Siege: A Thriller

by Simon Kernick

  27

  For more than ten minutes after leaving the suite on the top floor of the Stanhope, Scope had tried to get out of the building. The elevators were all out of order, and when he’d started down the fire exit stairs he’d run into one of the hotel staff, a room service waiter, coming the other way. The kid had hurriedly told him that there was some sort of terrorist attack going on. He didn’t have too many details, other than that he’d seen some dead bodies and at least two men with assault rifles.

  Just my luck, Scope had thought. To get caught up in the middle of a major incident and trapped in a place I have no choice but to get the hell out of. But he’d learned long ago that there was no point complaining about the hand you’d been dealt. You just had to play it.

  The kid had said he was going up to the restaurant on the ninth floor, which was currently closed, where apparently there were some good hiding places. He’d suggested Scope join him, but Scope had declined, figuring he’d take his chances. But he’d only got a couple of floors down when he’d heard a burst of automatic gunfire coming from somewhere in the belly of the building, followed a few seconds later by people coming up the staircase far below. At that point he’d decided that, given that he was only armed with a knife, maybe discretion was the better part of valor. At least until he knew what he was up against.

  He’d returned to the suite and put on the TV. Sure enough, Sky News was showing live footage of the front of the hotel, and the scrolling headline was reporting the presence of armed men inside and gunfire coming from the main lobby. There were also reports of bombs having gone off in two locations in London, and that a full-scale evacuation of the whole public transport system was under way. It sounded as if it had all been going on while Scope was up in the suite, but so far details were still pretty sketchy.

  The point was, he was trapped. And the bodies in the suite were already beginning to smell. He thought about his options for a couple of minutes, before concluding that he only had two: stay where he was and sit it out until the cavalry arrived, or try to make a break for it.

  Scope didn’t have much experience of how the police worked in scenarios like this. It was possible, of course, that they’d send in the SAS, but if the real-life cop shows were any indicator they preferred to adopt a softly-softly approach and negotiate, and this meant that there was no guarantee they’d enter the hotel before the gunmen torched the place, or shot the shit out of it.

  Which meant he had only one option.

  He drew the knife, kept it down by his side, and made his way back to the fire exit stairs, passing the next-door suite whose occupants were still playing loud music. He considered warning them about what was going on in the hotel, but knew that to do so would attract unwanted attention to himself. They probably knew about it by now anyway.

  This time when he reached the staircase he couldn’t hear anything. He paused for a few moments, then started down the stairs, moving almost silently as he listened hard for any sound that might signal danger. The creak of a door; an intake of breath; the click of a hammer being cocked on a gun. He knew that it was unlikely anyone would be lying in wait for him, but he also knew from bitter experience that you can never be too careful.

  And then, when he was between the sixth and fifth floors, he heard it. An exit door opening and a shouted command, delivered with the confidence that in a situation like this could only belong to someone holding a gun: “Move.” This was immediately followed by the sound of people coming up the stairs in his direction. He could hear their frightened whispering, interspersed with angry shouts from more than one gunman.

  Scope carried on down to the fifth floor and slipped through the exit door into the empty corridor, closing it behind him. Leaning back against the wall, he watched through the frosted glass as a masked man carrying an AK-47 came into view. The man had his back to Scope and was barking orders at a procession of stunned-looking hotel guests of all ages who were following him up the stairs. Another masked man, also carrying an AK, brought up the rear.

  Scope pressed himself up against the wall, clutching his knife tightly, just in case one of the gunmen decided to come through the door looking for more hostages. But neither of them did, and their voices faded away as they continued toward the upper floors.

  Scope gave them two minutes, then slipped back into the stairwell and continued his descent.

  28

  “We ought to leave,” whispered Abby Levinson, squeezing her son’s hand and holding him close.

  Her dad shook his head emphatically. “No. We stay where we are.”

  “But you heard what the manager was saying. They’ll shoot us if we stay in our rooms.”

