Spider's Web: A Collection of All-Action Short Stories (7 page)

The next morning, Tchorek left the house wearing a hard hat and a worn and faded boiler suit over his other clothes and carrying the device in a toolbox bearing a Thames Water logo. Even the most eagle-eyed observer would have struggled to realise that the logo had been downloaded from the internet and printed on a home colour printer. He boarded a west-bound Central Line tube and rode it for a dozen stops across London before getting off at Bond Street.

Had he placed his device during the previous night, his actions would have been picked up by at least one of the scores of security cameras in Bond Street, but he knew that there was much less chance of being observed during the working day, when the street was packed with cars and vans and the pavements choked with people, blocking the sightlines of many of the security cameras and also giving the security personnel many other things to worry about than a boiler-suited Thames Water worker inspecting the rainwater drains in the gutters. Although there were more security personnel per square metre in Bond Street than almost anywhere else in the world, all of them were inside the shops, behind the locked doors, and their attention would be focused much more on people passing those doors or approaching them than on workmen carrying out menial tasks in the street.

Tchorek made his unhurried way down Bond Street until he spotted a rainwater drain between two closely parked cars. It was then the work of a moment to lift the grate, kneel down and open his toolbox as if checking the drain. The well-off Londoners and foreign visitors passed him by without even a glance, their attention focused on the glittering window displays. He did not even look around before lowering the device into place. He had once seen rich Londoners stepping over an old woman who had collapsed in a Mayfair street, as if she were merely a kerb to be negotiated. None of them had so much as glanced at her, let alone offered help, and he was confident thatWatnfident such people would not even register a lowly workman as they strolled along. He replaced the grate, stood up and made his unhurried way off up the street.

That afternoon he returned to Bond Street, but this time wearing the uniform of a traffic warden and carrying a hand-held machine that, to a casual glance, looked the same as the ones on which the wardens checked car tax details and printed out parking tickets. He moved slowly down the street, pretending to check cars, and at one point crossed to the far side and waited in a doorway to avoid another warden coming the opposite way. He then remained in the section of street from which he could observe the entrance to Sotheby’s. A Lebanese woman approached him, dripping diamonds and furs, and demanded to know why her car had been ticketed. He first told her to take her complaint to the police and, when that failed to move her, he leaned towards her and murmured something in her ear. None of the people passing by would have heard a word of it or seen anything untoward, but the woman turned as white as if she had seen a ghost and hurried away without another word, choking back her tears.

After half an hour, the familiar stocky figure of Ilyushin emerged from Sotheby’s, flanked by his burly bodyguards, and began to wander down Bond Street, gazing into the shop windows. He saw Ilyushin take a cigar case from his jacket pocket, select a cigar and then light it. A little farther up the street, Tchorek saw the Rolls-Royce and the Mercedes pull out from the kerb and nose their way into the traffic. He pressed a button on his hand-held machine, initiating the device. He was already moving fast through the crowds towards Ilyushin as the bomb detonated.

Ilyushin heard a deafening explosion behind him and, as he turned to look back, Bond Street disappeared in a cloud of dense blue smoke. Before he could even react himself, his bodyguards had leapt into action. They made no attempt to locate the source of the explosion, nor to identify any potential threat. Their first priority, drilled into them in hundreds of briefings and practice runs, was the protection of their principal, and at once they half-hustled and half-threw him into the nearest shop doorway and then lay on top of him, protecting him with their own bodies until they could transfer him to the Rolls-Royce and get him away. The shop, a world-famous jeweller’s and one that Ilyushin himself had visited on many occasions, would have provided a safer refuge still, but instead of offering him sanctuary the shop’s security guard reacted to the sound of the explosion by locking the door and pulling down the steel shutters.

The remainder of Ilyushin’s security team in the Rolls-Royce and Mercedes were now cut off from him by the pall of smoke. The traffic had ground to a dead stop as a panicking chauffeur pulled out from the kerb and collided with a taxi, and all around them the street was dissolving into chaos with horns and alarms sounding and people shouting, screaming and running around like headless chickens as they tried to escape.

Tchorek, imperturbable among the chaos, walked over to the shop doorway and looked down at the heap of bodies protecting Ilyushin. He pulled out the Skorpion machine pistol and kicked one of the Russian bodyguards out of the way. Ilyushin lay on his back, staring up at Tchorek, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Whatever they are paying you, I will double it,’ he said.

‘That’s not how professionals work,’ said Tchorek, in Russian. He frowned as he saw the gun pointing up at him. It was a Glock and it was in the hands of one of the British bodyguards. It was a professional’s grip, the left hand cupping the right.

Tchorek immediately switched his aim and targeted the bodyguard’s face. He was in hisrede was i late thirties, nondescript with dark brown hair, and didn’t have the normal bodybuilder’s physique of bulging forearms and a thick neck. ‘It’s over, Tchorek,’ said the man.

Time seemed to stop for Tchorek as his mind raced.

The man was English and armed. That meant he was a cop. Or MI5. Either way he wouldn’t be on his own, which meant that there were probably other weapons trained on him at that moment.

The man holding the gun was a professional and unlike Ilyushin had no fear in his eyes. His finger had already tightened on the trigger and the merest increase in pressure would send a bullet into Tchorek’s brain.

The fact that the man hadn’t pulled a trigger suggested again that he was a cop.

The decision that Tchorek needed to make – and quickly – was whether or not to pull his own trigger.

If he did, the bodyguard would die. There was no question of that.

But as he died his finger would probably tighten enough to pull the trigger and Tchorek would also die.

And even if the bodyguard didn’t fire there would be other armed officers, Tchorek was sure of that. They would fire because he had killed one of their own.

