Ultimatum

by Simon Kernick

  Tina cracked off a third shot, more in desperation than anything else, hardly having time to aim it at her target.

  And struck lucky.

  The bullet hit him in the neck, knocking his gun hand off balance so that when he pulled the trigger, his own bullet passed over her head.

  A look of surprise crossed his face, as if he hadn’t been expecting that, but he was up on his knees now, still holding on to his gun, and Tina wasn’t taking any chances. She fired again.

  This time the bullet struck him in the forehead. He wobbled for a moment, and the look of surprise on his face seemed to melt away beneath the blood running down it, and then, without a sound, he tumbled sideways on to the tarmac, and stopped moving.

  Tina was on her feet in an instant, which was when she saw the cop rolling on the ground and clutching his shoulder, his MP5 beside him. Ten yards beyond him, Fox was running into the trees, holding a pistol, but she could see by the stiff, awkward way he held his upper body that he too had been hit.

  Shaking with tension, she raised the gun and aimed at Fox’s running figure, knowing it was completely illegal to shoot a suspect who was running away, and knowing too that if she killed him, the secrets he claimed to know would stay hidden for ever. But he was already disappearing into the undergrowth, and she knew she’d never hit him from where she was.

  And then she heard it. The sound of an approaching helicopter, coming in fast. Fox couldn’t escape now. He was trapped.

  Even so, the adrenalin was tearing through her at such a rate that she couldn’t even think about not pursuing him.

  Shouting to the injured cop that help was on the way, she took off after Fox.

  Fox ran fast, ignoring the pain in his arm from the gunshot wound and the nausea that was trying to envelop him. He wasn’t the type of man to give up, even though it was now clear his plan had failed. It had always been hugely risky, but he’d come so close that it hurt to fall at this, the final hurdle.

  The sirens were coming from all directions, but it wasn’t them that concerned him. It was the sound of the helicopter coming in fast somewhere ahead of him. Soon it would pick up his body heat and track him until he was finally cornered.

  There was no way he was going back inside. How could he? There’d never be another opportunity like this one to escape their clutches. They’d throw away the key this time, and never move him outside the prison walls again. He couldn’t have that.

  He wouldn’t.

  But things weren’t quite finished yet. Fox was nothing if not resourceful, and there was one last chance to snatch success from this situation. It was slim in the extreme, but what choice did he have?

  He slowed down, hearing the sound of footfalls in the trees behind him.

  It was time for one final throw of the dice.

  Seventy-eight

  21.36

  TINA SPRINTED THROUGH the woods, Glock in hand, hunting round for Fox. She’d already caught several glimpses of him running ahead of her, one arm hanging loosely by his side, but now, as she came over a slight incline, looking down towards where the wood ended and open fields began, she could no longer see him. The trees were bare and spaced a few yards apart, and aside from the odd holly bush and bed of ferns, there weren’t many obvious places to hide. She slowed down, working hard to keep her breathing quiet, keeping her finger tight on the Glock’s trigger.

  ‘Drop the gun,’ a voice called out to her side, cutting through the noise of the approaching helicopter.

  She turned as Fox emerged from behind a tree a few yards away, pointing his gun at her face. He took two steps forward, and even in the near darkness she could see that his face was contorted with pain.

  ‘It’s the end of the road,’ she told him. ‘There’s no way you can get out of here now.’

  ‘I can, with your help. Now, I’m only going to say it one more time. Drop the gun.’

  But she didn’t. Instead she turned and raised it so it was pointed at his chest. ‘And I told you. It’s over. You’re surrounded. There’s nowhere you can go. And don’t even think about trying to take me hostage. It happened once a long time ago. I’m not going to let it happen again.’

  ‘I could shoot you right here.’

  ‘I could shoot you right here,’ she answered, having to use all her willpower to keep her gun hand steady.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see the bright swirl of flashing blues lighting up the woods as reinforcements finally arrived. They’d be following her trail through the woods any minute now. All she had to do was hold her nerve.

