In amongst this planning and co-ordination activity, Twitter feeds began arriving directly from passengers still stranded on the stationary train. A specialist team at the emergency response centre was monitoring these. A man had been seen throwing a device off the train before escaping and running down the track back to Hertford North station. A blonde-haired woman in her early to mid twenties had followed him, soon after. A few passengers had taken pictures with their mobile phones. Although most were out of focus, they still allowed a description of these two individuals to be made available to mobile police units in the area. A police car had been despatched to Welwyn North station: a man fitting the description of the person leaving the train had been reported as having assaulted the driver of a Honda motor scooter and had stolen his machine. Within fifteen minutes of the explosion, the abandoned and damaged Honda had been located and the adjacent lane cordoned off. Officers at the scene were waiting for a fingerprint specialist to arrive. Reports also began arriving about a black Mercedes ‘M’ - class that had been stolen outside a school no more than a few hundred yards from where the moped had been abandoned. Details of the car and its registration were broadcast to all units across the county as well as to London’s Metropolitan Police and neighbouring forces. The driver was thought to be a young male in his late twenties or early thirties. Units were advised that the man might be armed and dangerous and instructed to take all reasonable and necessary precautions when apprehending him.
25
The vaporetto had been in the middle of the canal. It had been attempting to cross over to the right hand bank in preparation for its arrival at Rialto when the suitcase bomb had exploded. The force of the blast had been devastating, the carnage and destruction massive. People on board the vessel had been killed instantly. Various body parts were amongst the debris that had been flung far and wide into the canal. The scene was one of total destruction.
The Italian police later reported that, as best as they could judge, about two hundred people on board the ferry, and on other boats close by, had been killed. There were unlikely to have been any survivors from the vaporetto. Numerous pedestrians in the vicinity had also been seriously injured; flying glass from surrounding windows and falling masonry had also inflicted significant amounts of secondary damage. Many pedestrians had suffered cuts and lacerations, a significant number requiring medical attention.
It was sometime later before politicians from around the world had spoken out unanimously condemning the attack. They had called the bombing an intense act of cowardice – a senseless waste of human life. Surprisingly, no one had claimed any responsibility at first, leaving both journalists and counter-terrorism police guessing who might have been behind it. It wasn’t until several hours later that a reporter working for Le Figaro in Paris had received an anonymous email. It was posted from a mail server whose IP address ceased to exist moments after the mail had been sent. The message had been stark but very clear.
The Venice bombing had been the work of Islamic State.
Venice, it announced, had been the first of many planned reprisal attacks across Europe for the West’s continued arrogant foreign policy interventions in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The West had been warned. More attacks would follow imminently.
Within minutes, a second untraceable email, similar to the first, was received by a different journalist this time working for The Times newspaper in London. It claimed that the Welwyn viaduct bombing had been a similar act of reprisal against the West by Islamic State. It also warned that further acts of reprisal were to follow.
26
From an early age, Hakim had been smart: much more worldly-wise, more resourceful, and better able to get others to dance to his tune than his cousin, Fouad. He had also been much more devious. The Jordanian had the natural talent-spotter’s ability to remember disarmingly tiny pieces of, seemingly, irrelevant data about people – and then to recall them at a later date.
When Islamic State had taken the decision to wage jihad against the British in London, Hakim had been an obvious person to mastermind one component of such a campaign. It had been he who had first dreamt up the whole idea; he who had been the one to convince the high command that the plan would work; and he who had known how – and where – to source both the people and the C-4 explosive that would be necessary to make it all happen. His source of inspiration had been a loyal devotee to their cause and a friend of cousin Fouad: a man he had met only a couple of times but whose details had been salted away. A Pakistani by the name of Sadiq Akhtar.
Sadiq had been living and working in London, leading otherwise a very ordinary life. It had been the nature of Sadiq’s job that had given Hakim the germ of the idea. And something that Sadiq had mentioned, in a reply to a question from Hakim, that had given him the real inspiration.
Back in Jordan, Hakim’s brother, an increasingly well-connected importer and exporter, seemed to know just about everyone of any significance in the country. Over a lunch one day in an Amman restaurant, his brother had introduced Hakim to a Russian called Vladimir. Vladimir, a supposed arms trader, had been sitting just two tables away from them. Introductions over and pleasantries exchanged, Hakim had taken the Russian’s proffered business card. Rather than file it and forget about him, later he had studied the card and had concluded that a contact like Vladimir might prove extremely useful to their cause. As a consequence, he started to invest quality time in getting to know the Russian. For the Jordanian, it was to prove a highly opportune, and profitable, investment.
Two months, and several meetings with Vladimir, later and the two men had reached agreement on a new business transaction. Vladimir was to source the importation of a large shipment of C-4 explosive into the United Kingdom – for a suitable price that the two had haggled over. Hakim, in turn, had secured approval for the deal from those higher up the rather ill-defined chain of Islamic State command.
