First Response

by Stephen Leather

  He had finished taking the order of table eight, three suited businessmen he’d persuaded to try the sea bass special and upsold on the wine, when he saw the Asian man walk in through the door. He was young, brown-skinned, bearded, and wearing a cheap raincoat. Wade was pretty sure he was looking for work. At least a dozen people a day dropped in their CVs, but he still smiled professionally in case the man was a customer. ‘Do you have a reservation, sir?’ he asked.

  The man didn’t say anything but he looked around as if searching for someone.

  ‘I’m sorry, we’re totally full,’ said Wade. ‘Or are you here to meet someone?’ The man didn’t seem to be listening. He was still looking around, deep furrows in his forehead. Wade heard someone behind him calling for a new bottle of wine. ‘We’re full,’ he said again. ‘We might have something in an hour, but I can’t promise.’

  The man’s right hand lashed out and grabbed Wade’s. Then he clamped something metallic around Wade’s wrist. ‘What the fuck?’ shouted Wade. ‘Get the hell away from me.’

  He pushed the man in the chest and he staggered back but the chain linking them snapped taut.

  ‘What have you done?’ Wade yelled. The man began to unbutton his coat but Wade yanked his arm with the chain. ‘Get this off!’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t have the key,’ said the man. He continued unbuttoning his coat and Wade stared in horror as the suicide vest was revealed. ‘Don’t push me again,’ said the man. ‘I don’t know what it takes to set this thing off.’

  ‘It’s a bomb,’ said Wade, his eyes widening.

  The man nodded and finished unbuttoning his coat. ‘Yes, it’s a bomb, and if you and everyone else in here don’t do exactly as I say, everyone will die.’ His right hand slid inside his coat pocket and emerged holding a trigger with a Velcro strap. The man wiggled his fingers so that the strap slipped over his hand and the trigger nestled in his palm. ‘Just do as I say and everyone will be all right. Do you understand?’

  Wade nodded slowly, dumbstruck, unable to take his eyes off the explosives and wires attached to the canvas vest under the man’s coat.

  The man held up his right hand and shouted, at the top of his voice, ‘Allahu Akbar! Everyone stay exactly where they are. If anyone gets up everyone here will die! Listen to what I have to say and this will soon be over!’

  LAMBETH CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND CENTRE (12.51 p.m.)

  Kamran walked over to the SCO19 pod, carrying two coffees. ‘How’s it going, Marty?’ he asked, as he handed him a mug.

  Marty Windle smiled his thanks and sighed. ‘We’re stretched tight, Mo. Bloody tight. We get another one and we’re buggered, frankly.’

  ‘How many SAS men do you have now?’

  ‘Eight more have arrived and they’re on the way to support the ARVs. I do worry that we’ve got so many of them. I mean, we need as many guns as we can get but there’s a danger that they’ll take over. I’m not sure how well trained they are for hostage situations like this. They prefer to go in with guns blazing. As you know, we like to resolve our situations without firing a single round.’

  ‘They know it’s a Met operation,’ said Kamran. ‘They’re here in a support role.’

  ‘Yeah, so far,’ said Windle. ‘But that could well change as the deadline gets closer.’ He groaned. ‘I’m getting a bad feeling about this, Mo.’ He stood up and looked at the large screen on the wall that mapped out all the hostage locations. ‘Seven,’ he said, ‘and nothing linking them. Do you think they’ve been chosen at random?’

  ‘I can’t see how that can be because everything else has been so well planned,’ said Kamran.

  ‘But look at the range of places,’ said Windle. ‘A church in Brixton, a shopping centre in Wandsworth, a post office in Fulham, a childcare centre in Kensington, a coffee shop in Marble Arch, a pub in Marylebone, a bus in Bloomsbury. There’s no pattern at all.’

  ‘The geographical location is the pattern,’ said Kamran. He sipped his coffee. ‘They dropped the first one off at Brixton, then headed clockwise around the city. One every fifteen minutes or so.’