  They were suddenly bathed in the glare of the helicopter’s searchlight. Fox squinted up towards it, then glanced towards the field at the end of the wood, about fifty yards distant, before turning back to Tina.

  ‘I’m not going back inside,’ he said, almost plaintively.

  She could see a change in him now. The determination in his features was gone. Now he just looked thoughtful. It was clear he was contemplating his options and concluding that, like it or not, she was right: he didn’t have any.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be thirty years’ hard time,’ she told him. ‘We can still come to some arrangement.’

  This time he managed a smile, though there was no humour in it. ‘No, I think we’ve gone too far for that now, don’t you?’

  ‘If you cooperate, some good can still come out of this.’

  ‘Not for me it can’t.’

  ‘Give me the names of the people we want, Fox. What do you owe them? Nothing. They’re not the ones facing years and years in prison, are they? But they’re happy to hang you out to dry. Come on. Don’t protect the people behind this. Think of yourself.’

  Fox shook his head dismissively. ‘You don’t understand, do you? I’m fighting for a cause. I always have been. And it’ll live on long after I’m gone. I’m not going to betray the people still fighting for it.’

  ‘Bullshit. It’s over. Can’t you see that? You’ve failed. Your friends have failed.’

  He looked at her, his lip curled in a dismissive sneer, and Tina imagined it was the look he’d worn as he’d killed the hostages inside the Stanhope Hotel. ‘You’re wrong. We’ve only just begun. And the next time you hear from us, it’ll be from a place you least expect. You won’t even know we’re there.’

  To one side of her, Tina could just about make out a line of half a dozen black-clad armed officers approaching them, moving quickly but carefully, all of them with weapons outstretched.

  ‘This is your last chance, Fox,’ she told him, trying to keep her voice even. ‘Talk to me now, and we might be able to salvage something.’

  The cops slowed as they drew closer. They were only just outside the helicopter’s glare now, all of them pointing their weapons at Fox.

  ‘Armed police, drop your gun!’ shouted one, working hard to make himself heard above the din.

  But Fox’s expression was utterly defiant. ‘Unless you back off I will shoot her.’ His finger tightened on the trigger, and he didn’t take his eyes off Tina.

  At that moment they were absolutely stone cold, and she realized he didn’t give a toss that he also had guns, including hers, pointed at him. Was perhaps even willing her to use the Glock.

  ‘You have five seconds,’ Fox shouted. ‘Pull back and lower your weapons, or I’ll kill her.’

  No one in the line of police moved.

  Tina swallowed. The barrel of Fox’s gun was barely two yards away from her. This was a ruthless and desperate man with nothing left to lose. A man who would rather go out in dramatic fashion than spend the rest of his life rotting in a prison, and in the end, who could blame him? In the same position, she too would prefer a quick death. An end to everything. But right now, Fox could just as easily shoot her, and get his quick death from the police bullets that would inevitably follow.

  ‘Five!’ he shouted, a terrifying decisiveness in his voice. ‘Four!’

  Tina knew the police wouldn’t want to fire on him while he wasn
’t aiming his gun at any of them. It was too risky, leaving them potentially open to manslaughter charges. And there was no guarantee that his gun wouldn’t discharge anyway, wounding or even killing her.

  ‘Three!’

  A picture formed in Tina’s mind of the officers lying dead and dying on the road where she’d left them, their blood pouring all over the concrete. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to be like them. She wanted to travel. To meet someone. To have children. Suddenly, in a huge flurry she wanted all those things, and standing there, surrounded by colleagues, but utterly alone, she knew she risked losing it all. And in the next few seconds.

  ‘Two!’

  Fox was staring right at her now, a maniacal energy in his eyes.

  She knew he was going to pull the trigger.

  ‘One!’

  And then the shot rang out, echoing through the cold night air.

  Seventy-nine

  21.39

  FOR A FEW seconds, Tina didn’t even breathe. Then, slowly, she exhaled and lowered the gun as the armed officers raced over to her. She made no move to resist as the Glock was carefully removed from her fingers. Instead she stared down at the man she’d just shot.

