Target (27 page)

As they fell from the lorry, Mike Bolt just managed to pull himself away from the shaven-headed thug, so when they ended up on the road it was the thug who landed first. Bolt spun off him and rolled along the tarmac, conscious of the sirens getting ever closer.

He was winded, and tired from his exertions, but he managed to get to his feet faster than the thug, who was flailing about blindly. Out of the corner of his eye Bolt saw that Tina had stopped moving, but there was no time to worry about her now. Instead, he charged forward, headbutted the thug on the bridge of the nose and kicked him to the ground.

Panting, he swung round as the lorry weaved its way forward, already thirty yards ahead, then forty, still not being intercepted by the police cars whose sirens seemed to be coming from everywhere.

Then, as Bolt watched through the steadily increasing rain, an arm shot out of the open passenger door and grabbed for the handle. The next second he was knocked off his feet by a huge shockwave as the rear doors and both sides blew off the lorry, and the cab erupted in flames. Cylinders flew up into the air like confetti before showering down on the road in a cacophony of metallic clangs.

Clambering to his feet, he saw that Mo had picked up Tina and was in the process of putting her over his shoulder. He rushed over and grabbed her legs, easing the load for Mo, and together they took off down the road, yelling at the two uniforms at the junction to do the same.

Mike Bolt had no idea how fast mustard gas travelled, but as he ran through the rain the adrenalin seemed to course through every part of his body. And though he knew his, Mo's and Tina's lives were in danger he had a bizarre yet incredibly intense desire to laugh out loud. He was enjoying this, he truly was. It was like all those dreams of action and adventure he'd had as a young kid. Now, aged forty and banging on the door of middle age, here he was running for his life with the heat of an exploded bomb at his back.

He and Mo ran with Tina for two, three, four hundred metres, it was difficult to tell. He felt a surge of relief when she moved a little and groaned, told her it was going to be OK, and kept going, knowing that if they made it out of this it had to be a good omen for all three of them.

But his legs were getting weaker, and he was slowing down badly. As was Mo, who was panting like an old man, two decades of cigarettes taking their toll. So it was with another burst of relief that Bolt saw the police van approaching slowly, its sirens flashing, and the man in the protective white suit leaning out of the passenger window and motioning for them to get in the back.

He pulled on the rear door handle and he and Mo threw Tina inside before being pulled in themselves by two uniforms.

'Is anyone else down there?' came a voice from the front.

Bolt thought of the thug he'd floored a few minutes earlier. 'No,' he gasped, 'I don't think so.'

Immediately the van turned round and they were driving out of there.

Still lying on the floor, he looked across at Tina. She was bruised, splattered in dried blood, and beautiful, her eyes just about staying open. She managed a weak smile. 'Thanks, Mike,' she whispered. Then her eyes closed.

Bolt smiled across at Mo, who was too busy getting his breath back to notice, then he reached over and took her hand, utterly elated that somehow she'd come out of this alive.

That they were all still alive.

Chief Superintendent Ken Canaver of Essex Police was standing on a grassy verge directly opposite the outbuilding he and his officers had been told was the possible headquarters of a terrorist cell, watching as flames gouting thick black smoke lit up the sky over to the west. He'd heard the dull thud of the explosion that had caused the fire and knew that it was the lorry his colleagues were trying to intercept. He also knew what it was supposed to contain. But he had no idea whether in the current weather conditions the gas would spread to where they were now, and until he heard otherwise he and his officers would remain where they were.

Canaver was a solid career copper, only one year short of his thirty years' service, and he liked to do things methodically and by the book, because he knew that, ultimately, that was the best way. In all his time in the police he'd never had to make a life-or-death decision, and he was truly hoping that this wasn't going to change now. As well as a fleet of ambulances, Canaver had some forty officers on the scene, a dozen of whom were armed. As he'd already announced to the building's occupants on the megaphone several times in the last ten minutes, he had the place surrounded. Neither the hostage negotiation team nor the big guns from Counter Terrorism Command and SOCA were yet at the scene, but the sooner they were, the happier he'd be. In the meantime he'd carry on repeating his request every three minutes for whoever was inside to give him or herself up. So far he'd received absolutely no response, although there were several lights on inside, so he and his people continued to stand silently in the pouring rain using a line of squad cars as cover, waiting to be relieved.

