Sleeper Cell (31 page)

‘Ghada was a chameleon. Jewish, Palestinian, British… she could slip between warring factions invisibly, arousing no suspicion at all. Except that in the end, she did. What set her apart was that we never really turned her. She was a spy, so to speak. We’d been watching her closely for months, and this operation was the perfect opportunity to flush out her real allegiances. She was involved at the top level in planning the bombing, though not what came after it. She knew that with a timer-operated device, any of our people would be well away from the building in the final few seconds, so she would be free to go back to it. And she did: she tried to stop it. As you saw, she failed. The bomb was detonated manually from the roof of the building opposite.’

‘You sacrificed one agent to free another…’

‘No. And if you let your speed drop any further, I’ll put a bullet in the back of your head.’

Leila glanced in the mirror; Aquila checked his watch. She raised the speed to thirty.

‘We disposed of a rogue agent to get another out of what could have become a very public spectacle,’ he said. ‘If Golzar had gone on trial in the Palestinian Territories, barely a government in the western world would have escaped unscathed.’

‘And Harakat al Sahm? Was that just a flag of convenience? A fiction to keep us busy?’

‘Of course. You wanted Islamist terrorists, so we gave you Islamist terrorists. There’s no ‘cell’ in any sense that you would understand. Our sleepers are everywhere: in governments, the military, secret service… Take a left here and stop outside the last hangar.’

She turned onto the deserted road that ran along the perimeter of the small commercial airport as she had expected. She came to a stop outside an open hangar. Inside was a Gulfstream G150, the baby of the range. With a seating capacity of eight, it would be a squeeze to get the remaining Black Eagle agents in alongside Golzar and her lawyer. But with a range of three thousand nautical miles, Golzar’s new home could be in Moscow or Tel Aviv, or Washington with a following wind.

She killed the engine.

There was still no word from Lawrence.

While Leila was driving along the airport road twenty miles to the north, Michael Lawrence sat at his desk in Scotland Yard with the computer open in front of him. He watched the unfolding events at Mapleton on a series of feeds being relayed to CTC. Outside his office, Commander Thorne was overseeing the live operation. Maximised on Lawrence’s screen was the feed from Kriel’s iPad on the desk in the conference room.

The iPad camera swung round the room. All the delegates wore their det-cord necklaces. The image steadied on the man at the head of the table whose foot rested on the trigger. He stooped, picked it up and held it with his thumb over the switch.

‘We’re coming out,’ Kriel said. ‘If anyone shoots, if anyone moves within fifty feet of us, the bombs will be triggered.’ The camera went dark and the feed switched to a head-cam view from an MI5 officer outside the room.

Lawrence turned the mute off on his phone line to Phillip, ten miles away in the Waterboys’ safe house in Broadwater.

‘Phillip? Have you found the code?’

‘A couple more minutes.’

‘They’re leaving. Right now.’

No response.

‘Phillip, if they get on that helicopter, we’ll lose them.’

‘Then let me work.’

Ten minutes earlier a military helicopter had landed on the front lawn of Mapleton House. It was not the expected SAS squadron, who were still twenty minutes out. It was an ex-Army Lynx and no one in CTC or the security forces knew anything about it until it had appeared on radar fifteen minutes earlier. The pilot had not responded to calls and had maintained a flight-path low over towns and main roads. Air Traffic Control had had no choice but to let it come in. And as long as the delegates were necklaced with bombs, there would be nothing anyone could do to stop it leaving either. If Phillip came through too late with the disarm, if the helicopter was already back out over a populated area, they would be powerless to bring it down.

‘Phillip? Talk to me,’ he said when the silence became unbearable. ‘Anything?’

‘It can’t be done,’ Phillip said.

‘What? There’s no disarm code?’

‘There is one, but I can’t crack it. They’re using…’

‘I’m not interested in what they’re using. Just give me a way to stop the bombs before that chopper takes off!’ He muted the phone but kept it to his ear.

A CTC constable knocked and entered the room with a sat-phone and sheet of paper in his hand. Lawrence scanned the message and pressed the phone to his other ear. For a moment he heard nothing. The note said the communications to Leila had been activated, but he could not hear the sound of a car. Either she wasn’t driving, or the MI5 wire had been discovered when the comms went live, and she might no longer be alive. Then, faintly, he heard a police siren in the background.

