by Ed Grace
“But how?”
“You leave that to me. It’s not long now.”
“Thank you, Azeer.”
Azeer hung up and passed the phone to Hasim.
He turned and looked out of the cell window, over the empty courtyard below. Was it a mistake to have picked Zain?
No, of course it wasn’t. Zain was trustworthy. He believed in the cause. He had trained harder than anyone.
He was the right person.
Azeer just needed to be there to give him a gentle nudge should he need it.
He looked at Hasim.
“Enna alwaqt qad han.” It is time.
Hasim nodded.
Azeer’s days in prison were up. He was ready to leave now.
During the thick of night, it was confirmed to him. He’d done a lot of pacing back and forth, a lot of worrying it may not happen, but it had.
Azeer’s application for a prison transfer had come through.
One is never told when they are moving, but having a prison officer on his side helped Azeer. It meant he could be tipped off. That he could know in advance.
Before they went to sleep, and after they had finished praying, Azeer gave the final instructions to Hasim.
“Ta’akkad min anna aljame’a musta’edoun.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Patricks sat back in his office chair, trying not to break anything. He’d already broken his bin and knocked a mug off a shelf with the slamming of his door, but it wasn’t enough.
He was a restrained man, yes. He was a calm, and authoritative — but, in one poor decision, that authority had been completely undermined.
How had he been so gullible?
Now even his staff, who were normally so intimidated in his presence, were mocking him.
“Heard you got conned!” one of them had said.
“It happens to all of us,” said another.
“I mean, you know it was bullshit, right?” said a new prison officer, one who was too young and covered in pimples to stand up to even the least scary prisoners.
Even his wife somehow knew. As he arrived home, she was standing at the door ready to chuckle at his expense. That divorce was looming closer, and she would take anything she could do to get one up on him.
Sullivan had been so convincing.
He had played on Patricks’ prejudices; perhaps even ones he wasn’t aware he had. Azeer Nadeem was always so secretive, and had a group of Muslims who followed him wherever he went — but to say he was a terrorist…
Sullivan had conned Patricks, good and proper. He had made what the lesser educated members of staff would refer to as ‘a mug’ out of him.
Well, not again.
On his desk sat the final forms for Azeer’s transferral to HMP Woodhill. Patricks added his signature to complete them.
Azeer would leave in the morning.
And Patricks would intentionally pass Sullivan’s cell to mock him in return — to highlight that Sullivan would not fool him again.
Oh, what an idiot he was. Years of experience undermined in a moment. So much authority he’d had to earn, undone with the trick of one confident bastard.
He imagined what he could have said.
“Oh, you want to be put back in your prison cell? How would another week in solitary confinement work instead?”
He was tempted to move Sullivan straight back, but that would only make Patricks look weaker. As if he was trying to go back on his decision.
He just had to ride this one out.
You’re a foolish man, he told himself.
He would not be taken for a fool again.
Not by anyone.
Not even Jay fucking Sullivan.
Chapter Forty-Six
Two days until the thirty were up.
The attack was imminent.
Time was running out.
Sullivan paced back and forth in his cell. It was taking him too long to translate. It was too time-consuming.
They wouldn’t be talking about an attack that was weeks away, or even days. It could be a matter of hours.
And it was taking him longer than that to translate.
He tried going faster. He feared making mistakes, but he had no choice. Some words may end up being mistranslated, but he’d get the gist.
Until, finally, he translated a sentence that made his entire body tense.
“Etasil behem.”
Phone them.
Phone who? Who were they phoning?
Sullivan listened to the next sentence.
“Ta’akad min ‘ana hujum alghad jahiz.”
He took it word by word.
Ensure.
That.
Everything.
Is.
Ready.
Sullivan stood.
Tomorrow’s attack?
This recording had been done the previous night.
That meant they were talking about today.
“Shit,” he said, rushed to the television, and turned it on.
On BBC One, they were showing a replay of EastEnders.
Countryfile was on BBC Two.
On ITV there was some daytime talk show where unattractive people argued about the trivial problems in their lives.
No breaking news. That meant the attack hadn’t happened yet.
He kept translating. Kept going. He didn’t know the target yet.
“Jama’atuna tantazir fi Heethro.”
Our people are waiting at Heathrow.
Heathrow?
Did they mean the airport in London?
“My god,” Sullivan muttered.
They had killed a lot of people at Brighton Pier, but that was nothing compared to this.
He grew dizzy and used the wall to balance himself, trying to stay calm. He was trained to stay calm.
Yet it wasn’t so easy.
Heathrow Airport had thousands of people pass through it every day.
He rushed to his cell door. Where was the screw? Maybe they could alert someone?
Or maybe it would be tonight rather than this afternoon. He hadn’t translated it all yet, maybe Azeer had said something else about it.
