by Roger Pearce
Shakir turned down the volume on the TV. He was urging them to take their seats in front of the camera, but they ignored him. Mahmoud, agitated, checked his watch for the hundredth time. ‘Our brother is more than an hour late. Something bad has happened.’
‘He will come to us in good time,’ snapped Sabri. ‘We wait, as ordered.’
The old Pakistani spoke for the first time: ‘And while he comes to you, brothers, you make your living wills.’
Mahmoud glared at him. ‘Be silent!’ He turned back to Sabri. ‘The cops may already have taken him down. We need the red dots now, brother. And the sequence. Then we must leave this place.’
On the bus, this caused Kerr and Melanie to exchange a glance. ‘Red dots’ was Al Qaeda code for London Underground stations. It suggested that, to maintain operational security and synchronise the attacks, another brother was to provide the station names and the exact timing for each explosion at the last possible moment. In Kerr’s mind lay the conviction that the final link was Ahmed Jibril.
Sabri’s harsh voice exploded with anger. ‘No. I told you. We wait as planned. We stay here until our brother gives us the targets.’ He looked at Shakir. ‘Old man, we are ready for you. You have the words for us to speak?’
‘Everything is set,’ said Shakir, leaning on his stick as he checked his camera. ‘This is your legacy to the world. If you are careful, I need no more than three or four minutes.’
Mahmoud stood between Sabri and the tripod. The younger man was fifteen centimetres taller than his leader and stretched his hand against his chest. ‘No. We have no time for words and pictures.’ He carefully removed a London Underground map from the nearest rucksack and slapped it on the workbench. ‘In the last hours of our lives we no longer need to fear you. So choose the targets for us now. Otherwise Daljit and I go alone.’
‘Mahmoud is right,’ said Daljit. ‘We need to move right now. If the cops already have our brother they will find us, too. It is time, inshallah.’
‘Are you getting this, guys?’ murmured Justin, into his mike, from the flat above. ‘They’re getting ready to roll.’ Then he saw Daljit run to the window, while Mahmoud, who had mixed the explosives, stayed at the workbench, checking the IED connections. As he worked, a speck of plaster dropped onto Mahmoud’s hand and his eyes whipped to the ceiling.
Justin remained prone, capturing every movement on his monitor. He watched Daljit peer through the window and call to the others. Sabri joined him and they began to gesticulate excitedly. ‘Something’s spooking them outside, Al,’ whispered Justin. ‘Who’s moving around out there? You need to let the Trojans know. Alan, are you seeing this?’ he said, into his throat mike.
He heard Fargo speak quietly and urgently. ‘Yeah, and we want you out of there right now. Christ, Justin, don’t move. He’s looking right at you.’ Justin and Fargo froze in their respective viewing points, mesmerised by the image on the screen as Mahmoud peered at the camera directly above him.
Justin lay completely still as the terrorist looked straight at him, keeping his voice to a whisper. ‘Wait, he’s not sure.’
Mahmoud gave a yell and Sabri joined him, leaving Daljit by the window. The two terrorists stared at the ceiling, suspicious but unsure, like brothers in some zany family snapshot. In the corner, Justin saw Shakir using the distraction to dismantle the tripod and pack away his camera.
‘Trust me, Al,’ murmured Justin. ‘They’ll never spot the hole, not enough to be certain.’ For a few seconds the two sides stared each other out in complete silence, as if testing who would blink first. Then Mahmoud spotted Shakir edging towards the door with his equipment and gave a shout. He seemed enraged that the old man should be trying to escape. Justin watched him leap across the room, strike Shakir hard in the face and drag him back, flinging him down by the workbench and snapping his walking stick. Suddenly Daljit yelled something from the window and Justin watched the other two bombers rush to join him.
Ice cool, Justin panned to follow them. ‘It’s OK, we’re clear. Where are the Trojans?’ he said.
‘Getting ready for the assault,’ said Fargo. ‘They’re entering the building, Justin. You have to get out.’
‘And these boys must have seen them. It’s really working them up.’
Fargo again, urgent: ‘Listen, just stop fucking about and get your arse down here.’
