by Roger Pearce
‘Not through proper channels, you mean?’
‘It was urgent because the target was about to travel.’
‘So without clearances, in other words.’
Kerr felt a stab of vulnerability: Weatherall was already looking for a way out if things went wrong. She was on what Alan Fargo called the ‘scapegoat shoot’, the survival sport of choice for any aspiring big cheese. Further down the line, Kerr calculated, he was going to need heavy-duty back-up from Joe Allenby in Yemen. For the present, he fell back on operational fundamentals: go with what you see. ‘I believe we need to develop this, ma’am,’ he said. ‘You’re getting as much as me. He’s all over the place, plus his erratic movements on the street over the past three days. It’s either counter-surveillance or the guy’s nuts. I go for the first. I believe he’s going for a meet.’
‘Or to make an attack.’
‘No, there’s been no preparation.’
‘But he’s wearing something under that jacket,’ Weatherall said, performing another somersault. ‘There’s something round his waist. Could be a bomb.’
‘No, I’ve checked with Steve Gibb in the observation post. Nothing abnormal about his clothing when he left the address. We need to let him run.’
‘And I have to minimise the risk.’
Channel Eighteen came to life. ‘This is Challenger One. I have two Trojan units at the RVP in Fentiman Road. We’re ready to deploy. Sit-rep, please.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kerr. ‘Change to Channel Five for current status. Subject is in South Lambeth Road north towards Vauxhall station.’ Kerr turned back to the phone. ‘Ma’am, the Trojan firearms teams are on standby at the rendezvous point and I need a moment to check this out for you . . . Melanie, Jack, any signs subject is carrying, over?’
‘The way he sprinted across the road I’d say no way,’ said Melanie.
‘This is Jack and I agree . . . stand by. All units, subject is off, off, off, and on foot. South Lambeth Road, still heading north, junction with . . . looks like Wyvil, repeat Wyvil, Road on the left, possibly going for Vauxhall Tube or Overground, Red Four remaining on the bus.’
There was the growl of a motorcycle. ‘I’m covering from Vauxhall station and standing by,’ said Langton.
Kerr spoke into his mobile. ‘Did you get all that, ma’am?’
‘Yes, and I’m not reassured, not at all. I want to know every movement.’
Kerr’s phone went dead, then Weatherall’s voice crackled into Channel Five. ‘Any officer, this is Gold. How far is this man from Vauxhall station?’
‘This is Jack. At the rate he’s walking I estimate four minutes plus.’
Kerr shook his head and spun the Alfa into Wandsworth Road.
In the ops room, Weatherall sat still, seemingly frozen with indecision. Then she turned to Fargo. ‘I’m going to need my Andromeda file.’
‘But he’s not armed, ma’am,’ said Fargo, leaning forward and opening the drawer in her console, ‘and not carrying anything.’
‘Let me be the judge of that,’ said Weatherall, flicking through the pages. Andromeda was the police strategy for taking out a suicide bomber, a policy that, as an assistant commissioner had once quipped to an incredulous journalist, ‘does what it says on the tin’. It changed the rules of engagement and was routinely described as a licence to kill. Police preferred ‘interdicting’ to ‘taking out’, and insisted on ‘incapacitate’ in place of ‘kill’. But in 2005 at Stockwell, less than a mile from the present operation, the tragedy of Jean Charles de Menezes had shown there could be only one outcome from such a strategy.
In horror, Fargo realised that Weatherall was seriously considering shooting their only lead. He felt the eyes of Alice and the two other comms operators on him, and knew they were all sharing his fear: the real risk of that catastrophe being repeated. Yet, to his side, Weatherall seemed blithely unaware of the implications. As she ran her finger down the menu of options, she might have been choosing a takeaway.
‘What do you think, Brian?’
Perkins leant forward, elbows on the console, shirt stretched against his gut, and stared down at his desktop. Beside him, the boy of a chief inspector had rolled his chair back against the wall. Fargo could already hear the sound of shit being shovelled.
For the first time silence enveloped them all. It was the moment of truth. ‘Brian?’
Perkins was scratching the back of his hand. ‘I think we should stop him.’
