Nine Lives (17 page)
Back at the Heathrow Marriott, Number Six was confused. He was watching the news channel in his room, waiting for the first reports of an explosion at the airport, but nothing had happened.
Rising, he pulled back the curtain to see if there was smoke coming from the direction of the Terminal building.
But nothing.
The
bitch better not have failed
, he thought. She probably had. The girl was useless. He didn’t know where Dom had picked her up, but she was sickeningly mawkish and sentimental towards him. To his credit, Dom had used that infatuation and manipulated it to achieve what he wanted. She was soft and weak and it was likely the airport police had intercepted her or she’d found some other way to screw things up.
But that doesn’t change shit here
, he thought.
Turning, he checked the clock on the desk by the bed.
9:15 pm.
Time to get to the roof.
He reached behind the far side of the bed and with a grunt from the effort, pulled up a long dark case, dumping it on the bed. It was about two feet in length, a worn military case that had probably been stacked under a tarpaulin in a desert somewhere for the past couple of years. He pulled a long black holdall from under the bed and started tucking the case into the bag. He didn’t want any other hotel guests to see what was printed on the side, in thick black letters.
He finished wrapping the bag around the case. Grabbing a thick coat, he pulled it on and zipped it up tight. It was cold outside, and the last thing he needed was any unnecessary shivering. He then picked up the strap for the bag and looped it over his shoulder. Turning, he moved to the door and double-checked that he had everything he needed. He could never come back here. He was travelling light, he had clothes on his back and money in his wallet to get a taxi and disappear.
Satisfied, he clicked off the light and departed.
Outside the room, he walked swiftly down the corridor. A couple coming the other way were blocking his path; the two of them saw the guy with the big bag wasn’t going to stop, so the two of them had to press their backs flat against the wall to let him pass.
Ignoring them, he stared with focus at the stairwell by the lifts.
The only thing on his mind right now was getting to the roof.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Porter asked, behind the wheel of one of the squad cars.
He’d followed Rivers out of the Terminal to one of the ARU Fords as he’d run off, the American saying that they needed to get back to the Heathrow Marriott. Shapira had caught on fast and jumped in the back seat too, equally puzzled by the American’s behaviour and unwilling to be left out.
‘Number Six was at the hotel! I ran into him upstairs.’
Staring at him for a moment, Porter put his foot down and the car climbed past seventy as it roared past other traffic.
‘What? Where? Are you sure it was him?’
‘Positive. He’d shaved his head, so he looked different. But I saw his face, man. It’s him. He was on the top floor.’
He thought for a moment, remembered something else.
‘Oh shit.’
‘What?’
‘He was coming out from the stairwell when I bumped into him. He wasn't out of breath so he'd probably walked down, not up and we were on the top floor. So he must have been coming-’.
‘From the roof,’ finished Shapira.
Flooring the accelerator, Porter checked the rear-view mirror. He saw another black Ford weaving in and out of traffic, following close behind. He guessed some of the other lads were inside.
His suspicions were confirmed when the earpiece in his ear went off.
‘Port? It’s Fox. What the hell’s going on?’
Port pushed the pressel on his uniform with one hand while keeping the other on the wheel.
‘Rivers thinks he saw Number Six at the hotel earlier. Apparently the guy was walking down the stairwell, coming from the door to the roof.’
There was a pause.
‘He’s sure?’
Porter didn’t reply. He turned a hard right, and the car raced down a side road towards the entrance to the Heathrow Marriott, buses and slower moving cars flashing past the windows.
As soon as the car screeched to a halt outside the hotel, Rivers was already out and running through the entrance to the lobby.
It had been Dom’s idea. The two of them were old friends; they’d met in a club in New York City a few years back. When Dom had been putting this plan together at the beginning of March, the young man’s phone in Brooklyn had rung. Not much had been revealed, but he’d picked up on what Dom was asking of him and the reward that would come his way if he did it.
Without a moment’s hesitation the guy had packed his bags, jumped on a plane, and headed to London.
