Ultimatum Page 4

  Which meant it was time to move.

  Cecil gave me a curt nod. ‘You ready?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, sounding calmer than I felt. The adrenalin was pumping through me, heightening my senses. This job may have been planned to the last detail, but both of us knew better than most that in fast-moving, violent situations, the first casualty is usually the plan itself. The key when things go wrong is to ride with the punches and not panic.

  Cecil switched on the engine and pulled out, taking a left at the end of the road.

  The area was vaguely rundown but money had been spent keeping the streets clean and the walls free from graffiti. Low-rise sixties council blocks painted a tasteless mud-brown stretched out on either side of us. The road was quiet. Not many people commuted to work round here, and those kids who weren’t bunking off were already in school.

  Halfway down, a gunmetal-grey BMW X5 was parked illegally on the pavement outside one of the blocks. It was one of the cars LeShawn sometimes used, and a young black guy sat in the driver’s seat.

  Cecil drove towards him. The road was narrow with cars lining one side, and he had to go quite slow. LeShawn always carried the bag containing the takings with him, never letting it out of his sight as he went into each of the crackhouses, and he was always accompanied by one of his crew. So the plan was to relieve them of the cash when they were en route back to the car. That way we had the whole three-man crew together where we could control them. But the thing was, it required perfect timing. If we were too early making our approach then we’d have to come back round the block again, and as soon as the X5 driver saw our car a second time, he’d be as suspicious as hell. These guys were armed, and if they got nervous, anything could happen. Plus, there were only two of us, when really you needed four or five for a job like this.

  It struck me as we crawled towards our targets, and my heart thudded hard and fast in my ears, that this really wasn’t such a clever idea.

  But then, lo and behold, there was LeShawn and his wingman sauntering across the stretch of grass at the front of the building towards the X5 with the kind of confidence that only men with guns have. LeShawn had the holdall with the loot slung over one shoulder, and both men had their right hands in the pockets of their jackets, doubtless clutching weapons.

  LeShawn’s head turned slowly in our direction.

  ‘OK,’ said Cecil, still staring straight ahead, speaking as casually as possible. ‘I’m going to count to three, then you do it.’

  Without looking down, I removed the jacket that had been sitting on my lap, revealing a brand-new Heckler and Koch MP5 machine pistol and the type of black police cap worn by armed CO19 cops.

  One … two …

  LeShawn and his mate were only five yards away from the X5. He was still staring straight at me as he walked, but making no move for his weapon.

  Three.

  Our car was still moving as I threw open the door, lifting the MP5 and flinging on the cap, and leapt out. ‘Armed police! Get on the ground now!’ I ran towards them, MP5 pointed straight at LeShawn, who I knew was the one most likely to go for his gun. ‘Now! Now! Now!’

  This is the pivotal moment. You’ve made your move, now you’ve just got to wait that single second to see how they react. Most people are so caught out they instinctively do as they’re told, but a few are wired differently. They either bolt for it or, very occasionally, they stand and fight. And if anyone was going to stand and fight it was going to be LeShawn Lambden.

  LeShawn didn’t move. Neither did the other guy. They just stared at me, calling my bluff.

  I kept coming, yelling at them to get down, pulling the cap down, trying to obscure my face, knowing that if I fired I’d ruin everything, and if I didn’t fire I’d ruin everything as well. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the X5 driver try to reverse the car, then heard Cecil’s barked commands followed by an explosion of gunfire from his MP5 as he blew out the car’s front tyres and one of its headlights.

  The sound of automatic gunfire’s a hell of a lot louder than most people expect, and if you’re on a narrow street without ear protectors on, you jump when you hear it.

  I took another step forward, my finger tensing on the trigger. ‘On your knees now, both of you, or I’ll blow your fucking heads off!’ I didn’t bother shouting ‘armed police’ again since it was abundantly clear now that we weren’t. If anything, though, this did a better job of securing their cooperation, because they both finally did what they were told.

