by A P Bateman
“No, I do not.”
“Oh, I think you do,” he looked at the photograph again. “She has pretty eyes, Yevgeny. Maybe I can have them sent over for you to look at before you die.”
9
Caroline Darby flinched at the sound of gunfire. It was a momentary reaction, but she had crouched down on the floor in the doorway of the lounge. She looked at the Special Branch officer, who had spilt his mug of tea and was looking for a place to put it. Realising the absurdity, he dropped it onto the floor and ducked down, drawing the Smith & Wesson Sigma pistol and training it on the top of the stairs.
Caroline got to her feet and made her way swiftly to the window. She looked down, then turned to the Special Branch officer as another volley of gunfire erupted. “Contact! We’re being hit!” She took her mobile phone out of her pocket and started to dial.
“That’s a fucking machinegun!” The officer shouted.
The door at the bottom of the stairs crashed open and the officer edged around the door frame and peered down the stairs. There were gunshots and he recoiled back, regained composure and fired three return shots. There was another exchange and Caroline could hear shouting. The intruder was screaming, but it did not register at first that it was in Arabic. Caroline was learning Farsi. But the man shouted so fast, she could only pick out the odd word. She turned to Hoist, who was standing in the bedroom doorway. He had been tucking in his shirt and had frozen with his hand down the front of his trousers.
“Get down!” she shouted. She held the phone to her ear. She was through to the MI5 switchboard. “Come on!” she yelled into the phone as she listened to the list of options.
The stairwell echoed with heavy footsteps. Caroline looked over at the Special Branch officer, who was laying on his back. His feet were moving, twitching, but she could see the ragged bullet hole in his forehead, his eyes looking blankly at her. She half sprinted, half threw herself across the lounge to the landing and went straight for the pistol on the floor. She was aware of a shadow cast over her, but she had the weapon in her hand as she turned over and fell down onto her back, her legs on top of the dead officer’s torso. The intruder was at the top of the stairs, his feet almost touching her own. He aimed the pistol downwards as she aimed hers up into his face and fired, one, two, three, four, five shots… She lost count, wasn’t sure how many had hit, but she had hit. The top of the man’s head was over most of the ceiling and great chunks of plaster had been blown out and dropped like a snow flurry. The man had crumpled on the top stair tread. Caroline kept the weapon trained on him and got to her feet.
She lowered the pistol and turned towards Hoist, but was showered in plaster dust and debris as the machine pistol erupted at the bottom of the stairs. She screamed and lurched into the lounge. She dropped the magazine partially into her palm, checking the inspection holes. Somewhere between nine and twelve rounds remaining. She slammed the magazine back into the butt and turned toward the stairs. She could hear footsteps. Slow and tentative. She looked at the plaster wall. Bullet holes clustered near the top of the stairs, they had penetrated through the studwork. Caroline aimed at the wall and fired four shots, spacing a foot or so in between each one, dropping the aim point each time. She heard a woman’s scream and could tell she had cursed loudly. Swearing was universal. You didn’t have to understand, but it sounded Slavic or Russian.
There was a long sustained burst of fire and to Caroline’s horror the Special Branch officer’s body was shuddering under the impact of bullets. Blood and splatter hit the wall and open bathroom door and as a final insult, the officer’s head and face disappeared in a pinkish mist. Caroline heard a howl, a shrill scream of almost sensual pleasure and sudden bounding footsteps. The silence which followed was eerie. Caroline knew she had four or five shots left and kept the weapon trained on the top of the stairs. She was shaking slightly, she remembered she hadn’t breathed in ages and took a deep calming breath. The weapon shook a little less, but by now she knew the threat had gone.