Back in New York, his life was going nowhere and he knew it. He’d had some luck with a couple of low-level drug deals, but he was a small fish in a very big pond. He knew there was only so far he could go before the big sharks came swimming. When he made it to London, Dom had put him up in the flat he was renting. He’d told him about the ideas for the attacks, why he’d had to flee New York so abruptly after what happened at the Four Seasons, why it was imperative he laid low until he made things right with his family. How his uncle, Henry, hated the United Kingdom. The young man didn’t know much about Dom’s uncle save that he was a powerful and dangerous man who operated in the drug trade. Dom had told him that if he helped him, Henry would be so impressed that he’d probably employ him. He’d be rich. Protected. Living in the sun, far away from the Brooklyn back alleys and dark streets selling rocks and angel dust to crack-heads and junkies.
Dom had outlined his initial plan. It was solid but there was a problem; the young man wasn’t prepared to go down the suicide bombing route. He wasn’t a fanatic and certainly didn’t intend to kill himself, not to mention that he also didn’t have a clue what he was doing with explosives.
Dom had agreed with him that suicide bombing was moronic and that they would leave that to those who were stupid enough to do it.
He’d come up with this plan instead.
Take out a commercial jet.
The younger man liked the idea; although the targeted jet would be full of fellow Americans, he didn’t give a shit. The only thing he had ever cared about was himself. Once he fired the launcher, he’d be out of the hotel in less than a minute.
Stay low, out of sight. Give it a couple of days, then get out of the country.
Dom had promised he’d be in touch. After that, hopefully, he could meet with Henry and talk about a role in his business.
He was already in position. He’d opened the door to the roof, closing it behind him and was now standing facing west. He was glad he’d worn the coat seeing how frosty the night was. He lowered the case to the ground and unzipped the bag, pushing the cloth back. Kneeling, he undid two clips and eased the lid open. It was an RPG, or Rocket-Propelled Grenade; the weapon was a Russian model, designed to take out tanks or low flying aircraft. Assembly of the weapon was simple. It was only two parts, the launcher and the rocket.
He pulled the launcher from the black inner casing and lifted it to his shoulder. The weight felt good; it had a pistol grip for firing which he curled his fingers around, looking down the sight. The weapon was sleek, in good condition and he’d used it before.
He knew it would be accurate.
Carefully, he reached into the case and slid out the second part. The warhead. An armour-penetrating grenade propelled by a rocket. He tipped his shoulder and slid the missile into the front of the weapon. It locked into place with a
click
. Dom had managed to get hold of some high-quality equipment for the group. C4, RPGs, Semtex plastic explosive, but unfortunately there was one disadvantage with the weapon resting on his shoulder; it wasn’t a heat-seeker.
He’d have to hit first time, but then again, that wouldn’t be a problem. In practice runs against selected targets out on the empty moors in the Welsh countryside the young man had proved extremely accurate with the launcher. Dom reassured him it was equally effective against aircraft, despite being designed to take out a slow-moving tank. He’d informed him about the success of the weapon in Somalia in the early Nineties. Apparently, rebels had used this weapon to take out two Black Hawk helicopters, which left the young man sufficiently impressed.
When he fired, the plane was going down.
A noise jerked him back to the present. The jet was coming into view from the sky ahead. It was three hundred yards away, descending from the dark ahead and to his left. The 9:20pm from New York, right on time.
Full capacity, over two hundred and fifty souls on board.
He shifted his hips, letting the launcher slide snugly into place against his shoulder. Then he slowly rose to stand upright. He took long, deliberate breaths, trying to slow his heart rate.
Putting his eye to the sight, he lined up the plane. He’d have to aim ahead of its flight path, but the jet was moving smoothly and calculating its course was easy.
The rocket would get there in three seconds.
His finger fell back to rest on the trigger in the pistol-grip.
This is it.
Nice and slow.
Taking a breath, he started squeezing the trigger gently.
Suddenly there was a noise behind him and the entrance to the roof burst open.
He turned, with the weapon still against his shoulder and saw the guy he’d bumped into on the corridor earlier. He now had a pistol in his hand, the woman he’d been with and some other cop beside him also carrying firearms.
Shit.
He saw all three of them momentarily freeze as they realised what he’d been about to do.
