Siege (4 page)

Because of the levels of security at British ports, and the use of sniffer dogs to detect explosives, it had been considered safest to avoid bringing the consignment into the country using the lorry. Instead, the crate had been dropped at a safe house in Antwerp. A contact of the handler there knew a Belgian fishing boat captain who occasionally did hashish runs into the UK. For a fee, the captain had agreed to transport the weapons and land them using a RIB on an isolated stretch of beach north of Peterhead in Scotland. From there, the crate had been collected by Fox and several other members of the team, and driven to London.

Because the C4 had still been in powder form, Fox had delivered it separately to a lock-up in Forest Gate, along with the detonators, where it had been collected by the people whose job it was to turn it into bombs. Fox had no idea of their identities, he’d simply dropped off the tub containing the C4. Then, two weeks later, he’d received an anonymous text telling him to go back to the lock-up, where six identical black North Face backpacks and a small trolley suitcase were waiting for him, all of them now converted into deadly weapons.

Fox didn’t bother re-padlocking the crate since they’d be needing the contents soon enough. Instead, he pulled out one of the Kevlar vests, grabbed a set of stained navy-blue decorator’s overalls from a built-in cupboard next to the door, and got changed, packing the civilian clothes he’d come here in, and which he’d be needing later, into a backpack. Although he wore gloves throughout the process, he wasn’t too worried about leaving any DNA behind. A local cleaning company had been hired to come in the following day and give the whole place a full industrial steam clean, which would remove all traces of his presence here.

Fox could feel the excitement building in him now. This was it. The culmination of months of planning. Success, and the whole world was his. Failure, and it would be his last day on earth.

Death or glory. The choice was that stark. It reminded him of his time in the army, in those all too rare moments when he’d seen action. It was that feeling of being totally and utterly alive. He loved the thrill of violence, always had. And today, for the first time in far too long, he was going to get the chance to experience that thrill on a grand scale.

Down the corridor, he heard the sound of the rear loading doors opening, and he smiled.

The others were beginning to arrive.

CAT MANOLIS PACED THE
hotel room, wondering if it was work or the interminably heavy London traffic that was delaying her lover.

Their affair had started innocently enough. The occasional shared smile as they passed each other in the corridor at work, or in the gym beneath the building, where they both worked out; the first conversation on the treadmill at 7.30 one morning; the knowing look he’d given her. Even then it had been weeks before he’d asked her out for a coffee. Everything had had to be so secret. It was the same old thing. He was trapped in a loveless marriage, a handsome, charismatic man in need of female attention, possessed of the kind of power that was always such an aphrodisiac, even to a woman barely half his age.

They’d met for coffee one Saturday morning in a pretty little café on the South Bank. He’d made an excuse to his wife, telling her he had to come into town, and they’d spent a snatched couple of hours together. They’d walked along the banks of the Thames, and Cat had put her arm through his as they talked. She’d told him about her upbringing in Nice, how she’d been the only child of a father who was long gone by the time she was born, and a mother who’d never forgiven her for it, as if she was somehow to blame for his fecklessness. How she’d gone off the rails (although she refused to give him too many details about how low she’d fallen) before pulling herself together and marrying a man who was the love of her life, only to lose him a week before her twenty-fourth birthday. It was grief, then, that had brought her to London five years earlier.

He’d seemed genuinely touched by her story and had told her his own more familiar one: how he’d been with the same woman since university, how they’d once been in love, and how, over the thirty years and three children since, their love had faded to nothing more than a hollow husk, leaving him desperate to be free of the marriage.

‘I care for you very much,’ he’d said gently when it was time for them to part. He’d looked into her eyes as he spoke so she’d know his words were heartfelt.

They’d kissed passionately. It had been something that was always going to happen, and it seemed to last for a long, long time.

When they’d finally broken apart, they’d promised to meet again as soon as circumstances allowed.