  “They’ll shoot us if we leave.” He looked at her imploringly. “We’re Jewish, and they’re Arab extremists with guns. We’re the enemy. At least if we stay in here, we have a chance.”

  “Why do they want to kill us?” asked Ethan quietly, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Because they’re bad men,” said his grandpa, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder, before turning back to Abby. “There are hundreds of rooms in this hotel. They won’t be able to search all of them.” He leaned forward and cupped her face in his hands. “Have I ever lied to you? Have I ever given you reason not to trust me?”

  “No.” And he hadn’t. Dad had always been there for her, right from as far back as she could remember. He was the hardworking businessman who’d provided such a happy home for her and her three sisters while they were growing up; the rock that had held the whole family together when her mother died; and now the man whose love, and words of wisdom, had done so much to help her get over the sudden and brutal break-up of her marriage.

  “Then please,” he continued, “do as I say.”

  He might have been getting more frail these past few years, but right then he exuded strength and purpose.

  “OK,” she whispered. “We’ll do as you say.” She squeezed Ethan a bit harder. “It’s going to be all right, baby. Mom and Grandpa are here for you.”

  Breaking away from them, her father picked up the tub chair in the corner of the room and maneuvered it toward the door. Abby helped him and they tried to prop it under the handle so it wouldn’t open from the outside, but the back of the chair fell a good couple of inches short.

  Abby froze. She could hear footfalls outside in the corridor coming closer. Her father heard them too and he mouthed at her to take Ethan and go into the bathroom. Picking up a glass vase from the desk, he stood behind the door. Abby motioned for him to come with her, and took hold of his arm, but he shooed her away. “Go,” he mouthed, pulling the same stern expression he’d pulled when she was a child and had done something wrong. It was a look that brooked no dissent.

  The footfalls had stopped.

  Slowly, silently, Abby crept away from the door, putting a finger to her mouth to warn Ethan to stay quiet, and led him into the bathroom.

  Ethan looked up at her with wide, frightened eyes as she closed the bathroom door, and she gave him as reassuring a look as she could muster. She looked around, taking in the bath and the walk-in shower area, and caught her breath. There was nowhere to hide.

  Then she heard a key card being inserted in the door to their room and the handle turning. Her heart pounding, she put a hand over Ethan’s mouth.

  The door was opening now, and she could hear the tub chair scuffing against the carpet as it was pushed out of the way. Unable to resist, she peeked around the bathroom door and saw her father holding the vase in both hands above his head. Suddenly, for all the aura of strength he projected, he looked so damned small and vulnerable—an old man fighting the battles of far younger men. She knew she had to help him.

  And yet she didn’t move.

  The door continued to open.

  And that was when she noticed it: the narrow gap between the door and the doorframe widening at the hinges. Whoever was on the other side would be able to see her father standing inside. She opened her mouth to say s
omething, willing her father to turn around so she could warn him somehow, knowing that as soon as she spoke she’d give them all away—

  The shots exploded in the room—two of them, one after the other—and her dad fell back, dropping the vase and crashing into the bedside table. He managed to turn her way, a look of surprise crossing his face, and then his legs went from under him and he collapsed to the carpet with a dull thud, exposing the two holes in the woodwork behind him where the bullets had come tearing through.

  “Grandpa!” cried Ethan, struggling out of his mother’s grip.

  “No, Ethan, stop!”

  Abby tried to pull him back into the bathroom, desperate for him not to give them away. But it was too late. He broke away from her and ran toward his grandpa, just as the door was flung open and a man in a balaclava, dressed in what looked like a hotel waiter’s uniform, came into the room. He was carrying a powerful-looking pistol. Behind him the door clicked shut, trapping them inside.

  “You hurt my grandpa!” Ethan shouted, moving toward him.

  The man raised his gun. “Stop him or I’ll shoot the little bastard.”

