Red Notice (16 page)

Sambor stopped again at an automatic barrier at the far side of the security zone and used the dead officer’s card to access the service road that led to the tracks on the southbound side.
The three vans climbed the ramp and came to a halt on the bridge above the track.

Each van was packed with at least a dozen men, armed with a mixture of automatic rifles and light machine-guns for when the situation went noisy; suppressed sub-machine-guns until it did; grenades and a variety of ropes, NVGs (night vision goggles) and fire-fighters’ oxygen sets attached by bungee cords to 50cm-wide, old-school, plain wooden skateboards with plastic wheels and braces.

They were prepared physically and mentally for war. They’d all had at least nine lives, and had the burns, the dents, the bullet holes and the knife wounds to prove it. They waited, not caring about the gathering police presence. If you didn’t fear dying, you didn’t fear anything or anyone.

An HGV Shuttle approached on the tracks below them, beginning to accelerate as it pulled away from the platforms. One by one the insurgents climbed onto the parapet and, keeping clear of the power cables, they jumped. Each landed with a thud on the roof of the container cage and rolled to break his fall. A few seconds after the last was safely in position, the Shuttle, still accelerating, careered into the mouth of the tunnel.

The abrupt transition from cold, autumnal air to the warm, humid atmosphere in the tunnel caused a layer of condensation to form immediately on the skin of the wagons. Blown back by the rush of air from the slipstream, the spray lashed Sambor and his men, stinging their eyes.

Temporarily blinded, one rubbed at his face, and in doing so moved his arm and the weapon he carried too close to the power lines. There was a blinding blue flash and a whiff of ozone as the high-voltage current arced across the gap and fried him in an instant. His smouldering body tumbled from the roof of his container, smashed against the concrete wall and rebounded into the side of the cage before dropping to the ground alongside the tracks.

The train was now building up speed. Though he and his men were still hanging onto the top of the cages, Sambor
showed no emotion as he counted down the seconds on his watch, then shouted back at his team.

At once, two men extracted cans of kerosene from their backpacks and began pouring it through the thick metal latticework onto the cab of the truck it housed. One popped a distress flare and dropped it into the spreading kerosene. It ignited at once. Thick grey smoke began belching through the bars and was whipped away by the slipstream.

Within seconds sensors in the Shuttle and the tunnel wall detected the heat and smoke. Warning signals flashed to the Eurostar control centre, lighting up the digital control board and deafening the staff with the clamour of alarms as the sprinkler system kicked in.

The
chef de trains
took no more than a moment to reach the decision to stop all traffic, close both lines and dispatch the fire trucks at the Calais emergency response depot into the service tunnel that ran between the north- and southbound tracks. The fire that had shut down the complex for weeks had been four years ago now, but its memory was still fresh. If this proved to be a false alarm or a fault in the sensors, a few hundred passengers would suffer no worse inconvenience than a short delay. If it was a genuine blaze, every passing second of inactivity only increased the risk of a catastrophe.

In less than a minute the fire-fighters, roused from their chairs and bunks by the howling siren, jumped aboard their custom-built truck and roared across the compound.

Deep in the tunnel, the HGV Shuttle was losing power and speed. Smoke and flames still belched from the steel latticework at its rear, despite the automated rainstorm doing its best to dampen them down.

Sambor and his men began clambering down from the roofs of their containers, using the lattice bars like the rungs of a ladder. Sprinkler water ran down their hair and faces.

The narrowness of the gap between the train and the tunnel wall forced them to assemble in single file beside the track.
Sambor did a cursory head count, and led the way towards the front of the train.

Although his control panel was lit up like a Christmas tree, the driver had not panicked. He was reaching for the brake lever to bring the train to a controlled halt when Sambor blew the lock to the rear entrance of the cabin.

He kicked the door open, stepped into the cab, brought up his weapon and shot the man dead with a double tap to the head. His ceramic rounds were designed for fighting at close quarters on ships and planes, where there was a danger of ricochet. They fragmented on impact with the man’s skull and pulverized his brain without exiting his head. The only thing to hit the windscreen was a fine mist of blood.

