by Ted Tayler
“Hindsight is a wonderful thing” said Erebus “we must concentrate our attentions on finding the bombers and the other possible players; then we need to isolate them and neutralise their effectiveness before we reach zero hour. Get me photos and identities of all the people who used the maisonette in MK now! Get the surveillance boys to hack into the CCTV cameras on Oxford Street; I need to know where these people are so we can inform the teams on site.”
There was a knock on the door. It was one of the surveillance team.
“Perfect timing!” said Erebus “What have you got for us?”
“We’ve found the outgoing message sir; it was too nondescript to get picked up initially. It was sent from Leicester on Wednesday and read ‘Tell them we’re fine for a late lunch tomorrow as planned.”
Erebus told Alastor to go back to the ice house with the operator and start digging for the data he required. He turned to Thanatos and Minos.
“I wish Athena was here! I know she’s in Harley Street as we speak, but I’d be a lot happier knowing that Phoenix was watching over her; he’ll be abandoning that duty and moving across to assist Rusty and the team.”
Thanatos had expected as much; the boss was very protective of his second in command. He had also given some thought to the outgoing message and its implications.
“That message confirms my suspicions” he said with a sigh “the other members of the cell will be in the station too. The sooner we know what they look like and locate them the better. The odds are stacked against us, but while we still have a chance then we must remain hopeful.”
Minos asked whether they should tip off the TFL authorities so that the station could be evacuated. Erebus wasn’t happy about going down that road because it risked showing their hand and keeping the Olympus Project under the radar was paramount. The pros and cons of the situation were discussed and anguished over while they waited for news.
Alastor returned to the drawing room with a folder and a brief smile.
“The people we had watching the maisonette were thorough; we have excellent photos of five young people. They have been identified as follows:
- Irfan Baqri, 20, student; born and raised in Birmingham
- Karim Rivzi, 20, student; born and raised in Nottingham
- Arshad Usman, 19, student; born and raised in Leicester
- Habeeb Rehman, 20, student; born and raised in London
- Zunairah Jaffri, 18, student; born and raised in London
All five have visited Pakistan in the past eighteen months; the first three stick to Western clothes and attend a college in MK doing various foundation courses. The last two travel into MK from London separately on a Monday morning and return to the city on Friday afternoon. They too attend the college, wear traditional costume and appear to lodge with family members during the week.”
“Excellent; get these photos and details to Rusty and Brad, the squad leaders in London immediately. Are the surveillance team any further forward with the CCTV yet? We have five young terrorists to find gentlemen and one of them is a girl!”
Colin was no longer outside the consulting rooms of Dr. Ramanayake; he was on Oxford Street heading for Top Shop. He didn’t see Athena and her parents emerge from the building. The cardiologist had informed them that Mrs. Fox was in urgent need of a bypass operation. Tinkering with her diet and prescribing medicines was futile; two of her arteries were so bad that she could suffer an ischemic stroke at any time.
The family were stunned; but Athena’s father didn’t bat an eyelid. He just asked Dr. Ramanayake “How much?”
The consultant made a call and by just after midday an ambulance car arrived to take Mrs. Fox to a private hospital in the West End. Her husband accompanied her.
Athena agreed to go home to fetch her mother’s things for a stay in hospital; she also wanted to add a couple of personal touches of her own. She left the consulting rooms at around ten past twelve.
Colin spotted Rusty on the pavement outside Top Shop. He stuck out a mile. Anyone less likely to shop there Colin couldn’t imagine. As the two men greeted one another, Colin recognised two other familiar faces from Larcombe standing ten yards away. He nodded to them.
“Fill me in Rusty. What have we got mate?”
“Suicide bombers, it’s a group of three blokes at least. They’re going to hit the station at half past one.”
“What’s the plan?”
“A squad raided their place in Milton Keynes this morning, but they missed them. They’ve followed them down and should be here anytime now.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Five mate, giving us nine in all.”
“How are we going to take them down?”
“I reckon we can Taser them if we can catch them off guard; one man in front to ask for the time or directions and one behind to put them out of action. Then we use the cars we travelled up in to get them well away from these crowds. Erebus has sent the paramedics up as back up, so once we know where they are parked up we can deliver any of these lads that cause us extra trouble to them. They will remove them to Larcombe after this is over.”
“The pet cemetery could be busy!”
“Let’s get somewhere quiet for a minute. I need to give you some kit; I know you weren’t carrying when you came up for this babysitting job. Have they got a loo in this shop do you know?”
In two minutes Colin and Rusty were in the gents’ toilet on the basement floor. Rusty passed Colin a Taser and also handed him the PSS pistol.
“I brought this too mate. I know you liked it.”
“Thanks; it’s quiet, but if I have to use it we might have a job explaining to the transport police why we’re carrying a lad with a big hole in his head.”
When they got back out onto the street, the two guys from Rusty’s team joined them.
“The MK squad are here; three this side of the street and two outside Next directly opposite. Their leader is on this side; he wants to talk to you.”
