Sleeper Cell (27 page)

‘No one goes in or out. Sorry.’

‘I’ve got clearance. Check you records.’

‘No one goes in or out.’

‘Look. I don’t have time to debate this with you. Check your records, then get out of my way.’

‘Fine.’ He radioed for assistance and a few seconds later the back door of the blacked-out van opened.

‘DS Reid, this way please,’ a man in civilian clothes said.

She stepped up into the van and the officer motioned for her to sit. The van was packed with surveillance equipment. Eight high definition screens showed CCTV feeds from various points around the house; other screens streamed data from infra-red and tremble sensors, audio monitors and, of course, the SHIELD perimeter system.

‘Look into the camera, DS Reid,’ the officer said. She leaned forwards and stared into the light, hoping that Phillip had managed to hack into whatever was driving this system.

‘OK, you’re good to go,’ the man said. ‘Wish they’d bother to tell us about these last-minute changes. So why’s CTC going inside?’

‘Just a precaution. Best to mix things up a bit, keep the element of surprise. You’ve not seen or heard anything out of the ordinary?’

‘Nothing. Minor blip on the fence system a few minutes ago, but base think it was just a switching error. There’s no way anyone could have got in in such a short down-time.’

‘And you’re certain there’s no other way in?’

‘There’s some concern about air security, but we’ve got jets on stand-by. Advantage of this place is that it’s on the edge of one of the busiest airspaces on the planet. Every inch of the sky is monitored.’

‘Good. Thank you.’

This time the officers at the door let her pass. She stepped into a small internal guard-room where she was once again invited to look into the searching eye of a retinal scanner.

An internal door clicked open automatically, and Leila stepped into the cool gloom of Mapleton House. She checked her watch.

Eight fifty-seven. The delegates were at dinner.

And they were sitting ducks.

Ten men emerged into the little white room at the end of Mapleton House’s cellar.

Each carried a small rucksack containing a vacuum-

sealed change of clothes and the weapons necessary for the operation. They quickly changed into clean black jeans and black t-shirt over ultra-lightweight liquid armour vests. C-4 charges, detonators and ammunition magazines were already loaded into custom-made webbing.

Seven of them carried Jericho polymer pistols with sixteen shot magazines. Three, including their leader, Eben Kriel, carried small CZW9 sub machine guns. Although little more effective than the pistols, they were impressive to look at. They also made a hell of a lot of noise, and that could be just as effective as raw fire power in close quarter battle. They did not carry a great deal of ammunition as most of the necessary disabling of security would be performed using their Entourage automatic knives. Ninety per cent of their training was in hand-to-hand combat. Guns were only for when things went bad.

Each was also equipped with a tiny two-way earpiece, loaded with five grams of high explosive. These could be remotely detonated or, in the event of live capture, would be activated manually, killing the agent and making any kind of facial or dental recognition impossible. Black Eagle Executive routinely falsified the DNA records of all field-operatives at the time of recruitment.

The final piece of equipment each carried was a simple black balaclava. No armour, no protection. Just anonymity and intimidation.

They knew the layout of Mapleton House as well as they knew their own homes. Gaining access to the ground floor would be impossible through the cellar and kitchens, so they shinned up the narrow shaft of the dumb waiter one at a time and fanned out into the building to their pre-arranged positions. The gang would be greatly out-numbered, but they had surprise on their side.

The grandfather clock in the main entrance hall chimed nine. Kriel checked his watch. The clock was thirty seconds fast.

He moved out of the cover of the servants’ corridor and stood with two of his men outside the wide oak door to the dining room. He attached a thirty gram shaped C-4 charge to the door lock and stepped back.

At precisely nine o’clock he detonated the charge. A six inch hole appeared in the door. He turned the lock and kicked it open, stepping into the room with his men close behind. So far there had been no shots fired anywhere in the house, but that would change very quickly now that the door had been blown.

One of his men ran across to the main door into the hall and jammed the locking mechanism. Fists pounded on the wood. The agents outside would be through in seconds.

