Honour Bound (3 page)

“Jesus
fucking Christ!”
Sergeant Ray Moore swore as the sound of the blast thundered over the bus
station. He stood entranced as a pillar of thick black smoke rose from the
Terminal building, seemingly pushed upwards by the deep orange flames that were
greedily devouring the remains of the roof. “Fucking shit!” he shook his head
as if the sudden motion could change the information his eyes were receiving.
He turned on his heel and ran the few yards to the incident control vehicle
shouting orders to other policemen who were transfixed by the mushrooming
cloud, now differing in shades of black as the smoke writhed and twisted in the
still air like so may agonised serpents. On reaching the control vehicle, he
paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Jesus fucking wept!” He wrenched the
door open and grabbed the microphone from the nearest bank of equipment.

“What
the hell’s going on
sarge
,” a policewoman asked as
she set up the computer link to the control room a mile away on the outskirts
of the airport. Two of her colleagues looked at the sergeant, their expressions
asking the same question.

Moore
paused briefly, not answering, not trusting his voice to be more that a
panicked
squeak
. He breathed deeply to steady his
shaking hands and regain his self-control before speaking on the radio. He was
half way through a situation report and a request for further assistance when a
second Royal Mail liveried van exploded inside the bus station. The van, less
than thirty yards from the control vehicle contained four pounds of
Semtex
explosive attached to a fifty-gallon drum of petrol.
The resulting fireball engulfed emergency vehicles and coaches in a searing
ball of flame. People, who seconds before had been standing in orderly queues
and staring incredulously at the rising smoke, now ran in confusion as though
in some grotesque dance, as flames burnt through clothing and flesh. Some, in
blind panic, ran into the flames of burning vehicles only to die in screaming
agony as the fire, ever hungry, devoured all in its path. Others made but a few
paces before dropping to the ground, their pain finally over as scorched and
tortured lungs could no longer supply the much needed oxygen.

A
cloying smell of charred flesh and scorched metal filled the air. A second pall
of thick oily smoke climbed skywards as if in macabre competition with the
first. Many seconds passed before the screams of the injured could be heard.

-3-

Vance
Talbot was the senior field controller of the ATU, the Anti Terrorist Unit, a
position he had held for the last five years. He was a tall man, three inches
over six feet with film star looks that bordered on the ruggedly handsome. An
athletic physique and shock of jet-black hair above an evenly tanned face made
him look ten years younger than his actual forty-four years. He was sitting in
his favourite position, leather Admirals chair half reclined with his feet
crossed at the ankles resting on a clear corner of an otherwise cluttered desk
while he read through the contents of the Heathrow bombing file. As ever, when
in deep concentration he unconsciously toyed with the gold band on his ring
finger with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. His wife, Jayne, had
once called his small but functional office the eagle’s nest, high up as it was
on the twenty-fourth floor of the building that served as the Unit’s control
centre.

The
ATU had been in operation for twenty years, but until the terrorist attack on
the twin towers, it had been a secret government department, certainly not
publicised like MI5 or MI6. The ATU, mainly staffed by ex Special Forces
personnel, had been tasked to eliminate terrorist groups and their support
networks, both in the UK and abroad. Since that devastating attack on the twin
towers, the Unit’s existence, but not its methods, had come to the attention of
the press, mainly to emphasise the commitment of the government in the fight
against global terrorism.

Throughout
the years, numerous files had found their way onto Talbot’s desk, the majority
of them a catalogue of pointless destruction and indiscriminate killing. His
mind had been numbed to the violence and death that was regularly meted out for
useless causes by worthless people on innocent victims.
Victims
who, in all probability, had never heard of the group that had so casually
taken their lives.
There was yet to be an atrocity that man could
inflict on his fellow man that Talbot had not already seen the results of. This
latest outrage had been a well planned clinical operation for as yet an unknown
purpose. The warning given had left insufficient time to evacuate the terminal
building, a fact that the bombers would have been more than aware of. Usually
the groups were not shy in coming forward to claim the ‘glory’ for their cause.
Perhaps the disgusted public outrage or the number of casualties, 276 dead,
another 365 injured had made the rats crawl back into the stinking cesspool of
their own making.

