Hunter Killer (2 page)

Sarim checked his watch. 11.43. ‘Train leaves in 25 minutes,’ he said, casting a sidelong glance at Jamal, who nodded. ‘Come on, Alfie, mate. Let’s get moving.’

It took five minutes to reach the station. Sarim checked the departure board. ‘Platform seven,’ he told the others, and they walked towards it, trundling their suitcases behind them.

There were ticket barriers at the platform, but they were lodged permanently open so a friendly man in a British Rail uniform stopped them to check their tickets. ‘Off somewhere nice, fellas?’ he asked them.

‘Haverfordwest,’ Sarim said immediately. ‘A short holiday.’

‘Hope the weather improves.’ The guard looked at Alfie and winked. ‘You have a good time, sunshine.’ Alfie was busy watching the pigeons high in the station roof, so the guard turned back to Sarim and Jamal. ‘The wife’s sister has a Down’s syndrome boy. Lovely little lad. Very
trusting
, if you know what I mean. Shame really. But good on you for looking after him, fellas. Good on you.’

Sarim gave a sincere look as he took back the tickets. ‘Community, mate. It’s what it’s all about, innit?’

‘That’s your train,’ said the guard, pointing down the platform. ‘Unreserved seating, Coach G. You want to book a seat next time, mate. Don’t cost nothing.’

‘Yeah,’ Sarim said quietly. He pulled his hood up over his head. ‘Next time.’

The platform was busy. A hundred people, maybe more. As they dragged their suitcases alongside the train, it felt as though Alfie was saying hello to every single one of them in turn. When they arrived at Coach G, however, he stopped and pointed at it. Sarim wondered if Alfie had ever actually been on a train. He seemed excited by the whole prospect.

They stopped five metres from the carriage door. ‘Give me a minute, guys,’ Jamal said. He looked meaningfully back towards the station concourse. ‘I need to go take a slash.’

Alfie looked confused. ‘What’s a slash?’

‘Need the toilet, mate. Can’t stand going on the train. All stinky. Won’t be long, innit?’

‘We’ll wait here,’ Sarim said.

Alfie looked alarmed. ‘What if the train goes?’

‘Plenty of time, mate,’ he said. And when Alfie continued to look worried, he added: ‘We
have
to wait for Jamal, Alfie. That’s what friends do for each other.’

Alfie nodded. He looked disappointed in himself. ‘We’ll wait here,’ he agreed.

Jamal walked away. Sarim checked his watch. 11.55. He turned to Alfie.

‘Why don’t I go and get some snacks for the journey?’ he said.

Alfie looked alarmed again. He glanced at the train, then back at Sarim. ‘It’s getting full,’ he said.

‘You hungry?’ Sarim persisted.

Alfie shook his head.

‘Long journey though, mate. What’s your favourite?’ His eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Cheese and onion crisps? The blue ones? I’ll get a big bag, shall I?’

Alfie’s face was a picture of indecision, but after a few seconds he nodded. Sarim put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll only be a couple of minutes,’ he said. He stepped away from Alfie and the little cluster of suitcases. ‘Don’t go wandering off, will you?’ he added. ‘We’ll be in trouble if we leave our bags unattended. They’ll tell us off.’

The thought of being told off made Alfie look even more anxious. He stepped closer to the suitcases and clutched the handles of two of them.

Sarim winked at him, just as the platform guard had done, then strode quickly back towards the concourse. As he left the platform, he looked back over his shoulder. He only just caught a glimpse of Alfie through the crowds, his face still tightly framed by the hood of his cagoul.

It was enough to tell him that the young man was guarding the suitcases diligently.

Sarim and Jamal met at their prearranged spot outside WHSmith at 11.59. Only when they were out on the street and walking swiftly through the torrential rain away from Paddington did Jamal speak. ‘Fucking hate that geezer,’ he spat. ‘Looks all weird. Gives me the creeps, innit?’

They turned into a little cobbled mews where there were no pedestrians, but a couple of flash cars – an Aston Martin and a BMW – parked up.

