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Mulligan grunted and continued driving, the reddish glow of the motorcyclists’ tail-lights reflecting on his tough but solemn features.
Braithwaite checked his watch. Everything was going to plan so far.
They’d proceeded about ten miles, but were still in the midst of marshy desolation, when the motorcyclists flashed their hazard lights and started slowing down.
Braithwaite’s eyes narrowed. He felt for his Glock, but then reached for his radio instead, passing a quick message to the team in the first gunship. ‘Possible hold-up ahead. Everyone stay loose … looks like an RTA.’
Mulligan worked down through the gears. ‘See something, guv?’
Braithwaite pointed. A wrecked vehicle emerged into view on the road ahead, framed in the glare of the motorcyclists’ headlamps: a white Peugeot 106, lying skewwhiff across both carriageways, upside down. Its front end had caved in, and a column of steam rose from its exposed engine. Braithwaite checked his wing mirror as, one by one, the other vehicles in the cavalcade slowed to a halt.
In front, the two motorcyclists pulled one to either side of the road, and quickly dismounted. It was now evident that a body lay on the blacktop alongside the upended wreck. It wore jeans and a tracksuit top, but by its slim form and mass of splayed-out golden hair, it was a young woman. The immediate signs weren’t good – she lay motionless and face-down in a spreading pool of blood.
‘Shit!’ Mulligan said, grabbing for his radio. ‘This has only just happened …’
‘Wait!’ Braithwaite signalled for caution, before opening the front passenger door and climbing out.
‘Guv, what’re you …?’
‘Don’t touch her!’ Braithwaite hollered at the two motorcyclists.
Both had removed their helmets and knelt down alongside the casualty, checking for vital signs. The first glanced around at the commander, startled. But the second had seen something else. ‘Oh Christ …’
Braithwaite walked forward, his gaze riveted on the arm of a second casualty, broken and bloodstained, protruding through the Peugeot’s imploded windscreen. He halted, before swivelling around and peering back down the length of the cavalcade. SOCAR Sergeant Alan Montgomery was climbing from the cab of the first gunship. Unlike his gaffer, he was helmeted, but his visor was raised. He evidently couldn’t see what had happened, and was seeking an explanation.
But Braithwaite was too bewildered to offer one. ‘This … for real?’ he muttered, glancing to the front again, and noting with a deep chill the trickles of blood coagulating on the tarmac.
Mulligan, who’d also climbed from the command car, joined him. ‘Guv?’
‘I thought …’ Braithwaite stuttered. ‘I mean …’
‘Sir …?’ one of the motorcyclists interrupted. ‘We need to …’
Which was when the roadside explosive concealed near the rear of the cavalcade detonated with a volcano-like BOOM.
They spun around, eyes bugged, faces lit brightly by the searing, fiery flash.
The noise alone was agony on the ears – a devastating roar accentuated by a twisting and rending of steel as the second gunship was flung over on the blacktop, reduced in less than a second to a smoking mass of blistered scrap. They tottered where they stood, red-hot shards raining down around them, too stunned to respond.
At a single guttural command, the darkness came alive, spangled with blistering, cruciform gun-flashes. An echoing din of automatic gunfire accompanied it.
Sergeant Montgomery was the first to go down, flopping to his knees, both hands clutched on his groin, jack-knifing backwards as more rounds struck his face and upper body. But only as the first gunship began jerking and shuddering to repeated high-velocity impacts did it actually strike Braithwaite they were under attack.
He and his men had been through all the specialist training programmes. They were tough and experienced, routinely armed; an elite cadre within the British police. High-risk prisoner transport was their forte; pursuit and capture of fugitives and escaped convicts their bread and butter.
But anyone can be taken by surprise.
The first gunship’s immediate reaction was to get the hell out, but its cab was already so peppered with lead that its supposedly bulletproof windshield collapsed inward, and it skidded and slammed into the back of the command car, which, as it was also armoured, wasn’t shunted sufficiently to allow it through.
And still Braithwaite and Mulligan could only stand there, rounds whining past them like a swarm of rocket-propelled hornets.
With a dull metallic clinking, two small objects came dancing out of the darkness and across the road surface. Braithwaite watched them incredulously as they rolled to a halt by the front offside of the first gunship.
Hand grenades.
They detonated simultaneously.
Their combined explosion was not adequate to throw the heavy troop-carrier over onto its side. It was a smidgen of the power applied by the IED that had done for the second gunship, but it mangled the driving cab, in which Montgomery’s sidekick was still taking shelter, blowing out all its windows, shredding the guy in a hailstorm of glass and metal. The rearmost section buckled with the force, the blazing gunfire increasingly ripping through its reinforced bodywork.
