by Gulvin, Jeff
‘Now.’ Tal-Salem spoke into his mobile phone.
The skip lorry suddenly accelerated and raced through the open gate. No oncoming traffic, the road already cleared by the outriders and lead car. It bumped down the pavement and careered across the road, smashing into the side of the prison truck. The truck driver lost the wheel and the truck lurched across the road, leaping on to the pavement. People started screaming at the bus stop. The two workmen pulled on ski masks and ripped open their jackets, revealing the Vikhrs. Seven hundred rounds a minute: they sprayed the street in a burst of suppression fire. They were joined by the other two gunmen from the door to 105A. One firing, one loading, a continuous burst of gunfire.
At the intersection ahead, the outriders froze for a second. As they did so, a motorbike pulled out from behind the church and the pillion shot one of them in the chest. The other saw his colleague fall and screamed off up the road.
Tal-Salem gunned the Range Rover and backed it round and out of the gate. Already the driver of the skip lorry was out and on top of his cab, attacking the roof of the prison truck with the angle grinder. In the back, tarpaulin off, the other man hoisted the belt-fed PKS and sprayed rounds at the helicopter.
In the lead car, Nicholson heard the bang and lurched round in his seat. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. Then on the radio, ‘SEG. Hanwell Broadway. Repeat. Hanwell Broadway. We’re under attack. Urgent assistance required. Repeat. Urgent assistance required.’
Already his driver was backing the car at speed, the window rolled down so he could direct the traffic in the built-up area. In the front car, the officers were already dead. No time to get out, no time to raise their guns. Four men, two from either side of the road, no more than ten yards away, sprayed their car with bullets that went through the doors and windows, passing through body armour like water, kicking their bodies in the seats so they jerked and leapt like marionettes. Windows shattered, the sound of glass breaking, ringing out with the gunfire. People fell screaming, some of them running for cover, some of them hit by bullets that pinged off concrete and walls and the roofs of the car and prison truck.
At the church end of the Broadway, Nicholson and his driver reversed hard. A motorcyclist raced alongside them. His pillion lobbed something into the driver’s lap. Nicholson screamed, a high-pitched wail above the wail of the siren, long and icy, like a vixen screeching in the night. The grenade blew—phosphorus—and three men and their car were burning. Nicholson, on fire, voice torn away by the pressure wave bursting his lungs, lurched from the car, as it crashed into another parked by the side of the road. He could not hear. Before the flames took his eyes he could see the carnage, but it was silent, no sound—the blast had deafened him. His clothes were on fire, hair on fire, gun melting against his hip. The others couldn’t get out; the driver burned into his seat by the magnesium heat of the incendiary, his legs shattered by the explosion. Nicholson flapped at his face with arms ablaze and couldn’t cry out. He thought of his wife, his children, his parents, then he pitched forward on to the pavement.
The police Range Rover raced forward as soon as the occupants saw the skip lorry cross the road. The MP5 man kicked open his tailgate with the heel of his boot, ready to spring out as soon as the car stopped. As he did so, two motorcycles suddenly accelerated at him, shots rang out, and the two outriders, still at the first set of lights, pitched off their machines. The MP5 man tried to level his weapon, but the car swerved and his eyes balled as the bikes got to him at speed. And then the pillion, arcing back his arm, lobbed the fragmentation grenade into the back of the car. Desperately, the officer searched for it, saw it, reached, and it rolled. Two seconds, three, four, the bike was screaming down the road, already doing seventy miles an hour past the burning lead car. The grenade blew out the windows on the Range Rover, the doors billowing with the pressure and blast impact. The roof buckled upwards; the car was lifted off its wheels and dumped on to the ground. The MP5 man looked at his lower body where his legs should have been and all he could see was the hole in the floor, where the blast had impacted.
