Ultimatum

by Simon Kernick

  Fifty-eight

  20.06

  THE SQUAD CARS were arriving in force now, blocking the road at both ends. The problem was, thought Tina ruefully, they were far too late. It had been at least ten minutes since the black Shogun had disappeared into the night, and so far it hadn’t been located, even though dozens of police vehicles and a helicopter had now joined the search, and every minute that passed meant their terrorist was getting further and further away.

  Initial reports from Control suggested that there were as many as fifty casualties from the strike on the Shard, including at least two MPs and a well-known TV reporter, but so far there was no word on how many of them were fatalities.

  Tina and Bolt were now coordinating the evacuation of all the properties within a fifty-yard radius of the house from where the missile had been fired, in case there were further suspects inside.

  ‘The house belongs to a Mr Azim Butt,’ Tina told Bolt as she finished leading a couple and their two young children beyond the thin strip of scene-of-crime tape that acted as the edge of their cordon. ‘Thirty-one years old, and keeps himself to himself. According to the neighbours, he’s lived here for about eighteen months. They reckon he’s got a girlfriend who’s often here too.’

  Bolt nodded. ‘That tallies with what Control have found out about him. He owns a couple of businesses supplying imported goods to the restaurant and retail trades. Makes OK money, but he’s got a three-hundred-grand mortgage on the house. He’s got no criminal record, and his name doesn’t come up on any watchlists, but he is a Muslim.’

  ‘He definitely wasn’t the man I saw drive out in the Shogun. The man I saw was white, early or possibly mid-forties, weather-beaten features. Big build too, whereas Mr Butt is supposedly only a little guy.’

  ‘So, who the hell is he?’ Bolt frowned, the lines on his face looking more pronounced than Tina could remember. He still looked shaken up by everything that had happened, and she could tell that he was trying hard not to show it.

  ‘Whoever he is, he’s got to be someone with a military background. You need to be trained to fire a Stinger. Not any idiot can do it. And he didn’t panic when we tried to intercept him either.’

  ‘We’ll get him,’ said Bolt emphatically. ‘He won’t get far with half the Met on his back.’

  Tina resisted saying that he’d managed pretty well so far. Instead, she turned and walked back through the cordon to carry on helping with the evacuation. Fox had claimed the people behind Islamic Command were homegrown extremists, which would explain why the man leaving the property was white. And they’d already established a link between Fox and Islamic Command via Jetmir Brozi. But she still felt they were missing something. And she wanted to know where the hell the owner, Mr Butt, was.

  A uniformed cop was approaching the suspect property, completely against all the rules. As Tina watched, he leaned down and peered in through the letterbox.

  ‘Hey, get back from there,’ she called to him, knowing it was hypocritical of her to criticize a fellow cop for breaking the rules, when she’d made a career out of it, but knowing too that the terrorists had left a booby-trapped bomb for the police earlier, and might easily have done so again. ‘No one’s going in there until bomb disposal arrive.’

  The cop turned back to her, his expression anxious. ‘But there’s someone in there, and he’s crying out for help.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Tina, walking down the drive and grabbing him by the arm. ‘We’ve got to be really careful here. It could be a trap.’

  ‘He sounds like he’s in trouble, ma’am.’

  ‘OK, but get back.’

  She looked over to where Mike Bolt was now talking to a group of CO19 officers who’d just arrived on the scene, then bent down and opened the letterbox.

  She heard it immediately: the faint sound of a man calling out from somewhere within the house, the fear in his voice obvious.

  ‘This is the police,’ she called out. ‘Is that Mr Butt?’

  He didn’t answer so she repeated herself, louder this time.

  There was a pause, and then he shouted back, ‘Yes. You’ve got to help me. I’m trapped.’

  ‘I hear you. We’ll be with you very soon.’

  She stood up and waved at Bolt to get his attention.