‘Challenger One,’ said Weatherall, into the mike.
‘Go ahead.’
‘I want you to . . .’ she began, then hesitated. ‘I want you to . . . Don’t let him get to the Underground.’
‘Gold from Challenger One, repeat, please. Are you directing Trojans to interdict, over?’
‘I said he must not get onto the Tube.’
‘Gold, what are your orders?’
‘It’s perfectly clear,’ she said, ‘so do whatever is necessary.’
‘Roger that, we are mobile and have visual.’
‘Gold, no way.’ Kerr’s voice crackled back immediately. ‘We need to let him run. It may not be the Tube. He may be taking the Overground. We have him contained and he’s our only lead.’
‘All received, John. Stand by,’ said Fargo, on Weatherall’s behalf, picking up on his friend’s urgency. Fargo knew about John Kerr’s involvement in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell, and was convinced the tragedy still troubled him. He also recalled Weatherall had studied the summary of the inquest into that terrible morning in 2005, which recorded Kerr’s detailed evidence. He felt deeply for his friend as he waited for Weatherall’s response. Could she be so lacking in wisdom as to override the judgement of the man who had actually been there?
Weatherall was looking to her right, but Perkins was examining his hand. Fargo counted seven seconds while she hesitated again and, as she lost control in a sea of ambiguity, he scrawled furiously, making sure he captured every word. ‘No. As you were, Challenger One,’ she finally blurted out. ‘I can’t take the chance he may be a suicide bomber.’
Kerr’s voice hit the room like a punch. ‘This is John Kerr. All Trojan units, stay back. Repeat, stay back. Jack, Melanie, bump him.’
Seven
Thursday, 13 September, 08.44, South Lambeth Road
Good surveillance officers succeed because a credulous public brought up on a diet of TV spookery underestimates them. Their targets fail because fiction teaches them to look for people in distant shadows so they miss the blindingly obvious. Like the victims of a pickpocket, they ignore the student who sidles alongside, or appears next in line at the cashpoint, or sits opposite them in the café, immersed in a book.
Jibril was walking up South Lambeth Road, skirting Vauxhall Park, at full speed and on high alert. But the two surveillance operatives were quicker. Kerr’s two-word command was sufficient. Jack Langton, still wearing his cracked motorcycle leathers, and Melanie converged on their target at a bus stop just past the park, three hundred metres south of Vauxhall station, within view of the ‘Underground’ sign. The bus stop was crowded with morning commuters waiting for buses to Brixton, Stockwell and Clapham. About twenty of them thronged the width of the pavement between the bus shelter and a high brick wall, creating a natural choke point. By the time the operatives blocked Jibril’s path, they had morphed into a young couple arguing violently about his unfaithfulness.
They knew the script by heart, and it worked every time. They left Jibril no option but to push against them. The moment he made contact, they turned on him, united in a torrent of abuse, and shoved him back into the crowd. Langton’s heavy clothing gave them cover. Caught up in their decadent pushing and swearing, Jibril was unaware of the hand checking out his waist and upper body, and never heard the sniff of the explosives detector under his Puffa jacket. For all his training in the desert, he missed them both because he was too busy looking for spooks.
‘This is Jack. He’s clean.’
&nbs
p; ‘Received,’ said Kerr. ‘Gold, request you keep the Trojan units back in a holding position. We’re in danger of compromise here, over.’
Melanie’s voice broke in. ‘This guy is in a serious hurry. Time to Vauxhall station, two minutes.’
‘Gold from Challenger One. We can take him in thirty seconds.’
‘No,’ snapped Kerr. ‘Gold, he’s not, repeat, not carrying. Are you getting this?’
There was silence again in the ops room. From his chair, awaiting instructions, Fargo studied an exercise in paralysis as Weatherall and Perkins stared at each other. Perkins was an expert on safer neighbourhood teams. With a PhD researched in the job’s time he liked to style himself ‘Doctor’. This morning he looked like he would have settled for anonymity.
It was Fargo who broke the spell. ‘Ma’am, did you get that? Jibril is almost at the station.’ Fargo could recognise a fake and regarded them both with contempt. For all the bullshit and war stories, he knew their front-end experience amounted to a demo outside Marble Arch mosque and a couple of stabbings in north London.
