Slow Burn (2010)

by Conrad Jones

  “Black one, ready to penetrate,” came over the coms unit.

  “Black two, ready,” the second troop called in.

  “Roger that, you have a green light.”

  The doors were opened and the armed officers swooped through them with practised ease. Torch light flickered as they moved through the buildings.

  “Black one, clear.”

  “Black two, clear.”

  “Roger that.”

  Alec and Will looked through the outbuildings they had searched, as the troops prepared to search the workshops and enter the farmhouse. They were empty. There wasn’t a cobweb or a layer of dust to be seen.

  “This isn’t right,” Alec said. “The place is spotless.”

  “It`s the cleanest farm I`ve ever seen,” Will said. “Not that I`ve seen many, but this place has been scrubbed from top to bottom, recently.”

  “I think whatever they were doing here is already done,” Alec said. They walked across the farmyard and waited for the armed officers to breach the farmhouse. Alec remembered the van at the Mosque. It was clean as were the other devices that the bombers had used. They left no evidence behind them wherever they operated. He didn’t think that the farm would be any different, unless they had left any nasty surprises.

  “Superintendent, we`re ready to move into the workshop and the farmhouse,” the Inspector called on the coms.

  “Move in, but leave the cellar areas for now,” Alec had a bad feeling about it. The lengths that the Bernsteins had gone to not to leave any evidence was just one indicator of how much planning they had put into the attacks.

  “Roger that.”

  “Black one, ready.”

  “Black two, ready.”

  “Roger that, green light.”

  The armed officers moved like shadows and the support teams held their breath and waited for the `clear`, call to come. Long minutes went by as the teams searched the workshop.

  “Black two, workshop clear.”

  “Roger that.”

  Alec glanced at his watch as torchlight flickered from inside the farmhouse. Eventually the call came through the coms.

  “Black one, the farmhouse is clear.”

  “Roger that.”

  Alec skipped the workshops and headed into the house. It had been stripped of furniture and ornaments, and cleaned from top to bottom. There wasn’t a light bulb or lampshade left anywhere.

  “Is it the same upstairs?” Alec asked.

  “Roger that, Guv, It`s empty. It doesn’t look like it`s been used for years up there.”

  “Mamood said he thought he might have been underground, because there were no windows, and no noise,” Will thought aloud. “Ashwan Pindar and Malik Shah could be down there now, and so could the bombers.”

  “I don’t like this, something isn’t right,” Alec turned to Will. “Get everyone out of here. I want the bomb squad in to sweep the cellars first.”

  “We should check that it`s safe down there first, Superintendent,” Inspector Green was disappointed that his teams wouldn’t be the first in. “I must insist armed response sweep first, Sir.”

  “Get your men out of the building and pull everyone back a hundred yards, and do it now,” Alec growled across the coms network. “Captain Bishpam, I want one officer in the blast suit to check out the basement. There`s something not right here and the bombers haven’t put a foot wrong so far.”

  Captain Bishpam was an officer in the Army. The Royal Logistics Core were the world`s foremost Explosive Ordinance Disposal experts. He was seconded to the police bomb squad, as an advisor, and a trainer. Bishpam had three tours of Iraq, and two tours of Afghanistan behind him, and he missed being in the front line. He felt as if he was letting his Army unit down being on secondment with the police. Members of the logistics core were dying every week trying to make safe improvised devices in Afghanistan, and he felt that he should there alongside them. His police team were good, loyal and brave, but they had little real experience of locating and defusing terrorist devices. He was the most experienced member by far, and as such, he would wear the suit. The blast suit was a full body armour kit designed to protect technicians who were looking for or defusing bombs. They were nicknamed Demon Suits, because of the high number of men that died wearing them. The reality of the situation was that if you were in the blast radius of a bomb, with or without the Demon Suit, then you were dead. Bishpam wouldn’t allow anyone to don that suit in live theatre, except himself.

  “Roger, Superintendent, I`ll check it out myself, give me ten minutes to climb into it,” the Captain said. He was aware of the skill of the bomber, he`d been called to every scene to inspect the devices, or what was left of them. “You got a hunch, Alec?”

  “It`s not right, Captain. Why clean down the outbuildings and the stables?”

  “You`ve got me there,” the Captain sounded muffled as he struggled into the heavy suit. The clumsy suit offered bomb technicians a small amount of protection during reconnaissance procedures. It protected from fragmentation, blast pressure and the thermal and tertiary effects of an explosion, but their effectiveness was limited if a device detonated in close proximity. “What are you thinking?”

  “Let`s say they were done here. If they were going to level the place and they had left anything in the buildings above ground, then there would be evidence left in the rubble, right?” Alec explained his hunch on the coms. The officers of every unit there could hear them, and he made sense. “Anything below the buildings could be destroyed with say, incendiary devices maybe?”

  “You think the bomb factory was below ground?”

  “Where would you build them if you were the bomb maker?”

