Storm Crow

by Jeff Gulvin

  The 999 call came into the central command complex in Scotland Yard. ‘This is Billy Williams. I’m night manager at the American Diner on Moor Street. Look, it’s probably nothing, but right now I’ve got a car parked outside my restaurant. Someone drove up quarter of an hour ago, parked it and got out. He was picked up in a second car straight away.’

  ‘Right,’ the operator said. ‘Can you give me an exact location, sir?’

  Billy gave the full address. ‘I’m probably being stupid,’ he said. ‘One thing, though. There’s some kind of box on the floor.’

  ‘Box?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, it looks like a box, poking out from under the driver’s seat.’

  The operator took his number and Billy hung up. He lit another cigarette and looked across the counter at Jack. He was asleep with his head across his arms.

  Detective Sergeant Jack Swann was duty officer in the combined Antiterrorist/Special Branch operations room on the sixteenth floor of Scotland Yard. The white phone linking them directly with the communications room rang on the desk in front of him and the computer-aided dispatch started printing. He glanced at Christine Harris from Special Branch, who sat at another desk, reading the newspaper.

  ‘Swann. SO13.’

  ‘We’ve just had a 999 from Moor Street in Soho. Suspicious vehicle parked outside the American Diner. Been there since four-fifteen.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Caller said there’s some kind of box on the floor by the driver’s seat. But we haven’t received a codeword.’

  Swann pushed out his cheek with his tongue. ‘Hold on.’ He laid down the phone and dialled Superintendent Colson, the operational commander and senior duty officer downstairs. Colson was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘What time was the car parked?’

  ‘About four-fifteen.’

  ‘We’ve had no coded warning, Jack. The box could be anything. Standard response. It’s a West End Central decision. Let them make an assessment.’

  The West End Central duty inspector was a Welshman called Wilson, with thirty years in the job. He looked at the clock on his office wall and phoned Jack Swann. ‘Inspector Wilson, Swann,’ he said. ‘Savile Row. Just letting you know—I’ve sent a car to Moor Street. I have to say though, I’m not happy.’

  Swann rested on one elbow. ‘Fair enough, sir. We’ve logged it as standard response. But it’s your decision.’

  ‘I don’t like small boxes in cars, Swann. They have a habit of being PIRA timing and power units.’

  ‘We’ve received no accredited codeword, sir.’

  ‘Not yet, anyway. I’ll be back to you shortly, Swann. What time was the vehicle first spotted?’

  ‘Four-fifteen.’

  ‘So if it is dodgy, we’ve maybe got some time.’

  Swann nodded to himself. ‘Maybe, sir,’ he said.

  Five minutes later Wilson phoned him again. ‘Yes, sir,’ Swann said as he answered.

  ‘I’m not happy, Swann. There is a timing and power unit in that car. I’m evacuating. And I want an explosives officer here right away.’

  ‘OK, sir. Red response it is. I’ll task the Expos immediately. Cordons at two hundred metres.’

  ‘I know the drill, Swann.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, sir.’

  Swann put down the phone and immediately lifted the black one, a direct link to the explosives officer’s suite in Cannon Row. It rang without him having to dial, then Phil Cregan’s voice sounded in his ear. ‘Cregan.’

  ‘Put your boots on, Phil. I think we’ve got a live one.’

  2

  CREGAN SCRIBBLED NOTES AS he listened to all that Swann had to tell him, cigarette smoke eddying from the ashtray at his elbow. He wanted to know everything: time, location and the full assessment from West End Central. ‘Where’s the rendezvous point?’ he asked.

  ‘Brewer Street.’

  ‘Is it clear?’

  ‘They’re searching it now.’

  Cregan put the phone down, picked up his boots from where they lay by the chair and extinguished his cigarette. The fifth floor was quiet; night duty and only the one team working. Nicholson, his driver, was already in the corridor looking at the huge map on the wall and plotting the journey in his head. Cregan put his boots on in the lift going down to the car park.

  He tied the laces quickly, bent to one knee. The last thing he needed was to be tying them when Nicholson was flinging the van through the streets. Slightly built, Cregan stood five foot nine. He was originally from Perth, and had been a Met explosives officer for five years now, a veteran of many IRA mainland attacks. Before that, he was Explosives Ordnance Disposal, part of the Royal Logistical Corps based in Didcot.

