Meltdown (4 page)

'That's Delta One approaching the range.'

Lee's MP5 was still in the footwell; he wouldn't
draw down the weapon until it was needed.
Everything was played as if it were for real.

The A4 was still doing seventy as it entered the
range. Ahead, Danny saw a tall berm – a thick manmade
earthworks, five metres high on three sides of
the square, so that rounds could be fired to the sides
as well as forward.

In front of the vehicle were six wooden targets –
men and women in civvies, all of them holding
weapons. An explosion directly in front of them
lifted a fireball into the air and Danny hit the brake
and pressed the send pressel.

'Contact! Contact! Wait out!'

Lee had already raised his MP5; he pulled out the
butt before ramming it into his shoulder and pushing
down the safety. The A4 skidded towards the
enemy; Danny's feet were pushed hard down onto
the brake and clutch and he fought to keep the
vehicle straight as Lee started firing.

The windscreen shattered and the automatic
weapon's empty casings bounced off the roof and
down onto Danny. As the A4 screeched to a standstill,
Lee was still firing and giving Danny some
cover.

'Go, Danny! Go!'

Danny didn't need telling twice. He pushed
open the door and launched himself out of the
vehicle, the Velcro ripping away and freeing the seat
belt. Rolling onto the ground, he pulled out his
pistol from the pancake holster on his right hip and
began firing from beneath the door.

'Go! Go! Go!'

Instead of rolling out and taking cover, Lee
dropped his MP5 and empty mag to the ground,
drew down his own pistol and moved forward. He
stopped in front of the vehicle, putting down
rounds into the x-rays.

'Go!'

It was Danny's cue to move again. He stopped
firing and leaped to his feet, running past the front
of the A4 until he was a couple of metres ahead. He
dropped down onto one knee and took on the
x-rays.

'Go!'

Lee had started moving forward as soon as he
heard Danny firing. They were taking the fight to
the enemy; it was known as 'fire and manoeuvre',
meaning that there was always someone firing
while the other moved. They were working well
together.

Danny reached his next position and pulled the
trigger. Nothing happened. The top slide was held
back because he was out of ammo.

'Stoppage!'

Lee stopped moving and put down fire; Danny
pushed the mag-release catch with his thumb and
the empty mag fell to the ground. He pulled a full
one from his jacket pocket, reloaded and released
the top slide catch with his thumb as he ran on. It
rammed forward, picking up a round at the top of
the mag and loading it.

Stopping just a metre short of the targets, Danny
was close enough to put double taps into their
heads as Lee ran up to join him; they continued
firing until they ran out of ammo.

They unloaded their weapons and glanced at
each other. They'd done well. All targets were
punctured with their double taps and they had put
down fire continuously as they moved forward.

Phil had watched the whole exercise, and for once
there was a slight smile on his face.

That evening he called Fergus in Manchester.
'We're done. As ready as we'll ever be.'

'How did Danny get on?'

Fergus waited while Phil considered his reply,
and when it came, it was almost exactly what he
had expected.

'He can be cocky, and headstrong, and sometimes
he thinks he knows it all without being told. But
he's done good. And I've got to admit, he's a tough
little bastard. How's phase two going?'

Fergus smiled into the telephone. 'Going to plan.
See you in Manchester.'

Manchester, England

'We've checked you out, Mr Watts.'

'I would have been worried if you hadn't.'

'Ex-SAS. More medals than David Beckham.
Quite a hero, before it all went wrong.'

'If you've done all your checks, you'll know that
I've been officially pardoned.'

'Oh, we have. We know
everything
about you; we
followed the stories with great interest. You're
famous. We like that.'

Fergus and the Headingham twins were standing
in a large yard enclosed by a high fence topped with
barbed wire. The stench of petrol and charred
rubber and leather hung in the air as they inspected
the remains of four burned-out coaches. They were
totally destroyed – nothing more than blackened
skeletons.

