Hell's Mouth

by BATEMAN, A P

  He lifted the radio, just enough to capture his voice, not raising it into view for the rest of the people crossing the bridge to see. “Control, Bravo Delta Two,” he said, clearly and in control despite the building adrenalin within. “Positive ID, repeat, positive ID.”

  “Bravo Delta Two, confirmed, positive ID. All units, standby, standby. Sit rep on SCO19?”

  “SCO19. Four minutes.”

  “Speed up.”

  “Control. Bravo Delta Two, I’m in position,” O’Bryan interjected when the net was clear.

  “Denied.”

  “Control, I’m right here!” O’Bryan snapped. “He’s got the look; he’s praying as he walks! Whatever he’s going to do, he’s going to do it now!”

  “Denied, DI O’Bryan. Wait out!”

  Shaved, hair trimmed, washed and presentable, wide-eyed and mouthing a prayer, almost in a meditative state. It didn’t get more imminent than that. O’Bryan opened the door of the van and swung his wiry six-foot frame out onto the pavement. He kept the radio down by his side. He could see the man from behind. He had a shuffle going on, like he was rocking to a beat as he walked. Which indeed he was. But it went with the chant he was mouthing, nothing musical, merely the constant reciting of a near-silent prayer.

  Ahead of the man, O’Bryan could see the gathering of children. A school outing, the children holding leaflets, gathered around a brass plaque. William Wordsworth’s poem of Westminster Bridge. The teacher leading the talk was standing with her back to the river. Parents or teaching assistants stood nearby, cordoning off the children as they watched and listened. She had a sheet of paper in her hands and she cleared her throat before speaking. Had O’Bryan been closer, he would have heard:

  “Earth has not anything to show more fair:

  Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

  A sight so touching in its majesty:

  This City now doth like a garment wear

  The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

  Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

  Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

  All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

  Never did sun more beautifully steep

  In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;

  Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

  The river glideth at his own sweet will:

  Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

  And all that mighty heart is lying still!”

  The teacher continued to talk and the children listened. Passers-by paused and nodded. The bridge had seen a terrorist atrocity when self-styled terrorist and Islamic extremist Khalid Masood killed four and injured more than fifty people when he drove down the pavement at over seventy-miles-per-hour and crashed his hire car outside The Palace of Westminster and callously murdered PC Keith Palmer on 22nd March 2017.

  DI Ross O’Bryan was sure the bridge was about to see another attack. They had been lucky with the intelligence. Social media was being monitored constantly, but Abhim Maqsood had been careless. He had not friended a person, but a picture, a story, a social invention. He had requested the friendship of a person who didn’t exist, from a computer and server in a place that did. GCHQ. A team of operators trawling the net for an ‘in’. The software and telephone recognition system, known as ECHELON had picked up Maqsood six months previous, and not just one, but three times. Maqsood was targeted and a number of attempts to insert a cyber-spy into his network was rebuked. But then came the break the intelligence operatives at Cheltenham had prayed for, Maqsood sent a friend request to a ghost account and they had him. They didn’t pounce, keeping him waiting a week to be accepted, but then it was on. That person who appealed to him was ingeniously inserted into his internet usage. Someone who came up as a suggested friend because of other ghost accounts he had as so called friends. Maqsood could see the posts, did not know that the two-hundred friends the ghost account displayed were all GCHQ accounts and ‘legends’ and it was not long before the extremist rhetoric played to Abhim Maqsood and hooked him in. Open messages were sent, with each end describing what they wanted to do and achieve in the name of Allah. Human rights lawyers would argue entrapment and coercion, but the accounts were filtering enough ‘real’ people, and GCHQ were confident, that with help and cooperation from MI5, that they could sever the line and keep Maqsood’s social media trail natural to all who would later inspect it. Besides, they were the country’s communication intelligence service and were protected by joint intelligence and the terrorism act. The truth was, the extremists were there, they sometimes needed bolstering and nurturing, encouraging even, to step up and commit their act of terrorism. Better it was the intelligence services than an extremist cleric or Imam where the trail would remain undetected.

