Seven Day Hero

by J. T. Brannan

  As Cole sprinted for the relative safety of the stairs, the six remaining men regained their senses and opened fire. Mercifully, the confusion caused them to forget to lead their target, and the bullets instead tore through the air behind Cole, allowing him to reach the stairs unscathed. As he carried on up the stairs, the rounds from the assault rifles chased him, obliterating the carved wooden banisters just inches behind him.

  The men started to rush towards the stairs themselves just moments later, but Cole was already at the top. Instants later, he had dragged the dead sniper through the doorway, the heavy door slamming shut behind him. The section leader, the first up the stairs, heard two more shots from the other side of the door, then there was silence. He reached for the door handle and tried to open it, but found it locked. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed, before clicking the microphone on his collar. ‘Open the doors! Now!’

  52

  Cole looked at the three dead bodies on the floor of the corridor in which he now found himself. There was the sniper, and two others that he had found when he had dived through the doorway. Luckily, Cole had managed to take advantage of their surprise and get two rounds off before they could react.

  He then looked to his left, and confirmed with satisfaction what he thought he had seen through the doorway when he had glanced towards it earlier – a window. But something more than that; a way out.

  The section leader waited impatiently at the door as his order was transmitted to the electronic security centre, buried deep within the bowels of the building. Simon Edwards was a Sergeant with the Royal Military Police, although he had been seconded to a special section specifically recruited for the protection of the London safe house. As he counted down the seconds until the door swung open, the only thought going through his head was that he had failed. It was his section’s job to make the safe house physically safe, and this crazy bastard had already killed several of Edwards’s own men.

  When the door opened, he would have to catch this guy, whoever he was. That was another thing that grated. Normally he would be given details of every visitor to the house, no matter how important they were. He hadn’t even been given a name for this guy – orders from the top. But, Edwards promised himself, names are for tombstones; he was going to kill the man personally.

  Finally, Edwards heard the click of the locks come open. He organised his men with quick hand signals, then kicked open the big, heavy door, submachine gun tucked tight into his shoulder as he entered the first floor corridor.

  At first, he didn’t even notice the three dead bodies. His attention was instead captivated by the hallway window; or, rather, the lack of it.

  He understood instantly how Cole had done it. The glass had been armoured, naturally, and was rated as strong enough to withstand even the high-powered rounds of a sniper rifle. But not, Edwards could now see quite plainly, five carefully placed such high-powered rounds, fired at point blank range.

  The veteran RMP sergeant looked down and saw Hendriks’s discarded H&K SH rifle, lying in a pool of blood that still oozed out of a pulsating wound in the man’s neck. Another one gone, Edwards thought to himself. Damn. Brannigan and Fitch too, he now noticed, and although two of his men hurried to administer first aid, Edwards knew it was too late. They were already dead. Son of a bitch.

  Edwards ran to the window as his men continued checked the bodies. Leaning out of the shattered window, he peered into the rear yard, the muzzle of his weapon tracking the same line as his vision. Nothing, he thought with wonder. There wasn’t a trace, not even a mark in the fresh snow.

  The thought suddenly struck him that maybe the man had gone through one of the other doors in the hallway. He was about to come back in and get an interior search organised when a noise from above stopped him. Not much of a sound – a faint whump, followed by a few shards of falling ice – but he knew instantly what it meant. In the blink of an eye, he snapped his gun upwards and depressed the trigger.

  Two floors up, Cole barely managed to get his last foot over the edge of the slippery, tiled roof before it erupted in a sudden explosion of gunfire from below.

  Damn. He’d hoped to be quick enough that they wouldn’t see him, and therefore would suspect that he was still somewhere in the building, having used the shattered window as a diversion. Meanwhile, his plan was to make his way across the rooftop to a point further down the street, then to come down on the other side.

  The drainpipe and ledges he’d used to climb up the side of the building had unfortunately proved to be that little bit too icy, however, and with bare hands and leather soles, the ascent had taken longer than anticipated. Now the building’s security team would put men on both sides of the building and send others up to the roof; they’d probably cordon off the entire street before long.

  But Cole knew that there would be a delay in those orders being carried out, a brief window of opportunity in which he could act.

  Without another thought, Cole started to scramble across the slick, icy rooftop, the steeply sloped surface making his progress even more difficult. But he struggled on at a steady pace, heading towards the end of the long terrace. Being in the middle of the terraced row as he was, there was a formidable distance to cover, but Cole figured that his best bet was to head for the busy thoroughfare of the main park road at the end of the street. The security team would be unlikely to use weapons so close to so many civilians – six innocent people killed by armed police in the streets of London in the last two years, leading to a total payout of over thirty million pounds, combined with huge media vilification, would ensure the team would not be too trigger-happy – and once at street level he hoped to make his escape through the heavy traffic. But first he would have to get to the end of this row of roofs, and there were still fifty metres to go.

