Agent 21: Codebreaker: Book 3

by Chris Ryan

  ‘We have to evacuate the hospital as quickly and as quietly as possible. We have emergency vehicles on standby, but we can’t risk making them too obvious too soon. The bomber could be watching the building, ready to detonate if he sees anything suspicious.’

  Fraser wanted to run. He looked over his shoulder at the exit, but a firm grip from the anti-terrorist guy made it clear that his place was firmly inside the hospital.

  They were at the reception desk now. Another of the four men – he wore a leather jacket and, Fraser noticed, a covert earpiece in his right ear – took over. ‘How many patients do you have right now?’

  ‘A hundred and thirty-eight,’ Fraser replied automatically.

  ‘How many can walk?’

  ‘A . . . about half,’ he stuttered. ‘The remainder are bed-bound . . . very sick children . . . we’ll need to move their beds into the lifts and—’

  ‘Work from the top down,’ the man in the leather jacket interrupted him. ‘If the device goes off, the lifts will be out. I want the patients all congregating here in the reception area before it goes noisy outside . . .’

  ‘Wait,’ Fraser said. ‘Are you saying the bomb could go off while everybody’s still inside?’ He spun round in panic, only to see that another four plainclothes officers were expertly dealing with any arriving hospital workers, most being shepherded through the hospital towards another exit. ‘It could . . . it could kill everyone.’

  The officer gave him a flat look. ‘Then I’d say we’d better get started. Wouldn’t you?’

  0735hrs

  Jessica MacGregor was so tired that her body hurt.

  The nurses had been kind, and set up a bed for her in the room adjoining the isolation ward where her little girl, Ruby, had spent the last forty-eight hours. Poor, dear Ruby. She was only eight, but she’d already had to deal with so much. The year of treatment she’d had for her illness had been long and painful. She had lost her hair, grown painfully thin and seldom went a day without vomiting. She always had a smile on her face, but her mother could see through it. She knew it was put on for the benefit of those around her. When Ruby was asleep, the smile fell away, and so it was at night that her mother couldn’t help staring at her. It was then that she was looking at the real Ruby. So poorly. Clinging to life.

  Jessica started. Two men had entered the room and they appeared to be arguing. One of them was Dr Khan, a kind Indian man who had cared for Ruby so well. The other was a burly, broad-shouldered man in a leather jacket. ‘I’m afraid,’ Dr Khan was saying, ‘this child absolutely must not be moved. Under no circumstances will I allow it. She is very weak and highly susceptible to infection.’

  Jessica stared numbly at them. ‘What’s the matter?’ she breathed.

  Neither man answered her. ‘Doctor Khan,’ said the newcomer, ‘this device could go off at any moment . . .’

  ‘Device?’ Jessica breathed. ‘What device?’

  ‘What degree of certainty do you have of that?’

  The man couldn’t answer.

  ‘If we move Ruby now, it is probable that she will not survive. Medicine is about the balance of risk, Officer. Ruby cannot leave the isolation ward unless she is wearing a protective suit.’ He moved to the door leading to the ward and stood meaningfully in front of it. ‘I will be staying with my patient.’

  Jessica stood up. ‘What . . . is . . . happening?’ she demanded.

  The two men looked at her for the first time.

  ‘Evacuation,’ said the man in the leather jacket. ‘Please proceed calmly and quietly to the lift.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘Not without Ruby.’

  The man looked at her for a brief moment. Then he spoke into a small microphone on his lapel. ‘We need a protective suit. Isolation ward, fifth floor. Now.’

  0742hrs

  Fraser Willis wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘No,’ he told the three female hospital workers whose names he should know but didn’t. ‘It’s not an exercise. We need all patients brought to reception on the ground floor . . . no, I’m not at liberty to say . . . yes, it is absolutely necessary . . .’

  The fourth-floor corridor was bedlam. It didn’t matter how calm anyone tried to be, moving twenty bedridden children, along with drip stands and oxygen canisters, was never going to be straightforward. The younger kids were crying – thin, pitiful wails. The older children were looking anxiously at their nurses for confirmation that everything was OK, like nervous airplane passengers watching the cabin crew’s faces during a period of turbulence. But the nurses looked as scared as the patients. Nobody knew what was going on. They just knew it was serious.