  LeShawn stared me down, a look of simmering anger in his coal-black eyes. ‘You don’t know who the fuck you’re dealing with here,’ he spat.

  ‘Yeah, I do. An idiot who gets caught with his pants down because he’s too cocky. Now remove your hand from your pocket nice and slowly and throw away the gun you’ve got in there.’

  ‘I haven’t got a gun.’

  ‘Just fucking do it.’

  ‘I’ll kill you for this. You’re a dead man, you understand?’

  ‘You’ve got three seconds to comply or you’ll be the dead man.’ I lifted the barrel of the MP5 slightly so it was pointed right between his eyes, my aim absolutely steady.

  The key is to establish control, but LeShawn was still delaying. Behind him, faces were appearing in the windows of the council block, attracted by the noise of gunfire. Any second now the cops would be called, and there could be an ARV right round the corner. We had to move.

  I started counting. ‘One! Two!’ My finger tightened on the trigger, and I pushed the stock back into my shoulder, preparing to fire.

  Which was when LeShawn caved. Reluctantly he brought his hand out of his pocket and threw a Glock pistol on to the grass in front of him.

  ‘Throw the holdall over to me. Now.’

  He hesitated, and at the same time Cecil came over, pushing the X5 driver in front of him using the barrel of his MP5, before kicking his legs from under him. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he demanded, pointing his weapon at LeShawn. ‘Do as he tells you or you’re dead.’

  Slowly, LeShawn heaved it off his shoulder and threw it over.

  I grabbed it, slung it over my own shoulder, impressed by its weight, and took a step back.

  ‘You,’ I said to LeShawn’s wingman, the third member of the crew. ‘Bring out your gun.’

  ‘I ain’t got one,’ said the guy, taking his hands out of his pockets. They were empty, and now he looked scared.

  I told him to put his hands on his head and, while Cecil picked up LeShawn’s gun from the grass, I gave the guy a quick search, keeping the barrel of my MP5 pressed against the base of his skull. He was holding a knife but that was all, which is the great thing about Britain’s gun laws. The baddies can’t get hold of decent weaponry very easily any more, which gives men like us an advantage.

  I pocketed the knife and told the guy to keep his hands on his head, which he did without arguing. It wasn’t his money and he wasn’t prepared to die in order to protect it, which seemed to me to be the sensible option. I’d have done the same thing. Most sane people would. But then with these guys it’s all about respect, and having a rep on the street, and being made to go down on your knees in a public place and give up your stash and your weapons is an insult of the most heinous kind.

  Which was why, in the end, I suppose the whole thing was always going to go tits up.

  It happened when I was crouched down behind LeShawn, gun pressed against the back of his head. I was about to give him a brief once-over just to check he didn’t have another gun somewhere, while Cecil covered me from the front. By this point the whole thing, from the moment I’d jumped out of the moving car, had lasted no more than forty-five, fifty seconds tops, and was running pretty smoothly. We were ten seconds away from making our getaway when Cecil cursed and looked towards the council block behind me. I heard shouts too, and turned round.

  A lanky white guy with wild hair, wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms and nothing else, had appeared out of the building’s main entrance
and was running towards us, waving a carving knife and clearly off his nut on crack.

  Cecil opened fire over the guy’s head, the noise deafening, and the guy had the good sense to hit the deck, dropping the knife in the process. But I’d let my guard down, and suddenly LeShawn swung round, grabbed the barrel of the gun, and tried to yank it out of my hands. I fell forward, resisting pulling the trigger, and fell over him, landing in the grass, twisting round so I could still keep a grip on the gun.

  LeShawn fell on top of me, shoving the barrel to one side, one beefy hand going round my throat and squeezing with such power that it cut off my air supply instantly. I tried to kick out, but I didn’t have the room to do any damage. LeShawn roared, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth as he used his free hand to slam the MP5 down into the ground, twisting my arms in the process. He lunged at me, trying to take a bite out of my face, but I managed to free up a hand and smack him hard on the underside of his chin, making him bite his tongue.