Alice turned, too, her pale eyes darting between Fargo and Weatherall. ‘He’s getting very close. We need a clear decision, Alan.’
‘What are your intentions, ma’am?’ said Fargo.
Weatherall shot him a frozen look, and this time the scraping of the shovel filled the whole room. ‘Brian?’
‘Your call, ma’am.’
Weatherall turned back to the mike. ‘Withdraw the surveillance now.’ Her voice was quavering. ‘Challenger One, prepare to interdict.’
‘That’s fucking crazy.’ Fargo and Alice winced as Kerr’s voice exploded from the speaker a microsecond too soon. ‘Ma’am, subject is not, repeat, not carrying and if he’s going somewhere interesting and they take him down we lose the lot. Are you getting this, over?’
Weatherall looked at Perkins again, but he was too busy scratching. In the past three minutes the marks on his hand had become red raw. ‘We can’t take the risk,’ she said finally, and began reading from the checklist at the front of the file. ‘I am invoking Andromeda. Challenger One, I am passing you executive control at . . . oh-eight-forty-seven.’
‘No. No way. Cancel that.’ Kerr’s voice bounced back again. ‘Look, he’s practically at the station. Remember Jean Charles. You can’t risk the Trojans on the train again. But we can follow him wherever he goes, Tube or mainline, no problem. If you pull us off now you risk losing everything.’
‘That’s enough. I’ve made my decision.’
‘All Red units, I’m calling Birdcage.’
‘Birdcage’ was code for surveillance officers to close around the target while maintaining cover. It was a risky move, normally invoked in the closing seconds before arrest on the street, occasionally at gunpoint, in full view of the public. But this time it was different. The officers on the ground knew Kerr wanted them to provide a human shield against the Trojans, to sabotage the firearms operation. It was a direct breach of Weatherall’s order, Kerr at his most subversive. ‘Report sightings of Trojans immediately,’ he added, before Weatherall could recover.
Langton’s operatives immediately increased the pace around Jibril, their one-word acknowledgements echoing through the airwaves as they prepared to disappear into the railway system with their target. Then they saw Jibril make a detour left to walk beneath Vauxhall’s vast iron railway bridge, a dark, echoing stretch of more than a hundred metres bordered by brick walls, the perfect place for a final exercise in dry cleaning. By the time the two blacked-out Range Rovers of CO19, Tactical Firearms Branch, whirred into the giant roundabout at Vauxhall, seven surveillance officers had assembled at the other end of the bridge, twenty metres from the station entrance, forming an invisible, protective bubble around Jibril.
‘This is Mel. Trojan units approaching now.’
‘Received,’ said Kerr. ‘Challenger One from Kerr, urgent message. We have the target contained. Repeat. We have control of this and will maintain commentary. You need to hold back, over.’
Weatherall was trying to say something to Kerr, but the head of the firearms teams beat her to it. ‘Alpha from Challenger One, negative to that. We are on scene and have visual. We’re taking this from here. Withdraw your units now, over.’
Jibril continued walking rapidly to the Tube, oblivious to the activity all around him.
‘This is Mel, ten metres to the station.’
‘Challenger One from Alpha,’ said Kerr, ‘he’s nearly at the entrance and I’m telling you to hold your fucking cowboys back. It’s rush hour, for Christ’s sake, a thousand witnesses. He’s not, repeat, not carrying, and we can take him onto the train. We have to see where he leads us, so back off.’
As he spoke, Birdcage tightened to a radius of three metres, with a couple of the Reds already loitering ahead in the station entrance.
‘Trojan units from Challenger One. Attack attack attack!’
It was over in less than a minute. Both Range Rovers approached silently, taking a string of fifteen pedestrians by surprise as they drove the wrong way under the iron bridge and mounted the kerb right in front of them. At the same time Kerr’s operatives tightened the circle around Jibril until they were practically advancing at arm’s length.
