by Chris Ryan
Danny spoke into the new radio. ‘This is work party one, do you copy?’
A momentary pause. Then Spud: ‘Loud and clear. Work party two online.’
‘Entry in forty-five seconds.’
One of the guys banged on the back wall of the Transit. The vehicle immediately pulled away, accelerating sharply. There was a violent bump as it mounted the kerb, a swerve and then a screech as the Transit came to another abrupt halt.
‘Go! Go! Go!’ Danny shouted.
In an instant, all eight of them spilled out of the back of the Transit. Danny took a second to absorb his surroundings. They had stopped ten metres from the front entrance to Hertford Tower. A second Transit was facing theirs and another eight men were swiftly debussing. Danny recognised Spud not by his face, which was now also covered with a black balaclava, but by his civvies – like Danny, he was the only one of his eight-man team not in full black ops gear.
He turned his attention to the foyer of Hertford Tower. A man in a suit had been walking through the main door, but at the sight of the special forces unit just metres ahead of him he was standing frozen, staring at them. Danny ran towards him. ‘Get back into the building!’ he roared. ‘Now!’ The man dropped his briefcase and fled back into the foyer.
Danny pointed at four of his team. ‘Mark the exits,’ he instructed. They instantly took up positions, fanning out three metres apart and dropping down onto one knee in the firing position. As Danny ran to the entrance, he was aware of the sudden commotion the arrival of a heavily armed Regiment unit had created in the plaza. Pedestrians were running to the edges of the square, congregating in groups as if that made them safer. Some twats were, predictably enough, holding up mobile phones to take photographs – hence the balaclavas. There was some shouting on the edge of Danny’s awareness, and one woman even screamed. He segregated himself from those noises as he burst into the foyer.
There were seven people here. Four men in suits, two women and a concierge in a uniform behind a marble counter. Danny looked over his shoulder. Four members of his team were there. He pointed at one of them. ‘Get the civilians on the ground,’ he ordered. Then he turned his attention back to the concierge. He was a young guy, mid-twenties maybe, with a thin moustache and dark skin. He looked utterly terrified, and his eyes were darting around as if he was looking for an exit.
He was in for a bad morning.
Danny covered the ten metres between himself and the concierge at a sprint, only half aware of the harsh barks of his team forcing the civilians to the ground at gunpoint. As he ran, he dislodged his Glock from his belt. He ran behind the marble counter and saw three black-clad members of the unit swarming to the far side of the atrium, each securing one of three exits at the back, the grey shutters of what looked to be a service elevator, and a door that led on to a flight of stairs going upwards. He grabbed the concierge by the front of his uniform and saw that he was dialling a number on the mobile in his right hand.
‘Drop it,’ he growled. The concierge did as he was told. The phone thumped to the floor.
‘Is there a separate elevator for the penthouse?’
The concierge’s nostrils flared. Danny could smell cigarettes on his breath and see sweat dampening his temples. He stuttered, barely able to get the words out. ‘N . . . no.’ He pointed nervously across the room towards the main elevator on the far side, 25 metres away. A large, verdant pot plant stood right next to it.
‘Is there a service elevator?’
The concierge nodded.
‘Does it go to the penthouse?’
‘N . . . no. Sir.’
‘Stairs?’
‘No sir.’
‘What’s the code for the penthouse?’
The concierge shuddered, but didn’t reply. Danny didn’t fuck around. With a single swipe of his arm, he cracked the concierge’s head against the marble counter. The concierge howled.
‘The code!’
The concierge was whimpering now. ‘Five Three Eight Nine.’
‘Who’s up there?’
‘I don’t know . . . I swear I don’t know.’
Danny gave it a moment’s thought. He didn’t trust this concierge. If Abu Ra’id had been hiding out in the penthouse of this building, the chances were high that the concierge was complicit.
‘You’re coming with me,’ he said. He dug his Glock into the man’s side, then manoeuvred him out from behind the counter towards the elevator.
