Nom de Guerre

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Nom de Guerre Page 26

by Gulvin, Jeff


  Harrison and Penny had their guns trained on the crisis site, the bridge high in the superstructure. New Orleans SWAT would take the port side twelve to six o’clock, and Harrison and Penny moved off as the breachers came up with the battering ram. They stacked up at the external port side door, the breachers in front, Harrison second in the line, with Penny behind him. Harrison’s breath came as fog in his respirator, the air high and hoarse in his throat. His eyes were intent on that white metal door, as the breacher reached for the handle. It wasn’t locked and he wrenched it open. As he did so, Harrison slapped him on the shoulder and grabbed the two flashbangs from the back of his belt. ‘TWO UP,’ he yelled and lobbed the stun grenades over the first man’s shoulder. They burst in nine separate explosions, the boom echoing in the metalled confines of the hallway.

  Harrison was inside, crouching with his MP5, as the others came in behind him. They saw nothing, the hallway empty and silent. Smoke filled the confined space, but as it cleared they saw the flight of metal-runged steps that rose all the way to the top.

  Two-man clears, top to bottom and room by room; they would use flashbangs in every one of them. They moved off, up the stairs, keeping the line of the stack, each man covering his partner. Harrison and Penny started at the very top. They breached the door, tossed in the grenades, then entered the smoke-filled confusion. Nothing, the room was empty. They gradually made their way down. Still nothing—doors kicked open, smoke in their faces, weapons trained on emptiness. Then they came to the bridge. Harrison was lead man, Penny taking the grenades from him. Harrison bent and twisted the handle, then kicked the door open, foot sliding on the grimy metal step as he did so. Penny threw in the grenade and they entered, MP5s sighted, red lasers seeking for targets in the smoked grey of the bridge. Harrison saw two men trussed up on the floor, both of them in uniform.

  On the bank, the Puerto Rican reporter got behind the wheel of the KYZ Radio van and the woman with the blue-black hair sat next to him, long-lensed camera with a flashgun on her lap. The Puerto Rican fired the engine over and backed his way through the mass of panel vans at the very lip of the spillway. The sheriff’s deputies watched them for a moment, then stood back to let them through the perimeter, and they drove slowly back along the river road towards Highway 310. A Mexican sat in the back, four cellphones at his feet and three separate tape recorders.

  Swann stood and watched as the helicopters dumped the SWAT teams down the ten-inch-thick, fibred fast ropes. Like a long loose pole from the chopper to the deck. One by one, black-suited men slid down, then took up the cover position on deck. Beside him Logan stood tense, replaying in her head the last phone call from Boese, the pleading of his victim. Swann could still see the now-bloated body of the man hanging over the side. He felt sick. Byrne was watching with them, Fitzpatrick still inside the TOC, on the conference line to the SAC in New Orleans. It was three hours exactly since they had had the call from the Coastguard, too late for the elite Hostage Rescue Team. Swann glanced at Byrne, who looked on with a strange expression on his face. Then they heard the explosion. Swann stared at the ship as it lurched, but could not see anything immediately.

  Logan lifted a set of binoculars to her eyes. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘He’s blown the anchor chain.’

  Swann took the glasses from her and scanned the length of the ship. She was right, it was loose, the chains were blown at their deck housings, and the ship, high in already high water, was adrift on the river. Logan passed the word to the TOC and they scrambled the Coastguard. There were other ships and chemical installations downriver, not to mention the bridge by the Destrehan Plantation. Already, Swann could see the swiftness of the current begin to swing the ship fractionally. He left the TOC and moved up to the press corps, moving among them, walking between them, eyes peeled. He had seen this sight before—only not here in this macabre Louisiana sunshine, but on the streets of London. He looked at every face he passed, scanned every van, car, truck. He saw nobody he recognized, but the spectre of Storm Crow hung on his shoulders like a rancid shroud. He had the strange sensation that Boese could see him. A great clanging sound went up, then a shriek from the assembly and Swann looked back. The loose tanker had clipped the one behind it, as it was pulled downriver by the strength of the current.

