Girls With Guns

by Ali Vali

  “Whatever’s going on, Esther, we can talk about it.”

  “This isn’t the afternoon shift at the O2 Arena, Bel. Who are you?”

  “I lied to you. I’m sorry.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  The charade was over. “I work for MI5. I’m in anti-terrorism.”

  “This morning, I had no idea,” said Esther. “But you did, didn’t you? You knew who I was.”

  “This morning I fucked up my job and stumbled upon you. When I saw you I wanted to warn you there was danger on the underground. I wanted you to make me feel better about my shitty job, but then you disappeared.”

  “What did you fuck up?”

  “I wrongly suspected a mother with a child of being a suicide bomber. I’d been ordered back to base when I ran into you.”

  “You were searching for a bomber?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  Bel didn’t understand the question. This wasn’t the conversation she imagined having with Esther. Had Charlie been lying? Who was setting up whom? “How do we search for a bomber?”

  “No, how did you know there was a bomber?”

  “We had intelligence. We had a description.”

  “Of me?”

  “Yes. And then you disappeared.”

  “You need to listen to me carefully, Bel. Please keep an open mind.”

  Bel held her breath. “Whatever you’ve done, we can walk away from it. Together. I promise,” said Bel.

  “You don’t understand. I don’t have the power to make that decision.”

  “Yes, you do.” Bel wanted to run to Esther and hold her, assure her that whoever was putting her up to this could be caught, would be stopped. Bel refused to consider that Esther was working alone. She took one step toward her but didn’t advance further. She closed her eyes in the oppressive darkness and regrouped her thoughts.

  “To my knowledge, I have approximately fifteen kilograms of explosive in a jacket around my torso. There’s other stuff in with them too, I can tell that. Pieces of metal or nails maybe.”

  To your knowledge? There were others. She knew Esther didn’t have it in her to make a bomb jacket. It was a slight relief to realise for certain she wasn’t working alone. Bel instantly hated the asshole who’d brainwashed Esther and talked her into this. How had he, or they, convinced Esther to hate so much that she wanted to kill for them and kill herself in the process?

  “Please, just while we’re down here, just while it’s you and me, please put the detonator down. Maybe just rest it gently on the ground while we talk.”

  A wry laugh came from Esther. “I don’t have the detonator.”

  “What?” Bel couldn’t believe Esther was stupid enough to leave the detonation to someone else.

  “I’m not a suicide bomber. I’ve been set up. Do you know a police officer called Conrad Rush?”

  “Rush?” How the hell did Esther know who Conrad Rush was? “Rush isn’t a police officer, Esther. He’s the head of the London and Underground Anti-Terrorist Response Unit.”

  “It’s all the same. You’re all the same.”

  “How do you know Rush?”

  “I realise all this might be difficult to comprehend, but the name I was born with wasn’t Esther Banks.”

  “I know who you are. You’re Esmeralda Gaffney.”

  “So you’ll know enough to understand the implications when I tell you Conrad Rush’s father killed my dad.”

  It was all happening too fast for Bel. She shook her head, trying to jiggle the information into some sense of order. “MI5 pokes around in your past and in your life. How could it go unnoticed that Rush’s father was a convicted criminal?”

  “His father’s name is Alan McGory. He was a creep of a man, by all accounts, and was never named on his birth certificate. I imagine his mother lived in fear of him, but when he was charged with murder, she fled to Scotland. I suppose she saw a chance to escape and begin a new life. Conrad resents his mother for not standing by his father.”

  “How do you know all this?” asked Bel.

  “He told me when he was strapping explosives to my body and setting the detonator.”

  “Fucking hell.” Bel lowered her gun and switched on her torch. Esther shielded the bright light from her eyes. “Sorry.” She directed the light at the side of the tunnel, and it remained strong enough to see Esther. She walked toward her.

  “No. Don’t come any closer. I honestly don’t know if this will go off or not.”

  Bel instinctively stepped back after the warning, but everything in her wanted to go to Esther. “So, Alan McGory was IRA?”

