Fair Game (52 page)

The Republicans had put the explosive to good use. It had been the main component of the 1983 bombing of the Harrods department store in London, and the Enniskillen Remembrance Day massacre that left eleven people dead, and later it was used by the Real IRA when they killed twenty-nine men, women and children in Omagh in 1998. There wasn’t much left of the Semtex that Gaddafi had sent, but there was more than enough to blow Daniel Shepherd to kingdom come.

Liam was sitting at the kitchen table with his homework spread out in front of him and Katra was busy at the sink when Shepherd walked in. ‘Dad!’ shouted Liam, and he got up and hugged his father.

‘You should have said you were coming,’ said Katra. ‘I’d have picked you up.’

‘I didn’t want to bother you,’ he said.

‘Everything OK?’ asked Liam.

‘Sure.’

‘Where’s your bag?’ asked Katra.

‘I had to leave it behind,’ said Shepherd.

‘On the ship?’

Shepherd nodded. ‘Yeah, it was all a rush.’

‘But you’re home for a while?’

Shepherd sat down at the kitchen table and Katra went over to switch on the kettle. ‘Yes, I hope so.’

‘You work too hard,’ said Katra, taking a coffee mug from the draining board.

‘Yes, I do,’ agreed Shepherd. ‘But now I’m going to take it easy for a while.’

O’Hara brought the rental car to a halt. ‘That’s the house,’ she said. ‘See the two vehicles, the CRV and the X3?’ Eleven days had passed since O’Hara had watched Shepherd return home and it had been time well spent.

The man in the passenger seat nodded. His name was Eamonn Foley and there wasn’t a man in Ireland who knew more about blowing up cars. Foley’s forte was small controlled explosions that would kill the driver without causing much in the way of collateral damage. One of his devices had blown the legs off a High Court judge at the height of the Troubles but left his wife and two young children unharmed by the blast. It was all a matter of using the right amount of explosive and placing the device in the correct position. There were a multitude of factors to be taken into account, including the make and model of the vehicle and the weight and size of the target.

Foley had spent days studying technical diagrams of the BMW X3 and had researched everything from the thickness of the steel used in the body shell to the weight of the chassis, and he had visited several BMW showrooms to get a feel for the real thing. The bomb that he had in the holdall at his feet was a one-off, designed and built specifically for the vehicle that Shepherd drove.

The house was in darkness. The sky was overcast and the cars were far enough away from the street lights that even if someone walked by they wouldn’t be able to see anything.

‘How long, do you think?’ asked O’Hara.

‘Ten minutes, max,’ said Foley. ‘I just need to link it to the ignition circuit.’

‘It’s always the best way,’ said O’Hara. ‘Fewer mistakes.’

Foley winked. ‘No argument there,’ he said. He reached for the door handle. ‘Keep an eye on the lights,’ he said. ‘If you see anything, two beeps on the horn.’

Shepherd woke at just after nine o’clock. He didn’t bother showering or shaving, he just rolled out of bed and pulled on his running gear and went downstairs to get his rucksack from the cupboard under the stairs.

‘Dan, do you want breakfast?’ called Katra from the kitchen.

‘Later,’ said Shepherd, sitting down and pulling on his boots. They were more than ten years old and had moulded to his feet. They were comfortable but heavy. Running in high-tech Nikes or Reeboks was all well and good, but in his experience when you really needed to run to save your life you didn’t have time to change into fancy footwear.

He carried his rucksack through into the kitchen. ‘I’ll have a coffee, though, I could do with the caffeine kick-start,’ he said.

Liam was sitting at the table, tucking into cheesy scrambled eggs and toast. ‘You know what I don’t get, Dad?’ he asked.

‘Basic algebra?’ said Shepherd, dropping the rucksack on the floor and sitting down.

‘Ha ha,’ said Liam. He jabbed his fork at Shepherd’s rucksack. ‘The bricks. I don’t understand why you don’t use proper weights.’

‘Bricks are weights,’ said Shepherd. Katra made him a cup of coffee with a splash of milk and he smiled his thanks. ‘Doesn’t matter what the weight is, so long as it’s heavy.’

Katra picked up the rucksack and grunted. ‘Wow, that’s heavy.’ She let it fall back on to the floor. ‘Doesn’t it hurt?’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘You get used to it,’ he said.

‘And it makes you run better?’

