Red Notice (17 page)

Sambor presented the grab bag to his brother, as if it were a coveted award.

Laszlo checked that its contents were still intact, then put the strap over his shoulder. ‘Thank you, brother.’ From this moment, it would not leave his side until the triumphant conclusion of their operation.

46

TOM WAS STILL
making his way towards the front of the Eurostar, moving fast but scanning every passenger’s face and checking each toilet as he came to it. Most of the passengers he passed had yet to feel there was any cause for concern: they sat with bored, indifferent or mildly irritated expressions as they waited for the train to start moving again.

The public-address system burst into life. ‘This is the head steward speaking. We apologize for the delay. We hope to be moving again shortly. Meanwhile, please remain in your seats. The carriage doors will remain fastened for your safety. Thank you for your patience.’

The announcement created hardly a ripple of complaint among the passengers: Colin had done an excellent job, keeping everyone in ‘fucking typical’ mode.

As Tom entered the last carriage, he saw a red light blink above one of the carriage exits. A well-worn and seriously badged-up rucksack was preventing the door locking. Tom climbed down onto the concrete track bed and crouched, more out of instinct than anything else, his gaze sweeping in every direction.

The track was empty.

He scanned both sides of the train, checked the roof, then crouched low to peer beneath it. As he straightened again, he
heard the smallest of noises, a barely audible mechanical hum behind the green metal door.

He began to move towards it.

47

LASZLO AND HIS
cadre in the service tunnel also heard the noise. But for them it was louder, and they knew what it was: they had been waiting for it. He smiled as the noise turned into a clearly identifiable engine note and they saw the glow of lights approaching. ‘Right on time.’

His brother was in command of the fighting men and Laszlo would never usurp him. He stood to one side. At Sambor’s instruction, they all faded into the shadows, fanning out along one wall of the tunnel.

Sambor himself remained at its centre, facing the approaching French fire truck. Caught in the glare of their headlights, he raised his hands, miming the appropriate degree of panic-stricken gratitude. The leading appliance screeched to a halt and the two behind soon followed suit.

Sambor headed for the front wagon, babbling in Russian, trying to explain what had happened. The brigade commander could only reply in French. ‘Where is the fire? What has happened?’

The rest of the crews clambered out and began to unload their equipment.

Sambor got within two paces of the commander, stopped, legs apart to ensure stability as he pulled aside his leather jacket with his left hand, exposing the suppressed pistol tucked
into his belt. He drew the weapon down with his right hand. There was a faint thud as the round left the barrel. It made contact with the skin immediately beneath the fireman’s nostrils and took out his brain stem a fraction of a second before it emerged from the back of his skull, taking fragments of yellow helmet with it, and shattered against the appliance’s bodywork.

There was a faint movement in the shadows and more South Ossetians stepped into view. Their weapons made barely a sound as the working parts moved to eject the empty case, reload a fresh round, and propel it from the barrel. They mowed the firemen down, one by one, with double taps into the centre of their body mass. Tufts of fibre from their uniforms puffed outwards like thistledown as they crashed to the ground.

48

TOM REACHED THE
green metal door and moved into the service tunnel. Laszlo, Sambor and their cohorts had their backs to him as they completed the slaughter of the unarmed French firemen.

One of the insurgents stopped firing and clipped a fresh mag into his weapon. Tom sprinted forward, keeping low. His target didn’t even have time to turn his head as Tom grabbed the working-parts cover of the sub-machine-gun and, using his momentum, pushed down.

Partly through shock and partly as a result of the strength of the attack, the weapon fell from the assassin’s hands. Turning it quickly and reaching for the pistol grip, Tom fired. The safety catch was on single shot, so Tom put another round into him as he fell, then dropped onto the concrete and used the body as cover.

He dropped two more of them before the rest realized that something was wrong. Laszlo, Sambor and those closest spun round, momentarily confused.