  Abby grabbed Ethan and pulled him to her, with all the strength she could muster. “I’ve got him. Don’t shoot. Please.”

  “Shut the boy in the toilet,” he said. “Or I’ll kill him now.” His pistol was pointed at Ethan’s head.

  Ethan had stopped struggling but she could tell he was sobbing behind the hand she’d placed over his mouth. Her father lay in front of them, his head almost at her feet. He’d been hit in the upper body, and blood was soaking through his shirt, but he still seemed to be breathing.

  “Come on, Ethan,” she whispered. “We’ve got to go into the bathroom.”

  “Not you. Just him. Get him in there now.”

  Something had changed in the gunman’s voice. It took her a moment to realize what it was.

  Whatever was going to happen to her, she didn’t want her son to see it, so she pulled him inside the bathroom, then bent down and whispered in his ear. “I want you to stay in here until I call you, OK? Please. Otherwise he’ll hurt me.”

  It was emotional blackmail of the worst kind, but what choice did she have? She shut the door and turned to face the gunman.

  He stood in the middle of the room, his pistol aimed at her chest. “Turn around and lift up your dress, or you and the brat die together.”

  29

  In the stairwell, Scope was level with the third floor when he heard two gunshots, followed by a woman’s scream. He stopped and listened. He knew he ought to keep going. He only had a knife, but he’d never been one to walk away from someone in obvious danger. It just wasn’t in his DNA.

  Trying not to think too hard about what he was doing, he opened the stairwell door and stepped into the corridor, looking both ways. To his left, he could hear voices coming from behind one of the doors. It sounded like a man was barking orders and a woman was pleading with him.

  Scope strode over to the door, and put his ear to it. The man had a foreign accent, the woman sounded agitated, and there was another noise—a kid, quite young by the sound of him, crying.

  Sliding the homemade lock-picking device he’d brought with him—a credit card with an angled divot cut in its bottom edge—out of his pocket, Scope pushed it into the narrow gap between the door and the frame and lowered it carefully onto the lock. He’d been practicing opening doors this way for the past month, but it was hard to do it without making a noise, and he tensed as he gave the door a firm shove, the click of the bolt being released sounding loud in his ears.

  Scope pushed the door open, holding his knife by the blade in case he needed to throw it fast.

  An old man lay on his back on the floor next to a double bed. His white shirt was stained red where he’d been shot, and a thin trail of blood ran down from the corner of his mouth onto the carpet. At the far end of the room stood the gunman. But unlike the other gunmen Scope had seen, this one was dressed in a hotel uniform. He had his back to Scope, and it was clear he hadn’t heard the door opening. He was pointing a pistol down at a dark-haired woman who was on her knees just inside the entrance to the en suite bathroom, with her arms around a child. Scope’s view of the boy was obscured by the gunman’s legs but he could see that he and the woman were shaking as they prepared for the end.

  “You had your chance, whore. Now you die.”

  “Kill me, but please let my son go,” the woman was saying, her voice surprisingly clear.

  Scope took a long, silent step into the room.

  The woman saw him then, her expression changing before she could stop it.

  The gunman started to turn around and Scope charged him, ending his run in a flying headlong dive that sent him and the gunman crashing into the far wall. The gunman gasped, surprise rapidly giving way to anger, and he struggled violently as Scope grabbed his gun hand by the wrist and yanked it upward so that the barrel was pointing up in the air. The gun went off, the bullet ricocheting off the ceiling, and the noise made Scope’s ears ring. Eyes blazing with rage, the gunman drove his head forward, trying to slam it into Scope’s face, but Scope turned, thrusting his shoulder out to deflect the blow, at the same time bringing up his knife hand and driving the blade deep into the gunman’s side, between the sixth and seventh ribs, so that it pierced his heart.

  Once again the room erupted in noise as the gunman’s finger involuntarily squeezed the trigger, sending two more bullets into the ceiling. Scope stabbed him a second time, then a third, ignoring the ringing in his ears, and the stinging heat on his face from where the bullets had passed close by, waiting until the gunman’s body relaxed in his arms before letting him slip to the floor.