  Voorhess pulled up to the entrance of the park, and parked the police car against the fence in the shelter of some trees where it would be difficult to see it from the road. Sirens were still blaring in all directions but he no longer took any notice of them. Instead, he grabbed his holdall from the trunk, and climbed over the fence and into the park. He moved swiftly in the darkness towards the other side, forcing himself to stay calm, even though he felt more than ever like a hunted animal.

  He needed to cause a diversion by detonating the bomb at Mr Butt’s house. The police would be gathered round it now, making their final preparations for entry, and he was sure to catch a few of them with the explosion. With any luck, he’d also hit the woman who’d seen him.

  He pulled the mobile from his pocket and speed-dialled the number of the phone attached to the battery pack inside the bomb, wondering if he’d be able to hear the dull thud of the explosion from where he was now.

  ‘What the hell are you doing? Get back from there!’

  Bolt marched towards Tina, waving her away from Butt’s front door, thinking that she was like a naughty schoolkid sometimes, always delving into places where she shouldn’t be going. He could feel his legs shaking beneath him as he walked. He felt dizzy, and was still having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that he’d almost been crushed to death only a few minutes earlier. Above the buildings in the distance, he could see the thick black plume of smoke pumping out of the upper floors of the Shard into the night sky – a brutal reminder of the attack he hadn’t prevented. If only he’d reacted quicker, if only he’d kept a better eye on Jones, and had him followed to the meeting where they’d got the missile. If only he’d worked harder these past few months to catch the people behind the Stanhope siege, then he might not be here. But he’d failed. It was as simple as that, and he only had himself to blame.

  ‘Mr Butt’s inside,’ said Tina, coming forward to meet him. ‘He’s calling out saying he’s trapped, and he sounds scared.’

  ‘Just get back from there, and keep going with the evacuation. Bomb disposal are on the way. It’s best just to leave it to them now.’

  She nodded and turned away, while Bolt looked up at the house. If Butt was involved in the attack, the only reason he’d still be inside would be to ambush them, presumably in some kind of suicide attack when they broke into his house. Yet, how was he connected to Cain and Cecil Boorman? The whole thing didn’t make sense.

  The explosion that ripped through the first floor of the house in a single blinding roar sent Bolt flying backwards and tumbling over the low wall separating the front of the property from the pavement. He remembered feeling a wave of hot air rush over him, followed by the sound of pieces of masonry falling around him with strangely dull thuds – all in the space of half a second. And then he felt a sharp, sudden pain, and the world seemed to fade out.

  Fifty-nine

  20.12

  VOORHESS HEARD THE faint sound of the bomb blast, but took no notice as he ran through the darkness of the park, keeping to the single line of trees that ran alongside the main path, using them for camouflage. In his youth, he’d been a good middle- to long-distance runner, having always been too big to be a sprinter, and he still jogged four times a week round the rugged coastal paths of the Cape close to where he lived. As a result, he was able to keep his tiredness in check. He’d always found that running calmed him, and allowed him to think. But now, for the first time in a long time, he felt the pressure of what was going on around him.

  A police helicopter had already passed close to the edge of the park. If it came directly over, which it would do soon enough, its heat-sensing equipment would locate him, and once he was in its sights it
would be locked on to him until he was caught. He had to get back among other people where he’d be just one of many heat sources. It was his only option, because he was terrified of small spaces. Of being trapped. Prison represented a worse fate for him than death itself. At least death was quick. Years held in a cell seemed to him to be the most barbaric form of torture.

  He decided then that he wouldn’t be taken alive.

  He heard the helicopter turning somewhere behind him, and then the sound of its rotors drawing closer. The southern boundary of the park was barely thirty yards away, and he could see the lights of a car driving past on the other side. He redoubled his pace, sprinting with every last scrap of energy he had.

  The gate was locked but he vaulted straight over it. The helicopter was getting closer now. Soon it would pick up his heat source and that would be it. The end.

