Tall Order: The 15th Spider Shepherd Thriller

by Stephen Leather

  He put his jacket back on, refastened his belt and carried his holdall along to the side entrance. He had to swipe his keycard through a reader to open the door that led to the main car park at the rear of the mall. He had left his car in the employees’ car park, the furthest away from the main building.

  A black SUV drove off the main road and into the parking lot. Martin frowned as he watched the vehicle drive slowly through the empty lot. His frown deepened as he realised it was heading towards another car, a white sedan parked in front of the Sears entrance. He hadn’t noticed the white sedan; it was empty and in an area not well lit, close to a bank of bushes.

  The SUV switched off its headlights as it pulled up next to the white sedan. Martin started walking towards it but he kept close to the mall building. Doors opened and three men got out. Arabs, by the look of them. Two of them bearded. Wearing casual clothing. Martin stopped in the shadows, wondering what the hell was going on.

  Another vehicle appeared, a large red Chevrolet Silverado truck. It growled across the parking lot, its lights off, and parked some distance away from the SUV and the sedan.

  Another Arab got out of the passenger side of the truck. The driver stayed where he was. The guy who had been in the truck was overweight and in his fifties with a long, grey beard. He was wearing blue jeans and a long grey coat that flapped around his ankles as he walked towards the three men standing by the SUV. One by one he embraced them and kissed them on the cheeks. He seemed elated, and kept patting the men on the shoulders as if praising them.

  Martin stopped. It was a strange place for a meeting: the mall was shut and the nearest open premises were the 24-hour McDonalds and KFC and they were a couple of hundred yards away.

  One of the men went back to the SUV and took out something. He took it over to the older man and showed it to him. It was a camcorder, Martin realised. They were showing him something they had filmed. The man pumped his fist in the air and shouted something. All four men were clearly excited.

  Martin walked closer, sticking to the shadows. He heard one of them shout something and the older man made a patting motion with his hand, obviously telling him to calm down.

  Another went over to the SUV and pulled out a piece of equipment. The breath caught in Martin’s throat as he realised what it was: an FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missile launcher.

  Martin moved closer to the wall. It was too much of a coincidence – a plane had blown up just half an hour earlier and now four Arab men were moving a missile launcher less than twenty miles from the airport.

  The man with the launcher headed towards the sedan. Another man had taken a can of petrol from the rear of the SUV and was sloshing it over the roof.

  Martin knew he had to act quickly. There was no point in calling 911 – the nearest police station was a ten-minute drive away and by the time a patrol car turned up the SUV would be in flames and the Arabs long gone. He started to run. The two cars were about a hundred feet away, the truck maybe a hundred and fifty.

  He was up on the balls of his feet and wearing rubber-soled boots but even so the men heard him almost immediately. The one by the SUV turned, his mouth open in surprise.

  Martin increased his pace, his arms pumping at his side. Sixty feet. The man dropped the petrol can and pulled open the door to the SUV. Martin knew he was going for a weapon. He ran faster. Forty feet.

  The man with the launcher dropped it and reached inside his jacket. Martin ran faster. Twenty feet. The baton was banging against his hip but he ignored it. He wasn’t planning to use a baton.

  The older man had the quickest reactions; as soon as he heard Martin’s rapid footsteps he had started running to the truck, which was already moving.

  The man at the SUV was holding a large gun, an Uzi or an Ingram. Multiple shots exploded from both but they were notoriously difficult to aim. Spray and pray. But with a fire rate of five or six hundred rounds a minute they were very effective at short range. Martin figured that the safety was still on and he was close enough to see the uncertainty in the man’s face, so he carried on running, his boots slapping against the tarmac.

  The older Arab reached the truck and ran alongside it, grasping for the door handle. He pulled it open. The driver shouted something at him and the man climbed in.

  The man at the SUV fumbled with the safety catch, then swung the weapon towards Martin, but he was way too slow and Martin knocked the gun to the side with his left hand and punched the man under the chin, snapping his neck back. He heard the bang of a gun off to his left and a bullet thwacked into the side of the SUV. He grabbed the Uzi with his left hand and slammed his right hand against the stock. He turned and dropped into a crouch as his finger slid over the trigger.