Spud was already by the lift doors with two other masked men. Danny and the concierge were five metres away when the doors slid open. The lift contained a middle-aged woman with two young children. She screamed when she saw the armed men. ‘Get out! Get out!’ Spud barked at her. He yanked the panicked woman out of the lift, and she dragged her children along with her, all three of them whimpering. Danny chucked the concierge inside, then entered the lift with Spud and the two others. There was an electric panel on the side of the elevator. Danny pressed the touchscreen to take the lift to the penthouse. A numeric keypad appeared.
‘Type the code,’ he told the concierge. ‘If the lift doesn’t take us straight to the penthouse, you’re dead.’
Trembling, the concierge punched in four numbers. Five, Three, Eight, Eight. Different from the code he’d given Danny at the desk. But this was clearly the correct one, because the doors slid shut and the lift started to ascend.
The concierge was breathing heavily, but otherwise it was silent in the elevator as the Regiment men prepared for the doors to open. Danny stood at the back, his Glock still pressed hard into the concierge’s guts. The other three stood in front of them, with their rifles pointing directly towards the door, weapons set to semi-automatic, fingers resting lightly on the triggers.
Twenty seconds passed.
Tense silence in the elevator. None of them had seen a layout of the penthouse. They had no idea what would greet them when the lift doors opened. It was possible that they’d have a direct shot at Abu Ra’id the moment the lift stopped. They needed to be ready to take it.
Thirty seconds passed.
A gentle lurch of the stomach as the elevator came to a halt. Danny glanced at the line of lights above the door: the letter P was illuminated.
A pause that felt like it went on for ever.
The doors hissed.
Danny immediately assessed what was in front of him. The elevator did not appear to have opened inside the penthouse itself. Instead they were facing on to some kind of foyer or corridor. Five metres deep. Ten metres in length. A door at the end to their right.
And two men.
One was Middle Eastern, the other white.
Were they hostile? Abu Ra’id’s bodyguards? For a split second it was impossible to say. They clearly had no idea of the commotion that was going on downstairs. They were slouched lazily on a leather sofa four metres away against the wall of the corridor. One of them was reading a newspaper, the other twiddling with his phone. A look of sudden horror struck their faces at the sight of four masked men, heavily armed, facing them from the lift.
The white guy dropped his newspaper. His hand darted into the inside of his jacket. He was clearly reaching for his weapon.
Which was the last thing he ever did.
It was Spud who nailed him. A single shot to his chest which, from this close range, threw him back up against the wall and left a red stain on the paintwork when he tumbled forward. The second man tried to scramble over the side of the sofa, also pulling a weapon from inside his jacket: a pathetic, clumsy manoeuvre that was brought to a sudden halt by a second round. It hit him in the side of the face, splashing another flash of red against the paint, before the man’s dead body thumped awkwardly to the floor.
The lift pinged.
They stepped carefully into the corridor, Spud and his two companions covering left and right, checking that there were no threats they had missed from inside the lift, before giving Danny the nod. Danny pushed the concierge out into the corridor, then followed. A
side from the sofa and the two dead bodies, there was nothing here other than a large pane of glass at one end of the corridor which looked out over the Docklands, and the door on the opposite side to the lift, five metres to their right. Next to the door was another keypad.
Spud’s two companions ran to the door and knelt down on one knee, covering it. Danny grabbed the nearest dead body and chucked it over the threshold of the lift just as the doors started to shut. They hissed close, then made a clicking sound as they sandwiched against the bleeding body, opened up and then repeated their attempt to shut.
Hiss, click.
Hiss, click.
Danny turned to the concierge. ‘Have you been inside the penthouse?’ he demanded. ‘Do you know the layout.’ It put Danny on edge, entering a potentially hostile situation, without at least knowing the geography.
The concierge shook his head. Maybe he was lying, but they didn’t have time to find out.
‘Open it,’ Danny said.
Speechless with terror, the concierge closed his eyes and nodded obediently. Then he moved towards the keypad and, with a trembling hand, punched a code into it.