Then their weapons all came up, sighted on the terrorist’s head.
Number Six stood motionless, not intimidated, aiming the rocket launcher at them from ten feet away.
‘Drop it, asshole!’
the American guy shouted.
‘Put your guns down! If I fire, you all die!’
Number Six screamed back.
None of them moved. It was a stand-off, except one of them had a rocket launcher.
The young guy sensed the plane was approaching the runway behind him in the airfield.
He could hear it, getting closer and closer.
And in that moment, he realised he was done. There was no way out. He would never allow himself to get taken to prison, so he had to make a choice.
Three of them, or nearly three hundred of them
.
He decided.
He suddenly turned in one swift motion.
And the fearsome weapon swivelled towards the plane.
After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, police around the world had developed various methods and tactics when confronting a suicidal terrorist. The UK had called theirs Operation Kratos.
Members of the British government and police had visited Israel, Sri Lanka and Russia to consult with their security forces. Unlike the West, those nations had been accustomed to suicide bombings for many years and as a consequence had devised systems of attack that were beginning to be universally used around the world.
There were common themes. They’d found in most life or death situations any explosives a terrorist had control of were extremely sensitive to motion; hence, the conventional tactic of shooting the chest was likely to cause a detonation via twitching or jerked reactions.
Another key discovery had been that suicide bombers, if discovered prematurely by police, were more than likely to continue their attack regardless. Which meant stealth and covert tactics had to be in place to avoid them realising they’d been identified until it was too late for a terrorist to react.
For Rivers, Shapira and Porter, the second finding wasn’t relevant here. Clearly, the guy knew all about their presence.
But the first was.
The key to prevent any twitch or movement on a trigger or switch was to shoot the target through the brain stem, thus instantly severing any motor neurone activity.
And that’s exactly what Shapira did.
As the terrorist turned towards the plane with the rocket launcher, she was the first to react. The Mossad agent fired her pistol twice, a lightning fast double-tap. Both shots took the guy in the lower portion of his neck, severing the stem. Blood and bone sprayed in the air, and he dropped like a stone.
But there was a problem.
They’d waited a millisecond too late.
Number Six’s finger was already moving on the trigger to launch the weapon, fourteen pounds of grip pressure.
That was all it needed.
Smashing back the door to the roof, Deakins and Fox rushed into sight behind them as the terrorist went down; together, the five of them watched in horror as a cloud of light-blue smoke erupted from the rear of the weapon.
There was a loud
whoosh
as the rocket roared out of the tube and off into the air.
Headed straight towards the airplane.
The rocket chewed through the air towards its target, moving at frightening speed. The five people on the roof stood helplessly as it roared towards the Boeing 757.
It was going to be a direct hit.
The plane was about eighty feet off the runway; even if by some freak miracle the pilot saw the rocket, he’d have no time to do anything about it. He was flying a commercial airliner, not a helicopter.
It missed by a whisker. Literally, a hair.
The warhead thundered under the belly of the plane and zoomed off into the middle of the airfield, away from its intended target and any other planes in the vicinity. It ploughed on for another hundred and fifty yards, then self-detonated like a firework as the fuse inside reacted, exploding in the sky.
Back on the roof, everyone stood still for a moment, still stunned by the speed of what had just happened.
Then they all sagged with relief.
Taking a huge breath, Porter shook his head.
He was getting sick of this.
*
At that moment across the Channel, another plane was just about to land.
In the cool night air, two sets of wheels lowered from the undercarriage of the private jet. The pilot eased back on the throttle and the plane touched down lightly on the runway. It slowed and eventually came to a halt, turning and taxiing a short distance towards a waiting car.
From his seat inside, Dominick took a deep breath.
He’d made it.
Looking out of the window he saw a black Escalade waiting by the runway. Two large men were standing beside it. He didn’t recognise either of them; it seemed Henry had changed his entire crew since they’d lost contact, but then again, the man went through his security detail like a wolf chewed through a carcass. God only knew how many of them he’d killed over the years. They were too big to drown, so Henry often just machine-gunned them when they were least expecting it.