  The red truck was driving away, tyres screaming. The bearded Arab by the sedan had a large handgun in his right hand. He fired again but the shot also went wide. Firing one-handed was never a good idea. It was difficult to aim, difficult to track and difficult to deal with the recoil. Martin fired once and his round hit the Arab in the chest, but the man didn’t go down. The Uzi was firing 9mm rounds and they weren’t manstoppers. Martin fired again. And again. The third shot caught the man in the throat and he staggered back, fell against the car and slid to the ground.

  Martin kept low and cradled the Uzi to his chest as he ran to the third man. He had turned and was rushing towards the driver’s side door. Martin reached him just as he was pulling the door open and slammed the side of the gun against the man’s head. He went down without a sound.

  Martin looked around. He was breathing slowly and evenly and hadn’t even broken a sweat. The Arab he’d shot wasn’t dead but death was only a minute or so away. His eyes were wide open but flat and lifeless and blood was frothing from the wound in his throat. His chest moved slowly and as Martin watched, blood trickled from between his lips. The gun was still in the man’s right hand. A Glock. Martin went over, picked it up and tucked it into his belt as he considered his options. The obvious thing to do would be to call the police. But Martin had something else in mind – something that might work to his advantage. He walked quickly to the trunk, put the launcher in and slammed it shut, then put the Uzi on the roof, opened the rear door of the sedan and lifted the dying man in.

  The Arab by the driver’s door was still unconscious. Martin rolled him over and fastened his handcuffs on his wrists before opening the door and heaving the man inside. He shut the door, picked up the Uzi and jogged over to the SUV.

  The first man he’d hit was still out for the count. Martin had used his only pair of handcuffs but he took off his tie and used that to bind the unconscious Arab’s hands behind his back, then bundled him into the rear seat of the SUV. He slammed the door and looked around, reassuring himself that no one had reacted to the shots. All was silent. He peered at the road but the red truck had gone. The camcorder was lying on the ground where it had been dropped. Martin picked it up.

  He pulled out his wallet and took out a business card. At the top was the logo of Homeland Security and underneath it a name and several phone numbers. He took out his phone and tapped in the cell-phone number. The man he was calling answered the phone and Martin took a deep breath. This was going to take some explaining.

  Chapter 4

  Present Day, London

  D an ‘Spider’ Shepherd sipped his coffee as he stared at the bank of CCTV monitors in front of him. Outside in the stadium some forty thousand people were watching the game, but Shepherd was only concerned with the people in the stands. MI5 had received intel that half a dozen known jihadists from the north of England were going to meet at the stadium. Under normal circumstances finding them would be akin to locating the proverbial needle in a haystack, but Shepherd’s near-perfect memory gave him an edge, which is why he had been assigned to the stadium’s security centre an hour before the game was due to start. He was in radio contact with a dozen MI5 surveillance experts scattered throughout the stadium and had already spotted two of the jihadists and calle
d in their location.

  Shepherd’s near-perfect photographic memory meant that he was better at spotting faces than the most sophisticated facial recognition programs available. Shepherd didn’t just recognise faces; he remembered body shapes, clothing, even the way a person walked. It was a skill he’d been born with, a skill that had saved his life on more than one occasion. Not that his life was at risk as he sat in the high-backed orthopaedic chair and sipped his coffee. He hadn’t been in harm’s way for months. His career with MI5 had apparently been put on hold and he had been attached to the Metropolitan Police’s Super-Recogniser Unit indefinitely. There were a dozen police officers working full time in the unit, based on the third floor of a grey stone building in Lambeth, south London. There were another hundred and fifty or so officers in stations around London who had proven their ability to recognise faces and who could be drawn on when needed.