‘Not better,’ said Shepherd. ‘But it makes you fitter.’

‘You’ve heard about gyms, right, Dad?’ Liam put a forkful of egg into his mouth and chewed noisily.

‘Yes, and have you heard about eating with your mouth closed?’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Gyms are OK but they’re boring. I want to run outside, on the street or across fields. And it’s better training. Who wants to run while they watch a video or listen to their iPod?’

‘Who wants to run anyway?’ said Liam. ‘That’s why they invented cars, right?’

‘You know, the more conversations I have like this, the more I’m looking forward to you being in boarding school,’ said Shepherd. He put down his mug and swung his rucksack on to his back. ‘OK, I’m off. What are you doing?’

‘Facebook,’ said Liam. ‘And Farmville.’

‘You should try the real world some time,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’ll have a kickabout when I get back.’

He headed out of the front door and ran along the pavement for a mile before leaping over a five-bar gate and skirting a ploughed field. After ten minutes at half-speed he was starting to sweat and he upped the pace and ran at full pelt for a mile, then started jogging, settling into an easy pace as his breathing gradually slowed. He cut through a copse of trees, ducking under low overhanging branches, then ran at full speed again until he reached another gate that he vaulted without breaking stride. He slowed again as he headed down a road that led to a line of shops. A bookmaker’s, a newsagent’s and an off-licence. He stopped off at the newsagent’s and bought himself a chilled bottle of Evian water, the
Mail on Sunday
and the
Sunday Times
. He drank the water and jogged the rest of the way home holding the newspapers.

Katra was loading the washing machine when Shepherd got back. He dropped his newspapers on to the kitchen table. ‘I’ll have that breakfast now, Katra,’ he said. ‘A couple of bacon sandwiches will hit the spot. I’ll shower first.’

Shepherd went upstairs, showered and shaved, and changed into black jeans and a yellow polo shirt. By the time he returned to the kitchen Katra had put two bacon sandwiches and a mug of coffee on the table. He thanked her and sat down.

He pulled the
Sunday Times
towards him and flicked through the sections, discarding those that he didn’t plan to read. He opened the main news section as he bit into one of the sandwiches and read through any articles that piqued his interest. The economy was limping along, the only growth industry seemed to be crime, the government was promising yet another crackdown on benefit fraud and councils were complaining that they were being swamped by immigrants. The only good news was that an unemployed single mother with three kids by three different fathers had won more than two million pounds on the National Lottery.

He turned the page and raised his eyebrows when he saw a huge photograph of the
Athena
, docking at Southampton harbour. There was also a map of the area where the ship had been seized, and photographs of Somali pirates in an inflatable. Shepherd scanned the faces but none of them were the men that he’d come across. It was probably a file picture.

On the left-hand page was a separate story on Katie Cranham under a large photograph of the girl standing with her parents in front of a rambling farmhouse in the Yorkshire dales. Katie looked much better than when Shepherd had last seen her, on the plane flying away from the Puntland airfield, but even though she was smiling at the camera Shepherd could see the sadness in her eyes. Katie’s father had his hand protectively around her shoulder and her mother was holding her hand as if they both feared that she would be taken away from them again.

The feature was probably part of the pay-off for the Fleet Street editors who had held back on the story while the kidnap was in progress. Now that she was safe at home they had obviously demanded, and got, their pound of flesh. Shepherd scanned the article. Katie praised her rescuers and thanked the Somali government. There were no details of what had happened to her while she’d been held hostage other than her saying that it ‘had been a horrible experience that she wanted to forget’. The prime minister had already been down to see her, and there was a quote from the man himself saying how happy he was that the situation had been resolved. Katie was planning to go to university and wanted to put the kidnap behind her. Shepherd wished her well with that, but he knew from experience that trauma wasn’t so easily dismissed.

He looked back at the article on the rescue of the
Athena
. A reporter had interviewed the captain and several crew members, and had obtained figures from the shipping industry showing the effects the ship seizures were having on freight charges through the Gulf of Aden.

It was a cuttings job, mainly, with most of the information taken from stories that had appeared previously, and the captain and crew hadn’t said much other than that they were glad to be working again. When the captain was asked how he felt sailing back through the Gulf of Aden he’d told the reporter that he didn’t think that lightning would strike twice.