Two pristine coaches with matching black gloss
livery and darkened windows stood well away
from the wrecked vehicles; across the yard a couple
of young guys leaned against the wall of a huge
workshop with open double doors. Inside, another
coach was being steam-cleaned.

Fergus was meeting Teddy and Will Headingham
for the first time. He'd seen the surveillance pics
and read the int: identical twins, twenty-two,
privileged background, same prep school, public
school and university – Oxford, of course – same
degree in chemistry, now partners in business
together, running a fleet of luxury coaches to football
matches on the continent – at least that was
their legit business.

But Fergus was more interested in his own first
impressions of the Headingham twins. Up close, it
really was almost impossible to tell one from the
other. From his manner and in the way he
dominated the conversation, Teddy was obviously
the senior partner. He was maybe a couple of
centimetres taller than his brother, but they were
both strikingly good-looking, tall and slim, with
blond hair and piercing, cold blue eyes. And both
were dressed in lightweight, stone-coloured Paul
Smith suits.

They looked immaculate, completely out of place
in the coach yard, unlike the two young guys leaning
against the workshop wall, who were staring at
Fergus as though they were just itching for the
signal to do him some serious damage.

Fergus nodded towards them. 'That your own
muscle? Bit young, aren't they?'

'One might say that perhaps you're a bit old, Mr
Watts,' said Teddy. 'And hardly in prime physical
condition. I couldn't help but notice the limp. They
didn't mention that in the newspapers.'

'I get the job done.'

'Oh, indeed you do. You're an expert at what you
do – that's why we contacted you. And as for our
own security team, they may be young, but they too
get the job done.'

Fergus looked back at the burned-out coaches. 'So
I see.'

Teddy's pale face coloured a little.
'Touché,
Mr
Watts.'

Fergus was still looking at the blackened remains.
'So, who did this?' he asked.

'We've no idea,' said Will quickly. 'Possibly
business rivals.'

Fergus almost smiled. 'Bit drastic. And you say
this is the third incident?'

'The first time, when my car was taken and
burned out, we thought it was just joyriders,' Will
explained. 'But then the upstairs office was trashed.
And now this. And all in the last two weeks.'

Fergus turned and looked at him. 'I didn't know
the ticket-sales business was so cut-throat.'

'We do a lot more than sell tickets,' said Will
defensively. 'We provide exclusive luxury packages
for sporting events. Travel, tickets and hotel
accommodation.'

'Yeah, you can spare me the sales pitch.' Fergus
turned to Teddy. 'All I need to know is if you want
me to review your security. But like I told you, I
don't come cheap.'

Teddy nodded. 'Let's go and talk.'

Fergus glanced over to where the two heavies
were still attempting to look menacing. 'You think
they'll let us in?'

'This place is for the workers,' said Teddy dismissively.
'We'll go to our apartment. It's more
private, and somewhat more salubrious.' He took
the keys of a BMW 7-series from his jacket pocket
and nodded towards the vehicle, which was parked
close to the main gates. 'I'll lead the way. And as
we're still waiting for Will's replacement car, perhaps
you won't mind if he travels with you.'

The listening device had been fitted into a back
tooth, replacing an earlier filling in Fergus's mouth.
It looked exactly like a normal filling but was
actually a tiny microphone powered by the
electricity in Fergus's body.

The device had originally been developed for use
by the American Drug Enforcement Agency, whose
undercover operatives needed to be able to record
their encounters with drug dealers for evidence in
court. A receiving station had to be positioned within
a hundred metres, but the suitcase-sized piece of kit
could easily be set up in a car or a nearby building.

Fergus was behind the wheel of a new Land
Rover Discovery. It was the right sort of vehicle for
the job, but then nothing had been left to chance;
everything had to be right.

As soon as he pulled away from the yard, the
team was with him.

'Stand by, stand by! That's Bravo One mobile, left from the
yard. Danny has.'

