Zero Hour (2010) ns-13

by Andy McNab

  The moment I opened the door she leapt up from the mattress and cut across the room. ‘Nick! I make tea?’

  I gave her a big thumbs-up. ‘Madness not to.’

  I looked at the sink. The mugs had been washed. Everything was laid out neatly. The milk stains and tea circles where I’d been making brews had all been cleaned. ‘You had anything to eat yet?’

  ‘No, Nick. I wait for you.’ She looked worried. ‘I touch nothing.’

  I let her get on with it while I dug around in the plastic bags for a piece of pitta. It had started to go hard. What little scabbing I had on my arse had cracked with my exertions and was starting to hurt again. I leant on my good leg and gnawed on the crispy bits around the edges of the bread.

  ‘Listen, Angeles, someone is coming to see me soon.’

  She handed me my brew. She didn’t look happy.

  ‘This one must not know that you’re here, OK? You understand?’

  It didn’t seem to register.

  ‘He must not see you. I’ll find you somewhere to hide. You’ve got to stay out of sight, yeah?’

  She seemed to like the thought of not being seen. Maybe it meant she wouldn’t be moved on.

  ‘Stay hidden until I tell you to come out. You’ve got to be quiet. He’s going to get really pissed off if you’re here. He’s only let me use this place because he thinks I’m on my own. If he thinks anyone else is here he’ll be very angry with me. You understand?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, yes, Nick. We still leave tonight?’

  ‘No drama. Tonight. We’ll meet the friend I told you about and she will ask her friends in Moldova if what the Ukrainian men said was true.’

  I dunked my bread in the tea to soften it.

  She almost skipped back to the sink to pick up her brew.

  7

  I had an even better vantage-point from the shadows beside the window of the middle office. I could see the front door as well as back along the road towards the main.

  I checked my watch and gulped down my last couple of aspirin. They weren’t helping much with the pain in my arse, but I thought I’d try one more dose just in case. The sky was still overcast. The sun hadn’t quite given up trying to fight its way through the clouds, but it must have been tempted.

  Bradley came into view, still in exactly the same clothes, but this time gripping a heavy and expensive-looking leather overnight bag in his right hand. I watched him to the door, then headed for the stairs.

  By the time I’d got down to the fire escape on the first landing and turned to look down to the front door, he was inside and beginning to lock up.

  ‘I have everything you asked for.’

  ‘That’s great, mate. Thanks.’ I went down to meet him. ‘Half the job’s already done.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He followed me up the steps to the fire door and into the loading bay. His head bounced around the place, taking in the smell of vomit and petrol and the mess of pans and sock-covered glasses in my preparation area. The last of the sulphuric acid was still in its glass. But mostly his eyes darted between me and the Passat.

  He was desperate to know what was going on but didn’t want to ask.

  ‘He’s in the boot.’

  ‘In there? You’re sure it’s him?’

  ‘You tell me. Whoever it is, I got his sidekick as well. Don’t ask.’

  I fished out the key fob from my pocket and pressed the button. The bodies had hardened up completely. They were both curled up like Pompeii victims. Their puke- and bloodstained white shrouds only half covered them.

  I went and picked up Brogues’s camel-hair coat and extracted a slim crocodile-skin wallet. I produced a credit card with an unpronounceable name on it and tried to pass it to Bradley.

  ‘Very good.’ He didn’t want to touch it. ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘Like I said, don’t ask. That’s my job. I’m more interested in what you’ve been up to. You get the cartridges?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He put the bag down and started to unzip it.

  I talked to the top of his gelled-back hair. ‘Have you spoken to Mission Control since we met up yesterday, last night, whenever?’

  ‘No, not at all. Why do you ask?’

  He was still hunched down by his bag, his eyes on the cooker. Mine were on the boxes of shotgun cartridges.

  ‘How many did you get?’

