The Kill Zone

by Chris Ryan

  ‘How long till we can make the call?’ Colley demanded.

  A young man with thick-rimmed glasses and prematurely thinning hair answered. ‘We’ve sourced a recording of Habib Khan’s voice for the comparison, sir,’ he said as he continued to type into his terminal. ‘It’s an extract from a TV appearance he made on Question Time about three months—’

  ‘I don’t need to know what it is, man,’ Colley interrupted. ‘Just tell me how long until we’re ready to get an ID match.’

  ‘We’re about three minutes away, sir.’

  ‘Inform Hereford. Get them on standby.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ came another voice from behind him.

  Colley looked back up at the screen. The red circle pulsated slightly. He tried to look for the positives. There weren’t many: just that the area covered by the kill zone didn’t include Westminster.

  At least, not yet . . .

  16.05 hrs.

  The ops room at Hereford was smaller than that at Thames House, but it was no less full of activity. Fifteen men from the Special Projects team, plus four helicopter flight crew, had congregated and were tensely waiting for their instructions. Like Jack, they had already tooled themselves up. Each man carried an MP5 and a Sig 226 in expectation of close-quarter battle, and they were dressed in digital camo, body armour and armoured helmets. In addition, they all wore abseil and radio harnesses, and they all had bags with NBC suits and SF10 respirator masks slung across their arms.

  The ops officer dotted around like a pinball, anxious to issue instructions but not knowing yet what the instructions were. Everyone knew, though, that it wasn’t a matter of when the SP team were to be inserted, but where and how.

  The hit man was ushered in. They’d got a name off him now – Aamir Hussein – and the fucker looked terrified. His eyes darted around at all the grim-faced men in this large, busy room; when they fell on Jack he became twice as scared, and that suited Jack down to the ground.

  The ops officer’s voice above the hubbub. ‘Word from Five,’ he shouted. ‘GCHQ are online. Make the call.’

  Elliott Carver approached Jack. It was rare for the CO to take an operational role, and Jack knew a chaperone when he saw one, but there was no time to feel sore about that. ‘Follow me, Jack,’ he said. ‘We’ll do it together.’

  Jack nodded, then roughly grabbed Aamir’s arm and followed the CO to a nearby room. It was quiet here. It needed to be. Any telltale noises in the background and they’d give the game away. There were several wooden chairs in the room: Jack pushed Aamir onto one of them, but he and Carver remained standing. Jack towered over the hit man and handed him back his mobile phone.

  ‘You fuck this up,’ he said, ‘I’m going to hurt you. You know I will, don’t you?’

  Aamir nodded vigorously.

  ‘You’re going to make the call,’ he said. ‘You’ll say exactly these words: “Is that you?” If he doesn’t reply, you repeat those words until he does. Then you say, “It’s Aamir, Harker’s dead.” If I hear you say anything else I’ll assume you’re delivering a covert distress call and by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll be begging to climb back into my bath again. Do you understand?’

  Aamir nodded.

  ‘Say, “I understand”.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Jack and Carver exchanged a look.

  ‘Do it,’ Jack said.

  16.10 hrs.

  Back at Thames House, everyone had focused their attention on the young technician with the thin hair. He looked nervous no doubt because he had not only David Colley but also the newly arrived Director General standing over his shoulder.

  From the terminal came the sound of a dialling tone, then the unsteady beeps of a number being dialled.

  It felt as if the whole room was holding its breath.

  A ringtone.

  ‘Answer it,’ Colley muttered.

  Two rings.

  Three rings.

  Four.

  A click. Then a generic voicemail message.

  Colley swore. ‘Get on to Hereford,’ he instructed. ‘Tell them to try again.’

  A minute’s pause.

  The dialling tone returned.

  The phone rang.

  Voicemail again.

  The men and women in the operations room started to murmur. They were long enough in the tooth to know when an operation was going pear-shaped.

  ‘Quiet!’ Colley shouted. ‘Go again!’

  He was chewing on the corner of his lower lip now, his eyes fixed on the technician’s screen. Once more there was a dialling tone. A ring.

