Seventh (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 1)

by Lewis Hastings

  “We are and we are also somewhere near Browning Road. Any news on Petrov?”

  “None. Jack, these bastards shoot first so for Christ’s sake be careful, no more heroics tonight, yeah?”

  “Yep. 10-4. Jason, tell your boys to keep at least one of them alive. It’s all we have. Stay in touch. Out.”

  Chapter 32

  The air was suspiciously still. Police staff were used to the dead of night. When everyone else was sound asleep, they would walk, run and pursue criminal elements, often leaving a residential street completely unaware of their presence, slumbering and oblivious.

  Cade recalled with some lasting amazement the time he had run through a couple’s bedroom in the darkest hours, en route to the back door, in pursuit of a burglar. The couple never stirred, despite the frantic foot chase.

  But this evening was still young, and fortunately the foot and vehicle traffic was lighter than most staff could recall.

  It lent itself perfectly to a chase between a canine and a human.

  In a side street the Mondeo sat, its remaining occupants still trying to cope with the situation, frantically trying to work out an escape plan, the passenger diligently wrapping his jacket over his shoulder, trying to stem the flow of vivid red, oxygenated blood.

  He knew he had three options: escape, die trying or surrender. Where he came from, the police would make him pay for the near-death of one of their own. But this was England; perhaps they would be more charitable?

  He chose escape.

  He turned to his counterpart and smiled. Despite the smile intending to settle their nerves it looked manic. His grey face, his anthracite eyes and the metallic tang of blood in the cockpit of the vehicle all helped to add emphasis to the futility of their situation.

  “My brother, we achieved our aim. The Boss will be happy, whatever happens to us, he will take care of our families. Start the car, let us go home to Craiova and drink some Tuica.”

  The dog handler was tracking something in the shadows; quietly as possible he crossed from one street to another by negotiating a number of small rear gardens until he came to a wall, about six foot and certainly well within his grasp. He jumped up and looked over into the street.

  He looked down, straight into the cabin of the stolen Mondeo.

  He lowered himself back down. Think, man, think.

  Like his father, Constable Andy Pickers was a career dogman. His father was famous, infamous some said, and Andy had lived under the shadow of an all-spanning series of legendary stories for twenty years. Now it was his turn.

  His radio was silent, but he could hear something behind him. His shadow-black German Shepherd Sultan started to growl; a torch light illuminated both the dog and the handler as a well-meaning neighbour challenged them.

  “‘Ere you, beat it before I call the fackin’ police. You listening?”

  It was at that moment that the Good Samaritan saw the handler and his distinctive uniform. The officer had his index finger pressed firmly to his lips and with his spare hand held out in a classic ‘stop’ he hissed back, “I am the bloody police, now piss off before you get shot. Go!”

  Nine Nine’s own light cut a swathe through the area, bringing life to every gloomy corner.

  As he returned to the wall, the handler heard the engine start. He lifted himself up and onto his forearms as the car sped up the street in order to turn around.

  “Seven Seven MP. Target vehicle is on Colworth!”

  He grabbed his dog and practically threw him over the wall. Pickers followed, his black Magnum tactical boots landing simultaneously onto the footpath. They had done it a hundred times; in thirty seconds they were both on the street. Quite what he was going to do had yet to be processed in his cyclonic mind.

  “Nine Nine, we have visual with Seven Seven over.”

  “Trojan, we are on Browning, permission to go for a hard stop or TPAC?”

  Tactical Pursuit and Containment was never meant for this type of scenario but given the severity of the situation and the risk of the vehicle getting back out onto the streets of London, most thought it the wise thing to do.

  Except John Daniel.

  “Negative Trojan. Deploy Stinger. Do not engage in TPAC. Received?”

  Daniel had just spent the last five minutes being lectured by an incredibly fractious deputy commissioner and despite his basic police instinct to stop the targets at any cost, he knew he already had a fatal police shooting to deal with.

  “Fuck political correctness!” Daniel said to no one in particular as he threw a stapler across the room.

  The driver turned the car around in three movements and hammered it back along the short street. The passenger was bleeding more profusely, but having chosen escape he now no longer cared about the here and now, he just wanted to savour the distinctive aftertaste of his favourite plum liquor upon his parched lips, even if it was to be his last act.

  He looked down the street and saw the handler and a large, impressive black dog. He was a good-looking dog indeed, too good to kill, but the officer was an inconvenience.

  He lowered the window and awkwardly placed the Glock onto the doorframe. The pain was excruciating and affected his aim, but he needed to give the enemy something to concentrate on.

  The dog handler was running towards them, appearing from behind the safety of a parked car and into their path. His dog was alongside him, straining on a long search lead and homing in on its target.

  What kind of police did they have in this country? Were they really so keen to die, just to prove a point?

  He fired the first round, which missed hopelessly. The second struck a black wrought-iron gate and disappeared into the night.

  He fired again and again, indiscriminate and desperate, his every attempt missed its target. By the time they had reached the junction, he had fired seven rounds.