Braithwaite was still helpless, still frozen – unable to comprehend the unfolding events. When a brutal implement smashed without warning into the back of his unguarded skull, sending him reeling to the floor, it might almost have been expected. There was a resounding thud as Mulligan suffered the same fate.
The blacktop backhanded the side of the chief inspector’s face, yet somehow he retained consciousness, and despite the hot red glue dripping through his vision, found himself staring again down the length of the cavalcade, against which numerous figures were now moving, having emerged from the darkness on the right. Some were attacking the ambulance by hand, working with tools on its battered doors, prying them open. Others were still shooting – particularly down at the far end, Braithwaite realised, which meant they were drilling bullets through the burning, blasted scrap remaining of the second gunship, finishing off any poor devils who hadn’t yet been turned to a mess of meat and bone. Though dazed, Braithwaite was struck with wonderment at the variety of reports issuing from the weapons on view. But one was louder than the others: a repeated deafening clatter, as though a dozen men were beating iron frames with hammers.
He craned his neck up, blinking through the crimson stickiness. And he saw it.
A Hotchkiss Portable Mark 1 machine gun, already fixed on its tripod and with a two-man crew operating it – one to fire, one to feed the belt. It was on the road to the rear of the first gunship. Stupefied as Braithwaite was, a terrible understanding struck him. With no other choice, the surviving SOCAR team – so well armoured, so expertly trained – would have extracted their MP5 assault rifles from the safe in the troop-carrier’s floor, and would now be disembarking from their vehicle in ‘stick’ fashion, as they’d rehearsed so many times – straight into that focused fusillade, the stream of red-hot .303 slugs cutting through them like a buzzsaw.
‘No … pleeease …’ screamed a shrill voice behind.
Though it required a heart-straining effort, Braithwaite managed to roll over and look the other way. His eyes alighted on Sergeant Mulligan, lying face-down, a wound like an axe-chop in the middle of his stiff blond crew-cut. But he also saw their assailants, for the first time up close: ski-masked, gloved, wearing dark combat clothing. They stood around on the road in no particular formation, talking idly, dressing their smouldering weapons down.
‘Tavor TAR-21 … Beretta MX4 …’ he mumbled, eyes flickering from one gun to the next. ‘Chang Feng … SR-2 Veresk … SIG-Sauer MPX … Mini-Uzi …’
No doubt it was the stock of one of these that had crashed against his cranium, and Mulligan’s too … but in Christ’s name, this was a devil’s brew of hardware! Where had the necessity arisen to pack such firepower?
Behind him, meanwhile, the heavy machine gun had ceased to discharge. One by one, the other, lesser arms also fell silent … so now he could hear additional voices. These too sounded relaxed, some were even chuckling. It was over, the fight was won – and they were enjoying the moment.
‘Pleeease …’ the frantic voice cried again.
Ahead, a small clutch of gunmen pushed and kicked the two Norfolk motorcyclists across the road. The motorbike cops hadn’t been armed to begin with, and had now been stripped of their helmets and hi-viz jackets; their faces were badly bloodied.
‘Into the ditch,’ said a casual voice.
The ambushers did as instructed, shoving the motorcyclists down into a muddy hollow running along the verge, where they were told to sit and keep their hands behind their heads. None of this made sense, Braithwaite tried to tell himself. This was ridiculous, insane …
One man in particular emerged from the ambushers’ ranks. He too wore gloves and dark khaki, while an assault rifle – an L85 – was suspended over his shoulder by a strap. But he was more noticeable than the others, because if he’d been wearing a woollen balaclava before, he had now removed it – which was never a good sign. He was somewhere in his late thirties, with smooth, clean-shaved features and a head of tousled sandy hair.
Braithwaite tried to swallow a spreading nausea as the man strode up to him and peered down, almost boyishly handsome and yet with an ugly right-angled scar on his left cheek. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. His accent was vaguely Scandinavian.
‘B … Braithwaite …’
‘You command here?’
Braithwaite tried to nod, but the pain in his head was turning feverish and the vision in his right eye blurring. He had a horrible suspicion his skull was fractured. ‘My … my sergeant,’ he stammered, indicating Mulligan’s body, though another of the ambushers was already kneeling beside it.
The kneeling man glanced up and shook his head with casual indifference.
‘Make sure,’ the Scandinavian said.
A pistol appeared – an Arcus 94, and three quick shots rang out, each one directed into the back of Mulligan’s already shattered skull.
‘What …’ Braithwaite tried to speak, but phlegm-filled vomit frothed from his mouth. ‘What the … the fuck do you think you’re … what the fuck …?’
‘Put him with the others.’ There was no anger in the Scandinavian’s voice, but it was firm. It brooked no resistance.