Only one fireman remained standing, bleeding profusely from his wounds. He took advantage of the distraction to dive for the wall and smash a dimly illuminated glass panel. Another volley tore into him, but as he fell, his hand hooked
around the lever beneath, triggering one of the series of giant steel fire screens to crash down on the French side of the service tunnel.

Tom spotted the dim glow of another glass panel on the UK side, just before the green door. In the darkness, he couldn’t spot the precise location of the next safety barrier. Would he seal himself in with Laszlo? He was about to find out. He made a run for it, firing in bursts to keep the enemy’s heads down.

As his rounds slammed into the concrete around them, Laszlo’s crew finally identified the threat. Braving the ceramic hailstorm that was now aimed in his direction, Tom dived for the panel. Smashing the glass with his fist, he forgot about the incoming, focused completely on pulling down the lever.

A second fire screen began to descend, threatening to cut him off from his escape route.

He sprayed the rest of his magazine at his pursuers then rolled under the rapidly descending barrier. As it fell to the ground, he lay for a second or two, listening to the staccato drumbeat of enemy rounds on the other side of the steel barricade, then the rattle and bang of their vain attempts to force it open.

49

TOM HEARD A
muffled shout. Pressing his ear to the metal, he could make out Sambor’s yell in Russian: ‘Who the fuck was that?’

And Laszlo’s growled response: ‘What does it matter? We continue.’

The sound of heavy magnets being clamped onto the barrier a few seconds later echoed down the tunnel. Tom turned and hobbled towards the safety door, keeping close to the wall, away from the centre of the pressure wave and high-velocity secondary missiles that the imminent detonation would catapult his way.

Moments later, the area behind him erupted. The copper liner charge cut a rectangular hole through the steel as easily as if it were wet paper. The pressure wave jolted Tom’s body and hurled him – his internal organs shuddering, the fillings in his teeth vibrating – through the doorway into the Paris-bound tunnel. Debris rained down, burying him beneath a pile of dust and rubble.

As the ringing in his ears subsided, he began to hear the screams and shouts of the Eurostar passengers. He could also hear Laszlo, Sambor and their men advancing towards the breach in the fire screen, picking their way through the cloud
of noxious smoke billowing from the site of the explosion.

Tom was lying in their path. He had to move, and now. One round would be all it took to put an end to his chances of sorting out this nightmare.

He wrenched himself onto his hands and knees and tried to crawl. His legs wouldn’t function. He dug his elbows into the rubble and hauled himself forward. The cover of the nearest carriage seemed to be a lifetime away. But he managed to slide beneath it as a dozen sets of boots pounded past him.

Cutting charges were set on the carriage doors at intervals along the train. Sixty seconds later they, too, detonated. The succession of pressure waves rippled along the tunnels to England and France. They didn’t have anywhere else to go. As Tom struggled to recover, he knew that no one on either side would be in any doubt now that there was more than a fire going on down here.

He watched the insurgents swarm onto the train. The operation was as slick as anything the Blue team could have achieved. The charges guaranteed entry; they also subdued the occupants.

Tom thought only of Delphine. If one of the smouldering doors was hers, she’d be OK. Toilets and luggage racks separated the access points from the passenger seating. She’d be scared, but alive.

Laszlo’s men burst into the carriages, brandishing their suppressed weapons. Panic spread like wildfire.

‘
Shut up!
’ Laszlo’s voice cut through the bedlam in the forward section. ‘Everyone! Hands on your heads, then heads down. Do it now!’

A man in his thirties, alone in a corner seat, suddenly leaped to his feet and started running down the aisle, away from the guns. The first shots went wide, but well-aimed rounds from Laszlo and Sambor cut him down.

Sambor moved quickly after him and finished him with a single shot to the head. Laszlo paused alongside him as the other passengers tried to process what had just happened. He
knew it would be hard for them: no gunfire; no pre-game warm-up; just instant death. It wasn’t the way they’d seen it in the movies.

‘Could he be the one?’

Sambor kicked over the body so that they could have a closer look at his face.

Laszlo looked down. ‘No. No dust residue on him from the detonation. Just another nonentity with no self-control.’

