Hijack: A Sgt Major Crane crime thriller (A Sgt Major Crane Novel Book 6)

by Wendy Cartmell

  24:00 hours

  ‘I wanted to apologise, Emma,’ Kourash said to her, after she’d been taken to the driver’s cab and the hijacker that had delivered her had left them alone. The two of them took up most of the confined space as they stood facing each other.

  ‘Apologise? What for? For shooting that man? Or for taking us in the first place?’ Emma glared at him. Her arms were folded and her eyes huge behind her glasses. Rays from the overhead bulbs glinted off them.

  ‘Both, I guess,’ he replied, holding her gaze.

  But Emma couldn’t see any remorse written in his eyes. If anything they were alive, dancing as though with amusement. Amused by her anger? The thought made her even angier. She clenched her fists, wanting to strike him, but not daring to.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what is it you do? Do you work?’

  ‘No, I’m a student,’ she replied. ‘What of it?’ and lifted her head higher in defiance.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘English.’

  ‘Ah,’ he smiled, ‘you study all those great English writers? Who are you studying at the moment?’

  ‘An American writer, actually,’ she replied. ‘Truman Capote.’ Still not sure that she wanted to get into a conversation with him, she kept her answers short and to the point.

  ‘Which book? Breakfast at Tiffany’s?’

  ‘No. Although that’s the work people tend to think of when you mention Truman Capote. Anyway Breakfast at Tiffany’s is not a novel, it’s a short story, or novella, whichever term you prefer.’ She couldn’t resist putting him right and then, caught up in her passion for discussing literature, she said, ‘Would you believe it if I told you we’re currently studying Truman Capote’s book, ‘In Cold Blood’. It’s a true crime account of two young men, who go to steal money from a house and end up going on a killing spree.’

  Kourash nodded his head slowly, ‘Pretty ironic choice of reading material for this situation, don’t you think? Tell me, what do you make of them?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Smith and Hicock,’ he said. ‘Here sit in the driver’s seat it will be more comfortable than standing.’

  ‘You mean you’ve read the book?’ Emma tried to evaluate that piece of imparted information as she sat down, the chair creaking and bouncing as she got herself comfortable. Kourash sat cross legged on the floor facing her.

  ‘Of course. I was born and educated in England, just like you,’ he said. ‘Friends of mine at university were studying the book, so I read it on their recommendation. Anyway, you’ve not answered my question. What do you make of them?’

  And much to Emma’s astonishment, she began to relax as they discussed one of the greatest true crime novels ever written. At least it was in her opinion and in the opinion of millions of other people.

  Kourash never seemed to take his eyes off her face as they argued back and forth. Kourash, naturally, was trying to justify the killers’ actions and Emma took the opposite stance. He became animated at one point in their discussion and jumped to his feet, pacing around the small space, gesticulating with his hands, imploring her to see his point of view. His black curls bounced off his shoulders and Emma found herself being drawn to this unusual young man. She was trying to compare the man in front of her, someone who wouldn’t have been out of place in her university classes, with the person who a few hours ago had shot and wounded an innocent man.

  Then, abruptly, Kourash held out his hand and helped her to her feet.

  ‘It’s time you got some rest,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we can continue this discussion another time.’ As he talked, he stepped just that bit too close to her, invading her personal space. But Emma found that for once she didn’t mind. She’d seen a side of Kourash she had never expected and begrudgingly found herself smiling back at him.

  Once back in the carriage, as she slipped into her seat, Billy opened his eyes and looked straight at her.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he hissed.

  ‘The toilet,’ Emma replied before she realised what she’d said. Realised that she’d just lied to Billy.

  ‘That’s the other way,’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The toilet is in the opposite direction. Were you in the driver’s cab?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Billy. What would I be doing in there?’

  She hoped her reply sounded convincing. The only experience she’d had of lying to someone’s face was when she was living at home and her foster parents had confronted her one night, wanting to know where she’d been. She hadn’t been a very successful liar then, her foster father seeing right through her masquerade. This time she decided to brazen it out, hoping that her defiance would make Billy believe her.

  Seeing his forehead crinkle in consternation, she quickly said, ‘Anyway I’ve been hoping to catch you alone. I wanted to know if you thought there was anything we could do to help get ourselves out of this situation.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, overpower one of the hijackers or something?’ and she moved to the seat next to him while they whispered back and forth, trying to think of any way they could escape. But Emma’s thoughts weren’t really on the ruse she had used to divert Billy’s attention. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the cab door. The door that Kourash was behind.

  Day Two

  07:00 hours

  Dudley-Jones was doing a remarkable job as Intelligence Operative, receiving, consolidating and reporting on the massive amounts of information that was streaming in from various agencies located in other facilities away from the command centre: the Army Intelligence Service; the commanders of the teams responsible for covert surveillance of the train; MI5; MI6, and the police. There simply wasn’t sufficient room or buildings or equipment to accommodate everyone at Ribblehead, so they had each stayed at their various headquarters. Every new development was flashed up on the screen connected to Dudley-Jones’ computer and hard copies stuck onto incident boards. These now flanked a whole wall in the station waiting room, which was quickly becoming claustrophobic. Dudley-Jones and Keane wore headsets with microphones, as they were plugged into the communications systems. The other men were sat around the table, which had still not been cleared of the ordnance survey map they had consulted nearly 24 hours ago.

