“What did you see?”
“Passenger was racking a pistol of some sort. Hundred percent. He took a good look at me too.”
“Recognise him?”
“As it happens yes. We met at a graveyard once.”
The police vehicle tucked in as tight as it could to the Mercedes, all the while allowing the Bentley to accelerate away. Cade got back on the radio.
“MP from Six Six, the blue Bentley has made off towards the river. Can we get ANPR on that please and pass obs. I want that vehicle stopping as soon as possible, staff to proceed with caution. Consider Trojan.”
The automatic number plate recognition lenses placed around London were almost constantly snapping images of cars going into the city and in turn feeding the data back to whoever wanted it the most.
Trojan was the colloquial name for the armed response teams.
“We are with the Mercedes and want to conduct a tactical stop once we get some armed response back up. For now, he’s playing hard to get.”
Cade opened the small gun safe and saw two new Glocks sitting in their rack. Behind them, four magazines. He pulled the first weapon out, removed the chamber flag, checked it, pointing it down into the footwell – knowing that more than a few cops had drilled a hole through the floor of their car, or worse, through the roof or out of the windscreen.
He slammed in the seventeen-round magazine with his left palm then racked the weapon with the same hand which he allowed to almost hit his right shoulder. Shown once, properly, never forgotten. He put the weapon into the rack, then repeated the process.
Roberts took his weapon and slid it into the retention holster he wore for just such an occasion.
“You’ll have to carry yours like they do in Hawaii Five-O.”
“Fuck ‘em, Danno!”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself, Jack. Jesus…”
The Mercedes brake lights were glaringly bright, almost as if the driver had braked extremely hard. He had. The rear of their car approached Roberts’ car in a heartbeat, and there was no time to avoid them.
The collision activated the unmarked police car airbags, instantly filling the cabin with an acrid black smoke that clung to their taste buds.
The Mercedes drove ahead and then stopped about a hundred and fifty metres away. Everything heading the same way seemed to come to a halt too. Then opposing traffic, as motorists sat motionless, mouths open. Not because of the accident, but the sight of the two large black males exiting their car with weapons.
Some dialled frantically, screaming about guns to anyone that would listen. Others froze. One left her car and ran, praying that she would get home to her one-year-old before she was shot in the back.
“Gun!” yelled Cade.
Roberts was trying desperately to get their car into reverse, but failing. As the airbag deflated like a week-old party balloon, he could see through the windscreen and didn’t like what he saw. He was trapped. In the crash, the seatbelt had locked up, effectively pressing him back into his seat.
“Jack mate, I’m trapped, I’m stuck.”
Cade had seen them too. He leant across and pulled the Glock from Roberts’ holster. “Here, if they get too close, start shooting. Remember what they showed you at the range, bang-click-bang. Don’t rush the shot, smooth as a baby’s bum.” Cade smiled as he lowered himself down and prepared to exit the car. He’d seen his place of relative safety. But before he left, he opened a razor-sharp knife.
“Sorry mate but if I’m going down in a blaze of glory, then you are coming with me.” He slit the seatbelt, allowing air to escape from an anxious DCI Roberts’ lungs.
He sucked air in. “Yep, let’s do this. Have we got a plan?”
The first round hit the windscreen causing a huge star to crackle across the glass. Then another. One in the grill too, rendering the engine useless.
Cade reckoned they were now a hundred metres apart. So why weren’t they running at them? Instead, the two African bodyguards walked, almost nonchalantly, up the Vauxhall Bridge Road, in the middle of the day, in their garish suits, firing in what a witness would later describe as a gangster style; pistols on their sides, discharging rounds with attitude.
“We’ve got time buddy, just keep calm. See how they are firing?”
“No, actually I don’t. I want to get home to my wife. I’m too old for this shit.” Another round ricocheted off the windscreen surround.
“Now seems like a good time to leave the vehicle, Jason.”
“Are you mad? We’ll get shot.”
“Hear those sirens?”
“I do.”
“Well, that’s the cavalry at a guess.”
“And we’ll be bloody dead by the time they get here, Jack.”
“Trust me on this. Follow my lead. When I start shooting, you just do the same. No need to challenge them.”
Cade kicked open the passenger door and tucked into the gap that it created between it and the bodywork. It was about the safest place he could be and still fire back until he got to some decent cover. Roberts did the same.
He was about to shout the usual warning ‘Stop! Armed police. Put down your weapons!’ but saw Cade raise his finger to his lips.
The copper fragmented round that almost grazed the top of Roberts’ head was warning enough not to shout anything at anybody. Careless, reckless even. Where the round ended up bothered the shooter not one bit. From that moment on, Cade and Roberts knew things had just taken a shift upwards.
For the police it was a different game. A different set of rules. Rules of engagement – and they were strict. You didn’t just start firing until the bloody thing ran out, then stare at it until you realised moments later why the slide was closer to you than before – and a gaping hole existed where the rounds normally sat.
Cade hovered somewhere between the rules and the situation. And as far as he could see, if he shot well the risks of any civilian harm were minimised. But he needed to be closer. And why were they firing so many rounds without reloading? Then he spotted it. The black plastic magazine was protruding below the stock. They were carrying modified weapons. The game that had shifted up a gear had just had high octane fuel added.