  ‘Twenty. When are you going to the silo?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  He nodded slowly as if the message had to sink in. ‘I think I need to know what time you will be leaving here. I need to be ready to pick up the girl.’

  ‘I’ll drop her here as soon as I’ve got her, and then I’m heading straight off. I’ll gaffer tape her up so she won’t go anywhere.’

  ‘What about the Passat?’

  ‘Like I said, everything here will be clear. I don’t know what time - nine, ten, eleven o’clock - but it’ll definitely be clear tonight and the girl will be waiting.’

  He knelt down to unload the cartridges. ‘Excellent.’

  He picked up the empty bag and we headed for the fire door.

  ‘I suppose I’ll never meet you again, will I, Mr Smith?’

  ‘No, mate, never.’

  If only he knew the real reason. Both of us would be dead really soon. I was coming to terms with that myself, but I almost felt sorry for him. He was a two-timing little shit, but all in the name of queen and country. Sadly for him, people like Bradley didn’t realize that his queen had no idea he even existed, and his country didn’t give a shit in return.

  We went back down to the front entrance. Bradley stretched out his hand. ‘Good luck, Nick.’

  ‘Thanks, mate. And you.’

  I unlocked the door and he stepped onto the road. Empty bag in hand, he carried on walking without looking back.

  8

  Back in the office, I threw open the cabinet doors. She was curled up like another Pompeii victim. Her face was creased with concern. It wasn’t about being tucked into a filing cupboard and doing her own little Anne Frank, it was more to do with winning approval. ‘I was quiet, yes? You did not hear me?’

  ‘Yep, you were quiet. Now I have to go and work, so you have to stay up here again, OK? Go back to the airbed, rest, keep warm.’

  ‘OK, Nick.’

  I followed her into the back room. ‘Not long now. We’ll go out and buy you some real clothes for when we go to see my friend. I’ll stay with you, don’t worry, and we’ll get some more food, OK?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You stay here.’

  I closed all the doors behind me and headed back to the loading bay.

  There were twenty cartridges in each of the twenty boxes, which was more than enough. In fact, it meant I could make my devices a bit bigger and a lot better.

  Laying out my ingredients as before, I got back to work. The gaffer tape was a standard two-centimetre roll. I pulled out about two metres and placed a pan on each end so it didn’t curl.

  I opened the knife bit of the Chinese Leatherman and cut the top off the first cartridge. They were old. The red waxed-cardboard body cut far too easily, and the small pellets that dropped out were lead. They’ve been steel for years now.

  After the front two-thirds of the cartridge was empty, I dug out the cotton wad that separated the shot from the propellant. I tipped the grains of propellant onto one end of the gaffer tape and an inch or two along it. I was doing pretty much the same as my stepdad used to do when he rolled his own fags, only this one packed a bit more of a punch than Gold Leaf did.

  It took just over an hour to cut and pour the full two metres. I needed to make sure that whatever propellant was touching the tape was actually stuck to the adhesive. That way, there would be continuity in the burning even if there was a break here and there among the loose stuff if the fuse got bent. Once I’d done all that, I rolled the gaffer tape nice and tight until I had two metres of fuse half a centimetre thick. I put it to one side
with the picric acid, well away from where I was working.

  The next job was to make sure my bulb detonator was going to do its stuff. With the pliers part of the Chinese Leatherman, I crimped off the glass nipple to expose the insides of the bulb. I poured in propellant from one of the sixty-odd cartridges I had left over. Then I turned on the clock, set the alarm for one minute’s time, and waited. The element lit up. Within three seconds the propellant ignited in a burst of bright flame. A small cloud of cordite was left hanging in the air.

  I shook the residue off the bulb and reset the clock. I tried it again, this time without the propellant, and the light came on. I now knew the wire connections to the two terminals of the bulb were good, and the bulb itself was still working. Why use a new bulb and run the risk it was a dud?