  He heard the sound of the men climbing out onto the roof behind him not even a minute later; he hadn’t even managed to get half way. Spinning round into a crouch, careful not to lose his footing on the treacherous ice, Cole fired four shots at the emerging agents. His aim was to pin them down as he made a run over the peak of the roof to the far side, and he wasted no time with his plan, scrambling up the tiled slope as fast as he could, fearful that the men would open fire before he got to safety.

  As he reached the long peak of the roof, he looked down and saw men spilling into the streets on both sides of the house, weapons aimed up at him. Ice was churned up just inches from his feet as the men on the roof started shooting, but then he was over the other side, the bulk of the roof providing relative safety, at least for a few precious moments.

  He started racing towards the end of the roof, but trying to keep his body low to avoid fire from the snipers now stationed in the street below. A bullet shot past his ear, and he lost his footing on the ice, sliding down to the edge of the roof. He dug in with his heels and his free hand, just as his body passed the edge. He barely had time to pull himself back over before the ledge erupted with gunfire from below.

  Not able to even catch a breath, he saw the first two agents come over the roof peak. Firing wildly, he hit one in the leg and missed the other entirely. The second man ducked back on the other side of the roof, as his colleague lost his balance and started an inexorable slide towards a four-storey drop, the wound in his leg leaving an ugly red grease stain on the slick ice. Unable to stop himself, the man slid straight over the side, screaming all the way down until the sickening crump silenced him forever.

  Cole realized he was running out of time; fatally slippery or not, he would have to sprint the last twenty metres across the icy rooftop. Seeing the faint outlines of heads coming over the roof peak again, he emptied his pistol at the vague targets, dropped it as he regained his feet fully; then pulled out two more pistols from his belt, waiting just two seconds before the agents tried again. He saw plumes of red spray high into the winter sky as he loosed off all thirty rounds from both guns, but had no idea how many agents he had hit; he was off and running before the empty pistols had dropped
to the roof and skittered down to the street below.

  Edwards was watching in disbelief. How was the man still alive? He couldn’t see him now, as he was on the other side of the roof; he could, however, see his own men pinned down, three of them hit. What the Hell was going on up there?

  ‘Wilson!’ he barked into his tactical mic. ‘What’s going on up there? Give me a sit rep!’

  The reply came moments later, crystal clear through the helmet earpiece, the panic in the voice evident. ‘He’s pinning us down sir, we’ve got men down . . . He’s heading towards the end of the roof, he’s . . . Holy shit!’

  ‘What?’ Edwards almost screamed.

  ‘He’s jumped! The crazy bastard’s jumped off the roof!’

  Cole had seen the truck travelling along the road when he’d been just feet from the edge. He knew the agents would be coming over this side and opening fire at any second, and soon heard the staccato blasts of automatic fire, felt the snow and ice churning around him. There was only one option open to him, and he took it without a second thought.

  Leaping from the edge of the roof out into fresh air, as bullets raced towards him from behind, he doubted that he could make it. The big, dull grey haulage truck seemed so far away now, travelling so fast, it seemed impossible.

  But then his body crashed onto the wide, slightly curved roof, and he was scrambling for a secure hold, sliding over the roof, but he had made it, he had landed safely, now all he had to do was stay on the roof, stay on the roof . . .

  But then the truck turned for a bend in the road, and he found himself sliding inexorably over the side. Try as he might to get a grip, to hold on, it was no use; the roof was too icy, the turn too tight, and Cole found himself being flung viciously from the top, once more sailing through the air.

  The landing was hard, but he knew how to take a fall, and rolled with it. It still hurt like Hell though.

  ‘Whoa, you alright mate?’ asked a stunned passer-by, helping Cole unsteadily to his feet.

  Cole shook his head to clear it. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, I’m – ’ Over the Good Samaritan’s shoulder, Cole saw half a dozen agents racing out towards him. There was heavy traffic between them and Cole, as he was now on the far side from the row of houses, but he had no time to waste.

  Adrenaline successfully numbing the pain, Cole turned and ran for the roundabout straight ahead, heading for Regent’s Park. He would lose them there, he was sure.

  Edwards could simply not believe what was happening. He’d lost half his men, and they still hadn’t managed to catch the bastard.

  What could he do now? The man was out in the open, loose on the streets of London. They couldn’t risk a gunfight around here, that was for sure. But they needed to take the man down, and quickly.

  They needed help, and Edwards knew it. And so slowly, reluctantly, the security team leader reached into his pocket and extracted his phone. It was not a call that he was looking forward to making.

  Cole started to breathe more easily, and allowed himself to relax ever-so-slightly into the small plastic seat on the train in which he now travelled.

  He had entered the park with the remaining agents hot on his heels. They no longer sported their submachine guns, but Cole knew they would still be armed, and out for blood. Although he had been acting in self defence – they had tried to execute him, after all – Cole was in no doubt as to how his pursuers would be feeling. They would only see that Cole was an enemy of the state who had murdered several of their friends and colleagues in cold blood. So whatever the current policy on using firearms near civilians, Cole wasn’t entirely sure that protocol would be followed.