  “In the cellar, no doubt about it,” the bomb squad Captain agreed. Five minutes later, he was suited up and ready. The rest of the teams were pulled back away from the house. The Captain checked the plans one more time before he neared the house and he noticed a shaded area beneath the workshops.

  “Superintendent,” the coms clicked into life and the voice of the Captain came over.

  “Go ahead, Captain.”

  “I think the cellars run beneath the workshops too, Alec. There`s a shaded area on the plans, best to move your men away from that building.”

  “Roger that, move everyone back from the workshop area,” Alec ordered. “You`re green light to go in, Captain.”

  “Roger that.” The Captain and his bulky suit squeezed through the doorway sideways, and he disappeared into the darkness.

  Chapter 55

  The Bridge

  Ashwan was bleeding heavily, but he would live for a while. He couldn’t move, that was the point in shooting him in the back. Nick and David carried Malik from the ambulance and they plonked him in the back of the BMW. He was doped and compliant, and unable to move for now. His surroundings were confusing to him, but he knew that he was in trouble. The wind and rain blew into the car as he was manhandled into the back seat. The world was spinning, and he closed his eyes to steady his mind. The door slammed closed and everything became quiet. The wind stopped blowing and he could hear traffic passing by but the sound was soothing. He opened his eyes and saw the flashing lights of an ambulance. The vehicle was pulling away. A highway patrol truck was parked alongside his BMW in between it and the traffic. It blocked the view of passing motorists. The engine started, and it too pulled away. The passenger window opened and a hand waved goodbye to him as it drove away.

  Malik tried to get his bearings. He was in the backseat of his own car. He recognised the dashboard and the leather seats. Why was he in the backseat, he couldn’t remember. Next to his right hand was a reactivated Mac-10 machinegun. He bought them and sold them in their thousands, but he rarely saw them. The police had been chasing him for decades, but he`d been too clever for them to be caught. Everything had been perfect until the bastards that planted bombs turned up. He remembered the hotel room. He was about to fuck Melinda, wasn’t he? Yes, he was right. She`d drugged him, and then the am
bulance turned up. Bernstein, remember me? The ambulance men kept repeating it. Bernstein, remember me? He did remember them, they`d taken him from the hotel, it echoed, remember me? They were at the hotel. Why?

  He remembered that Sarah Bernstein was their sister. Her face flashed into his mind. She was pretty, but then it warped into a frightened face. She was crying, but she couldn’t speak, and Ashwan was on top of her paralysed body, pumping her while she sobbed. The faces of is school friends were there, holding her down, probing her and squeezing her body. They were laughing. The sound of laughter echoed around his brain, and then it turned to screaming.

  The image disappeared, and he looked at the machinegun again. Sweat ran down his face. His hand twitched and he touched it with his fingers. If he could reach it, he would shoot the fat ambulance man, Richard fucking Bernstein in the face, and then he would kill his brother. Fucking Bernsteins, they`d been a pain in his arse from day one. They should have killed the fat Jew when they had the chance. What were they doing now? Where had they gone? He remembered the ambulance pulling away. Were they in it? His mind was processing information a little quicker than it had. The effects of the Flunitrazepam seemed to be wearing off. Where was he? He looked up and around, taking in detail for the first time since he`d arrived. How long was it since the ambulance men closed the door and left him? Time had no meaning for now.

  Malik suddenly realised that there was someone in the driver`s seat. They were slumped over the wheel. The sound of passing engines became louder, and he recognised the fact headlights were flashing by, illuminating the interior of the BMW every few minutes. He was at the side of a road. Intricate steel framework surrounded the road and it disappeared into the sky above him. Runcorn Bridge echoed from the far edges of his mind. He was in his car on the bridge. The car was surrounded by traffic cones, each one fitted with a flashing yellow light on top of it. He needed to know who the driver was.

  Malik moved his right hand and then tried his left. His motor neurone functions were returning to him. He made a fist with his hands as the movement returned. The man in the front looked like Ashwan Pindar. Malik leaned forward, his head between the front seats.

  “Ash,” Malik said. It came out as a gasp. “Ashwan.” This time it sounded like he had marbles in his mouth. He reached forward and grabbed the back of his jacket. He tugged as hard as his muscles allowed him to. Ash groaned and slumped back in the seat. “Ashwan, what`s wrong with you?” Malik looked at his hand. It was covered in Ash`s blood. He looked down and noticed the bullet hole in the seat, and the corresponding wound at the base of his spine. “Shit!”

  Malik looked around for something to stop the bleeding. Next to him on the backseat was a sports bag. He reached for the zip, his limbs responding better now. His head was woozy but he felt in control of his body. He unzipped the bag and opened it. His eyes struggled in the dark; the passing headlights offered him some help as they lit up the interior of the vehicle. He reached inside and fumbled with the contents. His hands touched a tightly wrapped package. The plastic wrapping crackled as he handled it. He pulled it out. Cocaine. Malik reached in again and pulled out a second package with the same result. Cocaine. It was the cocaine from the ransom drop. Three kilos of it, which would equate to about fifteen years in jail.