He
read the report again, he’d lost track of the number of times he had thumbed
through it, reading and re-reading the contents hoping to find something,
anything, out of the ordinary, something that would help point the finger. The
caller used the codeword CARUSO in the call before the blasts, the same
codeword used in the four hoax calls. The same male had made all of the calls
to the airport central switchboard. As each threat came through, it was graded
into different levels, from red through a spectrum of colours to green. Any
call made using a known codeword was automatically coded red and the
appropriate action taken. Not that the appropriate action helped these poor
buggers, he thought.

Three
vehicle borne bombs had been left in the central terminal area. The two that
exploded with such devastating
effect,
and a third in
a taxi left on the cab rank on the ground floor. The primer in the taxi had
gone off, but the main charge had failed to detonate. The taxi had burned out
along with a fire brigade hose layer that had parked alongside.

He
leaned back in his chair, watching the flashing cursor on his laptop as though
hoping one of the flashes would turn into inspiration. It was at times like
this he wished he were on active operations, able to play a more positive role
in the elimination of the groups who carried out these attacks. Collation and
dissemination of information was an important part in the fight against
terrorism, and though he recognised that, it didn’t stop the longing he felt
when the field operators were receiving their briefings on a new job. He wanted
to be out there with them, feeling the rush of adrenaline, the surge of inner
strength as the reckoning drew near. He knew it was not to be. He had played
his part in the active battles, played and lost. With a grim smile, he recalled
the event that had so devastatingly altered his life.

It
was during a covert operation seven years previously. He had been on a team
tasked to release a hostage taken by a group purporting to be the Voice of
Freedom. As it turned out, they were the voice of a Columbian drugs gang who
were trying to divert severely stretched resources from a massive drugs deal.
During the final seconds of the operation, while the hostage was under escort
from the building, he had been shot in the back, the last act of a dying man,
by an amour-piercing bullet that had penetrated his body armour and left lung.

“If
you want to live to see your grandchildren and tell them many and varied tales
of derring-do,” the bespectacled service doctor had said, “you will have to
curtail your sporting activities. If you don’t, I’ll have to class you as unfit
and put you out to grass.”

And
so he was declared unfit for live-ops, the actual taking part in covert
operations. Because of his knowledge of the major terrorist groups and their
methods, he had been given command of a desk and jumped at the chance of field
ops controller when the job was offered. He sighed inwardly. I can’t undo the past,
he thought, but I can still help to make a difference in the future.

He
closed the folder and swivelled his chair to the window to look out over the
city of his birth. Somehow he found it relaxing to watch the silent hustle and
bustle of the great city spread out below, knowing at least for a few minutes,
that he was detached from it and its many problems, and able to organize his
thoughts in the privacy and silence of his own company. He watched a ferry
progress along the silver thread of the Thames, the constantly moving surface
reflecting the sunlight as though from a million heliographs. When the ferry
had moored safely at the Hammersmith jetty he turned back to his desk and
thumbed a button on the intercom. “Mary,” he said, “
contact
Sam Norton and tell him to meet me in the briefing room at eight.”

“Consider
it done.” The light on the intercom blinked off, leaving him alone with his
thoughts.

***

Talbot
leaned forward and absently tapped a finger on the red striped folder lying
open on the table. “You’ve read the report Sam, any word coming from the
streets yet?”

The
two men sat beneath harsh strip lights in the briefing room. The lights,
recessed into the ceiling, gave the white walled room a severe clinical
appearance. The monotony of colour was broken at one end by a 200-inch video
screen used for projecting photo surveillance material during in depth
briefings, and at the other by a green painted electronic sliding door. A large
oak conference table, surrounded by several tubular framed chairs, took up the
centre of the room. A bank of filing cabinets, a stack of extra chairs and an
ancient coffee dispenser were the only other features to break the stark lines
of the walls.

“My
sources are looking for anything unusual,” Norton replied in a quiet one to one
voice. “Only rumours so far, nothing substantial.”

Talbot
thought of Norton’s conversational tone as his Mr Hyde voice. His Mr Jekyll
voice was very loud, clear and commanding. During one operation, he had seen
twenty hostages milling around like frightened sheep brought to a standstill by
the authority and power in his voice, and obeying his instructions almost robot
like. Most, when asked why, simply said because he told me to.