  On board, Harrison was standing on the bridge with his gun at the heads of the trussed men, while Penny ensured the rest of the area was clear. Penny had found a submachine gun, set on semi-automatic and fixed in the broken window of the bridge. There was an electronic cam motor in the trigger guard, and, dangling outside, a slave flash unit. Penny spoke into the radio. ‘A team. Bridge now clear. Two found. Possible hostages.’

  Harrison still held the two tied men under the barrel of his gun; the echo of the flashbangs in his head, the shouting of SWAT men in his ears, yet there was the total concentration on his own line of vision. He didn’t hear the explosion, but he felt the sudden movement under his feet. He stared into the blue-green eyes of the grey-haired man on the floor and saw the sudden fear. He pulled the gag down and the man gasped for breath. ‘We’re moving,’ the man said. ‘Let me up.’

  Harrison just looked at him. Then the word came in his ear from the SWAT supervisor.

  ‘All teams blue and gold. You are adrift. The anchor chain is blown.’

  ‘I’m Captain Thyssen,’ the man said. ‘Untie me, for God’s sake.’

  Harrison stepped back, still levelling his carbine at the captain’s heart, and thought for a moment. The ship rolled ever so slightly, and he spread his feet for better balance. Then he gestured for Penny to untie him. The captain snatched up the radio and relayed the mayday message to the Coastguard.

  ‘Can you start the engines?’ Harrison asked him, his respirator hanging loose at his neck now.

  The captain spoke without looking round, his hands fixed on the wheel. ‘Not like this.’ He looked down at the man still tied up on the floor. ‘He’s the first officer. For God’s sake, untie him.’

  They freed the first officer, and again the captain was on the radio, talking about dimensions and boat width and the strength of the current. Above his head was a chart on which all the installations on this stretch of the delta were listed. Then he and the mate were talking about tugs. Harrison felt suddenly helpless. One by one the calls came in on the radio from the other teams, as each area of the ship was given the all-clear. Two of the New Orleans boys had located twenty people locked in the television room, six of whom looked like coke whores from the projects. All remained under guard, but from what they could make out, the terrorists were gone.

  Harrison spoke to the captain again, then took the ship-to-shore radio from him and spoke with the Coastguard. ‘This is Special Agent Dollar, FBI SWAT,’ he said. ‘I’m on the bridge of the Rotterdam.’

  ‘OK. I need to speak to Thyssen again. That guy just talking to me. He’s the skipper of that boat.’

  ‘Maybe. But I need to know what’s going on. We’ve got sixty FBI guys, plus twenty-two civilians on this vessel and it’s wheeling out of control.’

  ‘OK. We’ve got the big tugs coming up from New Orleans, but they’ll take a while to get there. In the meantime, we got smaller tugs from Shell and Amoco out by you now. They’re gonna attempt to shepherd you into the bank, before you start moving too quickly.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Listen, we’re on line to your command post in New Orleans about this, but that guy talking is Frans Thyssen. I know. I get shitfaced with him whenever he’s in the quarter.’ Again he paused. ‘Now if you wanna get off that mother alive, you got to let me talk to him.’

  Harrison handed the phone back to the captain and looked up as the SWAT team leader came up the steps. ‘Ship’s cleared,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, and now we got this crazy situation.’ Harrison took his tin of snuff from one of the many pockets on his black tunic, and placed a fingerful under his lip. He stepped out into the wind and watched the river far below them. They were moving, not quickly to the naked eye
, but other ships and the petrochemical installations were growing ever larger behind them. Fortunately, the river was four hundred yards wide here, and all shipping traffic had ceased as soon as Boese struck. But they were stuck on this massive iron monster, which seemed to bob like a top with no cargo to steady it. Harrison sucked tobacco juice and spat on to the diesel-smelling deck. Penny moved beside him, MP5 slung over his shoulder. Harrison stared at the eastern shore and the world’s gathered media. ‘You know what, I feel really fucking dumb,’ he said. ‘That sonofabitch set us up pretty good, didn’t he.’

  The team leader came outside. ‘We’re in for the Mississippi riverboat ride, boys,’ he said. ‘They’re taking the other teams off by chopper, but we gotta stay with the crew.’

