[Spider Shepherd #13] - Dark Forces

by Stephen Leather

  ‘They’ll come,’ said Omar. ‘It’s early yet.’

  ‘You said eight.’

  ‘I said from eight. It’s only quarter past.’

  They were standing at the door looking at the gate, now unlocked and open. The vehicles were all fuelled and ready, the freshly printed licence plates in place.

  ‘What if they don’t come?’

  ‘They’ll come, brother. A lot of planning has gone into this.’

  A blue Honda came down the road on the other side of the chain-link fence, slowed, and turned to drive through the gate. There were two Asian men in the car, both clean-shaven. The car stopped in front of the loading bay. The passenger got out, closed the door, and the car drove away. The man turned to Omar and Faisal. Omar waved him over. He was in his thirties, dark-skinned and wearing wire-rimmed glasses. ‘Welcome, brother,’ said Omar. He embraced the man.

  ‘Assalamu alaykum,’ said Faisal.

  The man hugged Faisal. ‘Assalamu alaykum.’

  ‘Come this way,’ said Omar, taking him to a table where there were four sets of green uniforms. He handed one to the man and showed him to the toilets where he could change. When he came out, Omar smiled his approval. He looked the part.

  ‘Have you driven something like this before?’ asked Omar.

  ‘I have driven trucks,’ said the man.

  Faisal clipped a laminated ID to the man’s breast pocket. ‘It’s the same as a truck,’ he said.

  Omar got into the passenger seat as the man sat behind the wheel. He ran through the controls with him, then showed him the sat-nav. ‘Your first destination is near Reading, to the west of London. Then you go to East London to the waiting area. Then you have your final destination.’

  ‘What do I say if I’m stopped?’ asked the man.

  ‘You won’t be,’ said Omar. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘I am. Inshallah.’

  Omar climbed out and slammed the door. He gave Faisal a thumbs-up and Faisal raised the shuttered door to allow the man to drive out. The two men watched as the vehicle drove away. ‘It’s begun, brother,’ said Omar, putting his arm around Faisal’s shoulders. ‘It’s finally begun.’

  Shepherd went downstairs and into the kitchen. He had slept in one of the bedrooms at the Ealing house. The previous evening he had spent playing cards with the three SFOs between popping into the front room to watch the surveillance screens. The armed cops were all good guys, tough and professional, and all had at some point trained with the SAS in Hereford, on the ranges and also in the famous Killing House. The three tangoes had stayed in the house all night, occasionally moving from room to room. But most of the time one of the men stayed downstairs and two upstairs. They had come together to pray three times – at three o’clock in the afternoon, at five thirty, and finally at just after seven. The infrared cameras had picked up the red and yellow images as they bowed, knelt and placed their foreheads on the floor.

  There was a flurry of activity at eight o’clock when a moped had arrived at the house but it had turned out to be a food delivery from a local Lebanese restaurant. Shepherd had thought about going back to his Battersea flat but decided he might as well stay put. The men had travelled to London for a purpose and he figured that purpose would be revealed sooner rather than later.

  He made a bacon sandwich and took it through to the room where Aspden was still sitting in front of the screens exactly as she had been seven hours earlier when Shepherd had gone to bed. ‘You don’t sleep?’ he asked.

  ‘I cat-nap,’ she said, pointing at a sofa under the window. ‘And I drink a lot of coffee.’

  ‘Shall I make you one?’ he asked.

  She grinned. ‘That was what I was hoping,’ she said.

  He offered her half of his sandwich but she shook her head. He made two coffees, put them on the table and sat next to her.

  ‘Tell me about your trick memory,’ she said. ‘Eidetic, right?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty much. I can remember pages after just looking at them for a few seconds. I never forget a name or a face.’

  ‘Must have been a help at university.’

  ‘Not really. Remembering facts isn’t a sign of intelligence. It’s how you use the information. For instance, I can remember foreign words easily but that doesn’t mean I’m particularly good at languages. I can read a book on astronomy and remember it, but that doesn’t mean I understand it.’