“Jas. Listen to me. They’ve got automatic pistols. OK?”
“No not really. But go on.” He yelled from the driver’s seat where he was awkwardly trying to shuffle out of and into the position that Cade had chosen.
“They won’t be accurate. Just a lot of bullets.”
“Super. Very reassuring.” Roberts was rarely this serious.
“I need you to draw them out into the open. Play dead. They won’t assume we are armed.”
“Oh, brilliant. If I get shot Mrs. Roberts will kill me. Why don’t you draw them out partner? I’ve got a wife and a mortgage. And a cat called Alice…”
“Alice?”
“Cat-Alice. Like you have on a car?”
“You never cease to amaze me, Jason. Listen, I reckon we’ve got ten seconds left. When I shout, you distract them. Anything. Just get their attention.”
Another four or five rounds hit the car, one smashing into the driver’s door mirror and glancing off into a shop window. Everywhere Cade looked, there were frightened people. They had no idea what they were dealing with, and it showed on their faces. Cade did his best to placate a mother and daughter that stood frozen in a doorway.
He looked along the street. The two men were gone. They’d separated.
“They’ve split up, Jason. Keep an eye your side. I’ll take the left as we look at it.”
Sirens still sounded. A helicopter droned somewhere else. Behind them, a young man whispered into his cell phone about terrorists and how much he loved his family.
Cade had heard enough. “Jason. Now.”
Roberts stood up and yelled at the male walking towards them, then saw the second running through a small area of park behind black wrought-iron railings. A road sign said Bessborough Park.
Roberts had an ima
ge in his mind.
‘Here lies DCI Jason Roberts. Killed on duty at Bess…’
His thoughts were interrupted when a shot rang out nearer to the car.
Cade had levelled his arm across the door where it met the car body, took a breath, tried to scan the whole area and hoped he still had the same accuracy as before. The round left the weapon before he realised. In shooting terms, the perfect shot. It was quickly followed by a second.
Both rounds hit the target in the chest, knocking him backwards violently. In seconds he was clambering up onto his feet. This was not good.
“Jason. They are wearing armour.” But Roberts had gone.
Cade scanned. There, running across the road towards the park.
Where was their bloody back up?
He settled once more, ready to fire, but the bruised bodyguard was now an angry one and he was firing indiscriminately. Like a wasp in a jar, with a diamond-tipped cutting tool and an eye for vengeance.
He shot at anything that moved. And that meant heightened risk for everyone. Sirens were getting much closer now. Hundreds of metres closer. Cade could almost feel the noise as it echoed off the tall Victorian buildings that surrounded him. He tried to grab the radio microphone, but another few rounds distracted him. All he could hope for was that the armed response staff made a quick risk assessment, and either stayed back or engaged him.
The large man spotted them and standing in a strong A-frame, almost arrogantly raised his weapon and steadied it with both hands and fired a burst at the two BMWs that had pulled across the road a few hundred metres back.
It was then that Cade spotted the one potential chance.
The driver was staring at his weapon. Only for a second. Trained or not, it was a common problem in the heat of battle. His slide was back. He needed to reload.
Cade fired and moved. He ran to the back of a Ford van. Checked his weapon. Checked for Roberts, then edged out, exposing only his right arm and a small profile. Just as he’d been taught. No point in shooting at his target’s chest. Breathe. Aim. A deliberate aim too, using the sights. And gently…fire.
And again. And again. Two to the body. One to the head.
His target was down this time. Slumped. No theatrics. Dead. A foreigner in a foreign town and bleeding out on a street in one of the busiest cities in the world.
“Stop! Armed Police!” Cade heard it but didn’t look back. He was still scanning for threats. They still hadn’t cleared the Mercedes. There could be people in the back. He edged out.
“Stop! You. In the suit. Put down your weapon.”
“I’m with you. Check the park to my right. My partner went that way. Go!” he waved an ID and hoped they had good eyesight.
Cade looked at the young mother to his left.
“You’ll be OK now. Just stay there, stay down.”
The little boy thought it was great. A real policeman shooting a bad guy. It just didn’t get any better. His mother just sobbed.
Roberts was running as fast as he could, through the small park area, typical of so many in the city, immaculate and hundreds of years old. The male target was now running too, unlike his counterpart he didn’t want to get caught. Now and then he pushed past people. An old man walking a small dog remonstrated then reeled back in horror when a gun barrel was pushed into his face.
Roberts hated guns. Had done since he was nearly shot on a tube train a while ago. The shooter was average at best and now serving life. He prayed each night that he’d stay there.
Now he had a new adversary. And he was fit. He turned right and vaulted over the wrought-iron fence, impaling his left hand as he did so. The black Victorian iron work ripped a hole right through the palm of his hand and pinned him in place, allowing Roberts to walk towards him, stopping about ten metres away.
“Drop it buddy or I will shoot you.”
The male was bleeding profusely from the hand and hanging unceremoniously, a discarded puppet in a quiet London park.