He translated the next sentence.
“Sayanqulonani ela sijn akhar.”
They will transfer me to another prison.
What?
Azeer was going to be transferred to another prison?
Prisoners were rarely told in advance and, if they were, they would only be told a few hours before. Yet Azeer had known.
The final sentence was spoken by the other voice. Hasim’s.
Sullivan translated, praying to a god he did not believe in that there would be something he could use; a time, which part of Heathrow, something.
“Rijaluna musta’edoun lil’othour alyk.”
Our men are ready to find you.
His men are ready to find him?
What the hell did that mean?
Then Sullivan realised; Azeer was going to be intercepted. The rest of Alhami knew he was being transferred.
They were going to ambush the van.
They were going to set Azeer free.
Sullivan could not let that happen. He could not allow Azeer to leave this wing; if he could stop that, maybe he could delay the attack.
He rushed to the window of his cell, trying to see to the one next to his. He couldn’t see that far — but he did see a screw leading a man to the cell.
A man that was carrying a welcome pack just like he had a few weeks ago.
There was an absent bed in this cell, and someone was coming to replace it.
Which could only mean one thing — Azeer had already left.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Azeer sat in the back of the van, content and cocky.
Two other inmates sat opposite him. One with a large beard and a twitch. The other was a young man, a little too middle class to fit in with most of the inmates.
There were no windows, and no way of Azeer knowing how close they we
re, but he knew it couldn’t be long now. His men had followed the vans driving this route numerous times, and had said it would take about ten minutes for him to arrive at the target location — which was along a country road where few cars were driven.
The van went over a few bumps. This didn’t feel like a motorway or an A road; they were almost there.
He closed his eyes. Leant his head back. Felt the van come to a stop.
“What the fuck?” said a voice from the cabin.
Azeer’s smile morphed into a large, satisfied grin.
He could picture it just as they had planned it. A car parked across the road to block the way, and a car following behind to block the van from reversing.
“I’ll radio it in,” said another voice.
No you will not, thought Azeer.
A spray of gunshots battered the van and shook the other two inmates. They both sat up, alert.
Azeer continued to rest his head back and enjoy the moment. He recognised the sound of the AK-47s. He’d trained enough people in how to fire them, how to assemble them, and how to target them, that the sound of their bullets was as familiar as his own voice.
The driver and his buddy would be dead now.
Azeer heard talking. He recognised the voices as they approached. The doors to the van opened, and Azeer squinted at the light. It wasn’t that bright, but he’d been in darkness for fifteen minutes, which made even the smallest amount of sunshine become overwhelming.
His eyes quickly adjusted, and he smiled at the faces of his soldiers.
One of them rushed in and unfastened his handcuffs. The other two prisoners stared wide-eyed at the gun over his general’s back.
“Maza anhum?” his general asked. What about them?
Azeer looked at the prisoners. Terrified. Pathetic.
“Etruk’hum,” he said. Leave them.
He wasn’t in the business of killing two insignificant morsels unfortunate enough to be in the back of a van with him. He had a far grander plan of death to attend to. Still, that didn’t mean he was going to go out of his way to save them.
He discarded his handcuffs and stepped out of the van. As he walked toward the cars, his generals lit a Molotov each.
The prisoners saw them and tried to run. One managed to get out of the van and across the field, but the other stumbled and went up in flames as Azeer’s men lit up the van in a glorious explosion.
Azeer climbed into the car. His thaub awaited him. Finally, he could release himself from his prison clothes.
He placed the ankle-length garment on, and smoothed down the sleeves. He sat back and rested as they drove past fields he hadn’t seen in years, though they disappeared once they entered London. After an hour they arrived, passing Brunel University, turning around the corner from Hillingdon Cemetery and stopping outside a flat.
One of his generals opened the door for him, allowing him to step out of the car. He strode into the house and looked around.
“Ayn howa?” Azeer asked. Where is he?
He searched the living room, where a group of men were doing the final checks on the vest.
He searched the kitchen, where a group of men were going through a map of Heathrow Airport.
He walked upstairs. Looked in the bathroom.
Nothing.
Then he peered into the bedroom, and that was where he found him. Sitting on the edge of the bed, his fingers fidgeting, the face of a nervous wreck.
But Azeer saw through that, and smiled at the brave man that lay beneath.
“My brother,” said Azeer, holding his arms open for an embrace. “It is good to see you.”
“Thank you,” said Zain. “It is good to see you too.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Sullivan paced back and forth in his cell, jumping from one panic to another.
He was trained to be calm, dammit. He had to get a grip of himself.
A few footsteps passed his cell, and he ran to the small window in his cell door.
“You have to let me out, there’s going to be a terrorist attack!” he shouted.