  Fraser looked to his right. The area around the lift doors was congested – three hospital beds, clattering against each other like dodgem cars, pushed by hospital porters whose faces were sweating and whose eyes were slightly wild.

  The crying continued. The air seemed stuffy. Fraser thought about his own son, no doubt just setting off for school.

  He looked at his right hand and noticed it was shaking.

  0756hrs

  The wailing of the children had reached the reception area of the ground floor. Along with a little boy whose leg was in a cast, Fraser had emerged from the lift to a scene of chaos. He quickly counted up the number of beds down here. Forty-three. There was no room for any more. They were going to have to let the patients out onto the hospital forecourt. Fraser’s mouth went dry. If he joined the children outside the hospital, where it was safe, would it be noticed? Would it be a dereliction of duty?

  One of the anti-terrorist officers pushed past him. He was talking into his lapel. ‘This is team Alpha Five. We’ve reached saturation point at the assembly area. We’ll start bringing them out in sixty, six zero, seconds.’

  Fraser looked towards the glass frontage. The crowd outside could see what was happening. It had tripled in size – maybe forty people now. If the bomber was watching, he or she would know something was going on.

  He started edging through the sea of hospital beds and drip stands towards the exit.

  ‘Willis!’ A voice barked over the crying and the clattering. Fraser spun round. The officer in the leather jacket was beckoning to him, with a steely glint in his eye. ‘Going somewhere?’ he demanded.

  Fraser shook his head.

  ‘We’re about to open up. It’s going to get noisy outside. Emergency vehicles, bomb disposal.’ He looked towards the ceiling. ‘I need you on the upper floors, make sure everyone’s evacuated. We’ve got a kid in the isolation ward on the fifth floor.’

  ‘Ruby MacGregor.’

  ‘Whatever. Mother won’t leave her. Nor will the doctor. I’ve put a call out for a protective suit. Just so you know.’

  Fraser swallowed hard. ‘But if the bomber sees—’ he started to say.

  ‘We can only keep this cover for so long,’ the officer interrupted.

  ‘But what if he . . . what if he detonates?’

  The officer blinked at him. ‘Then we’ll go to our graves knowing we did our best to save some sick kids from a sick terrorist. Right?’

  Fraser swallowed hard again. His eyes flickered towards the exit, and then towards the lift. ‘Right,’ he said.

  0757hrs

  The CR-V containing Zak, Gabs and Raf approached the hospital at a steady speed. All the way here, Raf had been burning up the roads, running red lights, cutting up angry commuters, holding the steering wheel lightly but with a look of intense concentration on his face and beads of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Zak had demanded as soon as they’d sped off. Raf had spoken to Michael for no more than thirty seconds, and had been silent as he hit the accelerator. Zak had appealed to Gabs, who still hadn’t regained her composure. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Evacuation,’ she’d said curtly. ‘It’s the only thing they can do.’ She’d cursed under her breath. ‘What sort of monster targets a children’s hospital?’

  It was a good question,
but it wasn’t the only one in Zak’s sickened mind. What sort of monster targets a children’s hospital, and advertises it using some coded message?

  ‘When we get there,’ Raf had said finally, ‘no heroics, OK?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The guys evacuating the building will be professionals. Same goes for whoever’s locating the device. They won’t thank you for getting in their way.’

  ‘What about you two?’ Zak had demanded.

  Raf and Gabs exchanged a glance. ‘We’re older, sweetie,’ Gabs said. Her tone of voice indicated that this was her last word on the matter.

  Having reached Lambeth Palace Road, they’d slowed down. ‘What’s wrong?’ Zak had breathed.

  ‘If they’ve got any sense,’ Raf said, ‘they’ll be performing the first part of the evacuation covertly, gathering as many patients as they can near to the exit before extracting them. Just in case someone’s watching.’