  Behind him the bedroom door swung open. Scope wheeled around in time to see a second gunman enter, this one dressed in dark overalls and carrying an AK-47. He was saying something, but Scope couldn’t catch it above the ringing in his ears. It was clear by the way the AK was down by his side that he wasn’t expecting to see his friend dead.

  When he saw the scene of carnage in front of him he hesitated for a split second, and Scope threw the knife just as the guy raised his gun to fire. At the same time he ducked down and weaved away.

  The knife hit the guy in the chest, blade first, embedding itself about an inch in, and though the force of the blow made him take a step back, he didn’t fall. Instead, with the knife sticking out of his chest, he raised the AK to fire, which was when Scope realized that he was wearing body armor underneath the overalls.

  But Scope was fast. Jumping over the old man’s body, he drove himself into the gunman, grabbing his AK by the stock as the gunman opened up with a burst of automatic fire. The kick from the barrel sent shockwaves up Scope’s arm, but he managed to push it out of the way so that the bullets flew high and wide, then he fell on the gunman, keeping him close, so that the AK was squeezed between them.

  The problem was that this particular gunman was a lot bigger and stronger than the other one. With a roar, he threw Scope off, sending him crashing back into the tub chair by the door. But Scope held on to the rifle with both hands, knowing that as soon as he let go of it he was a dead man.

  The gunman knew it too, and he yanked on the AK in a sudden, powerful movement, trying to twist it out of Scope’s hands. But Scope clung on, letting himself be taken by the momentum for a couple of seconds so that his adversary thought he had the upper hand. Then, without warning, he dug his heels into the carpet, forcing the gunman to fall into him, before wrapping a leg around one of his ankles and tripping him up.

  The gunman fell onto the bed, relinquishing his grip on the AK in the process, and swung around to face Scope, at the same time pulling the knife from his chest.

  Scope didn’t have time to turn the gun around and fire. Instead he slammed the stock of the AK into the gunman’s face.

  The gunman howled in pain as his nose exploded, splattering blood all over his balaclava. But he still managed to leap back up from the bed and
thrust the knife at Scope, who had to jump backward to dodge its arc.

  The gunman’s head was now exposed, though, and Scope came forward fast and drove the butt of the AK into his face a second time. This time, however, there was real power behind the blow, and it drove the gunman’s head back against the wall with such force that part of the stock broke off.

  Scope came in close, using the AK as a club to hit him again and again until the stock fell apart in his hands and the gunman slid silently down the wall, leaving a long smear of blood on the paintwork, his damaged head slumped forward as more blood dripped from the holes in the balaclava.

  For a couple of seconds Scope didn’t move as the adrenaline that was surging through him began to subside. He put his hands on his knees and took some deep breaths before retrieving his knife and turning back toward the woman and the boy.

  That was when he saw that the woman had been hit.

  She was sitting back against the bathroom doorframe clutching her leg just above the knee, her face contorted with pain as blood seeped through her fingers. The boy was holding on to her, sobbing and asking if she was going to be all right. At least that was what Scope thought he was saying because he still couldn’t hear much above the intense ringing in his ears.

  He went over and knelt beside her, gently prising open her fingers so he could see the wound. Blood leaked out steadily from a dime-sized hole three inches above the kneecap, and as he probed around the back of her leg he felt a larger, more ragged hole where the bullet had exited, and this was bleeding more heavily. Scope knew that the ammo used in the AK-47 could cause extensive tissue damage, but from the close positioning of the two holes it looked like this could be a relatively superficial hit.

  “You’re going to be OK,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I’m going to dress the wound.”

  She nodded tightly, her eyes focusing on him, and he was relieved to see that she didn’t appear to have gone into shock yet. “I understand,” she said through gritted teeth.