Behind him he heard several of the other officers whispering urgently to one another. The explosion had made everyone jumpy. Luckily, none of them knew its ramifications. The only people within the Essex police force who'd been informed that the lorry was carrying poison gas were the chief constable, his assistant, and Canaver himself.

Canaver fingered his mobile phone nervously, wondering if he was going to get a call to evacuate. As well as terrorists, he'd been told that the building might also contain a kidnap victim, although whether she was alive or not was still unclear. There was definitely someone alive inside though: two of his officers had seen movement in one of the upstairs windows a few minutes earlier. He didn't like the idea of abandoning a potential victim of crime, or letting the criminals holding her get away, but he had to admit that he'd be more than happy to leave this scene and its heavy responsibilities behind.

'I didn't expect an evening like this when I came on duty today,' said DCI Nigel Teasdale, the head of Essex CID and a colleague of Canaver's for more than ten years now.

The two men had never got along particularly well. Teasdale was brash, impulsive, and far too gung-ho – a trait that was definitely not needed in a siege situation – but right now it was all hands on deck and Canaver had no choice but to work with him.

'I don't think any of us did,' answered Canaver, wondering how Teasdale would react if he was told what the lorry contained. For all his bravado, the fat sod would probably run a mile, which given the size of his gut would be a sight worth seeing.

The thought momentarily cheered Canaver, but only momentarily, because as he stared straight ahead at the barn he saw smoke beginning to seep out of one of the windows on the upper floor, and the first flickering glow of flames coming from inside.

Others saw it too, including Teasdale. 'Blimey, he's burning the place down,' he announced loudly in a statement of the blindingly obvious. Then he asked the question Canaver had been dreading: 'What the hell do we do now?'

In the same moment, the head of the armed response team, Sergeant Tony Lennis, appeared at Canaver's other side. 'Do you want us to go in?' he asked.

The truth was that Canaver had no plan of action, no idea of the numbers he was up against or how well they were armed. Even the blueprints for the building hadn't arrived yet. Lennis might have been a firearms officer for close to two decades, but he'd never fired a shot in anger, and if he messed things up now it would be Canaver's responsibility.

The two men were looking at him expectantly. In the skies above, a helicopter circled noisily. Smoke was pouring out now, the flames rising higher. He could call the chief constable, put the onus on him, but that might look like indecisiveness, and time was running out. There could be someone in there in huge danger.

Christ, how he hated being put in this position.

He turned to Lennis, saw the pent-up tension in the man's face, the way he was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. 'All right,' he said, the words coming out with difficulty. 'Go in.'

As one armed officer yanked open the left-hand barn door, Tony Lennis, breathing apparatus on, moved swiftly inside, his Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun held out in front of him, followed immediately by two of his most experienced officers. Although the lights had been turned off on the ground floor, powerful spotlights from outside were shining through the two narrow windows at the front, illuminating the smoky interior enough for Lennis to spot the corpse of a tall skinny guy in the middle of the stone floor. He had intelligence that there might be a twenty-nine-year-old IC1 female being held captive somewhere in here, but he couldn't see her and had little desire to go upstairs where the fire had clearly been started, in case he got trapped.

A bullet hissed past his head, and one of his people – Jim Walton, a recently divorced father of three kids under ten – went down with a muffled yelp. Another round flew past, narrowly missing Lennis again, and he realized that in twenty years of armed service this was the first time he'd ever been fired at with live ammunition; and worse still, whoever was firing was good.

The shots were coming from behind a partly open door straight ahead, but neither the assailant nor his gun was visible.

To his credit, Lennis didn't hesitate. Nor did his other colleague, recently married Terry 'One Shot' Landesman. They both opened up with the MP5s, the bullets knocking open the door with a loud crack.

A shadow moved beyond it and Lennis let off another burst of fire, the torch beam from his MP5 lighting up the gloom. Where the fuck was he?

'Officer down!' he shouted into his mouthpiece as more officers poured in through the barn door. 'Repeat, officer down! We need urgent medical assistance!'

Lennis knew he had very little time. Ordinarily he would have secured the ground floor then waited while his superiors attempted further negotiation, but the fire was spreading fast above them and it wouldn't be much longer before the wooden ceiling gave way, condemning them all to a fiery grave.

With his heart hammering in his chest, he advanced on the open door, Landesman by his side. Lennis went through first, pointing his weapon up the wooden staircase that led to the next floor. The smoke was everywhere here and he could hardly see a thing.

Then another bullet hit the wall just behind him, and he returned fire, the sound of the discharge making his ears ring.

