State Of Emergency: (Tom Buckingham Thriller 3)

by Andy McNab

  ‘Wait here while I tell him. If he agrees, you’ll see him coming out of those doors to the right, in the hall.’

  She turned and went back the way she had come. He scanned the hallway, his head the only part of him exposed beyond the semi-opened door. The hall was inviting, like that of an old country-house hotel, with an ancient flagstone floor and the whiff of woodsmoke coming from a fireplace the size of a goal mouth. A chandelier sparkled in the mirror. Mum would like this, he found himself thinking, and quickly doused the thought before it led on to his father.

  There was a resonant, ponderous ticking from a tall grandfather clock against the opposite wall that seemed to be getting louder – something he recognized as a trick of the mind.

  Below the sound of the clock he could hear a gentle hubbub of chatter echoing along the hall, the clink of cutlery on china and the odd guffaw, coming from the double-height oak doors down to the right. In another mirror opposite the doors he could see a section of the table. He was tempted to step further out to get a glimpse of how it was going with the PM but he resisted.

  His heart sank as the clock ticked on. What if this didn’t work? He didn’t have a plan B or a plan C. In fact, he was pretty much making up plan A as he went along. He decided to move. He wanted to see for himself, have an early warning, if Gemma was going to help him or not.

  There was movement in the dining room as the stewards glided in with the dessert and took up their positions behind the diners. Gemma must have given them a signal, as they all stepped forward at the same moment.

  He heard nothing from her but after another agonizing ten seconds the PM’s voice wafted towards him.

  ‘Carry on. Back in a sec.’

  Success?

  Gemma appeared first, followed by the PM brushing crumbs off his chest. He frowned at the sight of Tom’s damp and torn clothing. Gemma lingered, watching.

  ‘Sir, Tom Buckingham. I work for Stephen Mandler. Is there somewhere we can speak in private?’

  74

  ‘What did you say your name was again?’

  The documents were still in Tom’s outstretched hand. The prime minister was ignoring them. His eyes bulged, as if they were about to launch themselves clean out of his reddened face. Evidently he’d had a few and was not focusing the way Tom needed him to. Gemma had disappeared back into the dining room. They were alone in the hall. Tom repeated his warning.

  ‘You are about to be surrounded by Invicta troops, sir. They think they’re staging a coup to replace you with Rolt. They’re going to force you to resign. I need to take you to the panic room now. With you safe there, nothing can happen.’

  The prime minister seemed to be taking his time to absorb what he was saying. Tom had seen this sort of reaction before, that rabbit-in-the-headlights look, the denial people could slip into when confronted with immediate danger. There were a thousand ways this was going to go tits up, but he knew that if he stopped to consider any of them it would be a waste of precious seconds – and, in any case, the way it would go wrong would be the thousand and first. He had staked everything on working the same magic he had done with Gemma. He tried to put the documents into the PM’s hand but he took a step back. Tom grabbed his arm to try to force him to take them.

  There was more movement at either end of the hallway. Not wanting to look shifty, Tom kept all his attention on the prime minister. Finally he spoke.

  ‘There’s only one flaw in your story, though, Tom.’

  ‘Sir?’

  From the corridor where Tom had followed Gemma, two men in suits appeared, pistols drawn, while a third came from the dining room. The prime minister’s face relaxed into a look of mild disgust.

  ‘Stephen Mandler was relieved of his duties earlier today. With immediate effect.’

  Tom dropped the documents and stood exactly where he was. He’d figured Gemma would speak to security but had hoped that the PM would have got the message.

  The third suit had his Taser up. Tom knew this wouldn’t be the time to do or say anything. One movement, one word or combination thereof would be taken as a threat, and he would be shot. He knew all too well that these situations were very black and white. If the life of their principal was in any way at risk they were entitled to shoot.

  He kept still and prepared to accept what was about to happen as the third man advanced between the two with the pistols, and fired the Taser.

