by Chris Ryan
‘It’s not the sort of thing I’d make up.’
Tony seemed to accept that.
‘Are you in?’ Danny said.
‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe’s no good to me.’
‘Best you’re going to get,’ Tony said.
Danny paused. ‘Talk me through the security arrangements around the grounds,’ he said.
Tony gave a dismissive hiss. ‘Piss poor,’ he said. ‘These royal protection officers need a kick up the arse.’
‘The security arrangements, Tony.’
‘The perimeter’s fairly secure,’ Tony said. ‘High fencing all around, CCTV on the weak spots. There’s a security room in the south wing of the main house where the camera monitors are, but just one guy watching them.’
‘The public are allowed into the church on Christmas morning, right?’
‘Right,’ said Tony.
‘Security checks?’
‘Of course. Handbag searches and metal detector sweeps.’
‘So none of the public can get a weapon through the perimeter.’
‘A ceramic knife, maybe. But no firearms.’
Danny thought for a moment. ‘How long have the royals been in residence?’ he asked.
‘About a week. That’s the thing – when they’re not here, the security isn’t even ten per cent of what it is now.’
‘So,’ Danny said, ‘if you were going to take out a hit on Christmas morning, you could get your hardware on site weeks beforehand?’
Tony nodded. ‘Months, even,’ he said. ‘And there are plenty of places to hide it. It’s all fucking trees and lakes.’
It was a strange thing. The animosity between them seemed to have fallen away as they spoke. It was as if the Regiment men were suddenly on autopilot, forgetting their differences for a moment, as they focussed on what they did best.
‘I checked out the map,’ Danny said. ‘The route from the house to the church is direct, right?’
‘Right. Along the northern edge of the West Lawns. Distance, about 400 metres. The old ones drive most of the way. The younger ones tend to walk it.’
‘From what I saw,’ Danny said, ‘there’s tree cover on either side of the road for about 150 metres, halfway along the route.’
‘About that,’ Tony said. His eyes were fixed on Danny, and it looked as if he’d just come to the same realisation that Danny had. ‘So if you were going to take a shot, that would be your best place to take cover.’
‘What about the church itself?’ Danny said. ‘There are trees in the vicinity, and it’s closer to the exit when you need to get away.’
‘Maybe,’ Tony agreed. ‘But the armed security will be heavier there, because it’s where the oldies will get out of their vehicles. If you were going to take out a hit, you’d definitely want to do it before you got to the church.’
Danny nodded. There was a long silence as he considered his options. ‘Can you get us into the grounds now?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Are there security personnel in the grounds at the moment?’
‘Yep.’
‘Me and Spud are going to do a recce. Try to find any positions the shooters have set up. You need to keep the security personnel off our backs. If we locate the firing positions, it means we’ll be able to put our hands on the shooters when they take their positions in the morning. I get the information I need out of my guy while you keep the other security away from us, then I hand the fucker over to you and you can do what you want with him. Nail him for all I care. Stand back and bask in the glory.’
Danny could tell Tony liked the idea of being a national hero, though he was doing a good job of not letting it show in his face.
‘I’ll do what I can to keep security off your back,’ Tony said. ‘But if anyone finds you, far as I’m concerned you’re a couple of creeps trying to break into the old girl’s bedroom.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m going back in,’ he said. ‘Give me exactly five minutes. I’ll get you forty-five seconds to scale the gate. Be careful, it’s icy. Be a fucking shame if you were to fall.’
Danny and Tony raised their watches, set the timers for five minutes and simultaneously started them. Without another word, Tony turned and ran back across the road to the gates. They watched his shadowy figure through the mist, speaking into the intercom. The side gate clicked open and he disappeared into the grounds.
‘Do you trust him?’ Spud breathed.
‘If there was nothing in it for him? Of course not. But there is. He’ll be the royals’ golden boy. Man like Tony could make a career out of that.’
‘He’s a bad soldier,’ Spud muttered. ‘We shouldn’t have anything to do with the fucker.’