Beyond the two men in the distance, Dominick could see the bright lights of Paris. French time was an hour ahead so it was fast approaching midnight. His eyes settled on the unmistakeable shape of the Eiffel Tower, golden and no doubt dressed up with fireworks in preparation for the display that would bring in the New Year.
Back in the cabin, Faris was already on his feet, swinging on his suit jacket which he’d laid to one side during the flight to avoid any creases. The pilot had pressed the mechanism in the cockpit to open the exit door and the stairs to the jet unfurled slowly towards the tarmac.
Faris went to move down the aisle then turned and looked at Farha, his hand near the pistol on his hip.
He didn’t say anything.
His face said it all.
Butterflies fluttering around in his stomach, Farha rose from his seat and moved to the door, stepping past Faris. He walked down the stairs quickly, Faris close behind him, and set foot on foreign soil for the first time in a year. It should have been a joyous occasion for him, finally out of the UK, but instead he felt sick with nerves and fear. He was trapped; from now on whatever happened to him was up to those around him. And he hadn’t even spoken to Henry yet; he had no idea what his reception was likely to be.
As he tried to stay calm, Faris stepped past him and walked towards the black Escalade. The two enforcers had seemed big from the plane, but up close they were enormous. Farha saw each man had a pistol tucked in a holster, poorly hidden under their jackets. The guns seemed as small as toys hanging under their ridiculously broad shoulders. He felt bile rise in his throat. A year ago, he’d commanded guys like this without a second thought.
Now, he felt completely helpless as he stood before them.
‘So what’s the deal?’ Faris asked the two men. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s at a café in the city,’ one of them said.
‘He’s waiting for you,’ the other added, grinning wolfishly as he looked at Dominick. ‘He said the Albanians aren’t going to be here for another hour or so.’
Faris nodded. Without another word, the two giants turned and moved back to the car. One of them climbed into the driver’s seat, the other in the passenger seat beside him.
Faris turned to Dominick. ‘What the hell are you waiting for? Get in. I’m cold.’
He obeyed; walking over and opening the door, he climbed into the back. Faris got in beside him and once they’d both shut their doors, the big guy behind the wheel fired the engine and the car moved off towards the lights of Paris.
Inside the car, Farha glanced at his watch.
9:21 pm
, London time, which made it 10:21 pm here.
An hour and forty minutes till the New Year.
With every fibre of his being, he prayed that he’d be alive to see it.
Four hundred yards across the airfield in the shadows, two men watched the car depart.
They were bedded down deep in cover under some mesh netting, camouflage paint smeared across their faces as they lay prostrate, grim and silent. They’d chosen a good location with thick bushes and hedge-growth beside them, right on the edge of the airfield. To any onlooker, they were invisible. No one could ever know they were there.
One of them had his eye to the lens of a Nikon camera; he clicked the shutter, snapping photographs of the departing car and the licence plates.
Beside him, the other man pulled a phone from his pocket.
‘Be careful,’
the man with the camera whispered.
‘The pilot.’
His companion nodded. The pilot was still in the cockpit, facing in their direction three hundred yards down the runway. If the man in the shadows didn’t cover the light on the phone, the man would see it.
Concealing it carefully with a black cloth, the man pressed
Redial
under the fabric and lifted it to his ear. The call rang three times and then connected.
‘
Brody. How are we doing?
’ Special Agent Crawford asked.
‘Sir, we’re in place. Farha just landed,’
Brody whispered.
‘It looks like they’ve taken him to see the main man but I think they’ll all be coming back. Seems like the deal isn’t going down yet. The plane is still here.
’
‘
It’s OK,
’ came Crawford’s voice. ‘
Special Agent Cruz is in place. Farha isn’t going anywhere without us knowing about it
.’
‘When are you due back, sir?’ Brody whispered.
‘
Rivers and I have to stay here for a while longer. But stay on them. The moment the deal is done, call me. I’ve spoken to the Saudi Police and DEA back-up. They’ll be ready and waiting for when the jet lands back in Riyadh.’
‘Yes, sir,’
Brody whispered.
The call ended. Agent Brody returned the phone to his pocket and together, the two men lay in total silence in the darkness.
Waiting for the cartel drug lord and his nephew to return.