The policeman in the passenger-seat stumbled on to the road, hands to his ears, fighting the blood that rushed into his mouth from ruptured lungs. The driver sat where he was, head rolling to one side. The four men on foot stopped firing. Sirens cried in the distance. The policeman from the Range Rover stumbled into a shop doorway and reached for his radio. It came away useless in his hand. He sat down, no sound. People, he could not hear, crying; faces broken up with shock and fear. He looked at his tattered uniform, pulses of blood pushing from cuts in the cloth all over his body. He looked up into eyes that hunted him from behind a black ski mask. The man wore grey overalls, like a flying suit. The policeman fumbled for his Glock, somehow managed to draw it. Then a spray of shells ripped through twenty-four layers of Kevlar and tore his body to shreds.
Tal-Salem had the Range Rover backed up to the prison truck, and was watching the precision of the suppression fire. He looked at the second hand of his watch, while the man on the roof cut away with the angle grinder. He was through, reached down and flipped the lever. The roof popped on all three cubicles and he offered his hand to Ismael Boese, the Storm Crow. Boese was up, on the roof of the truck, pausing for one moment to take in the scene of devastation: two burning police cars, one so shattered by gunfire that there were more holes than bodywork. He leapt on to the back of the skip lorry, then into the Range Rover. The man with the angle grinder looked down at the two unarmed SEG men in the second and third cubicles of the prison truck. He took out his pistol and shot them both in the head. Then he leapt to the ground and into the back of the Range Rover. The other man was already there; the PKS, complete with uplifted tripod and ammunition belts, on his lap.
Tal-Salem looked at his watch. Ninety seconds from start to finish. Police cars were arriving. One of the men in the back of the Range Rover lobbed an incendiary device into the back of the skip. ‘For later,’ he said and sat back. Tal-Salem drove quickly, tearing across the open concrete lot. Boese sat alongside him, silent, eyes cold, no smile. Down Jessamine Road and left on to the one-way system at Boston Road. Fifty yards and they went right, across the zebra crossing, past Murphy’s Bar and then left down the narrow, terraced confines of St Dunstan’s Road.
On the Broadway, the motorcyclists were gone. The four gunmen raced through the passageway of 105A and cut into the road at the back. They shouldered their weapons and pulled on crash helmets before tearing off north, separate escape routes. The last one took Church Street just as the police outrider returned to the scene after making his report on the radio. The gunman looked back once—too long perhaps. Instinctively, the officer braked hard, one foot on the floor, and wheeled his BMW round as hard as he could, heel kicking up concrete dust as he did so.
Above them the helicopter was moving again, trying to follow the final four bikes. But they burst in four different directions. The gunman being pursued rode hard. Glancing behind in a life-saver move, he spotted the policeman hard on his heels. He gunned the engine, dipping the clutch and lifting the stolen Yamaha into a wheelie, front end almost above his head. He dipped through traffic, shoulder dropping, knee out and back again. Behind him, the officer watched almost in awe at the man’s skill—popping through gaps that weren’t there, without the benefit of lights or siren.
Tal-Salem braked hard at the end of St Dunstan’s Road and swung right on to St Margaret’s, before accelerating to the end of it and hauling the wheel left with a screeching of brakes, and a whine and hiss from tyres biting deep into tarmac. He slowed then and cruised down Green Lane into the little bit of Hanwell village, past the Fox pub where the road ended by the canal at Oak Cottages. A white Escort van was parked there, and next to it, two Trials motorcycles. They all got out of the Range Rover. The man with the PKS loaded it into the back of the Escort, which was filled with rubbish from somebody’s house. He handed out three crash helmets from the front seats, then got back in and drove off. Tal-Salem passed
one to Boese. Already, the other man was on a bike, engine going and revving. ‘Teniel Jefferson,’ Tal-Salem said. ‘He fixes cars in Carson City, Nevada.’
Boese nodded, hands on the straps of his helmet. ‘El Kebir?’ he said.
Tal-Salem shook his head.