  ‘Which means one vehicle, obviously. But why do that? Why limit yourself? Why not have seven vehicles? Why not have the bombers all strike simultaneously like they did on Seven/Seven?’

  ‘This way is more efficient, maybe.’

  Windle shook his head. ‘This way is more risky. Suppose something had gone wrong at the start. They’d all have been caught. Seriously, why put all your eggs in one basket?’

  Kamran nodded thoughtfully. What Windle was saying made sense. A simple road traffic accident could have derailed the entire plan. If one of the vests had malfunctioned and detonated prematurely, all the bombers would have died. It would have made far more sense for them to travel separately. And there wasn’t much sense to the locations. The bus in Tavistock Square was perhaps a reference to the Seven/Seven attacks on London, and a church made religious sense. But a childcare centre? And a coffee shop just down the road from Paddington Green, one of the most secure police stations in the country? A post office? Yes, they were soft targets, but if this was an attack on Britain then why not pick targets that reflected that? There was nothing political about the locations that had been chosen and they did seem to be random. But, again, Windle was right – why go to all the trouble of planning a multiple suicide-bomber attack, then choose targets at random?

  Sergeant Lumley hurried over, looking worried. ‘There’s another one, sir. An MP’s surgery in Camberwell. A couple of people managed to get out before he locked the door but the bomber’s holding the MP hostage.’

  For the third time that day, Kamran swore.

  FULHAM (12.52 p.m.)

  The phone behind the counter started to ring again and the three post-office workers turned to look at it. ‘Do you want me to answer it?’ asked the Indian woman in a headscarf, who was the closest employee to Ismail.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let it ring.’

  ‘You should talk to them,’ said the woman he was chained to.

  ‘I’ve nothing to say.’ He glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘They have just over five hours in which to release the ISIS prisoners. If they don’t …’

  ‘If they don’t, we all die?’

  Hussain heard a vehicle arrive to the left and craned his neck to look out of the window. A large Mercedes van had pulled up behind two police cars, which were blocking the road to the left of the post office. The rear doors opened and uniformed police piled out. He saw movement at the window of one of the offices overlooking the post office and ducked back.

  ‘I told you, they won’t shoot through the window,’ said the woman scornfully.

  The phone stopped ringing. It had rung more than a dozen times since Hussain had been in the post office.

  The black guy sitting behind the counter took a photograph of Hussain with his iPhone, then tapped away on his screen.

  ‘You don’t care that they’re taking your picture?’ asked the woman.

  ‘People need to see what’s happening here,’ said Hussain. ‘The pictures will show that we’re serious.’

  ‘Make sure you tell them my name,’ she called, to the man who’d taken the picture. ‘Rebecca Nicholls. Nicholls with two ls. And his name is Ismail Hussain. Tell them that!’

  ‘You think this is funny?’ Hussain hissed. ‘You think this is a game?’

  ‘It is what it is,’ she said. She tilted her head back and looked down her nose at him. ‘Why did you choose me, Ismail?’

  ‘Choose you?’

  ‘Why did you handcuff yourself to me?’

  ‘You were at the end of the queue. The nearest to the door.’

  ‘And that was the only reason?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  She smiled. ‘Because you chose the one person who doesn’t care if she lives or dies.’

  Hussain’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know nothing about me, Ismail. You’ve handcuffed yourself to me
and threatened to kill me, but you don’t know the first thing about me.’

  ‘You’re just a hostage. A body.’

  ‘That’s right. That’s all I am to you. Well, my name’s Rebecca. My friends call me Becky.’

  Hussain shrugged.

  ‘Up until a week ago I was a wife and a mother. My husband’s name was William and my daughter’s name was Ruth.’

  ‘They died?’

  ‘Why, thank you for asking, Ismail,’ she said, her voice loaded with sarcasm. ‘Yes. They died.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘A stupid, senseless car crash. I wasn’t feeling great so William agreed to do the school run. Took Ruth and one of her classmates to school. Some bastard in a truck didn’t see that they’d stopped at a red light and ploughed into the back of them. The girls died immediately. They spent more than an hour trying to save William but he bled to death in the car. It was a Volvo. They say a Volvo is the safest car in the world but when a truck smashes into the back of you … Anyway, Ismail, every morning I wake up and wonder if today is the day I’m going to join my husband and daughter. I’ve got the tablets saved up. They’ll do the trick, with a couple of glasses of wine.’