  It was a simple enough task to lose them in the vast expanse of Regent’s Park, however, especially with the head start that he’d had, and so after leading them along a false route, he had doubled back and left the park near Baker Street.

  Descending the nearby stairs to the Underground, Cole was sure the agents would still be looking for him on the other side of the park.

  He couldn’t afford to lose concentration however, and after catching the Bakerloo Line to Oxford Circus he would switch lines a couple of more times until he was on the other side of the river.

  And then he would have to urgently set about finding a telephone box; he needed to tell Tarr to get his family to safety before it was too late.

  53

  Hansard sat in the back of his Bentley limousine, contemplating the news he’d just had delivered. This was not good. Not at all.

  Cole had been like a son to him for many years, and ordering his death had been hard, but like many of the unpleasant things he had done in his life, it had been necessary. There were events that had now been set in motion that were more important than the life of one man, of that Hansard had no doubt.

  But now this news that Cole was alive! And more than that, escaped! It was more than a worry; it could bring down everything he had worked so hard to achieve, destroy his magnificent plan before it had even borne fruit.

  It was of course inconceivable that Cole would be allowed to get away, and so after Edwards’s frantic phone call (why he had ever put the man in charge in the first place, he just didn’t know), Hansard had set about alerting John Hughes, the Security Service Department Head of A Branch. MI5’s highly-trained urban ‘watchers’, the men of A Branch were even now spreading their nets across London, with orders to bring Cole in, dead or alive; but preferably dead. And with almost every division of the government, from traffic wardens to the men and women of Scotland Yard’s SO19 weapons section being duly informed to keep their eyes peeled for a dangerous ‘terrorist’, Hansard was confident it would not be long before his mind could be put at rest.

  Looking out of the double glazed windows at the grey streets of the capital, Hansard picked up his phone and dialled a memorized number. Just one more thing, he decided.

  At a little after four in the morning, Tarr had seen movement on board the boat again. His position in the little cubby hole was not exactly comfortable, but Tarr hardly noticed; his attention was completely focussed on the little yacht.

  He saw the blond man come out on deck, talking into a satellite phone. He bent again to the man camouflaged on the deck, who now knelt, then stood up, both men retreating back downstairs to the cabin.

  Hullo, what’s this? wondered Tarr with piqued curiosity. Whatever was happening, he felt sure it couldn’t be good.

  Dan Albright and his men were already fully kitted out when the second call came. They wore black wet suits, combat vests and submachine guns fully waterproofed. Even their SCUBA gear was painted with a special resin that eliminated any chance of the metal giving a telltale reflective glint in the moonlight.

  He had finished his briefing and they were just about to slip down into the sylph-like Swimmer Delivery Vehicles that would carry them quickly and noiselessly to the shore, when the red light came flashing on the phone in the dock area.

  Albright momentarily thought about ignoring it, but decided that would probably not be wise, and so picked up the receiver on the fifth ring. The conversation was short and one-sided, Albright simply saying ‘Yes sir,’ before he replaced the handset and turned to his men.

  ‘Okay guys, stand down. The family are getting a short reprieve. Seems the husband has gone missing, and we can’t go until he’s been cleaned up.’

  The men around him seemed disappointed that they weren’t going into action, but somehow relieved at the same time. Although Albright didn’t seem to mind, not all of them were excited by the prospect of killing a woman and her two children in cold blood.

  54

  Cole was becoming increasingly wary as he travelled on his journey across London. He knew Hansard would have been informed about his escape by now. The question was, what would his orders be? Cole knew that the man could order a huge manhunt for him if he thought it prudent. One might already be underway, and the first Cole would know of it would be when he’d been identified, targeted and captured.

/>   But maybe he wouldn’t do anything, Cole considered. The thought was only fleeting, however – Hansard wanted him dead, and would stop at nothing to see that this was done. Cole was sure that the eyes and ears of A Branch would be scouring the capital for him this very second.

  He couldn’t help thinking that he’d been on this train too long. He’d first thought it prudent to keep on the Central line for as long as possible, changing over to the Northern line at Bank Station to cross the river, before finally getting off at the Elephant and Castle. He figured that the search would initially be concentrated north of the river, and after he emerged in the south, he’d have a little more freedom. He could then get to a phone and call his family to warn them.

  But as he passed station after station, watching the people getting on and off, he started to become nervous. There were too many people looking at him too closely. It was possibly paranoia, he knew, but then again – maybe not.

  It was the man in the jeans and dirty grey bomber jacket who had sat opposite him a few seats to his left that bothered him the most. Part of it, Cole admitted to himself, was the clothes – it was a typical outfit for a military undercover operative. Cole remembered his days in the SBS when he’d first received instruction in undercover operations, and remembered all too well the military definition of ‘casual’ – jeans, trainers, old jacket. The man had fit the bill perfectly. Maybe it was just coincidence, but the man had looked at him once too often, and had used his mobile phone to text someone straight after.