Rusty wandered up the street; despite the civilian clothes it wasn’t too difficult for the two ex SAS men to work out who was who. They shook hands and started to work out their plan of attack. A minute later Rusty and Brad received a call from Larcombe.
It was Erebus.
“I’m sending you details of the five terrorists.”
Rusty didn’t react; there was a slight tensing of his jaw line, nothing more.
“There are three bombers; all three will be dressed in Western clothing and carrying backpacks. The other two, a man and a girl, are probably arriving at the station by tube. They will be in traditional clothes, possibly a thobe for him and an abaya for her; she will have her head covered with a niqab. One or other of these two will be detonating the bombs remotely using a mobile phone. Our best intelligence suggests that the three bombers will enter the station over the next hour or so and they will plan to reach one of the many busy intersections at one thirty. We believe that the other two may be positioned so that they can see their fellow cell members and call the numbers at the optimum time to cause the greatest loss of life.”
“Okay boss” said Rusty “do you have eyes on the three above ground?”
“Still waiting for news; unfortunately there are a lot of cameras to choose from.”
“I’ll pass the details of the three bombers to our teams and they can set about taking them out of the game.”
“Good hunting” said Erebus and ended the call.
Rusty and Brad revised their plans, now they had the new information. Brad split his team into two groups of two and briefed them of their roles; Rusty gave his two men their instructions too. It was agreed Rusty, Colin and Brad would comprise the team responsible for tackling the underground threat.
Athena had collected a bag with her mother’s things from home and was now setting off to hunt down those personal items she wanted to pick up, before heading into the West End to visit her Mum in hospital. She was walking to Sloane Square tube station for a D
istrict line train that after a brief changeover at Victoria would get her to Oxford Circus.
Rusty, Colin and Brad were preparing to go into the station. Brad checked with Team 1 who had been assigned to Irfan Baqri. No sighting.
He got the same report from Team 2 who had been looking out for Karim Rivzi. At the same time Rusty contacted Team 3. No sign of Arshad Usman.
Rusty’s mobile rang again. It was Larcombe.
“They’re on the move; we have them on CCTV; all three have just come out of Primark near Marble Arch. They’ll be with you in fifteen to twenty minutes.
Rusty rang the paramedics, who were sat in the ambulance in 24 7 Parking not much more than five minutes away. They were primed and ready to move at a second’s notice.
Irfan, Karim and Arshad had split up; Irfan had crossed over the street and the other two followed ten to fifteen yards behind. As they approached Oxford Circus itself Karim moved ahead of Arshad. They were well schooled in how to enter their kill zone with the minimum of attention. As far as any staff or transport police at the station would have been concerned, they were your typical student. They were casually dressed, not in any particular hurry to get where they were going and looked a little moody. No different to millions of teenagers the world over.
The ambulance containing the paramedics eased into position. There were two men in the front and two in the back. The busy streets of London are so used to seeing emergency vehicles that no one batted an eyelid; if there had been a young policeman patrolling the area he would have just walked on past. As it was there were no policemen in sight.
Team 1 struck first. Irfan saw the entrance to the station and steeled himself to walk towards his destiny with his head held high. A man appeared in front of him and Irfan almost collided with him.
“Watch where you’re going mate” said the ex SAS agent. Irfan tried to sidestep him but suddenly he felt something pressed against his neck from behind. The Taser delivered an electrical current that interfered with Irfan's neuromuscular system, temporarily incapacitating him; or to put it the way Rusty had described it when he had trained his men at Larcombe ‘they go down like a sack of shit; but they’re right as rain in no time.’
The back doors of the ambulance opened and the paramedics helped Irfan into the vehicle. The doors closed and the ambulance moved further up the street. In the ambulance Irfan’s arms and legs were being secured, his mouth taped and the backpack removed.
Karim and Arshad should have made up the distance between themselves and Irfan and seen what was happening; even with them having to cross the busy street. However Teams 2 and 3 had neutralised them in much the same manner and they were both lying stunned on the pavement. The driver and his mate left the ambulance and helped the agents get the two terrorists into the back. They were dealt with just like Irfan, trussed up like a turkey for Christmas dinner. All three bombers were now out of the game!
The teams reported their progress to Rusty and Brad and the ambulance headed as far away from the crowds in Oxford Street as possible. They needed to get the bombs made safe before half past one. The advantage of having so many skills at your disposal when working for an outfit like Olympus was that ingenious solutions for tricky situations were commonplace.
The ambulance carried all the usual medical paraphernalia you would expect, but on one wall there was a microwave oven sealed with additional metal tape on the edges to provide a Faraday cage as near as made no difference. The cell phones had been rapidly removed from the backpack bombs and wrapped in aluminium foil, effectively cutting off communication. When the terrorists called their target phones and expected to detonate the bombs their call would not be received. If the science bit worked!
The three men underground had spread out and were covering as much of the upper levels of the station as they could. They were on the alert for the arrival of the remaining two terrorists; all three pairs of eyes were trained in the direction from which incoming passengers would emerge.