‘No,’ Danny said. ‘He’s a good soldier. He’s just a bad man.’ He checked his watch. ‘Four minutes,’ he said.
‘Whaddya know, Matt,’ Tony said. ‘Stupid cow didn’t even show up.’
‘Can’t trust these Norfolk lasses,’ said the voice at the other end of the intercom. ‘Her father’s probably her brother, and all.’
The gate buzzed and Tony opened it. But he carried on talking to Matt. ‘I’ve got a bottle of Scotch at my place,’ he said. ‘Fancy a Christmas sharpener?’
‘Can’t leave my post,’ Matt said, the regret in his voice very plain to hear.
‘I’ll come to you,’ Tony said. ‘Give me a couple of minutes.’
Once he was inside the perimeter, Tony kept behind the treeline again. Knowing that he was out of sight of anyone patrolling the ground, he sprinted back to his house. The mist felt even thicker now, like it was clinging to him. He was there in less than a minute. He grabbed the half-finished bottle of Scotch and checked his watch. Two minutes fifty to go. He left his digs again and hurried towards the main house. He knew where Matt would be – in the monitor room in the south wing. Ninety seconds later he was outside the door. Time check: one minute twenty to go. He knocked softly on the door, and entered.
Matt was sitting in front of a bank of eight screens, lounging on a swivel chair. He spun round casually as Tony entered. His eyes lit up at the sight of the bottle of Scotch. ‘Not really s’posed to be drinking on the job,’ he said.
‘Quick nip never hurt anyone,’ Tony said. ‘Especially in weather like this. Freeze the bollocks off a brass monkey out there.’ He looked around, found a couple of coffee mugs and drained their contents into the pot plant in the corner of the room, before pouring a good slug of Scotch into each. Matt still had his back to the screens. Tony quickly examined them as he handed him his drink. Of the eight screens, five were constantly changing camera. The remaining three showed clear footage of the northern gate, the western gate and – crucially – the south-eastern gate, shrouded in mist but perfectly visible, that Danny and Spud would be scaling.
Matt took a sip of his drink. ‘Compliments of the season,’ he said. ‘Look, I’d better keep one eye on these sodding screens.’
‘Course,’ Tony said, as Matt turned to face the bank of monitors. He glanced at his watch. Twenty seconds till the five minutes was up. He looked at the screen that showed the gate. No movement. But in fifteen seconds . . . ten seconds . . .
‘Hey,’ Tony said suddenly, ‘check this out.’
Matt turned again on his swivel chair as Tony pulled his phone from his pocket.
‘So I was outside the main house a couple of hours ago,’ he said, ‘just doing a security sweep, and I was by the window to one of the small rooms next to the ballroom, and I heard the sound of a bird panting.’
His eyes flickered to the screen. Movement: two figures running towards the gate.
‘So I had a little shufti, and it’s only Violet Two giving it to his missus under that big fuck-off Christmas tree.’
Matt grinned. ‘Dirty bastard,’ he said.
The two figures were scaling the gates. One of them had a bag over his shoulder and was moving a bit less quickly than the other.
‘So I recorded it on my phone. Want to li
sten?’
Matt’s grin grew a bit wider. ‘Yeah, course.’
Tony swiped his phone and navigated to his voice memos. On the screen, both figures were descending the other side of the gates. Tony frowned. ‘Fucking phone,’ he said. ‘It was here a minute ago.’
The figures were on the ground, disappearing out of the camera’s field of view.
‘Must’ve deleted it,’ he said. ‘Stupid bloody machines.’
‘Bet she’s a right screamer,’ Matt said.
‘Too right, buddy.’ Tony chuckled. They clunked their cups together and drained their Scotch.
‘Look, I’d better get back . . .’ Matt pointed at his screens again.
‘Course, mate. I should get some shut-eye myself. Got to take the kiddies to church in the morning. Better be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.’
‘More than you can say for Violet Two.’
Tony forced himself to laugh. He pointed at the Scotch. ‘Keep that, if you want,’ he said.