  I moved the assembly away from everything else. The clock was the initiation device, and the bulb was the detonator. Now that they were joined, I had to make sure they didn’t do their jobs until I wanted them to. I took the batteries out and laid them to the side.

  There was just one more manufacturing task, and that was to pour the remaining propellant into two of the freezer bags, one for each charge. It took me just over an hour. When I’d finished, the bags went alongside the picric acid and the fuse.

  I was almost done. All that was left was to retrieve the bags of damp picric. I cut them open and spread the yellow, claylike substance on plastic to dry. Then, making one final check that Brogues’s coat, credit cards and wallet were back in the boot of the Passat, I headed up the stairs.

  The market would be open now, and we both needed clothes for our exfil. I needed to look as clean leaving the country as I had when I came in. And Angeles, well, she just needed to look dressed.

  9

  The food stalls were piled with all kinds of products you’d normally find in a souk, from dates and spices to bags of rice and pistachios. The next one along sold nothing but second-hand clothing. Both of us blended in well. Angeles didn’t get a second glance in her gear from the House of Bling.

  I was going to keep her with me now, regardless. No way was I was going to let her stay in the safe-house with the Moldovans downstairs and a roomful of volatile explosive mixes. If she nosed around and found the bodies she might lose it completely. If she found the mix and fucked about with it she could take down the building. Only by controlling her at all times could I be sure that I knew where she was.

  The first priority was a coat each, not only to keep us warm and dry, but also to cover our existing clothes if we had to do a runner before we bought anything else. All the voices around us were Dutch, Arabic and Turkish, so I did my normal grunt and point. Next came a couple of sets each of trainers, jeans and sweatshirts. I also bought her a hairbrush to sort out the bird’s nest on her head.

  I was pissed off that I was still going to be in-country when the place went up. The timer had to be set for two or three hours at most. That way, the batteries had a good chance of staying charged. Once I left the silo, I had no control over the device. I wanted it to be exposed for the least possible time, yet still able to give me enough to get out of the area.

  I also couldn’t control the space that the device was placed in, so would have no way of knowing if it had been discovered. I had to factor in getting back to the safe-house afterwards, not just to pick up Angeles, but also to shower and scrub the DNA and cordite off me, then get rid of the clothes I’d worn on-target. The last thing I wanted to do was to turn up at the departure gate, and have security sensors detect traces of explosives on my clothes or hands.

  We moved away from the clothing stalls and she got changed in one of the coffee shops that lined the market while I slid into my nasty new black coat. I bought kebabs and coffees, and she shovelled everything down like a girl possessed.

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your friend, what is her name?’

  ‘You will find out soon enough.’

  Even with just a few weeks left, I couldn’t force myself to change the habit of a lifetime. I’d found over the years that giving out my own name was OK because it belonged to me. I could decide what I did with it, and what lies I was going to attach to it. But divulging the names of others was a different matter. That had to be up to them. In either case, you don’t give out information unless you have to. The less she knew about me, Anna, Flynn and all the rest, the better. I didn’t want to have an in-depth conversation about what I was doing here and where my family was. The only thing that was important was to get us both out of this situation. And as long as I kept her away from the loading bay, she’d know nothing and I could sort her out.

  As we passed FilmNoord XXX, I scanned the road ahead. The ship still blocked the view of the waterway but apart from that there was nothing out of the ordinary, not even a car parked on the pavement.

  We got to the door. She saw me checking the telltales in the locks.

  ‘This is a bad area. You have to make sure nobody breaks in.’

  The keys ripped through the little slivers of paper and I opened up. Angeles went through with the bags. I followed and turned to close the door.

  The two bodies that bomb-burst out from the garages came at me in a blur of leather jackets, shaved heads and face metal. They were already halfway across the road and closing on me fast.

  I jumped inside and tried to slam the door shut.

  She looked at me, terror-struck, rooted to the spot.

  ‘Run! Go!’

  They kicked and pushed, jarring me backwards and forwards. I couldn’t hold it any more.

  The door crashed open.

