by Andy McNab
Gavin picked up his brew and nodded his thanks. His eyes flicked back to the monitor. The one-metre lengths of mine tape were fluttering on top of the Chinook. The wind must be getting up.
Woolf patted his shoulder. ‘Everything that can be done has been done. Good luck.’
Each took a sip of his brew.
The Slime came on the net for all to hear. ‘The ETA of the train is one minute. Repeat, ETA, one minute. One minute from the tunnel mouth.’
Gavin lobbed his empty cup onto the floor to clear the decks. Woolf took a step back. They both stared at the monitors. Headphones clamped to their ears, the signallers and the Slime monitored their transmitters and receivers, continuously reaching forward to make endless microscopic adjustments.
Gavin got to work. ‘All stations, Alpha radio check. Blue One.’
Click-click.
‘Red One.’
Click-click.
‘Sierra One.’
Gavin watched Keenan’s red light spark up. And then he radio-checked every single sniper one final time.
110
A SMALL FLOCK of gulls that had been disputing possession of a stolen sandwich crust suddenly took flight, soaring skywards, then settling once more above the tunnel’s entrance.
Moments later, the long, sleek nose of a Eurostar locomotive glinted in the sunlight beneath them. At no more than walking pace, the rest of the engine slowly unsheathed itself from the tunnel. Through the tinted-glass windscreen, Gavin spotted the pale, frightened face of the driver. His head was half turned. His lips were moving. He was speaking to the man directly behind him. Gavin guessed there was a machine-gun rammed into his back. A hand gestured at the Chinook, as if the driver couldn’t see it, or had suddenly developed the magic power to steer straight off the tracks towards it.
‘Alpha has an X-ray in engine – brown bomber jacket, short dark hair and beard. He is carrying.’
The snipers would have eyes-on, but not the Blue and Red teams down the service tunnel. And they didn’t have monitors.
Carriage by carriage, the Eurostar inched out of the tunnel. The gentle rumble of its engine carried as far as the hangar.
Gavin dominated the net. ‘Coach One clear . . . Two . . . clear. Coach Three – bodies in carriage . . . wait . . . wait . . . twenty to thirty . . .’
The snipers would be locked on Coach Three. They didn’t need to be on the net: their job was behind their weapons. Gavin was the only one who had to talk.
‘Four, clear . . . Five, clear . . .’
Gavin felt a knot of tension in his stomach, but kept his voice flat and even. ‘Slowing . . .’
The seventh coach emerged from the tunnel.
‘Slowing . . . slowing . . . Stop, stop, stop. That’s Eurostar static. Coach Three, closest to the Chinook.’
A figure appeared at the open doorway and clambered down.
Gavin scrutinized the man. He didn’t look like any of the X-rays Tom had photographed, but it was hard to be sure.
Another figure emerged, then a succession of them. They huddled next to the train. Someone was controlling them. Another couple jumped down. The driver’s legs almost gave way beneath him as he touched the ground.
Next out was the one who’d been standing behind the driver.
‘Alpha has the driver’s-cab X-ray now in the killing area. Sierra Nine and Ten confirm.’
Two reds.
‘Roger that.’
One of the Slime ticked the board beside their names. They had a target.
Another figure emerged.
‘Alpha has X-ray One now in the killing area.’
Sierras One and Three red lit.
‘Confirm, Eurostar uniform and grab bag. He is in the middle of the pack.’
Sierra One’s light suddenly went back to green as the grab bag was lost in a sea of bodies.
The Slime held up a number count for Gavin on a whiteboard.
‘Alpha has twenty-eight in the killing area, still static by the train. No more movement in Coach Three.’
The strips of mine tape were flapping. The sky had darkened. A gust of wind blew rain across the Folkestone compound. The hostage group squinted into it. Someone near the centre of it said something. All of them began to shuffle slowly towards the Chinook.
‘Stand by, stand by . . . the group is mobile.’
Gavin checked Sentinel. He wasn’t concerned about Sierra Nine and Ten’s target as their lights flickered between red and green. It was Sierras One, Two and Three he had to worry about.