  75

  Tom glimpsed a streak of yellow arc through his peripheral vision heading towards his thigh, closely followed by fifty thousand volts.

  Then his whole being shuddered as if having its own private earthquake: the shock vibrated through all the cells in his body, short-circuiting his nervous system, and he dropped in a helpless heap. He knew he was face down on the carpet – his face was buried in it – but he couldn’t remember getting there.

  He tried to lift his head up off the carpet. In the haze of his brain he knew he must establish whether or not the PM had seen the documents. They would prove he was telling the truth.

  ‘Read them, Sir, please.’

  His voice sounded thick and blurred, as if he was speaking through a wet flannel. He felt a large foot bearing down on his back as his arms were straightened out behind him, then heard the ratchet sound as he was plasticuffed. Two hands roughly patted him down, more with anger than efficiency. They would be seriously in the shit for letting him anywhere near the boss, and were evidently making up for their carelessness by being extra hard.

  More security now appeared on the scene. One reached down, picked up the documents and escorted the prime minister away.

  ‘This is a bad idea, guys. You’re going to be in even more shit in a few minutes. Will you just hear me out?’

  ‘Shut up, cunt.’

  He took that as a no.

  They grabbed him and pulled him back onto his feet, then half dragged, half frogmarched him through a narrow door and down a stone spiral staircase to a basement passage. No one spoke. All he could hear was their laboured breathing as they manhandled their prisoner.

  ‘Please listen to me. It’s all going to kick off outside and they’re going to need every one of you.’

  For that he got a fist in the temple and nearly dropped again as they came out into a yard where a people-carrier was waiting, the engine running. One of the suits was shouting at the driver: ‘Fantasist! Only got right into the fucking house, didn’t he?’

  ‘All right, load him in.’

  They had a job to do, and listening to reason wasn’t in the brief. Tom’s body was still quivering from the shock of the Taser. He knew better than to fight it. Give in to it and the body had a better chance of recovering faster, so the opportunity to escape would come sooner. Except that sooner was still too late.

  76

  22.00

  Soho, London

  Jamal had remained in Pret A Manger after Latimer had gone, his mind a cauldron of remorse and rage. He had heard suicide bombers being prepared in Syria, having it drilled into them that their lives were over, there was nothing to live for but the act of war. Now he knew how they’d felt. But he wasn’t going to squander his last opportunity. He needed to focus again. Use the resources he had. He followed Latimer’s instructions. He made his way to the street in Soho where he had been told to wait. The BMW was there, lights on, the engine ticking over. As he came up alongside the driver’s door the window opened a couple of inches.

  ‘Get in.’ A woman’s voice.

  He opened the door and entered the warm, leathery cocoon. The woman at the wheel was pale, almost ghost-like. ‘Hello, Jamal.’ She offered him her hand. ‘I’m Xenia. Emma’s friend.’

  The car glided forward and out into the evening traffic. Jamal clutched his bag to him with its combustible contents inside and said nothing.

  He saw the Mall and Buckingham Palace, just a ghostly shape without any floodlights. Parked outside the gates were Husky and Pathfinder armoured vehicles and a line of police minibuses with riot g
rilles over the steamed-up windows.

  ‘Quite a lot has changed while you’ve been away.’

  ‘Was I the last person to see Emma?’ Jamal asked.

  She nodded. ‘I financed her assignment in Syria. She was very committed to her work.’

  ‘I’m so sorry she died. I don’t know how it happened.’

  ‘It’s okay. We know it wasn’t your fault.’

  He looked over his shoulder, checking to see if anyone was following.

  ‘You can relax for now. It’s not likely anyone will bother us.’ She accelerated away from Hyde Park Corner towards Knightsbridge. ‘There’ll be a police cordon at the end of my street, but they know me. Don’t be alarmed.’ She handed him some dark glasses.

  ‘Really?’

  She nodded. ‘They’ll make you look more like my bodyguard.’