  ‘That Stephen Hawking book about black holes? That was a tough read.’

  ‘Exactly. I’d be able to recall it word for word, but I wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation about it.’ He took a bite of his sandwich and washed it down with coffee.

  ‘You’re former SAS, right?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  She smiled knowingly. ‘You have the look. The way you carry yourself.’

  ‘I was for a while.’

  ‘And did the memory help with that?’

  ‘Sure. I only had to look at a map once so navigation was always easy for me. Building layouts, things like that.’

  ‘But Jeremy’s using you because of your facial-recognition skills?’

  ‘Yeah. I only have to see a face once to remember it for ever.’ He gestured at the screens. ‘The two tangoes who came down from Sheffield, I saw their faces on passports in Turkey.’

  ‘That’s a useful skill,’ said Aspden. ‘The Met has a unit of super-recognisers. The memory cops, they call them.’

  ‘Humans with the right skills can still beat the computers at facial recognition,’ said Shepherd. ‘But it’s not the sort of job I’d want to do, sitting staring at screens all day.’ He raised his coffee mug. ‘No offence.’

  Aspden laughed. ‘None taken,’ she said. ‘I love surveillance. I really love it. Watching people without them knowing. I mean, look at these three.’ She pointed at the centre screen on her table. ‘They’re up to no good, obviously. Moving a rifle around, planning whatever they’re planning, thinking we’re so bloody stupid we don’t know what they’re up to. But all the time they’re making their little plans we’re watching and waiting.’

  ‘They’ve got a big surprise coming, that’s true,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I like, the look of confusion on their faces when they’re confronted by the evidence,’ she said. ‘When they get arrested they think we know nothing and they try to brazen it out. Then they see what we’ve got on them and they can’t believe it.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘But I guess you prefer the action bit. The charging around with guns and the like.’

  Shepherd grinned. ‘It’s what I trained for.’

  ‘You see, I’d hate that,’ she said. ‘Guns always scare me. And I don’t think I could ever pull the trigger on someone.’

  ‘You say that, but if your family was threatened you might think differently.’

  Her eyes remained on the screens. ‘Oh, sure, no question. Anyone tries to hurt my kids and I’ll kill them with my bare hands. But that’s something else, isn’t it? That’s maternal instinct kicking in. Have you got kids?’

  ‘Just one. A boy.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘About to fly the coop? What’s he going to study?’

  ‘He doesn’t want to go to university,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s joining the army.’

  Aspden looked at him. ‘And you’re okay with that?’

  He shrugged. ‘He’s eighteen, he can make his own decisions. But, yes, I’m okay with it. It’s probably the right thing for him.’

  She smiled. ‘It’s in his genes.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘You’re probably right.’

  Sayyid and his assistants transferred the ammonium nitrate from the Tupperware containers to 45-gallon oil barrels. Ammonium nitrate alone was a powerful explosive, but by adding diesel fuel the compound became as effective as nitroglycerine. The most effective combination was 95 per cent ammonium nitrate and five per cent diesel. No mixing was required: the diesel was simply poured into the barre
ls and gravity did the rest.

  Once they had sealed four barrels, they used grey duct tape to attach hundreds of nuts, bolts and washers. They laid down strips of duct tape on the floor and placed dozens of nuts, bolts and washers on the sticky side. Then they wound the tape around the barrels. When the bomb exploded, the metal would form lethal shrapnel.

  ANFO was a powerful explosive, but it was very stable. It took a considerable kick to detonate it, but Sayyid had spent hours researching the best detonator to use. He had settled on the igniters that enthusiasts used to launch model rockets. They were freely available and even sold on Amazon. He had bought two dozen over several weeks from different sellers.

  He placed them on a table in groups of six, then taped all the left-hand wires of each set together, and all the right-hand wires. He stripped the plastic from the ends of lengths of 12-gauge electrical wire, then connected those wires to the sets of leads of the igniters.