  ‘Ain’t that just the ticket.’ Harrison spat into the wind.

  The captain fought to steer the ship, engines still off. Harrison and Penny were down on deck, watching the Blackhawks whirl in from the shore and drop the winches and ladders for the other SWAT teams to get off. Harrison shifted the weight of his carbine to his left shoulder and then he and Penny reached over the side and began to reel in the dead man on the bulwark. He weighed a ton, it felt like, and they hauled him up, hand over hand with the rope. Finally they made it, and struggled between them to lift him over the side. He lay on his back, face blue, lips swollen, eyes glassy and staring. His teeth were long and yellow and feral. He had been shot twice in the head.

  The tanker ploughed its crazed path downriver and Harrison watched with his heart high in his chest, as the first of the tugs came alongside. From where he looked, the tug looked tiny indeed. But it bulldozed up against the hull and was joined quickly by another. Harrison glanced at his watch: it would be another half-hour before the big tugs got upriver from New Orleans. They would hit the Destrehan bridge before then. He had a sudden vision of sinking to a watery death in the grey swirl of the river.

  Penny was still looking down at the dead man. ‘Only one killed,’ he muttered. ‘Rest are just dandy.’ He squinted at his partner. ‘Why’d he do that, ponyboy? And what the fuck was this all about?’

  ‘Beats me.’ Harrison looked down at the tugs.

  The tanker was carried along by the current. The captain was trying to keep the bow straight, but already it had turned and they were flatter against the wind than he would have liked. They rounded the bend where the river road fed out beyond the levee on the eastern shore, and the first of the feed pipes from the chemical installations threatened their path. Two tugs were on the port side now, pressing their combined weight against the hull, trying to steer the ship away from the shore and into the middle of the river. With no traffic, that was their best hope, merely to guide them on to a safer path until the big tugs arrived and could manoeuvre them into the bank, between the installations. Harrison watched, his heart in his mouth, as they negotiated the first of the chemical plants, with the tugs just a hair’s breadth away from the feeder pipes.

  Penny stared further down the river and grimaced. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing.

  Harrison twisted his head and saw the 310 bridge, looming grey in the distance.

  The minutes ticked by and the 310 bridge grew larger. Both of them went back inside, where the captain and first officer were sweating. They talked among themselves, ignoring the two black-suited FBI men, concentrating their efforts on steering the stricken vessel and keeping in tight radio contact with the skippers from the small tugs below, that were trying desperately to keep them away from the shore. Harrison lit a cigarette and blew a steady stream of smoke at the window.

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ Penny said all at once. ‘I gotta watch what happens.’

  They went back outside again, and watched from the height of the superstructure, as the grey span of the bridge grew closer and closer. The first three tugs had been joined by two more, and Harrison used his binoculars to scan the horizon for the big ones. All at once, the boat juddered and a tearing sound split their ears. Harrison almost lost his footing. ‘What the …’ he started.

  Penny was looking over the side. ‘Barge,’ he said. ‘We just hit a barge.’ They could see the crumpled mass of metal suddenly spin loose from where the hull had trapped it, and zip out to the bank, like a stick tossed by a child.

  ‘You see that?’ Penny said. ‘Jesus, Harrison. What if we hit the bridge?’

  Harrison laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘We won’t hit the bridge,’ he said.

  They rolled on, slowly being sucked by the current, and the height of that grey mass of concrete drew closer and closer. Harrison could see the press gathered in droves on it, before the sheriff’s deputies moved them on. ‘Surely they gotta close it,’ he said to himself. Sure enough, all vehicle movement was halted, and now his heart surged as he took in the dimensions of the footings and the position of the tanker in the water. The tug captains had steered them away from the eastern shore and into a more central position, but he still could not gauge whether or not they would make it. He thinned his eyes, and the bridge got bigger and bigger. He could feel the saliva draining from his mouth. Penny was standing very still alongside him. The bridge got closer still. Two helicopters buzzed overhead: the Coastguard monitoring their position. Tugs on either side of them pressed their combined weight against the high sides of the hull, gradually squeezing them further into mid-river. And then the bridge was upon them, and Harrison could see the height of the carriageway, and he imagined that amount of concrete falling on to the ship. But the tugs still pushed and the captain tried to steer, and Harrison spat tobacco juice into the wind, as they passed through the central section with ten feet to spare. He looked the length of the bows and knew then they would make it. Penny’s hand suddenly rested on his shoulder. ‘Look,’ he said, and, as Harrison turned, he saw the bows of the first big tug steam into view downriver.