  They travelled in silence until she made a left turn and slowed as two armed police came into view.

  ‘Sit up. Don’t cower and don’t try to avoid their gaze.’

  Miraculously, the police waved them through.

  The residence was surrounded by a wall and tall gates, which opened automatically as they approached. Jamal had never been in a building anything like it before. It looked more like a fortress than a house, bristling with security devices.

  ‘You should be safe here.’

  They descended to the underground car park where they left the car, and travelled to the fifth floor in a lift that was all mirrors. Jamal saw himself standing beside this impossibly beautiful woman clutching a bag with Isham’s bomb in it, as if he was in a dream.

  She showed him to a room with a large double bed, and an adjoining bathroom almost as big that was all white marble. It was as if he had died and gone to some other place, not necessarily Heaven. A servant came and offered to take his bag but he refused to let it out of his hands. He looked out of the window at the rooftops and the street below. He was safe, which he had not felt in a long time.

  77

  22.30

  M40 motorway

  Tom examined his options: there weren’t very many. Basically he was limited as long as he was surrounded by the four with him in the Ford Galaxy people-carrier, one each side of him and two in the front. It wasn’t clear where they were going. No one answered when he asked. But they were on the M40 heading for London. He had put up no resistance after the Tasering, partly because he couldn’t – his muscle tissue had contracted. After that subsided, he remained limp, to fool his escorts into lowering their guard sufficiently to give him something to work with: if an opportunity presented itself there would be maximum surprise.

  As he was being driven out of Chequers Tom had looked to see if Ashton’s main gate team had actually made it to the start point. If they’d halted this vehicle he might have had one final chance of stopping Ashton but if they were there they hadn’t shown themselves, and the Galaxy sped on.

  On the motorway, sleet and mist slowed their pace, reducing all three lines of traffic to a steady thirty-five. He didn’t much like how close the driver was keeping to the vehicle in front but right now that was the least of his worries. His wrists were bound behind his back with plasticuffs. He didn’t have his seatbelt on, which made him vulnerable if the driver didn’t watch his distance but it offered an opportunity if the right moment arose.

  He assumed that at some point he would be handed over to the police. With Mandler apparently gone, his only contact left was Woolf, though in the current climate it wouldn’t surprise him if he denied all knowledge of him. And where was Phoebe now? There was nothing more he could do for the prime minister. By now most probably all the call signs would have carried out the attack. Ashton would have been the one to walk in and make the PM sign the documents.

  There was complete silence in the vehicle until the front passenger with the goatee facial hair heard his phone buzz and put it to his ear.

  ‘Yeah, I can hear you … The fuck?’

  That put the rest of them on the alert.

  ‘You having a laugh?’ Goatee’s voice went up an octave. ‘You want us back there?’ He pulled the mobile from his ear and examined the screen.

  ‘Fucking cut off.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked the one on Tom’s left.

  ‘Some kind of incident. Wait out.’

  Goatee tried to get the caller back.

  ‘You wanna stop?’ the driver asked Goatee, turning his head towards him just as the brake lights flashed on the truck in front of them. Before even consciously thinking what he was about to do, Tom tensed his calf and thigh muscles and launched himself at Goatee. The driver lifted one hand off the wheel to stop him, his attention distracted by the commotion as the two either side of Tom made to grab him. Tom used the force from the man on his left who had grabbed his shoulder to drop behind the back of Goatee’s seat just as the driver realized what was happening in front of him and slammed on the brakes. Tom couldn’t see what was happening but felt the steering being yanked left.

  The impact didn’t feel like much, but the angle at which the people-carrier hit the truck twisted it ninety degrees as the airbags deployed. All Tom could do was hope that whoever was behind was better at keeping their distance or he would be responsible for a massive pile-up. That thought had barely formed when it came. Not as big an impact but just enough to put the already tottering people-carrier on its side.

