Wanted (24 page)

Impressive, Danny thought. The agents on the ground held their positions. None was panicking. But, then again, why should they? He could pretty much guess what was going through their minds. If the chopper was holding its current fixed position – as it was – and not engaging, or indeed beating a rapid retreat, the chances were they had nothing to worry about either, right?

Wrong. He pressed the second and third yellow squares on his screen simultaneously.

Two more explosions blasted out. Neither sounded harmless, but both were, as the first bomb had been. Home-made incendiaries designed to do nothing more than belch white smoke into the sky.

His thumb punched two more squares on-screen. No noises came this time. Instead black smoke billowed upwards from the two incendiaries he had detonated, which had both been concealed inside waterproof packages rammed with dry bedding and strips of black tyre.

Another of the Old Man’s aphorisms echoed through Danny’s mind:
The best way to panic an enemy is to make them believe they’re surrounded, outnumbered – or, preferably, both.

He allowed himself a grim smile now, as he watched those words take their grip on the reality below. It would be the black smoke, of course. Most of the agents would have been in combat at some point in their lives. The smoke, and the stink now hitting them too, meant that whatever those explosions were, they sure as hell weren’t cars backfiring, ship flares being sent up or any other such innocuous shit.

Panic, absent before, now began to spread. And not just on the ground. The chopper rose higher, rotating first this way, then that, focusing on one column of black smoke, then another, torn between which threat to concentrate on first.

Both of its side doors were open now, with snipers facing out either side, their rifles covering the multiple threats they’d now been presented with, swinging from one smoke stack to another, no longer looking nearly so confident or in control – no longer certain which their primary target was.

But Danny knew even more confusion was needed to allow him to escape. More incendiaries – a precaution he’d planned with Spartak, suspecting that this might be a trap.

Tap-tap.

He thumbed two more of the grid squares on his phone from yellow to red. Another two explosions rang out, further east – away from the direction in which he was planning to exit – each much more audible now that the chopper was so high.

The layout of the docks was playing into his hands now. The labyrinth of alleys and buildings made it practically impossible for the agents on the ground to work out from which direction the explosions were coming. Their only real guide was the chopper above them, but that was now switching focus even faster than before, giving no useful indication of where the main threat was based.

As a result, the agents’ previously tight formations were continuing to break apart. Some were taking cover, bodies hugged tight against walls, or wedged into locked doorways, while others were frantically screaming at them, attempting to force them back into position.

Tap.

Bang
went the ‘Big Boy’, as Danny had christened it. It had ten times the power of anything that had come before. He’d rigged it even further to the east. More black smoke filled the sky and he could smell the stench of burning rubber now. To anyone but himself, it looked as if several buildings across the compound were on fire, though none actually was.

Meaning it was time to get the heck out of Dodge . . .

As the first of the smoke reached his building, Danny began to edge away, watching the chopper to check it wasn’t yet looking towards him. And just in case its pilot was thinking of turning.

Tap
.

Another incendiary: this one launching a high-street rocket, which Danny had rigged inside a drainpipe. It streaked vertically into the sky. Fifty yards from the chopper, but close enough maybe to convince the pilot that he was now under ground-to-air strike.

The chopper lurched sideways in an emergency evasion manoeuvre.

Then it shuttled forward.

Before, finally, it raced away.

The knock-on effect on the agents was immediate. Any attempt to restore their previous pattern was abandoned. Maybe because of something the helicopter pilot had radioed down. Or because he had bolted – perhaps that had driven home the message that their assumed dominance had been stripped away.

Danny peered down over the edge of the roof a final time to see that the courier had now been pulled to his feet and was being dragged towards the wall of Building 17. With the helicopter gone, he could hear shouts rising up. He could even pick out the accents. English.

Again his eyes narrowed on the dark-haired MI5 agent he’d fought off at Lexie’s school. And for the first time since he’d triggered the first of his incendiaries, he felt a dart of panic.