  In the car park downstairs, the four Range Rovers were parked in readiness, each with an individual officer’s equipment inside. Normally it would be the two duty teams’ vehicles in front, ready for the turn around when the relief changed. Tonight, however, the big van was parked in front. One officer on duty only—there was no one to back him up with additional kit if he needed it, so everything was in the van.

  Nicholson got the van started and they were rolling, blue lights flashing and siren on the yowl. It was 4.51 exactly. Cregan hung on to the Jesus bar on the dashboard as they raced through the empty streets. By 4.55, they were parked between the inner and outer cordons at the rendezvous point. West End Central controlled the perimeter, and everyone had been evacuated within the two-hundred-metre zone. Nicholson was already at the back of the van beginning to assemble the gear.

  ‘You want the heavy or lightweight suit, Phil?’ he asked.

  Cregan made a calming motion with the palm of his hand. Nicholson was new and very keen. ‘Just hold on, Tom,’ he said. ‘Things to sort first.’

  Webb and Swann waited for Cregan at the inner cordon line, facing north-east along Brewer Street. Cregan arrived, took a cigarette from Swann and cupped his hands to the match. ‘RVP clear?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Webb nodded to where Nicholson was still holding the bomb-suit bags.

  ‘Bit keen, isn’t he?’

  Cregan spoke without looking at him. ‘JFD, Webby. Just a fucking driver, and a new one at that.’ He sucked cigarette smoke with a hiss and shivered. ‘Tell me the story again, Jack.’

  ‘The call came in at four-thirty. Car was parked about four-fifteen, no later than four-twenty. The caller knows the time because one of his regular night owls had just turned up for his cocoa.’

  Cregan looked at his watch, a maximum of forty minutes. He pushed out his lips. The first twenty-five to thirty-five minutes after a device has been laid is known to be the most dangerous in PIRA incidents. After that, it was the twenty-minute period between one hour fifty and two hours ten. He looked down the length of Brewer Street. The target vehicle was well out of sight. Everything was very quiet, frost on the pavements glistening in the fall of light from the streetlamps. ‘No warning?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Still none?’

  Swann shook his head. ‘Decision was the local’s, Phil. PC reckons he’s seen a Provo TPU before and this is definitely one of them.’

  Cregan made a face. ‘I wasn’t doing anything, anyway.’

  The duty officer from Savile Row came over to them from where he had been talking to some of his officers, ensuring that the outer cordon was not breached. He was a smallish man, not much bigger than Cregan. They shook hands and Wilson introduced himself.

  ‘What’re we going to do?’ he said.

  Cregan looked at his watch. ‘Nothing for the moment.’

  The inspector squinted at him. ‘You want to stand off?’

  ‘Aye.’ Again Cregan looked at his watch. ‘If it is a TPU, it’ll either be a Mk 15 or 17 that’ll have a Memo-park safety-arming switch and maybe a kitchen timer, with a one- to two-hour wind-down from when he pulled out the dowel. It’s now almost five o’clock. We reckon the car was parked at four-fifteen. That gives us at least another fifteen minutes to see if it goes bang.’<
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  ‘And after that?’ The inspector was looking back at the roadblocks.

  ‘Soak for another hour at least.’

  ‘Why another hour?’

  Cregan looked him in the eye. ‘Like I said, there could be a secondary timer.’

  ‘That’ll make it six-fifteen, then.’

  Cregan nodded. ‘About that, yeah. In the meantime, any chance of some coffee?’

  He sat with Webb and Swann in the back of Swann’s car. Swann took a call on his mobile from Superintendent Colson.

  ‘Soak period, Guv’nor,’ Swann told him.

  ‘Who’s the Expo?’

  ‘Phil.’

  ‘OK. Listen, I need you to get back over here, Jack. We’ve run a check on the vehicle and it’s a ringer. I want you working on it.’

  ‘Right, sir. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’ Swann put the phone down. He glanced at Cregan who sat in the back looking at the street plan and considering his approach path. ‘The car’s a ringer, Phil,’ Swann said. ‘So it may well be a live one.’