‘Come with us, now,’ Kriel ordered the assembled guests. There were nine of them; The three Prime Ministers – Richard Morgan, Aaron David and Abu Queria – plus two close aides for each. Six men and three women in total. For a moment no one moved.

‘
Now
,’ he repeated.

‘What is this?’ Richard Morgan said.

‘This is your peace conference. So we need to move you to the conference room, right now. Go!’ He hauled Aaron David to his feet and shoved him towards the door at the back of the room.

The main door from the reception hall burst open. Kriel let off a short burst of fire from his sub-machine gun and the two security officers fell back. He covered the door while his men herded the delegates through into the servants’ corridor.

A hand appeared and tossed in a flash-bang grenade. Kriel got a single shot off before the hand withdrew. Flash-bangs are designed to disorientate hostiles and give rescue forces the upper hand for the few crucial seconds necessary to change the balance of power. This time it didn’t work. All Black Eagle field operatives were trained to ignore these grenades the hard way: Kriel had, on numerous occasions, spent an hour at a time locked in a darkened hangar with his fellow operatives lobbing grenades at him randomly. They don’t hurt, and once the subconscious mind understands this, they lose most of their usefulness. Kriel ran, head down, for the exit door even as the MI5 men outside were steadying themselves for an assault.

By the time he was in the corridor the last of the delegates was being pushed into the conference room. He dashed the few yards along the corridor and in behind them. His second-in-command was already at the door into the main hall, securing it with the twelve-point hardened steel locking bolts designed to keep anyone from breaking into the room. No one had considered that one day those who were being kept out might be exactly the people they most wanted inside.

Kriel locked the door to the servants’ corridor. This too had been designed to be impenetrable.

Less than ninety seconds after blowing the first door, the nine delegates and three hostage-takers were sealed in the conference room; a room designed to be impervious to everything from radio signals to rocket propelled grenades.

‘Sit,’ Kriel said. A volley of semi-automatic fire echoed around the building above them.

‘You’re trapped in here,’ Morgan said. ‘There’s no way out. Let these people go now and we can do a deal.’

‘Sit down.’ The others sat around the conference table. Morgan did not move. Kriel raised his hand to push him to the table but Morgan grabbed his wrist.

‘I need to look into the eyes of the bastard who did this,’ he said. ‘See what kind of man you really are.’

‘I’m just like you, Prime Minister. I’m doing my job.’

‘My job doesn’t involve the deaths of innocents.’ The tip of the submachine gun was lightly pressing against his chin and he let go of Kriel’s wrist. ‘You know my government won’t negotiate with you. You’ve got nowhere to go.’

‘Sit down, Mr Morgan. We have no intention of negotiating with your government. Your part in this is over.’

‘What is this? What do you want?’ Abu Queria said.

‘You will shortly make a phone call, Prime Minister Queria. If our demands are met, you will all be released unharmed. If not, everyone in this room will die.’

Kriel took an iPad Mini from his rucksack and plugged it into one of the ports on the desk. In this steel- and lead-lined room, radio communication was impossible. The land-line phones would work, but he needed a method of communicating with his own men on the outside, and the computer could send encrypted spoken commands directly to each of them as well as audio and visuals to whoever was monitoring the line. By now, that would be half the UK security services.

His first message was to ensure that the computer link was not severed.

‘Any interruption on this line,’ he said, addressing the iPad’s camera, ‘will be met with the immediate execution of all the hostages. This will be our main means of communication.’

There was no response, but he’d been heard.

While Kriel checked in with his men on the outside, his two fellow-operatives unpacked equipment. Each carried several narrow plastic strips about eighteen inches long, with a small black bump in the centre. These were looped around the necks of each of the hostages and secured with zip ties at the back. One then took a small device out of his webbing and walked to the front of the room. He placed it on the floor, flicked a switch and rested his left foot on it.

‘You are wearing rings of det-cord,’ he said. ‘The trigger in under my foot. If pressure is released, either through a rescue attempt or through resistance on the part of any one of you, the cords with detonate. You will be decapitated immediately.’