  Twenty yards to his right, a small hatchback car was stopped at a red light, the heavy beat of mindless music booming out from inside. Two other cars were stopped at the lights on the other side, all waiting for a young couple to cross the road. The hatchback was revving its engine impatiently as Voorhess slowed down and jogged over to the passenger door, trying to look as casual as possible, banking that on an old car like this the door would be unlocked. The lights started flashing orange, just as the helicopter came hurtling over the park, and Voorhess yanked open the door and jumped unceremoniously inside, before the driver had a chance to pull away.

  The driver – young, white and pimply – stared at Voorhess with his mouth hanging open.

  ‘Drive,’ growled Voorhess, producing the .22 and shoving it in the kid’s ribs.

  The kid stared at the gun, made a pathetic mewing noise, then did exactly what he was told as the helicopter passed overhead, loud and close.

  Sixty

  20.13

  THE WHOLE WORLD sounded muffled to Tina, as if someone had stuffed her ears full of cotton wool. She got to her feet unsteadily and looked around. Everyone seemed to be moving in slow motion, their voices sounding distant and alien as they hurried towards her.

  It took her a few seconds to de-scramble her senses and work out what had happened. The bomb blast had come as she’d been crossing the road, its force, and her own instincts, sending her sprawling across the concrete. She looked back to see the first floor of Azim Butt’s house completely ablaze, with gouts of flame and thick plumes of smoke pouring out of the blackened window frames. Chunks of masonry of varying sizes, from half bricks to foot-square lumps, some on fire, dotted the road in front of the building, and Tina was immediately relieved she hadn’t been hit by one of them.

  And then, as her eyes focused on the scene, she saw a body in front of the garden wall.

  Shit. Mike.

  Feeling a rush of panic, Tina ran over to where he lay and knelt down beside him. His eyes were closed and there was a cut on the back of his head that was leaking blood, but it was difficult to tell how deep it was. She called his name, hardly able to hear the sound of her own voice, still partially deafened by the blast, terrified that something had happened to him, and appreciating at the same time the depth of her feelings for him.

  Then his eyes opened and he stared up at her and she had this sudden urge to lean down and kiss him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, trying hard to keep the air of desperation out of her voice.

  ‘I think so.’

  He started to get up, but his legs went from under him and he stumbled into Tina, almost knocking her over.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve got you,’ she said, just about managing to hold him up.

  Turning round, she shouted for help, and a group of CO19 officers ran over, followed closely by two paramedics with a stretcher.

  ‘Christ, my head hurts,’ said Bolt as he was lifted on to the stretcher by the assembled group.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said one of the paramedics, ‘we’ll have you in the hospital in no time.’

  Bolt shook his head, squinting against the pain as they carried him away from the blazing building. ‘No way. Treat me here. I haven’t got time to go to hospital.’

  ‘I’d do as she says, Mike,’ said Tina, who was walking alongside the stretcher, wanting to hold his hand, but knowing it wouldn’t be right. He didn’t look good, though.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he said, trying to sit up, but not quite making it.

  The paramedic started to say something else but Bolt cut her off by leaning over the side of the stretcher and throwing up, only just missing Tina’s feet.

  At that moment, his mobile rang inside his jacket. He looked up at Tina, frowning as he tried hard to focus. ‘Can you answer my phone?’

  She nodded, reached inside his jacket and pulled it out, as the paramedics put him into the back of the ambulance.

  ‘Mike Bolt’s phone. Tina Boyd speaking.’

  ‘This is Commander Ingrams, CTC Control. What’s happening down there?’

  Tina told him about the booby-trap bomb.

  ‘How bad’s Mike hurt?’ asked Ingrams, sounding genuinely concerned.

  ‘I think he’s concussed, but he’s conscious and fairly lucid. They’ve just put him in an ambulance. Have we managed to locate the suspect in the Shogun yet?’