The routing for the C-4 shipment was necessarily complicated. The goods were sent via Warsaw and Dublin, before finally landing at Liverpool docks. The product, in its familiar olive-green outer wrappers, and presented as rectangular-shaped blocks, about a foot in length, had been heavily disguised. Each stick had been concealed inside an empty photocopier ink toner cartridge. When the plastic cover on the cartridge had been snapped shut it had been, from the outside, indistinguishable from the genuine article. Each cartridge had been individually wrapped in foil-sealed packages before being placed in cardboard boxes with the manufacturer’s labels stencilled on them. This charade had given the whole shipment added authenticity.
On arrival in Liverpool, the boxes of ‘toner cartridges’ had been taken by container lorry to a disused warehouse outside Bradford. Here the next stage of Hakim’s secretive operation had begun. Hakim’s cousin, Fouad, had arranged for two Pakistani faithful, flatmates of Sadiq, to begin the laborious task of removing the C-4 blocks from each toner cartridge, one by one. They had then arranged them into pairs before placing each pair inside its own hessian sack: every sack being topped up with a small amount of sand, before being sealed. Once complete and the sack sewn together, they were virtually indistinguishable from a genuine sandbag. Finally, each completed ‘sandbag’ had been stacked, carefully and neatly, in the back of Fouad’s white minivan for its onward journey to London.
27
Olena was gradually becoming aware of her predicament. Her jostled body had been shaken back to consciousness as the car took various corners at speed. Her neck felt incredibly sore and tender. It was slowly dawning on her still befuddled mind what must have happened. The car was a hatchback, that much she was aware: the lid over the boot space a simple parcel shelf hinged along its long edge. She reached above her head and felt it move. She rattled the boot lid some more and started yelling.
“Let me out of here! I think I am going to be sick.”
“Shut the fuck up, bit
ch,” was what she received back for her troubles. It was a strange accent. It had sounded partly French, but with a hint of Russian. “Or maybe you’d like me to come back there and beat the shit out of you, eh?”
“Otyebis,” she muttered sufficiently loudly for the man to hear. If he was Russian, her swearing at him abusively in the slang language known as ‘mat’ was unlikely to be helpful to her current predicament – even if it temporarily made her feel better.
Virenque was approaching a roundabout: it was also, in part, a junction with the motorway. He had a decision to make: whether to head north, south or keep off the motorway altogether? On balance it was an easy choice. The man called Lewis was no longer on his tail. No one else knew about this VW Golf apart from the girl, and she was tucked away from view in the boot. As an operational headquarters, Polunin had rented a secluded farmhouse to the south of Cambridge. It was to here that Nemikov’s son was being brought later that evening. Cambridge was to the north and east of his current position. Therefore, the most logical option was to head north on the motorway back towards Cambridge. Because only southbound cars were able to join the motorway at this particular junction, it meant that Virenque had a little further to drive before he could join the motorway.
28
The road is a dual carriageway. Lewis is travelling at nearly one hundred miles an hour as he approaches the junction. He brakes hard, feeling the electronic traction cut in as he turns on to the roundabout. All four tyres grip the road during the rapid deceleration, the action bringing his speed down to nearer the limit. Driving past the first turn off to the left, the slip road heading on to the southbound carriageway of the motorway, he can see no sign of the silver Golf: on either the slip road or the carriageway itself.
Beyond this junction the traffic continues as two lanes. Access to the northbound carriageways of the motorway is at a different intersection about half a mile further along. There is still no sign of the other car. Then, just as he is about to give up hope, he finally spots it: turning on to the northbound motorway slip road, almost one hundred metres in front.
Finally, Lewis is in position on the motorway, three cars behind the Golf. The traffic is down to two lanes at this point, the flow moderately heavy as they approach the outskirts of Stevenage. It is definitely the same man – the bomber from the train – who is driving the Golf. Lewis can see no sign of Olena. Either she is lying on the floor, perhaps unconscious, or, more likely, bundled into the boot. In different circumstances, Lewis might be tempted to hang back and follow the other car: to find out where it is heading and who the bomber’s accomplices, if any, are. Olena’s kidnapping, however, changes everything. There can only be one priority: to get her out of the car as quickly as possible. Nothing else matters.
People write fantasy about car chases: Lewis had once attended a one-week close-protection driving course in order to learn for himself what was fact and what was fiction. Popular fiction tells you that if you are in a chase vehicle, there’s little you can do to stop the car in front without significant risk to all parties. Lewis now knows this to be factually inaccurate. There is one intervention that can work. It is not without risk. All that Lewis needs is a clear road, and a decent width of hard shoulder.
He finds both a couple of miles later on.
Just beyond the town of Stevenage.
Where the carriageway changes back from two lanes to three.
To begin, Lewis needs to get in position. He does this by overtaking the two cars ahead of him, allowing him to move into the space directly behind the Golf. Both cars are in the nearside lane – the separation between them about two car lengths. Each is driving at the speed limit: seventy miles an hour. Lewis checks his mirror. The two cars behind him, the ones he overtook recently, have already both dropped back some distance.