***
Alesha cursed all the way down the street. She tossed the empty weapon into an open refuse bin as she walked past and then crossed over the road. Betesh still had the keys to the van in his pocket and she could already hear the sirens and traffic in the distance. She had a small window of opportunity to escape and she kept up a fast pace. She took off the gloves she had been wearing and balled them up, dropping them into a service alley beside a vacant shop. She got her smartphone out of her pocket and was already scrolling down her phone to dial. For a moment she could not remember the number and it infuriated her further. As usual she had deleted the last call after leaving the coffee shop, but the sudden rush of adrenalin was affecting her mind. She needed to call Zukovsky and when she attempted she had missed dialled. She continued, her pace fast enough to be overtaking people as she made her way towards Regent’s Street. Her plan was to get to a department store and lose herself for a while amongst the shoppers.
On her third attempt she got through. “There’s been a problem!”
“Go on.”
“I took out both surveillance teams. Two men in a car and two men in a van. Betesh allowed the target to escape,” she lied.
“Are you following?”
“No.”
“Why the Hell not?”
“Betesh is dead. The keys to the van are on his body.”
“So go back and get them. The van is hired. They will connect the dots.”
“I have had to get out of the area, the police are on the way.”
“Is the target still there?”
Alesha hesitated. “The target is still there, but he has armed protection. I have no more ammunition and I’ve disposed of my weapon.” The line went dead and Alesha cursed loudly in Russian.
10
Charles Forester entered the house and stood to one side as a Scotland Yard SOCO technician clad in white coveralls and wearing a surgical style face mask brushed past him.
Detective Inspector Hodges caught the officer’s arm and flashed his warrant card. “All right to go in?” he asked.
The officer pulled the mask down. “Coroner is up there with the second body,” he paused. “Just don’t touch anything. There’s not much to do, it’s pretty cut and dry, but we don’t want bullet casings or fragments picked up just yet.”
Forester nodded at the officer, then turned to Hodges and beckoned him up the stairs. Caroline was at the top. The Special Branch officer was in a body bag on a gurney with retractable legs. Caroline had handed the weapon over to the SOCO team, an armed support officer was standing in the bedroom doorway, his Heckler & Koch MP5 machine carbine held against his chest. Forester turned to the coroner. “I don’t care about logistics, but the Special Branch officer does not ride back with the perpetrator. Okay?” The coroner nodded. Forester turned to his agent. “How are you holding up, Caroline?”
“I’m okay, Sir.” She sipped some tea from her mug. She looked shaken.
“You did well, from what I hear. The SCO19 commander said he’d have you on his team any day,” he smiled. “Did you get a look at the second gunman?”
“No. It was a woman though, I heard her. Russian or Slavic.”
Forester turned to Hodges. “Detective, this is Caroline Darby, one of my top officers. Caroline, this is Detective Inspector Hodges. He’s with the Met and he’s assigned to us for the next few days at least. We’ve had another incident. I couldn’t help think this may well be connected in some way.”
“Serious?”
Forester nodded. “Four dead officers from GIG.”
“Oh my God!” Caroline exclaimed. She was General Intelligence Group. She would know some if not all the officers.
“How did it go down?” Hodges asked.
Caroline looked at Forester hesitantly. Forester nodded. Caroline turned to the detective. “Special Branch had two men in a van parked fifty metres south of here. One was in the back of the van using a portal telescopic camera, the other was eyes on in th
e front. We had two watchers from domestic security in a car forty metres north of here on the same side of the road. I was in here with the SB officer. We heard gunshots, fully automatic small arms fire, I caught sight of the SB van getting pummelled. I couldn’t see the shooter, but the rounds were tearing through the windscreen and side panel. There was blood all over the windscreen. Christ knows what it looked like in there.” Forester and Hodges had seen; they’d seen the MI5 vehicle as well. Both remained silent. “The door downstairs was kicked in and then there was gunfire, I didn’t see the SB officer get hit, I was dialling headquarters, but I got the first intruder.” She didn’t elaborate, taking another sip of tea. “I didn’t see the next attacker. She had a machine pistol of some kind. She tore the place up, I fired through the wall as she came up the stairs. I either grazed her or came extremely close because she screamed and swore and charged back down the stairs. She’s a vicious bitch though,” Caroline shook her head. “What she did then was awful. Just shot the body of the SB officer all to pieces.”
