Hunter Killer (25 page)

The concierge shook his head. Maybe he was lying, but they didn’t have time to find out.

‘Open it,’ Danny said.

Speechless with terror, the concierge closed his eyes and nodded obediently. Then he moved towards the keypad and, with a trembling hand, punched a code into it.

The door clicked open.

‘On the floor, hands on your head,’ Danny told the concierge.

The man immediately dropped to his knees. But his eyes flickered over to where one dead guard remained slumped over the sofa. He clearly thought he might be able to lurch over towards him and grab the weapon he’d been going for as the unit had nailed him. The concierge flung himself towards the sofa, but of course he never made it that far. With a single step, one of the team grabbed him by the back of his collar. No need to make use of his weapon on this joker: the masked man delivered two brutal blows, one to the concierge’s jugular, the second to the pit of his stomach up towards the ribs. The concierge collapsed, twitching in silent agony, while the SAS man plasticuffed his wrists behind his back. The fucker wouldn’t be making a nuisance of himself again.

Silence.

Danny and Spud edged towards the open door. They moved with total quietness. Their rifles were pressed hard into their shoulders, their fingers resting lightly on the triggers.

Spud gently, silently, kicked the door open. A strong, fragrant scent immediately hit Danny’s nose. Someone had been burning incense in here very recently.

And maybe still were.

Dead quiet. Danny could hear his pulse.

It was dark in there. They could have done with NV, but they had to make do with their natural vision. Danny discerned a long corridor, twenty metres, which bisected the apartment. There was a suitcase leaning up against the wall about five metres in on the right. Danny immediately marked it as a possible explosive threat. Either that or it belonged to the bodyguards. Or maybe someone else in the apartment?

Several doors led off the corridor. Danny counted them: four on either side. Without lowering their weapons, they stepped inside.

They moved silently. Danny opened each door one by one while Spud covered him in the corridor. The first room on the right was a bedroom. Blackout blinds down. A double bed against one wall – a divan, ruffled sheets. Recently used, but with no space underneath to hide. A closet, empty.

Danny made no noise as he emerged, but nodded at Spud to indicate: room clear.

First door on the left. Same deal.

Second on the right, second on the left. More bedrooms. More unmade beds. But: rooms clear.

Two bathrooms. Huge. Marble. Towelling robes hanging by the door. One of them still had condensation on the mirror. But empty. Room clear.

Noise. For a moment it made Danny start, until he realised it came from outside: the grind of a chopper’s rotors. He pictured a military helicopter hovering round the summit of the building, a side gunner at a minigun in case anyone tried to escape on to the roof. But there seemed to be no escape route. No second exit as far as he could tell.

Which meant Abu Ra’id would be in one of these final two rooms. And possibly alerted to a threat by the sound of the chopper.

The further they crept along the corridor, the darker it became. Every room had its blackout blinds down, but now Danny’s eyes were more accustomed to the darkness. The final door on the right-hand side led to an enormous sitting room with modern white sofas and a bar area in the corner. Danny’s eyes picked out a glass table full of framed pictures. He’d like to know who they were of, but that would have to wait.

Because there was still no sign of Abu Ra’id.

And now only the final room remained.

Danny and Spud exchanged a glance. Then Danny nudged the door open and, weapon primed, entered.

He recognised the room immediately. It was in here that the execution video had taken place. There was a tiled floor and a dining table, and the blackout blinds were shut here as they were everywhere else.

Otherwise it was empty.

The thudding of the helicopter grew louder as it circled this part of the building. Danny stepped across the room and pressed a button on the wall that raised the blackout blinds. Sure enough, he saw a Merlin hovering no more than ten metres from the window, and beyond it the grey sprawl of London against an equally grey sky.

He lowered his weapon and turned to Spud. ‘We’re too late,’ he said meaningfully. ‘Should have got here earlier.’

Spud ignored that and spoke into his radio. ‘The apartment is clear. No sign of the target, repeat, no sign of the target.’