  “Yes. My father’s investigation put Alan McGory in prison for life. According to Conrad Rush, he died there.”

  It all made sense now. Rush had said Esther was working alone. Bel now knew the tip-off for the undercover officers came from him. He knew Esther wouldn’t have been back at her place when they were looking for her. “I’m glad you listened to my message. I’m glad you stayed put until I found you.”

  “What?”

  “I left a voice message for you. I found you on the CCTV footage at Control. I came here to find you as soon as I saw you. I left you a message.”

  Esther lowered her head and her voice failed. “I meant in heaven. I thought you were on your way to work. By the time you listened to the message, I thought I’d be dead. I wanted you to know I was waiting for you.”

  Oh hell.

  “I was supposed to be on the Hammersmith line, and my target was the son of one of the officers who investigated my father’s death and who helped put McGory in prison.”

  It didn’t make sense. The Hotstream team was trained to shoot a suspected bomber. The way Rush had run the investigation and hunted Esther down, she’d likely have been shot before she had a chance to find the target. Then it dawned on her.

  “You didn’t do as you were told, did you?”

  “No. He said he had you and would kill you if I didn’t do what I was supposed to. But then I saw you at the station and knew he didn’t have you. I knew you had no idea what was going on. I went aboveground to get here.”

  “He lost you. That’s why he had to tell us you were the bomber. All morning he sent us on a wild-goose chase as a decoy, but then he lost you and needed to find you. He needed us to find you.” The pieces were beginning to fit.

  “Why here? And I saw you fifteen minutes ago, sitting in the same spot on the platform.”

  “I made my way here after I left you. I knew about the Royal Mail tunnel from a school project. God knows how I remembered it. I was moving between here and the southbound line, trying to remember where I should jump on the line and trying to calculate a safe distance before the next train came. I can’t hurt anybody down here, and I don’t know if he can get a signal to blow this thing up. He said it’s booby-trapped. If I try to take it off, it’ll explode.”

  “Can you remember what he did when he put it on you?” Bel’s brain switched into Hotstream mode.

  “It’s like a vest with a zip. He said my body heat was keeping it from exploding. As soon as I take it off and the temperature drops, it’ll go off.”

  Bel ran through the scenario in her head. She hadn’t heard of a device set to explode after a drop in body temperature. She seriously wondered if it were a load of shite.

  “He switched a button and a red light came on,” said Esther. “He showed me an old Nokia mobile phone, said it was more stable than the new ones. He said he would set it off with that phone.” Esther began to cry. “He said he had you and would kill you if I didn’t do what I was told.”

  “We’ll work something out, I promise.” Bel began to pace. Three steps forward, three steps back.

  “He said I was already dead. He said the only person I could save was you.”

  Bel stopped. “But you had to kill dozens of innocent people to do that.”

  “Then I saw you and I knew it was a lie.”

  Bel made a decision. “I
want you to listen to me carefully. I need you to take off both jackets simultaneously. Unzip them both and take them off together.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “The bomb vest is zipped at the back.”

  Of course it is.

  Bel advanced down the tunnel.

  “Don’t, Bel. Stay back. It’s not safe.”

  “I have an idea. We have to work a way out of this.” Bel continued to walk at a brisk pace. She bounced a light beam off the wall and onto Esther’s face. “Trust me, okay?”

  When she stood before Esther, she gently touched her face. “Hey, you.”

  “Hey, you too.” Esther was crying.

  A loud clanking noise stopped them both dead.

  “We don’t have much time.” Bel recognised the sound of the hatch opening and closing. She turned her head, and even at the distance she estimated they were from the hatch, she could see faint beams of light back down the tunnel. “Take your coat off and put it on backward.” Esther did as she was told. The bomb vest underneath was grey and stitched neatly. It was a professional job. “I’m going to unzip the vest, and on the count of three, we’re going to push both jackets off you, trying to keep as much heat in as possible.”

  “And then what?”

  Bel shrugged. “And then we run for our lives.”