  He roared with frustration and lunged at me again, which was the moment the left side of his face suddenly disappeared in a welter of red, and I was splattered in warm blood. His grip on my throat weakened as his whole body slumped. He let out a loud grunt, and I had to put up a hand to stop him falling on me.

  I kicked him off me and jumped to my feet, wiping the blood from my eyes as I made sure the holdall was still on my back.

  ‘Come on, move it!’ yelled Cecil, retreating rapidly.

  The other two members of the crew were lying on their fronts, still alive but clearly not wanting to get involved, while the wild-haired guy was back on his feet and dancing round with the knife, but still sensible enough not to get too close.

  Cecil glared at me as we ran for the car. ‘What the fuck were you doing?’

  I didn’t answer as I chucked the holdall in the back of the car while he ran round the front and jumped in the driver’s side.

  And then, just when things couldn’t get any worse, they did.

  A marked patrol car pulled into the road behind us. There were no lights or sirens, so it wasn’t responding to an emergency call. It had arrived on the scene purely by accident and was driving in our direction. I looked at them, and they looked at me, slowing up at the same time as they took in the sight of a man in a police cap with a submachine gun and a face covered in blood.

  The terrible thing was, I recognized them. PCs John Nolan and Gloria Owana. I’d met them both when we’d worked out of the same station. Even so, I didn’t know them well, and I was pretty damn sure they wouldn’t recognize me in the state I was in.

  But they still presented a threat, and it was time I showed Cecil what I could do. As their car stopped, I opened fire, swinging the gun in a steady arc as I blew out the tyres, feeling that intense satisfaction that only pulling a trigger can bring, watching as both ducked out of sight. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the wild-haired guy charging me and I swung the gun round, ready to pop him if I had to, but he took a flying dive and landed face down on the pavement with an angry thud, the knife clattering on to the tarmac.

  Then, as Cecil gunned the engine, I turned and jumped in the car, and he pulled away in a screech of tyres.

  The whole thing had been a disaster. A man was dead; cops had been shot at; half the Met would probably be on our tail in the next five minutes. But in the end we still had the money.

  Although if I’d known what it was going to be used for, I’d have flung it out the window there and then.

  Nine

  09.19

  ‘HAVE YOU GOT any idea why William Garrett might want to talk to you?’ asked Mike Bolt, leaning forward in his seat and fixing Tina with a cool, formal stare that belied the friendship they’d once had. They were in his office in a large Georgian townhouse just off Green Park, facing each other for the first time in almost two years.

  Tina shrugged. ‘I’ve got no idea. It’s not as if I’ve ever had any contact with him. All I am these days is lowly CID.’

  ‘Although you still manage to get yourself right in the thick of things. It’s a pity we lost that suspect.’

  ‘You’re the second person today who’s told me that, Mike. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘I know, but we’ve now had confirmation that the explosion earlier was a powerful rucksack bomb, delivered by the suspect you were chasing. We’ve already had a very plausible claim of responsibility from an unknown outfit calling themselves Islamic Command, and they’ve given us an ultimatum. Either the government acquiesces to their demands – which are the usual stuff, promising to pull out of all Muslim lands – by eight o’clock tonight or there’ll be a much bigger attack.’

  ‘It all sounds very similar to the Stanhope siege.’

  Bolt nodded. ‘It does.’

  The Stanhope siege had been a short but brutal terrorist incident just over a year earlier. It had involved a team of white mercenaries, allied with Arab gunmen, who’d set off two bombs in London before taking over the Stanhope Hotel and holding hundreds of guests hostage. When the whole thing had ended six hours later, more than seventy people were dead, and the psyche of the nation had been left badly scarred. Almost all the terrorists had died – one of them at the hands of Tina herself, who’d killed him in self-defence while rescuing the kidnapped children of one of the senior officers involved (an act for which she’d narrowly escaped charges) – but, since that night, there’d been no further arrests, nor any clear sign of who was responsible. Theories had abounded. Some claimed the terrorists were working for al-Qaeda; others for an unnamed Arab government, or the Iranians; and some claimed the real organizers were even closer to home and members of a domestic neo-Nazi organization seeking to foment discontent. But the problem was that only two of those involved had survived. One, a member of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command called John Cheney, who’d been the terrorists’ inside man, had been found hanged in his cell a few weeks afterwards. And the other, a former soldier called William Garrett, who’d gone by the codename Fox, and who was now in prison awaiting trial, had kept his mouth resolutely shut.