  As an officer of Special Branch, DI Ross O’Bryan was part of the joint operation with MI5, working on the intel handed over by GCHQ – a non-field operational service. The role of Special Branch in an operation such as this, was to make MI5’s arrest. SCO19, the specialist armed police unit of highly-trained officers was on hand to provide armed support. The arrest would be hard, armed officers surrounding Maqsood and eliminating the threat. O’Bryan and his team would read the rights, so to speak and MI5 would accompany Special Branch officers in the interview. Only it hadn’t worked out that way. Maqsood had given the surveillance team the slip, the officers were dispersed all over the city and had only just relocated Maqsood by chance. O’Bryan had cut through the traffic by a devious route and made it to the bridge. SCO19 were in transit from what was initially confirmed as the target area, a shopping centre situated on the other side of the river. Now that O’Bryan had got the second eyes-on and confirmed a positive ID, the target made sense. Maqsood was a former colleague of Khalid Masood and Westminster Bridge seemed a fitting location to rein terror once more.

  O’Bryan broke into a jog, keeping his eyes on Maqsood. His pace slowed and he fumbled with his jacket. It was a hot day, but the jacket had been noted, profiling had indicated that Maqsood would be operating alone. They knew there would be something under the jacket. Maqsood’s browser history was of suicide vests and bomb-making. SCO19 had been made aware of this in the briefing. Standard operating procedure of taking shots at the target’s central body mass was being changed by the advent of suicide vests. Israeli officers now only attempted head shots. The practise was becoming the same for British forces. They would ultimately have to make their own call, but the officers had each come onto their shift knowing that if they needed to fire upon Maqsood, then extreme prejudice protocols would be required.

  Maqsood stopped at the group of school children. O’Bryan was sprinting now. Maqsood pulled his jacket off to reveal a vest, but this was no suicide vest. There were two short handled kanjar knives, or Arabian daggers, strapped to the man’s back. The vest was a bullet-proof or stab-proof vest, and slashes made in the top layer of material acted as sheaths for the kanjar knives. He drew them swiftly, both blades were approximately fourteen inches long, curved and had wickedly pointed tips. Maqsood slashed them through the air and the first person, a parent or teaching assistant, fell to the floor, partially decapitated. He did not wait to look at his handiwork; merely kept slashing. The full horror of what was happening took moments for the onlookers to comprehend, in which time, Maqsood had felled another adult and a small child. People screamed and ran in both directions, and an oncoming crowd soon blocked O’Bryan’s view of the terrible scene. O’Bryan pushed the terrified people out of the way as he barged onwards.

  Maqsood had a group of children cornered at a buttress. There was terror on their faces and the sound of screaming came from every direction. Amid the chaos, a teenaged boy had stopped walking and was filming the scene. His presence seemed surreal, voyeuristic in the extreme. O’Bryan could hear approaching sirens and the noise of the screaming was dying down as people ran far enough away to safety. He reached the first casualty, but he could already see that they were dead.
The next body was that of a child, equally as far gone as the first body. No hope.

  Maqsood stood above a woman who was sobbing and crawling into the road. She was the teacher who had recited the poem, and she was bleeding seriously from slashes to her arms, legs and shoulders. She looked to have put up a fight, and O’Bryan could see she must have been defending a group of children huddled between the wall and buttress of the bridge. Maqsood kept the group of children in sight, watching their faces as he drove the tip of the dagger into the woman’s back. She shuddered and gasped, her legs shook and as he pulled the blade back out, she relaxed and lay still.

  O’Bryan barrelled into Maqsood at an astonishing closing speed and took the man to the ground. Maqsood was winded for a moment, but suddenly started lashing out with the blade in his left hand. He had dropped the other blade onto the pavement with a clatter. An onlooker stepped over the knife and hustled away, like it was a good opportunity and he would not be late for his appointment after all.

