Ultimatum (26 page)

As Bolt did an emergency stop, Tina jumped out of the car and watched, dumbstruck, as the missile raced towards its target. It seemed to travel for a long time, but in reality it must have been barely seconds. And then it struck the observation deck with an audible bang, followed by a flash of bright light.

They’d been too late.

Fifty-three

19.46

WHEN THE MISSILE
struck, Gina was standing against the wall at the edge of the scrum of nervous guests near the lift entrance.

She saw something bright hurtling towards them from outside the window and then, before she had time to react or properly process the information, there was a loud explosion, followed by an immense, almost deafening sound of shattering glass.

Instinctively, she threw herself to the floor. She heard a single piercing scream of panic coming from somewhere very close, which stopped as abruptly as it had begun. And then there was a deathly silence, broken only by the howling wind as it gusted in through the broken glass. Nothing moved. No one cried out.

Slowly, unsteadily, Gina got to her feet. And witnessed a scene of total devastation. There was a huge hole in one of the floor-to-ceiling window panes at the southern end of the observation deck, about twenty yards from where she was standing. A blazing fire next to it ran almost the entire width of the room, its plumes of thick black smoke slowly advancing on her like an army of ghosts. All around Gina, guests staggered to their feet, their faces white with shock. Many had deep cuts. Some were covered in blood. One young woman still had a drink in her hand as she wandered round aimlessly, seemingly oblivious to the four-inch piece of glass sticking out of her stomach, which was staining her white cocktail dress a deep red.

Gina turned away from her, too shocked even to feel nauseous, which was when she saw the five or six bodies lying close to the fire. One was in the uniform of the security guards; another had a TV camera next to him, a blackened hand resting on top of it. There was a man in a dinner suit lying on top of a woman, who may or may not have been the TV reporter Gina had seen only a couple of minutes earlier.

Gina stifled a gasp. The man in the dinner suit looked like it might be Matt.

Oh God, no. Please. Not him
.

Filled with a sudden sense of urgency, she made her way through the ranks of shocked, bloodied guests, ignoring the heat from the fire and the carnage all around her. She moved aside as a large, middle-aged man stumbled towards her, one cheek literally hanging off his face, blood gushing from the wound, his mouth gaping open. She didn’t even look at him. She was too busy staring through the thickening smoke at the body of the man in the dinner suit.

It was difficult to tell but it looked like his hair was the same colour as Matt’s.

The heat from the fire was becoming more intense now, and was burning her face. Behind her, people were beginning to talk again, several of them trying to take charge. Gina was only feet away now, and she could see that the woman lying beneath the man in the suit was the TV reporter. It looked like she was asleep except for the huge gash that had split open her skull, exposing the bone. The man in the suit had his face buried in her shoulder as if they were locked in an embrace.

Blinking against the smoke, Gina bent down next to him, feeling a terrible sense of dread. He wasn’t moving, and the back of his suit was shredded where the material had been torn open by hundreds of shards of glass. Gina had never seen a dead body before tonight, but even so, she could tell that he was dead. She heard herself begin to sob. To have been given a taste of hope and then, in the next instant, have it snatched away was too cruel a blow.

And then she felt a firm hand on her arm, pulling her away. She turned round to see Matt standing there, his tie askew, his lip bleeding, and a look of sheer relief on his face.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Tina stood staring up at the flames and smoke angrily swirling out of the Shard’s windows as she listened to Bolt talking into the radio, his voice cracking with the shock of what they’d just witnessed. ‘Missile has just hit the Shard observation deck!’ he was shouting. ‘I repeat: missile has just hit the Shard observation deck! There’s a fire burning up there!’

Tina thought she could just make out figures moving behind the huge wall of glass as the fire billowed through the observation deck, obscuring the view. The sight made her guts wrench. All their efforts to stop the Stinger had been in vain. Had it been fired at eight p.m., on the deadline the terrorists had given them, they might have prevented the attack, but by launching it a quarter of an hour early, the terrorists had shown a breathtaking callousness. Tina felt gutted and galvanized at the same time. Because they could still catch the perpetrator if they moved fast enough, although the smoke trail from the Stinger that would lead them to him was already dissipating above the rooftops around them.