Boese was on the back of the bike, Tal-Salem got on the other one and they rode down to the canal, turning sharp right before taking off at speed, past the lock gates and along the wide towpath, with a screeching of engines and a blast of blackened exhaust fumes. They tore along the towpath and were past the Three Bridges before the first police car stopped at the carnage on the Broadway. A woman walking her dog was almost knocked into the water, as they screamed past at eighty miles an hour. The day before, the lead rider had ridden this route twice on his mountain bike. He knew that the Glade Lane Bridge would mean up the steps and around the house. They were there in under ninety seconds. He bumped the bike to the right, dropping his knee and almost flipping Boese off. Tal-Salem followed, up to the bridge, round the house, then back on to the towpath again. Forty-five seconds later they were at the recreation ground where the towpath petered out, beyond the Old Oak Tree pub. The fruit and vegetable van was already waiting for them, engine idling, back doors ajar. Leaving the engines still running, they ran the bikes into the canal with a hiss of steam. Then Tal-Salem and the other man threw their helmets into the water: only Boese kept his.
In the back of the van now, moving slowly along the common, Boese pulled on a set of leathers and took the batch of documents from Tal-Salem. At the top of the road another biker was waiting, this time squatting on a GBR 900 Fireblade in black and yellow, with fumes rising from the massive exhaust. Boese jumped down, climbed aboard and two minutes later they were weaving a path through traffic, past the Western International Market that had been opened along with Nine Elms when Covent Garden closed down, and then hard left and the junction with the M4. The driver took the roundabout at speed, with Boese perched high on the back, head forward, the tarmac coming up rapidly as the bike was laid as low as it would go. Up again, flipping to the other side and accelerating with the front wheel off the ground. Up the slip road and roaring on to the motorway. One junction later, they were racing east on the M25. Two junctions further on and in less than four minutes, they were banked over, like an aircraft, on the approach to the M3.
The policeman on the BMW chased the biker hard through traffic. Voices crackled over his headset. Mass shooting, explosions on Hanwell Broadway, but he kept his eyes ahead, lights and sirens going, and watched his prey as he weaved his incredible path. He raced all the way north on Greenford Avenue, then hit the Ruislip Road west without even looking, his knee scraping at the kerb as he decked the bike sideways. The policeman was after him, but losing ground. The biker rode on, straight down the middle of Ruislip Road, with traffic fading either side of him. He stormed across the lights at the junction with Greenford Road and only just missed a van coming the other way. The policeman stormed after him. They flew along Ruislip Road, other cars and bikes joining in the pursuit, and they were gradually bearing down on him. The policeman could hear his chief inspector talking in his ear, the suspect on Ruislip Road was the only one they had. He leaned on the tank and wound the throttle open.
The roundabout with Margaret Road came up so fast the biker barely had time to see it. He leaned left and right, not slowing, and as he faded left off the roundabout, an old man in a Mazda pulled out from a side road. The biker saw him too late, eyes suddenly wide against his visor. He hit the red Mazda full on and went cartwheeling across the road, with the bike spinning after him. He did not remember landing.
The police rider pulled up, foot down, skidding his bike to a stop. He leapt off. The biker was a crumpled mass of grey boiler suit, his arms askew, one almost ripped off with the impact. His head was at a difficult angle, hunched up against a car door. He wasn’t moving.
Swann was still up on the sixteenth floor, talking to some colleagues from SO12, when the CAD started chattering in front of Campbell McCulloch. Swann could hear it whizzing through the printer, and he stopped talking, looked at the SO12 officer and then over his shoulder. ‘Sounds busy, Macca,’ he said.
McCulloch did not reply, his eyes fixed on the dispatch print-out in front of him.
‘Macca?’ Swann was on his feet. ‘What’ve you got?’
McCulloch looked up at him then, the colour lost from his face. When he spoke, the words chipped drily from his lips. ‘SEG’s just been hit.’
Swann felt a cold sweat move through his hairline. ‘Which SEG?’
‘The one from Reading Prison.’
10
SWANN DROVE, MCCULLOCH alongside him in the passenger-seat, out of the underground car park and along Victoria Street, blue strobe light flashing against the windscreen where it was mounted on the dashboard. Neither of them spoke, each lost in his own thoughts, Swann silently cursing as cars got in his way and he whipped along the wrong side of the road. He had never driven faster. The initial reports were that the SEG had been massacred, that was the word from the operators in the central command complex. It rang now like a death knell in Swann’s head, the weight in his gut, like a stone which would not dislodge. He saw again the faces of the crowds who had evacuated the capital in the wake of Boese’s bomb.