“Anything else?” Hodges asked.
“She got off on it,” Caroline paused. “It was weird, she was screaming in pleasure, like, well you know, almost sexual.”
“Never heard that before,” Hodges said grimly.
Forester looked at Caroline. “Where’s Hoist?”
“He’s having a lie down.”
Forester looked around the tiny flat and strode off toward the bedroom. The SCO19 officer stood aside and Forester walked in. “Get up!”
Jeremy Hoist looked at him. He was shocked at the entrance of the Deputy Director of the Security Service. He swung his legs over the bed and rose unsteadily to his feet. “I’m, I’m sorry,” he said meekly.
“We’re going to a safe house. Some big, tough men will be asking you a lot of questions. Expect it to be an uncomfortable experience.”
“I want a solicitor,” he said.
“Fine. Special Branch are downstairs and will make the arrest formally. You will be assigned a lawyer if you cannot afford one, but he or she will be a duty solicitor so not good enough to run their own practice or make partner, and they will be very concerned about entering into a defence against treason, terrorism and mass murder.”
“Terrorism? Murder? People came to kill me!”
“You downloaded classified data.”
“Someone must have logged in using my access code,” Hoist interrupted. “It could have been anyone.”
“CCTV has been retrieved at the correct time and at the relevant computer,” replied Forester. “And people on that classified download have been killed.”
“Coincidence.”
“Murdered. Together. Four of my agents bound, gagged and drowned. They were your colleagues.”
“They never set eyes on me!”
“Priceless. I’ll see that little quote gets into the newspapers. I’ll see that by the end of your trial the public will be voting to bring back hanging for treason. Since the shootings in Tunisia, Paris and Lyon there has been a surge in the public response to terrorism and you have aided terrorists in this instance.”
“I still want a lawyer.”
“You’ll get one. But first you are going to a safe-house for a national security debrief. I cannot allow anyone else near you for security protocols. Afterwards, you can lawyer up and we’ll see that the next five years of your life are a living Hell. With the premeditated murder of four MI5 officers and the deaths of five more police and security service personnel caught up in a situation of your making, you won’t get bail. I’ll see you rot before trial. I’ll get someone on the inside to make your life hell. You’ll be buggered daily with nothing more than spit and determination and you’ll get beaten senseless every week.”
“Look, I…”
“Save it!” Forester turned and walked back out to the lounge where Hodges was drinking a fresh mug of tea. He handed a mug to Forester, who took it and sipped slowly. “Right, Caroline I want you as bodyguard on Hoist. I’ll get an officer over to back you up. We’ll get him to a safe house. Use number two-twenty-five. I don’t want him anywhere near headquarters, and then I’ll get a team over to interview him.”
“What about protection?” she asked. “Look what just happened here. I’m not going to be a sitting duck again.”
Forester nodded. There was no remit for MI5 to carry weapons on mainland British soil. As far as the government was concerned the Security Service was an intelligence gathering agency, not law enforcement. “Armed SB officers will stay with you until we get to the safe house,” he said. “I’ll arrange for an armed Diplomatic Protection squad once we’re in place.” Forester’s mobile phone rang and he held up a hand to the others as he turned away to take the call.
Caroline turned to Hodges. “So I take it you’re on the investigation of the dead officers?”
“I am,” he replied.
“Was it bad?”
“Horrendous,” he said. “The worst of it is, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It was calculated. It wasn’t the work of an individual, and it took time and logistics to execute,” he paused, wishing he’d chosen another word. “They needed a boat, they timed it with the tide, they were able to subdue and maintain control on highly trained individuals, but as a group. I think it was a message. I think if it were a case of just wanting intelligence officers dead we would have had bodies on waste ground shot in the head. They orchestrated this perfectly, right down to leaving identification on the bodies. They wanted the bodies and the links to be found quickly and the trail to lead right to MI5,” he paused. “That guy in there,” he said, nodding towards Hoist in the bedroom. “He’s a pawn in a much larger game. Today he was of no further use to them. Whether having him under surveillance forced their hand, or whether it was just the right time, we probably won’t know. One thing for sure though, they’ll try to kill him again. You should be aware of that.”