  When he had finished all four, he prepared the second part of the circuit. He put together a simple circuit with a push-button trigger and a 12-volt battery. He used a small bulb to check that the trigger worked, then added a simple on-off switch so that the circuit would be totally safe while the bombs were in transit. Once in place the on-off switch had to be put in the on position and the button pressed. There was no timer in the circuit. For what had been planned, no timer was necessary.

  The first vehicle arrived at just after midday, right on time. ‘He’s here,’ said Farooqi.

  ‘Open the door,’ said Sayyid.

  Farooqi pressed the large red button that activated the metal shutter and it rattled up. The vehicle drove in and parked.

  Farooqi opened its rear doors while Sayyid and Hashmi carried over one of the barrels. The driver stayed where he was as the three men lifted the barrel into the back of the vehicle. Farooqi used a length of washing line to bind it into place so that it wouldn’t move around in transit.

  Sayyid opened the front passenger door and climbed in. The driver was in his twenties with deep-set eyes and an unnerving cold stare. ‘Assalamu alaykum,’ said Sayyid.

  ‘Wa alaykum alsalam wa rahmatu Allahi wa barakaatuhu,’ mumbled the driver. And peace and blessings of Allah be upon you.

  Farooqi passed over the trigger from the rear of the vehicle. Sayyid showed it to the driver. ‘This is the on-off switch,’ he said. ‘It’s in the off position now. That means the device is not live. When you’re in position, you put the switch in the on position. Then the circuit is live. It is activated by pushing the button.’

  The driver nodded.

  ‘Do you have any questions?’ asked Sayyid.

  The man stared blankly ahead.

  ‘Are you okay, brother?’ asked Sayyid.

  The man nodded again.

  ‘You understand what I have said to you?’

  ‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raaji’oon,’ he said, his voice a low whisper. To Allah we belong and to Him we will return.

  Sayyid patted his shoulder. ‘Alhamdulillah,’ he said. Praise be to Allah. He climbed out and slammed the door. Farooqi closed the rear doors and banged on them with the flat of his hand.

  Hashmi pressed the button to raise the metal shutter and the vehicle reversed slowly out, a warning beeper sounding aggressively. Sayyid watched the man drive away. One down, three to go.

  Salman knocked on Mohammed al-Hussain’s door. The man was sitting on the bed, reading his copy of the Koran and fingering his prayer beads. ‘The car will be here in two hours,’ said Salman.

  ‘Thank you, brother,’ said al-Hussain.

  ‘Do you want anything to eat or drink?’

  Al-Hussain was hungry but the kitchen downstairs was so dirty that he hadn’t eaten any of the cooked food that had been offered to him. He had had some fruit the previous day and drunk the tea that Salman had prepared, but that was all. He knew he needed to eat something but when he looked at Salman’s dirty fingernails he couldn’t bear the thought of eating anything the man had touched. ‘What fruit do you have?’ he asked.

  ‘I have oranges. And a banana.’

  ‘I will eat those.’

  ‘I could cut them up and make a fruit salad.’

  ‘No,’ said al-Hussain, quickly. ‘Do not peel them, just give me them as they are. And do you have eggs?’

  Salman nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes. I could fry you some.’

  ‘Just boil them and bring them to me in their shells. And hot tea.’

  Salman sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I’ll bring it to you straight away,’ he said. He smiled and closed the door.

  Al-Hussain shuddered. He couldn’t understand why Salman was so careless with his personal hygiene. The Prophet himself had been clear that Islam is clean, and that the followers of Islam should keep themselves clean because only clean people can enter Paradise. A good Muslim kept himself scrupulously clean, which meant that Salman was not a good Muslim.

  Akram Hakim drove at just below the speed limit. The sat-nav unit mounted on the dashboard said he was two hours from his destination, an industrial site on the outskirts of Reading. The route took him mainly along minor roads, away from CCTV cameras and speed traps.

  It had taken Hakim three months to reach England. It had been an arduous journey. He had started in Turkey, where he had been given a Syrian passport to disguise his Iraqi origins and a waist pack filled with euros. He had crossed the sea to Greece on an overcrowded dinghy, then taken trains across Europe until he had reached France. He had killed two men in the migrant camp in Calais, which the newspapers referred to as the Jungle. It was home to more than six thousand people, mostly young men, who wanted to make a new life in the UK. They slept in the camp as they tried to make the final leg of their journey by stowing away on lorries, cars and ferries, or sneaking on to a train at the Eurostar terminal.