  “Ashwan, wake up!” Malik felt alone for the first time in his adult life. There had always been someone there to help him out of trouble, help him fight his battles, or to take the blame. He looked around the car. On top of the dashboard was another Mac-10. It was wedged above the steering wheel resting on the heater vents. Malik assessed the situation in his befuddled mind. He was sat in his car with a machinegun in his hand. The driver had been shot through the back, and there was three kilos of cocaine on the seat next to him. It was then that he heard the first police siren approaching.

  CHAPTER 56

  The Farm

  Captain Bishpam reached the top of the cellar stairs. There was a light switch on the left, fixed to the wall, but it was an obvious place to fix a booby trap, so he ignored it. He switched on a head torch, which was fitted to the blast suit. The stairs were crafted from pine and stained with a clear varnish. The torch light swept the floor space that he could see from the top of the stairs. There was a gel substance spread evenly across the floor. The floor seemed to be a concrete base, covered in self-levelling cement. It had been painted red with floor-paint and the gel made it look wet in the torch light.

  “Black three,” Bishpam made his call sign. He took the first two steps slowly, looking for tripwires or fine metal filament, which could be a trigger for a bomb.

  “Go, ahead, Captain.”

  “The floor is coated in a gel, I`m guessing it`s an accelerant of some type, or a Hypergolic liquid. The place stinks of chemicals.”

  “Roger that, Captain, get out of there,” Alec knew the cellar was rigged, and the Captain had confirmed it.

  “I`ll get half way down the staircase then I can get a proper view of the cellar,” Bishpam held the handrail and moved awkwardly down the steps. He ducked and scanned the cellar with the head torch. A camera fixed next to it relayed pictures back to the bomb squad command vehicle. There were workbenches lined up symmetrically along the length of the cellar, and the walls were lined with shelving. The shelves were packed with electrical gadgets. Stereo systems, video recorders, and televisions were piled high. “Are you getting this?”

  “Roger, Captain, we`re seeing it. It`s an Aladdin’s cave of electronic spare parts, right?”

  “Right,” Bishpam replied. There were three blue lights glowing in the darkness across the room. He knew it was a bomb, even from where he was stood.

  “Superintendent Ramsay,” a call came over the coms unit. It was Inspector Green from armed response.

  “What is it, Inspector?” Alec sounded irritated by the interruption at such a critical moment, but he knew the Inspector wouldn’t be using an open channel unless it was important.

  “We`ve got an Armed Response Unit en route to an incident.”

  “Go ahead,” Alec was irritated now.

  “A shooting was called in anonymously an hour ago. The first teams at the scene reported two men in a BMW, armed with MAC-10 machineguns. One of them is shot and wounded. The other man is holed up in the backseat. The vehicle registration plate has its owner listed as Malik Shah.”

  “Where are they?” Alec scratched his chin.

  “Runcorn Bridge, Guv.”

  “Roger that, Inspector.” Alec didn’t know what was happening, but something was. He had to get the Captain out of there.

  “Can you see the lights across the room?” Bishpam said when the other conversation was done.

  “Roger that, I want you out of there now, Captain,” Alec repeated. The accelerant gel had been put down for one reason only. To spread fire evenly throughout the cellar and to destroy everything that was down there. There were a million and one ways to set up a trigger device that would detonate a bomb, or start a fire.

  “Roger that, I`m on my way out of here,” Captain Bishpam said as he turned on the stairway. He moved his left foot off the fourth step down, and released the pressure in a pressure pad. The pressure release closed a live electric circuit, which was causing a magnetic field around a steel ball bearing. When the magnet was turned off, the steel ball rolled down a metal track and then slotted between two connectors, and completed a circuit. The trigger detonated a series of explosive devices, which were designed to destroy everything in the cellar, and start a firestorm, which would cremate any remaining evidence. Captain Bishpam didn’t stand a chance.

  CHAPTER 57

  END GAME

  “Drop the weapon and get out of the vehicle,” an amplified voice travelled across the bridge to him. Malik was surrounded by armed police units at the front and rear of his car. They had closed the bridge to traffic and set up roadblocks seventy-five yards back from his position. Ashwan smelled of excrement, which told him that he was dead, and his bowels had r
elaxed and emptied. His options were limited. He was in possession of two machineguns and three kilos of cocaine. Ashwan was dead, probably shot with the gun that he had in his possession. The police would lock him up and throw away the key. He wouldn’t see the light of day ever again. The Bernsteins had stitched him up good and proper, and he knew it. The police would know it as well. Would they admit it was a set up and miss the opportunity to lock him up? Malik doubted it very much. MI5 tracked him for years because of his arms dealing. To catch him in possession of two reactivated weapons would be six numbers and the bonus ball.

  “Throw the weapon out of the vehicle, and come out with your hands up,” the voice sounded more urgent this time. “You have nowhere to go, throw your weapon down.”