  Winter rain fell almost as sleet, accentuating the grey of the grey-roofed town that straddled the banks of the Teviot. Webb and McCulloch watched from their car as Catherine Morgan delivered her only son to school.

  ‘Two weeks out in term-time,’ Webb said. ‘Lucky little sod, isn’t he.’

  McCulloch pushed a meaty, red-knuckled hand through his hair and looked at the car through cat-green eyes. ‘Where did she get the money, Webby? That’s about three grand worth of car she’s sitting in.’

  Webb looked sideways at him. ‘We’ll ask her, shall we.’

  They followed her back through town and she turned into Bourtree Terrace and parked outside the door to her flat. She was locking the car when Webb walked up to her.

  ‘Catherine Morgan?’ he said. She started, and turned and stared at him. ‘My name’s Webb,’ he went on. ‘Detective Sergeant Webb, from Scotland Yard. This is Detective Constable McCulloch. Enjoy your holiday, did you?’

  They sat inside the flat. There was a very small, narrow hall with a bedroom on the left, then a sitting room, one further bedroom at the end of the hall, and a shower room and tiny kitchenette on the right. In London, they had checked with the ferry companies and found her booked in her own name, coming into Portsmouth the previous Saturday. She had driven all the way back to Scotland in her Volkswagen Passat. Webb stared at her now—eyes blue, but still kindly—as she sat with her hands in her lap, a cigarette burning between her fingers. Pictures of her son lined the mantelpiece and there was one of her and the boy and her brother Brynn. Webb watched her face, the pale skin, the freckles faint against her nose, and her thick red hair.

  ‘Close family, are you?’

  ‘Sorry?’ She squinted her head sideways at him.

  Webb flicked a pudgy finger at the photograph. ‘Close family. You and Brynn and Ieuan.’

  ‘Brynn’s my brother, not my husband.’

  ‘We know. We spoke to him.’ Webb smiled at her. ‘After Ismael Boese was broken out.’ He leaned forward in the seat. ‘You know how many people got killed that day, Catherine? Twenty-two.’ He paused then and looked at McCulloch. ‘Boese doesn’t care who he kil
ls, so how come she’s still alive?’

  McCulloch shrugged. ‘Beats me. How come Boese didn’t kill you, Catherine?’ he said.

  She blanched then and stared at him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anyone called Boese.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ Webb inched himself further forward on his seat. ‘Sure you do. You just went to France with him, yourself and Ieuan. We don’t know where you stayed yet, but we’ll find out.’

  She looked down at the floor.

  Webb sat back again. ‘Who bought the car, Catherine?’

  She looked up sharply then, chin high, head back, nostrils flaring slightly. ‘I bought the car. It’s my car.’

  ‘Where did you get the money? We reckon it must be all of three thousand pounds worth.’

  ‘I won the money. Cash. I bought it at an auction. Got it cheap.’

  ‘Which auction?’

  ‘The one over in Gala.’

  ‘And you’ve got the papers, the receipt for it and everything?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Good. We’re going to need them.’ Webb stood up, looked at his watch and heard the grinding engine of the low-loader as it faltered down on the high street. He looked at McCulloch. ‘D’you want to go and check them, Macca? We’ll never get the truck up here. I’ll suit up and drive the Passat down. They can throw the tarps over it on the high street.’

  Catherine stared at him. ‘What’re you talking about? You can’t drive my car.’

  ‘I can,’ Webb said. ‘Catherine Morgan, I’m arresting you under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.’ She stared goggle-eyed at him, as he went on to read the rest of her rights. When he was finished, he shook his head. ‘Conspiracy to murder police officers, Catherine. That’ll get you twenty years, at least.’ He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Never mind, we can talk about it later.’

 

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