Because the dark-haired agent wasn’t running or seeking cover. While his colleagues raced this way and that, he was looking at the rooftops. And then he did what Danny had dreaded. Through the gathering smoke, Danny saw him stare directly at him, then point.

Danny punched yet another square on his grid. A thud. The parcel, right there beside the agent, erupted into flames. Black smoke danced into the air. The dark-haired agent ran for the building.

Danny didn’t wait to see what happened next. He slithered across the roof, heart stuttering with adrenalin, towards its back edge.

He’d never considered waiting it out there anyway. As soon as it had been confirmed that the courier was innocent and had been nothing but a dupe, the whole area would be cordoned off, and the rooftops – the vantage points – would be the first places to be searched.

Danny fought the urge to shake off the garbage that covered him, stand up and run, reminding himself that the area would still be under satellite surveillance, and while the smoke now billowing above him would at least partially obscure his movements, he still needed to do everything in his power to blend in.

To which end he punched the last three grid squares on his phone, two of them detonating incendiaries further to the east, away from the direction Danny was planning to go, and one detonating outside Building 17.

Danny kept moving. Come on, he told himself, shuffling back now as fast as he could, reaching out with his feet, feeling for the end of the building, which he knew could only be a short distance away.

He couldn’t stop picturing the dark-haired agent and his team rushing towards him, closing in on the building he was on, surrounding it and waiting for him to descend.
Could he really have seen me from that far away?
Had he really made eye contact, or was that just Danny’s paranoia? Had he really been pointing at him or somewhere else?

He reached the roof’s edge. Only then did he break cover, slithering out from under the rubbish that had been covering him and over the side onto the drainpipe that ran down the two-metre gap between the building he was on and the next. He slid down, moving so fast he was half falling, using the pipe almost like a zip wire, grunting in pain as he tore his right hand on a bracket.

He crashed to the ground, jarring his ankle, He got up, dusted down his uniform, took the peaked cap from his bag and pulled it on.

A flash of movement. There, at the end of the alley he was now standing in. Someone – one of the agents – had rushed by. Were they the first in pursuit or the last? Were the others already rounding the building to cut him off? How much longer did he have?

Stumbling to the east end of the alley, he peered into the wider service street beyond. Empty. He looked up into the sky. Plenty of black smoke billowing around. Even better, it was starting to rain.

He trotted, didn’t run – like a man who was unnerved by the explosions going on around him, not like one who was desperate to escape – knowing if he was spotted now by any of the agents on the ground, or any eyes in the sky, his uniform alone might allow him to escape.

On the opposite side of the service road, which he was now halfway across, were another two high-sided corrugated-iron storage facilities and in between them another alley, like the one he had just emerged from, leading further east.

Five yards to go. Danny counted them down, ears straining, eyes flicking left and right, praying he’d make it into the dark mouth of the next alley before any agents arrived.

Four . . .

Three . . .

Two . . .

One.

The second Danny entered the next alleyway, he broke into a sprint. No shouts behind him. No footsteps. No shots.

But he knew he wasn’t safe yet. There was still the danger of an agent having seen him but not wanting to alert him to the fact. They might be running parallel with him even now, either side of the two buildings he was sprinting between. Meaning they’d emerge into the next service street at the same time as he did. And if they wanted to, they’d gun him down.

The fact was, they might also be behind as well. He didn’t give himself time to turn. What was the point? If they were that close, he was already as good as captured or dead.

As he sprinted, he stared fixedly along the alley, as if it were the barrel of a gun, imagining himself absurdly as a bullet, as something deadly that could not be stopped.

He made it to the end. Breathless, weakening from lack of sleep and proper food, he lurched out into the road beyond without stopping, and looked first right, then left to the end of the buildings he’d just run between, and saw—

Nothing. The street was empty. Both ways. Relief burst inside him, but was then snatched away.

Three men ran into the road from a doorway in the warehouse twenty yards to Danny’s right. He slowed – at a loss. What the hell was he going to do now? They were running at him fast.