Norton
pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to the coffee machine. His slim
but muscular body moved with a firm grace. Broad shoulders, accentuated by the
expensive cut of a dark blue suit, added to the suggestion of latent power. His
peak physical shape had been moulded by years of tough training and active service
in the Special Forces. A career brought to an abrupt halt by a rogue gust of
wind as he was about to land after a HALO, (high altitude low opening)
parachute jump. The resulting crash into a low wall had broken several bones
and any chance of staying with his elite unit. He had been offered an RTU, a
return to unit in military parlance, or a full medical discharge. Like most
elite troopers, he viewed an RTU as a retrograde step and chose the discharge.
The Anti Terrorist Unit had welcomed him with open arms, putting his many and
varied talents to the test on numerous occasions.

“I’ll
be seeing them this morning,” he said, “and hopefully there’ll be something to
go on. No guarantees of course.”

“Anything
would be better than what we have now.” Talbot said, the coffee dispenser
punctuating his words with its inner rumblings. “The only thing we are sure of
is that this wasn’t an Al Qaeda operation. The direct warning and the codeword
takes them out of the frame. They don’t want people evacuating the area, the
bigger the death toll the happier that lot are.”

Moments
later Norton placed two Styrofoam cups on the table and settled himself back
into his chair. “I take it that no one has actually claimed this one then?”

“No,
that’s normally done within the first twelve hours or so, it’s well over that
now, and nothing.”

Norton
picked up his cup and blew on the hot liquid. “Do we have anything at all to go
on, even something vague?”

Talbot
shook his head and leaned back in his seat, interlacing his fingers behind his
head.
“Nothing, absolute
diddly
squat.
The checks made on the remains of the vehicles have all proved
negative. We’ve had three engines and partial remains of one chassis to have a
go at, and as you could probably guess, the ID numbers had been removed.”

Norton
looked at his coffee, the vapour rising in the still air. “What about forensics
on the one that didn’t blow?”

“That
was the taxi. Nothing doing there, wiped as clean as a whistle.
Semtex
was in all three devices. That stuff is so readily
available nowadays you can all but buy it in the local supermarket.”

Norton
picked up the folder and flicked through the pages and photographs. He knew
from a previous study of the information contained in the closely typed sheets,
that the bombers had covered their tracks well. But he also knew that no one,
no group, was perfect. There would be an opening somewhere. The problem for the
analysts, was trying to find it in among the masses of information constantly
being added to the file. Maybe, just maybe, a slight crack had already
appeared. Some of the survivors questioned about the attack, said the van
parked in the bus station had belonged to the Royal Mail. That would almost
certainly have guaranteed the vehicle wouldn't be towed away by the police, nor
would it have caused undue concern among the bus station staff.

To
Talbot he said, “I’ve been thinking about the vehicles they used. The cab, well
they could have got that from anywhere, there are literally thousands of them
to choose from. Even one salvaged from a breakers yard and tidied up would have
worked. But a Royal Mail van, well that’s a bit different. It would attract
attention if it didn’t look the part. You know reasonably new and correct
markings. A big chunk of the Royal Mail fleet, as far as I am aware, switched
over to a satellite tracking system a while back. Apparently, it makes it
difficult to steal their vehicles because the thief will not know where the
satellite transceiver is mounted. At least it will give us an area to start
enquiries. On the other hand if they weren’t stolen, then two vans have been
sprayed and marked with the proper livery, and someone, somewhere, knows who
did it.”

“I
don’t know how good their system is,” Talbot said, “but if they’ve had loads of
them stolen all over the country you could be setting out on a wild goose
chase.”

“If
they were stolen,” Norton said, “I’ll lay money they were taken locally. It’d
be pointless having to drive them any further than necessary. They’d just be
running the risk of being pulled up by the police.”

Talbot
nodded. “A valid point, I’ll get on to the powers that be in Royal Mail and see
what surfaces. As you say it may give us somewhere to start.”

He
took another sip of his coffee and placed the cup on the table. “By the way,
congrats are in order for clearing that team in Lincolnshire, it’s another of
my files closed. The weapons found in and around the house had been used in
eight attacks, both here and in Europe. The clean up team also found a rather
generous supply of ammo, explosives and detonators. It looks like they were the
central armourers for that area as well as being active. It’ll have set the
bastards back a bit.”

Norton
grinned, etching laughter lines around his mouth and eyes. “I like to do a
proper job, any further info on the visitor’s van?”

“
Mmm
, it belongs to a Kevin Miller. The local CID paid him a
visit. Apparently he and his wife run a local grocers, he’d delivered an order
to Faisal, that’s who he knew our man as, said he got there late, because he’d
been at the wholesalers for most of the day.”

“Everything
check out?” Norton asked.