  Cregan waited the full two hours, then went round to the back of the van and opened the armoured door. The Wheelbarrow robot squatted on its tracks in the darkness. The driver switched on the rear light and Cregan climbed into the back. Attached to the nearside wall was the TV monitor for the drive and attack cameras fitted to the upper hamper of the Wheelbarrow. He wiped the thin layer of dust that had gathered on the screen, then took down his cases, two of them, black, about the size of ordinary briefcases but made of hard plastic and deeper. One contained his tool kit and the other the various pulleys and ropes he required if a device had to be moved before the render safe procedure could be conducted. Carefully, he checked his tools, then glanced at his watch. It was beginning to get light, tendrils of grey working into the shadows that marked the edge of the night. It was very cold now, and quiet. They were some distance from the outer western cordon and he was only vaguely aware of the traffic.

  Cregan hummed as he checked his equipment. This was his first call-out in nearly two weeks and sometimes the boredom got to him. He ought to be used to it after twenty-odd years dealing with improvised explosive devices. But you never did get used to it. You got better hopefully and more careful, but you never got used to it. The last call-out had been the first for his new driver. In Whitehall—an undercar booby trap left in a telephone box. He could almost see it from their floor at Cannon Row. Red response, accredited coded warning and exact location. The cordons were in and the area evacuated. Cregan had got ‘suited and booted’ behind the cordons, then walked as far as the Cenotaph for a better look. Initial reactions had been to ‘pig-stick’ it, but he could see how far the Memopark had wound down when he looked through a set of binoculars. He was watching when Nicholson spoke in his ear through the radio. Cregan nearly jumped out of his skin. Rule one broken. Radio contact is for the Expo to speak to his second—not the other way round. The last thing any EOD man needed was a voice in his ear just as he was about to render something safe.

  ‘What does it look like?’ Nicholson had said.

  ‘It’s about seven feet tall and grey with a telephone inside. Have you never seen a phone box, Tom?’ After that Cregan had wandered down and disarmed it manually. Fifteen minutes left on the timer.

  The duty officer called through to Webb and Webb relayed the message to Cregan. ‘Wants to know what you’re going to do, Phil.’

  Cregan looked at his watch. ‘I’ll send in the Wheelbarrow and have a look.’

  Webb moved back to the cordon, leaving Cregan alone with his driver. Swann had already gone back to the Yard to start work on identifying the car. Nicholson set up the hydraulic ramp and then Cregan lifted the handheld control set, activated the robot, and drove it as far as the cordon tapes. Here, he paused. Alvis, the manufacturer, always recommended radio control as the best form of operation—which was probably true given the constraints of cable. But the last time he’d used this particular Mark 8, the radio signal was weaker than it ought to have been and the thing kept stopping and starting. He had two other options, the regular or fibre-optic cabling. ‘Use the normal cabling, Tom,’ he said, and moved into the back of the van. Nicholson set up the linkage and climbed in behind him. The ramp was up and the doors closed. Above their heads, the roof was reinforced with Kevlar and anticrush bars in case any buildings fell on top of them.

  Cregan squatted in front of the TV monitor as the robot rolled along Brewer Street. The drive camera lens was wide-angle and gave a reasonable view of the road ahead. The Wheelbarrow came to the intersection with Old Compton Street. Fifty metres further on, the front of the car came into view. Cregan slowed it a fraction and scanned the area. He had the attack camera engaged now and the sawn-off shotgun set up underneath the modular weapons mounting system, which had three fixings for disrupters. The Expos had rigged up the shotgun as an addition. They used it to fire No. 6 shot from four feet. It had the force of a single slug at that distance, but there was no danger of overpenetration. It meant you could take out the doorlock without using one of your disrupters. That was what he intended to do now, take out the passenger door and have a good look round inside. The shotgun would remove the lock and then he could wrench it open using the hooley bar.

  The Wheelbarrow was all but alongside the car now and Cregan studied the monitor as he guided the robot around it. He needed to be careful the cable didn’t snag against obstacles in the road, though the limited vision sometimes meant that was easier said than done. Using the actuators to lift and lower the teleboom, he checked for any sign of booby traps. Then he raised the boom so he could look in the window from the passenger side. He could see a bulky travelling rug partially covering the back seat, and something on the floor sticking out from under the driver’s. He screwed up his eyes and looked closer; definitely a wooden box. He had seen the type before.

  He decided to take the driver’s door out instead of the passenger side. Reversing the robot back along the pavement, he brought it round in front and then out into the road. The shotgun was loaded with No. 6 and ready for firing. Cregan squared the Wheelbarrow to the driver’s door and lowered the attack camera so he could see the doorlock clearly. He paused and licked his lips. Critical moment; the shock and sudden rocking of the car could knock out a mercury tilt switch and set the device off. He looked again at the lock, then sent the electronic charge to the firing connectors underneath the weapons mounting system. The shotgun smashed the lock. No explosion. Once the smoke and dust was clear, Cregan focused on the damage and then applied the hooley bar to the hole.