Caroline nodded. She feared as much.
Forester returned to them, his face ashen. “I have to go,” he said.
“Problem?” Caroline offered.
“Always,” he said. “But not part of this investigation. I have to return to headquarters for a meeting.” He looked at Hodges. “Inspector, my resources are yours. You’re cleared at headquarters. We have to assume that the agents killed at the quay are because of the stolen data and that this massacre here today was connected. It’s too big a coincidence. Special Branch have video from across the street of the attack here, they are running it through CCTV as we speak. I won’t be able to hold them off. They will want this investigation now that three of their own are dead, but we cannot risk the investigation becoming segregated. We need a free-flow of data or we’ll be working against each other.”
“Forester!” A man stood at the top of the stairs. He wore an expensive suit and stylish black leather shoes shined to a mirror finish and a Special Branch ID card hung around his neck on a lanyard. He walked over, a semi-folded laptop in his hands, his fingers preventing it from closing like a well-read book. “Look at this. It’s a download of the footage outside, taken from across the street in the house we commandeered. Going to bloody come out now that this lot has happened. I guess we can look forward to a break in and entry, trespass, God knows what else.”
“Go on,” Forester said tersely. This man was a police politician, their paths had crossed many times.
The man placed the laptop on the coffee table and the four of them crouched down to get a closer look. “I must warn you, it’s pretty grim viewing,” he paused, looking at Caroline. “You might not want to watch this.”
“Piss off,” she said and took a sip of tea.
Forester smiled. “This is agent Caroline Darby. She killed the gunman,” he paused. “With your dead officer’s weapon. It fared better in her capable hands.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Davies was a bloody good officer.” He held up his hands. “Let’s
all take a breath; it’s been awful for everybody.”
“Just play it,” Forester said.
The Special Branch officer pressed play on the MVI file and the film started to roll. The sound of automatic gunfire was clearly audible and the footage blurred and shook as whoever was operating the camera moved it and focused in on the source of the noise. The sound of swearing and disbelief of the cameraman was continuous. The man Caroline killed was already walking out of frame, but the image of the woman was crystal clear. She was above average height, slim and well proportioned. Her skin was well tanned, olive and her hair was jet black and she had tied it back in a thick and heavy ponytail. She wore tan leather boots, a brown suede skirt to just above the knee and a cream sweater, the poncho wrap wafted in the breeze, as she casually turned and walked away from the shattered car and calmly changed over the magazine in the tiny machine pistol. She walked towards the van, casually working the action on the weapon to chamber the next round in the magazine of twenty. The door of the white van partially opened, then the driver looked to have second thoughts. It was easy to imagine the driver frantically attempting to start the engine. Easy to imagine the driver fumbling the ignition, forgetting the start-up procedure, failing to get the van started as the woman with the machine pistol drew ever closer. The tiny machine pistol spat out a flame two feet clear of the muzzle of the barrel. Again, a casual and professional magazine change and then the shots came in bursts of three or four as she worked the bullets into the body of the driver and then shot a continuous line down the length of the panel, slicing the unfortunate soul in the back to pieces. The woman turned and walked to the entrance of the building, her back to the camera now, but it was clear she was changing to yet another magazine. The sounds of Special Branch officers fumbling for phones, swearing in disbelief and generally shouting what they should do was all the sound that could be heard. There was a faint tapping sound of the multiple gunshots fired inside, and after a minute the woman came running out of the house. The camera operator kept the frame on her for as long as she could and called out a thorough description of her for the sake of the recording. It was a professional detail by a man clearly in shock, but starting to compose himself after witnessing such barbarity.