Absence of Mercy

by Joe McCoubrey

  “We’re running out of time!”

  “Don’t you think I know that? If Stratton gets wind that this place is a bust he’s likely to step up his timetable and detonate immediately. Christ, we could get news of an explosion any minute now.”

  Devon dropped his eyes to the floor and stared at a spot for more than a minute. “We have to buy time. There’s no way Stratton can know what’s happening here unless….”

  “Unless what?” Ramsden snapped.

  Devon smiled. “The way I figure it, the bomb at the front of the building was meant to be detonated here. The one that Stelling carried into the shop must have been intended for transit to another location. Nothing else makes any sense.”

  “I forgot to tell you,” Ramsden said, “we found a crude diagram in the pocket of Stelling’s trousers. It was a scribbled linear map of part of London, with an X placed in the middle of a car park at Saint Margaret’s Church, close to the rear of the House of Commons. We think he was preparing to drive there when you showed up, although we’re not sure why he carried the bomb back from the garage into the shop.”

  “That’s easy,” Devon beamed. “He was trying to reach the detonator phone and wanted to bring the whole place down with him.”

  Doyle stepped in between the two. “Guys, let’s not get off track here. Didn’t someone mention about buying us some time?”

  “Yes,” Devon responded. “The only way we can make Stratton believe things are still okay is that we provide him with an explosion. By now, he’s across town somewhere and has a second mobile to trigger the device located at the front of the shop. We can’t disappoint him.”

  “That’s madness,” Ramsden snorted. “We have no way of knowing when he will activate the timer.”

  “Of course we do,” Devon beamed. “We have the receiver mobile phone. As soon as it’s pinged we can trigger a safe explosion of our own, something with enough noise and smoke to make Stratton believe the little shop has gone up. I’m guessing here, but there’s no headline value in this location other than to create a diversion away from his primary targets. He’ll have to allow a window to draw security resources to the Woodburn Road. There’s your bought time.”

  “Brilliant!” Ramsden was already jumping from the ambulance as Devon turned to Doyle.

  “Alan, help me outta here. We’ve got to get moving...”

  “Whoa, Mike, you heard what the doc said. You need to take it easy. Let Ramsden and the Met run down Stratton. You’ve already done more than your fair share.”

  Devon ignored him and rose unsteadily to his feet. “There’s no way we can rely on cameras picking out Stratton. We have to figure out where he’s going and we have to get there ahead of him. Tell our analysts to recheck the purchase of the Woodburn Road property. See if anything else pops up among deals done by the same company. There’s got to be one more location for us to find.”

  Chapter 40

  FOUR HOURS. Two hundred and forty minutes. Fourteen thousand and four hundred seconds. And Carl Stratton had to endure every one of them.

  Move here, walk there. Try to look inconspicuous. Avoid security cameras, stay off the streets, browse through department stores, visit one restaurant after another. There’s only so much coffee the body can take.

  But the waiting was now over.

  The Victoria Embankment was busy with the customary assortment of office workers, sightseers, and general commuter foot traffic shuffling backwards and forwards in the endless motion of city life.

  No-one took any notice of Stratton as he reclined on a bench and stared at the mobile phone nestling in his left hand. According to the Nokia’s backlit analogue clock, it was precisely eleven-forty-five. He double-checked with his wristwatch. Both timepieces were in agreement.

  He tore off the piece of paper with the preset number. He wouldn’t need it. The number was already encoded in a speed-dial sequence. Printing out the full ten digits was merely a precaution in the event of a device failure. He knew he could quickly get to a public phone inside one of the many hotels dotted around the area.

  He took one last glance around, as if expecting someone to stop what he was about to do. The sea of apathetic faces told him there would be no heroic last-ditch cavalry charge riding in to save the day.

  His right index finger moved over the keypad. He tapped the number two button twice and pressed enter.

  There was no going back.

  Three seconds elapsed.

  Nothing.

  Five seconds.

  Nothing

  Seven seconds.

  Nothing.

  Then he saw it. A large plume of dense black smoke, spiked by red and yellow flames, shot up over the north-western rooftops, five miles from where he was sitting. It took another second for the sound to reach him. It was an ear-splitting, thunderous roar that rolled across the landscape, blotting out the usual myriad of city noises, and turning countless thousands of heads in shock and bewilderment.

  People seemed to freeze on the spot. Some held their hands to their mouths to cover their amazement. Others simply pointed. Strangers began to converse, seeking answers from each other about what they were witnessing.

  Stratton rose from the bench and walked away in the opposite direction, ignoring attempts by frightened people to engage him in speculation.

  No-one seemed to notice that he was the only person on the Embankment who wore a smile as wide as the fast-moving Thames running alongside the cluttered pathway.

  Two bomb squad officers shared a rickety table in a deserted car park on the Woodburn Road. Sitting in front of one of them was a two-inch moulded plastic receiver wired to a portable electrical meter, its single arm resting on the twelve o’clock position. In front of the other officer was a black metal box with a button glowing red in the centre of the console.

  Both men had spent the last hour staring at their respective units.