‘You’re a gentleman.’
Tony winked at him, then left the room. ‘Fucking muppet,’ he muttered to himself as he closed the door behind him.
Danny and Spud stood stock-still in the dark cover of the trees just to the right of the gate, mist curling around them. Danny was sweating hard, but he kept his breathing steady as they waited.
Three minutes passed. A car drove along the road outside the Sandringham perimeter fence. It made their shadows, and those of the surrounding trees, longer as it passed. The sound of its engine faded into the distance.
‘So you made it in,’ a voice said from a distance of about five metres. Tony stepped out from behind a tree.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Danny said.
‘If you want to recce that bit of the route from the house to the church where the trees are,’ Tony cut across him, ‘you don’t want to take the direct route. Too much open ground – you’ll be seen. Better to follow the perimeter fence. It’s got tree cover all along. Just don’t get too close to the fence itself – CCTV.’
‘What about you?’ Spud said.
Tony feigned a look of surprise. ‘It talks!’ he said. And before Spud could respond, he continued: ‘I’ll follow the same route as you, but I’ll stay outside the treeline. Keep an eye on me. If we come across any security personnel, I’ll head them off in a different direction.’ He pointed north. ‘That way,’ he said, before turning his back on them and moving out of the trees.
‘I don’t trust him,’ Spud hissed. ‘Since when was Tony Wiseman so fucking helpful?’
‘Since there was something in it for him,’ Danny murmured.
‘I still don’t like it. We’re AWOL, we’re in the grounds of Sandringham and we’ve stolen half the Hereford armoury. That cunt decides to shop us, we’re fucked.’
‘He won’t. Not so long as he gets a chance to act the hero.’
It was impossible to move completely noiselessly – too many twigs underfoot, which kept cracking. But they kept the sound to the bare minimum. It was a skill Danny had learned on the training fields of Salisbury Plain, and used all over the world. But he’d never expected to find it useful in the heart of Norfolk. They were little more than shadows, skirting the perimeter of the grounds. Grey men. Invisible. Danny kept glancing left, trying to spot Tony in the open ground towards the treeline. The night was too dark, however, the mist too thick. It was only when he heard the sound of someone whistling – ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’, or some tuneless version of it – maybe fifteen metres to their left, that he was sure their Regiment colleague was nearby.
They had been carefully picking their way through the trees for five minutes, however, when the whistling stopped. Danny instinctively held up one hand. He and Spud halted. Danny found himself holding his breath to avoid the clouds of condensation, and listening hard. Silence. Then Tony’s voice, filled with what Danny instantly recognised as a false bonhomie. ‘Jerry! Fucking hell, mate, didn’t see you there.’
A pause. ‘Tony?’ The second voice sounded a little uncertain. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yeah.’ Danny heard Tony sniff. ‘Fucking typical, eh? Their royal highnesses get to sleep off their Christmas Eve brandies, we get to freeze our nads off out here.’
‘I thought I heard something, in the trees.’
‘Probably just me, mate,’ Tony said. ‘Needed a slash. Dick feels like an icicle now. Nearly snapped it off. You look fucking freezing and all.’
‘Roger that.’
‘You know Matt, in the CCTV room? He’s got a bottle of Scotch on the go. You should go join him. No point both of us freezing. I’m on it out here.’
A pause.
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, of course. Have one for me.’
There was a moment’s silence. Then Tony’s whistling started up again, and the sound continued to move round the perimeter. Danny and Spud followed.
They reached the north gate five minutes later. Here, they crossed twenty metres of open ground, keeping well clear of the gate and its CCTV camera, before regaining the treeline and continuing to skirt the perimeter. They advanced for another hundred metres. The whistling stopped again. This time, however, Tony appeared in front of them ten seconds later. He pointed south. ‘That way,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll cross one open path, then enter another copse. Then you hit the road to the church. I’ll take up position on the road itself. You two can search the trees on either side.’