  Fox lay on his back, convulsing and gasping for air, his hands down by his side, his eyes wide with shock. His gun had dropped from his hand and was now out of reach – not that he was in any position to use it. She’d shot him once, in the chest, and already his movements were beginning to slow as his heart stopped working.

  A group of officers approached him carefully, pointing their MP5s down at his torso, but none made any move to help him. Only when his eyes closed and he stopped moving altogether did someone shout for medical help, but by that point Tina was already walking away from the scene, almost in a daze, her heart hammering in her chest, as she tried to come to terms with what had happened.

  One of the officers walked with her. Putting an arm round her shoulders, he asked if she was OK. She wasn’t. She was shell-shocked. She’d seen too much in one day – more than her mind could quite take in. But she shrugged off his arm and told him she was OK, and he didn’t try to stop her, even though she was going to have to make a statement.

  More people were coming up the incline now, a long, straggling line of police officers, the majority of them armed, and ambulance crew. They were hurrying, some glancing across as they passed, but no one saying anything. Whether they knew who she was or not, it seemed as though they all wanted to give her a wide berth. Blue lights flashed through the trees in a wide and ever-growing arc as the emergency services continued to arrive in large numbers – but too late, as so often, to prevent the bloodbath.

  Tina sighed. She’d been played. They all had. She’d fallen for Fox’s lies. She’d believed that he was genuinely going to cooperate. So, it seemed, had a lot of other people, including members of the government, who’d authorized his move to a safehouse. No one had believed that the individuals they were dealing with would have dared launch such an audacious rescue attempt. But perhaps they should have done. Audacious attacks seemed to be these people’s forte. Jesus, they’d even attacked the Shard.

  But ultimately they’d failed. London had been shaken, but it was still there, just as it had been when the attacks had started this morning; and the perpetrators hadn’t been able to achieve their goal of making it look like the work of homegrown Islamic extremists, further diminishing the effect of their bombs.

  Fox, too, had got the fate he deserved. Tina found it hard to believe that she’d been the one who’d killed him. She’d killed before, more than once. Two of those killings had been legal and were out in the public domain. One wasn’t, and never would be. But the shock of ending a life always hit her like a hard, physical blow, especially when it was done at close quarters. She wasn’t a soldier. She hadn’t been trained to kill. She was just a copper, for Christ’s sake, although after tonight, she wasn’t sure for how much longer.

  Still, she was too tired to worry about that now. Reaching into her jacket with shaking hands, she pulled out a cigarette and lit it, savouring the hit as the smoke flew down her throat and into her lungs.

  Before she called it a day, though, she needed to do one more thing.

  Eighty

  21.50

  AFTER HE’D BROKEN the boy’s neck, Voorhess allowed himself a well-deserved sigh of relief.

  Given the numbers of police who’d been trying to catch him, he’d been extremely lucky to have made it this far, but Voorhess was a firm believer in the maxim that ultimately you made your own luck. He’d remained calm when others would have panicked, had adapted his plan to suit the rapidly changing circumstances, and even though he’d been betrayed, he’d outrun his pursuers and beaten their roadblocks.

  On the seat next to him, the boy sat facing Voorhess, his neck tilted at an awkward angle. Voorhess pulled the boy’s baseball cap down over his face so that he didn’t have to look at him. The boy had told him that he was eighteen, and Voorhess felt a pique of sadness that he’d had to kill him. At least it had been quick. As the boy had pulled into the parking space, Voorhess had reached over, slipped an arm round his neck, like they were old rugby buddies, and done it one swift movement, so that the boy hadn’t had to suffer. Eighteen was a very young age to die, just when you were on the cusp of adulthood, with a whole bright world of adventure about to open up. But it didn’t look as if this boy – with his bad skin, his poor looks and his terrible taste in music – appreciated life in the way he should have done, and as a result, in Voorhess’s mind, his death was less tragic than it might otherwise have been.