Either way, Tchorek would die.

If he didn’t pull the trigger he would be arrested. But on the plus side he hadn’t killed anyone and the bomb hadn’t been designed to hurt or maim.

With no shots fired he was guilty only of carrying a loaded firearm. If he pleaded guilty and apologised and promised not to do it again, the absolute maximum penalty would be ten years and he would almost certainly only serve five. And five years in a British prison was no hardship, on a par with a three-star hotel in Moscow. With a choice of TV channels in his cell, a varied menu and regular sessions in the gym, he could do five years standing on his head.

He smiled and slowly raised the gun above his head, then tossed it behind him. He clasped his hands behind his neck and slowly knelt down as the bodyguard got to his feet, keeping the gun aimed at Tchorek’s face. ‘I surrender,’ said Tchorek. ‘It is, as you English like to say, a fair cop.’

Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd ran a hand through his hair as he watched two uniformed officers bundle Tchorek into the back of a van, taking care not to bang his head on the door, which seemed very good of them considering what had just happened. ‘I really thought he was going to shoot me,’ said Shepherd. A fire engine had arrived and was dealing with the aftermath of the explosion. Uniformed police officers had cleared the pavements and sealed off the street.

Shepherd’s boss, Charlotte Button, turned up the collar of her raincoat and flashed him a sympathetic smile. ‘You’re wearing your vest, aren’t you?’

‘In the head, Charlie. He was going to shoot me in the head.’ Ilyushin was sitting in the back of his armoured Rolls-Royce, ashen faced and trembling. Shepherd nodded over at the car. ‘Ilyushin isn’t happy.’

‘He’s lucky that we found out about the contract,’ said Button. ‘If we hadn’t put you on his security team, he’d be dead.’

‘He very nearly was,’ said Shepherd. ‘And so was I.’

‘Once he knew the operation was blown, there’d be no point in him pulling the trigger,’ said Button. ̵ gyutton. 6;He’s a professional.’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘I could see it in his eyes. He was thinking about it. His finger tightened on the trigger and he was close. Then he had a change of heart.’

‘He probably assumed that as he hadn’t actually pulled the trigger and no one was hurt in the explosion the most he’d get was five or ten years with half off for good behaviour.’

Shepherd smiled. ‘Well, he got that wrong, didn’t he? He doesn’t know that we already have enough for conspiracy to commit murder in this case and enough evidence for the Americans to put him away for life times three for contracts carried out in the States.’

Button wagged her finger at him. ‘Just be grateful he didn’t know,’ she said. ‘Because then he might just have pulled the trigger.’

Coming soon from

STEPHEN LEATHER

The tenth SPIDER SHEPHERD all-action thriller

TRUE COLOURS

The Russian oligarchs are the world’s new elite. They treat the world as their plaything, travelling without borders and living lives of unimaginable luxury without fear or restraint.

But when an assassin starts killing off some of the world’s richest men, an oligarch with friends in high places seeks the protection of MI5. And Spider Shepherd is placed in the firing line.

But while Shepherd has to save the life of a man he neither likes nor respects, he has to deal with a face from his past. The Taliban sniper who put a bullet in his shoulder turns up alive and well and living in London.

And Shepherd is in no mood to forgive or forget.

Out 18 July 2013

Rea
d on for a gripping extract.

www.hodder.co.uk

AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN BORDER, 2002

The Chinook cleared a low ridge, dropped to the floor of a plateau and then rose again, following the steep slopes of a round-topped hill. The helicopter came to a hover and landed as the groundwash of the twin rotors stirred up a storm of dust and debris.

Jock McIntyre, Geordie Mitchell, Jimbo Shortt and Lex Harper jumped down and went into positions of all-round defence while Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd and Captain Harry Todd unloaded six mopeds that had been lashed to the tailgate of the Chinook. They remained crouched and watchful as the Chinook took off, then took a few more minutes to watch and listen, allowing their hearing to become attuned to the quietness of the night after the din of the helicopter. They scanned the surrounding countryside for any movement or sign that might suggest they had been spotted. All was dark and quiet, and eventually McIntyre signalled to them to move out. He led the column of mopeds down the hill before looping around to make their way to the target.

McIntyre and Shepherd rode at the head of the column, with Harper, Todd and Shortt behind them and Mitchell as ‘Tail-end Charlie’ at the rear of the line. They rode without lights, their Passive Night Goggles allowing them enough vision to avoid pothoheiles and obstacles in the path.

The night was icy, the wind stinging their faces as they cleared the top of a ridge. McIntyre checked his GPS, signalled to the rest of the team, silenced his engine and freewheeled down the slope, towards the dark, indistinct shape of a tall building set into a fold of the hills.

They hid the mopeds in a clump of trees a hundred yards from the target and moved forward on foot, carrying the sections of ladder and the prepared charges, and leaving a faint trail of their boot-prints on the frost-covered ground. Shepherd caught a whiff of woodsmoke on the breeze as they approached from downwind, and a moment later, the tall shape of the target building loomed out of the surrounding darkness, the wall facing them glowing an eerie yellow through the goggles as it caught and reflected the moonlight filtering through the clouds.

There was a straggle of huts and outbuildings surrounding it and a pile of rubble that might once have been another house. While the others kept watch on the main building, Shortt and Mitchell made sure that all the outbuildings were deserted.

They dug in and watched the main building. In the early hours of the night, two small groups of men arrived and left again. Another hour passed and then a solitary figure, shrouded by a black cloak, emerged from the door and disappeared into the darkness. After that, there was no more traffic, and the faint glow of a lantern inside the building was extinguished well before midnight.