A shadow flitted across the balcony and Lennis fired again, moving his weapon in a tight arc, his rounds tearing up the woodwork. He thought he heard a scream and saw a figure stumble as if he'd been hit, but visibility could be measured in feet and it was impossible to tell for sure. He became aware of Canaver calling out on the megaphone for the man to surrender, but his voice was stifled by the crackle of the fire and the sound of his own breathing.

With a nod to Landesman, he raced up the stairs, eager to press his advantage, operating on instinct now, not thinking of the dangers inherent in his actions. As he reached the top, the smoke seemed to swallow him up, and he felt the heat of the fire against his protective overalls. He turned the corner, finger tensed on the MP5's trigger, and almost tripped over the body of the gunman at his feet. He'd been shot in the head, the pistol with silencer still in his hand. It was hard to tell whether he was dead or not, but he was definitely in a bad way.

But it was the sight of the girl in handcuffs lying on the floor a few feet away through an open door that grabbed Lennis's attention. Her face was smoke-blackened and she was choking beneath her gag, eyes tight shut in an effort to keep out the smoke.

Lennis ran forward, ignoring the heat from the flames as it came at him in intense waves, and heaved her up from the floor. Then, helped by Terry Landesman, who took one of her arms, they hauled her from the room.

'What about him?' asked Landesman through his mouthpiece, nodding towards the gunman.

'Leave him,' panted Lennis, knowing they had only moments to get out. 'He's not worth risking our necks for.'

As they helped the girl down the staircase, a loud crack rang out from the ceiling above the main barn, and Lennis saw a long, twisting split appear right across it. He knew it was going to give any second and he was tempted to drop the girl and make a dash for it, but he knew without a doubt that he'd never be able to live with himself if he did that. Instead, he stopped and heaved her over his shoulder.

'Go on, go!' he snapped at Landesman, and the two men made a dash across the floor as another crack sounded above them and the ceiling began to buckle. 'It's going!' he shouted through the mouthpiece as he charged out the door and across the track before falling to his knees and setting the barely conscious girl as gently as he could on the grass as the paramedics moved in.

Behind him there was an almighty crash as the ceiling finally collapsed, interring the gunman in a fiery grave. Lennis felt a sudden surge of euphoria. He'd made it.

Thick black plumes of smoke continued to pour from the badly damaged barn while more than a dozen police and TV helicopters flew slowly in a wide circle overhead vying for the best view of the dramatic scene that was being played out over the few square miles of countryside below.

A three-mile exclusion zone had now been set up around the burnt-out gas lorry, and a major evacuation of the area's residents was already underway, although the effects of the phosgene had been severely limited by the rain that was still falling, coupled with the lack of a strong wind. So far the only confirmed casualties were the lorry's driver, who'd been incinerated in the blast, and his passenger, who'd been rushed to hospital suffering from the gas's effects and who was not expected to live.

The barn lay just a few hundred yards outside the exclusion zone, and three separate fire crews were still working to bring the blaze under control. Further back, behind the police lines, Mike Bolt and Mo Khan, both of them exhausted, stood watching them alongside the police and ambulance crews. Big Barry Freud had arrived by helicopter a short while earlier and was now in the process of taking charge of the crime scene from his colleagues in Essex on behalf of Counter Terrorism Command.

Bolt, still hyped up by his recent experiences, was drinking a hot mug of coffee, while Mo was smoking a sneaky cigarette, having fallen off the non-nicotine wagon once again. When Bolt had given him a disapproving look, Mo had answered simply, 'It's the stress of working with you,' and Bolt could hardly disagree. Neither had said much to the other since their narrow escape from the bomb nearly an hour earlier. They were both still getting over the shock of it, and Bolt knew that there was no way either of them was going to be sleeping much tonight.

Tina, meanwhile, had been transferred to hospital, where she was now being treated for her injuries. She'd drifted in and out of consciousness in the immediate aftermath of the explosion so Bolt hadn't been able to ascertain what had happened to her during the thirty or so hours she'd been missing, but the word from the hospital was that she was going to be OK, and he was looking forward to visiting her there as soon as he could.

