by Andy McNab
The line went dead.
Sean and Adams looked at each other.
‘Nice try.’ Adams’s tone suggested he didn’t think it had been. ‘Give me thirty seconds with the little tosser and I’ll debrainwash him …’
Sean tapped the phone in the palm of his hand. ‘How does he know about the white suits?’ he asked. Adams looked at him. ‘The biohazard guys. They’ve stayed behind the vans. He could only see them if he’s up close … or …’
They looked at each other.
‘Or above,’ Adams finished. ‘The little shit’s in Wolsey, looking down and having a laugh. Probably coordinating everything by phone.’
Chapter 28
Friday 4 August, 04:00 BST
‘So here’s what we do …’ Adams was gasping as they sprinted back to the square, avoiding hidden traps on the pitch-black paths. ‘We ID him from below. We each go up a different staircase and pincer him. And I dangle him by his ankles over the drop until he spills.’
‘There could be a crowd of them,’ Sean pointed out. ‘Not that we couldn’t handle one or two, but—’
‘I repeat, he will be dangling by his ankles over the side. I guarantee immunity from interference from his mates.’
Sirens were whooping their way up the access road, laid down over the rumble of heavy diesel engines and the blue pulses of emergency lights. The fire brigade had arrived – two, three large tenders. The blaze in Gladstone was sending white and yellow flickers into the night.
The police cordon had been extended around the base of Wolsey in all directions. No one could get in or out. There was already a small crowd of civilians gathered about the entrance to West Square, either passers-by who had wandered along for the entertainment or locals who had got out and found they couldn’t get back in again. The cops moved aside to let the fire tenders in, but immediately closed up again as Sean and Adams tried to gain re-entry. A pair of officers blocked Adams off.
‘Good morning, sir. We’ll have to ask you—’
‘We’re here on business.’ Adams flashed his ID, and nodded at Sean to do the same, making to move on without breaking step.
But the cops weren’t shifting.
‘Hang on, please, sir …’ The guy deftly removed Adams’s wallet from his hand and his mate shone a Maglite on it. Then they turned the beam on Sean’s outstretched wallet to compare.
‘Royal Fusiliers?’ The cop sounded disbelieving. ‘What are you lot doing here?’
‘There’s no time to explain everything, Officer. You just need to let us through and you need to let us through now. I bet you get all kinds of cranks in your line, but a serving sergeant wouldn’t be bullshitting you, would he?’
‘Right you are, sir. No offence, but I’m going to have to call this in …’
‘Oh, for—’ Adams exploded. But he could see the other cop fingering his Taser, so he calmed down while the first cop turned away with deliberate slowness and tried to call up a superior officer.
Meanwhile, visibly seething, Adams tried to engage the second cop in a conversation that used facts and logic to make his point.
And Sean clocked all the onlookers who were clocking him and Adams trying to get some kind of clout with the cops. This was probably the last shreds of their security evaporating. It was a strange kind of relief. He could stop pretending to be undercover and just be a straight soldier again.
‘Sean …’
It was so faint he thought he had imagined it, but then it came again – and there, on the edge of the onlookers, was Emma.
Sean stared at her, looked at Adams, who was still talking, looked back.
The fuck?
Her eyes were wide and pleading. She looked more tired and drawn than when he’d last seen her, a few hours earlier – but then, he supposed, that was also how he felt. She was beckoning him over.
He glanced at Adams again. Adams had never seen Emma, wouldn’t recognize her now. But in front of all these people – and particularly in front of Emma – Sean couldn’t just blurt out, Sergeant, that’s Emma Booth, and we still don’t know if she’s Girl X, and even if she isn’t, she might still know something about Zara.
Well, he could still talk to her, right?
He sidled away from Adams and the cop.
Emma flashed a tight, unhappy smile and led him away from the others. She reached out and took his hands in hers. ‘I really need to talk, but …’ She nodded back at the cordon. ‘Sean, are you with these people?’
