all disgusting,’ said Fargo, racing through the electronic voters’ register, ‘and the adjacent flats are occupied, above and below.’
Kerr stepped b
ack and sat down to improve his line of sight. ‘Will the neighbours let us in to do some tech?’
‘Mind your back, John.’ Kerr caught a whiff of old sweat as Fargo squeezed past. ‘This has been a no-go area for years.’
‘Let’s phone them anyway, if you can find anyone who’s still using a landline. Where’s Justin?’
‘Already in,’ said Melanie, tapping a small video screen. ‘Probably up to his ankles in used condoms and hypodermics by now.’
‘Assault teams?’
‘Flexing their muscles,’ said Fargo, wiping his headphones. He waved a disinfectant swab in the direction of the rear window. Since catching an ear infection from headphones a decade ago, he had been fastidious. ‘RV point for the firearms teams is in Miller Road, supermarket car park.’
‘How the hell will they get in unseen?’
‘They’ll make the approach from the car park at the back – 608 only looks onto the front. Unless the targets leave the flat to check from the landing window, they have no visibility. And there’s no way they’ll risk that.’
‘There’ll be another entrance direct from the car park?’
‘Sure, but the Trojans are planning to snake round the front because it gives direct access to the stairs. Their leader wants a word, by the way.’ Fargo gestured for silence and spoke into his radio mike. ‘Go ahead, Justin.’
Justin Hine, Kerr’s technical whiz kid who had joined them at Pepe’s, was lying prone on the floor of the living room in flat 708, directly above the target address. He lay completely still, stretched out on his stomach with his eyes closed.
The occupier, a Somali mother in hijab and veil, looked on from the doorway with her young son, trespassers in their own home. Justin had talked his way in less than three minutes earlier. The little boy, no more than five years old, crept up and tentatively prodded his thigh. Justin opened his eyes, removed one earpiece of the stethoscope he was using to detect signs of life in the flat below, and murmured into his throat mike, ‘At least three, possibly four males.’
The little boy seemed to think Justin was speaking to him and looked up to his mother in bewilderment. Justin held a finger to his lips then carried on murmuring, confusing the kid even more. ‘Plus the TV on Al Jazeera, and they sound pretty worked up.’ He frowned and shook his head, as if disagreeing with someone, but this time the little boy retreated and clung to his mother’s knees. ‘No, I can do something here. Switch on your screen and stand by.’
Justin stood up, stretched, tucked his T-shirt into his jeans and made a tired face at Mum and her little boy. He knew she spoke hardly any English. At the front door a few minutes earlier she had simply stared at his woollen hat and rucksack as he had flashed his ID, winked at the little boy and eased himself into the hallway. Now he took their coats and gently ushered them from the flat to the lift lobby. Pressing the button for the ground floor, he listened to check that the lift was working. ‘You can come back in one hour,’ he said, holding up his index finger for the mother. He gave her elbow a reassuring squeeze, chucked the little boy under the chin, loped back to the flat and quietly shut their front door on them.
Back in the living room, he took from his bag a fibre-optic cable, a tiny TV screen and specially adapted drill. He pulled back the threadbare rug and calculated the exact central point of the room. Within thirty seconds, lying flat, he had silently drilled down five centimetres into the concrete floor. He replaced the bit and worked at the hole again, drilling until he reached the ten-centimetre marker. For the final stretch he used a device equipped with suction to prevent the tiniest fragment falling to the floor below.
Justin took his time but was inserting the fibre-optic cable inside three minutes of pulling back the rug. Within another forty seconds he was refining colour digital images on the miniature screen. He sat cross-legged, swivelling the cable to cover the room below. ‘OK, Al, we have a bomb factory, four up, two in their mid-twenties, English-speaking, Yorkshire accents. Number three is older, saying nothing yet. And the cameraman Shakir is setting up his equipment. You should be getting audio and video feed.’
‘Loud and clear.’
‘Workbench in the centre of the living room. Three devices minimum in plastic containers, fridge in the corner, possibly more stashed in there. Three rucksacks, half a dozen batteries, piles of white powder in a heavy plastic bag.’
‘How much?’
‘Masses. Al, these boys are clean-shaven.’ This was significant, because suicide bombers shaved their faces and body hair immediately before blowing themselves up. Deprived of a proper burial, this was to ensure cleanliness when they entered Heaven.
‘What’s the stuff at the end of the bench?’