  “That’s your plan?”

  “Got a better one?”

  “No, but aren’t you a bomb expert? Can’t you disarm it or something?”

  “Honey, I shoot people with bombs. I usually don’t get close enough to have a fiddle with it.” Bel glanced down the tunnel. The light beams were becoming larger.

  Esther put her jacket on backward. “Incidentally, how many people have you shot?”

  Bel took up position behind her, ready to unzip the vest. “None.”

  Esther turned and kissed her. “I love you.”

  Bel smiled. “Tell me again when we’re out of this mess, and I promise I’ll say it back.”

  “What if…”

  “We will. I promise.” She switched her torch on. “Now, on my count. One, two, three.”

  In a remarkably smooth motion, Bel unzipped the vest and pushed both jackets from Esther’s shoulders.

  “Run!”

  Bel was sure she’d grabbed Esther and turned to run before the jacket and vest hit the ground. The gravel beneath their feet crunched as they ran for their lives.

  Bel braced herself for the explosion. Esther was bracing herself too, if the bone-crushing hold she had of Bel’s hand was anything to go by.

  The air was thick with dust, but she pushed her lungs to inhale deeply, forcing oxygen to the spent muscles in her legs. She could hear Esther’s laboured breathing, and it was only when she began to gasp and stumble that Bel realised the jacket hadn’t exploded.

  Bel stopped running. “We’re far enough. It didn’t blow.”

  Esther doubled over puffing, unable to offer more than a grunt.

  “He lied. He fucking put you through hell, and he fucking lied about it.”

  “Us.” Esther flung her arms above her head, expanding her chest to suck in valuable air. “He put us through hell.”

  “Oh, you think that’s hell?” A familiar voice echoed through the tunnel from in front of them.

  Bel drew her gun. She knew the Hotstream team was behind her, so Rush must have entered the tunnel through a different hatch. It stood to reason that he was trying to tidy up his mess before the others found them.

  Esther gasped.

  When Bel trained the beam of light on Conrad Rush, it wasn’t to see who it was, but to blind him with the strong light. When she caught a glimpse of his gun, pointing right at them, instinct took over.

  Bel deliberately lowered her gun an inch or two and discharged her firearm. She shot Conrad in the thigh.

  “You fucking shot me, you bitch.” He hit the ground after the bullet—shot from a range of approximately fifteen metres—propelled him backward.

  Bel’s heart pounded, and she was convinced it would thump right out of her chest. Her aim was perfect. She was briefly surprised by her hidden talents, but then Conrad Rush had pissed her off today. The sensation of a firearm in her hand, freshly smoking from the bullet, was exhilarating. In reality, she knew her Glock wasn’t smoking, those theatrics were for the television, but the smell of a bullet exiting a gun she’d successfully discharged, landing Rush flat on his arse, was a job well done in her book.

  “And I’ll shoot you again if you even think about using that.” She aimed her torch and her gun toward Rush’s right hand and his own service weapon, just centimetres from his fingers.

  His fingers twitched.

  “Go ahead. Really, sir, I enjoyed the first one so much, I’d welcome another excuse to have a second go,” said Bel.

  “Okay, okay.” He moved his hand to press on his wound.

  Bel walked toward him.

  “Christ, I can’t believe you shot me.” He winced. A bullet through your thigh would be agony.

  Bel picked up his weapon and tucked it in the back of her jeans. She went and stood by Esther. “It’s not the fucking movies, Rush. What were you expecting, a witty dialogue of banter before we both drew our weapons, mine on you, yours on Esther? Or were we going to walk back ten paces and have a good old-fashioned shootout?”

  He groaned.

  “Nope, not the way I roll. I’m into time management. By shooting you now, I’ve saved us all a rather uncomfortable few minutes.”

  “Don’t ever write a book, Reilly. It’ll have a shit ending.”

  “How about I write the ending?” Esther’s voice was cold.

  From the corner of her eye, Bel could see Esther was pointing something at Rush. She immediately felt the back of her jeans. Esther had Rush’s gun.