Danny's life with his grandfather had turned full
circle. When he had set out to find Fergus more than
a year earlier, he had been the target of a surveillance
operation by MI6. Now he was part of a
special surveillance team himself.

He squeezed the pressel on the gear stick of the
silver Mazda he was driving to activate the
concealed microphone.

'Danny still has Bravo One held at lights, indicating right.
Phil, can you?'

The answer came back immediately in Danny's
radio earpiece.

'Phil can.'

'Roger that, Phil. Lights to green, Bravo One mobile. That's
right at the lights.'

The Land Rover made the right turn but Danny
continued straight on. A few moments later the
Land Rover passed a junction on the left and Phil
turned his green Vauxhall Vectra onto the road,
behind Fergus's vehicle.

'Phil has Bravo One.'

Danny was pleased that he'd got the first part of
the job right, knowing that it would be his turn to
take up the follow again before long. It was a
relatively simple job: they had a pretty good idea
where Fergus was heading because of previous
surveillance work. But it was important to keep
eyes on him – for his safety and to see if anyone else
was following him. It was also vital, after all the
training and practice, for the newly formed team to
gain experience of working smoothly together on a
real operation.

'That's Bravo One indicating left at the roundabout. Lee, can
you?'

Lee was behind the wheel of his blue Ford
Mondeo, two cars behind Phil.

'Lee can.'

Danny was already driving back towards a
junction where he could comfortably slip in as the
following vehicle once again. He knew the road network
well. Since moving into an MI5 safe house on
the edge of Manchester, one of the team's main jobs
had been to familiarize themselves with both the
city roads and the Greater Manchester area.

All that had been happening while phase two of
the operation was completed. And phase two had
gone exactly to plan: Fergus had expertly carried
out the very acts of sabotage and vandalism that the
twins were now asking him to investigate.

The tooth microphone was working perfectly.
Each car had a receiving station concealed under
the rear seat, and as Danny took a right turn and
came into range, he heard Fergus's voice clearly in
his earpiece.

'So, what do the police reckon about these three
incidents?'

Will's sarcastic laugh and cynical reply was more
distant, but still quite audible. 'The police have been
their usual inefficient selves, Mr Watts. They come,
they make notes and then they tell us they'll be in
touch if there are any developments, which there
never are.'

'So you've no idea who might be doing this?'

There was a pause before Will spoke, as though
he were racking his brain to work out who might
have the nerve to target their company. 'One of the
Moss Side gangs, perhaps – there are a lot of them.
Trying to muscle in on a legitimate business so they
can launder illegally gained money, perhaps.'

'This business of yours . . . If you don't mind me
saying, it must have taken quite a lot of cash to set
up.'

'Oh, it did, but Mummy helped with the finance,
and we're doing tremendously well. It was Teddy's
idea, while we were still at uni. We read chemistry,
but neither of us liked the thought of being stuck in
some laboratory working for someone else. The
business makes a lot of money and gives us time for
the sort of lifestyle we enjoy.'

'And what's that?'

Will laughed. 'We like a good time. Clubs . . .
interesting people. We have quite a number of
celebrity friends.'

In the Mazda, Danny shook his head as he
listened.
Mummy!
He hadn't met the twins yet, but
just listening to Will was enough to turn his
stomach. All that money and privilege, and all they
were interested in doing was messing up people's
lives with drugs. If the int was right. And Danny
was already thinking that it was.

He dropped a gear and told himself to focus on
the job, just like his grandfather always told him,
then he heard Fergus's voice again.

'So you've had no contact from anyone? No
demands? No threats?'

'No, nothing at all. To be absolutely honest, Mr
Watts, we're completely in the dark.'

Danny smiled as he heard the words: phase two
had been a total success.

'Lee's held at the lights. Bravo One through and still mobile.
Lee does not have.'

Danny reached a junction, saw the Land Rover
pass by and then eased the Mazda into the traffic
flow. He squeezed the pressel on the gear stick.