Sean ground his teeth together. What had she seen? Him and Adams showing ID to the police and obviously expecting to be taken seriously? But, hey, she knew he was in the army.
Basically he still had to act the innocent. If he still couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure she was Girl X, it worked both ways: she couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure he was on to her. By now she would be aware that he knew about Zara and Ste … but maybe not her.
And if she was just plain Emma Booth, then she was a fit civvy girl who he liked and who was in trouble, so he had to do what he could.
‘Thought our army ID might work with the cops,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It was worth a try. Are you all right?’
She eyed him. ‘OK …’ She seemed to come to a decision. ‘Look, I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but you were asking about Zara and … Oh, God, Sean, I have to tell someone. I don’t know what else to do. There’s no one else to turn to.’
‘So, what’s up?’
‘She’s in a bad way. A really bad way. She called me up, said she has to get help … Can I show you?’
O-o-o-kay! His smile grew fixed. So he was supposed to head off alone into the dark with a potential terrorist, no backup or support?
But, shit, if it was int … He was torn.
‘Me?’ He played for time. ‘Sure, I’d like to help, but … but what can I do?’
‘You’re army. You’re with …’ She jerked her head at the cordon. ‘You’re on the inside. If the cops find her like she is, she’ll just be busted. You might be able to have a word with someone … someone in authority … make them go easier on her … Please, Sean?’
Fuck, why can’t this be simple?
‘I …’ He glanced back at Adams. ‘I could bring the serge— my mate. He’s senior to me. Authority will pay more attention.’
She shook her head abruptly. ‘There’s no way she’d trust a stranger.’
Bollocks.
He couldn’t see any way out of this. He had a lead and he had to take it, even if he was heading into danger.
Sean took a step back towards Adams – and stopped. Adams and the cop still seemed to be locked in mind-to-mind combat. Would it really help if he interrupted? Or would he just be dragged into the interrogation and get bogged down again?
And if he said anything to show that Emma was a person of interest, then the cops would claim her, which would screw up the mission good and proper.
And meanwhile Emma would just push off, taking all the int in her head with her. She was trembling on her feet, poised to run away.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He marched up to Adams and clapped him on the shoulder, just long enough to mutter in his ear: ‘Gotta go – mission objective – I’ll leave my phone on.’ Then he about-turned and headed off before the cop or Adams could say anything.
Would leaving his phone on make any kind of difference? He didn’t know. He did know phones could be tracked with the right equipment – which hopefully Dave had access to. He’d done what he could.
Sean and Emma slid away into the darkness.
They didn’t talk much. Every sense of Sean’s was alert for danger, for any sign of a trap, for Ste and anyone else to come leaping out at him. But she was moving too fast and determinedly for it to be a set-up. At least, yet.
They took a circuitous route, away from the square, round the back of Coopersale Tower on the east side. With Coopersale in the way, you couldn’t see the fire blazing away at the foot of Gladstone, and the bulk of t
he building blocked out most of the sounds.
Sean assumed Coopersale was where they were heading, or somewhere else on the estate, but then Emma began to curve back towards the rear of Gladstone. The tower grew out of a concrete apron that was covered with rubbish. On this side of the tower, where people weren’t meant to be, at ground level there was a sheer concrete wall. The shops had no external back doors or windows. There was no sign of the fire that was blazing a few metres away.
Emma pulled aside a pile of boxes to reveal a crumbling hole, waist high – an even darker splodge on a dark background.
Sean whipped out his phone and switched on the torch so that he could crouch down and peer in. From this angle, all he could see was more concrete walls. He was sweating and he could feel his heart pounding. None of this felt good.
‘She’s in there?’
‘It’s always been our secret place.’ Emma swung herself into the hole and dropped to the floor. When she turned to face him, he could see her from the shoulders down. ‘See? It’s not far. And there’s lights on further along.’
Sean lowered himself almost to ground level and squinted in. She was standing in a short, dead-end passageway which led to the main underground passageway, as he had expected.
