Ultimatum (27 page)

It was like the Stanhope siege all over again, and Crossman felt an elation so pure and ferocious it made him want to shake. Not only had he got rid of his wife, who’d found out far too many of his secrets for her own good, but the attacks that he’d masterminded and invested in – attacks he hoped would push the UK to the brink of social breakdown – had been carried out with near-perfect precision. The missile had hit the Shard before the ultimatum they’d given the government, but it didn’t matter. Crossman had always known that the government would never agree to the demands they’d made. In fact, he’d banked on the fact that they wouldn’t, and that the Prime Minister would refuse to negotiate. Now that the third attack had taken place, he looked weak and ineffective, a spent force.

Garth Crossman loved his country. He loved the fact that it had pioneered the industrial revolution, colonized half the world with its armies, its culture and its ideals, and had stood proud and stable for generations while the hurricanes of change battered the nations around it.
That
had been the land of his grandfathers. But like the other members of The Brotherhood, he hated what it had become, and it was this feeling of anger, combined with the cold ruthlessness that had served him so well in his business dealings, that had pushed him on to the path he was following now, a path that was littered with death and destruction.

There was another reason too. Garth Crossman would never forget the day when as a twelve-year-old boy he’d been mugged and beaten by a group of local youths after leaving school one day. There’d been four of them – two black, two white. They hadn’t just robbed him. They’d tormented him, cutting up his blazer and cap with a Stanley knife, putting the knife up against his face, laughing as he wept and begged for mercy. They’d threatened to scar him for life. They’d made him take off his trousers, and thrown them into the river. They’d laughed at his tears.

Bastards.

Crossman lived with that ordeal every day of his life. It simmered beneath the surface, filling him with hatred and anger and a constant desire for revenge. Not just against the four thugs who’d put him through that humiliation, but against every piece of lowlife scum that walked the streets, as well as the weak-kneed scum in authority who stood up for them.

‘Who could be doing something like this, Dad?’ Lucy whispered, her face pressed against his chest for comfort, as the sound of the news presenter’s tones reverberated around the room in surround sound.

‘People with no conscience, sweet one,’ said Crossman in soothing tones, using the pet name for his daughter. ‘I’m afraid there are a lot of bad people in the world. But I’m here to protect you. I’ll always be here.’

He fumbled for the remote control, enjoying the warmth of his daughter against him, and switched off the TV, knowing he could enjoy the coverage later. Right now, it was his duty to make Lucy feel better, and loved, again.

One of three mobile phones on the coffee table beside him rang, the ringtone immediately identifying it as the phone used only for emergencies. He tensed. Only two people in the world knew that number. He checked the screen. It was an inner London landline. Almost certainly a payphone.

‘I’m going to have to take this,’ he said apologetically, lifting her head from his chest and getting to his feet. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, I promise.’

She gave him a small tear-stained smile to show she understood, and Crossman smiled back at her, thinking what a beautiful, charming girl she was.

He took the call in the adjoining room. It was Cain, and when he spoke, his words sent a cold shiver up Crossman’s spine.

‘We may have a problem.’

Fifty-seven

20.01

VOORHESS KNEW HE
had to dump the Shogun fast. There was no way he was going to drive it back to the airport now.

Somehow the police had known about the Stinger attack before he’d carried it out. It was the only thing he could think of to explain the way they’d suddenly appeared on Mr Butt’s doorstep when he’d driven out. A few seconds later and they’d have had him, and although he’d tried to run them over, that hadn’t stopped the plainclothes female police officer – an attractive, if slightly hard-faced, woman – from trying to get into the car to arrest him. More problematic, though, was the fact that she’d seen his face. With the exception of the old man earlier, no one had ever seen him on a job before and lived to tell the tale, which was why he was still working after more than a decade of being a professional killer.

What was really irritating was the fact that none of this was his fault. He’d done his job, just as he’d promised he would. He should have been warned that Mr Butt had a girlfriend with a key, because that too had almost ended in disaster. Voorhess prided himself on his skill and attention to detail, and he expected the same from those who hired him. And they’d let him down.

Now he was on the run with the police coming at him from all directions.