  Once.

  Twice.

  And then a voice.

  ‘Yes?’

  A wave formation appeared on the technician’s screen; the young man started typing furiously into his keyboard. ‘Matching now,’ he breathed.

  ‘Is that you?’ A second voice, sounding a bit nervous.

  Silence.

  ‘Is that you?’ the second voice repeated.

  Silence.

  ‘Harker is dead.’

  Another silence. And then . . .

  ‘Do not return home. Avoid London, and you will survive to continue the fight.’

  A click.

  ‘Have you got a match?’ Colley demanded immediately.

  The technician continued to type.

  Silence in the room.

  And then the young man spoke.

  ‘It’s a match,’ he stated. ‘The guy on the phone is Habib Khan.’

  Colley felt a chill run through his veins. ‘Get back on to Hereford,’ he instructed in a loud voice that cracked slightly. ‘I need that unit in London and I need it here now.’

  16.20 hrs.

  Hereford ops room. The call came through. Carver gave the instruction. ‘Special Projects team, immediate action. Jack, give them the low-down.’

  Jack raised his voice and spoke briskly. ‘Our target is one Habib Khan. We’ve reason to believe he’s carrying a dirty bomb and our best guess is he’s using it to target the President at Westminster this evening. President or not, the device is capable of spreading enough contaminants to infect several thousand people within a radius of one mile, killing ten per cent within a month, up to half within a year.’

  He surveyed the team. Their grim faces mirrored the horror of what he was describing.

  ‘Our best intelligence is that the device is packed in a metal flight case, about the size of a small suitcase. Method of detonation is unknown, but if we get into close quarters with it, we need to be aware that a stray round could cause it to explode. We’re using frangible ammunition, but even so we need to keep discharges to a minimum. And we want to take Khan alive if possible.’ Jack and the CO exchanged a look.

  The ops officer spoke up. ‘Khan is in the general area of southeast London. He’s not near enough to where the President’s going to be to launch a direct attack, though, so we’re assuming that he’ll be on the move before long. That should help us narrow down his location, assuming he keeps his phone switched on. You’ll be set down at the heliport near Battersea to await further movement orders there. We’ll be in constant comms with the ops room at Thames House. Any questions?’

  One guy put his hand up. ‘Why the hell don’t they extract the President?’ he asked.

  ‘Good question,’ the ops officer said with a dark frown. ‘Can’t fucking answer it.’

  ‘All right,’ Carver interrupted. ‘You’ll get further instructions on the ground. Move!’

  The ops room started to swarm once more with activity.

  ‘Jack!’ Carver called.

  He’d been heading for the door, but he turned to see the CO gesturing at him, so he approached his boss. Carver tapped two fingers on his skull. ‘Head, Jack,’ he said. ‘Not heart. Remember what’s at stake. Thousands of people, not just one. Isolate the device first, then you can question him. Now’s not the time to get personal.’

  Jack sniffed. ‘Roger that, boss.’

 
On the southern boundary of RAF Credenhill, two Agusta A109 helicopters were loaded and ready to fly, rotary blades spinning. The men of the Special Projects team ran towards them, heads bowed, then bundled in, eight soldiers and two flight crew to an aircraft. Jack’s was the first to leave the ground, gaining height quickly before spinning mid-air and, its tail slightly raised, accelerating eastwards towards London.

  Jack checked his kit, his weapons and the contents of his ops waistcoat before fitting his earpiece. The sound of conversation from the ops room filled his senses. Estimated flight time, fifty-eight minutes. Police liaison waiting at landing zone. Await further instructions on the ground.

  ‘Who’s the raghead with the phone, Jack?’ a voice shouted over the noise of the engines. Jack looked up. It was Fly Forsyth.

  ‘Just some dickhead who thought the world would be a better place without Jack Harker in it.’

  Fly grinned. ‘Who hired him? Ex-girlfriend?’

  Jack forced himself to smile and Fly noticed how strained it was. ‘Maybe it was the adjutant,’ he joked to relieve the tension. ‘Jack, care to share how you know so much about our target?’