  Directly in their line of sight, almost two hundred yards away, was a twenty-foot high chimney structure, made of large concrete rings commandeered from a roadworks site where they were waiting to be installed as sewerage tunnels. Instead of lying end-to-end, the rings were stacked on top of each other to create a funnel for the shaped charges that were crammed into the base unit.

  The materials were a mix of explosive and pyrotechnic components. They had worked for most of the morning to get the right blend of propellants, adding layers of gunpowder, aluminium hydroxide, magnesium and flash powder to create an exothermic chemical reaction that would emit smoke gas, flame and sound capable of mimicking a powerful conventional explosion. The base was packed with hard foam and steel plates to direct the blast upwards through the funnel and into the London sky.

  The best judgement was that anyone hearing and seeing the result from more than a mile away should be fooled into believing they were witnessing a catastrophic event.

  The theory was sound, but the hardened bomb squad officers knew the dangers too well. The hoped-for spectacle could prove nothing more than a damp squib. Then again, despite the precautions, the detonation could shatter the chimney, sending fragments of concrete hurtling over a large area. They had done the best they could. Now it was a matter of waiting and praying.

  A sharp buzzing sound blared from the receiver unit and the needle jumped off its static position.

  “We’ve got a signal!”

  The second officer calmly reached across to the metal box and pressed the red button. An electrical impulse shot down the double-insulated line of wires and disappeared into a hole at the bottom of the chimney.

  It took barely a second before a muted whoosh barrelled out from the top of the chimney, followed by a decibel-busting soundwave that shook the ground for hundreds of yards. Waves of flames and smoke shot high into the air, blotting out the faint morning sunlight and causing a thousand pairs of eyes to look heavenwards.

  The officer tore his gaze away from the pall to examine the funnel structure. It was intact, save for thin wisps of smok
e squeezing through the gaps where the concrete rings were stacked on top of each other.

  The two men at the table looked at each other for a moment. Then they raised their hands to connect with a high-five slap that was as much a gesture of relief as it was a celebration.

  Sirens screamed from more than twenty emergency vehicles attempting to manoeuvre through choked inner city streets on their way to the distant disturbance. Ambulances, fire and rescue tenders, police cars, and high-topped security trucks were forced to take to footpaths as they barged their way through the growing gridlock.

  Stratton took in the sights and sounds as he walked towards the grounds of the St Thomas Hospital on the Westminster Bridge Road. It was a typical hospital site, crammed with a hotpotch of buildings accommodating various external specialist wards, an Accident and Emergency Department, office complexes, and an assortment of staff and public car parks. He walked past the main building entrance, crossed a small well-manicured lawn, and made his way to the rear of the site, following the outstretched arms of a dozen pointed signs.

  A building on his left was announced in six-inch lettering as the central laundry facility, behind which he knew was a smaller building that served as the hospital morgue. A small pathway ran alongside the bleak, grey-stoned edifice and took him to a boundary fence fronted by a row of six-foot-high bushes.

  He took a quick glance around to make sure there were no prying eyes before pushing his way through the thicket.

  He smiled at the vista that opened in front of him. Manfred Stelling had done well when he selected this vantage point for him during a reconnaissance visit earlier in the year.

  The Thames stretched before him, its waters speckled by the reflection of the tall Palace of Westminster building sitting serenely on the opposite bank. The river lapped against the outer wall of the iconic building, a curious mixture of Gothic architecture and modern add-on buildings that spanned over 300 yards and sat within an eight-acre site. He knew from his research that there were eleven-hundred rooms, three miles of passageways and one hundred staircases scattered around the interior, all looked down on by more than eight-thousand works of art, the oldest of which are thirteen statues of medieval kings. It was a site that contained the House of Commons and the House of Lords and attracted more than a million visitors every year.

  Stratton was aware that regular sightseers are not allowed direct access to waterside views of the landmark. One of the many security measures in place around one of London’s most heavily-protected areas was a river exclusion zone, in this case the Lambeth Reach Zone, which prohibited vessels entering within seventy metres of the northern bank between Westminster Bridge and Lambeth Bridge. The only craft to be seen in this area are patrol boats operated by the Port of London Authority and the Met’s Marine Police Unit.

  Stratton gazed across at four of these vessels as they weaved aimlessly up and down the precluded stretch of waterway. They would not pose a threat to his plan.

  He looked to his right at the imposing façade of Westminster Bridge, barely two hundred yards from where he now hunkered on a grass bank. There was a lot more activity on that stretch of waterway, and somewhere among the colourful assortment of river traffic was the Maid of Inishfree. It was time to bring her into play.

  He removed the laptop from his briefcase, set it across his knees, and attached the joystick console.

  He had less than fifteen minutes before initiating his final act.

  Chapter 41

  DEVON HAD TO ADMIT the frantic show of emergency response vehicles was pretty impressive. The outward and visible signs were there for all to see, except for those who might have been afforded a closer look. For the most part, the convoy that raced towards Woodburn Road were older, out-of-service vehicles with only a driver and passenger aboard, each under instruction to put on as big a display of attention-getting as they could muster.