  When Hakim had arrived at the Jungle, it had been made up of nine camps. Every now and again the authorities would move in and close a camp down, but another would spring up elsewhere. The French were half-hearted in their attempts to stem the problem because they knew that the migrants in Calais had no wish to stay in France.

  The migrants were a mixed bunch. There were Pakistanis and Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians. Most had thrown away their passports and identification documents, unless they were from a true war zone. A Pakistani or an Egyptian arriving in the UK would have a hard time claiming asylum, but a Syrian, an Afghan or a Somalian would be fast-tracked through the process.

  Hakim kept his Syrian passport in his back pocket, wrapped in a plastic bag. It had earned him free rail travel across Europe. On trains in Hungary, Austria and Germany, all he had had to do was show the ticket inspectors the passport, smile, and say, ‘England!’ and they ignored him.

  The main camp was on a former landfill site three miles from Calais, which had electricity, showers and toilets. Hakim stayed in a smaller camp with little in the way of facilities, though residents received one meal a day supplied by a French charity. Conditions were bad but no one at the camp planned to stay there long. Almost everyone was looking for passage to the UK on one of the thousands of trucks that passed through Calais every day.

  While he was in the camp, Hakim had met a man who knew him. The man was also an Iraqi and, like Hakim, had fought for Islamic State in Iraq, then in Syria. He was also hoping to get to England and had embraced Hakim like a long-lost brother. The man had a loose tongue and spoke loudly, reminiscing about their days in Syria. Hakim had asked the man if he could sleep in his tent and he had agreed. It was a ramshackle lean-to made of scrap wood and lined with cardboard, a stolen tarpaulin providing shelter from the rain. Another man shared the tent, a second Iraqi.

  They shared what little food they had with Hakim – half a stale baguette, some rancid cheese and a bottle of water. They made plans for the final journey to England. One said he had heard of a French truck driver who was prepared to let migrants ride in the back of his truck for a thousand euros.
Hakim had more than two thousand euros hidden in a money belt under his shirt, but he didn’t tell them that.

  He killed them both while they slept that night, strangling them with his bare hands. Afterwards he slipped away to another camp and, two days later, stowed away in the back of a truck transporting fruit. He left it at a service station somewhere in the south of England and used a phone box to call a number he’d memorised before he left Syria. Two hours later he was collected by an elderly Asian man in a small van with the name of a carpet-cleaning firm on the side.

  The man drove Hakim north to Leeds where he handed him over to a Pakistani family, who had prepared a spare room for him. Hakim stayed in the room: he ate, slept and prayed there, leaving it only to use the bathroom. The family gave him a small television to watch but he never switched it on. He spent his waking hours praying, reading the Koran and preparing himself for martyrdom.

  When they were ready, the father had driven him from Leeds to east Manchester to collect the vehicle he was now driving south to Reading. He was totally calm. He had no reservations about what he was about to do. There was no greater glory than dying for Islam. He was happy to give his life for Allah. Soon he would be in Heaven, while thousands of infidels would be burning in the fires of Hell and it would serve them right.

  ‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raaji’oon,’ he whispered to himself. To Allah we belong and to Him we will return.

  Shepherd’s phone rang. It was Paul Evans. Aspden was talking into her headset so he left the room and closed the door before he took the call. ‘Terry, mate, where are you?’ asked Evans.

  ‘Just heading out to see a guy about some business,’ lied Shepherd.

  ‘You still up for this evening?’

  ‘Sure. Of course. Wouldn’t miss it for the world, mate.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Evans. ‘The fight starts at six – the Russians want it to be shown at prime time in Moscow so a six o’clock start for the main bout but there’s a couple of good ones before that so we should take our seats at about four thirty. Some of the guys are going to meet at the Mayfair for lunch and a few drinks, then we’ll head over to the stadium.’