  ‘Not really.’ The guys seemed to accept that.

  Jack looked out of the window at the patchwork countryside speeding below. A memory flashed across his mind: the sandy view from the Black Hawk in Helmand, just moments before it went down. He pushed it away. He had to keep his mind on the job in hand. Dwell too much on the last few days and he wouldn’t just be ineffective. He’d be a liability.

  Silence in the heli. There was none of the usual pre-op banter. Just eight men carefully preparing themselves and their kit. Everyone seemed to understand that the situation they were heading into was serious.

  The sort of operation from which they could very well not return.

  27

  17.01 hrs.

  Thames House. David Colley looked up at the enlarged map of London. The red circle continued to pulsate.

  ‘CO19 teams in place,’ a voice called. ‘Target’s location perimeter secured.’

  Colley took a deep breath. It was all very well putting armed police around the area of Bermondsey defined by the red circle, but they all knew it would be the easiest job in the world for Khan to slip through such a cordon. There simply weren’t enough CO19 officers to secure an area like that effectively. Lack of personnel wasn’t their only problem, though. If Khan got even a whiff that they were on to him, he might be encouraged to detonate his device early. Even if he was nowhere near the President when it happened, the death toll would be devastating. They had to keep this covert until the very last minute. Only when they had a precise location could they hit him hard and fast.

  Time passed. A strange sense of helplessness descended upon the ops room.

  ‘What if he knows we’re tracking him?’ the DG asked. ‘What if he’s left his phone somewhere just to put us off the track.’

  Colley turned to his boss. The balance of power seemed to have shifted, and Daniels was giving the impression of being entirely in Colley’s hands.

  ‘Then we’re in trouble,’ he said. ‘But we know he was with the phone when they made the call from Hereford fifty minutes ago. That’s something.’

  They continued to wait.

  A sudden blur of voices. The red circle had disappeared. Within seconds, another one started to glow on the map of London. It had moved. Its centre was about half a mile further north of the previous circle.

  ‘He’s moving!’

  The ops room was alive again.

  ‘Sir!’ a voice called across the room. It was Jackie, and she was gesturing to Colley. He strode over to her.

  ‘What is it, Jackie?’

  ‘The fix, sir. His phone’s connecting to two mobile masts.’ She pointed up at the screen. A second circle had appeared. ‘Where the two circles intersect, that’s where the phone’s broadcasting from.’

  Colley looked at the elliptical shape. It crossed the River Thames between Southwark Park and Shadwell.

  ‘Is he heading for the river?’

  ‘Hard to say, sir.’ And as she spoke, the shaded blue area of the kill zone moved half a mile further north.

  Colley raised his voice. ‘Inform CO19 of the new location,’ he instructed. ‘And make sure they’re discreet.’

  ‘We could close the river,’ the DG suggested from over Colley’s shoulder.

  Colley shook his head. ‘It would alert him.’ He addressed Jackie again. ‘Do we have satellite tracking on his possible locations?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, sir. We have people examining them in real time.’

  ‘Good. Speak to Hereford. Tell them there’s a possibility that he’s heading for the Thames.’

  He looked back up at the map. The red circles were like eyes, glowing at him balefully. Colley stared back at them.

  ‘Where are you, Khan?’ he said under his breath. ‘Where the hell are you?’

  17.28 hrs.

  ‘RAF Northolt. RAF Northolt. This is Air Force One.’

  ‘Copy, Air Force One.’

  ‘Requesting permission to land.’

  ‘Go ahead, Air Force One. You have full clearance.’

  Sean Barclay looked out from the control tower at Northolt. The evening sky was still a rich, cloudless blue. Perfect weather for the President’s arrival. Sean’s line of sight was clear. The airspace had been emptied of traffic for the arrival of Air Force One – regular holding patterns changed, military flights diverted to Brize Norton or elsewhere. And although he couldn’t yet see the President’s aircraft in the distance, his screen told him that it would be only a couple of minutes before he saw the blue and white Boeing 747 emerge from the hazy skies in the distance.