  Above the high-pitched whistling in his ears, caused by the detonating airbags, he heard a mixture of groans, swearing and car horns. With the people-carrier on its side, Tom unexpectedly found himself on his feet. He was standing on the tarmac in the aperture where the side window would have been, in a pool of broken glass.

  Headlights from the traffic behind lit up the interior. The man who had been on his left had been thrown forward by the impact and had come to rest curved over the headrest of the seat in front of him on top of Goatee, who was groaning under him. The man on his right had demolished the driver’s seat and the pair of them were slumped half out of the windscreen and not moving.

  There was nothing Tom could do for them while his wrists were cuffed so he worked his way past the third row of seats to where the rear window had burst out of the tailgate. Then he backed himself up to the edge of the window frame and worked the plasticuffs up and down against the sharp metal edge until they snapped apart. Already a crowd of other motorists was forming around the front of the vehicle and someone was ministering to Goatee through the space where the windscreen had been.

  Tom made his way back into the vehicle and reached the man who had been on his right, suspended in his belt, his eyes half open but barely focusing. He lifted a hand but let it fall as Tom reached into his coat for a weapon.

  Tom checked the chamber of the Glock, keeping it out of sight. ‘I’ll get it back to you when I’m done with it.’ He lifted a phone out of another pocket, checked that it was still working and didn’t need a password, then retraced his route through the passenger cabin and out of the tailgate.

  ‘You all right, mate?’

  Tom heard the question through the high buzzing in his ears from the airbags. The man talking to him was a truck driver, with a big orange first-aid kit in his hand. ‘Bit dazed, that’s all. Them in there need the help.’

  The traffic on the London-bound carriageway was stationary, the motorway ablaze with headlights glowing in the mist and sleet.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘About three miles from Gerrards Cross.’

  In the distance he heard sirens. That wasn’t going to be useful. He moved across the lines of cars to the hard shoulder and into comparative darkness. It was freezing cold and he had no coat. He surveyed the scene from the comparative gloom of the verge. A row had broken out between a man whose Mercedes had been lightly rammed by a woman’s Mini. The driver had gone up to her door and was giving her a piece of his mind about female motorists. She was politely asking him not to be so abusive, when another woman shouted from another car, telling him more
purposefully to back the fuck off. Meanwhile, a second man was heading towards them.

  ‘Hey, you fuck off out of this,’ said the Merc man.

  ‘Don’t you fucking talk to me like that, cunt.’

  As the Merc man squared up to the other, Tom skirted round the cars and past the Merc’s open door. The key was still in the ignition, the engine still running. He stepped in, rammed the shift into Drive, let off the handbrake, swerved onto the hard shoulder, pulled round a couple of the other cars that had also stopped there, and sped off into the night.

  After he had put about ten high-speed miles between him and the pile-up he came off the M40 and stopped in a lay-by. He had tried to warn the prime minister and failed. He had done nothing to derail Ashton’s plan; for all he knew he had helped it. Well, fuck it, he thought. I did what I could. All he cared about now was his father.

  He took out the phone.

  Hugh Buckingham wasn’t picking up. Maybe it was the unfamiliar number Tom was calling from. He sent a text: Dad call Tom on this NOW.

  Then he tried Woolf. ‘It’s Tom Buckingham. Remember me?’

  Woolf sounded breathless, as if he’d been running. ‘Have you any idea what’s happening?’

  ‘I might – but you go first.’

  ‘Some flap on at Chequers – I haven’t heard much detail yet. Some paramilitaries have surrounded the house. Most of the cabinet are in the panic room but Rolt isn’t with them. The assumption is he’s the target.’

  ‘That’s an interesting interpretation. Let me give you mine.’

  Tom gave Woolf his headlines.

  ‘Mother and father of fuck! Where are you now?’

  ‘Pass. What’s this about Mandler? The prime minister said he’s been dumped.’

  ‘Something to do with a past misdemeanour. Tom, seriously, you’d better watch your back. With Mandler gone, I’m not sure who’s going to vouch for you.’