  ‘No. We’re throwing a huge security cordon round the whole area, but there’s no sign of him.’ Ingrams exhaled loudly. ‘And we’ve got another problem too. There’s a major riot at the prison where they’re holding William Garrett. One wing’s been completely taken over by the prisoners and now there’s a disturbance in a second one.’

  Tina thought back to the conversation she’d had with the prison officer, Thomson. How he’d described the prison as a tinder box, a place that only functioned because the prisoners allowed it to. And now it seemed they’d decided to stop cooperating.

  ‘Is Fox OK?’ she asked.

  ‘It was his wing it started in, but they managed to get him out. Apparently there was a second attempt on his life. It failed and he’s unhurt, but it sounds like he was lucky.’

  ‘He told me this would happen. It’s not a coincidence.’

  ‘I know it’s not,’ said Ingrams. ‘I understand Garrett told you he’d name the people involved today if he was moved to a safehouse, and offered some kind of deal.’

  ‘That’s the gist of it, yes.’

  ‘We’re in the process of organizing his move to a safehouse right now, but as you can imagine, it’s a very sensitive issue, particularly in light of what’s happened today. I want you to stay by your phone tonight because if he’s moved, I want you to talk to him again. You’ve clearly developed some kind of rapport.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘There’s something else as well. We’ve just sent two detectives to the pub where they were meant to meet Mike’s informant, but he wasn’t there. We need to debrief the informant urgently, as I understand he was the person who told us about the missile. Yet no one seems to have any contact details for him.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Mike now.’

  Tina ended the call, and looked over the growing throng of emergency services vehicles towards where the Shard stood, dominating the skyline, its austere beauty brutally violated by what had just happened.

  The people responsible had won the battle, but she was as determined as she’d ever been that they weren’t going to win this particular war.

  Sixty-one

  20.22

  ON THE TV in the poky front room of my flat, the Shard was burning, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. I couldn’t bring myself to switch channels either. So there it was: a constant reminder of everything I’d done this afternoon.

  I took a last slug of the beer and put down the bottle, feeling like a condemned man.

  I’d killed a man in cold blood. Shot him while he begged for mercy. I’d killed in cold blood before, back in Afghanistan – two Taliban wounded in a firefight with our patrol whom we could easily have taken alive. I’d stood above them, like I’d stood above Dav, and em
ptied more than a dozen rounds into each of them in turn. Afterwards I’d felt guilty. I still do. They might have been trying to kill me but, in the end, it was we who were in their country, and what I’d done was barbaric.

  The difference was, those killings had been carried out in a dusty, hot war zone thousands of miles from home, and away from the prying eyes of the media.

  Today’s bloodshed had been right on my doorstep.

  So, Bolt and his colleagues hadn’t stopped the terrorists’ third attack. Like most other people, I hadn’t had a clue that the Shard was having an official opening-night party tonight, and it was difficult to believe that it would still have gone ahead after the earlier bomb attacks. Clearly, it was part of the government’s strategy of carrying on as normal in the face of the terrorist threat. If so, it hadn’t worked.

  Cain had got exactly what he wanted, and what he’d predicted – chaos and terror. And with this morning’s coffee shop bomber now identified as a thirty-one-year-old Muslim man, it looked like Islamic fundamentalists were going to get the blame. Cain was probably toasting his success right now.

  That was unless, of course, the police had already tracked him down using the GPS unit I’d planted. If so, he might actually be under arrest, along with Cecil. I was just going to have to wait to find out.

  The huge problem I had was that both men could implicate me in the slaughter at the scrapyard, and Dav’s murder, if they chose to testify against me in a court of law. I could go back down for years this time, and never see Gina or Maddie again. It was a bastard of a position to be in. My plan, as much as I had one, was to tell the detectives from CTC that Cain and Cecil had gone to the meeting without me, and had then shown me the missile at a neutral location, and hope for the best. It wasn’t exactly foolproof, but right now I didn’t have anything else.