  ‘You want to kill yourself?’

  ‘What do I have to live for? Do you have any idea what it’s like to lose the two people you love most in the world? I wish I’d died with them. In the car. Instead I was sitting at home watching some crap TV show and drinking coffee.’ She shuddered, then a slow smile spread across her face. ‘Maybe that’s why your God has sent you here today. Maybe this is the sign I’ve been waiting for. This way I don’t have to take the tablets and lie down. Maybe this is a better way to go.’ She nodded at the trigger in his hand. ‘You press that and it’s like flicking a light switch, isn’t it? Press it and the lights go out, just like that. Like the blinking of an eye.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Her smile widened and he saw the craziness in her eyes. ‘I want you to press it, Ismail. If there is a Heaven, then I want to be with William and Ruth. And if there isn’t, if there’s just an empty blackness, then fuck it, I want to be with them there, in the darkness.’ She leant towards him. ‘Press it, Ismail,’ she hissed. ‘Just press it.’

  ‘You’re fucking mad!’ he said, trying to pull away from her.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not. I’m the sanest person here. And the way it’s going, Ismail, if you don’t press that trigger, I might just do it myself. You think about that. When you’re not looking, when you’re distracted, I might just reach over, grab your hand and squeeze it.’

  Hussain backed away from her until the chain tightened.

  She laughed at his discomfort. ‘Now who’s scared, Ismail? Now who’s fucking scared?’

  MARBLE ARCH (12.53 p.m.)

  Inspector Richard Horton, a twenty-five-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police, had been appointed as Silver Commander at the Marble Arch incident. He was based at Paddington Green station, less than half a mile away down Edgware Road, and had arrived outside the coffee shop within six minutes of getting the call. It wasn’t his first major incident by any means. In 1994 he had been a beat constable when a car bomb had exploded outside the Israeli embassy in London, injuring twenty people. He had been a sergeant in April 1999 when a neo-Nazi with mental problems carried out nail-bomb attacks in Soho, Brixton and Brick Lane. And he was still a sergeant on duty on 7 July 2005 when four suicide bombers had attacked the capital, and two weeks later when four copycats had tried and failed to bring havoc to London’s transport system.

  He had been an inspector since 2010 and had taken part in several major incident rehearsals and had hit the ground running at Marble Arch. The role of Silver Commander was basically to take charge of the scene and to implement the strategies of the Gold Commander. It was clear from the speed of events that the Gold Commander had yet to have any strategy in place – everyone was simply reacting to events. Horton’s first tasks had been to manage the scene and establish the necessary cordons. They had to be set up promptly to protect the public, keep onlookers away and to ensure that the emergency services had the access they needed. He already had sixteen constables and had requested more. They had set up inner and outer cordons around the coffee shop, and a traffic cordon to prevent unauthorised vehicle access to the scene. As the coffee shop was close to one of the busiest intersections in London, where Edgware Road met Bayswater Road, the closures had already caused traffic chaos. Two ARVs were on the scene, with two SAS snipers, who were wearing borrowed police clothing. Horton wasn’t happy about having special-forces soldiers mixed in with his armed-response teams, but that had come down from Gold Command so he had no choice in the matter.

  A marshalling area had been set up at the junction of Edgware Road and Bayswater Road where most of the emergency vehicles were parked. Horton walked towards a new arrival at the scene – a white DAF truck with only police markings on it. If necessary, magnetic signs could be reversed to reveal the van’s bomb-disposal role but generally it stayed in covert mode so as not to alarm the public and to avoid becoming a target for attack.

  A dark-haired woman was getting into an ABS – an advanced bomb suit – assisted by an older man in a fluorescent jacket. He was helping her into the crotchless Kevlar trousers that would protect her legs. Horton greeted her with a smile. ‘Richard Horton,’ he said. ‘I’m Silver here.’

