Street Soldier (26 page)

‘I believe you know these two gentlemen?’

‘Copper. Matt,’ Sean said with a nod. He wanted to say more. He wanted to say,
What the fuck do you think you’re doing getting involved in this bullshit?
and
Are you fucking mental?
and lots of other stuff too. He wanted to lay into them, beat the crap out of them, kick them out of the unit and all the way back to the petty crime that kept them occupied back on their own turf.

‘Surprise, hey, Seany?’ said Copper, and gave him a big-man hug that almost cracked a rib.

Matt gave him a fist bump. Sean nodded, still fighting the urge to punch their faces for being such tossers.

‘If Gaz could see us now, eh?’ Matt murmured with a wink, and Sean had to stuff his fists into his pockets so that the urge to use them didn’t overwhelm him.

‘Yeah,’ he managed to say.

‘Good, good,’ said Rich. ‘Shall we get on?’

‘Sure,’ Sean said. ‘Tell us about the big one.’

Rich cocked an eyebrow at him and he froze inside, keeping the smile plastered on his face. Oh, shit, had that been too eager? Had he aroused suspicions?

‘All in good time.’ Rich waved a hand over to one corner of the unit. There was a screen there, and a pile of DVDs, and some bean bags. ‘For the moment – food
will be arriving shortly and there is enough there to keep you gentlemen entertained for the night. You will be sleeping here. Tomorrow is, as Mr Harker puts it, the big one.’

‘Yeah, but what is it?’ Matt asked. Now he was the recipient of the cocked eyebrow.

‘It is something that will cause terror and chaos stretching far beyond London itself. This will be world news. The media frenzy will be enormous. People will at last realize that they are not safe at home. They will demand changes. I’m not talking about a revolution – nothing so grand. Just sensible laws to protect law-abiding folk and suppress undesirables. A little less democracy and considerably more investment in our armed forces. Soldiers on the streets to protect us.’

‘Hey, Sean,’ Matt said, ‘you might get to be a useful member of society after all!’ He and Copper high-fived each other.

Why?
Sean wanted to shake them and scream the question in their faces, though he could already have a go at guessing the answers. Heaton – for the profit and for himself, like he had just said. Copper – because he was messed up and this was messed up, and people who weren’t him would suffer and die. But Matt? Matt had always had a calmer head than Copper. Copper must have recruited him and made him think that there was
something in it for the Guyz. In the world that Rich wanted to create, the Guyz could fly high.

‘Before we go any further,’ Rich said, ‘I believe Mr Harker has a phone call to make?’

Suddenly it was like the air conditioning had come on, full blast. Sean felt the blood drain from his face and the moisture from his mouth.

Fuckity-fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck
. . .

‘I do?’ he whispered. He barely made any sound, and he had to cough and force volume out of his throat for another try. ‘I do?’

He was conscious of five pairs of eyes all trained on him like lasers. How did they know about the phone? And if they knew, how was he still alive?

‘You will all be spending the night here,’ Rich said, as though explaining something to a child. ‘You can’t just go AWOL from the army – they will ask questions. Corporal Heaton has already booked a day’s leave for tomorrow, on my instructions. But you need to call the adjutant and tell him that your mother has been taken ill, so you need to request emergency leave.’

The sheer gush of relief made Sean’s heart thump so loudly that he wondered no one could hear it. It was backed up by an equally strong surge of revulsion at the thought of spending the night with these crazies. But there was nothing he could do about it. MI5 wouldn’t
pick this lot up until they absolutely knew what was going down. Until that happened, he was still in it.

‘Uh. Yeah.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’ll make the call now.’ He pulled away, stepped out of the office and into the dim interior of the unit. Took two or three deep breaths. The air tasted of plastic and petrol, but it still seemed cleaner than what he’d been breathing.

He sensed rather than heard a noise behind him. Malcolm stood in the doorway, watching. He silently extended a single finger and pointed to where Sean was standing. It was an obvious message that he was to go no further.

So Sean pulled out the spooks’ phone and dialled, with a friendly smile at his watcher. It rang twice, and then he heard the unmistakable voice of Sergeant Adams on the other end.

‘Yes?’

‘Uh. Hi. This is Private Harker.’ Sean rattled off his army number, and gave Malcolm another smile. ‘I need to speak to the adjutant’s office. It’s an emergency . . .’