She jumped back in the car, slamming the door shut. ‘Drive! We need to catch the bastard!’

For a moment, Bolt didn’t say anything. He looked utterly shell-shocked. Tina had never seen him like this before.

She grabbed his arm and physically shook him, fully prepared to kick him out of the car and drive herself. ‘Mike, drive, for Christ’s sake! We can still find the shooter!’

‘All right! All right!’ he shouted back, snapping out of his trance. ‘But for once, do not do anything stupid, understand?’

‘Just fucking go!’

Giving her a glare of intense anger, he yanked the car into gear and accelerated down the street.

Fifty-four

19.47

VOORHESS KNEW HE
had to move fast.

After putting his balaclava back on, he strode down into the living room and crouched down beside Azim Butt, who was literally shaking with fear in his seat. The reason for his distress was that he’d seen the heavy black explosives vest he was wearing, which Voorhess had fitted to him earlier while he’d been unconscious from the dose of diazepam. Although the actual explosives themselves weren’t visible, as they were sewn into the lining, both the vest’s weight and the exposed wires running between the pockets made it obvious to even the most naive of civilians what it was.

‘I’m going to untie you now, Mr Butt,’ Voorhess explained as he removed his gag, ‘but I must warn you: the jacket you’re wearing contains explosives, and it’s connected to a pressure pad beneath your seat. If you try to remove the jacket or leave the seat, you’ll set off the bomb and blow yourself to pieces.’ As he spoke, he untied each of Mr Butt’s ankles in turn. ‘What I want you to do is remain exactly where you are until help arrives. It won’t be long, I can promise you that.’

‘Please don’t kill me. Please.’

Voorhess started on the left wrist. ‘No one’s going to kill you if you do as you’re told. When help arrives, they’ll come through your front door. When you hear them, you call out and tell them that you’re wired to a bomb. They’ll send in the experts and deal with the device.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I just want to slow them down, Mr Butt,’ Voorhess told him, putting on his most reassuring voice as he released the final bond. ‘And remember, don’t tell them anything about me that could be of use. I don’t want to have to kill your young son in Cobham.’

Mr Butt’s eyes widened. After everything else he’d been through, this was clearly the biggest shock of all.

‘Yes,’ said Voorhess calmly, ‘I know about him. Now give a poor description and he’s safe. A good one and he dies. Understand?’

Mr Butt nodded frantically. ‘Yes, yes. I understand.’

Beneath the balaclava, Voorhess smiled. ‘Good.’

He stood up and left the room, moving quickly. He’d fitted an electronic sensor to the front door of Mr Butt’s house earlier: as soon as the door opened, the sensor would activate, automatically sending a text message to Voorhess’s phone. This would be his cue to set off the bomb.

Afterwards, the conclusion would be that Mr Butt himself had been the man who’d fired the missile, and had then lain in wait to ambush the police when they arrived, trying to take as many of them with him as possible. Given the power of the bomb, there wouldn’t be enough left of Mr Butt to uncover any evidence of his incarceration; and, anyway, Voorhess had been very careful not to leave marks on him. A background check would show no obvious links between Mr Butt and Islamic fundamentalism, but the physical proof of his involvement would be more than enough.

It was, thought Voorhess, a near-perfect plan, which was just the way he liked it.

Fifty-five

19.49

‘SLOW DOWN!’ TINA
yelled as they drove on to the residential road of modern townhouses where a thinning pall of smoke still hung over the rooftops. ‘It was fired from down here somewhere.’

The road was too narrow for on-street parking, and all the houses had attached garages, and car ports, but there was no sign of a black Shogun anywhere as they drew level with the properties directly beneath the smoke. But now that it was drifting on the breeze, it was impossible to pinpoint the exact place from where the missile had been fired.

Tina opened her window, looking for some kind of reference point. The sirens were coming from everywhere now, their sound almost deafening, and the car’s radio was alive with rapid-fire chatter as officers converged on the area from all sides. No one, it seemed, could believe what had just happened. She was still in shock herself. They both were, although thankfully Bolt had calmed down.

‘It had to have been fired from one of this group of three or four houses here,’ she said, pointing out of the window, her heart still pumping hard from the tension.