One red . . . then two . . .
Gavin pushed the radio pressel, ready to send.
Back to just one light.
Then none.
He looked at the monitor. The group was halfway to the Chinook. If he got one red, then that Sierra would have to take the shot.
Sierra Three flashed red.
He pushed the pressel. ‘All stations, I have control. Stand by, stand by . . .’
Sierra One went red.
‘Go.’
He heard two high-velocity cracks from the other side of the hangar. The snipers’ weapons recoiled and their rounds ripped through the air, each carving its track through the huddle and severing its target’s brain stems at the same instant. The two bodies crumpled.
There were a few beats of silence, broken only by the squawk of seagulls as they took to the sky once more. Then the hostages realized what had just happened in their midst. A woman screamed.
Simultaneously, two call-signs made entry into the train and the Blue and Red teams poured out of the service tunnel. The air crew, too, were out and running.
The single scream soon became a chorus as Laszlo’s men drew down their weapons. They stood their ground, knowing they were about to die, but determined not to go without a fight. The snipers dropped the ones they saw.
Jockey, Bryce and the rest of the team raced forward, throwing flash-bangs as they went. A bunch of Yankees broke ranks and ran towards them in blind panic, grabbing the assaulters, like drowning swimmers clinging to the closest available life-raft.
The Blue and Red teams pushed, punched and knocked them out of the way as they surged towards the main passenger group. The snipers continued to drop any threat they detected. Some Yankees took rounds in the chaos. Flash-bangs exploded with deafening, blinding force.
The assaulters reached the middle of the killing area. Any Yankee left standing was forced to lie face down on the ground by a combination of boots, fists and weapons. Everyone had to be gripped as if they were an X-ray, because some of them would be.
Gavin watched Ashton take a long, hard look at the body with the Eurostar uniform and the grab bag. He lifted what was left of the man’s head, checking the face against a printout of the picture Tom had taken. From the way he let it fall back to the ground and stood up before he got onto his radio, Gavin knew it wasn’t good news.
‘We do not have the initiation device and we do not have X-ray One. I say again, we do not have the initiation device.’
Gavin acknowledged.
Now that all the train group were zip-tied or dead, Jockey checked the casualties.
‘Alpha, roger that. Blue One, what you got for me?’
Jockey checked one last corpse before turning to face the camera. Gavin felt his eyes drill through the monitor.
‘We have eleven dead, seventeen breathing. We need to go back in the tunnel and find X-ray One.’
He didn’t have to spell it out. It wasn’t just Antonov and the device they wanted. Tom and Delphine were still in there somewhere. If they could stop Antonov, they might be able to save their friends.
Jockey remained staring into the camera as police vans raced into view.
‘Alpha, roger that. Wait out.’
Gavin spun round to Woolf. ‘Get on to COBRA. Get permission. We need hot pursuit. We need to stop this fucker.’
111
GAVIN LEAPED INTO a Range Rover and screamed down towards the tunnel entrance. The moment COBRA
green-lit a follow-up, he wanted to be the one leading the team.
The military option was complete; the police had begun mopping up. Hands on heads, the Yankees lay face down in the rain as blue flashing lights swamped the area. They were taken into the back of a van one at a time. It wouldn’t be long before the whole world knew this hadn’t been an electrical fault.
The team was reassembling inside the service tunnel as Gavin screeched to a halt. He ran straight over to Jockey. ‘Mate, any luck with the mobile?’
Jockey tossed it to him. ‘They just retrieved it from the cab. Tom, Delphine . . . We’ve got to get fuckin’ moving.’
‘Mate, I know. Make sure the boys are ready. We’re waiting on the “go” from COBRA.’
Gavin hit the keypad and scrolled down the call log. He saw it at once. Ashton had been on the line when he was outside the hangar. He turned to Jockey. ‘Where’s the Boss?’
‘Gone back to the heli.’
Gavin broke into a run. He sprinted the thirty metres past the line of soaked hostages and straight onto the Chinook’s ramp. Rain drummed noisily on the aircraft’s aluminium skin.