Chapter 30

It was a long, long night spent on a mat on the warehouse floor. Sleep wouldn’t have been easy even if Sean hadn’t been surrounded by murderers who wouldn’t think twice about offing him if they knew the truth. There was still speculation about what they were doing here – though Sean had twigged one thing. Four vans, four of them. That had to mean something.

Rich had disappeared before they turned in, and Sean actually found himself wishing he hadn’t. His absence meant that Malcolm was in charge.

But sleep did come, and it came so deeply that when they were kicked out of bed at 05:30, all Sean really wanted to do was stay in his sleeping bag – sleep in and pretend that none of this was happening.

Except that he couldn’t. They all stirred blearily and stumbled into life, knocking back coffee and pizza which Malcolm provided. And far too soon they were lining up
beside the vans, awaiting instructions. Sean had guessed right – they were drivers.

Malcolm handed out four plastic envelopes: Sean, then Copper, Matt and Heaton. Each one had a CD in it.

‘These are your orders,’ he said. ‘You will each take one of these vans. Your destinations are in the satnavs – just follow directions. Play your CD when you are in your van. Stick to the schedule. Arrive when you’ve been told to arrive, leave by the route you’re given.’

With nothing left to say, Sean gave a nod to the others, then climbed into one of the waiting vans. He couldn’t see whatever was in the back as it was blocked off from the driving compartment.

Time to go. Malcolm thumbed a button on the warehouse wall that made the shutter rise up to reveal the early sun of a September morning. Sean fired up his engine and, one by one, the vans began to roll out. Sean was third. He gave the last driver, Heaton, a nod, and put the vehicle into gear.

The little convoy trundled slowly off the industrial estate, picking up speed until they could pull onto the main road. The van handled slowly and heavily. Whatever was in the back weighed a lot.

‘OK,’ Sean said loudly, for the benefit of the wire he was wearing. ‘Playing the CD now.’ He pushed it into
the slot on the dashboard and waited. A moment later, an artificial-sounding voice filled the cab. Sean guessed the instructions had been typed into a computer’s voice synthesizer. There was nothing here that would link it to Rich.

‘
Your satnav is taking you to the southern entrance of the Blackwall Tunnel. Arrive at 06:55. Enter the tunnel. Halfway along, at the deepest point, pull the van over across both lanes to block the traffic flow. Abandon the van and proceed northward on foot. The van will explode at 07:00 hours.
’

Sean’s eyes went wide. There was a
bomb
in the back? He had been assuming it would be another Monty job. Suddenly he fancied he could feel its malevolent presence lurking behind the bulkhead. The van hit a slight bump in the road and he stifled a scream.

And, of course, Sean thought, remembering what MI5 had told him, it would all be pinned on non-existent IS supporters.

The voice was continuing:

‘
In the meantime, please note that the device is attached to a GPS tracking mechanism. If this vehicle diverts from the intended route, it will explode. I apologize for this necessary precaution. I look forward to seeing you again, and to thanking you in person.
’

Well, fuck all this – this was right off his pay grade.
Adams and MI5 would have heard all that on the wire, but they couldn’t talk back to him. Sean grabbed the spooks’ phone and dialled, then drove single-handed with it pressed to his ear.

Adams answered almost at once.

‘You’d best have a plan, Sergeant,’ Sean said, ‘because I’m all out of ideas.’

The screen of the satnav showed him the route he was taking. At the moment he was crawling along steadily towards the A2 south circular. ETA at the tunnel now just under forty minutes.

‘We’re working on it.’ A pause, with murmured voices in the background. Adams was not alone. Sean tried to imagine him sitting with the spooks, who were channelling all that precious information where it needed to go. ‘Keep going. Please confirm that there was no hint of where the targets for the other vans are.’

‘Nope. No idea.’

‘OK. Each of you has a drone tracking him from above – pisses off Heathrow no end, but that’s their problem. We’re projecting along the routes the other three are taking for likely targets so we can intercept them. The Bomb Squad are scrambling as we speak.’

‘OK, cool. What about me? Just give me directions where I can hand this over to the Bomb Squad and I’ll be fine.’

More muted conversation.

‘You’re not to divert from the given route, Sean. You heard the instructions about the GPS.’