  He got out of the car, closing the door gently behind him, and stretched. It had been an uncomfortable as well as nerve-racking journey here, and his back was aching. Rolling his shoulders, and keeping his head down, he looked around. He was on the fourth floor of the short-stay car park at Heathrow’s Terminal 4, parked in a dark corner, and at this time of night it was mostly empty. Surprisingly, he could still hear the sounds of the occasional plane taking off and coming in to land, which meant that despite his missile attack, flights were still going in and out of Heathrow.

  A lift bleeped, and Voorhess stepped into the shadows as a couple walked out pushing a luggage trolley. He waited until they’d got in their car and pulled away before transferring the boy from the driver’s seat to the car’s boot, so that he was hidden from view, only just managing to squeeze him in.

  Then, grabbing the bag that contained his few possessions, he flung it over his shoulder and walked away from the car, feeling a sense of satisfaction at a job well done, and already dreaming of sunshine and money.

  Eighty-one

  23.00

  MIKE BOLT WAS lying in the hospital bed with his eyes closed, a bandage round his head, when Tina walked in. She’d had to beg the officers from CTC to let her come here before they took her away to Paddington Green Station for questioning about her part in what had happened that night. So far, she wasn’t under arrest, even though she’d shot dead two men using a police-issue gun she wasn’t authorized to use. But she guessed this was only because so far no one had figured out exactly what to arrest her for, given the unprecedented nature of the night’s events. As soon as they did, she’d be facing charges of some sort.

  The doctor had told her that the results of the CT scan they’d given Mike when he’d arrived at the hospital had shown no major head trauma and that it looked like the concussion he was suffering from was mild. Now he just needed to rest.

  Tina approached the bed. Looking at him lying there, she felt a sudden urge to cry that she only just managed to suppress. She’d promised the doctor she wouldn’t wake him, but as she stopped by the bed, taking a deep breath to push down her emotions, his eyes opened, taking a couple of seconds to focus on her.

  ‘You’re OK?’ he whispered.

  She put a hand on his. ‘I’m fine. Everything’s all right now.’

  ‘I heard shots over the phone. What happened?’ His voice
was weak and he sounded exhausted.

  ‘They tried to break out Fox. They failed. Cecil Boorman’s dead. So’s Fox. And another gunman they think might be Cain.’

  ‘Did Fox talk before he died?’

  ‘Not enough to give us anything useful.’

  He sighed. ‘Then we’ve failed.’

  Tina shook her head and squeezed his hand. ‘No,’ she said, ‘we didn’t. The men behind today’s attacks are dead, the Shard’s still standing, and Jetmir Brozi’s in custody facing charges that are going to keep him in prison for the next twenty years. I’d call all that a success.’

  Bolt managed a weak smile. ‘That’s what I like about you, Tina. You don’t let things drag you down.’

  ‘And nor should you.’ She bent down and pecked him on the cheek – a gesture that surprised both of them. ‘Go to sleep now,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back to see you tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re not in any trouble, are you?’ he asked as she said goodbye and turned towards the door.

  She smiled. ‘Course not. You know me.’

  And with that, she went back out into the corridor where the CTC officers were waiting.

  Eighty-two

  23.45

  ALONE IN HIS spacious living room, Garth Crossman smiled.

  It had been a difficult few hours watching the stories unfold on the TV screen. A huge part of him enjoyed the seemingly non-stop scenes of chaos: the Shard spouting flames; the Prime Minister pale and shaken as he addressed the nation; the burning prison surrounded by riot police; the aerial view of the police convoy that had been escorting Fox, with one of its cars on fire and the bodies of several black-clad police officers clearly visible on the ground. These scenes were the electric shock treatment that the nation needed to jolt it from its complacency, and they demonstrated Crossman’s power, because he had made them happen. But they’d also shown his vulnerability. Such was the scale of the attacks that the hunt for the perpetrators would be intense and all-consuming, and for the last two hours Crossman had had to wait to discover whether either Cain or Fox – the only two men who knew his part in all this – had been captured alive after the botched attack on the convoy.