Braithwaite was taken by the elbow and yanked to his feet. He went dizzy, pain arcing down his spine, and had to be forcibly held upright while they patted him down. His Glock, the only weapon he was carrying, was confiscated and he was walked – though it was all he could do to stumble – across the road, and dumped down into the ditch alongside the motorcycle cops, both sitting hunched forward, hands behind their heads. There were others there as well: the two prison staff and the two medics from the ambulance. Perhaps unsurprisingly, but no less horribly, there was no one from either complement of men who’d been riding in the gunships.
Fleetingly it seemed as if the hostages were forgotten, some of their captors keeping half an eye on them, but the rest moving back and forth along the cavalcade, which was now a scene of unprecedented carnage, the police vehicles reduced virtually to wreckage. There was still fire and smoke, and a stench of burning flesh. The crew from the first gunship lay in shapeless bundles, rivers of blood crisscrossing the road on all sides of them. The ambushers stepped into and around this without any concern.
Braithwaite, who thought he’d been about to faint as they’d steered him towards the ditch, had now recovered his composure a little. He eyed the ambushers as closely as he could. For the most part they were nondescript even in their urban terror gear, the masks rendering them indistinguishable from one another. They seemed fit and organised, and something else was now clear – they were multinational. They openly conversed, and though it was all in English, he heard various accents – one was Cockney, another sounded Russian, another Australian; in another case, he detected a twang of the USA.
The thing was, they were so calm. The men they’d just mowed down were on-duty cops – at least some of them might have got radio messages out, and yet these guys were walking around as if they had all the time in the world. But then, maybe they did. The nearest place was still the prison, but that was ten miles away, and no help could be expected from there anyway. It was easily another twenty miles before the next area of conurbation, but what use was that? This prison transport had been kept well under wraps. The best they could hope for was a response by routine unarmed patrols – but how could they cope with a situation like this? With such overwhelming firepower?
A sudden clanking of gears drew his attention elsewhere. A monstrous vehicle, previously hidden in the darkness beyond the smashed Peugeot, rumbled to life, a battery of brilliant headlights glaring out from it. Slowly and noisily, a bulldozer came shuddering into view, its huge steel digging-blade canted downward. It briefly halted, but when orders were shouted by the Scandinavian, it altered direction and continued apace, connecting with the Peugeot, and with a clangour of grinding metal, shoving it sideways across the road. Braithwaite’s injured scalp tightened as he watched the massive mud-caked tracks pass over the body of the fair-haired girl, crushing her flat, pulped organs splurging outward.
When the wreck had been thrust across the ditch and into the marshy blackness on the other side, the dozer straightened up and halted on the verge, its engine chugging. A second vehicle emerged from the darkness behind it, this one reversing. It was an everyday high-sided van, but its sliding rear door was already open and inside Braithwaite glimpsed the sterile whiteness of an improvised medical chamber. It bypassed the prisoners and continued down the bullet-riddled ruins of the cavalcade, finally stopping next to the ambulance.
With great care, several of the ambushers lifted the prone shape of Peter Rochester, now on a wheeled gurney, neck-deep in woollen blankets, from the back of the ambulance, and placed him into the van. One of them climbed in after him, carrying his drip. With a clang, the sliding door was closed, and the prisoner’s new transport jerked away, accelerating up the road and vanishing into the night. About fifty yards ahead, on either side of the tarmac, other vehicles now throbbed to life, their headlight beams cross-cutting the dark in a shimmering lattice.
The ambushers sloped idly in that direction, guns at their shoulders, chatting. There was no triumphalism, no urgency – they’d got what they came for, and the job was done. The sandy-haired Scandinavian strode among them.
‘Are you … are you maniacs out of your minds?’ Braithwaite couldn’t resist shouting. ‘What the hell do you think you’ve done here? Do you really think you’ll get away with this?’
Almost casually, the Scandinavian diverted towards the ditch side, a couple of his comrades accompanying him. ‘A timely intervention, Mr Braithwaite … I almost left without saying goodbye.’
He and his compatriots cocked their guns and levelled them.
Braithwaite could only stare, goggle-eyed.
The rest of the captives begged, wept, whimpered.
All came to nothing in the ensuing hail of fire.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_de4bdcfe-21a1-5a82-b073-ebe50e1d6d2e)
Heck was seated in his favourite breakfast bar at the bottom end of Fulham Palace Road, waiting for eggs Benedict, when his eyes strayed from his morning paper and happened to catch a breaking-news bulletin on the portable TV at the end of the counter.
Thanks to the twisted metal coat-hanger serving as the TV’s aerial, the image continually flickered, but Heck, slumped at the nearest table, was too close to avoid the photographic mug-shot that suddenly appeared on the screen. It portrayed a man in his late thirties or early forties. He was handsome, with a square jaw, a straight, patrician nose and a mop of what looked like prematurely greying hair. Even though the shot had clearly been taken in custody, he wore a sly but subtle grin.