Kriel established that three of his men were dead. The remaining four had disabled nine of the in-house security officers and had begun to sweep the building. He triggered the tiny PX charges in the downed operatives’ earpieces and a series of dull explosions could be heard from distant parts of the house.

There was a heavy thump on the main door.

Kriel propped the iPad up, angling the camera towards an empty chair at the head of the table.

‘You,’ he said, addressing one of Queria’s aides, ‘sit there.’ He motioned the woman to take the empty seat.

He stood behind her and spoke to the camera.

‘I am aware that you are trying to rescue your hostages, and we would expect nothing less. However, know that no one will be alive should you manage to breach the room’s security perimeter.’

There was another bang on the door. It sounded as if something heavy – probably one of the marble statues that stood in the entrance hall – was being used as a battering ram.

‘I need you to clear all your operatives from the building. I have men patrolling the corridors and they will kill anyone they find. The hostages will be released when we have finished here, so any attempt at rescue will only be bad for you.’

Again something heavy smashed against the door. It barely moved under the impact.

‘Back your men away from the room,’ Kriel said, still addressing the camera. He raised his sub-machine gun just above the woman’s head and pointed it at her. ‘Clear the building, now.’

There was another bang on the door.

Kriel squeezed the trigger and a single bullet passed through the woman’s head and slammed into the table in front of her. She wavered for a moment then fell face-down onto the wood.

‘Clear the building.’

Leila stepped into the stone corridor beyond the guard room just as the deep boom of the first C-4 charge shook the walls. Someone shouted; feet pounded along the corridor above.

She backed up and addressed the two guards.

‘Call in an emergency,’ she said, ‘but don’t let anyone else into the building.’ There was a crackle of automatic gunfire. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Yes. What the hell’s going on?’

‘I don’t know. I’m going in. Log me out of the system: make it look like I left.’

‘What…?’

‘Get me off the internal logs! If they don’t know I’m in the building, they won’t be looking. And keep everyone else out until we know what we’ve got here. Move!’

She shut the door and ran along the still-deserted corridor to the kitchens.

Inside, six of the caterers were still working. They had obviously not heard a thing over the noise of the washers and the radio.

‘You need to leave, right now,’ she said. ‘Go to the back door. Quickly!’ She flashed her ID at them and began to push them out into the corridor.

Single shots, from two different types of handgun. The caterers began to run. Over the next ninety seconds there was sporadic gunfire and three percussive thumps as small high-explosive charges detonated.

There was then a single, muffled shot from the front of the building.

Checking the corridors were clear and that there was no one on the stairs, she ran up to the top floor. For now any hostiles in the building would be engaged with security. She had a brief window to find a base to plan her next move.

The top floor was deserted. All the doors were open. These small ex-servants’ rooms had been converted to administrative use. Some were little more than store-cupboards; the larger ones were offices. Leila chose one with a window that overlooked the front drive and slipped in.

She did not dare risk closing the door. A large partners’ desk stood at ninety degrees to the door and would provide her with good cover. She crawled under it and dialled Lawrence’s private cell. It rang for what seemed an eternity before he picked up.

‘Hello? Who’s this?’

‘Reid,’ she whispered.

‘Who?’

There was a series of small explosions on the floors below her. Four, she counted – quick succession, small, high-explosive charges.

‘It’s Leila Reid,’ she whispered. ‘Listen. I don’t have long. I’m inside Mapleton House.’

‘You’re what?’

‘You wouldn’t get me in, so I did it myself. This was always going to be the target.’

‘Leila, hold the line, I’m going through to the briefing room. They need to hear this.’

‘No! Not until I know what’s going on.’

‘You have no idea?’

‘No. There were shots when I arrived then all hell broke loose. I’m on the top floor.’

‘The delegates and six of their aides are being held in the conference room. One has been killed. Our people have been neutralised or forced out of the building. Three minutes ago we lost the feed from the Goshawk system, so we’re completely blind.’