The Kill Zone (49 page)

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Authors: Chris Ryan

BOOK: The Kill Zone
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Brad remained perfectly still. Colley’s call made him uneasy. Hell, everything made him uneasy these days, but this especially. His British colleague had sounded concerned. And if he was concerned, Brad should be too.
He dialled another number. ‘Get me Air Force One,’ he instructed. ‘I need to speak to the Chief of Staff.’
A thirty-second pause, and then a familiar voice came on the line. ‘Yeah?’
‘Sir, this is Brad Joseph.’
‘What is it, Brad?’
‘I just took a call, sir, from a contact at MI5. They’re getting a bit antsy about something.’
‘What are you trying to tell me, Brad?’
Brad thought for a moment. What
was
he trying to tell the President’s Chief of Staff – and by extension, the President himself.
‘I think we should abort, sir. Cancel the event. Something doesn’t feel right.’
A brief silence. Brad could almost see the Chief of Staff’s faintly patronising politician’s smile. ‘Relax, Brad,’ he said. ‘The British have already made our people aware of their concerns. They’re not taking it seriously. Believe me, they’re puppies. They wouldn’t dare let this go ahead if there was a real problem. The President has instructed that we proceed.’
‘But sir—’
‘I gotta go, Brad. See you on the ground.’
The Chief of Staff hung up, leaving Brad to stare at his cell once more.
16.00 hrs.
In the operations room in the basement of Thames House, electronic maps glowed on the walls, and banks of technicians sat at computer terminals. Ordinarily, there was a low blur of steady conversation in this room twenty-four hours a day. But not now. Everybody was silent, their attention clearly focused on what they were doing.
A woman in her mid-forties approached Colley. ‘GCHQ have put the mobile-phone company that issued the number on alert. As long as the phone’s switched on, they should be able to start locating it any minute now. They’ll be piping the information directly through to us.’
‘How accurate can you be?’ Colley demanded.
‘Hard to say, sir. If the phone is switched on and in a service area, it’ll be wirelessly communicating with at least one mobile mast. But that will only give us a very rough area.’
‘Enough to send a team in?’
‘No, sir. You’re talking two to three square miles. But depending on the phone’s location, it could be communicating with more than one mast. We get
three
masts, we can triangulate. As soon as we do that, we can pinpoint the location to a fifty-metre radius.’
‘OK. What’s your name?’
‘Jackie, sir.’
‘Let me know the minute you’ve got anything, Jackie.’
The woman nodded and went back to work. Two minutes later, Colley heard her voice from the other side of the room. ‘We’ve got a fix. Coming up on screen now.’
Colley looked up at the main wall in front of him. An enlarged map of London appeared, several metres square. And superimposed on to it, a big red circle centred on an area of south-east London. ‘Single mast,’ the woman announced. ‘Bermondsey area.’
Colley found himself involuntarily shaking his head. The circle reached as far north as the river, as far south as New Cross. To locate one mobile phone in that area in the time they had was impossible. He cursed.
The woman’s voice again. ‘Sir, we have an estimate of the kill zone based on what we know about the device from Hereford.’
Colley blinked. ‘Go ahead.’
The screen changed. The red circle was still there, but this time it was superimposed with a larger circle, shaded in blue. This blue area covered most of the eastern half of London.
Ten per cent fatalities in a month; half within a year.
With a sickening twist in his stomach, it came home to Colley what they were talking about. Thousands of deaths.
A thick silence penetrated the room.
‘It’s an estimate,’ Jackie stated, as if that made things better. ‘Based on what we know about the device—’
‘How long till we can make the call?’ Colley demanded.
A young man with thick-rimmed glasses and prematurely thinning hair answered. ‘We’ve sourced a recording of Habib Khan’s voice for the comparison, sir,’ he said as he continued to type into his terminal. ‘It’s an extract from a TV appearance he made on
Question Time
about three months—’
‘I don’t need to know what it is, man,’ Colley interrupted. ‘Just tell me how long until we’re ready to get an ID match.’
‘We’re about three minutes away, sir.’
‘Inform Hereford. Get them on standby.’
‘Yes, sir,’ came another voice from behind him.
Colley looked back up at the screen. The red circle pulsated slightly. He tried to look for the positives. There weren’t many: just that the area covered by the kill zone didn’t include Westminster.
At least, not yet . . .
16.05 hrs.
The ops room at Hereford was smaller than that at Thames House, but it was no less full of activity. Fifteen men from the Special Projects team, plus four helicopter flight crew, had congregated and were tensely waiting for their instructions. Like Jack, they had already tooled themselves up. Each man carried an MP5 and a Sig 226 in expectation of close-quarter battle, and they were dressed in digital camo, body armour and armoured helmets. In addition, they all wore abseil and radio harnesses, and they all had bags with NBC suits and SF10 respirator masks slung across their arms.
The ops officer dotted around like a pinball, anxious to issue instructions but not knowing yet what the instructions were. Everyone knew, though, that it wasn’t a matter of
when
the SP team were to be inserted, but where and how.
The hit man was ushered in. They’d got a name off him now – Aamir Hussein – and the fucker looked terrified. His eyes darted around at all the grim-faced men in this large, busy room; when they fell on Jack he became twice as scared, and that suited Jack down to the ground.
The ops officer’s voice above the hubbub. ‘Word from Five,’ he shouted. ‘GCHQ are online. Make the call.’