  The building that Zak had seen on Gabs’s phone came into view. It was about five storeys high, and encased in tinted glass that reflected the June sun. It was as if their arrival had triggered something. There was a sudden burst of activity at the front of the hospital. The doors opened, and the small crowd that had gathered parted as harassed-looking hospital staff wheeled out a hospital bed and a drip stand. Suddenly five emergency vehicles – three ambulances and two fire appliances – appeared from nowhere and pulled in front of the hospital. Their sirens were off, no lights were flashing. But in the distance Zak could hear the sound of more emergency vehicles approaching.

  As the three of them jumped out and took a moment to check what was happening, he heard something else too: the now-familiar low chug of a chopper nearby. At first he couldn’t see it; seconds later, it rose ominously from behind the hospital. The chopper skimmed over the top of the building, then started to descend nosily until it settled on the ground twenty metres from the entrance of the hospital. The downdraught was immensely strong, and everyone in the vicinity bowed their heads and covered their eyes. Zak watched breathlessly as the side door of the chopper opened, and two figures stepped out. Even above the noise of the rotor blades, he thought he heard someone scream at the sight of them.

  They were indeed a scary vision, these two men in their green-brown blast suits and protective helmets, not a single inch of them exposed. They walked awkwardly in their heavy boots, like space-men on the moon, each carrying metal flight cases. Behind them, another man and a woman emerged from the helicopter, dressed in plainclothes and each holding two dogs on leads. German Shepherds, by the look of them. ‘Bomb disposal unit!’ Raf shouted above the noise. ‘And sniffer dogs. Flown in from Wellington Barracks. The dogs are trained to sniff out explosives.’

  More movement at the main entrance to the hospital. Soldiers in DPMs had appeared. They were carrying standard-issue SA80s and were barking at the onlookers to get away from the building. Two of them started erecting a cordon twenty metres from the hospital exit; others were shouting at the hospital workers not to loiter near the door but to get past the cordon. Zak’s eyes were drawn to the children in the beds. They looked very young, very thin and very scared. One of them, a little girl with red hair and freckles, was sitting up and crying. Wailing for her mother.

  ‘What kept you?’

  Michael didn’t even turn his head as he strode past them. His face was grim, his eyes tired, but he walked with the purpose of a man half his age. Without a word, they followed him to a white van, the rear doors of which were open and the inside filled with a bank of screens. Each screen showed an interior of the hospital in grainy black and white. Sitting in front of them, wearing a microphone, a headset and a furrowed brow, was a plainclothes surveillance operative. There were no introductions, but Zak wasn’t expecting any. He turned his attention back to the screens. In one of them there were twenty or thirty occupied beds. Another looked down onto a corridor, where a hospital porter was pushing another bed in the direction of the lift. A third screen showed an empty ward where the curtains that once surrounded the beds flapped ominously.

  ‘We have a feed into the hospital CCTV,’ Michael said. ‘Bomb-disposal personnel are going in now. They’ll have robotic cameras, we’ll have a feed into those too when they’re operational.’ He pinched the area between his eyes. ‘But it’s a big hospital,’ he said. ‘If we don’t get it evacuated in time . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘We should help with the evacuation,’ Gabs said.

  Michael and Raf nodded. ‘Zak,’ Raf said. ‘Stay here.’

  ‘I want to come. I can help.’

  Gabs shook her head. ‘No way, sweetie,’ she said. She reached out and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘You’ve done enough. Now you need to stay safe.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It’s an order,’ Michael said abruptly. ‘We don’t have time to argue.’ He looked at the other two. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  Seconds later, Zak was alone apart from the surveillance operator.

  He paced the inside of the van impatiently. He felt useless, stuck there in the middle of it all and yet unable to do a thing.

  ‘If you’re going to pace, pace outside,’ said the surveillance guy. Zak cast him a black look, but the man wasn’t paying any attention to him – he had eyes only for his screens. The noises outside continued to blare. Zak had heard the chopper rise off the ground, but it sounded like it was still circling above the hospital and he looked outside to check. There it was – a great black beast keeping watch over this chaotic scene.

  The bomb-disposal guys were now heading into the hospital. The sniffer dogs were behind them, pulling frantically at their leads. They showed no sign of fear – the dogs were clearly well trained to deal with situations like this – and when their handlers let them go, they scampered into the entrance. The hospital staff were still wheeling out the beds of sick children. Zak looked around. To his west, the River Thames with the Houses of Parliament on the other side. Closer at hand, paramedics tending to the terrified young patients, and armed troops barking at members of the public to stay back.