Since then they’d had three separate trysts – all involving coffee, followed by a walk, though never in the same place – and all the time they’d been moving towards this day. When they would finally sleep together for the first time. Michael had wanted to consummate their relationship at Cat’s apartment, but she’d explained that it would be impractical given that she shared her place with three other women, so they’d settled for the far more romantic destination of the Stanhope on Park Lane.

Cat was dressed seductively in a simple sleeveless black dress that finished just above the knee, sheer black hold-up stockings, and black court shoes with four-inch heels. Usually she dressed far more modestly and, as she stopped and looked at herself in the room’s full-length mirror, she felt a frisson of excitement. She looked good. There was no doubt about it. Michael would melt when he saw her.

If, of course, he turned up.

She looked at her watch. It was five to four. He was almost half an hour late. And he hadn’t even called. She couldn’t call him either. She was under strict instructions never to call him. Too easy to get found out, he’d said, and then that’ll be it for both of us.

Trying to hide her concern, she poured a glass of Evian from the mini-bar and took a long sip, contemplating breaking the law and annoying Michael at the same time by lighting a cigarette.

If she had to wait, then she might as well make the most of it.

16.00

IF WE WANT
to survive, then we have to operate like a well-oiled machine. That means obeying orders when they’re given.

‘Innocent people are going to die. There’s no getting around that. But that’s not our problem. They’re collateral damage in a war. Nothing more, nothing less. At no point can you forget that, or suddenly develop an attack of conscience, because if you hesitate about pulling the trigger, or refuse, then the penalty’s immediate death. No exceptions. We can’t afford for the machine to break down. If it does, we’re all dead, or worse still, in the hands of the enemy, which means the rest of our natural lives in prison. And I’m not going to let that happen. Are we clear on that?’

Fox looked in turn at each of the four men facing him, watching for any signs of doubt in their eyes, but none of them gave anything away. All of them had worked for him in the recent past, and they had three things in common. One: extensive military experience in a combat role. Two: no spouses or dependants. And three, and most important of all: they were all disaffected individuals who harboured a rage against the many perceived injustices in the world – a rage that had manifested itself in the heady mix of violent extremism. There were other motives at play too which explained why they’d chosen to become involved – money, boredom, a desire to once again see real action – but it was the rage that was the most important, because it would be this that drove them to do what was needed today.

There were two he considered totally reliable. One was Dragon, the ex-sapper he’d picked to drive the van bomb to the Westfield. He was currently on the run from prison, where he was being held on remand on a number of explosives charges. He’d run down and killed a ten-year-old boy in a hijacked car during the course of his escape, as well as seriously injuring a prison officer, and he was facing the rest of his life inside if he was recaptured. The other was Leopard, a short, wiry former marine who’d once come top of his group in the SAS selection trials, only to be turned down because apparently he didn’t have the right mental attitude. Leopard had ended up being court-martialled in Afghanistan for breaking the British Army’s ultra-strict rules of engagement by carrying out an unauthorized kill on two members of a Taliban mortar team. He’d served more than two years inside on manslaughter charges – just, in his mind, for doing his job – and the burning anger he felt at his treatment was authentic.

Tiger, a typically Aryan Dane who’d received extensive shrapnel injuries while serving in Afghanistan and walked with an aggressive limp, also had plenty of ruthlessness, but Fox was a lot less sure of his reliability. A one-time member of a neo-Nazi group, Tiger had grown up with an almost psychotic hatred of Jews, and after his experience in Afghanistan had added Muslims to his list of sworn enemies, along with politicians and, as far as Fox could tell, pretty much everyone else who didn’t agree with him. He was also a violent sadist and bully who’d stripped and tied up his ex-girlfriend the previous year and burned her repeatedly with cigarette butts. He’d only avoided jail because she dropped the charges against him after threats to her life. The other men didn’t know about this, or they probably wouldn’t have agreed to work with him.

