“I’ll speak to Wolf. Get him to keep an eye on him.”
“He needs more than that. He’s dangerous. Fucking Arabs. You can’t trust them.”
“It’s fucking Arabs who are paying our wages,” Fox reminded him. “Come on. We need to get this area locked down. If Special Forces do launch an assault on us, it’ll be through here.”
He went over to the main kitchen window and looked out. They’d killed the lights so that no one from outside could see what they were doing, but it didn’t look like there was anyone watching them. The building at the other end of the courtyard, a vacant office block with no windows looking back toward the hotel, blocked the view from the road. The only way of seeing or getting in was through the archway beneath the office block where the body of the security guard Fox had shot earlier still lay. The street beyond it looked empty. Fox assumed that the police would still be evacuating the area around the Stanhope so for the moment it was safe to work.
The rear of the hotel was their most vulnerable point. If there was an attack, Special Forces would come in through the kitchen and fan out into the building. He and Wolf didn’t have the manpower to put guards down here so it was essential to make entry as difficult for them as possible.
Dragon had brought one of the rucksack bombs with him, and while he prepared it in one of the wheelie bins in the delivery area, Fox locked all the external doors using the manager’s keys and booby-trapped each of them with a grenade—a simple enough procedure that involved taping down the grenade’s lever before loosely attaching it to the doorframe and removing the pin.
They worked quickly and in silence, having practiced these maneuvers time and again in training, and though Fox tried to empty his mind of all thought so that he could focus on the job at hand, he couldn’t help feeling a sense of satisfaction at the way this op had been planned. Even with the complications caused by the earlier uncontrolled shooting in the kitchen, they were still very much on top of things.
Six minutes later, having wheeled the bin out into the courtyard and placed it against the wall among half a dozen others, they were done. It was 17:22, and still the street beyond the archway was empty.
“Jesus, I don’t know how I got involved in something as risky as this,” said Dragon, picking up one of the backpacks they’d brought inside the building when they’d first arrived.
Fox grinned at him. He liked Dragon. The guy was no-nonsense. “Because you’re on the run and wanted for murder. You don’t have a lot of options.”
“But I’ve just basically helped seal myself in a building with half the Met outside. I didn’t even walk into a trap. I made it for myself.”
“It’s all part of the plan,” said Fox, picking up the other rucksack and hauling it over his shoulder. “Cause maximum chaos, maximum embarrassment to the government and the establishment, and then, pfff! We disappear into the ether, two million dollars richer.”
Dragon grunted. “That’s the theory, anyway.”
He pulled off his balaclava and dabbed his brow with a tissue. Like the rest of them he was wearing black camouflage paint on his face, and with his dark contact lenses and longer hair he looked far removed from the handsome, raffish surfer-boy who’d appeared in the police mug shots when he broke out of prison, leaving an injured prison guard and a dead kid behind.
“If it wasn’t risky, you wouldn’t be getting paid two million,” Fox told him, stepping over one of the bodies and heading for the door, keen to get on.
They walked back through the darkness of the lobby, keeping close to the wall so they couldn’t be seen by anyone outside, then went around the back of reception.
Ultimately, the most important part of the plan was not just getting into the hotel, it was getting out afterward without getting caught, and they had a plan for that as well.
Using the password he’d been given by the hotel manager, Fox logged into the guest reservation database on one of the tabletop PCs. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket containing a list of fake IDs and which operatives they applied to, and while Dragon watched he matched their names to empty rooms, making a note of the number of each one as he did so.
“How the hell did you manage to get into the system so easily?” Dragon asked him when he’d finished.
“The manager told me. It’s amazing what people will tell you when you’ve got a gun to their head.”
“That’s the blond girl in the suit, right? The good-looking one.”
“That’s right.”
“Ah man, that’s a pity. I’m assuming we’re going to have to make sure she doesn’t tell the authorities that she gave you the password to their computer system.”
Fox nodded, thinking about what she’d told him earlier, about getting engaged. She seemed a nice girl. “You’re right,” he said, logging out and standing up. “She’s going to have to die.”
25
17:30
Elena sat on the ballroom floor along with the other hostages while four of the gunmen, including Armin, stood in a semicircle guarding them. Usually the ballroom was full of noise and drunken laughter. Now it was like some kind of vast tomb. No one spoke. No one even seemed to want to move. They were all too shocked by what had happened.
What scared Elena the most was how well organized the gunmen were. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing, and they were so damn calm. Especially the one called Fox, the white man who’d dragged her around the lobby while he set traps and disabled both the elevators and the sprinkler system. She’d just seen him come back up, along with one of the other gunmen, carrying more bags. They’d gone straight into the satellite kitchen, which they seemed to be using as some kind of HQ.
She wondered what it was they really wanted, and what they were trying to prove. She was sure they had to be on some sort of suicide mission. Why else would they disable the sprinkler system unless they planned to set the hotel ablaze?