  This was the second critical moment; the car rocking badly as the robot hauled the door open. Nothing. No blast. Next to him, Nicholson watched intently as he guided the Wheelbarrow back over to the now open and accessible car. The drive camera showed them the hole where the door had been but little else. In close, Cregan tilted the boom so the attack camera was covering the floor. He focused in on the timing and power unit and saw the hole where the dowel had been.

  ‘Definitely a live one,’ he said, and tapped the video screen. ‘Mk 15, Tom. Remember the components?’

  Nicholson nodded. ‘Memopark with a nail soldered on to it, another nail or screw as a contact, couple of batteries and the microswitch held in place with a dowel.’

  ‘Good lad.’ Cregan scratched his head. ‘Fortunately this one’s not working, though, is it. One-hour timer only, should have gone off by now.’ He then spoke into the radio to Wilson. ‘We have a TPU,’ he said. ‘I’m going to perform a controlled explosion. Stand by.’

  He settled himself over the control panel once more and guided the Wheelbarrow back, then forwards again, lifting the boom. He got the weapons mount positioned over the box and selected the central disrupter: a high-pressure jet of water to literally blow the box apart, ruin the electrical circuitry and remove the power source from the detonator. A tiny bit of sweat gathered on his brow as it always did and he could feel the moisture under his arms. It was war
m in the van with the engine running and the back doors closed and sealed. He tensed, screwed up his eyes and fired.

  For a moment afterwards he sat there and considered: the TPU was smashed to pieces, bits littering the inside of the car. Next to him Nicholson was smiling. ‘Got it, Phil,’ he said.

  Cregan arched his brows. ‘Looks like it, doesn’t it.’ He called the con-ex in to the uniforms, then eased the robot back into the road and guided it round to the back of the car.

  Selecting the second disrupter, he smashed the lock and the boot popped open. Set squarely over the petrol tank was a green and black sports bag, with the word Jaguar written on the side. It was bulky, clearly quite full, with the sides bulging slightly. He moved the boom up and down and from left to right. Two wires extended from the bag to the back of the rear seats and disappeared beyond. He spoke to Webb on the radio. ‘There’s explosives in the boot, Webby, or at least a sports bag with wires sticking out of it.’

  ‘Don’t normally come like that, do they, Phil.’

  Cregan grimaced. ‘The one I bought my son didn’t, no.’

  ‘What’s happening now?’

  ‘Soak for another hour, then I’ll take a look manually.’

  ‘OK. But don’t forget the famous SO13 battle cry.’

  ‘What’s that, then?’ Cregan said.

  ‘If in doubt—run away.’

  Cregan sat for another hour and drank coffee. When he was ready, he told Nicholson to get the bomb-gear bags. He held up the blue one and Cregan nodded. This was the lightweight suit—modular body armour with a vest, detachable sleeves and trousers. It had been tested against eighty-pound mortars and experienced minimal fragmentation damage. Kevlar-lined, with acrylic to avoid blunt trauma internal organ damage.

  ‘You don’t want the heavy one, do you?’ Nicholson said.

  Cregan shook his head. ‘Just give me the vest and trousers.’

  Nicholson passed them across and Cregan got into them. Then Nicholson held the bomb helmet, as he squatted and screwed his head up into it.

  Cregan started to move along Brewer Street, vaguely aware of the eyes on him from the gathering the other side of the cordons. He walked slowly, the trousers gripping his legs like motorcycle leathers, only heavier and that bit more cumbersome. He walked past the sex shops and the video stores and the revue bar. Then he stopped. A one-hour Memopark timer winding all the way down. Mk 15 TPU. Single safety-arming switch with the dowel-held microswitch as the final precaution. In his mind’s eye he revisited the images on the screen in the back of the van. The flat wooden box on the floor, back seat covered with a rug. No trace of the wiring. Hidden. Deliberately hidden. He stood where he was for a long moment and then turned back towards the cordon. Maybe he should get the big suit after all. If you went to all that trouble to hide the wiring, why leave your TPU sticking out? You wanted the bomb to go off, because you didn’t telephone a warning.