  All main frontline resources were held in reserve. Leave was cancelled, personnel were called back in from holidays, and in every borough men and women stood ready to respond to whatever the next few hours might throw at them.

  More than three-thousand uniformed and plainclothed police officers mingled in tube stations and bus depots, or simply walked a forlorn beat in hope of snatching a glimpse of their quarry. The centre of London was being blanketed, if only because there was nothing much else that could be done.

  Devon’s head throbbed despite a heavy dosage of Paracetamol tablets. He grabbed a black woollen sports hat to hide his bandaged scalp as he sat in the Range Rover passenger seat looking glumly over the crowds milling around Trafalgar Square. It was as good a place to be as any. At least it was central, and Devon was convinced the last throw of Stratton’s dice would be somewhere in this two-mile radius that housed the city’s best-known landmarks.

  “Anything yet?”

  Alan Doyle shared the rear seat with Chelsea Horgan. He looked up to catch a glimpse of Alfie Cheadle staring at him from the driver’s overhanging mirror. “Not since the last time you asked me twenty seconds ago.”

  Devon pivoted in his seat. “If we don’t catch a break soon, we’ll end up sitting here like a bunch of idiots while that fucker blows half of our capital to kingdom come. Somebody must have noticed something by now.”

  “Mike, everyone’s busting their balls, but we’re dealing with one clever bastard who’s not simply going to amble up to a security checkpoint and announce his intentions. There’s nothing much we can do until we get some decent information from somewhere out there. We’ve got to trust the Met boys to do their job.”

  Devon sank back into the seat. “Is there any significance in the location we got for Stelling’s target? If he intended to be in the vicinity of St Margaret’s Church then it’s obvious he was going for a detonation as close as possible to the Palace of Westminster. Does that tell us Stratton will go for a location at the other end of the city, something that would produce a widespread destructive area?”

  “Hard to tell,” Doyle responded. “We could second-guess ourselves all day and still not come close to knowing. The only thing we can be sure of is that the Woodburn Road attack was meant to be a diversion to pull us away from the rest of the city. Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of areas he could choose for a supplementary blast.”

  “No.” Devon said emphatically. “Stratton will be in charge of the main event. This is his baby, and there’s no way he’ll play a secondary role. Whatever he’s going after will be a far more significant target than Westminster.”

  Doyle threw his hands up in despair. “Take your pick. Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Oxford Street during Christmas shopping. The list is endless.”

  “What if we’re looking at this the wrong way?” All eyes turned to Horgan. She paused before continuing. “What if the Palace of Westminster is the only target? What if it’s a two-pronged attack? Seems to me that if you put two bombs within the same location you will be minus one big palace at the end of the day.”

  “I’m not convinced about the logic,” Devon told her. “People like Stratton go in for divide-and-conquer strategies that dictate not putting all your eggs in one basket. If a target is compromised there should always be a fallback location, somewhere far enough away to allow for a follow-up action.”

  “Yeah, but……”

  Horgan’s response was cut short by the sharp buzz of Devon’s sat phone. He looked at Tim Halloran’s name on the screen and hit the speaker button.

  “What is it, Tim?”

  “We might have something on that property search. We haven’t come up with any new buildings, but there’s an item here that might interest you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Well, it turns out the same company that bought the Woodburn Road premises was also involved in the purchase of a river cruiser in the same month. The money was funnelled through the same bank in the Caymans, and the same brokerage firm was used to tie up the deal within a matter of days.”

  Devon bolted upright
. “Where is this cruiser operating from?”

  “She has a long-standing berth at the Dinsdale Wharf on the Thames. Not much to look at by all accounts, but somebody paid a lot of money for her.”

  “What’s her name and where is she now?”

  “Goes under the title of Maid of Inishfree. I’ll contact the Port of London Authority to bring her up on their satellite-location screens.”

  Devon ordered Halloran to give top priority to finding the vessel and was about to end the call when he thought of something else. “”Tim, do we know if this cruiser has river access close to the Palace of Westminster?”

  “Well, there are restrictions about getting too near to the Palace, but yeah, that’s the general area where she plies her trade.”

  Three sets of eyes turned to stare incredulously at Horgan.

  Peter Ramsden was not having a good day. Despite acting as a conduit for the information flow from LonWash to the other agencies he had found himself frozen out by the hierarchal system of responsibilities that had seen a lot of territorial infighting over the past few hours. The Metropolitan Police had made it perfectly clear who was in charge. Everyone else, including Ramsden, was told to butt out.

  He could see their point, but it rankled nonetheless. The dangers of too many cooks in the kitchen were all too obvious, although he had hoped at the very least to be kept informed. For the past hour there was nothing, just a helpless phase of staring out through the fourth-floor window of the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross on the Albert Embankment.

  Sure, he got a lot of kudos for relaying valuable intelligence, thanks to Devon, but he wanted more than a spectator view. He had managed to keep the LonWash involvement under the radar, but he wondered how long that would last, particularly given Devon’s habit of continually popping up when least expected. How had the service ever let someone of Mike Devon’s calibre slip through the net?