  O’Bryan felt the slash against his shoulder, felt the knock of the blade upon bone. It did not hurt, but he knew that he had been wounded. Maqsood was getting to his feet and reaching for the other dagger. O’Bryan rolled to put some distance between them, kept glancing behind him to keep Maqsood in his vision. He could feel the slash now. It burned and froze all at once. Maqsood was back on his feet and breathing heavily. O’Bryan stepped off to the side. He unbuckled his leather belt and ripped it out of the belt loops. He held onto the buckle like a knuckle duster and wrapped the belt once around his hand. Maqsood smirked and came in for his attack, but O’Bryan was quick and flicked the tip of the belt into the man’s face like a wet towel in a men’s locker room full of high jinks. The leather cracked in Maqsood’s face and he yelped and recoiled. O’Bryan advanced and flicked twice more, catching the man both times in the face. Maqsood shook his head and lunged with the blade in his left hand. O’Bryan kept his eyes on both blades and swung the belt around Maqsood’s left hand. He kicked out and caught Maqsood in the kneecap. Maqsood swung the other blade like a great pendulum and O’Bryan stepped back. He could hear the swish of the blade through the air. He was no longer aware of ambient noise around him, of the screams, the sobbing, the sirens or anything else. For now, it was this moment and nothing else. The belt had become tangled with the blade and O’Bryan whipped it to one side. The knife clattered onto the pavement and slid into the road, but it had slashed the belt and snagged, and the belt shot out of O’Bryan’s hand. Maqsood said nothing, but he had noticed that his quarry was now unarmed. He lunged forwards and O’Bryan kicked the blade aside. He looked at the group of terrified children behind Maqsood. There was six or seven-feet between them. More than enough room to duck out from behind the buttress.

  “Run!” he shouted. “Now!”

  They did, or most of them did, and Maqsood turned around. O’Bryan charged forwards, just two-feet away when Maqsood turned and swung back with the knife. O’Bryan felt the blade go in. He caught hold of Maqsood’s wrist and the Pakistani tried to wrench the knife back, but was no match for O’Bryan’s strength.

  Strangely, it did not hurt. But O’Bryan felt the unnatural presence of the blade, his body aware that it should not have been there. He felt his heart rate go crazily fast, his heart pounding and the blood surging through his veins and arteries. His brain seemed to send out signals too. He knew he had been stabbed, but the brain was reminding him of it constantly. He could feel nausea washing through him. Knew he did not have much time.

  O’Bryan could see his daughter. Memories of happy events, snapshots of pictures he had taken. A time before the drink had driven his family away. A time he had wasted and squandered and in his last moments on this earth, a time he regretted losing. He glanced at the two terrified girls from the group; still huddled against the buttress. He was no longer thinking. He was well past that stage now. It was a series of subconscious reasoning – action and reaction. Like knocking a cup from the draining board and putting your toe out to break its fall. You never thought to do it, it was merely reactionary instinct. All that he could process, was that if he died now, if he dropped and fell, those girls would be Maqsood’s next victims. He was already pushing Maqsood backwards. Backwards towards the railings of the viewing point cut into the walls of the bridge. He mustered more strength, more momentum. He kept Maqsood’s wrist clamped tight, the blade sheathed within his own body, and powered down through his core, through his strong legs for the final push and slammed Maqsood’s back into the iron railings.

  3

  “I don’t get it,” Sarah snapped indignantly.

  “I’m sorry,” O’Bryan said, replacing the binoculars to the top of the bookcase. He closed the glass doors and drew the curtains. He nodded towards the light switch. “It’s okay, turn the lights on now.”

  “Turn them on yourself,” she said, walking out of the room. O’Bryan noticed her bare shoulders, the low-cut dress showing them off, along with a tiny dolphin tattoo. It added an air of mystery to her. He wondered if there were any more and where they might be. She flicked on the kitchen light and dropped the bags of take-out on the table, next to a four-pack of Heineken and a bottle of chardonnay. She had everything planned. In the light of the kitchen the low-cut dress looked like part of the plan as well.

  “Look, I just…”

  “Don’t think you can snap at me like that, Ross. I’ve put up with enough shit in my life, I’m not making the same mistakes again.” She placed her hands on her hips, cocked her head and stared at him. “What the hell were you looking at out there anyway? It’s almost dark outside.”

  “I was watching a boat.”

  “A boat?” She looked at him like he was crazy.

  “In the bloody dark, this far up the creek?”