He saw a small hotel up ahead on the right with parking in front of it, and turned in. There were no spaces so he double-parked in front of two cars, blocking them in, then got out and started walking fast, knowing he’d left DNA traces inside the Shogun that the police would be able to recover, but unable to do anything about that now.

As he stepped out on to the pavement, he spotted a police patrol car, its blue lights flashing angrily, hurtling towards him on the other side of the road.

Where others saw problems, Voorhess always saw opportunities – it had been something drummed into him by his father, along with the importance of decisiveness – and he immediately stepped into the road and waved them down. A physical description of him had almost certainly been circulated by now, but it would be basic, and with no reference to his size since he was sitting down when he’d been spotted, and he was banking on the fact that in the heat of the moment it wouldn’t occur to the pursuing officers that their target would be trying to attract their attention.

The police car veered across the road and stopped next to him, the driver sticking his head out of the window, a sour, accusatory look on his face. Obviously he wanted to get back to chasing terrorists.

‘The hotel! I saw a man!’ stammered Voorhess, approaching the car.

When he was only a foot away, he drew the .22 that he’d used to kill Mr Butt’s girlfriend from beneath his overalls, pressed the barrel against the surprised officer’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. The man gasped and fell back in his seat, and Voorhess leaned down so he had a view of the officer in the passenger seat – a young man in his early twenties with a pallid complexion – and shot him in the face as he went for the door handle, putting a second bullet in his chest for good measure.

Already he could hear another siren coming closer, and he knew he was going to have to move fast. Putting the gun back in his overalls he ran round to the back of the car and opened the trunk, throwing in the holdall containing his possessions. Then, taking a quick look round to check there were no witnesses, he pulled the driver from the seat, hauled him over to the boot and bundled him inside, grabbing his cap in the process.

A second cop car was approaching fast now, coming the other way, barely a hundred yards distant and closing, and it took all of Voorhess’s self-control to put on the cap, jump in the driver’s side and pull away from the kerb and back on to the left-hand side of the road.

The approaching cop car slowed as it came closer, which was when Voorhess heard groaning coming from the seat beside him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the young, pallid-faced cop lean forward in his seat, blood pouring down his face, making a keening sound, and trying to lift an arm, clearly some distance away from being dead.

Slamming his arm into the injured officer’s chest and knocking him back in the seat, Voorhess nodded towards the other cops as the two cars passed each other, blocking the view of their injured colleague as he accelerated down the road.

Only when he’d put a bit of distance between them did he let go of the young cop, who was wriggling and gasping in his seat like a zombie from a cheap horror film. Slowing the car, Voorhess pulled the .22 free, shoved it against the cop’s temple and pulled the trigger.

Which was the moment the radio crackled into life, the caller asking for the current location of the car Voorhess was driving.

‘Bravo Four, do you copy?’ asked an anxious male voice. ‘We have just heard gunshots. Bravo Four. Please respond. Over.’

With a sigh, Voorhess pulled the unit free from its stand and threw it out of the window, wondering if he was ever going to get out of this Godforsaken city in one piece.

Fifty-eight

20.06

THE SQUAD CARS
were arriving in force now, blocking the road at both ends. The problem was, thought Tina ruefully, they were far too late. It had been at least ten minutes since the black Shogun had disappeared into the night, and so far it hadn’t been located, even though dozens of police vehicles and a helicopter had now joined the search, and every minute that passed meant their terrorist was getting further and further away.

Initial reports from Control suggested that there were as many as fifty casualties from the strike on the Shard, including at least two MPs and a well-known TV reporter, but so far there was no word on how many of them were fatalities.

Tina and Bolt were now coordinating the evacuation of all the properties within a fifty-yard radius of the house from where the missile had been fired, in case there were further suspects inside.

‘The house belongs to a Mr Azim Butt,’ Tina told Bolt as she finished leading a couple and their two young children beyond the thin strip of scene-of-crime tape that acted as the edge of their cordon. ‘Thirty-one years old, and keeps himself to himself. According to the neighbours, he’s lived here for about eighteen months. They reckon he’s got a girlfriend who’s often here too.’