Oh, shit. Adams had called him Sean, not Harker. Oh
shit
– that had to be bad. You only started to be nice to someone if you weren’t optimistic about their prospects.

‘Well, fine, I’ll RV with the Bomb Squad wherever. And do me a favour and keep calling me Harker, Sergeant. Please?’

A pause.

‘Harker it is. Of course. Right, listen up. You proceed as per satnav instructions. Our friends are staging a traffic jam. They’ve hacked into some traffic lights, set them permanently on red. Any moment now the traffic you’re in will snarl right up. You’ll grind to a dead halt.’

Oh, great . . .
Sean thought. Stuck in traffic with the bomb going
tick-tick-tick
?

‘And that’s where the Bomb Squad meet me, right?’

A pause.

‘Negative. That’s where you defuse the bomb.’

The sergeant’s last sentence floated alone for just a little too long.

‘Excuse me, please – what? Could you repeat that, please?’

‘You will have to defuse the bomb. We don’t have enough EOD personnel to handle four simultaneous
targets. You’re our man on the ground. We have Captain Fitzallen here, who’ll guide you through it. She reckons it’ll be pretty easy – probably just a timer attached to a shitload of fertilizer.’

‘You’re kidding me, right?’

‘No,’ said Adams. ‘I am definitely not kidding you. This is our only option.’

The traffic on the A2 ahead was starting to slow.

‘I’ve never defused a bomb.’

‘Then now’s your chance to learn,’ said the sergeant. ‘As soon as the traffic stops, get in the back of the van, tell us what you see. Understood?’

Sean didn’t reply as, almost on cue, the road snarled up. Drivers up and down the highway started to vent their frustration in the only way they could: with the car-horn symphony.

Sean jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran down the side of the van. A man in a BMW yelled at him to ‘Get back in your van, you dick, or you’ll just make this worse,’ but Sean ignored him. Insults he could take. Explosions, not so much.

He fumbled on the keyring for the key to the rear doors, and pulled them open. And there, innocent as anything, was the bomb.

‘F-u-u-ck . . .’

Two rows of waist-high blue plastic tubs, filling the
rear of the van. He remembered Captain Fitzallen’s briefing.
Two hundred kilograms of explosive . . . killed thirty people . . . two hundred bags of sugar
.

This was a lot more than two hundred bags of sugar.

Even as his eyes continued to scan it, Sean was back on the phone. Taped to the nearest one with high-quality gaffer tape was a black box with an LCD counter, and a grey slab the size of a phone that Sean immediately recognized as PE – plastic explosive. The counter showed the current time – half past. A black tube was embedded in the explosive, joined to the box by a couple of wires.

‘I’ve found it. Not that it was difficult to miss.’

‘OK,’ the sergeant replied. ‘I’m passing you on to the captain now. Do exactly as you’re told.’

There was scuffling down the line.

‘Private Harker?’ The voice was clipped and professional.

‘Yep – uh, yes, uh, ma’am,’ Sean replied.

‘Under the circumstances, call me Fitz. OK, this is going to be fun. We usually do this in threes and we’re all experts. Tell me what you can see.’

Sean described exactly what was in front of him, down to the box and the PE.

‘Good,’ said Fitz. ‘That will be what we have to deal
with. I need you to take a photograph of it now and send it to me.’

Sean flicked up the camera and took a snap.

A yell came from behind him. ‘What do you think you’re doing taking photos?’

Sean turned round to see a pretty fit woman in a pretty fit soft-top sports car. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and sent the photograph.

‘Sorry?’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re blocking the road! If the traffic starts to move,
you
won’t be able to! Get back in your van!’

Sean turned his back on her, the phone to his ear. ‘Well?’

‘Piece of piss,’ Fitz said. ‘The black box will be both the timer and the power supply. That thing in the plastic explosive is the detonator. At the chosen time the timer will send a spark down those wires – and
boom!
That looks like some hard-core tape holding everything in place but the wires are unshielded, so they are what we deal with. You’ll need to cut one of them. Either will do. Do you have any kind of knife?’

‘Sure.’ Sean’s penknife was in his hand in a moment. He put the phone onto speaker, set it down, and put the blade to the nearest wire. ‘Hang on, I’ll do it now—’