'Danny has Bravo One.'

Fergus and Danny were sitting opposite Dudley
at a table in a motorway services fast food outlet
off the M60. It was late, after eleven p.m. At
other tables, a few truck drivers sat hunched
over newspapers as they stabbed at plates of
chips.

Two teenage girls in jeans and padded jackets,
both with heavy rucksacks on their backs, wrapped
their hands round steaming brews of hot chocolate
as they passed their table. One of them glanced at
Danny and whispered something to her mate and
they both began to giggle.

Dudley, buttoned up in his overcoat as always,
heard the laughter and glanced at the girls. He
shook his head at the unwanted interruption and
then grimaced at the plastic beaker in front of him.
It was brimming with thin, brown, lukewarm
liquid. He had asked for tea; it didn't even look
close, and it certainly wasn't the sort of brew he was
accustomed to drinking.

'They twins are clean,' said Fergus. 'Completely.
Their flat, their cars, their computers, everything.
And it's not down to luck or any normal antisurveillance
procedures. They're taking instructions
from someone very experienced. Someone in the
know.'

Dudley received the news philosophically, his
face giving away nothing as he took in the information.
But they all knew that Fergus's words
confirmed what Dudley had suspected from
the beginning, and that an already tough and
dangerous job was likely to get even tougher and
more dangerous.

In the short time that Fergus had been 'working'
for the Headingham twins, the most advanced and
sophisticated technology had been used to try to
track down the location of their DMP – without a
sniff of success. With access to their home, their
business premises and even their computers, Fergus
had been in the perfect position to place tracking
and surveillance devices.

But nothing had been found, which could only
mean that everything was being expertly hidden. It
was all
too
clean; the twins even paid their tax bills
on time.

Dudley looked at Fergus. 'Are you telling me that
someone on our side, someone on the inside, is
advising the Headingham twins?'

Fergus shrugged. 'Not necessarily one of ours,
but certainly someone trained to the same level as'
– he hesitated for a moment and then shrugged
again – 'as someone like me. We've done the hightech
stuff and the regulation checks – pre-opened
their mail before it gets to the sorting office,
searched through their rubbish – but there's just
nothing at all. They even use pay-as-you-go phones
and change the SIM cards every day so their calls
can't be traced. And whatever calls they make, they
don't make them from home, or from the office. It's
just too good. Too professional.'

On the plastic tabletop was a copy of that morning's
Daily Mail,
open at an inside page. The
headline made grim reading:

CLUBLAND RIOT
ENDS IN MURDER

Dudley nodded towards the newspaper. 'That's
only on an inside page because it was late news and
it happened in France. But it's going to get worse.
Here and everywhere else.'

The story had made the late editions of most of
the daily newspapers and was being heavily
featured in the daytime news bulletins. Police in riot
gear, some on horseback, had been called in as
rioters poured out of a club, smashing shop
windows and overturning cars before setting them
alight. The newspaper report described the French
city centre as becoming Tike a war zone' for more
than two hours as police fought to regain control.

For once Dudley's usually placid face showed a
flash of anger. 'We know that the man responsible
for the killing was on Meltdown. He went completely
berserk, and he wasn't the only one.
Fortunately the French authorities have managed to
keep the Meltdown connection from the press, but
it can't continue for much longer. The irresponsible
bastards who created this monster of a drug have to
be stopped quickly – I've got the Europeans breathing
down my neck: they want us to stop Meltdown
being manufactured, and immediately.'

He stared down at the newspaper, reading the
story again, and Danny took a sip of the Diet Coke
he'd been nursing while they waited for Dudley's
next words of wisdom.

Danny was getting used to waiting, having discovered
for himself that the job wasn't always as
exciting as people imagined. He'd spent long days
watching and waiting outside the twins' impressive
glass-and-steel, canal-view penthouse apartment in
Castlefield.