Even as he reached for his pistol, he knew he wouldn’t shoot them. They were government agents, not terrorists, not crooks. No matter how much they might be his enemies today, on any other he’d be on their side. They were just people like him, doing what they thought needed to be done to make things right and keep the world safe. For Danny to open fire . . . well, that would make him one of the bad guys too.

But surrender? Not yet, not until he had no choice. His training kicked in. Even as they kept running, none of them had even aimed his weapon. Leaving Danny with a chance. He speeded up. He’d give everything he had. Every last atom of energy.

Even as he turned, though, an alarm was shrieking in his head. Something about those men giving chase, something that didn’t make sense . . . He turned back for a second look.

And only then did he realize what had been staring him right in the eyes all along. They weren’t wearing jeans or T-shirts, or even goddamn suits. The reason? They weren’t agents. They were rent-a-cops. They were dressed in black Docklands Authority uniforms – just the same as him.

They must have heard the explosions. They were frightened. They were racing towards him – seemingly one of their own – to find out what he knew and work out what the hell was going on.

They were still ten yards from him and only twenty yards back from the corner of the building, where the agents chasing him, led by the dark-haired MI5 spook, would appear at any second.

Take control.

That was what the Old Man would have told him, dammit.

Danny did. ‘It’s a robbery,’ he shouted, his accent English. ‘Back there.’ Louder this time, the sound of the chopper’s rotors was rising. It was coming back. ‘They’ve broken into Building Seventeen. They saw me trying to radio it in. They’re coming this way. Quick! We’ve got to go.’

The rent-a-cops slowed, some confused, others scared. The taller of the three, a blond guy, his brow creasing now, was staring Danny dead in the eyes. Was he maybe realizing he’d never seen him before? Or thinking his uniform was two sizes too big?

Danny didn’t give him any more time to think. In fact, he didn’t have any more time to think because, at that moment, two agents appeared at the end of the building fifty yards to his right, just as he’d predicted they would.

Danny’s blood ran cold. The guy in the lead was unmistakably the MI5 agent from Lexie’s school. He’d rounded the corner, like a sprinter entering the home straight on a track. Danny didn’t need to be a psychic to guess what was going on in his mind. He’d let Danny get away before. Just from the set of his jaw, Danny could see he wasn’t planning on letting that happen again.

‘There,’ Danny barked. ‘Behind you.’

The blond rent-a-cop, the tallest of the three, turned fastest. The rest of his crew followed. The guy on his left, short but wide as a barn door and looking like he’d been breastfed on steroids, flexed himself even wider as the dark-haired agent ran at him, screaming at him to get out of the way.

Only he didn’t.

Danny’s uniform, or the lack of any uniform being worn by the agents, had been enough to convince the three rent-a-cops whose side they were on.

From scrutinizing him, they’d switched to forming a human barrier between him and the agents, which the agents were going to have to circumvent or break clean through if they were going to stand a chance of taking him down.

As the dark-haired agent tried sidestepping the supersized blond rent-a-cop, in an attempt to cut off Danny, who was already turning to break west towards the next alley, the rent-a-cop showed a remarkable turn of speed.

He launched himself hard at the agent, ploughing into him and tackling him around the ankles, sweeping the man’s legs from beneath him and bringing him crashing to the ground.

The last thing Danny saw was the look of pure disbelief on the agent’s face. He didn’t wait to see what happened next. He sprinted into the alley and only looked back when he reached its end.

It was clear. Which was more than could be said for the sky. The incendiaries were still pumping black smoke all around. But not only that. Heavier clouds had gathered. More rain.

He kept running. Further west. Across another road. Into another alley. Another glance back: still no sign of pursuit. What the hell had happened to that agent? The tackle must have been even more powerful than it had looked. Enough to have laid him out flat. It had been no martial-arts move either, he reflected, which was perhaps why it had taken the agent so much by surprise. It had been a rugby tackle, pure and simple, a sport Danny had never played but that would have a place in his heart from now on.