In the end, things had worked out as well as they could have done. The mustard gas lorry had been intercepted; a woman believed to be Jenny Brakspear had been rescued alive from the burning building by one of the armed response officers; and it seemed that Hook had never made it out, and was therefore almost certainly dead. Bolt was pleased: someone like him didn't deserve the comparative luxury of a British prison. But he would have liked to look into his eyes while he died and say, 'This is for Leticia Jones, you callous bastard.' Bolt knew that some people would say acting like that made him almost as bad as Hook, and he could see their point. Ordinarily he didn't believe in the death penalty, yet there were people out there – not many, but some – who were so corrupt, so depraved, and most important of all so dangerous that it was more of a crime to let them live. Hook was just such a man, and when the time came, Bolt would raise a glass to his passing.

'You two did well tonight,' said Big Barry, coming over to join them.

Bolt nodded a thanks, thinking that it was typical of his boss to arrive and take charge of the scene long after the danger had passed and all the hard decisions had been made.

'We could have had a disaster on our hands,' continued Big Barry. 'If that bomb had gone off in a crowded area and it hadn't been raining ...I don't even want to think about the implications.' He concluded by announcing that he was going to be recommending the two of them for bravery awards.

Mo grinned, and Bolt was pleased to see how happy he looked as he thanked their boss. Bolt thanked him too, but he was less effusive. In the end, an award didn't mean as much to him, although he knew his mother would be proud. He was more interested in getting an answer to the one question that had been bothering him through all this. 'Have we any idea what on earth this is all about, sir?' he asked.

Big Barry nodded. 'We're beginning to, yes, although we're still a long way from a definitive explanation. But you were right: the key's Sir Henry Portman.'

Bolt frowned. He knew that the photo in Dominic Moynihan's house couldn't have been a coincidence, but it was still a shock to think of Portman as a central player in this whole conspiracy. 'How come?' he asked. 'And what did Moynihan have to do with it?'

'Moynihan's a partner in Sir Henry's hedge fund, HPP. It's a very small and exclusive outfit, mainly dealing with wealthy private clients, and it's had a good reputation for making money over the years. But in the last year they've piled into some risky financial and banking stocks at exactly the wrong time, as well as some pretty iffy-looking mortgage-backed securities, and they've taken some big hits. Or, more to the point, their clients have.'

'One of whom's Paul Wise,' said Mo. 'He's been investing in them through one of his holding companies, hasn't he? We were looking at it just yesterday.'

Big Barry nodded. 'That's right. Ratten Holdings. They've got roughly thirty million with HPP. But twelve months ago it was a lot nearer fifty. Wise hasn't done at all well out of Sir Henry, but here's the strange thing. A lot of Sir Henry's clients have been taking their money out of the fund and putting it elsewhere because of its poor performance, but in the last three months Ratten Holdings have actually been putting more money in. In fact, they're now helping to keep Sir Henry in business.'

'But what's that got to do with all this?' asked Bolt, waving a hand towards the burning building. 'And what's it got to do with a lorry load of mustard gas?'

'Have you gents ever come across the term "short-selling"?'

'I've got a little bit of an idea,' answered Mo.

Bolt just shook his head. He'd never had much of an interest in finance.

'Basically, it's when someone sells a share they don't own, then buys it back at a later date, hopefully at a lower price.'

Bolt pulled a face. 'How the hell do you sell something you don't own?'

Big Barry shrugged. 'That's the financial industry for you,' he said, as if this explained it. 'I'm not sure how it works exactly but it seems the person rents the share from someone else, and then they just hand it back to him at an agreed time. Apparently, it's a very common practice among hedge funds. Anyway, the thing that's significant from our point of view is that HPP have been short-selling huge numbers of shares in British retail, leisure and insurance companies in recent weeks – hundreds of millions of pounds' worth. If the prices of these shares stay static or rise, then HPP are going to be in a lot of trouble, because they're already stretched financially. On the other hand, because of the size of their holdings, if the prices of all these retail, leisure and insurance companies were suddenly to fall significantly – and by significantly I mean ten, fifteen per cent – then they're looking at making the kind of profits that are going to reverse all their bad calls of the last twelve months. But it would take a catastrophe affecting the whole of the FTSE to cause that to happen.'

'My God,' said Mo, who looked genuinely gobsmacked. 'You think that they were going to blow that lorry load of mustard gas to cause some kind of stock market crash?'

'Well, given the individuals involved in this plot, it stands to reason. A big London-based terrorist attack would cause an automatic knee-jerk reaction on the stock market, and the shares whose prices would suffer most are those in the sectors that HPP were shorting.'