Ashton was just behind the pilot’s bulkhead, next to the stack of gold. He had his back to Gavin and was holding a mobile to his ear. Tom’s phone vibrated in Gavin’s hand. He closed in on Ashton, passing the full bladder of extra fuel rigged up to supplement the main tank. Strapped to the deck, it looked like the floor of a bouncy castle.
Ashton spun round at the noise of footsteps.
‘What the fuck were you doing?’ Gavin yelled. ‘You told me you didn’t call him. But you did, didn’t you? And Antonov had this fucking thing, not Tom. What the fuck were you talking about? You were on this fucking thing for more than two minutes.’
Gavin closed on Ashton, thrusting the mobile’s screen at him. ‘And what the fuck is all that about?’ He pointed at the ready-bag the other side of the gold.
Gavin felt angrier with each stride he took. ‘It was you that warned him yesterday. It was, wasn’t it?’
Ashton stood his ground. He let the mobile drop an inch or two in his palm so half of the phone was sticking out, like the blade of a dagger. He tightened his grip.
The NCO ranted at him: ‘Tom and Delphine are still in there, with that fucking nutter . . . If I find out it was because of you, I’m going to fucking destroy you. What the fuck do you—’
Ashton’s fist tightened around the phone. Before Gavin could gather himself, he swung it round and down, making brutal contact with Gavin’s right temple. Gavin staggered under the blow. Ashton moved closer, pounding the mobile into his head with all the force he could muster, once, twice, three times.
Gavin sank onto the ridged floor of the Chinook. Ashton grabbed him under the armpits and shuffled backwards, dragging him behind the stack of crates. He got down onto his knees and stabbed the hard plastic case repeatedly into the side of Gavin’s head.
Whimpers and groans filled the air. It took Gavin a moment to realize they were his own. He felt the power ebb from his hands as he tried to stop the onslaught. The skin split under the pressure and blood streamed from the wound.
Another thirty seconds and Gavin struggled one last time, with all the frenzied strength a man draws on when he knows he is dying. His hands stopped grasping. The movement in his legs subsided to no more than a spasmodic twitching. Seconds later he lay still.
112
ASHTON CLAMBERED TO his feet and admired his handiwork for a moment. He retrieved Tom’s phone from where it had fallen and tossed it down beside the warrant officer’s body. Then he headed down the ramp and out into the rain.
He tapped the dialling pad on his mobile as he made his way back towards the mouth of the tunnel, where the Red and Blue teams were busy sorting their gear.
He ran through the story in his head. Planting the device on board the Chinook had been Gavin’s idea. If the sniper option failed, they’d have to stop Laszlo some other way.
But there had been a terrible accident. Gavin must have tried to disarm the thing, and it had detonated.
It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.
Ashton highlighted Tom’s number.
And then he pressed Send.
A blinding flash filled the sky as two kilograms of PE4 kicked off the fuel bladder. Within the tight confines of the aircraft, the combustion pressure turned it into an instant fireball, which, in turn, ignited the main tanks.
The Chinook’s rotors broke off and spun drunkenly into the cloud of fire and smoke.
Ashton was knocked to the ground by the blast. He landed only metres from the tunnel entrance. As he picked himself up, chunks of fuselage and fragments of unidentifiable metal rained down on the surrounding area.
Jockey powered towards him, distress vibrating from every fibre of his taut Glaswegian frame. ‘Gav!’
113
DELPHINE BRACED HERSELF as Laszlo reached past her once again and scooped down to propel their skateboard along the smooth interior of the pipe. He sat behind her on the board, his legs either side of her, as if they were kayaking. They were deep under the English Channel, and for many miles each breath she had taken from her compressed-air tank had echoed down the cylinder like the air bubbles of a diver in the ocean depths.
The skateboard slewed from side to side, rolling up the curve until gravity took over. She could feel the rush of gas as she lay there, and see wisps of it streaming over her mask. Her breathing accelerated with her rising fear of Sambor’s imminent return.