He showed no reaction to the howls around him, but he was pleased. They were getting the message. Fear really did bring compliance.

‘So, you think our hero is still out there?’

‘Perhaps.’

The only thing that mattered to Laszlo was the mission. Once a clear set of objectives had been decided upon, he knew he must never deviate from them, no matter what was thrown at him. Fighting and killing were easy; his mind had processed the why, the when and the how. Laszlo was an intellectual; a professor of the art of conflict. His heart provided the fire; his body was the finely honed instrument with which he forged his vision.

He scanned the carriage. Some of the passengers had obeyed his orders: they kept their heads low. Others, trembling with fright, were still too stunned to react. Speed and aggression were the key. They needed to be gripped instantly. He nodded to his men, and out came the Mace cans. Ten seconds later, the offenders were doubled up, coughing and retching, tears and green mucus decorating their faces.

He was glad they’d dropped the runner. These people needed to know what would happen if they didn’t do exactly what they were told.

The next phase could now begin: herding the passengers towards the front half of the train. They had about four hundred people to control, and they needed to confine them.

50

DELPHINE HAD DONE
exactly as Tom had instructed when the explosions started. She’d crouched behind her bags and stayed where she was as the pressure wave rocked the carriage. Her ears felt as if they were bursting.

The pinstriped businessman had been less prudent. Panicked, he had dived out of his seat, run towards the nearest detonation site and leaped into the darkness. Hyperventilating with fear, not knowing which way to run, he hadn’t seen the heavily armed men emerge from the smoke. He hadn’t had time to take a single step before he’d felt something pushed into the side of his head, just below the earlobe.

His killers stepped back from the side of the train and fired a burst at one of the windows. The suppressed weapons continued to make no sound, so the blizzard of incoming safety glass was the first sign of further attack. Safe behind her makeshift barricade, Delphine remained untouched, although the faces of two or three others were cut. But she wasn’t unharmed. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she curled up like a small child and wept. It wasn’t long before she realized she was weeping for Tom.

As the insurgents stormed the carriage, Delphine wriggled further down in her seat, dragging her bags on top of her. But
she was spotted at once. A man mountain with wild hair and a glistening beard seized her arm, dragged her out from behind her protective barricade, and herded her towards the rest of the panic-stricken crowd of survivors.

She saw Grace, tears streaming down her face, clutching her children and trying to quieten their terrified cries. Delphine worked her way towards them through the heaving mob. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispered, squeezing her arm. ‘It’s OK, children. Just stay quiet and keep still. The bad men will go soon.’

51

WHILE THEIR MEN
secured the passengers and herded them through the train, Laszlo and Sambor stormed the driver’s compartment. Laszlo issued his commands in a brisk monotone. ‘Get on the floor. Put your hands behind your backs. And now stay absolutely still or we will kill you.’ He knew that people generally couldn’t control their fear: they needed his control because they had lost all sense of their own.

The driver proved not to be as stupid as Laszlo had assumed. He slid out of his driving seat like oil and lay flat on the floor, face down. He didn’t move a muscle. Sambor zip-tied his wrists and ankles while Laszlo picked up his radio mic. He knew that Folkestone control centre would be standing by, desperate to know what was happening in the tunnel.

To begin with, he just heard breathing.

When he spoke, it was slowly and deliberately, in perfect, slightly accented English. ‘My name is Laszlo Antonov. And I have complete control of this train and all its passengers. What happens to them next depends on the nature of your response. Now, put me in contact with whoever is in command of incident control.’

It was pointless dealing with anyone else. He knew how the system worked.

‘Sorry . . .’ The voice at the other end of the line was barely more than a squeak. ‘You said Laszlo Anton—’

‘Listen to me, young man. I want to talk to whoever will be liaising with COBRA. They know who I am. They know I am on this train. Just do what I say, and do it now. If
you
don’t know what COBRA is, go and find someone who does.’

He listened in silence to the panic-stricken rambling of the Eurostar employee.