Nine Lives (23 page)
‘Jesus Christ. That’s the second biggest building in the UK,’ said Deakins.
Cobb nodded.
‘Yes, it is. And unfortunately for us, the business community doesn’t care that it’s a public holiday. We estimate there are just over eight thousand people inside, spread over all floors, and most of the shops on the lower levels are open too.’
He looked at Mac.
‘The evacuation has already begun. CO19 and Bomb Disposal have been deployed over there. But I just spoke to the Prime Minister and he asked that you get down there too.’
There was a pause.
The room was silent as each man considered the sheer scale of the task ahead.
‘How many floors in the building, sir?’ asked Fox.
‘Fifty,’ said Mac. ‘Each one is twenty-eight thousand square feet.
‘Do they know what floor he got off?’ Archer asked.
‘Security is checking the CCTV as we speak. There aren’t any cameras in the stairwell, so he might have stepped out of the lift and moved to a different level.’
There was an uneasy murmur in the room.
‘We could search all week and not find this thing. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack,’ said Deakins.
‘More like a needle in an entire hayfield,’ added Chalky.
Cobb nodded. ‘I know. I’m sorry. But we have to try. Now it could be nothing. Just a hoax. But judging by yesterday’s events, I think we all know what it potentially could be.’
‘If it’s a bomb, the building could blow at any minute,’ said Fox.
Silence.
The room was still. Any positivity had instantly vanished.
Cobb looked at his men.
‘You need to get down there, lads,’ he said, quietly. ‘And make every second count.’
After his arrest on the platform inside the Underground station, Number Four had been taken back upstairs and hauled over to Limehouse Police Station, located nearby by the docks. Officers there had processed the suspect through to holding and he’d been dumped in an interrogation room, alone. Word had spread from a security guard at Canary Wharf that he’d left a package somewhere inside One Canada Square; they were now preparing to ask him what and where it was.
A CID detective stood outside the interrogation cell watching the arrested terrorist closely. His name was Davis. He’d been a Detective Inspector for twelve years and was also the father of a teenage son who’d been at the Emirates stadium the night before. The boy had been in the opposite stand to the explosion and had thus escaped unscathed, but Davis felt his knuckles whiten with fury as he stared through the window at the suspect.
The guy was slumped in his chair, navel-gazing. He was still dressed in the delivery uniform, his hands now cuffed in front of him, resting on his lap.
Davis watched him for a moment.
Time for a little payback.
Before he entered the room, the detective turned and moved through a side door and into the reception area. A younger detective was behind the desk, manning the post.
‘Did you make the call?’ Davis asked.
The man nodded. ‘Yes, sir. They’ve started evacuating the building. EOD and counter-terrorist teams are on their way over there.’
‘Good.’ Davis paused. ‘Now let’s go and see what our friend’s been up to this morning.’
He turned and walked back into the station. He approached the door to the interrogation cell, taking a look inside as he reached for the keys to the door in his pocket.
But the terrorist wasn’t in the chair anymore.
He was lying on the floor, blood pumping from his severed jugular. It was spilling out of him like a ruptured pipe leak.
Davis saw a small work-knife spilled to the floor, fallen from his hand.
The suspect was spasming and shivering on the floor as his blood pooled around him.
‘Oh shit!’
Davis fumbled into his pocket for the keys, staring at the terrorist bleeding to death inside the cell.
The detective next door had heard Davis shout and he ran in from the front desk, catching sight of the wounded man through the glass.
Davis eventually managed to get the key in the lock and twisting it open, the two men ran inside towards the terrorist. He was jerking and gasping like a fish on dry land, lying in a vast pool of blood as his heart pumped it out relentlessly.
Without hesitation, Davis pulled off his suit jacket and clamped it to the man’s neck, trying to staunch the bleeding. But it wasn’t working; the blood just kept coming. Davis and the other detective were covered in it as they knelt beside the man.
Davis snapped his attention down to the small knife lying in the blood. The blade was only an inch long, but that’s all the guy had needed.
‘Where the hell did that thing come from!’
Given the quiet Sunday morning streets, the three ARU police cars made it down to the Wharf in just under fifteen minutes. They pulled to a halt in the Canada Square plaza, the huge building looming above them like a giant monolith. Climbing out of the vehicles, each man slammed his door and shielded his eyes from the sunlight as he gazed up.
The building seemed to go on forever.
Archer stood side-by-side with Porter and Chalky, the three of them looking up in silence, seeing first-hand the enormity of their task.