The door clicked open.
‘On the floor, hands on your head,’ Danny told the concierge.
The man immediately dropped to his knees. But his eyes flickered over to where one dead guard remained slumped over the sofa. He clearly thought he might be able to lurch over towards him and grab the weapon he’d been going for as the unit had nailed him. The concierge flung himself towards the sofa, but of course he never made it that far. With a single step, one of the team grabbed him by the back of his collar. No need to make use of his weapon on this joker: the masked man delivered two brutal blows, one to the concierge’s jugular, the second to the pit of his stomach up towards the ribs. The concierge collapsed, twitching in silent agony, while the SAS man plasticuffed his wrists behind his back. The fucker wouldn’t be making a nuisance of himself again.
Silence.
Danny and Spud edged towards the open door. They moved with total quietness. Their rifles were pressed hard into their shoulders, their fingers resting lightly on the triggers.
Spud gently, silently, kicked the door open. A strong, fragrant scent immediately hit Danny’s nose. Someone had been burning incense in here very recently.
And maybe still were.
Dead quiet. Danny could hear his pulse.
It was dark in there. They could have done with NV, but they had to make do with their natural vision. Danny discerned a long corridor, twenty metres, which bisected the apartment. There was a suitcase leaning up against the wall about five metres in on the right. Danny immediately marked it as a possible explosive threat. Either that or it belonged to the bodyguards. Or maybe someone else in the apartment?
Several doors led off the corridor. Danny counted them: four on either side. Without lowering their weapons, they stepped inside.
They moved silently. Danny opened each door one by one while Spud covered him in the corridor. The first room on the right was a bedroom. Blackout blinds down. A double bed against one wall – a divan, ruffled sheets. Recently used, but with no space underneath to hide. A closet, empty.
Danny made no noise as he emerged, but nodded at Spud to indicate: room clear.
First door on the left. Same deal.
Second on the right, second on the left. More bedrooms. More unmade beds. But: rooms clear.
Two bathrooms. Huge. Marble. Towelling robes hanging by the door. One of them still had condensation on the mirror. But empty. Room clear.
Noise. For a moment it made Danny start, until he realised it came from outside: the grind of a chopper’s rotors. He pictured a military helicopter hovering round the summit of the building, a side gunner at a minigun in case anyone tried to escape on to the roof. But there seemed to be no escape route. No second exit as far as he could tell.
Which meant Abu Ra’id would be in one of these final two rooms. And possibly alerted to a threat by the sound of the chopper.
The further they crept along the corridor, the darker it became. Every room had its blackout blinds down, but now Danny’s eyes were more accustomed to the darkness. The final door on the right-hand side led to an enormous sitting room with modern white sofas and a bar area in the corner. Danny’s eyes picked out a glass table full of framed pictures. He’d like to know who they were of, but that would have to wait.
Because there was still no sign of Abu Ra’id.
And now only the final room remained.
Danny and Spud exchanged a glance. Then Danny nudged the door open and, weapon primed, entered.
He recognised the room immediately. It was in here that the execution video had taken place. There was a tiled floor and a dining table, and the blackout blinds were shut here as they were everywhere else.
Otherwise it was empty.
The thudding of the helicopter grew louder as it circled this part of the building. Danny stepped across the room and pressed a button on the wall that raised the blackout blinds. Sure enough, he saw a Merlin hovering no more than ten metres from the window, and beyond it the grey sprawl of London against an equally grey sky.
He lowered his weapon and turned to Spud. ‘We’re too late,’ he said meaningfully. ‘Should have got here earlier.’
Spud ignored that and spoke into his radio. ‘The apartment is clear. No sign of the target, repeat, no sign of the target.’
They left the room. Looking back along the corridor, they could see their mates still on one knee, covering the entrance to the flat. And as they walked towards them, Danny became aware again of the noise of the elevator doors, opening and closing against the bloodied body he’d dragged over the threshold.