They left the room. Looking back along the corridor, they could see their mates still on one knee, covering the entrance to the flat. And as they walked towards them, Danny became aware again of the noise of the elevator doors, opening and closing against the bloodied body he’d dragged over the threshold.

The lift area itself was a mess. Blood still oozed from the two dead bodies littering the place. It dripped down the wall and there was a red smear across the floor where Danny had dragged his man to the elevator. Now he dragged him back again so the doors could shut. Immediately, the lift descended. Danny felt inside the jackets of the two guards for their weapons. They each had identical Browning Hi-Powers, idiotically unlocked given where they were stashed. He made them safe before laying them out on the ground again. Spud went through the formality of checking that their targets were fully dead, while the chopper continued to circle outside.

Two minutes passed. The SAS guys covered the concierge’s eyes and mouth with packing tape, then removed their balaclavas. The lift hissed open. Two figures walked out.

Danny straightened up when he saw them. Victoria Atkinson stepped briskly out of the lift. As her eyes fell on the bloodied corpses, she looked immediately bilious. She removed the tissue from her sleeve and pressed it to her mouth.

Alongside her was Harrison Maddox, Hammerstone’s CIA liaison. He looked altogether less concerned by the sight that awaited him, merely glancing at the corpses and the terrified concierge with a raised eyebrow and taking care not to step in the streak of blood that smeared the floor.

‘We can do this downstairs, Victoria?’ Maddox said. ‘If you’d rather.’

Victoria waved her handkerchief at him dismissively. ‘I’m quite all right, thank you, Harrison.’ She looked at Danny and Spud in turn. ‘Perhaps we could go inside?’ she said. ‘Your colleagues here can watch the door.’

Danny shrugged. ‘Nothing to watch,’ he said. ‘The flat’s empty. He’s gone.’

‘If only we could question the guards,’ Maddox said with heavy sarcasm in his voice. ‘But they seem to be a little past it.’

‘Yeah,’ Danny said coolly. ‘They do, don’t they?’

The conversation was cut off by the ringing of Maddox’s mobile phone. As he took the call, Danny and Spud led the two spooks into the dining room where the execution video had taken place. The blinds were still up here, and as they entered they saw the circling chopper peel off and head towards the river. Victoria looked a bit giddy. ‘I don’t have a very good head for heights,’ she admitted. She looked around. ‘Forensic teams will need to come in,’ she said. ‘Check he was actually here.’

‘Not much doubt of that,’ Maddox said. ‘I’ve just received word that a figure in a burka left the building just before five o’clock this morning. There’s footage on the foyer’s CCTV. No doubt our friend the concierge will be able to tell us more.’

‘I’d be interested to know how you found that out before me, Harrison?’ said Victoria. The American simply shrugged. Neither of them seemed to notice the look Danny gave Spud: a look that said,
I told you so . . .

Danny left the room. He couldn’t face listening to the spooks’ arguments, and there was something else he wanted to check. He entered the sitting room, and walked up to the glass table with the framed pictures. There were five of them, and they all showed the same family dressed in traditional Middle Eastern clothes. The father had a very obvious crooked nose. He selected the one that showed this feature the most clearly, then carried it back to the others.

‘So what now?’ Spud was saying. ‘He obviously knows we’re after him. He’s going to go to ground.’

‘We’ve got something,’ Danny said, holding up the picture.

‘Should you be touching that?’ Victoria asked. But she accepted it from Danny when he handed it to her.

Danny watched her carefully. Her eyes narrowed. Recognition. And maybe a hint of a smile.

‘Friend of ours?’ Danny said.

‘Oh, yes,’ Victoria said. ‘He’s
very
well known to us. This is a Saudi businessman called Muhammad Al-Sikriti. He’s an occasional donor to the Holy Shrine mosque. We’ve been trying to link him to Abu Ra’id for some time now. Without success.’ She turned to the CIA man. ‘Muhammad Al-Sikiriti. Name
mean
anything to you, Harrison?’