  Spraying his CS gas into the vehicle was in hindsight not an ideal solution to the problem but it was the only tactical option that he had, other than throwing Sultan into the cockpit, and he loved that dog more than his wife, so option one it was to be.

  The dog handler would buy a lottery ticket the following day and a year later, when most had forgotten about it, he and his partner would collect a gallantry medal for their actions.

  The effects of the CS were instantaneous. Even Pickers got a face full of the noxious spray, its crystalline properties causing a forceful and uncontrollable shutting of the eyes and a profuse discharge from the nose. The passenger, already in agony, started to scream; he rubbed at his eyes, which were already raw. When would this day end?

  The driver lowered his window; it was a sensible but futile attempt to ventilate the cabin. In seconds his olfactory system was working overtime as he tried to clear the irritant from his eyes, nose and throat. He spat foaming mouthfuls of saliva into the street, rubbed at his eyes and tried desperately to control the car.

  They reached the junction, without waiting to see if their way was clear he turned wildly right and into the larger road.

  The Trojan team – together with their backup, were ready.

  The slithering bed of spikes flew across the carriageway as the operator deployed the device from the relative safety of an armour-plated vehicle.

  “Stinger deployed!”

  The remaining crews tracked the Mondeo with their weapons, but it failed to stop. Its front left tyre was already starting to break apart, the result of the savagely sharp hollow metal tubes ripping into their vulcanised flesh.

  Seconds away, Cade was talking to Douglas when his phone rang for the last time. The battery icon was blinking furiously.

  “Cade. Speak, I’ve got less than a minute of power left.”

  “Cade, Roberts, the target is on the move. He’s heading your way. Keep your heads down or the deputy commissioner will have my balls in a baguette. Out.”

  Cade grimaced at his colleague’s culinary description before shouting, “Come on, Dolly let’s go. George head south let’s see if
we can at least watch the circus.”

  He boarded the bus with O’Shea, who ran up the aisle to the window, replacing Cade as a new set of operational eyes. Quite what she was going to do hadn’t really passed through her mind. The closest she had come to getting any recent operational experience had been with a certain Welsh detective, and she fought a daily battle to erase that particular night from her memory.

  Douglas was back on board, giving the aging vehicle everything it had. She protested at every gear change, but Douglas had already decided that he wanted his beloved Dolly to go down in history as one of London Transport’s finest.

  Cade stayed at the rear door, choosing to hang onto the safety bar, ready to deploy, if the chance arose. He stared at the passing buildings, which blurred into one continued mass. His attention shifted. His frontal lobe was focused upon the immediate situation, whilst his temporal lobe jousted for position, playing havoc with his emotions. Neurons communicated effectively with other neurons, electrical and chemical stimuli played their critical part in the process too. But none of it made any sense.

  He was transfixed on the passing street scenes, subconsciously mouthing the words, “Where are you?”

  Douglas had reached fifty miles an hour, only six below her mechanically restricted top speed, as a passenger waved manically from a bus shelter in a vain attempt to stop and board. Seeing Cade clinging feverishly to the doorway, the would-be passenger decided that discretion was the better part of valour and chose to walk the two miles to work.

  Back on board, O’Shea saw it first. She turned and yelled down the aisle.

  “Jack, it’s there, coming towards us!”

  He leant outside the bodywork; the flexors pumping in his forearms as he struggled to maintain his grip. She was right; the Mondeo was travelling towards them, fifty, sixty, seventy, he couldn’t tell but he knew it was travelling way over the speed limit and its path was erratic. Its front tyres were torn to shreds.

  Behind it was a growing convoy of white vehicles, blue lights recoiling off nearby walls as a cacophony of sound filled the air.

  The situation was surreal and contrary to modern myth, nothing slowed down, in fact every movement was enhanced, quickened and more intense.

  Daniel was deploying his troops across the region. India Nine Nine was relaying every last second of footage and updating the movements of each and every vehicle on the ground. The Trojan team had the lead and were providing the ground commentary.

  From the north another three units were approaching, coming up fast behind the solitary double decker bus but still some distance away. Local units, both uniformed and plain clothed, were turning out of nearby stations.

  Inside the Mondeo the young Romanian male fought valiantly with the controls, with one hand he changed gear and then wiped his eyes, with the other he battled with the steering wheel. Unable to see clearly, the passenger groped around in his pockets to find his phone. His eye was hideous, permanently damaged, and to exacerbate the situation he could bleed to death. His arrogance would help him survive though; it had since he was a young boy, growing up without a father.

  Enough of that, he needed to tell his boss the good news.

  The girl was gone; there would be no more trouble from her, the traitorous whore.

  Douglas turned to O’Shea and yelled over the dying Leyland engine – his vain attempt at a Star Trek quote dissipated into the night air.

  “I canna give her any more captain!” His laughter boomed around the confines of his cab.

  O’Shea was simply too scared to laugh. Here she was, in the care of a man who to the outside world had nothing to live for, who seemed hell-bent on joining his long-departed wife and trapped in an aging, overtly red relic of London’s transport system.