The lift area itself was a mess. Blood still oozed from the two dead bodies littering the place. It dripped down the wall and there was a red smear across the floor where Danny had dragged his man to the elevator. Now he dragged him back again so the doors could shut. Immediately, the lift descended. Danny felt inside the jackets of the two guards for their weapons. They each had identical Browning Hi-Powers, idiotically unlocked given where they were stashed. He made them safe before laying them out on the ground again. Spud went through the formality of checking that their targets were fully dead, while the chopper continued to circle outside.
Two minutes passed. The SAS guys covered the concierge’s eyes and mouth with packing tape, then removed their balaclavas. The lift hissed open. Two figures walked out.
Danny straightened up when he saw them. Victoria Atkinson stepped briskly out of the lift. As her eyes fell on the bloodied corpses, she looked immediately bilious. She removed the tissue from her sleeve and pressed it to her mouth.
Alongside her was Harrison Maddox, Hammerstone’s CIA liaison. He looked altogether less concerned by the sight that awaited him, merely glancing at the corpses and the terrified concierge with a raised eyebrow and taking care not to step in the streak of blood that smeared the floor.
‘We can do this downstairs, Victoria?’ Maddox said. ‘If you’d rather.’
Victoria waved her handkerchief at him dismissively. ‘I’m quite all right, thank you, Harrison.’ She looked at Danny and Spud in turn. ‘Perhaps we could go inside?’ she said. ‘Your colleagues here can watch the door.’
Danny shrugged. ‘Nothing to watch,’ he said. ‘The flat’s empty. He’s gone.’
‘If only we could question the guards,’ Maddox said with heavy sarcasm in his voice. ‘But they seem to be a little past it.’
‘Yeah,’ Danny said coolly. ‘They do, don’t they?’
The conversation was cut off by the ringing of Maddox’s mobile phone. As he took the call, Danny and Spud led the two spooks into the dining room where the execution video had taken place. The blinds were still up here, and as they entered they saw the circling chopper peel off and head towards the river. Victoria looked a bit giddy. ‘I don’t have a very good head for heights,’ she admitted. She looked around. ‘Forensic team
s will need to come in,’ she said. ‘Check he was actually here.’
‘Not much doubt of that,’ Maddox said. ‘I’ve just received word that a figure in a burka left the building just before five o’clock this morning. There’s footage on the foyer’s CCTV. No doubt our friend the concierge will be able to tell us more.’
‘I’d be interested to know how you found that out before me, Harrison?’ said Victoria. The American simply shrugged. Neither of them seemed to notice the look Danny gave Spud: a look that said, I told you so . . .
Danny left the room. He couldn’t face listening to the spooks’ arguments, and there was something else he wanted to check. He entered the sitting room, and walked up to the glass table with the framed pictures. There were five of them, and they all showed the same family dressed in traditional Middle Eastern clothes. The father had a very obvious crooked nose. He selected the one that showed this feature the most clearly, then carried it back to the others.
‘So what now?’ Spud was saying. ‘He obviously knows we’re after him. He’s going to go to ground.’
‘We’ve got something,’ Danny said, holding up the picture.
‘Should you be touching that?’ Victoria asked. But she accepted it from Danny when he handed it to her.
Danny watched her carefully. Her eyes narrowed. Recognition. And maybe a hint of a smile.
‘Friend of ours?’ Danny said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Victoria said. ‘He’s very well known to us. This is a Saudi businessman called Muhammad Al-Sikriti. He’s an occasional donor to the Holy Shrine mosque. We’ve been trying to link him to Abu Ra’id for some time now. Without success.’ She turned to the CIA man. ‘Muhammad Al-Sikiriti. Name mean anything to you, Harrison?’
‘Of course,’ Maddox said, clearly trying to restrain himself.
‘Mr Al-Sikriti is also well known to the American administration, but for different reasons,’ Victoria said. ‘Oil, isn’t it, Harrison? No wonder he’s entertained so many American trade delegations. I do believe we have several pictures on file of him shaking hands with the President . . .’