  “Yes.”

  “Probably poachers. You ‘seen the deer over there?” her accent slipped a little towards the Cornish end of the scale. “There’s stock fencing and a gated entrance to the estate. Much easier to drag a deer carcass down through the woods and into a boat.”

  “That goes on?”

  She shrugged. “It all goes on down here.” Her eyes flared for a moment. “No reason to shout at me like you did… I’ve put up with enough shit, I’ll not put up with any more.”

  “Okay,” he said quietly, not sure what she had meant, but certain he would be told in time. He stepped closer and placed a hand on both of her shoulders. It was the first time he had touched her. Her skin was soft and smooth. “It was nice of you to come round.”

  “You invited me!”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. The other night. You said it would be nice to just get a takeaway, have a quiet night in.”

  O’Bryan cursed inwardly. He had said that was what he planned to do, rather than going to The Smuggler’s Rest again, where he had taken most of his meals since arriving. Sarah worked there as a part-time barmaid. He had enjoyed her company, enough to go on the date in Truro. However, when she floated the idea of getting together again, he realised that he couldn’t miss the second scheduled time and date that Commander Anderson had made for him. He noted, for the thousandth time, that he really was shit socially. Or maybe he was just out of practice.

  He looked at her, all red hair and fire in her eyes. She was attractive, but damaged. He could tell that much. But he could tell as much when he looked in the mirror. She was keen on him, that much was true. And women hadn’t been beating down his door for the past couple of years. Not since his divorce. Not even before. He studied her eyes. Hazel, glossy. She had an honest face. He could tell being in her company wouldn’t be an easy ride. But where was the fun in that? She looked back at him, her expression a little softer now. There was a comfortable height advantage on his part, and she tilted her head upwards. Her lips were soft and pouted a little. He took it as a sign, and leaned in to kiss her. She kissed him back and he relaxed, it wasn’t often he read the signs right, but he was about due. She kissed softly, and he matched her.
He’d learned early on to step up the pace or tone it down, but whatever you did, match her mood and take your cues. He’d also learned that if you didn’t rush this part, you got far more of her later on.

  She pulled away and smiled, her expression was one of contentment. “Now that’s more like it,” she said. O’Bryan leaned in again, but managed to kiss fresh air as she turned around and opened one of the take-out bags on the table. “I got you ribs. Men like ribs. Or you can share my sweet and sour king prawns, whatever, I’m easy…” She turned around. “Well, not easy! I mean…”

  O’Bryan regained some composure, managed to put his lips and tongue away in time. “Ribs will be great!” he said, a little too enthusiastically. He was ebbing, the blood pounding through him a little less. So much for his tried and tested strategies.

  “I got noodles and rice as well,” Sarah said and she went off in search of plates and cutlery. O’Bryan wished her luck, he hadn’t used them yet, didn’t know where to find them. She bent down and opened a cupboard door. Her backside was shapely in the snug-fitting dress. She seemed to realise this, and dropped down, squatting somewhat elegantly on her heels. She came back up with two plates and put them down beside the food. She smiled at him, a little coyly. O’Bryan couldn’t tell if it was an act or a ploy, but he knew he hadn’t wanted anybody more in years. She was good, because she all but had him in her hand. “And wantons.”

  “Great,” he said dumbly.

  He thought he’d better be pro-active and set about in search of cutlery. He’d found the coffee mugs and he had learned how to use the espresso machine. It probably cost more than his car, which admittedly had seen better days, but still. He drank his coffee black and unsweetened, so hadn’t bothered finding a spoon. He never ate breakfast, often skipped lunch and The Smuggler’s Rest had provided him with steaks almost as large as the plate they were served on for most of the week. He found the correct drawer and took out two spoons and two forks. Sarah took a spoon from him and set about spooning out the food. She was taking control more than O’Bryan liked, but he hadn’t kissed like that in a long time, and if he thought about it, the kiss had been about the best he’d ever had. Sarah’s lips were soft and wet and her tongue had been so soft and gentle, probing tentatively. There was a freshness and tenderness he couldn’t remember feeling before. One kiss and he was falling hard.