Elliott Carver approached Jack. It was rare for the CO to take an operational role, and Jack knew a chaperone when he saw one, but there was no time to feel sore about that. ‘Follow me, Jack,’ he said. ‘We’ll do it together.’
Jack nodded, then roughly grabbed Aamir’s arm and followed the CO to a nearby room. It was quiet here. It needed to be. Any telltale noises in the background and they’d give the game away. There were several wooden chairs in the room: Jack pushed Aamir onto one of them, but he and Carver remained standing. Jack towered over the hit man and handed him back his mobile phone.
‘You fuck this up,’ he said, ‘I’m going to hurt you. You know I will, don’t you?’
Aamir nodded vigorously.
‘You’re going to make the call,’ he said. ‘You’ll say exactly these words: “Is that you?” If he doesn’t reply, you repeat those words until he does. Then you say, “It’s Aamir, Harker’s dead.” If I hear you say anything else I’ll assume you’re delivering a covert distress call and by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll be begging to climb back into my bath again. Do you understand?’
Aamir nodded.
‘Say, “I understand”.’
‘I understand.’
Jack and Carver exchanged a look.
‘Do it,’ Jack said.
16.10 hrs.
Back at Thames House, everyone had focused their attention on the young technician with the thin hair. He looked nervous no doubt because he had not only David Colley but also the newly arrived Director General standing over his shoulder.
From the terminal came the sound of a dialling tone, then the unsteady beeps of a number being dialled.
It felt as if the whole room was holding its breath.
A ringtone.
‘Answer it,’ Colley muttered.
Two rings.
Three rings.
Four.
A click. Then a generic voicemail message.
Colley swore. ‘Get on to Hereford,’ he instructed. ‘Tell them to try again.’
A minute’s pause.
The dialling tone returned.
The phone rang.
Voicemail again.
The men and women in the operations room started to murmur. They were long enough in the tooth to know when an operation was going pear-shaped.
‘Quiet!’ Colley shouted. ‘Go again!’
He was chewing on the corner of his lower lip now, his eyes fixed on the technician’s screen. Once more there was a dialling tone. A ring.
Once.
Twice.
And then a voice.
‘
Yes?
’
A wave formation appeared on the technician’s screen; the young man started typing furiously into his keyboard. ‘Matching now,’ he breathed.
‘
Is that you?
’ A second voice, sounding a bit nervous.
Silence.
‘
Is that you?
’ the second voice repeated.
Silence.
‘
Harker is dead.
’
Another silence. And then . . .
‘
Do not return home. Avoid London, and you will survive to continue the fight.
’
A click.
‘Have you got a match?’ Colley demanded immediately.
The technician continued to type.
Silence in the room.
And then the young man spoke.
‘It’s a match,’ he stated. ‘The guy on the phone is Habib Khan.’
Colley felt a chill run through his veins. ‘Get back on to Hereford,’ he instructed in a loud voice that cracked slightly. ‘I need that unit in London and I need it here now.’
16.20 hrs.
Hereford ops room. The call came through. Carver gave the instruction. ‘Special Projects team, immediate action. Jack, give them the low-down.’
Jack raised his voice and spoke briskly. ‘Our target is one Habib Khan. We’ve reason to believe he’s carrying a dirty bomb and our best guess is he’s using it to target the President at Westminster this evening. President or not, the device is capable of spreading enough contaminants to infect several thousand people within a radius of one mile, killing ten per cent within a month, up to half within a year.’
He surveyed the team. Their grim faces mirrored the horror of what he was describing.
‘Our best intelligence is that the device is packed in a metal flight case, about the size of a small suitcase. Method of detonation is unknown, but if we get into close quarters with it, we need to be aware that a stray round could cause it to explode. We’re using frangible ammunition, but even so we need to keep discharges to a minimum. And we want to take Khan alive if possible.’ Jack and the CO exchanged a look.
The ops officer spoke up. ‘Khan is in the general area of southeast London. He’s not near enough to where the President’s going to be to launch a direct attack, though, so we’re assuming that he’ll be on the move before long. That should help us narrow down his location, assuming he keeps his phone switched on. You’ll be set down at the heliport near Battersea to await further movement orders there. We’ll be in constant comms with the ops room at Thames House. Any questions?’
One guy put his hand up. ‘Why the hell don’t they extract the President?’ he asked.
‘Good question,’ the ops officer said with a dark frown. ‘Can’t fucking answer it.’
‘All right,’ Carver interrupted. ‘You’ll get further instructions on the ground.
Move!
’
The ops room started to swarm once more with activity.
‘Jack!’ Carver called.
He’d been heading for the door, but he turned to see the CO gesturing at him, so he approached his boss. Carver tapped two fingers on his skull. ‘Head, Jack,’ he said. ‘Not heart. Remember what’s at stake. Thousands of people, not just one. Isolate the device first, then you can question him. Now’s not the time to get personal.’
Jack sniffed. ‘Roger that, boss.’
On the southern boundary of RAF Credenhill, two Agusta A109 helicopters were loaded and ready to fly, rotary blades spinning. The men of the Special Projects team ran towards them, heads bowed, then bundled in, eight soldiers and two flight crew to an aircraft. Jack’s was the first to leave the ground, gaining height quickly before spinning mid-air and, its tail slightly raised, accelerating eastwards towards London.
Jack checked his kit, his weapons and the contents of his ops waistcoat before fitting his earpiece. The sound of conversation from the ops room filled his senses.
Estimated flight time, fifty-eight minutes. Police liaison waiting at landing zone. Await further instructions on the ground.

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