The screw ignored him.
“Let me out for fuck’s sake, let me out! I’m not making it up!”
Sullivan knew that this was the kind of nonsense that screws heard every day. Prisoners banging against their doors, shouting that they needed to be let out, claiming they don’t belong here. He heard those shouts all the time — mostly at night. The screw would assume Sullivan was just another crazy man, or was off his head on spice.
All the other prisoners had cried wolf enough times that he wouldn’t be listened to.
But he had to try.
He had to.
“Stop ignoring me, I’m being serious! You have to listen to me, you fucking idiot!”
He knew this wasn’t the best way to get the screw to listen but, once again, his anger took over.
He ignored his banging headache, he ignored his racing heart, and he ignored the sickly feeling in his stomach. He didn’t know if these were symptoms of anxiety or lack of booze. He had to fight through it, he had to get the screw to listen.
Damn, how he missed the days that he would just wander from one place to the next, not giving a shit about such things.
Despite his ego, and despite the humiliation, he had no choice but to plead.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to call you that, you just have to listen, just listen, come on!”
The screw walked to the stairs. Looked over his shoulder. Grinned at another crazy inmate.
“I’m not crazy! People are going to die; you have to get me out of here!”
The screw chuckled to himself and walked down the steps.
“Fuck you!” Sullivan shouted, rattling the door, banging against it. “Fuck you and your judgemental looks you fucking prick!”
He tried to open the door. It would be useless, and he knew it, but he tried anyway.
He pulled it. Pushed it. Even tried using the end of his toothbrush to jimmy the lock.
He tried throwing his fist at the small window, but not even a bullet could penetrate it.
He stood still and realised he was panting.
He turned on the television. The news was on, but there were no reports about Heathrow yet.
But this hardly gave him hope. The light of early evening was descending, and there were only so many hours left for the attack to happen. He was running out of time.
He leant against the wall by his elbows, covering his head with his hands.
How did things get so fucked up?
His chest hurt. He took a few pills.
He stayed like this for a while.
He wanted to do something, but there truly was nothing he could do.
It felt so wrong to just be standing there, helpless, but the screw couldn’t hear him even if they cared. The other prisoners had started shouting and would cover any noise Sullivan might make.
He had no one who could help him.
No one that would care.
What if he spoke to the governor? Patricks listened before, maybe he would listen again?
But how was he supposed to get the governor here? He could hardly give him a ring, could he?
He had to come to terms with it — he was completely alone, and unable to make any difference to what was about to happen.
He watched the news, hoping he was wrong. That he’d mistranslated.
It was all he could do. Just sit and hope.
He could have made a mistake, couldn’t he?
Surely?
He’d made many before.
Except, he knew it wasn’t a mistake. He knew he’d translated correctly.
But for now, at least, he could pretend.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Patricks liked to walk around the prison after lockup. It was a time of day where he could truly gain a sense of the minds of these inmates.
He walked past the cells, listening to the shouts. Inmates openly made plans to deal spice to one another at
a volume that everyone could hear. They shouted abuse and intimidation at those that they didn’t like. They ranted about the prison officer on duty, declaring all the things they would like to do to them.
Even though the prison governor was walking through, they still subtly dealt drugs and bullied one another. He reminded himself that this wasn’t because he was poor at his job, but was simply because of the state of prisons in this country. The UK was facing a prison crisis, and there did not seem to be a way out of this crisis any time soon. Half of these inmates would reoffend upon release. It was his job to prevent that, but there was little he could do in the current climate.
“Governor!” came a voice from a cell nearby. “Governor, over here! Over here!”
He ignored it. He wasn’t prepared to be taunted or bullied like his prison officers were.
“Governor, it’s me! Over here, it’s me!”
It’s me?
Intrigued, Patricks turned to look at who was calling him.
At the cell window was the face of Jay Sullivan. Patricks grew instantly furious.
“Governor, please, I need your help.”
“What?” Patricks barked. “What could you possibly want?”
“Azeer Nadeem has been transferred.”
“Yes, I am quite aware of what occurs in my prison, thank you.”
“He knows he’s being transferred; his group is planning an ambush.”
Patricks scoffed and turned away.
“He is part of Alhami,” Sullivan insisted. “He is the leader! They are planning an attack today!”
Patricks shook his head and turned back to Sullivan.
“Do you know how pathetic this is?” he said.
“What? No!”
“That you insist on involving me in this lie — you have already made a fool of me once; you think I’m going to listen to you again?”
“He is going to bomb Heathrow Airport — either you let me out so you can stop it, or you call the police.”
“How could you possibly know what he is going to do?”
“Because I’ve been listening to their conversations, I’ve been translating.”
“And you can translate as fast as you can listen, can you?”