  The unit had been set up in 2015 after it became clear that identifying suspects from CCTV images was a specialised skill and one that couldn’t be done by computers, and it now accounted for a quarter of all the identifications made by the police in London. Most of the unit’s work involved chasing down petty criminals – thieves, muggers, carjackers. Shepherd’s brief had been to use the unit to pursue terrorists, specifically Islamic jihadists. There were now believed to be more than a thousand ISIS fighters in the UK – many were British-born men who had returned home after fighting in Syria, but hundreds had slipped into the country under the guise of asylum seekers. Shepherd had been through American and British databases of surveillance photographs taken in Syria and spent his days reviewing CCTV footage from the four hundred thousand CCTV cameras around the city. He had personally identified a dozen ISIS fighters, three of whom had already been picked up by the authorities. When any member of the unit had any spare time they would help Shepherd, but the workload was mainly his. And that was his job. Eight hours a day. Five days a week. The visit to the stadium was the first time he’d worked away from the Lambeth office in three months.

  The job was as boring as hell and he had asked several times to be moved back to operational duties but his requests were ignored. He was either being sidelined or punished, and there was nothing he could do about it. The transfer had happened after his former boss Jeremy Willoughby-Brown had been found shot dead in the garden of his home. No one had ever been arrested for the shooting and the fact that Shepherd had been in the vicinity of the man’s house at the time of the murder meant that he had to undergo hours of interviews that bordered on interrogation before his version of events was accepted. He had been en route to Willoughby-Brown’s house for a mission debrief, and he had heard two shots. By the time he reached the garden Willoughby-Brown was dead. What Shepherd could never admit to was that he had seen the killer, Matt Standing of the SAS, or that he had spoken to him after the killing. Standing wanted revenge for the death of his sister and had shot Willoughby-Brown twice in the chest. Standing had left the gun at the scene and swabs taken from Shepherd’s hands proved that he hadn’t fired the weapon, but he had been under a cloud ever since and had been kept off active operations.

  He took another sip of his coffee. Two Asian men were sitting together close to the halfway line. Both were wearing United scarfs. He zoomed in on their faces. Both in their twenties, both with beards and both clearly enjoying the game. Their faces weren’t known to him. He took another sip of coffee and used his mouse to click to another camera. This one was inside the stadium, near the toilets. More Asians, but none that he recognised. There was a clock on the wall facing him, slowly ticking off the seconds. The match would be over in an hour and he’d be home forty-five minutes after that. Katra had promised him a steak with his favourite red wine sauce and he was looking forward to it.

  Chapter 5

  Present Day, London

  S arah had been a United fan since she was six years old. Her bedroom was festooned with photographs of the team, she had half a dozen scarfs and her quilt cover was in the team’s colours. She watched every one of the games on TV and whenever they played in London, no matter who their opponents were, she’d beg and plead to be allowed to go. Usually either her mother or father would give in and take her, even though they had no interest in the game. But that night her mother wasn’t feeling well and her father – an accountant – was tied up with a last-minute audit. But the tickets for the match had been purchased, so Sarah had turned on the charm with her sister and Eleanor had been easy enough to persuade. Unlike their parents, Eleanor was a big fan of the beautiful game and had agreed to take her. It was a school night but Sarah was top of her class and her parents agreed that a few hours away from her books wouldn’t do her any harm.

  The score was one–all at half time and they went to the concessions area in search of refreshments. Sarah looked over at a stall selling team shirts and practically salivated. Eleanor touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Do you want one?’

  Sarah looked up with wide eyes. ‘Do I want one? Are you serious? I’d sell my soul for one.’ She had long blond hair and was wearing a long pink quilted coat and a United bobble hat and scarf.

  Eleanor laughed and opened her bag. Unlike her younger sister, Eleanor had chestnut hair, cut short, but she was also wearing a United scarf. ‘Well there’s no need for anything that drastic,’ she said. She opened her purse and handed Sarah the money. ‘You go get yourself one,’ she said. ‘Think of it as an early Christmas present.’ Sarah hugged her and took the notes and then ran to the concession stand, where there were four lines of at least a dozen people queueing to buy shirts. Eleanor couldn’t help but smile at her sister’s enthusiasm. She looked around for somewhere to buy a coffee but the area was crowded so she decided to stay where she was so that she could keep an eye on Sarah. Sarah joined one of the lines, clutching the notes.