  Some thirty feet away she saw a man who had entered her life in what seemed like days ago, but it could have been hours, years or simply moments. However long it had been she craved his company and yet she couldn’t let go of a simple piece of stainless steel in order to navigate the short distance to him. She resembled a distraught passenger on a pleasure boat unwittingly trapped in a swell; all at sea, lost and out of control.

  Cade was futilely yelling words of encouragement and command to his newfound partner, but she couldn’t hear a syllable. Surrounded by a night sky alive with the sounds and sights of a full-born police pursuit, he found himself laughing. Adrenaline did that to you, often at the most inopportune moments.

  Blue lights danced off of nearby architecture, sirens rebounded back and forth, a discord held captive by long-forgotten, sterile and forlorn buildings.

  Douglas broke the habit of a lifetime and grabbed one side of the overly large steering wheel with both hands. Not since his frenetic days on the training circuit had he thrown his ‘old girl’ around with so much gusto. He too was fuelled by his adrenal gland and had never experienced the dangers of Red Mist – the point where the sub-conscious makes the call to overstep the mark.

  As the Mondeo bore down on them he weaved, jousting with the opponent, matching its every attempt to evade them and a cortege of desperate, disparate pursuers.

  Daniel could only watch from behind his detached screen as the procession galloped towards a climax. The imagery that beamed real-time from his air unit was crystal clear. He and everyone around him could see, witness and almost taste the drama unfolding. He controlled all of his ground units but was unable to regulate the one which had played such a significant part and on which were two of his colleagues: out of touch and in harm’s way.

  “For Christ’s sake, get that bloody bus out of the way! Do I need to remind people we have a foreign force officer on there, let alone two bloody civvies?”

  “Trying, sir, no comms. She’s on her own.”

  “India Nine Nine we will use the Sonix to tannoy the bus.”

  It was a grand gesture, but one which Daniel knew was too late.

  “Yes, yes, Nine Nine do it. Now.”

  Tyres of all dimensions and quality roared their disapproval on the carriageways. Heartbeats raised. Brows furrowed.

  Douglas’ eyes widened. The whites of which were now brighter than the moon, his teeth a splendid accompaniment. This was it. No criminal was going to make a fool out of George Douglas and least of all the second love of his life.

  The Mondeo, now travelling at eighty, was completely out of control, the driver now a passenger. He fought against an overwhelming demonstration of pure physics and lost. He tried to close his eyes but saw the bus lurching into his path.

  The Routemaster started to lean, its comparatively thin tyres simply giving up, releasing their tenacious grip and leaving the road surface. In seconds, the twin-decked vehicle had exceeded its tipping point and began its unceremonious fall from grace.

  The front offside bodywork was the first to make contact with the tarmac, its lightweight alloy body searing against the surface, causing a shower of minor sparks and a hideous scraping noise.

  In the CAD room voices stopped, throats became parched, hands ran through hair.

  Douglas knew this was the end. He let go of the wheel and looked towards the evening sky. He thought of his girl and closed his eyes – he was already with her, whispering her name when the two vehicles collided.

  O’Shea started to fall, her grasp on the cold metalwork now as tenacious as a first-day mother at the gates of school. Her tumble through the void was far from graceful, life for her did not slow down, it simply carried on at its normal frenetic pace. She hit the row of seats diagonally behind her and felt the life rush from her body as her diaphragm released a blast of warm air from her lungs.

  Fortune favoured her as her now limp frame wrapped around the legs of a much-used seat, her head jarred into the footwell and her lower body became trapped in the industrial metal ware. As unladylike as it appeared, it would save her life.

  Unable to scream, she waited for the inevitable, but it never arrived. Instead, she clutched onto life, heard the collision and felt herse
lf being consumed by twisted metal, exploding glass and a cocktail of debris; decades of dust, dirt and the stench of heated lubricants surrounded her.

  She closed her eyes and prayed for clemency.

  However, she saw not her life flashing before her but Cade.

  Looking along the aisle she could see through the rear window, out onto the street. Nausea almost overcame her as she tried to focus on him.

  Cade’s body had exited the bus. Unable to sustain his own grasp on the vehicle, he had chosen to release his vice-like grip on the gnarled leather safety strap. Waiting until the vehicle was on its side he simply let go.

  A casual observer would refer to it as assisted suicide, a stuntman, a moment of genius. To Cade it was a semi-conscious decision based upon his early teenage years and of repeated falls from an ancient motorbike. His grandfather had taught him well.

  “Relax Jack, let go, try not to anticipate the conclusion, for the end will be what it will be.”

  The words have remained in his mind, sealed in a faded cerebral envelope and unopened, unused until now.

  He slipped quietly, almost gracefully from the rear open door, landed on the road surface with a disagreeable thump, exhaled and contrary to everything his mind was instructing him to do, he relaxed and let go.

  Now spinning along the tarmac surface, he became aware of the pain in his back and legs and eased the pressure by raising them both, lifting his head and placing the central point of contact onto his belt, its leather shredding in seconds but providing temporary respite.

  Cade came to a halt, took a moment to gather his thoughts, ran through a mental checklist to ensure his body was functioning, fought off some initial nausea and then exhaled. The delivery van that nearly hit him brought Jack Cade swiftly to his senses.