Absence of Mercy

by Joe McCoubrey

  Ramsden ordered one of his analysts to check the ANPR database, the automatic number plate recognition network, which detailed the exact real-time location of all registered vehicles. The name of Manfred Stelling filled the top of the computer screen. He was the registered owner with an address at Prince Albert Road. According to the ANPR webcam system, the vehicle was last picked up by a traffic camera close to that address.

  By the time the analyst turned in his seat to hand a print-out to Ramsden, the room was already empty.

  Stratton prided himself in never having lost his cool. No matter what was thrown at him, he had somehow always managed to turn it to his advantage. He didn’t see any need to start changing now. The arrest of Melrose, coupled with the involvement of MI6, could not have been foreseen, but, hey, shit happens all the time. Deal with it. Move on.

  And that’s exactly what he was doing. The last of a number of boxes were sitting duct-taped on the bench in the basement. He had been methodical about what to take and what to leave, regretting that most of his firearm collection would have to stay behind. He took one last look around the room before walking towards the stairs and shouting over his shoulder at Stelling. “Take these up to the garage. I have a few other things to take care of.”

  Stelling looked uneasy. “Carl, I still don’t see why we have to leave the house. Nobody knows about us here. We have everything we need here, and we still have to hole up until Friday.

  Stratton stopped and turned. “I made a mistake in letting Melrose see my face. I never imagined his involvement would have been discovered so soon. One thing for certain is that the spineless bastard will be spilling his guts, and that will include, no doubt, doing what he can to help them put together a very credible image of my face.”

  “But you are a master of disguise. How can this be a problem?”

  “Because,” Stratton responded patiently, “knowing who I am and what I have done will lead my old cronies at MI6 to start unearthing whatever they can find about me. I’ve no doubt they’ve already arranged for my Manhattan apartment to be ransacked, in which case they will have been able to track my movements to London. This city is known throughout the world for having the greatest array of intrusive CCTV coverage per square foot. I can’t risk the chance that we were picked up and followed to this location.”

  Realisation dawned on Stelling, and without another word he grabbed three cartons and walked purposefully past Stratton. He bounded the concrete steps two at a time, as if he expected the authorities to come crashing through the door at any moment.

  Eight first-response vehicles converged on Prince Albert Road from three directions. They were led by an armoured vehicle belonging to SO19, the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command Unit. Seated on two benches inside the vehicle were six men and two women, dressed in typical SWAT gear, each cradling a lethal MP5 sub-machine pistol. They would be first through the doors.

  An additional twenty men and women were crammed into four MI5 Range Rovers, with half that number in two MI6 vehicles. Bringing up the rear was a high-topped truck, specially adapted with two-inch interior lead lining. The people inside this vehicle were all dressed in Hazmat suits, and would be called into action if specialist monitors detected any chemical signatures from within the target house.

  There was nothing frantic or disorganised about the cavalcade. A chain of command had already been established and honed by countless exercises in places like the SAS centre at Sterling Lines on the outskirts of Hereford. Normally, a team from one of the SAS Sabre Squadrons would have been part of this kind of operation, but it was judged that time was of the essence. Nonetheless, a helicopter was already en route from Hereford.

  Command was entrusted initially to the SWAT team leader. He would plan the assault, clear the building, and then stand-down his unit in favour of MI5. Until he signalled the transfer of command, all other personnel would hold at the perimeter to mitigate the risk of persons escaping the building and breaking the cordon.

  The vehicles were held at an outer perimeter as an unmarked police car conducted a drive-by of the premises. A female officer in the passenger seat radioed in that the Daimler was still parked in front of the house.

  As soon as he received the message, the SWAT leader announced a go. The vehicle raced to the front wall, parking close so that the occupants could scramble onto the roof, step onto the wall, and leap into the garden beyond. It was decided that ramming the gate or exploding it off its hinges would provide too much of an early warning of their arrival. In operations such as these, every second was vital.

  Four members of the team broke ranks and raced down either side of the house to prepare for a rear-door assault. Two of the front-garden squad took position either side of the mahogany door while the remaining pair fired a sustained burst of automatic fire at ground floor windows. When the windows shattered, the SWAT men each chucked in two fragmentation and stun grenades.

  Without waiting for the blasts, the men at the door stood back and fired short, sixty-round-per-minute bursts at the area around the door locks. A large eight-inch circle erupted in toothpick fragments. The team leader put his shoulder to the door, which give way under his weight. All four men sprinted into the foyer, their weapons trained on empty halls and stairways.

  The leader waited for the four-man team from the rear of the building. They too had encountered no opposition. He signalled for his men to break into pairs to begin a room-by-room clearance operation. Ten minutes later, they met back in the foyer. The house was well and truly deserted.

  Carl Stratton watched the action unfold. He was five miles away, in a large warehouse, where his laptop was logged on to a live feed from his camera surveillance system at Prince Albert Road. His mood was anything but celebratory. Another fifteen minutes and he would have been snagged. Had he not decided to visit Melrose’s house, he would not have known that a net was closing in. It was indeed a fortunate turn of events, one that made him wonder again at the ways of Allah.