Roberts edged forwards. “I won’t ask again.”
“What, you are going to shoot a man who can’t escape with all those witnesses?”
Roberts turned to look. It only took a second. There was no one there, the young, and the old had fled, leaving the two men alone in the park. The first three rounds left the adapted pistol, all missing Roberts but raising his heartbeat considerably.
The marionette and the pistol.
The police officer and his conscience.
Roberts brought his pistol up into the aim as his target did the same. The two shots that rang out around the park and made the pigeons scatter for cover came from neither of them.
The marionette wasn’t dead,, but he was seriously injured. Slumped onto the railings like a game bird in a butcher’s shop window, he smiled at Roberts. Then he saw who had shot him. Another white guy, with blue eyes, standing there in the bushes. Standing there and looking straight at him. And now he was shouting at the other white man.
“Cuff him, Jason.”
And as Roberts walked towards him, the unnamed male from somewhere in West Africa brought up his pistol and squeezed the trigger for the last time. The four rounds that left the weapon did so in a sequence that would later be discussed in the coroner’s court; the first two hit his head, killing him, the third hit a second-story window, and the fourth was never found.
Cade approached the body as Roberts was cuffing it to the railings – as absurd as it looked he was still considered a risk.
“You OK, mate?”
“Yes. Thanks, Jack. I owe you.”
“No, you don’t, just call it credit for the next time we get knee-deep in shit!”
“There won’t be a next time. I’m done.”
“We should go to the Sanctuary and talk this through over a game of pool. My round.”
They began to walk away as three-armed response staff ran into the park, their weapons levelled in the high ready position.
“It’s OK team, we are the good guys!” shouted Roberts, holding his warrant card aloft for all to see, slowly, deliberately bringing attention to himself. “We’ll need him photographing in situ, and a CSI team down here for him and his mate. And cordon the place off. And when you’ve finished, leave him hanging there for the birds to peck on. I want the rest of his people to see this. I will not be bullied in my own city. Am I clear?”
The middle-aged AFO nodded. “Guv. Hundred percent. You alright?”
They knew each other from way back.
“Never better, my son. Now if you don’t mind, I need to go and make a few phone calls and when I’m done, I’ll partake in a more than a cursory check of my underpants.”
He walked back to the wreck of their car and grabbed his cell phone.
“Let me guess,” said Cade. “Mrs. Roberts, then the boss, then Roger at the Sanctuary to reserve the pool table?”
“Almost. I need to ring my tailor first. I need a new pair of trousers. These will never come clean.” He patted Cade on the back. “You ring the ranch see if they’ve come up with anything yet and get that Bentley circulated.”
“Yes guv, anything you say guv.”
Roberts was already dialling.
In Knightsbridge, a gold top-of-the-range iPhone rang.
“Yes.”
“Boss. Two of our team are dead.”
The svelte African voice was calm but furious. “I know, it’s all over the television.”
“Are we pulling out boss?” The male voice asked, respectfully.
“No. In fact, we now turn the heat up. I want no one to rest until we find the old man and what is left of the girls. If any of you don’t want to help, then come to me and we can discuss it, in person, face to face. Do you hear me?”
“I do.”
“Good, because you have just become my number two and I need you to get the team out there and hunting. We have a week at best. If we don’t find what we are looking for, I will make everyone pay.”
Chapter Forty-One
&n
bsp; Southern England
“Cade.” He answered briskly, running his tongue around his cheeks, still trying to rid the tenacious tang of adrenaline.
“Hey it’s me. You OK?” O’Shea asked, trying not to sound too maternal.
“Yeah, we’re fine. One of our targets is down. The other shot himself twice and missed with at least two more. Complete waste if you ask me. No obvious need, so he obviously feared someone more than us.”
“But you are OK?”
“Yes, Carrie, I’m absolutely fine. Good to get back on the horse, to be honest. What news from your end?”
She had learned that when Jack Cade said he was ‘fine’ it often meant otherwise. So she chose to ignore it.
“Dave and I have been crunching data, and I’ve also been working my charm on our Defence contact. Jack, you have no idea how deep this runs. It turns out he was just waiting for someone to ask the question, he knew that one day someone who actually enforces the law might come knocking.”
“But surely his team is cleared above ours?”
“You’d think so wouldn’t you, but it transpires that the military only want one thing back, the rest is down to us.”
“And what is that exactly?” Cade asked, favouring a growing lump on his left forearm and trying to work out how it got there.
“They want their reputation intact, Jack. He’s looking to rid their barrel of the rotten apples, and now the cat is out of the bag, time appears to be of the essence.”
“A lot of nautical analogies there, Carrie. Here’s another. What about the Siren, what’s her role?”
“You mean Reddington?”
“You got it in one.”
“Find her attractive, don’t you?”
“Yes. Most men would. There’s something about a girl in uniform.”
“Well, it seems little Red Riding Hood is not all she appears either.”
Cade was intrigued. There was no doubt Reddington was attractive, but she also had a mystical persona and he wanted to learn more about her.
“She’s in as deep as any of the defence staff can ever be.”
“Friend or foe?”
The Angel of Whitehall Page 36