  Crane looked around, mindful of the need for information gathering, but personally more interested in when, where and how a rescue mission would take place.

  ‘Sir!’ Dudley-Jones called causing both the Colonel and Crane to respond to the call.

  ‘Well?’ demanded the Colonel, who didn’t seem to be coping very well on just a few snatched hours of sleep. The man’s eyes were rimmed red with fatigue and at times his eyelids seemed so heavy Crane was convinced the man was about to fall asleep. But to be fair Colonel Booth looked no worse than the rest of them. They were all crumpled and unkempt, with lines of worry furrowed on their faces.

  ‘What have you got for us this time?’

  ‘The information gleaned from the microphones under the train and the sweeps by the drone, sir,’ said Dudley-Jones

  ‘Very well, show us,’ Booth said and everyone turned to look at the screen.

  ‘Basically, the microphones have picked up voices in several parts of the train, which has been confirmed by heat source surveillance from the drone. Unfortunately they aren’t picking up much in the way of words, but we can distinguish between male and female voices and occasionally words in different languages.’

  A model of the train appeared and two figures were placed in the rear carriage.

  ‘Working from right to left, with the front of the train on the left, it appears there are two people in the rear carriage. We presume these are hijackers acting as lookouts. The original black paper they used seems to have been replaced by a film placed on the glass. This means they can see out but we can’t see in.’ Dudley-Jones paused as he clicked a key and more figures appeared.

  ‘There are several people milling around in
the other carriage and at the moment we can’t identify how many are hostages and how many hijackers. However, the intel received from Sgt Williams seems to be confirmed that there are 14 people in total on the train. This would suggest 8 hostages and 6 hijackers as he said, although the movement of people makes it difficult to be precise. We are still working on voice analysis so we know who stays in the carriages and who leaves, which will give us a clearer picture as to who’s who.’

  ‘And the driver’s cab?’ asked Crane

  ‘Always at least one person in there as look out, but again that number is fluid. Once again the windows have been filmed over.’

  ‘Are the voices in the driver’s cabs always male?’ asked Keane.

  Dudley-Jones frowned for a moment and consulted his screen.

  ‘No, sir, a woman’s voice has been heard in the front cab.’

  ‘Why did you ask that?’ Crane worried at his scar.

  ‘I’m just trying to ascertain if the hijackers are male or female. A woman amongst them could be good for us as women are statistically less inclined to commit murder.’

  ‘Apart from Rose West and Mira Hindley,’ mumbled Crane, citing two of Britain’s most notorious women serial killers and he turned away to look at the incident boards, not comforted by Keane’s statistics at all.

  ‘What about communications?’ Crane asked, still looking at the boards. ‘How are they communicating with the outside world?’

  ‘We believe they are using a secure satellite network to communicate.’

  ‘Haven’t you blocked it yet?’

  ‘No, sir, we’re trying to crack it but no luck as yet.’ Dudley-Jones looked suitably chastised as Booth glowered at him. But quickly rallying he said, ‘However, I do have more information on the group of terrorists,’ and he proceeded to brief the assembled men on their identities and the background information he and his colleagues had gleaned from Facebook and YouTube. They were all of Afghani descent.

  ‘Asa and Farhang were born in the UK. Both are practising Muslims, attending their local mosque, which is one of those on the intelligence services list as being of a high level of concern. Giti and Housyar were born in Afghanistan and lived there all their lives. They are here on student visas. Mehrab is on MI5’s watch list as someone they think could have been radicalised. He had been under surveillance, but as they couldn’t see that he’d been plotting anything, they’d cancelled the surveillance a couple of weeks ago. And we already know a lot about Kourash Abdali. Social media is also very active, as you can imagine,’ Dudley Jones continued.

  ‘Social media?’ interrupted the Colonel. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Mostly Twitter, but also Facebook to a lesser degree.’

  ‘Explain,’ Booth barked.

  ‘Twitter is a community of millions of people around the world. You can send tweets to your followers and also to other people you want to communicate with, but who aren’t following you. But you are only allowed to use 140 characters in a tweet. However, more importantly in our case, are the hash tags.’

  ‘Hash tags? For God’s sake, speak English, or at least in words of one syllable,’ said Booth and Crane smiled at the confused faces all looking at Dudley-Jones.

  ‘It’s a way of drawing the Twitter community together. At the moment there are two main ones that concern us. The first is #savethehostages and the other #supportthehijackers. These hash tags are used by people in their tweets and help drum up support for their thinking. #savethehostages is trending higher than #supportthehijackers at the moment, thank goodness. But the point is that these hash tags reflect the popular mood of the people. The team are looking at those Twitter users who are supporting the hijackers.’

  ‘Why is that important?’ asked the civil servant.