  From his vantage point, he glanced down to the ground. Bloody Yanks, he thought to himself. They’d taken the whole place over. The previous day, a Globemaster had arrived with the President’s limousine – the Beast – which two Secret Service drivers had immediately taken off site to Buckingham Palace. Now there were three identical US Marine Corps helicopters, with Secret Service personnel swarming round them like bluebottles.

  Sean shook his head. Talk about over the top. Yesterday, one of these Secret Service guys had taken him to one side to explain that they’d chosen him to guide Air Force One down, like it was some great privilege. They’d run background checks on him, and Sean couldn’t help wondering why, if he and his colleagues were all trusted by the British Army, they couldn’t just be trusted by the Yanks. The agent had then explained to him certain security precautions. Secret Service – not RAF personnel – would escort the President directly to one of the helicopters. Once he was on board, all three choppers would take to the air. Whichever of them carried the President would be given the call sign Marine One.

  ‘You go to all this trouble every time the President takes a trip?’ Sean had asked.

  The Secret Service man’s face had remained impassive. ‘When the President takes a trip,’ he’d said, ‘it ain’t just a trip.’

  No shit, Sean thought to himself now as he continued to look out of the control tower. This was, quite literally, a military operation.

  He squinted back up into the sky. Far away, he thought he saw a dot of light appearing from the distance. He glanced down at his screen. The green dot with the President’s call sign and altitude had entered that part of the screen that included Sean’s field of vision.

  Air Force One was coming in to land.

  17.32 hrs.

  From the window of the Agusta, Jack saw the western outskirts of London come into view. Somewhere over Wormwood Scrubs Park they started to lose height, continuing across the urban sprawl to Hyde Park, where they veered more sharply to the south before coming in to land in the drab surroundings of the London Heliport just west of Battersea, and bang on the south bank of the Thames. The helipad was surrounded by police liaison vehicles and other unmarked cars. As the two Agustas touched down and the Regiment unit spilled out on to the ground, Jack t
ook in the ten or so people waiting for them around the helipad – some of them uniformed police officers, others in suits he assumed to be a mixture of plainclothes and MI5. ‘Who’s in charge?’ he shouted above the noise of the chopper’s blades.

  An armed police officer stepped forward. ‘We think he’s on the river. Hereford have requested police dive teams meet your guys with equipment. They’ll be here within a minute.’ He pointed at the water where, among the many boats passing up and down the Thames, a long vessel covered with dirty, multicoloured cargo boxes was drifting up towards the bank. ‘Your transport,’ stated the police officer.

  Jack didn’t need to hear any more. He turned back to the unit who had assembled in a group a little way from the two helis. ‘Dive team!’ he shouted.

  Six of the guys – all of them members of Boat Troop – immediately peeled off from the others and ran towards him. At that moment, an unmarked white Transit van screamed on to the helipad. The moment it stopped, two men jumped out of the front, opened up the rear doors and started unloading equipment on to the tarmac.

  Jack and the rest of the Boat Troop guys ran up to them. ‘Get changed!’ he shouted. ‘Intel suggests the target’s on the river.’

  There was no fucking around. All seven of them stripped out of their operational clothing and started changing into the dive gear. The black drysuits went on first, followed by tight neoprene hoods and black boots; after this second skin went their ops waistcoats and firearms, followed by a weight belt to ensure they kept well hidden under the surface. Each man attached a dive mask with a Dräger rebreather and a matt black oxygen canister. These compact, closed-circuit rebreathers would allow them to swim shallow without any telltale air bubbles rising to the surface. Each man took a black swim board, which had a large, illuminated compass that they would be able to see in the murky waters of the Thames, along with a depth gauge and a luminous timer; plus the various other bits of kit they needed for the covert boarding of a hostile vessel.

  Jack and the others carried their military fins – into which they would be able to fit their boots directly – and ran to the water’s edge. They tumbled in and swam to the nearby cargo vessel. They boarded, then hid among the cargo boxes.