When Cobb had told them it was this particular structure, Archer had felt his stomach turn. Standing over seven hundred and seventy feet tall, the building housed fifty floors and thousands upon thousands of people who moved in and out of the doors daily. It served as the central hub for London’s hectic trading and financial district. In photographs, the place had always seemed big, its iconic pyramid roof now a familiar part of the London skyline.
Up close, it was enormous.
Deakins was right.
They could search inside for a week and not find anything.
Mac barked an order and the men brought their attention back to the plaza in front of them. Up ahead, scores of people were streaming out of the large entrance to the building. Various vehicles had been parked in the square, most of them street police, their lights flashing. To the right, Archer saw a black van with EOD printed on the side, a man standing beside it talking into a radio. Bomb disposal were already here, which was good. Past the black van, he saw a cluster of other Ford 4x4s, which looked as if CO19, the city’s other main counter-terrorist team, had also arrived.
As one, the ten task force officers made their way past the evacuees flooding the plaza as they headed towards the entrance and the lobby. Shapira and Rivers remained standing by the ARU cars, both staring up at the building. They’d both played a major and crucial part in events yesterday, but this was a job for the task force.
As the ten-man team moved into the lobby, Archer saw the other counter-terrorist unit standing to the left. Much like the ARU, CO19 were the London Metropolitan police’s equivalent of an American SWAT team. The officers were dressed in much the same clothing as the ARU squad, save for the fact that each of them carried an AR15 Carbine assault rifle instead of the ARU MP5. As they arrived to stand side by side, both teams nodded to each other. Their sergeant stepped forward, a big, barrel chested guy with a sandy moustache. Approaching Mac, the two of them shook hands quickly and the other man updated him on the situation.
‘We found him on the surveillance cameras,’ the man said with a gruff voice. ‘He got off on 30. But he could have used the stairs; we’re not sure. Some genius didn’t put any cameras in the stairwell.’
‘Yeah, we heard.’ Mac said.
‘My lads can start on 30 and work our way down. Can your boys work up?’
Mac nodded. Not wasting a second, the burly CO19 sergeant turned back to his men.
‘
Listen up!’
he called.
A silence had already fallen. The ARU guys were listening intently too.
‘Here's the situation, lads. As we know, a terrorist suspect was seen leaving this building roughly an hour ago,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘The CCTV is telling us that he got off on the 30
th
floor, carrying a large brown package that he didn’t bring back down with him. Unfortunately, he could have used the stairs so we’re looking at a radius of probably ten floors each way. We’re going to sweep them all, one by one. Be quick, but be thorough. You see something, call it in and let EOD take over.’
He jabbed his thumb across the lobby towards the main reception desk. Archer saw two members of the EOD, climbing into green blast suits. He recognised them as two of the guys from the shopping centre the night before. The burly CO19 leader continued.
‘My team, we'll start on 30 and work our way down, floor by floor. Sergeant McGuire and the ARU squad are going to work their way up.’
‘Any word from the suspect?’ asked one of the CO19 officers.
The man with the moustache shook his head. ‘He’s dead.’
There was a moment’s pause.
Everyone frowned, confused.
‘He cut his own throat inside a cell at Limehouse,’ the man explained. ‘He must have had a knife or something that they missed when they frisked him. And that means we’re going to have to do this ourselves, lads. Whatever this thing is, it could very well be a shitload of explosives, possibly on a timer. So all of you, move quickly, be thorough and just find the bloody thing. Let’s move.’
He turned immediately, jogging across the marble floor towards the lifts. His men followed immediately behind. Mac turned to the ARU squad.
‘First team, with me to 31,’ he ordered. ‘Deakins, take Second Squad to 32.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the task force said in unison, and together, the group of men headed for the lifts.
Across the city Dominick Farha was staring at the grass by his feet, wondering both what to do and also how the hell he’d ended up back in London.
He was in a small clearing, surrounded by pine-trees and leaning against the side of a small helicopter that had brought him here. He was thinking about the task ahead of him. No matter how many times and different ways he looked at it, the same undeniable fact kept on presenting itself.
I need a gun.
After meeting his uncle in the Parisian café and somehow managing to get out of there alive, Dominick had climbed into the back of the car that was waiting outside on the street. It had taken him through the streets of Paris on a journey that had left him completely clueless, no idea where the hell he was. He’d been tense the whole trip. Half of him suspected it was a trap and there would be an unpleasant final surprise waiting for him whenever or wherever they stopped.