Then Kerr’s voice was in his ear. ‘I already told you, Justin. Lock the cable so we have the best picture and get out of there. Call me on your mobile when you’re clear.’
‘OK, but you have to hit them right now.’ Justin heard a sound and turned as the Somali mother reappeared, holding her little boy’s hand. Justin got to his feet and spoke gently to her. ‘I told you, it’s not safe here. You have to go.’
The mother pointed in the vague direction of the lift. ‘Not work.’
Justin held his hands up, palms outstretched. ‘All right, I’ll take care of you, but we have to be very quiet.’
He checked the image on the monitor and secured the cable to capture the maximum coverage. Packing the rest of the kit into the rucksack, he spoke into his throat mike. ‘Al, I’m signing off. Seven-oh-eight is clear.’
The little boy went up to Justin and took his hand. Justin heaved the rucksack on to his back, picked the child up and led them from the room. ‘Come, we’ll use the stairs.’
Ten
Thursday, 13 September, 11.36, Fielding Road, Walthamstow
In the bomb factory directly below, Daljit watched through the window as the other two continued with the final preparations to their bombs. Then, as he leant out, he spotted Gallagher’s firearms teams sneaking through the main door. ‘Sabri!’ he yelled. ‘They are attacking! They are coming to kill us.’
Their leader looked across from the table. ‘How many?’
‘Too many. You must hurry, both of you, we have no more time.’
Fargo’s picture was imperfect, but Daljit’s voice was loud and clear, so powerful that Fargo had to lift his headphones. He and Melanie crowded the screen as Kerr spoke to Gallagher: ‘Jim, do you still have the audio link? You have to hit them now.’
Gallagher’s voice was breathless. ‘Roger that, I’m with Team One, fourth floor,’ he panted, brushing past Justin and his charges, ‘forty seconds away.’
Sabri helped Mahmoud and Daljit arm their devices and place them in the rucksacks while the old Pakistani cowered in the corner where he should have been filming their final message to the world. The bombers gave Osama bin Laden’s film-maker a final look of contempt. This lame, sick man, who had once enjoyed access to the world’s most famous jihadi, meant nothing to them. He belonged to the past. ‘Everything is finished,’ said Daljit, quietly.
When they were ready they held the rucksacks to their chests and shouted in unison, ‘We will take them with us, inshallah.’
The trigger wire to Daljit’s device became detached. ‘Wait! Wait!’ His hands steady in the face of death, Mahmoud helped Daljit carefully reinsert the copper detonator.
The terrorists had their final moment of calm as Jim Gallagher and his first assault team assembled silently outside the door of flat 608.
‘Are you ready?’ said Sabri, sounding like a leader again, looking to each of his comrades.
They walked closer to the door and stood quietly for a moment, listening for movement outside. Then, as the door crashed open and the Trojans’ stun grenades rolled across the floor, the cry went up in unison: ‘Allah is great! Allah is great!’
The grenades exploded in the same instant as the terrorist bombs, creating a blast that obliterated the senses and created a hell of ragged flesh, blood and fire. Gallagher had been the first across the threshold. He saw the terrorists were about to detonate their bombs, so charged into the room behind the grenades, firing his Heckler & Koch as he ran. From less than a metre he took the full force of Daljit’s bomb. It tore away his helmet and every shred of clothing. The nails ripped his belly to shreds.
&n
bsp; He landed on his back in the middle of the floor, firing his weapon until the magazine was empty, then looked down at the parts of his body that should have been in his stomach but were strewn haphazardly across his chest. His lower chest to his thighs was a mass of smoking, unrecognisable flesh. But the helmet had protected his head and face from the worst of the blast and he looked almost quizzically at the bright red blood pumping across his chest onto the floor.
Unthinkingly, Gallagher’s number two had followed him. They were buddies at work and family friends outside, playing squash every week at Imber Court, one of the Met’s sports clubs. Sabri’s device seemed to have been destined for him, and he was charging at full speed when the blast hit. The bomb stripped him naked, too, scorching the front of his body and tearing away his left leg above the knee. A volley of nails ripped apart his torso, and a chair leg sliced into his face, tearing out his right cheekbone. Every wound was fatal, but none strong enough to kill him immediately.