Bolt nodded. ‘That tallies with what Control have found out about him. He owns a couple of businesses supplying imported goods to the restaurant and retail trades. Makes OK money, but he’s got a three-hundred-grand mortgage on the house. He’s got no criminal record, and his name doesn’t come up on any watchlists, but he
is
a Muslim.’

‘He definitely wasn’t the man I saw drive out in the Shogun. The man I saw was white, early or possibly mid-forties, weather-beaten features. Big build too, whereas Mr Butt is supposedly only a little guy.’

‘So, who the hell is he?’ Bolt frowned, the lines on his face looking more pronounced than Tina could remember. He still looked shaken up by everything that had happened, and she could tell that he was trying hard not to show it.

‘Whoever he is, he’s got to be someone with a military background. You need to be trained to fire a Stinger. Not any idiot can do it. And he didn’t panic when we tried to intercept him either.’

‘We’ll get him,’ said Bolt emphatically. ‘He won’t get far with half the Met on his back.’

Tina resisted saying that he’d managed pretty well so far. Instead, she turned and walked back through the cordon to carry on helping with the evacuation. Fox had claimed the people behind Islamic Command were homegrown extremists, which would explain why the man leaving the property was white. And they’d already established a link between Fox and Islamic Command via Jetmir Brozi. But she still felt they were missing something. And she wanted to know where the hell the owner, Mr Butt, was.

A uniformed cop was approaching the suspect property, completely against all the rules. As Tina watched, he leaned down and peered in through the letterbox.

‘Hey, get back from there,’ she called to him, knowing it was hypocritical of her to criticize a fellow cop for breaking the rules, when she’d made a career out of it, but knowing too that the terrorists had left a booby-trapped bomb for the police earlier, and might easily have done so again. ‘No one’s going in there until bomb disposal arrive.’

The cop turned back to her, his expression anxious. ‘But there’s someone in there, and he’s crying out for help.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Tina, walking down the drive and grabbing him by the arm. ‘We’ve got to be really careful here. It could be a trap.’

‘He sounds like he’s in trouble, ma’am.’

‘OK, but get back.’

She looked over to where Mike Bolt was now talking to a group of CO19 officers who’d just arrived on the scene, then bent down and opened the letterbox.

She heard it immediately: the faint sound of a man calling out from somewhere within the house, the fear in his voice obvious.

‘This is the police,’ she called out. ‘Is that Mr Butt?’

He didn’t answer so she repeated herself, louder this time.

There was a pause, and then he shouted back, ‘Yes. You’ve got to help me. I’m trapped.’

‘I hear you. We’ll be with you very soon.’

She stood up and waved at Bolt to get his attention.

Voorhess pulled up to the entrance of the park, and parked the police car against the fence in the shelter of some trees where it would be difficult to see it from the road. Sirens were still blaring in all directions but he no longer took any notice of them. Instead, he grabbed his holdall from the trunk, and climbed over the fence and into the park. He moved swiftly in the darkness towards the other side, forcing himself to stay calm, even though he felt more than ever like a hunted animal.

He needed to cause a diversion by detonating the bomb at Mr Butt’s house. The police would be gathered round it now, making their final preparations for entry, and he was sure to catch a few of them with the explosion. With any luck, he’d also hit the woman who’d seen him.

He pulled the mobile from his pocket and speed-dialled the number of the phone attached to the battery pack inside the bomb, wondering if he’d be able to hear the dull thud of the explosion from where he was now.

‘What the hell are you doing? Get back from there!’

Bolt marched towards Tina, waving her away from Butt’s front door, thinking that she was like a naughty schoolkid sometimes, always delving into places where she shouldn’t be going. He could feel his legs shaking beneath him as he walked. He felt dizzy, and was still having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that he’d almost been crushed to death only a few minutes earlier. Above the buildings in the distance, he could see the thick black plume of smoke pumping out of the upper floors of the Shard into the night sky – a brutal reminder of the attack he hadn’t prevented. If only he’d reacted quicker, if only he’d kept a better eye on Jones, and had him followed to the meeting where they’d got the missile. If only he’d worked harder these past few months to catch the people behind the Stanhope siege, then he might not be here. But he’d failed. It was as simple as that, and he only had himself to blame.