‘Have you got it?’ Sarim asked. He had to speak loudly over the rain.

Jamal put one wet hand in his pocket and pulled out a mobile phone.

‘Speed dial one!’ Sarim shouted. ‘That’s what he told us. It’ll do them both.’

Jamal licked his lips nervously. ‘You trust him?’

Sarim nodded. ‘With my life,’ he said. ‘Not that I’m afraid to lose it.’

‘How can he be so sure we won’t be caught?’ Jamal asked. ‘There were cameras everywhere in that station. I know we look different to usual, but . . .’

A pause.

‘You scared to do it, Jamal?’ Sarim asked. There was an edge to his voice. ‘You not what we thought you were?’

Jamal looked uncertain. He didn’t reply.

Sarim grabbed his upper arm. With his free hand, he pointed up into the sky. ‘Look,’ he shouted. ‘Look up there. Tell me what you see.’

With a perplexed expression, Jamal looked up. He blinked as the rain fell directly on to his face.

‘What do you see?’ Sarim insisted.

‘I . . . I don’t know,’ Jamal said. ‘Nothing . . . rain . . . and clouds.’

Sarim nodded fiercely. ‘Clouds,’ he said. ‘That’s right. Do you like clouds? You like it when it’s cloudy?’

Jamal shook his head.

‘You prefer the sun, yes?’

‘Of course.’

Sarim made a soft hissing sound. ‘In your country – in Pakistan,
your
country – they pray for clouds. They
pray
for them. Do you know why?’

Once more, Jamal shook his head.

‘Because when there are clouds, the drones do not come.’

A moment of silence.

‘They think they are our judge, our jury and our executioner, these British and Americans.’ Sarim was loud now, but his voice was almost drowned out by the downpour. ‘They think they can kill our innocent women and children, and that we will be too weak to fight back. Well,
are
you, Jamal?
Are
you too weak to fight back?’

Jamal drew a deep breath. ‘I’m not weak,’ he said. ‘Innit?’ His sopping wet face frowned, and the hand that held the phone trembled.

‘Then
do
it!’ Sarim shouted. ‘
Now
. The idiot won’t wait forever, and if the bags are unattended someone will raise the alarm.’

Jamal gritted his teeth. His finger hovered above the ‘1’ button on the phone.

‘
Do it!
’

Jamal pressed his thumb on to the button, and held it down.

Alfie knew nothing of the explosion.

He didn’t hear the noise, like thunder, that echoed in the vaults of Paddington station, and which was audible in the West End, and Shepherd’s Bush, and at the top of Primose Hill, and anywhere else within a two-mile radius.

He didn’t hear the shattering of the train windows, or the metallic drilling of shrapnel peppering its chassis.

Or the sound of Coach G crunching in on itself from the violent shock wave, turning into a hot, twisted coffin that crushed everybody inside.

Or the buckling of a second train that was pulling into the opposite platform at the moment of the explosion.

He didn’t hear the strange, ghostly silence that lasted for only a few seconds.

Or the screams that followed.

Some were screams of pain. Some were screams of horror. The horror that only someone who has witnessed such atrocities can know. The horror of men and women forced to look upon those parts of the human body that nobody should ever see. The horror of mothers cradling their dead children.

And Alfie, of course, didn’t see these atrocities. He didn’t see the body parts, grotesquely separated and mutilated, that flew to the concourse, and as high as the roof, and up the stairs at the far end of one platform that led to the tube station. He didn’t see the blood that coagulated with hot dust and sprayed like thick paint over concrete and iron and mangled human bodies. He didn’t see the corpses, some of them a full hundred metres away, that had been killed by shock waves if not by debris. He didn’t see the faces, their skin burned away to reveal damaged networks of capillaries. Or the shower of dead birds that rained down from their roosting places in the ceiling and spattered as they hit solid ground. Or the rain that leaked in from the devastated ceiling, creating pools of watery, pink-red blood all over the platforms.