  An Asian man in a black puffa jacket walked by Eleanor. She thought he was talking into a phone but as he drew away from her she realised he was muttering to himself. She frowned. It was too easy to jump to conclusions when you saw a brown-skinned man with a beard acting suspiciously but no one wanted to be seen to be racist. But there was something about the man that seemed off and she continued to watch him. He wasn’t carrying anything but even if he’d had a rucksack or backpack she probably wouldn’t have reacted any differently. Despite the recent terrorist attacks, London was still one of the safest cities in the world and you couldn’t live your life jumping at shadows. Besides, it was a football match. Terrorists didn’t target football matches; they blew themselves up on Tube trains or brought down planes or shot tourists. The man walked away, and was soon out of sight.

  A bald fan in a United shirt with tattoos all over his arms bumped into her but immediately apologised and wouldn’t leave her until she had promised that she was okay. When she looked over at Sarah again, she was only one customer away from being served. Sarah waved at Eleanor and Eleanor waved back, then Sarah blew her a kiss and Eleanor laughed. She stopped laughing when she saw the Asian man walking towards her. The man was still muttering to himself and looking around as if searching for something. For a brief moment Eleanor had eye contact with him and her breath caught in her throat. His eyes were dead. Lifeless. A feeling of dread washed over her. The man stopped walking and raised his right hand. It was clenched into a fist. He was holding something. Something metallic. Eleanor looked over at Sarah again. Time seemed to have frozen. Sarah was pointing at a shirt, and smiling. The middle-aged woman behind the counter was smiling back. Eleanor opened her mouth to shout at Sarah. Then she looked at the Asian man. He too was opening his mouth. He was quicker than her, by a fraction of a second, and the last thing she heard was him screaming ‘ Allahu Akbar!’ at the top of his voice before there was a blinding flash and a thump, and everything went black.

  Chapter 6

  Present Day, London

  S hepherd stared at the blank CCTV screen in disbelief. ‘What the fuck just happened?’ said the stadium’s head of security, who
was standing behind Shepherd’s chair.

  They had all heard a dull thud off in the distance and even though they were in the bowels of the stadium they could hear the screams of terror from outside. There were scenes of panic on several of the CCTV monitors as spectators rushed for the exits.

  One of the screens had gone blank. It covered the concession area. On a screen showing the view from a camera close to the one that had died, spectators were screaming in panic.

  Shepherd scanned the screens in front of him. Scenes of chaos and terror, but no indication of what had happened.

  There were cameras covering the pitch and the referee had blown his whistle and called the game to a halt. The players were running off the pitch.

  On one of the screens a paramedic in a yellow and green tunic was running against the tide of spectators, rushing to get out.

  Shepherd thought that a bomb had gone off in the concessions area but he didn’t want to say anything until he was sure. The radio on his desk crackled and one of the surveillance team called in. That was when he was sure.

  Chapter 7

  Ten Years Ago, Virginia

  R ichard Yokely wasn’t a fan of the Pentagon, but when the Secretary of Defense personally called him and told him to report to his office and to be quick about it, he did as he was told. It was the sheer size of the place that Yokely always found intimidating. The Pentagon was one of the world’s largest office buildings, covering six and a half million square feet. It was so big it had six ZIP codes, all Washington DC codes despite the fact the building was actually in Virginia. The man Yokely was there to see had his own personal ZIP code, to make mail delivery that much more efficient.

  Yokely was wearing a dark blue blazer, a crisp white shirt and a dark blue tie with pale blue stripes. His shoes were tasselled, the black leather gleaming as if they had been freshly polished. He had a chunky gold ring on his right ring finger and a Rolex Submariner watch on his left wrist. He was in his late forties and had spent almost half his life working for government departments that were almost always known by their initials.