It angered her that they’d chosen to murder people because it meant they couldn’t be reasoned with. Armin the waiter had killed Aidan in cold blood, just, it seemed, because he could, while Fox had set up bombs and shot at the police in between making conversation with her as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
When she was a young girl, Elena’s grandmother had often told her stories about life under Nazi occupation, stories that had scared and upset her but which had always seemed strangely compelling. How the SS and Gestapo treated the Poles as subhuman; how they executed people for the smallest of infringements, often in public; how they would round up whole villages—men, women, even children and babies—and slaughter them just because someone in another village had killed a German soldier. And Elena had asked her grandmother how they could have committed such evil deeds.
“Because they were cruel,” she’d answered, as if this were reason enough. “Because they were cruel.”
Just like the gunmen in the ballroom now.
The door to the satellite kitchen opened suddenly and the leader and Fox came out. They strode over to the other terrorists, one after another, and spoke to them in hushed tones.
Then the leader approached Elena and, without warning, yanked her to her feet by her arm. “You’re coming with us,” he snapped in his thick Middle Eastern accent.
“Where?” she asked before she could stop herself.
“Don’t ask questions, bitch. Move.” Grabbing her by the collar, he shoved the barrel of his assault rifle into her back and made her walk toward the exit. “Take us to room 316. Use the staircase.”
Elena did as she was told, conscious that three more gunmen, including Armin and Fox, were also coming with her.
As they reached the emergency staircase she could hear the occasional shouting of panicked guests, and the noise of footsteps on the stairs, and she prayed no one would come running down here, see her, and think they were safe. She’d seen Fox disable the elevators earlier, and right now the staircase was the only way out.
The third-floor corridor wa
s completely silent as Elena led the gunmen through. She wondered how many people were hiding terrified behind their doors. The hotel was currently booked to more than 80 percent capacity, so there would be quite a few of them.
“Which side’s room 316?”
She pointed right.
“In a few minutes’ time you’re going to tell the people on this floor to come out of their rooms and line up outside. But first I want you to see exactly what, and who, you’re dealing with.”
Elena felt a growing sense of dread as they stopped outside room 316 and Wolf knocked four times on the door.
A second later it was opened from the inside by a young woman about Elena’s age, with black hair and olive skin. She was barefoot and wearing a figure-hugging black dress that finished above the knee. She looked completely normal, except for one thing: she was holding a pistol with a long cigar-shaped silencer attached to it.
She was also smiling at the leader. “Welcome,” she said in lightly accented English.
Elena looked past her and saw a gray-haired man tied to the tub chair beside the bed, with his back to the window. He had a gag in his mouth and he looked pale and terrified.
They filed into the room and she saw the woman and Armin exchange small smiles. They obviously knew each other, and for some reason the thought filled Elena with rage. Armin was an animal, and she wished she’d called Rav and got him kicked out of the hotel when she’d had the chance.
The leader ordered Elena to stand against the far wall. He then walked over to the man in the chair and, pulling a pistol from his waistband, shoved the gun against his forehead. “Hello, Mr. Prior,” he said. “I trust you’re comfortable.” He turned to Armin. “Get everything set up. I want this recorded and put online straight away in case they switch us off.”
Elena watched as Armin pulled a laptop out of the rucksack he was carrying and connected it via a cable to a camera. At the same time, the leader removed what looked like a large belt with pouches along its entire length. Then she saw the wires poking out of the pouches and the old-style battery-operated alarm clock in the middle.
Elena knew next to nothing about explosives, but even she could see that this was a bomb.
The leader looped the belt over their prisoner and the chair so that the bomb was resting across his chest with the alarm clock dead center, while the woman who’d answered the door pulled on a balaclava and went over to join him.
As Armin lifted the camera and began filming, the woman put the barrel of her pistol against the man’s temple. He sat still, his eyes wide, sweat forming on his forehead. She spoke directly into the camera, her voice confident and educated. “The man sitting here is Michael Prior, a director of MI6. His job is to oversee the surveillance, arrest, torture and imprisonment of Muslims all over the world, and both he and his government are responsible for the ongoing slaughter of Arab and Muslim civilians. We, as members of the Pan-Arab Army of God, have taken him into our custody, along with a number of other British citizens, and we demand that the British government immediately cease all its current military, political, and economic operations against Muslim and Arab countries.” She pushed the gun barrel harder against the man’s temple, forcing his head to one side. “Unless our demands are met in full, he will be executed tonight, at midnight GMT, and this building will go up in flames, along with everyone in it.”
Elena felt her heart sink as the woman stopped speaking, and Armin lowered the camera and started typing on the laptop.
“OK,” he said after a few moments. “We’ve got the footage online.”
This was the cue for the leader to start giving orders again. He told the woman to take the laptop and go downstairs to the ballroom to reinforce the others. Then he ordered the rest of the men out into the corridor.
Finally, he grabbed Elena roughly by the arm. “We need more hostages,” he said, bringing his face close to hers. “And you’re going to get them for us.”