  Was the bomber watching, Zak wondered? Was he waiting for the moment to strike that would cause the most harm?

  One of the soldiers caught his eye and gave him a confused look. Zak had no ID, nothing to say he was permitted inside the cordon, so he quickly stepped back into the van. Out of sight, out of mind. He hoped.

  He looked at the screens. The images of the hospital’s interior were sinister – being silent, they gave no soundtrack to the chaos within. Zak had a bizarre recollection of watching Big Brother on TV. While the contestants had been sleeping, the cameras had shown silent, empty corridors. The CCTV in the upper levels of the hospital looked similar, but every few seconds the screen was filled with a moving bed and drip stand or, on one occasion, a nurse carrying a small bundle that could only be a sick baby. Zak could barely watch. He turned his attention to one of the other screens.

  ‘Dog’s going crazy,’ the surveillance guy said. He was right. One of the German Shepherds looked as though he was chasing his tail. ‘Happens sometimes. They get spooked. They’re trained to give certain signals if they find something, but that one’s a waste of space. Dogs’ home for him. What you doing here anyway, son?’

  ‘Just along for the ride,’ Zak breathed. He couldn’t take his eyes off the German Shepherd. Something wasn’t quite right. ‘Where’s that dog?’

  ‘Ground floor,’ said the surveillance guy. ‘Corridor on the north side.’

  ‘Can you zoom in on it?’

  ‘What is this? Pets’ corner?’

  ‘Can you?’

  The surveillance guy gave him a slightly confused look, then shrugged and turned a dial on the VT equipment in front of him. The CCTV camera focused in on the German Shepherd. Zak peered more closely at it. Even in this grainy image he could see that the dog’s eyes were bright, its ears sharp. It stopped suddenly, and although Zak couldn’t hear it, he could see t
he dog bark as its handler surveyed the area, clearly looking for a place where a bomb could be hidden. But it was just an area of open floor. The dog cocked its head, and for a moment seemed to look directly into the camera at Zak. But then it started chasing its tail again.

  ‘That dog’s not spooked,’ Zak muttered, just as the handler gave a thumbs up to the CCTV and gestured the dog to move on.

  ‘What you say, son?’

  ‘That dog’s not spooked. I’m sure he’s found something.’

  But the surveillance guy didn’t hear any more of what Zak had said, because by the time Zak had finished speaking he’d already jumped out of the back of the van.

  9

  CASUALTY OF WAR

  ZAK NEEDED TO tell someone. Fast.

  As he jumped back out onto the pavement, he scanned quickly around for Raf, Gabs or Michael. There was no sign of them. He ran in the direction of the hospital entrance, but he was fifteen metres away when he found his path blocked by a sturdy figure in DPMs carrying an SA80. Before he knew it, a steely-faced soldier was barking at him: ‘Get back! Behind the cordon! Now!’

  Zak opened his mouth to argue, but he clamped it shut just as quickly. There was nothing he could say that would make the soldier believe he was supposed to be on site. That it was thanks to him all this was happening anyway. He held up his palms in surrender and stepped backwards. As soon as the soldier saw that Zak was retreating, he turned away. Zak hurried back to the van, slipped behind it, waited a few seconds, and then approached the hospital from a different angle. He kept his head upright and his stride purposeful. He needed to look like he was supposed to be here. And, after all, everyone was being evacuated; the only people walking towards the scene were those with jobs to do.

  There was an ambulance parked between the van and the hospital. Its rear doors were open and an empty stretcher bed was stationed just behind it. The paramedics from the ambulance itself were not there – presumably they were tending to the evacuated children whose beds were still crowded around the front of the hospital. Zak moved almost on instinct. He jumped into the back of the ambulance where he immediately located a high-visibility medic’s jacket and a blue cloth surgeon’s face mask. He quickly put them on, hoping that they would hide how young he looked, then exited the ambulance and pushed the empty stretcher bed in the direction of the hospital.