Danny nodded his agreement. He and Spud followed Tony, across the first path, into the copse and up to the road that interested them. Tony stepped on to the road and started walking east, fading slightly into the mist, towards the main house. ‘We’ll check this side first,’ Danny said.
They were looking for a firing position. It was unlikely that a sniper would already be in position – Danny expected them to arrive on Christmas morning when members of the public were let into the grounds. But there would be a limited number of positions from which they could take a shot on the royals. Danny expected such a position to be raised from the ground, and to offer a direct line of sight on to the road where the royal convoy would be passing. It also needed to offer a place to hide weapons for a period of weeks. It meant their assassins really had only one option.
‘We’re searching the trees, right?’ Spud breathed. He’d clearly come to the same conclusion.
Danny nodded. ‘Every tree that’s easy to climb, and which forms a natural platform where the main branches diverge.’
Spud nodded his understanding. He moved west, while Danny headed east, examining each tree that lined the road. They either had long, smooth trunks with no notches below a height of three metres, or the branches formed a dense knot where they spread out from the trunk – impossible for a kid to sit down on, let alone for a fully grown sniper to establish a firing position. As Danny rejected each tree along the path, he found himself having to suppress a mess of panic in his gut. He had felt so sure they were on the right track. But now, what had seemed so obvious a few hours ago began to feel improbable.
It was instantly clear, when he rejoined Spud, that his mate was having the same thoughts. He spoke carefully, as though not wanting to antagonise Danny. ‘Nothing, mate. They’re just . . . I don’t know, the wrong kind of tree.’
Danny pointed towards the road. ‘Other side,’ he said.
Tony was walking back towards them now. When he saw them waiting on the edge of the treeline, he nodded. They ran across the road and into the trees on the southern side. Danny headed east again, Spud west. Danny rejected the first three trees he passed. But the fourth one made him stop.
He knew, at a glance, that he could climb it in seconds, to a height of at least five metres. More importantly, there was a natural platform where the branches diverged. Danny felt a small surge of adrenaline. He ran back to Spud, brought him back to the tree and dumped his bag of hardware at his mate’s feet. ‘Watch that,’ he said quietly, before grabbing one of the lower branches, finding him
self a foothold and launching himself easily up the tree.
He was clambering on to the platform within seconds. It was covered in a thin frosting of ice crystals. Leaves had gathered in the hollows, and turned into a fungal-smelling compost, now frozen hard. Danny felt and looked all around him, convinced that his fingers would at any moment touch the cold, hard steel of a rifle strapped to one of the branches, or locate an ammo stash in one of those leafy hollows.
He found nothing.
Tony’s whistling grew nearer. Danny looked down to see him five metres from the base of the tree, looking up. His expression was almost amused, as if he was watching a child.
Danny drew a deep breath and climbed back down the tree.
‘Mate . . .’ Spud started to say, but Danny stormed away from him, examining the remaining trees on this side of the road. But none of them were suitable as firing positions.
Disappointment crashed in on him.
He returned to Spud. A moment later, Tony joined them. He had a characteristic sneer on his face. ‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘Nothing doing. Surprise fucking surprise.’ He seemed to have forgotten that twenty minutes ago, he’d been agreeing with Danny that this was the obvious location for an ambush.
Spud glowered at Tony, then turned to Danny. ‘Mate, this was always a long shot. We’ve got no real evidence there’s going to be a hit here anyway. We should get the hell back to Hereford. Tell the headshed the truth about your kid. They can put out a search—’
‘No,’ Danny said. He closed his eyes. ‘No.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘They must have stored their hardware somewhere else in the grounds. Where do you—’
‘Nah, fuck this,’ Tony interrupted. He was looking at Danny like he was crazy. ‘Never thought I’d ever say this, but Spud’s right. I’ve had enough of this shit. You two twats want to play boy soldiers, you can do it without my help.’
He turned his back on them. Danny grabbed him. It was almost like an electric bolt had been forced through Tony’s body. He spun round and fronted violently up to Danny, their faces inches apart. ‘Get your fucking hands off me,’ he hissed.
Danny loosened his grip.