His leg ricocheted off the wall and fell back on top of him, but he pushed it away as he crawled across to help Gallagher. In the last seconds before the shock killed them both, he weakly tried to replace Gallagher’s intestines. To the end the two friends looked out for each other.
Sabri and Daljit were luckier. They destroyed themselves instantly, even before the rounds from Gallagher’s carbine ripped into them, and took out Shakir as well. Sabri was decapitated, as is common with suicide bombers, his head shooting like a meteorite across the room and mashing itself against the wall. The blast pulverised their torsos, fusing their limbs and organs into a single, indistinguishable heap of flesh. Gallagher could see Daljit’s head lying inches away, the eyes staring right through them in surprise. His last act was to pick it up by the hair and toss it aside, like a piece of trash.
With shock waves reverberating around them, a second pair of Trojans stormed into the room. Weapons cocked, torches lighting the way, they stood at the threshold searching fruitlessly for targets. Both men had witnessed bomb scenes before, but the sights and smells of flat 608 would never leave them. The room was dark as night and their gas masks protected them from the acrid smoke and dust, though the images were straight out of hell. The brightest light came not from their torches but from the flames shooting out of a gas pipe high in one corner, which had already set fire to the ceiling. From the other side of the room, water rushed down the walls in a torrent and a bloody pool lapped around their dead comrades, as if seeking out their bodies to cool them.
Then, with a rush, the Trojans saw daylight, which entered where the far wall should have been. As the smoke cleared, they felt another blast, this time of cold air. The scene outside was filled with flashing blue lights. They could see a double-decker bus in the distance, abandoned cars, and people racing towards them. It was as though they were looking through a giant picture window. In the deathly hush of the bomb factory, against the buzzing of their damaged eardrums, they heard strong voices shouting for them.
Their weapons found movement from the farthest corner. As the dust and smoke swirled away on the wind they saw a man balancing on the edge of the precipice, silhouetted against the clouds. He was standing with his rucksack still tight to his chest. Face lacerated and clothes in tatters, he had been wounded not by the energy of the bombs so much as his failure of courage. Hand out of sight behind the rucksack, he trembled in the cold as the Trojans’ carbines arrested him in their sights. ‘Stand still!’ the officers shouted, though neither had any intention of taking him alive.
They shot him as tried to activate his bomb and launched himself into the air, crashing onto the roof of a police personnel carrier. His bomb detonated as dozens of officers in riot gear were streaming into the building. It stripped open the roof like a tin can to lacerate the driver, killing him instantly.
Eleven
Thursday, 13 September, 11.47, Fielding Road, Walthamstow
Justin had reached the second floor on his descent with the Somali family when flat 608 exploded. He heard the snap of the stun grenade, then the much louder double crack of the terrorist bombs. The whole building shook violently. He threw the screaming mother and child onto the hard concrete stairs and flung himself on top of them, protecting them with his body just as a heavy chunk of ceiling plaster crashed onto his shoulders. With adrenaline keeping the pain away he picked up the little boy again and pulled the mother to her feet. Half dragging, half carrying her, he raced on with them down the staircase.
Five steps from the ground floor, with the open entrance door in view, their path was blocked by riot police storming the block. The surge of bodies overwhelmed them and almost certainly saved their lives: they were forced to stand to one side of the staircase as the bomber crashed onto the police personnel carrier. Seconds later Justin would have been running with them, past the vehicle, directly in line with the blast.
As they reached the ground, the bomb blew the heavy front doors three metres into the hallway as if they were pieces of cardboard. Because the three were pressed to the side of the entrance they escaped the full energy of the explosion. Ramming them into the corner of the stairwell, Justin enveloped mother and child with his body. A tornado scorched his face, then something struck his temple. He had the presence of mind to find his warrant card, then charged with them into the open, holding up his ID and yelling, ‘Police!’ at every gun barrel he could see, shielding them from the devastation around the bombed vehicle and searching for a tree, a wall or a building to protect them from the next explosion.