‘And Zara’s down here?’
He squeezed his eyes shut. It wasn’t right, but he was having difficulty finding the words to say it. He had been on the go for nearly twenty-four hours, most of them spent upright. He was dead tired and his brain just wanted to shut down for the night. Zara was down here, under a burning building, and he was expected to go in and do something about it …
He couldn’t see the fire, but with his face up to the hole he could smell it. There is something distinctive about the wrong sort of smoke. It’s dirty and gritty and it scratches the inside of your lungs.
‘Yes!’ Emma kept her voice down. ‘Please, Sean? She’s with some really dodgy types. I want to get to her.’
This was his last chance to stay in touch. His phone’s signal would be blocked in there. He thumbed up the text icon and started to type out to Adams.
Back of tower …
‘Come on, Sean.’ Emma turned and hurried off.
‘Hey, wait!’
He looked at the screen. Fuck’s sake, he hadn’t even said which tower. Adams would have his balls for a sloppy report like that, and if he wasn’t so brain dead, he wouldn’t have even tried. He started to thumb back to specify which tower he meant.
But he couldn’t afford to lose her. Shit.
So he hit SEND as was, and put the phone down next to the hole. Still out in the open; still – he hoped to God – trackable. Then he stuck his legs into the hole and dropped down after her.
The underground passageway was lit with the familiar dim lights in wire cages, made even hazier by the first faint hints of smoke. Like the place where Wolston had got shot, it was somewhere he had already been, earlier that day, and drawn a blank – because, as he now knew, there hadn’t been anything the detector could have found.
Dave had said he was going to call in the pros to do this properly, now that their cover was blown. No sign of anyone else yet, though. Maybe they hadn’t got round to this spot. Maybe events had overtaken them.
Sean was used to how the sublevels cut out surface noise, but he had never really appreciated it until now. His ears were still braced for the racket outside: the rioters chasing around the estate, the shouted orders and cries. Down here there was nothing. The building above cut out the sound just as efficiently as it did phone signals. Sean’s imagination compensated for the absence by making up random fears.
And that was when his over-tired brain finally coughed up a question that needed an answer to make sense of all this. Emma had said Zara called her up? How, exactly?
‘Emma …’ he began as he caught up with her.
They were at a T-junction. The left and right passages looked identically empty. If Adams or anyone came this far after him, how would they know which way Sean had gone?
Emma darted down the left one. She had her back to Sean, so he fished his ID out of his wallet and quietly dropped it as he followed.
She had stopped at a door, pushing it open. It looked like the twin of the one where he had listened in on Zara giving blood, right down to the wire ventilation mesh above.
‘The fire’s not getting any better,’ she said in a loud whisper.
Which was true enough; it made Sean hurry forward the last few steps.
‘Hey, babe! Look who I found for you!’ Emma beckoned him in urgently.
The room was even barer than the last one Zara had occupied. Nothing to make it even remotely comfortable. Another concrete box with thick, heavy ducts running across the ceiling, and—
Oh, shit!
Zara, lying on a pallet by the wall. Her eyes were almost closed, and in the gloomy half-light the trickles of blood from her eyes and mouth were black and sticky. She peered up at him. ‘Who’s that?’ she moaned. ‘Em, I need a doctor!’
Sean grabbed up the front of his own shirt and buried his face in the cloth. It was the nearest he could get to a proper surgical mask but he had no idea how effective it would be. His brain had been running on pure reserves for a long time, and now they were almost used up; it was just shutting down. He ought to be doing something but he couldn’t put his finger on it …
A blur of motion in the corner of his eye, and sheer instinct took over where conscious thought failed. He threw himself towards the wall as Emma lunged at him with a bloodstained transfusion needle.
Chapter 29
Friday 4 August, 04:30 BST
Sean hit the wall; Emma stumbled and slashed at the air where he had been.
She was between him and the door. In the moment it took for the last cobwebs to blow out of his head, she had locked it, standing with her back to it. Her grin reminded him of a hungry wild animal.