  He had been right to leave the Daimler. It had already been compromised, but now he worried if the mail delivery van he used to flee the scene might also have been picked up by traffic cameras. Good job he had insisted on Manfred procuring the nondescript back-up Clio family car. They would use this for the final transportation of the last two packages.

  He busied himself by preparing the two bombs. Satisfied they were operational he carried the boxes across to the rear of the Clio.

  He removed three prepaid cellphones from a third box. Each had a colour-coded sticker, across which was scribbled the number of its target receiving unit. The first call would be made at precisely twelve noon on Friday, followed fifteen-minutes later by the remaining two calls. He glanced at his wristwatch. A little more than thirty hours to go.

  It was time to settle in. They had packed enough food and water to keep them going, and he would wait until the morning of the last day before donning an elaborate disguise.

  Chapter 32

  DEVON NUDGED the LonWash Range Rover up to the perimeter police barrier, flashed his security credentials, and was admitted through to a scene of pandemonium at Prince Albert Road. Security vehicles cluttered the street, and massive arc lights bathed the area in dancing shadows, as a constant stream of operatives entered and exited the large town house. It was three hours into a gloomy Thursday morning.

  Devon’s cyber team had spent what remained of the previous evening in a frenzy of activity, using all their backdoor entry systems to listen into the chatter from MI5, MI6, the Metropolitan Police Incident Room, and GCHQ. He had watched from the sidelines, fascinated by the unfolding events on both sides of the Atlantic, but resisted lifting the phone to request an update from Peter Ramsden.

  The news that Stratton had been tracked down to an address in the northwest of the city finally galvanised him into action. He had hoped for an invite to join in the operation, but understood the logistics involved. There was no way, however, that he was about to sit this one ou
t.

  He had left the building shortly after the assault on the house began. With him in the car were Alan Doyle and Chelsea Horgan. He reasoned that he needed to be in the vicinity, intending to grab the first opportunity to visit the aftermath of the action. He had parked up less than two hundred yards from the outer perimeter, switched off the engine, and tried to remain patient.

  The uneasy wait was broken by a mid-air sat-phone update from Cheadle, who provided the heartening news that Felix Hoffmeier had paid his dues for his part in the conspiracy against LonWash. The news that Hoffmeier had confirmed Stratton’s lead role made Devon’s blood boil another few degrees.

  He had no sooner broken the connection with Cheadle than his phone buzzed for a second time. It was a familiar voice. “Mike, it’s Peter Ramsden. I need you down at Prince Albert Road. We have had an incident involving our former colleague.”

  “I’m less than two minutes away.”

  Devon detected a chuckle on the other end of the line. “Why does that not surprise me?”

  Doyle and Horgan were asked to remain in the foyer while Ramsden handed Devon a paper forensics suit. “We’ve found a concealed basement. Thought we’d take a quick rummage through before we let the Scenes of Crime boys lock it up for most of the day. We haven’t time for the usual niceties.”

  Devon squirmed into the outfit and followed Ramsden into a large study and down a flight of concrete steps. There were already six other paper suits walking around the confined space. No-one bothered to make any introductions.

  Cabinet doors and drawers were hanging open and a centre table was cluttered with small boxes and a bewildering array of paraphernalia, including an assortment of firearms and ammunition cartons. A tiled floor sparkled under the fluorescent lighting, and Devon noted the absence of dust on any of the bench surfaces.

  “Looks like someone left in a hurry, but not before they swept the place clean.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Ramsden responded. “Our HAZMAT boys picked up nothing with their chemical detection equipment. According to them, an initial IMS sweep produced zero results, so either our friend is not using chemical agents or he has them stored off-site.”

  Devon knew about the handheld Ion Mobility Spectroscopy units that had become the go-to tool for detecting hazardous materials. He felt a surge of relief. He didn’t mind admitting that chemical warfare scared him shitless. Looking around at the elaborate construction of the room, he had no doubt this was the centre of Stratton’s operation. If there were no chemicals here, they wouldn’t find them anywhere else.

  “No,” he told Ramsden. “We can strike a chemical bomb off our list. We’re dealing with something conventional, although I doubt there’ll be anything conventional about the way Stratton intends to use it. Whatever it is, I can’t help thinking we don’t have much time to find it.”

  Ramsden nodded in agreement. “We know that whatever it is was smuggled into the country in laptop battery containers. According to the ship’s captain who surrendered himself yesterday, he made a total of six deliveries, but we have no way of knowing if other couriers were also used. Stratton could have acquired dozens of these battery units and has God knows how much destructive power at his fingertips.”

  Devon leaned an elbow on the centre table and seemed to be engrossed in thought. Finally he spoke. “It seems to me that Stratton didn’t just whistle up an order for the latest variant of Semtex. This has been too long in the planning for someone like him to leave a trail with the usual arms and explosives dealers. Is there a possibility of anything in his past career that will point us to a source? He must have had dealings with some pretty interesting individuals while he played out his Queen-and-country charade. Can you get your people to do a thorough backtrack?”

  “No offence taken.”

  Devon shot him a puzzled look, before realising what he had said. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to tell you how to do your job. I was just thinking out loud.”