‘Bottle of clear liquid – sulphuric acid, possibly.’ Justin strained his eyes. ‘Can’t make out the label. Six, correction, seven plastic beakers, looks like a couple of eye-droppers beside them. There’s a hacksaw and copper tubing for the detonators but can’t see any wires to go with the batteries, not from here. Shakir, with his tripod et cetera, covering the wall to the left of the door. Three chairs. Sheets of A3 covered with felt tip. Al, this guy’s even written the script for them. Bomb factory plus film set.’
In their makeshift observation post, Kerr, Melanie and Fargo crowded round the monitor. Kerr grabbed the mike. ‘Justin, I want you out of there, do you hear me? I mean now.’
‘John?’ said Melanie, quietly, tapping Kerr’s arm. ‘We’ve got company.’
Kerr turned to find the firearms team leader behind him and smiled with relief. ‘Hey, Jim,’ he said, grasping his hand, ‘am I glad to see you.’ Kerr and Jim Gallagher had worked many ops together over the years. Gallagher had arrived in complete silence, shrouded in black fatigues and ready for action, with CS canister, stun grenades, gas mask, quick cuffs, baton, and Glock 17 in the holster strapped to his thigh. Had he been in the jeans and sweatshirt he wore around the house, few would have guessed his job. A Highlander in his early thirties, Gallagher was tall, blond, superfit and mildly spoken, and his youthful face belied the dangers confronting him every working day.
Kerr knew he was also ice cool. In 2005, the week after 7/7, Gallagher had co-ordinated three of the five firearms teams deployed to arrest jihadis planning a second wave of attacks in London. Because further attacks were believed to be imminent, his operations had been executed with very little notice to plan or recce, but had been faultless. Captured on TV and replayed constantly, the pictures showed the Trojans at their professional best.
Melanie cleared a space for Gallagher to study the screen.
‘So, John, what crock of shit are you handing me this time?’
‘See for yourself,’ said Melanie, activating the mike. ‘Justin, we’re briefing Challenger One, so pan around again.’
The picture moved jerkily as Kerr pointed at the screen. ‘Three targets in flat 608, plus one to record their suicide video. You can see the explosive mix here, at least three completed devices to pack into rucksacks.’
Gallagher peered through the bus window, counting up the floors. ‘So, no chance to evacuate the building?’
‘Not with safety,’ said Kerr, holding the headphones to Gallagher’s ear. ‘They’re really worked up, almost ready to hit the street. We don’t have much time.’
Gallagher listened intently. ‘I can’t risk explosions in the block.’ He spoke calmly into his throat mike. ‘Challenger Two, withdraw all units and await my instructions.’ Instinctively, he was checking his gear. ‘We’ll have to regroup, and you should too, John. The uniforms have the cordons set up and you’re about sixty metres too close. If this lot goes up you’ll get hammered.’
‘There’s no time,’ said Kerr.
‘I reckon we’ll have to take them out as soon as they move.’ As he spoke, Gallagher was already heading for the staircase, his body crackling with radio traffic. ‘Keep your heads down, guys,’ he said, as he pattered down the stairs. ‘It’s going to get very noisy out there.’
In
flat 608, as Justin and the others watched and listened, the three Islamic terrorists moved about their bomb factory, preparing to make their video and head out for their target destinations. With the exception of Fazal Shakir, none had come to the notice of Room 1830. Sabri, their leader, was in his mid-thirties, a veteran of many training camps in Pakistan. His English was poor and he rarely spoke, but he was a legendary explosives and technical expert.
Daljit, husband and doting father of a young son, had lived in Bradford all his life and worked as an assistant manager in a supermarket. At twenty-four he was the same age as the third member of the group, Mahmoud, who had turned down a place at Leeds University to study chemistry and drifted through a series of dead-end jobs. The grandchildren of Pakistani immigrants and lifelong friends, they had become radicalised in their last year at the local comp and begun to worship at the same mosque until Sabri had ordered them to drop off the radar. Neither had ever travelled outside England, and none appeared to be acquainted with bin Laden’s video producer.
Their bodies spiritually purified, they carefully packed the copper detonators with TATN for insertion into the mix of chapatti flour and hydrogen peroxide, while Shakir waited patiently by his camera. Except for the nails, which showed black through the plastic, they might have been preparing a meal.
They had placed each of the three rucksacks next to an improvised explosive device, IED, in a plastic box, ready to be packed inside. The bags already contained a map of the London Underground, one for each martyr. Apart from the workbench, fridge and large TV, there was no other furniture in any of the rooms, and nothing to distract on the walls. The flat was truly fit for purpose. None of the terrorists bothered with gloves and they knew their fingerprints would be on every surface. That was an up-side to suicide bombing: it did away with the necessity to conceal evidence.