Shepherd finished the first sandwich and took a sip of coffee. As he put his mug down his eyes settled on the photograph of the
Athena
. He frowned and then his face slowly hardened and he cursed under his breath.

‘Is something wrong, Dan?’ asked Katra, but he ignored her, ripped the picture out of the paper and dashed upstairs. He picked up his mobile and tapped out Charlotte Button’s number. ‘Where are you?’ he asked the moment she answered.

‘Home,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I need to see you in London,’ he said. ‘Now.’

‘I’m with my daughter,’ she said. ‘Is it important?’

‘Charlie, this is as important as it gets.’

‘OK, I’ll leave for the office now,’ she said. ‘Can you give me a clue as to what this is about?’

‘Not on the phone,’ he said. ‘But there’s a major problem with the
Athena
. I need to see the satellite photos of it when it was taken by the pirates.’

‘I’ll arrange it,’ she said. ‘You’re in Hereford, right?’

‘Yeah. I’ll need you to arrange some transport,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to move fast.’

He ended the call and went along to Liam’s bedroom. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go to London,’ he said. ‘Hopefully not for long.’

‘You said we were going to play football today.’

‘I know, I’m sorry, but this is important.’

‘It’s always important, Dad.’ Liam looked away and concentrated on his iPad.

‘Liam, don’t be like that.’

‘It’s OK, Dad,’ said Liam quietly. ‘No big deal.’

Shepherd looked at his watch. He didn’t have time to argue. He hurried back downstairs and picked up the keys for the X3. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be, Katra,’ he said.

‘Dan, you’d better take the CRV,’ said Katra. ‘The BMW is booked in for a service tomorrow.’

‘No problem,’ said Shepherd, taking the CRV keys instead. He picked up his mobile and started dialling as he hurried out to the car.

Shepherd drove the CRV to the SAS barracks and showed his MI5 identification card to a uniformed guard, who waved him through immediately, pointing towards a field where a helicopter was already warming up.

Shepherd parked his car and ran over to the helicopter. It was a Eurocopter Dauphin painted in civilian colours and with a civilian registration, but the two pilots were from 8 Flight Army Air Corps. The non-military configuration allowed the SAS to move around the country without attracting attention, and was also used to fly troops in and out of Northern Ireland during counter-terrorism operations.

‘Spider!’ Shepherd turned to see the Major jogging towards him in a black Adidas tracksuit.

‘Thanks for arranging this, boss,’ shouted Shepherd over the roar of the twin engines.

‘No sweat. It’ll have to be a one-way trip because we need it for an exercise tomorrow.’ He clapped Shepherd on the back. ‘Pity you won’t tell me what’s up. Never thought you’d go secret squirrel on me.’

‘I’ll tell you when I get back,’ said Shepherd, and he climbed into the helicopter. The pilot in the left-hand seat turned around and flashed Shepherd a thumbs-up. Shepherd grinned as he recognised the man; they had flown together almost ten years earlier on a training exercise in the Brecon Beacons.

Shepherd slammed the door shut and was strapping himself in when the engine roared and the helicopter lifted off.

The flight to London took just over half an hour, the last five minutes curving along the River Thames until they reached the London Heliport, between Battersea and Wandsworth bridges.

The moment the helicopter landed Shepherd had the door open and was out on to the tarmac, bent low as the rotor wash tugged at his hair and clothes.

A blue-grey Nissan Primera was waiting for him, a black-suited driver ready with the rear passenger door open. There were two Metropolitan Police motorcycle cops in full-face helmets and fluorescent jackets, one at the front of the car and one at the back. Shepherd hurried over and showed his ID to the driver.

‘We’re going to Thames House, right?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Mrs Button wants you at Vauxhall Cross,’ said the driver.

‘She knows best,’ said Shepherd. ‘But I don’t have time to sit in traffic.’ He asked the cop at the rear of the car to hand over his full-face helmet, which he did reluctantly. Shepherd jammed the helmet on his head and climbed on the pillion of the first bike. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. The cop revved the engine and they roared off.

It took them just six minutes to get to Vauxhall House, zipping through any red lights with the siren on and the bike’s lights flashing. The bike pulled up outside with its siren still going. Shepherd took off his helmet, gave it to the motorcycle cop, and ran to the main entrance. Charlotte Button was there waiting for him, dressed in a dark blue suit and a pale blue shirt. ‘You made good time,’ she said. ‘Now do you want to tell me what’s wrong?’