Alfie saw none of this. At the moment of the explosion, he had been waiting patiently for his friends, who had promised him such a lovely weekend away, and whom he had trusted implicitly, just as he trusted anybody who showed him the slightest kindness. Like good friends should, he had been clutching their suitcases, quite unaware that each one contained twenty-five kilos of military-grade explosive, and plastic bags filled to bursting with hard, anodised five-inch nails.

And as he was at the very centre of the explosion, he had of course been the first to die.

Part One

Hammerstone

One

South London. Monday. 23.00hrs

‘What the fuck do they think we are?’ Spud Glover muttered. ‘Twenty-four-hour locksmiths?’

Danny Black grunted, then looked left and right up Horseferry Mews. The name made this little side street – a hundred metres end to end and lined with railway arches – sound a lot posher than it actually was. Some of the arches were cavernous, full of litter, plastered with fat, colourful graffiti, and stinking of piss. Others had been turned into lock-ups and mechanics’ workshops. Danny and Spud were standing alongside the central arch. The frontage was painted grey, with a red roll-top grate for vehicles to get in and out, and a steel door to one side. Both locked. The adjacent arches were empty, with no frontage. Over the sound of the hammering rain, Danny could hear larger drops echoing as they fell from the top of the arch on the right to the concrete floor. Between the two arches was a corroded metal downpipe reaching all the way to the ground from the railway above. The torrential rain was too much for it. Water sluiced down its sides, and belched up from the grate at its mouth.

Danny was as soaked as the drainpipe, and pissed off. Ordinarily, theirs was a life of aircraft carriers, forward operating bases and active missions behind enemy lines. But this? This was donkey work. He and Spud had been entrusted with nothing else since they got back from Syria six months previously.

Their two Regiment mates, Ripley and Barker, were at either end of the street. Danny could just make out the glowing end of Ripley’s cigarette as his mate leaned against the ten-foot-high wall, topped with razor wire, that faced the railway arches. If you saw Ripley round Hereford, he’d probably be wearing a leather biker’s jacket. Motorbikes were his obsession. He owned, what, six or seven of them? But his biker’s jacket would be no good for tonight. It couldn’t conceal a rifle. Neither Ripley nor Barker showed any sign of the HK416s secreted under their Barbours and attached to their shoulders by means of a short length of bungee rope. But they only needed to open up their coats and extend their right arms to be as heavily armed as anyone in London – and in the wake of the Paddington bomb that was saying something.

Spud and Danny were less heavily armed. Their jeans and North Face jackets covered the Sigs holstered at their waist. Spud wore night-vision goggles propped up on his forehead. No body armour for either of them, though. They’d discussed it back in Hereford, and agreed that it wasn’t necessary. This was Lewisham, not Lagos. Nobody expected a job like this to go noisy, and there wasn’t a single self-respecting member of the Regiment who actively
chose
to strap on plate hangers if they didn’t have to.

‘I said, who do they think we
are
?’ Spud repeated. ‘Twenty-four . . .’

‘They’re just a bunch of geeks,’ Danny interrupted. ‘Open the frickin’ door and we can get out of here.’

Between Danny and Ripley, about thirty-five metres from Danny’s own position, was an old grey Bedford van with a dent on the nearside wing. It was parked up on the other side of the road opposite the arches. All lights off, nobody behind the wheel. But in the back, hidden from view, was a police tech unit. As soon as Spud had broken into the lock-up and given them the all-clear, the tech unit would swarm in and take detailed photos of everything inside. Then they’d go away and make a replica of something – a lamp, an old oil can, whatever they could find – doctored with surveillance equipment. Which meant it was odds on they’d all be doing this again in a couple of nights’ time, when the police could replace the chosen object with their specially altered one.

‘I don’t care if they’ve got Stephen fucking Hawking hiding back there,’ Spud said. ‘I’m missing a piss-up at Karen Macshane’s place thanks to a bunch of plods scared of their own shadows.’

‘Shame,’ Danny said distractedly.

Spud turned to look at him. ‘Shame?’ he asked. ‘
Shame?
She sent me a selfie the other day.
With her tits out!
She’s
gagging
for it . . .’