26
It was all going so damn wrong, thought Martin Dalston as he lay behind the double bed, trying to keep as still as possible.
One minute he’d been sipping the Pinot Noir and remembering the sound of Carrie Wilson’s laughter, the pills still firmly in their containers, the next he’d heard the commotion coming from the room next door, followed by people talking just outside his door. He’d tried to ignore it, determined not to be disturbed, but then he’d heard a woman with a Polish accent introducing herself as the Stanhope’s duty manager, her voice shaking as she spoke. She was saying that the hotel had been taken over by a group called the Pan-Arab Army of God, that they had master key cards to all the bedrooms, and that everyone had to come out of their rooms, otherwise they would be shot immediately.
The whole thing seemed so surreal that at first he’d thought it was some bizarre joke, but then he’d ventured over to the window and peered out, which was when he saw the flashing lights of dozens and dozens of emergency vehicles blocking the road in both directions. That was when he’d knelt down behind the bed.
“Please, please,” the manager kept saying, her voice fading then coming back into earshot as she paced up and down the corridor, “do as you’ve been told and you won’t be hurt.” She sounded very scared.
Martin was scared too. Terrified. Irrationally so, really, given that within the next few hours he’d fully intended to kill himself anyway. But the thing was, he wanted to die at a time and by a method of his own choosing, with happy memories filling his consciousness. Not at the hands of terrorists.
He could hear the sound of doors opening further down the corridor, barked orders, and the nervous whispers of frightened people. A young child was crying, and Martin felt his stomach knot. God, what on earth was happening? He knew if he didn’t go out he risked being shot. Dying on his knees in a pool of his own blood. Even so, he didn’t move, maintaining his position behind the bed, hoping that the terrorists were lying about having key cards, or that they’d rounded up enough people and therefore wouldn’t bother searching all the rooms.
The noise in the corridor faded, and Martin felt his hopes rise. “You wouldn’t believe this, Carrie,” he whispered to himself. “All this happening outside our room.”
He had a sudden urge to speak to her then. Just one last time. To reminisce with her about those two fantastic weeks all those years ago. To find out what she was up to now. Whether she had children or not. How her life had turned out. He wished he’d found her contact details so he could ask some of the questions he so desperately wanted answered before he went to his grave.
“Please, this is your last chance to come out of the rooms.” The manager’s voice was coming back down the corridor, loud and clear. And getting closer.
Martin remained absolutely still. There was no way he was going out. He suddenly felt brave. Braver than he’d felt in all his adult life. Even more so than on that day when he received the news about the spread of the cancer, when he’d held himself together so well.
He could hear muffled voices right outside the door.
And then it began to open, and he could hear movement.
God, they were inside his room.
He held his breath. But the wine, the stress, and the ever-present cancer were making him feel nauseous.
With his eyes tightly shut, he felt rather than heard the man stop at the end of the bed, and he knew he’d been seen.
He heard the sound of a gun being cocked, loud in the silence of the room, and he gritted his teeth, waiting for it all to be over.
“Open your eyes.”
The words were delivered calmly in an eastern European accent that, for some reason, didn’t sound quite right. Martin gasped and looked up into the eyes of a masked man in a balaclava and dark overalls, pointing a rifle down at him.
The man turned toward the door. “See, I told you there’d be more of them hiding.”
“Kill him,” ordered a voice in a foreign accent, its tone terrifyingly casual, as if he, Martin Dalston—a man w
ho’d lived, loved, had children, and fought against a terrible illness—was completely worthless. Someone—something—simply to be disposed of as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But the gunman didn’t fire. Instead, Martin could see him watching him beneath the mask.
“We need more hostages,” said the gunman. “And if we shoot too many guests, we’ll make the security forces jumpy.”
“As you wish,” grunted the other man dismissively.
The gunman flicked his gun upward and Martin got to his feet unsteadily, unsure whether to feel relief, gloom, or terror.
He could now see the other gunman. He was small and dark, heavily built, also dressed in black. Beside him was the hotel manager. She was tall and pretty, with blond hair and a kind face. She was staring, horrified, at the noose hanging from the picture hook.
Their eyes met briefly, and Martin experienced a deep sense of humiliation as his carefully made and deeply personal plans were exposed to the world.
And then he was being pushed into the corridor along with the manager and maybe a dozen guests of varying ages, including the crying child, who was no more than ten. There were four gunmen in all, all masked, and the leader—the man who’d ordered his killing—didn’t look happy at all.
“There must be more people on this floor,” he snapped, grabbing the manager and pointing his gun at her.
“Most of the rooms are taken,” she answered quickly, “but it doesn’t mean that they’re occupied. A lot of our guests will be out.”
“There should be more.” The leader turned to two of the other gunmen, one of whom was Armin. “You have your key cards. Clear the rooms one by one. Take people alive unless they resist. If they try to fight back, kill them.”
He turned away and, as the little girl’s sobs grew louder, began herding the rest of them toward the exit doors.
Siege: A Thriller Page 9