It is, as Lewis likes to think of it, a now or never moment.
‘Nunc aut nunquam’, as the Dutch Marines would say.
Lewis begins the manoeuvre by accelerating, steering the four-by four into the empty hard shoulder to the left of the main carriageway. In this manner, he starts to overtake the other car from the inside, positioning the front of the Mercedes so that it overlaps the rear of the Golf by about two feet. Speed is of the essence. Lewis wants to get the Mercedes in position before the other driver can figure out what is happening.
With his foot on the accelerator, Lewis begins the next stage: steering deliberately to his right. The front, driver’s side, wing of the Mercedes makes physical contact with the nearside back end of the Golf, just behind the rear tyres. The collision is very real and very deliberate. Contrary to what his instincts scream at him, Lewis continues steering to the right, still pushing the other car: the physical contact being maintained. The Golf’s tyres have no option but to lose grip on the road. The car spins out of control, moving in an anti-clockwise direction around the front of the Mercedes: a pirouette through one hundred and eighty degrees into the hard shoulder lane. One second it is facing forward; the next backwards. There is little the Golf driver can do other than take his foot off the accelerator – and avoid hitting the brakes. By contrast, Lewis finds himself back in the nearside lane of the motorway, the two cars having, in effect, swapped places.
Lewis brakes sharply. He needs the forward speed of his car to be no faster than the rapidly slowing speed of the other. This is important: the other car, although technically still having forward momentum, in practice, is pointing rearwards. Its engine thus is fighting to drive the Golf in the opposite direction to the Mercedes; the tyres battling to re-establish grip on the road’s surface. The instant the Golf becomes almost stationary is the precise cue for Lewis’s denouement: steering the Mercedes, directly and aggressively, into the Golf’s front passenger side wing. The Golf’s steering and front suspension system is thus quickly disabled – the car immobilised, unable to be driven any further.
Reversing the Mercedes on to the hard shoulder behind the Golf, Lewis climbs out of the car. He leaves the door open and the engine running – but freezes when he sees the bomber from the train pointing a gun directly at him. It is a Russian-made GSh-18 pistol. Lewis knows it well. It was Oleg Panich’s weapon of choice. It takes nine millimetre rounds. Fully loaded, it weighs well over half a kilogramme. It is a professional’s weapon of choice.
“Get away from the car. Move ten paces back and hit the deck.” It is an unusual accent, each word spoken with a deliberate inflection. A sudden flurry of traffic causes the man to waver: whether to shoot Lewis in cold blood or escape to save his own skin? In the distance, the sound of police sirens can be heard. They appear to be getting nearer. His mind appears to be made up. With a final glance to check that Lewis is not about to attack, he races to the Mercedes’s open door. Seconds later he is accelerating away, directly into the oncoming flow of traffic.
With no time to lose, Lewis is around the back of the Golf and opening the boot. Olena is there: alive and in one piece, albeit badly shaken. She clambers out and they embrace. The moment is short lived. Two police cars, sirens sounding and blue lights flashing, are fast approaching. Overhead, the noise of a police helicopter coming in to a hover above them is almost deafening.
It has been a busy afternoon. Lewis knows it is about to get worse: he will doubtless have to suffer his second police interrogation in thirty-six hours.
29
Virenque was watching the black Mercedes in his rear view mirror. It had overtaken the two cars immediately behind him before settling onto his tail. He couldn’t see the driver because of the angle of the windscreen glass. The action itself was not particularly noteworthy. Satisfied that there wasn’t an immediate threat, he focused on his breathing, forcing himself to relax. He began thinking about how he might kill the girl when they got to the farmhouse. Panich wanted her death to look like an act of Islamic Terror. Well, perhaps he would slit her throat for the cameras? Come to think of it,
he liked the idea. They could make the younger brother watch. That would surely terrify any father into submission?
The next junction was the turn off for Cambridge. He checked his speed. He was travelling almost exactly on the speed limit, seventy miles an hour.
He sensed something was wrong. Before his brain fully had time to register what it was, the black Mercedes was overtaking him – but from the wrong side, from the hard shoulder lane. One second it had moved off the motorway’s main carriageway; the next, it was deliberately ploughing into him, pushing the rear end of his Golf to the right. He tried to accelerate out of trouble, but he was too late, powerless to stop his car from spinning out of control. He knew not to hit the brakes, his training telling him that such a reaction would cause an even greater loss of control. Instead he took his foot off the accelerator. He found himself grappling to control the steering as the car rotated through one hundred and eighty degrees on to the hard shoulder. The residual momentum was still in the original direction: the tyres burnt rubber as they tried to drive the car in the other. As the Golf slowed rapidly, Virenque glanced momentarily to his left. It was Lewis! Just as his own wheels were regaining traction, the bastard suddenly ploughed his car into him once again. This time, it was a killer blow. The left-hand wheel assembly on the Golf crumpled under the impact and the car came to a crashing halt.
The Gambit (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 2) Page 9