  Until now, it seemed.

  Tina frowned. ‘So Fox has suddenly decided that he wants to cooperate?’

  ‘Apparently he saw footage of the explosion this morning and told the governor he knew who was behind it, but wouldn’t give any further details.’

  ‘The suspect I chased this morning was south Asian. Probably Pakistani. Definitely not a white mercenary, and not the kind of guy likely to be working as an Arab government agent.’

  ‘So it might be nothing to do with Fox or any of his friends. But initial reports are saying the explosives used were PETN, the same as those used at the Stanhope, and that the bomb looked sophisticated. The thing is, there just aren’t that many terrorists with access to that kind of weaponry, particularly homegrown Islamic extremists.’ Bolt paused. ‘There’s something else as well. There was an attempt on Fox’s life three days ago.’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything about that.’

  ‘It’s being kept under wraps. Cheney died before he could stand trial. If they lose Fox as well, it’s going to make the government, and this country, look like a bunch of incompetents. He was attacked by another prisoner armed with a homemade blade. He got a slash across the head and defensive cuts on his hands and arms, and ended up with a lot of stitches. But he managed to fight his attacker off and put him in hospital as well.’

  ‘Do we know why he was attacked?’

  ‘The other prisoner’s not talking. He’s Category A and violent, so it could be any number of reasons, but the timing, just days before a new bombing campaign, is the kind of coincidence that sets alarm bells ringing.’

  Bolt absent-mindedly stroked the biggest and deepest of the three small scars that dotted his right cheek – the result of a car crash many years earlier. Because of his big build and closely cropped hair, they helped to lend him a thuggish appearance that was only partly offset by his incredibly blue eyes, and looking at him now, Tina
remembered how attractive she’d once found him.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Fox is a tough bastard, but the word is the attack’s shaken him up, so what he has to say could be useful. It might also be nothing, of course, and if he’s after immunity from prosecution, then he’s pissing in the wind. But I want to give it a shot.’

  It struck Tina how little she knew about Mike Bolt these days. The building they were in now was a four-storey Georgian townhouse on a quiet residential Mayfair street, with a brand-new plaque outside the front door identifying the occupants as Lowe Robertson Real Estate. She’d walked through an open-plan office with a handful of men and women working on high-end PCs to get to the room she was in now, but the place was hardly buzzing with activity.

  ‘So, what is this place and how are you involved?’ she asked. ‘The last I heard you were working for SOCA.’

  ‘I’m in CTC now, working counter terrorism. I’m running a unit called Special Operations, but you won’t find anything about us in the brochures or on the Met website. We’ve been set up specifically to identify, locate and gather evidence against the people behind the Stanhope siege – the ones who bankrolled it, and provided logistical support to the terrorists.’

  ‘That sounds a lot more fun than what I’ve been doing these past few months. Fancy seconding me?’

  Bolt smiled properly for the first time since Tina had walked into his office. He was, she thought, still a good-looking guy, perhaps even more so since he’d hit his forties. His hair had begun to turn from blonde to silver, and the lines on his narrow, aquiline features had become more pronounced, but the changes actually enhanced his appearance, and she wondered suddenly if he was still single.

  ‘It sounds a lot more exciting than it actually is,’ he said. ‘We do all the usual no-frills policework: sifting through available intelligence in-house, talking to informants, running taps and surveillance ops. But it’s a long job, and I’ve got to be honest with you, it hasn’t generated many good leads. The people we’re looking for aren’t known to us, and they’ve proved very adept at covering their tracks.’