And then there was Bear, the so-called ‘man with the face’. Of all the men involved in the operation, Fox trusted Bear the least. And yet he owed him the most. Bear had once saved his life when they were serving together in Al-Amarah back in 2005 by spotting an IED half-buried in an irrigation ditch just as the platoon was passing by on patrol. Fox had been closest to it and would have taken the brunt of the blast, but Bear had shouted a warning and jumped on his back, sending them both sprawling into the dirt just as it was detonated by the insurgents. Fox had been temporarily deafened by the blast but was otherwise unhurt. Bear had been less lucky. A jagged, burning piece of shrapnel the size of a baseball had struck him on the side of the face. Alerted by his screams, and the sizzling, Fox had managed to pull it free, burning his fingers through his gloves in the process. Although the heat had cauterized the wound, the shrapnel had burned away most of the flesh just beneath the eye to the jaw line, leaving him permanently disfigured, and bitterly resentful of the politicians he’d always blamed for it.

Bear had worked with Fox since those army days, and Fox knew that he was a proven killer, but he was still concerned that, when it came down to it, Bear wouldn’t be able to murder an innocent person in cold blood.

They caught each other’s eyes, and Bear gave him a long, hard look to demonstrate that he knew what was expected of him.

Fox acknowledged it with a nod before turning to the sixth man in the room, standing next to him. ‘Now, I’m going to hand you over to Wolf, who you’ve all met before. I just want to reiterate that he’s the client’s representative, and in overall command of the operation on the ground, while I’m acting as his second in command. You refer to him, as you refer to me, and each other, by codename rather than rank, and never, at any point, use real names. Understood?’

The men nodded, and Wolf took a step forward. He was a short, squat man, well into his forties, with dark skin and a pockmarked face which, combined with his lacquered, dyed-black hair, gave him more than a passing resemblance to the former Panamanian dictator, General Noriega. He cleared his throat loudly and let the cigarette he’d been smoking fall to the warehouse floor.

‘In the next fifteen minutes, you are all going to be half a million dollars richer,’ he announced in a clear, strong Arabic accent.

Fox saw all eyes light up at this. After all, whatever their political affiliations, this was what they were really here for.

‘As soon as I give the word, the money will be sent to your nominated bank accounts. The remainder, one and a half million dollars, will be paid at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, on successful completion of the job. Before I give the word for the first instalment, however, I need proof that we are all committed.’

Wolf reached into his overalls pocket and produced a mobile phone, which he held up for everyone to see.

‘We all know about the decoy bomb in the Westfield Shopping Centre car park that Dragon delivered. The man who presses the call button on this phone will detonate it. I understand that we’ll be able to hear the explosion in here, as we’re only a mile away.’ He paused for a moment, watching them carefully through hooded eyes. ‘So, my friends, who wants to make the call?’

Dragon spoke up. ‘I drove the van, I’ll do it.’ He put out a hand.

He looked like he’d do it too, thought Fox. So did Tiger, the psychotic Dane, who was standing there with an expression of utter boredom on his face. He’d have done it as casually as blowing his own nose. Leopard wore an impassive expression. He’d do it too, if he had to.

Bear, though, was sweating.

Wolf noticed it too, Fox could tell.

Bear lowered his eyes, like a kid who doesn’t know the answer to a question. He was trying not to draw attention to himself, but it didn’t work. Bear was a big man with a ruined face. He was always going to stand out.

Wolf lobbed the phone over to him. ‘You do it.’

Bear caught it instinctively in one gloved hand, looked at it, then looked at Fox, the expression in his eyes demanding ‘you owe me, help me out here’.

But Fox couldn’t. There would be no favouritism on his part.

The warehouse was utterly silent.

Bear took a deep, very loud breath, his finger hovering over the call button.

Fox’s voice cut across the room. ‘We said no hesitation.’

He and Bear stared at each other as if locked in a silent battle of wills.

Fox began counting the seconds in his head. One. Two. He saw Wolf slip a pistol from his waistband and hold it down by his side. Bear was unarmed. All of them were except him and Wolf.

Three.

Wolf’s gloved finger tensed on the trigger.

Four.

Bear pressed the call button in one swift decisive movement.