  “Esther, put the gun down.”

  Esther wasn’t listening. “How about I do to you what your father did to my father?”

  “Your father cried like a girl, cried for his dear old mammy. My father put him out of his miserable existence.”

  “Your father put him down like a dog.” Esther was crying. “I was there, remember? I saw it all. Your father was an evil man, and I can see the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “My father had a vision for Ireland. You wouldn’t know a damn thing about that. You have no pride, no sense of place, no sense of patriotism. It’s people like you who let the English divide Ireland, and it’s idiots like your father who should have shut their mouth and let the real men fight.”

  Esther laughed. “Like you fought the gallant fight this morning? You strapped a fucking bomb to a woman, to me, you asshole, and you were going to watch me blow up myself and innocent others. You know nothing about real men. You’re a castrated version of your father. You’re impotent because you lack courage. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you.”

  “I can think of one,” said Bel.

  “Stay out of this, Bel. This is between me and the gutless prick who tried to kill me today.”

  Bel touched Esther’s shoulder. “And if you shoot him, you’ll be no better than he is.”

  Esther began to shake.

  “Please, Esther.”

  Bel turned as the cavalry finally arrived. She stood between them and Esther. After all, it was her they were hunting. “I’m Officer Belinda Reilly with the Hotstream team. I have this situation under control.”

  “Officer Reilly, you have no authority here. You are an enemy of the state. Please put your weapon down.”

  Bel recognised the voice as Jason’s from Liverpool. She knew he would shoot her if he had to, if he’d been ordered to do so.

  “I can’t do that, Jason.” Bel worked to keep her voice even. “The vest of explosives you’re hopefully dealing with back there was placed on a woman called Esther Banks this morning.”

  “Officer Reilly, stand down immediately.”

  “The man who made Esther wear that vest is right h
ere. It’s Conrad Rush.”

  “What?” Nothing could disguise the surprise in Jason’s voice.

  “He’s been shot. He’s alive, but his leg is pretty bad.” She remembered the message Charlie left her. “Where’s Charlie, Jason? You need to talk to her. She can explain.” Bel hoped she was right. She hoped Charlie had worked it out.

  “Charlie’s on her way to Guys and St Thomas, Reilly. She was mugged just outside base.”

  Bel detected that Jason’s explanation lacked conviction. She pounced on the opportunity. “I’m standing here with Esther Banks, who was born as Esmeralda Gaffney. Her father was killed by Alan McGory in Dublin. Alan McGory’s son is Conrad Rush, but he’s not listed on the birth certificate, so it’ll take longer for you to check that out than he’s got to live.”

  Bel knew by Jason’s hesitation that she had him thinking.

  Suddenly, a massive explosion rocked the tunnel. The noise was deafening, and the blast propelled them against the grimy walls. Bel’s ears rang, and a plume of dust engulfed them.

  “Jason!” Bel stumbled to her feet. She checked Esther first, who was dusting herself off but seemed otherwise okay. “Jason!”

  She could hear panicked voices, and in the commotion she heard the Hotstream officers call each of their names. The dust was thick and suffocating.

  “We’re all right back here,” called Jason. His coughing and spluttering echoed toward her.

  Bel turned to see Esther standing over Conrad. “We need to get out of here, Esther. The tunnel may not be stable.”

  Esther wasn’t listening to her. When Bel arrived, the gun Esther was holding was pointing directly at Conrad’s head. “Come on, Esther. It’s over.”

  “I watched your father beat my dad, I watched him rape him with a gun, and I watched him fire a bullet into both his knees so he didn’t stand a chance of escape.”

  Esther bent down and rested the gun on Rush’s knee. “This one’s for my dad.” She pulled the trigger, and the recoil of firing the gun sent her backward.

  Rush screamed in agony.

  Bel couldn’t believe what was happening. Before she had a chance to intervene, Esther advanced again, this time with the gun against the other kneecap. “And this one’s for me.” She pulled the trigger.