In jeans, sweats and baseball caps, holsters strapped to the leg, with their Glock model 17 semi-automatic weapons already drawn, six Trojans steamed from the first vehicle. ‘This is Mel and they’re attacking,’ was Melanie’s last message, as the Trojans crashed through the circle of Reds and raced across the pavement, terrifying dozens of workers hurrying for the station. A pair of surveillance officers broke cover, signalling them to hold off, but the Trojans shoved them aside on the sprint to their target, already yelling at the tops of their voices: ‘Police! Stand still!’
The Trojans caught Jibril just inside the station entrance, dead opposite the crowded bus terminus, as he made a right and headed for the staircase leading down to the Tube network. They stopped the morning rush-hour commuters in their tracks as the first pair threw him to the ground. Crammed into the entrance, a dozen witnesses froze in open-mouthed horror as one Trojan held his weapon against Jibril’s temple. Then they saw a lean figure in motorcycle leathers rush forward from the crowd and launch himself into the air to land on top of Jibril, completely covering his body and spoiling the officer’s aim.
Before anyone could react Melanie swept in after him, shouting, ‘Police! Police!’ and crouching protectively over Langton and Jibril as the Trojans piled in, pumped up, confused but ready to fire. They grabbed Melanie first, but Langton, still on top of Jibril, was already rolling over and shoving his ID up at them. ‘We told you, you stupid bastards,’ he was shouting, ‘we had him.’
Sirens were coming from everywhere, but Jibril lay prone as one of the Trojans made a rapid body search. Their team leader stood over them while thirty commuters looked on from the station entrance, evidently stunned by the drama unfolding in front of them. Three Trojans roughly dragged Melanie and Langton aside and stood them against the station wall, then made a quick search and glared at Langton’s ID.
The Trojan searching Jibril looked up and shook his head at his boss, just as Kerr appeared beside him. ‘Hi. I’m John Kerr,’ he said, nodding at Langton and Melanie, ‘and those two are mine.’
The leader scowled back, ignoring Kerr’s outstretched hand. ‘I’m gonna have you for this.’
The second Trojan team appeared, carrying white forensic suits. Recovering from the shock, many of the commuters were taking photographs with their mobile phones, so the assault team carried Jibril to one side of the ticket hall as Langton and Melanie melted away. They drove one of the Range Rovers onto the pavement to block the entrance, then stood the prisoner on the middle of a giant sheet of plastic and methodically removed his clothes, placing each item in a separate evidence sack.
‘So, are you going to tell her, or shall I?’ Kerr asked the Trojans’ leader, as they dressed Jibril in a white forensic cove
rall.
The team leader turned away and spoke into his mike. ‘Gold from Challenger One. Suspect is unarmed. We’re taking him into Paddington Green.’
Kerr was studying the gathering crowd, routinely spotting his own people. ‘Have to say,’ said Kerr, nodding at another pair of Trojans nearby carrying Benelli shotguns, ‘they look a bit disappointed.’
‘There was no need for your guys to jump in,’ said the team leader. ‘We weren’t going to shoot him. No way.’
Kerr watched a marked armed-response vehicle screech to a halt in front of the lead Range Rover and the crew recover Heckler & Koch 9mm automatics from the boot. ‘You sure about that?’
The firearms man glared back. ‘We couldn’t afford to risk letting him run on the train,’ he said, instinctively checking his weapon.
‘But we have to, mate,’ Kerr shot back, his head full of memories from 2005 and the torn body of Jean Charles de Menezes. ‘That’s exactly what we have to do. It’s why we’re in this business. Bottom line is, he wasn’t armed, not carrying a bomb. Perhaps you were gonna shoot him, perhaps not.’
They watched the Trojans quick-cuff Jibril and lead him to the Range Rover.
For a moment Kerr was back in the toilets at Green Park station, smashing the young bomber’s face against the mirror. ‘It’s a fine line. And I’m not having a go, believe me. I’ve been there. A young man is dead because I overreacted.’
‘Oh, really?’ The Trojan’s voice was bitter with sarcasm. ‘And when was that, exactly?’
He was strangling the wannabe suicide bomber now, then Gabi was screaming at him, her eyes wide in disbelief at her father’s violence. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
As he passed by, his face framed in white, Jibril looked hard at the firearms man. It was as if he had heard everything. ‘Doesn’t like you much, does he?’