'This is Paul Wise's work,' said Bolt, who was finding it hard to believe himself. 'It has to be. I know some of these City boys don't have that much in the way of moral scruples, but there's no way someone like Sir Henry Portman would have had the contacts to get something like this up and running. But Wise . . . I wouldn't put anything past that bastard.'

'No, I agree,' said Big Barry. 'Someone high-level like Wise would have been running things, but Sir Henry was a willing partner, as was Dominic Moynihan. I believe Moynihan went out with Roy Brakspear's daughter for a while so he would have been the one who volunteered the information about her father's connections with dangerous gases. Then Wise would have used his criminal contacts to organize the actual logistics and hire Hook. Whether or not they intended to carry out a mass slaughter or give some sort of warning before the bomb was detonated we don't know, but knowing someone like Wise, they'd probably take the mass slaughter route, because that would have the bigger impact on the stocks.'

Mo shook his head slowly. 'What kind of people would do something like that?'

'Greedy ones. And I reckon Sir Henry and Dominic Moynihan were probably under a lot of pressure from Paul Wise. He's not the type to be very understanding about people losing millions of pounds of his money.'

'But I can't understand how they'd have got away with it,' said Bolt. 'Surely it would have been a huge coincidence them making a fortune like that on exactly the same day this bomb goes off?'

Big Barry shrugged. 'I'm no economist, old mate, but I heard once that one third of the world's money passes through the City of London every working day. If that's the case, then the money they would have made – fifty, sixty million – is just a drop in the ocean. So I doubt if it would have been picked up. An attack like that would almost certainly have been blamed on Islamic terrorists trying to disrupt the British economy, and with no witnesses left alive to say otherwise it would probably have been left at that. I doubt if anyone would have suspected a couple of UK-born City financiers, one of whom's a peer of the realm.'

An unpleasant thought struck Bolt. 'What can we prove against Wise?'

'I don't know,' admitted Big Barry, his expression not inspiring a great deal of optimism. 'Probably not a lot. Wise is an intelligent, surveillance-aware operator so he'll have been careful with his side of the planning, and I expect he left a lot of the actual logistics to Hook. With most of the conspirators dead, we're going to have to rely on Sir Henry testifying against him, and even then it's going to be difficult to build a case.'

'Have we brought Sir Henry in yet?'

'At the moment we haven't got enough evidence to charge him with anything, but we've got him under twenty-four-hour surveillance and his house has been bugged, so even if he farts we'll know about it.'

Bolt took a gulp of his coffee. 'Fair enough,' he said, even though he'd have been happier with Sir Henry Portman in a place where they could lean on him. Bolt was sure a high-living socialite who'd never known true pressure would crumble immediately.

At that moment, a shout went up among the assembled firefighters in front of the barn. The fire was pretty much out now and two horrifically charred bodies were being brought out. As Bolt watched, they were laid down on the gravel track, and two paramedics with body bags and the duty doctor came forward to complete the formalities.

'So we got him at last, boss,' said Mo, patting Bolt on the shoulder. 'It's what he deserved.'

Bolt nodded, then slowly made his way between the squad cars over to where the bodies lay, exhaustion finally beginning to take hold. He had no real desire to view the charred corpse of the man he'd been after these past five years, but something drove him on. Perhaps it was the memory of Leticia Jones's small, stiff body on her uncle's floor. Or the other bodies he'd seen these past twenty-four hours. Roy Brakspear, Rob Fallon, the unidentified woman beside the road the previous night . . .

He stopped a few feet away from the bodies, flinching against the overpowering smell of burnt flesh. Bolt might have been a police officer with more than twenty years' experience, but he still found it very difficult to look at dead people. They reminded him too much of his own mortality, and burns victims were possibly the worst. The intense heat melted their fat and shrank them into nightmarish charcoal sculptures, almost unidentifiable as human.

One was very tall, and he guessed that this was the body of the as yet unidentified man who'd been found on the barn floor when the armed officers had gone in.

Bolt took a deep breath and stared down at the other corpse – all that was left of his nemesis. Although some form of natural justice had been done here, he found it difficult to feel any real satisfaction.

Something caught his eye on the body. A smoke-blackened gold ring on one of the gnarled, twisted fingers.

He bent down, looking more closely. Which was when he felt a surge of pure shock. There was a second gold ring on the finger next to it, unmistakably feminine in design.

Bolt wasn't looking at Hook at all. He was looking at the body of a woman.

And straight away he knew it must be Jenny Brakspear.