Heck sat bolt upright.
‘Rochester,’ the newscaster intoned, ‘who was convicted of abducting and murdering thirty-eight women across the whole of England and Wales, was serving life at Brancaster Prison when he developed chest pains late yesterday afternoon. It was during his subsequent transfer to hospital when the incident occurred …’
The scene switched to an isolated road, possibly on the coast somewhere, though a barricade of police vehicles with beacons swirling prevented further access to the camera crew. Beyond them, police, forensics and medical personnel were glimpsed moving around in Tyvek coveralls. In front of the barricade stood two firearms response officers, MP5 rifles across their chests.
The gorgeous Jamaican lady behind the counter leaned over to switch the channel.
‘Whoa, no Tamara … please, I was watching that!’ Heck shouted.
She relented, sticking her tongue out at him as she moved away.
Heck remained transfixed on the screen.
‘There are reports of at least sixteen fatalities,’ the newscaster added, ‘though that number is yet to be confirmed, and of course it may increase. None of those listed, or so we’re told, is Peter Rochester … better known to the public of course as Mad Mike Silver. Rob Kent is on site with the latest …’
Rob Kent appeared on screen, a plump reporter with a balding head and wire-framed glasses. He looked pale and harassed. ‘It’s … well, it’s a terrible scene here,’ he began. ‘As you can see, the place is flooded with security personnel. Not to mention ambulances, though I have to say … I’ve yet to see any ambulances leave, though I have seen several undertakers’ hearses moving away, carrying what looked like closed caskets. This obviously means they’re moving, or have started to move, some of the dead …’
‘Do we have a clearer picture of the circumstances, Rob?’
The reporter raised his mike. ‘Well … no one’s saying very much yet, but it seems pretty clear to me. To start with, this is an incredibly bleak spot. We’re over twenty miles from King’s Lynn, nearer thirty miles from Fakenham. There is literally no other habitation anywhere near …’
He walked to his right, the camera panning with him, catching open grassland, ripples of wind blowing across it towards a flat but hazy horizon.
‘So this is the ideal spot to launch an ambush … if indeed an ambush it was. From what we can gather, the security detail taking Rochester to hospital was subjected to a highly disciplined assault. I haven’t had this confirmed by any senior members of the police yet, but those are the words I’m hearing: “a highly disciplined assault”.’
Kent shook his head; doubtless he was a seasoned reporter, a man who’d witnessed the aftermath of many atrocities, but he looked genuinely shaken by what he’d witnessed on the lonely road from Brancaster to King’s Lynn.
‘Can you confirm whether or not Peter Rochester is on the casualty list, Rob?’
‘The official line is that we have no word about Rochester’s location or condition at this time. Of course, he was being transferred to hospital because he was thought to have suffered a heart attack yesterday afternoon, so what state he’s likely to be in now is anyone’s guess …’
Heck stood up, his chair scraping back so loudly that other customers jumped. ‘Tamara, love!’ he shouted. ‘You’re going to have to cancel those Benedicts.’
She turned from the range, dismayed. ‘They’re almost done!’
‘Sorry darling … I’ve got to go. I’m sure someone else’ll appreciate them.’ He hurled the requisite money onto the counter and dashed from the café.
‘Heck … you’re flaming murder!’
Various SCU detectives were present in the DO when Heck barged in, still in his day-off gear of jeans, sweatshirt and trainers. The first one to see him came hurriedly across the office. It was DC Shawna McCluskey. Originally, like Heck, a member of Greater Manchester Police, she was short, athletic and dark-haired, but a toughie too, whose pretty freckled face belied her blunt, blue-collar attitude.
‘I bloody wouldn’t, Heck!’ she advised. ‘I genuinely wouldn’t.’
‘Seriously, pal,’ DS Eric Fisher added, lumbering up. He was SCU’s main intelligence man, and possibly the oldest officer still on the team. He was heavily built and pot-bellied, wore horn-rimmed glasses, and boasted a massive red/grey beard that the average Viking would have been proud of. ‘This has hit Gemma too … like a bombshell.’
‘Yeah, she’s been up half the night and she’s at her wits’ end,’ Shawna said.
‘So she’s in?’ Heck replied.
‘For the next few minutes, yeah. Then she’s off to Norfolk.’
‘She taking point on this?’
‘Deputy SIO,’ Fisher said. ‘They’re putting a taskforce together as we speak.’
Heck gave a wry smile. ‘Let me guess … Frank Tasker’s running it?’
‘He’s in there with her now.’