  Ramsden shrugged. “Don’t sweat it. I’ve had a team working on this for the past six hours. We’re going through every mission and every contact Stratton ever made while he worked for us. I’ve given instructions for dozens of redacted files to be cleaned up and every eyes-only dossier to be taken out of the vaults. If there’s something to be found we’ll find it.”

  He held up his hand to stop Devon from speaking. “Before you say it, we are also looking into Manfred Stelling’s background. We know that he came over the Wall sometime around 1985, but it is not yet clear how he ended up as a British citizen. Something tells me that Stratton played a part in his good fortune.”

  This time Devon couldn’t be stopped from commenting. “You’re hoping that somewhere along the line Stelling has been less circumspect than his boss about leaving a trail. Maybe he bought a piece of property or is renting a lock-up garage or has left a credit card trail we can follow?”

  “I admit it’s a long shot, but we have to chase down everything. We have also asked the Bank of England people to check back through all Stratton’s companies to see if any of them has been involved in property deals, no matter how innocuous. Unfortunately, I’m told an exercise like that could take more than forty-eight hours. There are just too many shell businesses involved.”

  Devon was impressed, but before he could say anything a woman walked forward and whispered into Ramsden’s ear. After a few minutes she walked away and Ramsden turned to Devon. “It seems like someone is looking in at what we’re doing here. Our tech people say the CCTV camera system is being monitored remotely, although there is no way of tracing it back to the source. I’ve ordered the system to be shut down.”

  “Wait!” Devon put his hand on Ramsden’s shoulder. “I have an idea”

  Stratton recognised the tall man who was standing with Ramsden in the centre of the basement. The photos he had of Mike Devon didn’t do him justice. Here was someone who radiated an air of menace, the sort of steely eyes and calm assurance that he himself used to show in his career days. When this was all over he would make a point of paying Devon a visit.

  He watched the two men in animated conversation, not quite understanding why the chief operative of the clandestine LonWash agency was overtly snuggling up to MI6. Surely the whole existence of Devon’s operation depended on keeping under the radar of the other spy agencies? Of course! It was a needs-must courtship, brought on by the realisation of all parties that they were powerless to stop him.

  As he stared at the laptop screen, he cursed inwardly for not adding audio to the video stream. He would have liked to hear what they were saying. He noticed a young woman approach Ramsden and soon afterwards Devon left the basement. Two minutes later Devon returned to the room, holding a large white board. The board was turned towards one of the basement cameras.

  It had writing scrawled across the surface. Stratton fumed as he read the message:

  Hi Carl, hope you’re enjoying the show.

  Don’t stay in one place too long.

  I’m coming to get you!

  Chapter 33

  THE FORD MONDEO police pursuit car rolled through the deserted entrance of the rundown industrial complex. Its tyres bumped on a recessed semi-circular track that once carried an electronic gate, part of which leant against what remained of a sorry-looking guard hut. The combination of smashed windows and the removal of its roof had caused the shed to collapse inwards, hiding the scorch marks of a failed juvenile arson attack a long time in its past.

  A wide concrete roadway stretched from the gate area towards a row of dilapidated warehouses, each standing forlornly against the brightening dawn sky. Patches of brown rust stains and scores of missing corrugated panels provided clear evidence of the abandonment of structures that once covered all manner of industrial manufacturing activity. The combined effects of a global recession and cheap imported goods had wiped out the laid-back optimism of the eighties and nineties.

  WPC Janice Barlow nursed a Starbucks plastic-topped cup as her partner, Tony
Mountford, aimed the car up the centre of the weed-covered road. The needle on the speedometer vibrated on the ten MPH mark, a far cry from its usual position while patrolling the busy motorways into London.

  Barlow and Mountford had been pulled from traffic duties to join in the hunt for a mail delivery truck. It seemed every available police vehicle had been similarly commandeered into the service of one security agency or another. As usual, the cops on the ground weren’t told much, other than the normal jargon-busting directives. Suspect is considered armed and dangerous. Approach with caution. Call for back-up.

  Janice absentmindedly caressed an e-Fit, wondering if her superiors meant she should call for back-up before approaching with caution, or should she simply walk up to the suspect and ask him to wait until she radioed in a report. She smiled at the procedural contradictions.

  “What’s so funny?” Mountford asked.

  “Nothing. Let’s get this over with. I’m due off shift in an hour.”

  The car passed the first four derelicts, all minus their doors, the gaps providing a look into empty shells. The doors of the fifth building were intact.

  “Pull over. I’ll check this out.”

  Barlow climbed out of the vehicle before it came to a rest. She walked to a small wicker gate and pushed down on a recessed handle. The door was locked. She stood back, eyed the frontage, and started to walk to the side of the structure.

  Mountford leapt from the car. “Janice, wait. Get back in the car and we’ll do a drive-round.”

  “Don’t be such a wimp, Tony,” she teased.

  By the time Mountford reached into the car to switch off the engine, Barlow had already disappeared around the side of the building. There were no windows to look through so she fast-paced to the rear, her mind already conjuring up an image of slipping into a hot bath back at her two-room rental.