‘Leila,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a link you. We can hear you. If you can hear me, cough three times.’

There was a long pause and three coughs crackled in his ear.

He looked back at the screen. The seven surviving Black Eagle operatives were emerging from the main door of the house. The spotlights of the two ASU helicopters were trained on their progress. Their own dark green chopper was waiting on the front lawn, its rotors at take-off speed.

‘Black Eagle are exiting the building,’ he said. ‘We’ve not got the hostages yet.’ Leila did not make any reply.

‘Got it!’ Lawrence jumped at the sound of Phillip’s voice from the desk phone. He clicked the mute off.

‘You can do it?’

‘Sort of.’

‘OK, I’m patching you through to the Command Room: they all need to hear this.’ He looked Commander Thorne through the glass partition. Both men nodded and Phillip’s call was relayed to the speakers next door.

‘Go ahead,’ Lawrence said.

‘I can bypass the wireless connection,’ Phillip said. ‘There’s a back-up system that will switch the detonators to a count down in the event of any interruption to the power.’

‘How long?’

‘Don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say less than three seconds but more than one.’

‘Is that based on anything?’

‘Yes, a guess. It won’t be less than a second because sometimes there are minor blips in the power and they wouldn’t want a false interrupt…’

‘But it might be long enough to get the necklaces off?’

‘It depends how quickly you work.’

‘OK. Hold the line. Be ready to move as soon as we’ve got bomb squad ready. Confirm: Leila told us they’re held in place with platic cable ties. They’re not wired. We can just cut them off.’

Commander Thorne relayed the message to Mapleton as Lawrence ran from his office to the Command Room. They all watched as a group of army bomb disposal engineers entered the conference room and took up positions behind each of the delegates. Four heavy containment vessels were wheeled into shot.

‘Phillip?’ Lawrence said.

‘Ready.’

‘Count us down.’

‘You’re clear to go on one: three, two, one….’

Instantly, bomb officers began to work, snipping the cable ties and pulling the det cord away from the necks of the hostages. Everyone in the Command Room held their breath.

In moments all nine of the necklaces had been cut free and dropped into the containment bins. Just as the squad commander pulled one of the delegates to her feet, the first of the explosions rocked the room. The camera feed was momentarily lost and when it restarted ghostly figures ran through a fog of smoke and dust. One of the bins had not been closed fully before the detonators finished their count-down. There was no sound now, but everyone watching the screens could image the screams of panic.

The smoke began to clear. Chairs lay scattered across the floor and the shutters beside the windows were in tatters. Two of the delegates lay on the floor and paramedics were picking their way through the debris to get to them.

On the next screen, the head-cam of the same MI5 officer who had detained Leila when she had first entered the grounds showed the Black Eagle helicopter beginning to take off.

‘We’re clear!’ Commander Thorne said. ‘Don’t let the helicopter go. Lethal force.’

At the bottom of the image, the MI5 man’s gun came into view. Other agents were moving in on the chopper. A shot was fired; the screen cracked, but the helicopter was already ten feet off the ground and rising fast.

‘Bring it down!’ Thorne said.

There was a crackle on the line and a voice came through.

‘CTC, this is Prime Minister Morgan.’

‘You’re breaking up,’ Thorne said. ‘Is everyone clear in there?’

‘We’re all alive. Don’t let them leave. Are the Typhoons in the air?’

‘Yes, two miles out.’

‘Then use them.’

‘Are you giving permission for air-to-air engagement?’

‘Yes.’

‘Confirm. Lethal force?’

‘Shoot these bastards down!’

Commander Thorne opened a channel to the RAF commander in charge of the operation. He relayed the Prime Minster’s orders and instructed ASU and ground personnel to evacuate the area.

Outside Mapleton, the helicopter had been holed by small-arms fire, but was still climbing. At two hundred feet it banked towards the woods at the edge of the grounds.