Whenever the twins left the apartment, Danny
and the rest of the team had followed in their
vehicles. But so far the twins had done nothing
more than make occasional trips to the coach yard
or late-night visits to Manchester's fashionable
restaurants and clubs. It was boring, regulation
surveillance work – which Fergus called a 'hurry up
and wait' operation, meaning they had to hurry into
action and then spend endless hours waiting for
something to happen.

But Danny, being Danny, had soon become pissed
off with the waiting bit. He complained to his
grandfather, desperate to get in on the action and,
much to his surprise, had been given the go-ahead.
Fergus had moved from the safe house into an
expensive hotel once he had started working for the
twins, and he was charging them the full whack for
his luxury accommodation.

Teddy and Will knew about Danny from the press
stories, so when Fergus told them that he needed
extra help and was bringing his grandson in, there
was no argument.

Danny moved into the hotel too, and for the past
two days he'd been checking out the office on the
pretext that someone inside the business might be
involved in the acts of sabotage and vandalism.

'And you, Danny?' said Dudley, turning to him.
'What about the office?'

Danny shrugged. 'Not a thing. I've been through
the phone records, letters, the lot – every piece of
paper I could get my hands on. The twins haven't
been around but there's always someone keeping
an eye on me.'

Dudley frowned at his beaker of tea, considered
risking a sip of the tepid liquid, which looked
pathetically weak even though the tea bag was still
floating on top, but then decided against it. He
looked at Fergus again. 'So what do you propose
to do next? You didn't bring me to this
haven of culinary delight just to buy me a cup
of tea.'

Fergus almost smiled. 'I want your go-ahead to
take a more proactive line.'

Dudley raised his eyebrows slightly. 'Meaning?'

'The twins suspect that one of the Manchester
gangs might be trying to muscle in on their
legitimate business.'

'I've read that in your sit reps.'

'Well, I want to bring in one of the gang bosses for
real. I'll tell him where the Meltdown is coming
from. He's a nasty bastard and if I set him up right,
he'll want the business for himself.'

'And what exactly is the point of that?'

'He'll scare the boys shitless. They're all mouth
and no trousers. Once they believe that it's their
precious Meltdown everyone's after and not
their little travel firm, they'll realize they need me
even more. I'll get them out of the shit when the
gang boss comes looking for the Meltdown and
then they'll take me into their confidence.' Fergus
sat back in his chair and sighed. 'That's the theory
anyway.'

Dudley didn't look completely convinced. 'And is
that all?'

'No, not quite,' said Fergus. 'There's a girlfriend;
her name's Storm.'

'Storm? 7s that a name?'

Fergus shrugged.

'And whose girlfriend is she?'

'One of the twins', I'm not sure which one.'
Fergus turned and looked at Danny. 'He's gonna get
to know her.'

'What d'you mean, get to know her?' said Danny.
'I already do. I was talking to her in the office today.'

'And?'

'Well . . . she's . . . she's all right. Seems quite nice.'

Fergus shook his head and sighed. 'I'm not
interested in knowing if she's nice. I want to find
out what she knows. Chat her up a bit; use your
charm.'

'Charm? What charm?'

'Get some!' said Fergus firmly. 'Just chat her up.'

Dudley looked over at the two teenage girls,
who were still casting the occasional flirtatious
glance in Danny's direction. He nodded towards
them, causing Danny to look round. One of the girls
smiled and beckoned, and Danny quickly turned
back, his face aflame with embarrassment.

'I don't think it's me or your grandfather they're
smiling at,' said Dudley to Danny. 'They seem to
find you . . . interesting and attractive. Perhaps you
are – I have no idea about these things – but you'd
better make yourself interesting and attractive to
this Storm.'

Fergus saw Danny suddenly look anxious. He
laughed. 'Don't worry Danny, you've got the better
half of the job. While you're chatting up Storm, I'll
be making the acquaintance of Mr Siddie Richards.'