They’d arrived in a small field, gated off from the public; the driver had pulled up alongside a small white helicopter parked in the field.
Once Dominick had stepped out, the car immediately turned around and sped off into the night. He saw a small, wiry man standing by the helicopter and the rear door to the vessel was open.
The guy saw Dominick standing there and without a word, turned his back, and starting climbing into the front seat.
Henry had mentioned these men were reliable and that they worked for an associate. They certainly moved like drug-runners. Neither the pilot nor the man who’d brought him here hung around for a second longer than necessary.
Dominick had glanced behind him cautiously and slowly approached the helicopter. He still wasn’t sure if this was a trap. He didn’t want to turn his back and suddenly get jabbed with an autojet syringe, a pistol-shaped injection weapon that Henry used to sedate his victims.
But no-one was lying in wait. He’d approached the helicopter and climbed in. The pilot wasn’t wasting any time, the rotors were starting to spin, gathering speed, the engine whining as it warmed up. They’d been in the air in less than five minutes and heading back towards London.
The whole journey had taken around ninety minutes. Farha had watched in silence from the back seat as the inky waters of the Channel glinted dully below them in the moonlight, on his guard the entire time.
He didn’t fancy having a gun pulled on him and being told to jump out.
But they’d made it to London around 1am UK time. Dominick was wondering if his man had succeeded at Trafalgar Square, but he had no way of finding out seeing as he’d ditched his mobile phone a few days ago after arranging his escape with Faris.
The helicopter had landed in an empty field under cover of darkness. The pilot had shown great skill. He’d navigated the vessel down in a small clearing, surrounded by a cluster of tall pine trees, the perfect place to lay low.
And if Dominick got a move on, they wouldn’t be there for long.
This whole trip had left a bitter taste in Farha’s mouth. He’d spent a year almost to the minute hatching a plan to get the hell out of this country, but he’d been away for less than an hour then immediately sent back. It was almost laughable. If it had been any other person on the planet telling him to do this Farha would have spat in his face. But his uncle was the one man who could make him do it; hell, he could make him do whatever he wanted.
After the helicopter had landed, Farha had debated whether to make a move there and then in the darkness, or wait until morning and hatch a plan. The nervous tension of the day had hit him like a freight train and he realised he was more tired than he thought. He’d nodded off in the back of the vessel and had woken up again after the sun had come up.
He hadn’t gone anywhere yet though.
If this whole thing was going to work, he needed to plan his next few moves carefully.
He checked his watch. It was coming up to midday, UK time. The sun filtered in through the trees which was bad. The good weather meant there would be more people on the street, not indoors as there would be during inclement weather. He needed to lay low; his face was all over the news channels and papers and he was the most wanted man in Europe right now.
And Henry’s proposition was a risky one. More than risky; potentially suicidal. It could either be incredibly hard or surprisingly easy. He had to be careful.
And he needed a weapon.
Some sort of gun would be perfect. Anything would do at this point. He cursed. If he had more time and access to weaponry, the job would be a cinch. He could do the deed from a distance and be out of the country before anyone realised what had happened.
But where can I get one
? He couldn’t risk using a phone, or using one of his old contacts. He couldn’t trust anyone.
A light bulb suddenly turned on in his head; he turned to the pilot.
‘Does your boss have a safe-house here? Any weapons?’
By the front of the vessel, the pilot shook his head as he read a paper.
‘Don’t even bother. I’m not taking you anywhere else. My job was to get you here. If you don’t get going soon, I’ll go ahead and leave without you. I’m going to leave to refuel in ten minutes anyway. If you’re not back by sundown, I’m off.’
Farha felt his temper start to rise.
But he couldn’t react. This guy was the only way he was getting out of the country again.
He thought for a moment, searching for another solution.
‘You got a toolkit?’ he asked.
The guy nodded, not looking up from the paper. ‘Under the front seat.’
Farha moved to the pilot’s door, opening it, and checked under the pilot’s seat. Sure enough, there was a red toolkit there, about the size of a large shoebox.
Pulling it out, Farha put it on the pilot’s seat and opened the box. It was mostly full of stuff he couldn’t use. A map, two flares, some small screwdrivers. But he did find something that could work.
He pulled it out, examining it in his hands.
It was a jack-knife.
He pushed the switch, and the blade slid out. He tested the edge with the tip of his finger. It was as sharp as a razorblade.
Suddenly, he felt a little bit better.
He really needed a gun.
But a knife would do.