Seconds later the first of the typhoon jets screamed overhead, flying east. The chopper too turned east and dipped its nose to gain speed. In ninety seconds it would be out over densely populated towns and it would be easy for the pilot to find a corridor along which it would be impossible to shoot them down.

The second jet buzzed the chopper just as the first made a tight turn half a mile out.

They were waiting for the helicopter to pass over the woods and the field beyond.

There was a bright flare as the first jet unleashed its sidewinder air-to-air missile. The Typhoon climber vertically, white clouds spilling from its wings and glistening in moon light.

The sidewinder wriggled in the air as its radar system made its final lock-on. The chopper, five hundred yards in front of it, dipped and the missile followed.

The people gathered in the Command Room in central London did not get a good view of the impact. They didn’t need to. The missile slammed into the back of the helicopter and tore through it in a ball of flame. The rotor blades sheared off and a shower of glass and metal fragments rained down into the woods.

Lawrence left the room.

Back in his own office he spoke quietly into the sat-phone.

‘Leila?’ he said.

There was a long pause before she spoke.

‘Here.’

‘Black Eagle are down. No survivors. All hostages rescued.’

‘They’re all OK?’

‘Yes. Agents are on their way to your location now.’

‘No! Keep them back.’

‘But it’s over.’

Lawrence heard a click on the line. The click of a gun being cocked.

‘Michael,’ Leila said. ‘I’ve got to go.’

Leila pulled the earpiece out and looked at Aquila in the rear-view mirror. The tip of his pistol was barely six inches from her head. For several seconds she met his gaze in silence. The car rocked slightly. She glanced at the jet in the hangar: lights off, engines at rest. The wind sock at the end of the runway hung limp and low cloud blanketed the sky to the thin band of dawn light on the horizon.

‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘Your friends won’t be joining us after all.’

‘So I heard. Clever to use a concealed earpiece then hand over your phone with such reluctance.’ He removed his own earpiece and put it in his pocket. ‘I should have been more thorough. Give it to me.’

Leila handed it back and took the watch from her pocket.

‘Golzar can’t escape,’ she said. ‘CTC and MI5 have been shadowing us since I arrived.’

‘Golzar has already gone.’

‘What?’

‘She was removed an hour before you got to Holloway.’

‘Then why all this charade?’

‘You. You were already too close to discovering the truth when you went to Mapleton. We couldn’t let you continue.’

‘So why not just kill me?’

‘Killing you wouldn’t have killed your ideas. Your people trust you; they rely on you. Your death would only have confirmed your theories, but we saw that we could use their trust to run enough interference to complete our mission. A mission which you so nearly destroyed.’

‘All this was just to keep me out of the way?’

‘Golzar was taken out by road, a long way from here. A new identity is being prepared and she will leave when it is convenient for us to take her back to Washington.’

Aquila clicked the door open and Leila did the same. They both stepped out onto the tarmac. Leila glanced at the car. She took in the details of the vehicle for the first time and realised that maybe this was not really over at all.

‘So what now?’

‘Join us.’ He dropped the MI5 earpiece and watch and stood on them.

‘What?’ Leila laughed. ‘Join you? Was this some kind of insane recruitment?’

‘Think about it. You can’t beat us. You can’t even find us. But you can be one of us. We could use talents like yours.’

‘Go to hell! I’d rather you shot me now.’

‘No one’s getting shot. Walk away, DS Reid. It was a fair fight. You almost won.’ He slid into the driver’s seat and handed Leila her gun and phone. ‘Goodbye.’

‘You can’t escape. The airfield’s surrounded.’

‘I will drive right through your cordons. This is a diplomatic car. Prime Minister Queria’s men handed it over along with Golzar.’

‘You think that’ll stop you being prosecuted for kidnap, murder, terrorism?’

‘Where’s the evidence? Everyone in the helicopter is dead. You’ve got a story but no one to corroborate it. Without the smoking gun, everything you have is circumstantial.’

‘Peretz is still alive.’

‘Peretz too has diplomatic cover. Under the circumstances, do you really think your Prime Minister would want an international incident with the Israelis over a matter that would still be impossible to prove? I think his futile quest for peace will keep him too busy for that.’

‘Then that just leaves you,’ Leila said. She raised the gun.