‘Of course,’ Maddox said, clearly trying to restrain himself.

‘Mr Al-Sikriti is also well known to the American administration, but for different reasons,’ Victoria said. ‘Oil, isn’t it, Harrison? No wonder he’s entertained so many American trade delegations. I do believe we have several pictures on file of him shaking hands with the President . . .’

‘You’ve absolutely no concrete evidence that he’s anything to do with Abu Ra’id.’

‘Not yet,’ Victoria persisted. ‘But if it turns out that this flat is linked in any way to Mr Al-Sikriti, presumably you won’t mind if we inconvenience him with a little extraordinary rendition. Pack him off in a Hercules to one of your black camps in northern Poland. I’m sure he’ll be a mine of information. Never mind if he’s one of the unfortunate majority who don’t survive the questioning . . .’

‘Al-Sikiriti can’t just disappear off the face of the earth. The political fallout would be . . .’

‘Funny, isn’t it,’ Victoria interrupted quietly, ‘how keen you are to violate a suspect’s human rights,
unless
they have the one thing that talks.’ She rubbed her fingers together to indicate cash.

‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t question him,’ Maddox said. ‘I’m just saying he has to survive the process, and remain intact. If anything happens to him, my government
will
deny all involvement. That’s a political reality, and it’s out of my hands.’

‘Did you hear that, gentlemen?’ Victoria said. ‘He remains intact. Otherwise our American cousins will be
very
upset.’

‘Where is this Al-Sikriti now?’ Danny asked quietly, happy to put a stop to the barbed sniping of the two spooks.

‘He’s in the place where the Saudi playboys love to come to spend their wealth and do all the things they can’t do in their own country,’ she said.

‘Right. And where’s that?’

Victoria looked out of the window.

‘London,’ she said.

Thirteen

In the morning they slept.

Having arrived back at the safe house, Danny gave himself two hours’ shut-eye that felt, when he woke, like it had only been two minutes. He and Spud had hauled their arses out of bed at 14.00hrs, when they returned to the basement of Paddington police station. Fletcher, their police liaison officer, was waiting for them. He looked even more put-upon that the last time they’d seen him.

‘Come on in, come on in.’ He beckoned them with his soft West Country accent when they appeared at his doorway. As they stepped inside, Danny saw that the piles of paper on his desk had grown even higher. ‘Been busy since we last met?’ Fletcher asked. ‘On second thoughts, don’t answer that.’ Danny recalled that it had been Fletcher who gave them the key to the safe house opposite the flat of the first bomber. He’d have put two and two together by now regarding that hit, even if he hadn’t joined up the dots with respect to the others.

‘Have Hereford sent through everything we need?’ Danny asked.

‘Yes, yes.’ He paused. ‘Probably shouldn’t ask, but is this all to do with the bombings?’

Poker face from both SAS men.

‘Quite understand, lads. Quite understand. But if it is, you’re doing a better job than us. Not a man to spare and still we don’t have a handle on what’s going on.’ More silence. Fletcher smiled. ‘Immune to compliments, I see.’

‘Found your intruder?’ Danny asked, to move the conversation on from questions they didn’t want to answer.

Fletcher looked at them blankly.

‘You mentioned it last time,’ Danny reminded him. ‘That bird with the intruder up on Praed Street. And you had that hit and run on that fella walking up to the university. Gengerov, or something?’

Fletcher shook his head. ‘Too much on my plate,’ he said. ‘Far too much.’ He rummaged around on his chaotic desk before holding up a set of printouts – A2-sized architectural drawings. ‘The Park Lane Hotel, thirteenth floor,’ he said. ‘Took the liberty of checking, the whole floor’s taken by a Saudi Arabian gentleman by the name of Muhammad Al-Sikriti. Must be quite an entourage he has, and costing an arm and a leg.’

‘He can afford it,’ Danny said. ‘Did you find out about the floor above?’

‘All rooms taken, I’m afraid. We could probably put pressure on the hotel to clear one of them for us, if you think that’s necessary.’