  ‘Charlie,’ said the woman. ‘Charlie Kawczynski.’ She nodded at her companion. ‘Peter here’s my dresser.’

  ‘You don’t sound Polish,’ said Horton.

  ‘Neither does my husband,’ said Kawczynski. ‘But he was born here, too.’

  ‘Sorry, no offence.’

  Kawczynski grinned. ‘None taken.’

  Peter helped her on with the Kevlar jacket. It would protect her chest and groin but it left her forearms and hands exposed. She would be free to work on any devices but would lose her hands and arms in the event of an explosion. Horton tried to blot the image out of his mind as he explained what he needed her to do.

  ‘The problem we have, Charlie, is that we can’t see inside the coffee shop and there’s no CCTV we can access. He’s covered the windows with newspaper so we can’t see what’s going on inside. I need you to go to the window and see if you can spot anything. Ideally get us some pictures we can analyse.’

  ‘Got you,’ said Kawczynski.

  ‘No need to make contact,’ said Horton. ‘Just see what you can and pull back.’

  ‘Not a problem. We’ve got a camera in the truck,’ said Kawczynski.

  They finished fastening the jacket and Peter began putting the ballistic panels in place. He worked slowly and methodically, checking and double-checking that everything was as it should be. If anything went wrong and the device exploded, the suit was the only thing that would save her from certain death.

  CAMBERWELL (12.54 p.m.)

  The man was sweating and a vein was pulsing in his forehead. He kept looking at the window. He was in his late twenties, Metcalfe figured, and conformed to the racist stereotype of a suicide bomber, straggly beard and all. He had taken Metcalfe to the outer office and had slipped the bolts on the main door so that no one could enter or leave. The window overlooked the street. They were on the first floor, over the main constituency office.

  A dozen people were sitting on hard-backed chairs, most of them elderly. The man stood with his back to the bolted door and told his hostages to stand up and move to the front office where Metcalfe had been taking his meetings. They filed through one by one and stood in the far corner, huddled together and whispering fearfully.

  ‘Shut up and listen!’ the man shouted. ‘You are all prisoners of ISIS. You are to send text messages to your friends and family to tell them what is happening. Use Twitter and Facebook, if you can, and use hashtag ISIS6. Tell everyone that you are being held hostage and that the government must release the six ISIS fighters who are being held in Belmarsh Prison. Do you understand?’
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  A stick-thin West Indian woman, wearing a shapeless hat and a herringbone coat, raised a hand. ‘I’m sorry, what is a hashtag?’ she asked, her voice trembling.

  ‘That thing that looks like a noughts and crosses game,’ said the man.

  The woman’s frown deepened. ‘I don’t know what that is,’ she said to the man next to her.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ said Molly. She smiled at the bomber. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get them to do it.’

  The man pointed at the far corner of the room, away from the window. ‘Everyone sit down there. Just do as you’re told and everyone will go home.’

  The hostages obeyed, though several were quite elderly and had to be helped onto the floor. Molly fussed around them, making sure they were comfortable and explaining what they had to do.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Metcalfe. The man frowned at him, as if he hadn’t understood the question. Metcalfe repeated it slowly, enunciating every syllable carefully. He could still smell garlic but it wasn’t as overpowering as when the man had handcuffed him.

  ‘I’m not fucking retarded,’ snapped the man. ‘What – you think cos I’m Asian I don’t understand English? I was born here, mate. I’m as British as you are.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you hadn’t heard me,’ said Metcalfe.

  ‘No, you thought I’d just got off the bloody boat, that’s what you thought. You condescending prick.’

  ‘Seriously, no. I’m sorry. I just wanted to know your name, that’s all.’

  ‘Why do you give a toss about who I am?’

  ‘Because you’re handcuffed to me, that’s why. And if things go wrong and that vest goes off then yours will be the last face I see and that’s about as personal a relationship as you can have, so I just wanted to know who you are.’