Sucking hard from Sambor’s oxygen mask, Tom wasn’t sure how far Delphine and Laszlo were ahead of him. There was hardly any light, just a dim white glow every five hundred metres or so, through the glass panels on the airlock doors. Tom had no idea what he was going to do when he caught up with them. His head was empty of all thought; his body was using up every reserve of energy to make best speed on Sambor’s board. For now thinking was pointless. The work he needed to do was physical, not mental.
Tom paddled his hands along the floor of the pipeline and felt the skateboard pick up speed. It swooped up to the right. Tom instantly knew it was going too high. He tried to compensate, leaning hard left, but was too late. He came off like a bobsleigh rider on a fast bend.
His oxygen tank slammed into the metal superstructure and the clank of steel-on-steel echoed along the cylinder. Tom skidded fifteen feet, eyes closed, expecting the friction to ignite the gas at any moment.
He finally managed to bring himself to a halt and listened to the skateboard doing the same somewhere ahead of him. There was no time for him to take a breath or thank the pipeline designers. He rolled over onto his chest and started crawling forward.
Laszlo seemed to be moving more cautiously as they approached the next circle of light. He must have been concentrating hard: he didn’t seem to hear the loud metallic echo that washed over them.
Delphine did, and it immediately filled her with dread. It meant Sambor was alive. But then she realized that Tom wouldn’t have come to that conclusion if their positions had been reversed. Until he knew otherwise, Tom would have thought it was Delphine coming for him. She needed to think the same. She needed to believe it was him.
They came to a stop next to another steel door. She saw numbers stencilled on the glass panel. Laszlo crawled off the skateboard, allowing Delphine to take deep breaths to re-oxygenate her numb body. The respite lasted no more than two seconds before he grabbed her and made her kneel alongside him as he worked the handles.
She needed to slow him down. She needed to stop him blowing the pipeline. She eyed his recently acquired day-sack.
She lay there asking herself one question, over and over. What would Tom do? Until he caught up with them, she would have to take matters into her own hands. Whatever it was going to be, she had to do something.
The sequence of airlocks was designed to allow safe passage of maintenance engineers and emergency crews between the pressurized interior of the gas pipe and its exterior. Lasz
lo had done his homework.
An LED glowed and he heard the suction of gas as the air pressure in the chamber equalized with that of the environment beyond the outside door.
He glanced at Delphine. Laszlo knew exactly what was going through her mind. He’d heard the crash behind them, but decided it was pointless to react. There was no reason to believe it wasn’t Sambor. And sooner or later he would know for sure. The most important objective for now was getting himself and his brother out of the pipeline and into a safe position from which he could trigger the detonation.
Another LED illuminated and he swung open the outside door. He turned and grabbed the tube that led from Delphine’s oxygen tank to the mask. As the mask started to lift from her face she soon followed. Laszlo pushed her into the chamber, slammed the steel door shut behind them, and pushed a yellow button. The floor vent inside the airlock sucked out the gas and another above them replaced it with oxygen. The noise was deafening.
The sudden slam on the other side of the door they’d just come through made Delphine give an involuntary cry.
Tom’s masked face appeared at the window.
114
DELPHINE HEARD TOM throw himself against the other side of the door; she could almost feel his grunt of pain and frustration as he failed to open it. She threw herself across the airlock and grabbed the handle. Laszlo didn’t move a muscle, just watched her pitiful attempts to wrench it free. It took her six or seven frenzied and fruitless heaves to realize that it wouldn’t unlock until the gas exchange was complete.
As the green LED started to blink, Laszlo shoved her ahead of him through the outer door. She felt his grip harden once more on her arm. He manhandled her up a steel ladder towards a hatch. She tried again to slow him down, but didn’t have the strength to put up much of a fight.
He forced the lever open with his free hand and climbed out, pulling her with him. She ripped off her mask and breathed in until she thought her lungs would burst. After what seemed like hours of tainted oxygen, it was the sweetest air she had ever breathed. She just wished she wasn’t sharing it with Laszlo.