Bolt gave their location to Control and stopped the car as the door to one of the suspect houses opened. A middle-aged woman in a tracksuit stepped outside, looking round with a puzzled expression on her face. Her gaze then fell on the battered Ford Focus that Bolt was driving, and she gave him a suspicious glare.

Bolt opened the window and flashed his warrant. ‘Police,’ he hissed, not wanting to alert any suspects. ‘Get back inside.’

The woman pulled a face and shook her head as if she didn’t believe him.

‘Leave her to me,’ said Tina, getting out of the car.

But she was only halfway across the road when she heard an automatic garage door opening to her left. ‘Get inside!’ she urged the woman. Bolt was gesturing at her to get back in the car but Tina was already walking towards the house next door, wanting to get a look at the car coming out of the garage.

Suddenly she was blinded by headlights as a black Shogun drove out.

Tina’s next move was utterly instinctive. She sprinted over and went for the front door handle.

There was a single shadowy figure in the driver’s seat. He gave her a brief half-second glance, and their eyes met.

Tina grabbed the handle and the Shogun accelerated on to the road, taking her with it. She tried to yank the door open but the damn thing was locked. She saw Bolt drive towards the Shogun, trying to cut it off, and then she let go, hitting the tarmac with a painful thud and rolling over and over.

Looking up, she just had time to see the Shogun slam into the Ford Focus side-on, shunting it round ninety degrees in a crunch of metal, before it reversed back just as suddenly, forcing her to scrabble out of the way on her hands and knees. Tina thought he was trying to kill her, but he wasn’t. He was just getting some extra purchase so he could drive into the back of the Focus and force it off the road. Once again he slammed against it, and as Tina got to her feet, the Shogun made a hard right and sped down to the end of the road. Hopelessly, pointlessly, Tina chased after it, ignoring the pain that seemed to come from every part of her body, as the Shogun made another right at the junction and disappeared in an angry screech of tyres.

Behind her she saw two marked patrol cars drive on to the road, sirens blaring. Turning round, she ran towards them, holding up her warrant card, yelling at the cops in the lead car to continue the chase. And then, as they manoeuvred around the battered Focus and accelerated away after the Shogun, she ran over to where Bolt still sat in the driver’s seat, looking dazed.

‘Mike, are you OK?’ she asked. They may have been on the verge of a real row a few minutes earlier, but the fact was she cared about him far more than she liked to admit.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he grunted, just managing to open the crumpled driver’s-side door and get out.

‘The other cars are on his tail but he’s got a bit of a head start.’

‘Shit,’ he said, leaning against the car and rubbing the back of his head, still unsteady on his feet. ‘We can’t let him get away. Not after what he’s done. I just heard on the radio that they’d already started the evacuation of the observation deck, but that they took a hell of a lot of casualties.’ He glared at her. ‘I thought I told you not to do anything stupid.’

‘I didn’t. And before you start giving me a load more crap, remember this: I got a look at him.’

Bolt’s expression brightened just a little. ‘Would you recognize him if you saw him again?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Tina with a cold certainty in her voice. ‘And if I ever do, I’ll kill him.’

Fifty-six

20.00

GARTH CROSSMAN HELD
his seventeen-year-old daughter and stroked her soft blonde hair as they sat together on the chaise longue. Lucy was a beautiful girl in so many different ways, and she’d taken the death of her mother earlier that morning in the first of the day’s attacks extremely hard, as was only to be expected.

On the TV, the news was showing the flames pouring out of the upper reaches of the Shard, and the male voiceover was reporting on the third of the day’s terrorist attacks in a tone that was coming close to panic.

No one yet knew the extent of the casualties, but many of the guests from the opening-night party, which not only included leading politicians, businesspeople and celebrities but even, it was rumoured, at least two minor royals, were carrying injuries as they were led from the building. There were also a number of bodies visible behind the glass on the observation deck, even though the camera was trying to avoid them, focusing instead on the first of the fire crews that were now desperately tackling the blaze. But what was obvious to everyone watching was the sheer scale of the disaster, and the ease with which the terrorists had been able to strike at the heart of London, and at one of its most iconic landmarks.