The driver slumped over the controls. Even without power, the train’s momentum kept it moving forward, still trailing smoke, until his lifeless body slid to the floor and the dead man’s handle braking system brought the train to a juddering halt.

43

DELPHINE HAD RECOVERED
from what she’d thought might be another bout of sickness as she felt the Eurostar begin to slow.

Tom appeared at her side and she reached for his hand, enclosing it in hers. ‘What’s happening?’ she breathed. ‘Surely the French can’t be stopping the train. You said that they need—’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘They’d never stop the train in the tunnel. Something else is going on.’

He leaned out into the aisle and peered up the carriage. The lights flickered and died, then came back on in dimmed emergency mode. The train was still moving, but painfully slowly. Finally, with a squeal of brakes, it came to a complete stop. There were moans and groans from the passengers, frustration and a hint of anger rather than fear. There had been so many breakdowns over the years, stories of passengers being delayed for hours . . .

Delphine tightened her grip on Tom’s fingers because she knew differently. He knelt closer to her and brushed her cheek with his lips, then eased his hand gently from her grip and locked his gaze on hers. ‘I’ll have to leave you here a while longer.’ His voice was little more than a murmur. He placed
her hands on her lap. ‘I want you to do as I say now, and stay here. No matter how noisy it gets, you stay put.’

‘Noisy?’ Delphine said.

‘There may be some shooting, but even if you hear gunfire or an explosion, do not get off the train. Just take cover behind your bags, keep low and stay exactly where you are now. It’s the safest place, and I’ll know where to find you.’

‘If there is danger here, wouldn’t it be better to get off and run back along the tunnel?’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘I don’t know what’s out there. In here, you’re safe for now. Keep anything valuable with you, in your jeans. We may have to move fast.’

Her skin tingled as he reached out and touched her cheek. ‘Give me your mobile,’ he said.

Delphine handed it to him. ‘But it won’t work in the tunnel. I don’t have any reception . . .’

Tom didn’t glance up as he tapped the keys. ‘Bluetooth still works. I’m pairing it with mine.’ He handed the phone back and got to his feet.

‘Do you have to go?’ Delphine looked up at him as he leaned down once more.

‘I need to make sure that whatever is happening out there doesn’t happen in here, to you.’

Their lips touched. Despite herself, Delphine liked how it felt.

44

LASZLO WAS A
couple of coaches ahead of him, working his way towards the front of the train, when an Englishman in a pinstriped business suit caught sight of his Eurostar uniform and stood up, blocking the aisle.

‘Why have we stopped?’ he demanded. ‘Why has there been no announcement? Don’t you people know anything about customer care?’

‘An announcement will be made shortly.’ Laszlo’s smile was as polished as any Eurostar smile-trained employee’s. But his eyes betrayed the fact that he couldn’t care less. ‘Meanwhile, please remain in your seat.’

He tried to move past the irate passenger but the man grabbed his arm and held him back. ‘This is simply not good enough,’ he said. ‘I have an important business meeting. I deserve an explanation.’

‘Then I shall give you one.’

Laszlo drove his knee into the immaculately tailored groin. As the passenger doubled up, Laszlo grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his nose on the edge of the table. When he released his grip, the man sank to his knees, his face a mask of blood.

‘Thank you for choosing to travel with Eurostar today,’ Laszlo muttered.

The shouts and screams of the other passengers pursued him as he moved on along the train.

Tom heard the screams ahead of him and, abandoning caution, began to run through the carriages. A dazed businessman, blood pouring from his nose, was being helped to his feet by another passenger.

‘An attendant . . . assaulted me.’ The pinstriped suit was as blood-stained and rumpled as its owner, who was now radiating more embarrassment than pain. ‘He hasn’t heard the last of this. I’ll make sure he never—’

‘Tall guy, with a beard?’

He nodded, spilling a fresh gobbet of blood-stained mucus on his lapel.

Tom checked the toilet signs at both ends of the carriage. ‘Where did he go?’

‘I don’t know . . .’ the injured passenger said, from behind his hands. ‘I was on the fucking floor. I’d just been assaulted!’