Rusty could just see Colin on the far side of the busy concourse and gave him the thumbs up to indicate that the first part of the mission had been a success. It was now twenty past one.
Colin breathed a sigh of relief; those three young men wouldn’t be bringing their version of ‘Death in the Afternoon’ to Oxford Circus today! Where were the other two though?
Habeeb and Zunairah were making their way separately towards the surface. They had arrived from Victoria a few minutes earlier. Everything was going smoothly; they would soon see Irfan, Karim and Arshad. Together the five of them would cause mayhem and fear in the centre of the capital city.
For the two students who had steadfastly refused to become westernized, despite having been born and brought up in the UK, it was politics rather than any religious fanaticism that drove them.
It was they who had recruited the other three at college. They persuaded the three students that they were discriminated against by the society they thought had nurtured them, and although they grew up in Britain, they were not considered British by many. They exploited their Muslim identity crisis and helped them develop a more radical interpretation of Jihad, encouraging them to embrace activism as a way to combat the alienation they felt and seek revenge for the injustices that young Muslims suffered in Britain. They had been vulnerable subjects and followed their mentors like lambs to the slaughter.
Habeeb and Zunairah emerged from the underground and positioned themselves in their appointed places. They looked across the concourse for their colleagues; there was no sign of them! What was keeping them? It was almost twenty eight minutes past one!
Colin saw Habeeb first. He swiftly scanned the same side of the building for the girl. There she was! He called Rusty immediately.
“I’ve got eyes on them both Rusty! We’ve got a problem mate; they’re both carrying backpacks. There were five bombers not three!”
Rusty signalled to Brad to move closer to where Colin is standing. The three men were now poised, ready to react as soon as they saw any movement from either terrorist to use a mobile phone. Because he couldn’t see Irfan and the others Habeeb hesitated; should he make his call or should he wait a little longer?
Brad called his men from Teams 1 and 2; they were on standby in the entrance hall of the station; the ambulance crew hadn’t needed everyone in the vehicle while they transferred their prisoners to a safe place. Six ex SAS men were ample for three lads. Brad learned that the ambulance was on the return journey and two paramedics plus Team 3 were standing guard over the three would be bombers.
The area was teeming with people rushing to and fro; Rusty decided to take out Habeeb Rehman first. He ordered Team 1 to create a disturbance; something to distract the terrorist. The sound of someone shouting about a lost wallet could suddenly be heard over the general hubbub, a scuffle broke out a few yards away from the male terrorist. Rusty had used the ploy to cover the ground between them quickly and was on top of Habeeb in seconds. He had taken him down, before he had time to blink.
Zunairah was looking left and right; she couldn’t see Habeeb! Where were the others? It was time. She got her mobile phone out of her purse.
Colin was still watching her. Someone strode across his eye line. He recognised that walk! It was Athena! She had a couple of shopping bags and a large bunch of flowers and was heading for the entrance to the trains!
“Athena” he shouted “down now! Hug the ground!”
She spins around and sees Colin; she can’t work out why he’s there in London, but the urgency in his voice convinces her that she’s in danger. She darts around the nearest corner and crouches down by the wall, with her hands over head.
Zunairah starts to dial. She looks directly at Colin who is now moving towards her, dozens of people are pushing and shoving at him as panic starts to take hold. Women are screaming; children are in danger of being trampled underfoot. A small crowd are showing an unhealthy interest in Rusty as he frogmarches the disorientated Habeeb out of the station with one
of his team.
Colin draws his pistol as he gets nearer to Zunairah; her phone is ringing out but nothing is happening. The eyes that are staring at him from the narrow slit of the niqab are full of hatred. She dials again. Colin is a foot from her now; he raises the gun and shoots her between the eyes. As she slumps to the floor Colin sees Brad with one of the paramedics running towards them. The paramedic has a stretcher.
Colin lets them scoop up the dead girl and rush her away. He follows them after he has grabbed Athena by the arm. She was cowering down, clearly frightened and traumatised after her past experiences. Colin thought she looked as if she was trying to say something to him, but she was struck dumb with shock.
One minute later the ambulance is pulling away from the station into the busy traffic. Colin is on board. Zunairah’s body is on one side; Habeeb is tied up securely on the other. Rusty is guarding him.
“Where are the others?” asked Colin.
“Brad and the rest of the team members are making their way to where we have stashed the terrorists. They are using the transport they came down in from Milton Keynes” replied Rusty “ Olympus think of everything, you know that mate; we dropped the other three off at a safe house near St George’s Fields. It’s about ten minutes drive.”
“Go on Rusty; say it.”
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Until you called me in on this caper, my whole concentration for the past couple of days has been on keeping Athena safe; Erebus wants her around to carry on Olympus after he’s gone. I didn’t think; I just yelled out.”
Athena stared at him; realisation suddenly dawning.
“You’ve been following me!”
“Only following orders” he replied sheepishly.
Rusty looked at the two of them and wondered if he might have missed something; Phoenix had a thing for her! Who would have thought! He decided to change the subject; they had better get back on track regarding the terrorist cell.