‘Em …’ Zara protested. Her weak voice dissolved into something that was a mixture of coughs and sobs.
‘Shut up.’ Emma slipped the key into a pocket and waved the needle at Sean. ‘You know what’s on this?’
His chest heaved as he sucked in breaths through the shirt. He couldn’t see any point in pretending any more. ‘Gonna guess Lassa fever.’ The shirt muffled his voice. ‘Version five.’
‘Clever boy.’
Anyone else, especially any other girl with her slight build, and he would have just decked her, and that would have been that. But the thing in her hand focused his mind like it was hypnotic. If it broke his skin, it was basically game over for him. And his skin was just as thin as hers.
Zara had slumped back onto her pallet. He’d had no idea that everything would be so quick. She hadn’t looked this bad when he watched her being evacuated from the other room a few hours ago. But now, with her blood leaking like that, there was no doubt in his mind that she had reached the end.
‘I don’t want to do this any more, Em,’ she mumbled. ‘It hurts too much. I want a doctor, please …’
‘This is what we both signed up for,’ Emma said. She was speaking to Zara but didn’t look away from Sean. Her voice was calm, but the grin was fixed and her eyes had a glint that spoke of madness. ‘You know that, Zee. So do I. Remember what they said? There’ll be doubts. It’s just our human nature. It’s to be expected. We just hang on that little bit longer …’ She must have been holding herself back while she kept up the charade, because she suddenly dissolved into a fit of lung-wrenching coughing. But she still managed to keep the needle up, waving it and jabbing it randomly at the air in front of her in case Sean tried to make a break for it.
He wasn’t trying any such thing. He had his back pressed against the far wall and his shirt pressed even further up his nostrils.
‘So who fed you that load of crap?’ he asked. ‘Someone who isn’t here, by the look of it. Must be nice to know they’re one hundred per cent behind you. Decent of them.’
The fit passed. Emma drew some breat
hs, then straightened up and pulled back her sleeve. A fresh white bandage was wrapped neatly around her elbow. ‘Don’t even try, Sean. You’ll never understand. Have you worked it out yet?’
He nodded. As long as she was talking, she wasn’t attacking him with that needle. And there was still the chance of finding out more.
‘You got infected with something,’ he said, ‘which we think was probably the three-week extra-nasty Lassa fever, and you’ve both been giving blood so that Ste can … what? Infect other people? Who?’
She giggled. ‘I don’t know!’ She held her hands wide open, smiling innocently, and for a second he thought he could close the gap between them, grab her wrists, nut her hard to knock her out. But then the needle was back in front of her, held out like a duelling sword.
‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘That’s what’s so clever. Right, Zee?’
Zara had collapsed onto her side, barely twitching but sobbing very faintly. Sean clocked the look of compassion that flitted over Emma’s face – a remnant of a time when they were just two ordinary BFFs, before this mad self-righteousness had taken over.
‘That’s how I know this is right,’ she said. ‘Ste told us. Bombs aren’t the way. Think about it. It’s wrong when the Americans take out a leader with a drone, and simultaneously wipe out twenty innocent people as collateral. But our brothers do the same. The London bombs – how could they be justified? What had those people on the bus or the Tube done to them?’
Her eyes were going glassy with the glorious vision, and Sean thought he recognized the smooth tones of Fayez in the rhythm and inflection of her words.
‘But plague – plague is in the hands of God! You let off a bomb on a crowded train and everyone dies. But you release a virus, and who knows? One person will die and the one standing next to them will live. Their lives and deaths are exclusively in the hands of God, where they belong. By choosing to offer up our lives, we are giving God a weapon that is guaranteed to strike down the ones only he has chosen. He chooses! Not us! It’s fair. It’s just. We were booking up tickets to events, shows, games – anything where there would be people. We would move among them as the instruments of God. I bought so many tickets … And Ste will put the blood he took off us into other people like me, and they will buy tickets … And … And …’