They arrived at the scene on Hanwell Broadway twenty minutes after the attack. The uniformed officers guarding the cordons told him that an incendiary device had gone off five minutes after the first assistance got there, sending yet another shock wave through them. Mercifully, no one else had been hurt, but they did not know whether there were any other bombs. Phil Cregan, the explosives officer from Cannon Row, was already there, along with a colleague. Swann stood with Cregan, just inside the inner cordon, and surveyed the scenes of urban desolation that greeted them. The three marked police cars were wrecked, the lead vehicle burnt to a cinder, with smoke still rising from the ruptured metalwork. The second Rover was so full of bullet holes that it looked like some macabre pincushion.
As he walked slowly along the Broadway, McCulloch next to him, Swann saw two paramedics lifting the lifeless bodies of the three SEG men who had occupied the Rover on to the pavement, where they were immediately covered with blankets. Swann paused by one blanket-covered corpse and could smell the thick, ugly scent of burning flesh. He glanced to see where the bulk of the newsmen were gathered farther down the road, then squatted on his haunches and drew the blanket back. It had been a police officer. Now the scorched shell of something vaguely human clutched at the pavement, limbs drawn up, face gone, hair gone, most of the flesh burned off, revealing reddened tissue, black and crisp at the edges. Swann looked for a long time: a colleague, a fellow officer. McCulloch drew breath sharply. Swann laid the blanket back over the bits of matted hair that stuck to patchy black skin on the back of the man’s head, then he got to his feet. He looked at the shop windows, blown out or shot out. Ten ambulances in all and still more arriving. He had no idea how many civilians had been killed or wounded. He looked at McCulloch and McCulloch at him. Superintendent Colson arrived with Garrod, the security group commander, walking in long coats, hands in their pockets, faces grim and grey and chipped stiff by the sight that greeted them.
Swann crossed to the smashed remains of the prison truck, the armoured glass in the windscreen shattered. The street was littered with shell casings. God only knew how many rounds had been fired. He could hear someone moaning and saw another team of medics working on a man slumped in the doorway of one of the shops, the windows of which were merely tatters of glass, like rags, hanging from their housings. Swann crossed to where they were trying to save his life—jacket open, blood pulsing from twenty different wounds. His face was the colour of salt and his eyes opened and closed, body spasming now and again with the shock. Blood had spilled from his ears and his mouth, congealing in heavy brown lumps at his jawline and over his lips. The blast from a pressure wave. If he survived, he would be deaf. The man’s ey
es flickered then, widened a fraction, seeming to focus on Swann, whose own features were stretched into a taut, hard line. They looked at one another and Swann saw sudden fear in the wounded man’s eyes. Then his head dipped and he died. For a moment the paramedics worked on, then one sat back, placed his hand on his partner’s arm and shook his head.
Swann moved back to the road, where the Range Rover was buckled, doors blown out of shape, roof rising like the peak of a mountain. The paramedics had lifted what was left of the rear MP5 man on to a stretcher, part of one of his legs still hanging out of the back window. Swann looked up where the whump whump of a helicopter diverted his eyes. He could see a TV crew filming from the open fuselage doorway. Colson came up behind him.
‘Jack?’
Swann turned.
‘They’ve got one alive.’
‘One of the attack team?’
Colson nodded. ‘Motorcyclist. Some of them got away on bikes, according to India 99. This one was chased by one of the SEG outriders and hit a car on some roundabout out to the west. They’ve got him on life-support at Ealing Hospital.’ He paused. ‘I want you to get down there. This is an exhibits job now. Once the fatalities are cleared, we’ll need to zone the area.’
‘You going to let the press in?’
‘Not for a long time yet.’ Colson’s voice stuck in his throat. The skin of his face was pallid like bad parchment. So was Garrod’s, who was talking on his mobile phone by the advertising hoardings that boarded the vacant lot.