Tom turned to the other passengers. ‘Where did he go?’

A group of four lads-on-the-piss sat at a table piled high with Stella cans, not bothering to hide the fact that they’d quite enjoyed the show. The logo on their sweatshirts told him they worked for London Underground and their expressions made it clear that they knew how it felt to be accosted, abused, poked in the chest and treated like dirt in the course of a working day.

The only one without a baseball cap pointed towards the front of the train and Tom took off at a run.

45

SAMBOR AND HIS
men jumped off the Shuttle, as it ground to a halt near the midpoint of the tunnel, and prepared for phase two of their operation. So far everything was going to plan. They had been trained well, and years of experience had honed their skills. Fighting, killing and dying was the only life they knew.

Sambor located the nearest CCTV security camera and, hugging the wall, used the curvature of the tunnel and the pall of smoke to conceal his approach to it. Reaching up, he hacked into the cable feed with his knife. One of his team swung a backpack off his shoulder, fished out a steel probe and pushed it against the wire core. A torrent of sparks burst from the camera housing above their head, and from all the others, the entire length of the tunnel. He’d sent an electromagnetic pulse surging through the system.

Sambor shouted for his men, motioning them across the track in front of the train to a green metal door set in the concrete wall that connected the UK-bound tunnel with the service tunnel. He opened it and signalled to his men to follow him out of reach of the sprinkler system.

One hundred metres away, separated from his brother by the thickness of the tunnel wall, Laszlo clambered down from the
motionless Eurostar and crept back along its flank, using the dim glow of the emergency lights from the carriage windows a metre above him to find his way through the darkness.

He soon saw a green metal door in the wall ahead. He ran to it and slipped into the service tunnel where Sambor and his men were waiting in the gloom. Sambor grasped him in a bear hug and planted a kiss on both his cheeks. Laszlo was just as pleased to see him. It wasn’t only because of the plan they had made: the siblings were close; they trusted each other with their lives – and had done so many times.

‘Little brother!’ Laszlo returned the affection, happy to be talking in his mother tongue once more. It was always a relief. During their youth as ethnic Slavs living in South Ossetia, they had been constantly pressured by the dictatorship to refer to themselves as Georgians, and to speak Georgian. Georgia controlled their country, but they never forgot they were Ossetians, that Russia was their motherland, and Russian the language of their ancestors.

Laszlo and Sambor had been raised in a lawless nation that had descended into a constant state of conflict after the South Ossetians had declared their independence from Georgia in 1990. Their parents had tried to protect their sons by keeping their heads down and muddling through as best they could. Just finding enough food was a constant battle.

It had been clear from an early age that Laszlo was a gifted student, and his parents had known that the only place for him to further his education and be clear of the violence was with their fellow Slavs in Russia.

Sambor had had to stay at home: he wasn’t bright enough to follow in Laszlo’s footsteps, and they couldn’t afford to send both boys. But there was no bad feeling between the two. Laszlo was the leader; he was mentally strong, just like their mother, the one who would lead the family out of poverty. Until then, they would carry on keeping their heads below the parapet and trying to survive.

Laszlo had not let his family down. He had achieved a PhD in physics, with a dissertation on gas-pipeline engineering; he
had emerged from Russia a fervent nationalist. Given the poverty and death that he’d witnessed in South Ossetia under Georgian control, his fervour had its roots in genuine concerns.

Upon his return home, he had been unable to find work despite his skills. The few jobs available went to the ethnic Georgian minority. It was then that Laszlo had decided to follow a different path from the one his parents had planned. He had taken Sambor with him. They would keep their heads below the parapet no more.

‘You kept your promise.’

‘Of course.’ Sambor held his brother at arms’ length, but only so he could admire Laszlo’s new facial hair. He hadn’t seen him like this since the old days. ‘Did you ever doubt it?’

‘Not for a moment.’

‘Are you ready to greet some of our old friends?’ Sambor gestured towards the two men closest to them, both carrying belt-fed machine-guns. They stiffened proudly as Laszlo cast an eye over them and the rest of the warriors he had commanded when they were all Black Bears.