  ‘Well, sir, through that we might find anyone who is actively involved behind the scenes. Someone is feeding them information and as I said earlier, we think it’s through a secure satellite link. We are hoping to find the person on the ground who is communicating with them. Twitter users are also trying to sway the mood of the country into backing their cause. Someone somewhere started this hash tag and it’s our job to find out who that is.’

  As Dudley-Jones finished, Crane said, ‘Well that’s all very interesting, and I’m sure there are going to be some red faces in the intelligence services, but what I want to know is what’s going to happen at 10:00 hours? Is President Karzai going to make a statement?’

  ‘No, Crane, he’s not,’ said Hardwick.

  ‘Well then, if Karzai isn’t going to make a statement or release any prisoners, what is going to happen?’

  ‘From our end?’ asked Keane.

  ‘Yes, Keane, from our end.’ Crane’s patience was wearing thin and he struggled to control his temper, so as not to take his frustration out on Keane.

  ‘In that case the answer is easy. It’s nothing. We’re not going to do anything.’

  The reality of Billy’s predicament sliced through Crane. Images of his Sergeant flashed across his closed eyes. Billy on parade. Billy on exercise. He watched Billy creeping around the old cinema; investigating the underneath of the swimming pool in the Garrison Sports Centre; talking to the old Ghurkha, Padam Gurung; trying to help his friend who had been viciously raped. As he massaged his eyes the images crunched together, leaving just one. The smiling face of Sgt Billy Williams, who Crane was very much afraid he’d never see alive again. There was only one thing to do. So he turned away from the men in the waiting room and walked out into the cool morning air, lighting a cigarette as he went.

  08:00 hours

  Threading through the crowd, Diane Chambers searched for Harry Poole. As he was tall, she was looking upwards, trying to find his head poking above the sea of people. She’d done it. Found the identity of one of the hijackers. Combined with the exultation of a job well done, was an over-riding sense of relief. She was glad that she had been able to back up her boasts when she’d said her network of contacts would be able to come up with something.

  She’d gambled that because the hijackers had joined the train at Dent they probably originated somewhere in the North of England. That way they would have been able to blend into their surroundings, whilst they laid their plans and scouted out a suitable target. She’d bet that not many southerners knew about the Ribblehead Viaduct, whereas in Yorkshire it was a well-known local beauty spot and tourist attraction. So she’d concentrated on the friends who had joined northern provincial papers, with the hope of moving onto something bigger once they’d gained some experience.

  Even at university, Diane had recognised the need for a journalist to have good contacts. Everyone she met became someone she could turn to in the future, another notation in her growing address book, which was a vital tool in her ever present pursuit of information. The only thing she’d asked of them was to not print the details until she gave them the go-ahead, mindful of the delicate situation being played out on the train. For once being responsible and respectful rather than gung-ho and headstrong.

  Just then the flock of people jumbled in front of her, cleared and she was given a glimpse of the train. She stopped walking and just stood watching the two carriages. Seeing their vulnerability for the first time, she wondered if that fabricated hulk of metal, plastic and glass would be Billy’s salvation or his coffin.

  She was startled out of her morbid thoughts by Harry, clapping her on the back.

  ‘Hey, Diane, got you some coffee.’

  ‘What? Oh, sorry, thanks.’

  ‘Are you alright?’ Harry looked down on her, concern on his rugged, weather beaten, vastly more experienced face.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I was just looking at the train. Got a bit morbid, just seeing it up there, all alone on the viaduct. It threw me that’s all.’ After taking a drink of the hot coffee to revive her, she forced a smile. ‘You’ll never believe what I’ve got,’ she said and proceeded to tell him about the information she’d garnered on the hijackers. But she’d l
eft the best until last.

  ‘Wait until you see this,’ she smiled and clicked a button on her tablet. The media file was an interview with an Afghani couple. They wore western clothes, but the woman had a headscarf covering her hair. They stood upright, as if determined not to be cowed by the interviewer.

  Q. Could you tell the viewers who your son is?

  A. Kourash Abdali.

  Q. Has he always been religious?

  A. Yes. He was brought up in the traditional way, went to mosque regularly and studied the Qur’an. We do know that he became obsessed with Islam. We believe he joined various groups and mosques whilst at school and university here in England. This led to him becoming increasingly concerned about the plight of Syrian civilians caught up in the conflict. He’d never been to Syria before but last summer, after he’d graduated, he went there and joined Isis.

  Q. Are you talking about the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant?

  A. Yes, that’s correct.

  Q. Do you realise that of all the rebel groups, Isis is the most brutal? So violent that even Al-Qaeda’s leadership has formally distanced itself from them. Do you think they brainwashed him?

  A. We think he was convinced by their reasoning, through videos Isis posted on line.

  Q. Aren’t these used to lure foreign fighters to their cause?

  A. We believe he made an informed decision to join them. We strongly deny that he was brainwashed.

  Q. So why did he return home?

  A. He told us that his brother, who still lives in Afghanistan, had been arrested and detained in Bagram Detention Centre. He said he’d got permission from the Isis leadership to return to England. At the time we thought it was something like compassionate leave, but now it seems he was allowed home in order to strike at the heart of the British Government.

  Q. Is Kourash not your biological son?