  10

  I pulled her through the fire door and into the loading bay. That was where there were weapons. Where there were weapons, there was a chance.

  There was nothing else I could do for her now.

  I let go but she grabbed my hand again. I had to push her out of the way. The pulse in my neck surged as my body built up to the fight. She screamed somewhere behind me but my focus was on the glass of acid sitting on the concrete.

  One of them was so close I could hear his laboured breathing. I dropped to my knees. They banged against the concrete. The pain shot up my thighs. I grabbed the glass and some of the liquid spilt. It burnt my right hand. As I turned, all I could see was jeans and boots.

  I jerked the glass upwards and let go of it a split second later. I rolled away to escape the splashback.

  The bearded neo screamed and his hands clawed at his face. He fell to his knees level with me. I jumped up. I wanted the Leatherman. I wanted one of the glasses. I wanted anything that was a weapon for the next man, who now blurred into my vision from the left. The grunts and screams continued from the lad below me. He was still on his knees as he took the pain.

  The thud as the other guy’s body hit me full-on was as hard as if I’d walked into the path of a moving car. The momentum hurled me against the opposite wall. The back of my head hit the blockwork. Stars burst in front of my eyes. Hollering and screaming was coming from everywhere: from me, from them, from Angeles.

  I scrambled onto my hands and knees. I had to stand. I had to keep on my feet. Go down and you’re finished.

  Neo number two was back and at me. He leapt on top of me. We grappled like a couple of scrappers in the schoolyard. I tried to head-butt him, bite him, anything to get him off me. I kicked and bucked. Both of us screamed. He had a week’s bristle on him that rasped against my cheek. The boy stank. I could smell booze, cigarettes and unwashed skin. My face was stuck into his neck. I tried to get my hands up to squeeze against it. He snorted with exertion and snot fired from his nose.

  He finally opened his eyes and I could see them bouncing around, out of control. He was in a frenzy. He managed to get his hands around my neck and squeezed. I tried to shake left and right. He started to snarl like a pit-bull.

  He was on top of me, on the floor. I wrapped my legs around his body. My arse felt like I’d sat on a branding iron, but there wasn’t
a whole lot I could do about that. If I could get him closer he couldn’t exert the same pressure round my neck as he leant in to me.

  He lifted his head and snarled. It gave me a chance. I tried to head-butt him, tried to make contact wherever I could. I tried to bite into his cheek. He jerked his head away. I could taste his week-old sweat.

  His mouth opened as he threw his face down onto the top of my head. He bit into my scalp. I could hear the skin break as his teeth sank in, and then the sound of him straining to bite harder.

  I managed to get my legs tighter around his gut as the fucker started to pull his head back. I could feel the snorting from his nose as his teeth dug into my scalp and scraped along the bone.

  I shoved my hands up in front of his face as my capillary bleeding sprayed the ground and ran down the back of my neck. My thumbs searched for his eyeballs and found the cheekbones and then went on from there. I pushed them down into the sockets. He jerked his head back. His teeth had to lose their grip. He needed to scream.

  I moved my right hand so I had a flat palm underneath his chin, then switched my left to his ear. I didn’t have much choice. If he’d had a fistful of hair I’d have grabbed that instead. He howled at me through clenched teeth.

  I wanted to break his neck. To do that I had to screw it off, like I was turning a tap. I had to take the head off at the atlas, the small joint at the base of the skull. It’s not so hard if you’re doing it against a body that’s standing. If you get them off balance as they’re going down, you can twist and turn at the same time, so their own momentum works against them. But all I could do was keep my legs around him and try to hold him in one place.

  I managed to get my boots interlocked, and at last I could squeeze and push down with my legs, at the same time twisting up with my arms as hard as I could. I kept on turning. We both screamed at each other. He bit my hand, trying to jerk his jaw left and right. This wasn’t so much about him trying to kill me. I didn’t know what he was doing. He was totally out of it.