With Melanie and Fargo in the bus, Kerr stared at the last images of the bomb factory. On the screen they saw Gallagher burst through the door and heard the staccato shots from his weapon before the pictures turned to snow. The building disintegrated a second before the shatterproof windows of the bus blew in. The shockwave tipped the vehicle so far they feared it would overturn. They crashed against the seats and partitions, then hurled themselves to the floor as the bus lurched the other way before righting itself. When they looked again, masonry and lethal shards of glass were still falling to the ground. Just as they thought the horror was over, they saw a man wearing a rucksack fall from the cavity. They felt the bus tip again, thrown sideways by the blast of his bomb.
‘Dear God.’ Melanie was staring at the destruction. Smoke was pouring from the space where the wall had been, followed by flames spreading across the ceiling, fanned by the cold air. Dark clouds drifted on the wind, clogging their nostrils with the stench of burning. Then sirens rose with the dust and heat and screams as armoured carriers and ambulances tore past them, ignoring the cordons, racing to capture the perpetrators and search for signs of life.
‘Anyone injured?’ shouted Kerr, climbing to his feet, but Fargo was already scrambling for the radio, shouting for Justin on his bodyset. He tried twice, in vain.
‘Call his mobile,’ yelled Kerr, as if he might yet save his officer by sheer force of will.
Fargo wanted to recover his kit, but Kerr ordered them off the bus into his car. The whole area was about to become a media circus, so he needed to get them clear. They were plastered with dust and debris, and Kerr’s jacket was torn, but none would admit to any injuries.
Justin called as Kerr was driving them to the surveillance rendezvous point and gave his location.
In the health-centre car park Kerr told Fargo and Melanie to stay in the car while he briefed Langton’s surveillance officers on the attack, then told them to scramble. He asked Langton to collect as much of Fargo’s tech gear from the bus as he could, then wait for him at the Yard. Back in the car with Melanie and Fargo, he parked at the perimeter of the cordon and found Justin among a crowd of walking wounded being shepherded to a fleet of ambulances stacked up in Hoe Street. Rucksack on his back, Justin held a little boy in one arm and comforted the child’s hysterical mother with the other.
Kerr called to him as he helped them into an ambulance. ‘What happened to you?’ he said, as they walked back to the car.
‘I’m
fine.’
‘Don’t talk bollocks. None of us is fine.’
Back at the Yard, Kerr asked Langton to have Justin checked out and arrange transport home for Melanie and Fargo. He caught Langton looking at him shrewdly. He knew his deputy was thinking about everything else that had tested him that morning. ‘How about you, John?’ said Langton. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah. But there’s something else I have to do.’
The next call Kerr made was to the commander of the Trojans. Once the worst was confirmed, Kerr went with him to break the news to Jim Gallagher’s widow at the neat three-bedroomed semi they had just bought in Croydon. Gallagher had a child of primary-school age from a previous marriage. His second wife of thirteen months was young, attractive and Muslim, and had just given birth to their son. Her name was Nandeeta, and she was the daughter of wealthy, high-caste immigrants from New Delhi. Kerr had met Nandeeta once before, and described how he had witnessed her husband’s last moments. She listened to the story of Gallagher’s heroism until they told her there were no remains to identify. Then she screamed that the terrorists had stolen her husband’s soul.
With adrenaline flowing long after the endgame, detectives find different ways to wind down immediately after any dangerous operation. Like stand-ups buzzing after a late-night live performance, the young and unattached often prefer to hang out together, in the pub or briefing room, while battle-hardened veterans race home to make up for lost time with their families.
A few, like John Kerr, normally sociable and extrovert, prefer to reorient themselves alone. He arrived home shortly after four. His Islington apartment, on the top floor of a refurbished Victorian mansion block, had two bedrooms and a balcony overlooking Upper Street. It had a great view of the local market and Kerr had fallen in love with the place at first sight. Less flashy than the new-build apartments spreading out along the banks of the Thames, it retained masses of character, with high ceilings and ornate cornices. The style was contemporary, the décor neutral, and Kerr had changed scarcely a thing since moving in three years ago.