Red Notice (21 page)

Delphine gripped Daniel more firmly under his armpits now that his legs were dangling under the carriage. She tried to calm him. ‘It’s all right. Everything is going to be OK. Just breathe in and try to wriggle through. Don’t worry, you won’t fall – the nice man, our friend, he will catch you.’

The guard had heard the boy’s cries, and Delphine watched, horrified, as the handle turned, then stopped. The angry shouts from the other side of the door were followed by boot and body slamming against it.

Tom yanked hard on Daniel’s legs and, with a yelp, the boy finally dropped into his arms.

Delphine lowered herself as quickly as possible into the hole, but the toilet door burst open as the guard kicked it off its lock. He dived forward, grabbed her around the chest, and dragged her out.

As Tom launched himself upwards to help her, she shouted, ‘Save the ki—’

Her assailant slammed a fist into the top of her head. She felt the skin on her scalp split and her face hurtled towards the linoleum.

Fighting the pain as she lay sprawled on the toilet floor, she felt rather than heard him spray three suppressed bursts of 9mm into the darkness, then watched him lean as far as he could into the hole to see what he had hit.

60

TOM HAD THROWN
himself and the children to one side, shielding them with his body as a flurry of rounds peppered the concrete. Now he dragged them well away from the danger zone and planted them both behind one of the steel wheels.

‘Stay there,’ he whispered. ‘Not a sound!’

They went rigid, but Rose managed a nod.

He moved to the other side of the train, to what was left of the door. He still had to reach Delphine, and then try to get them all out of this shit. That was all he needed to think about. What might happen later wasn’t important right now.

He got there just as Delphine’s guard cannoned across the threshold. He misjudged the grapple as the man landed, but the fighter was taken by surprise. Both their weapons clattered to the ground. He felt a blinding pain as his opponent’s head glanced off his own, then another as the guard recovered enough to butt him full-on and hurl him backwards onto the ground. He lay there for a moment, stunned and winded, as the man landed on top of him.

Tom scrabbled for his weapon but was pinioned in a vice-like bear-hug around his chest and beneath his armpits. He tried to kick and buck, then head butt. The guard was doing exactly the same.

The man’s breath was hot against his cheek. It stank of cigarettes and decay. He had a week’s bristle on him, rough against Tom’s face and neck. He squeezed, his eyes closed, snorting. All Tom could do was keep trying to butt him, keep trying to make contact wherever he could.

Tom somehow managed to get his legs around the Russian’s gut and fought to link his feet. The fighter’s head jerked back – Tom’s opportunity to reach his eyes. Blood and snot glistened on the man’s face in the dim glow from the carriage. He fought to breathe through gritted teeth and did everything he could to keep Tom’s fingers away from his eyes. He tightened his grip around Tom’s chest and shook his head as Tom began to get a grip on his face and dig deeper with his thumbs. He tried to bite Tom’s fingers. Tom moved his right hand so he had a flat palm underneath his chin, then switched his left to just below the crown of the man’s head and grabbed a fistful of his hair.

He finally managed to interlock his boots. At last he could squeeze and push down with his legs, at the same time twisting up with his arms. His opponent’s neck suddenly gave way, with a barely audible crack. His body didn’t even jerk. It just went still. Tom rolled over and kicked him off.

He wiped the blood, snot and saliva off his hands on the dead man’s coat, and picked up the nearest weapon. He checked that the magazine was on tight, and that he still had a round in the chamber, then started to move back to the carriage door to get what he’d come for.

61

DELPHINE WAS STILL
lying on the toilet floor when she heard Tom’s voice.

‘Delphine . . .
Delphine
!’

It sounded a long way off at first. Perhaps even in a dream. Then a terrible stench assaulted her nostrils. She opened her eyes, saw the bundle of soiled clothing, and started to recover her bearings.

‘
Delphine! Come on!
’

Her strength surged back. She started to crawl towards the entrance to the carriage. Tom’s face was framed in what was left of the doorway. He raised his hands to help her out.

A smile crossed her face. ‘You took your time . . .’ She jerked her head sideways before he had a chance to answer. She could hear Laszlo’s shouts in the distance.

Tom stretched his arms out towards her. He was only a few feet away.

‘Don’t stop –
come on
.’

But she couldn’t help herself. She glanced once more along the carriage and saw Laszlo approaching, with three of his gunmen behind him.

All Delphine could do was mouth: ‘Go . . . the children . . .
go
. . .’

She knew he had to fight every instinct that urged him to stay and protect her. She could see it in his face. Finally he nodded. ‘Keep your mobile – I’ll come back for you.’

He dropped back into the gloom.

Laszlo strode up to her, ordering his men to jump down from the train. He seized her by the hair, lifted her head and jerked it back. She arched her back, trying to ease the burning pain in her scalp. She looked into his lifeless eyes and, for the first time in her life, felt pure and uncontrollable fear.

‘Someone attacked us. They took the kids.’ Delphine flinched, expecting him to hit her. But just as quickly, the fear changed to something else. It started to feel liberating. She had no control over the madman standing over her. No matter what she did or said, there was no guarantee he would react as she wanted him to. So what was the point in being scared? All she could do now was cling to any chance she was offered to save herself and the children.

‘You lying
bitch
.’ Laszlo’s expression darkened, and then the blow came. He raised his arm and backhanded her across the face.

Delphine tasted the metallic tang of blood. ‘Am I lying about the cuts?’ She tried to match his stare. ‘Do you think this is makeup?’

Laszlo’s fingers tightened in her hair and he dragged and kicked her out of the doorway towards the toilet cubicle. She saw the hole in the floor and the empty 9mm cases scattered around it. He inched forward, his feet making no sound, and peered down through the hole. He was suddenly, dangerously, still. Delphine knew what he’d seen: the guard they’d dispatched to escort her and the children, stone dead, his swollen tongue protruding grotesquely from his mouth.

Laszlo betrayed no emotion. The man had been there to fight and, if necessary, to give his life for their cause. What was he supposed to feel? Compassion? Regret? Those luxuries could be afforded only by the comfortable, complacent middle classes of the West. Laszlo had no doubt that he would rather
have died in that way than in the squalor of whatever pig-shit village he had come from.

He turned his ice-cold glare back to the woman. She was defiant, this one. He could see the fear in every fibre of her being, but he could not see compliance. Or understanding. Like every one of her kind, she couldn’t comprehend why men chose to fight and die. Maybe these people had spent too long sitting in front of their 44-inch flat-screens, phoning for pizza delivery, knowing the state was always there to feed them if their funds ran dry. Maybe they just had too much to live for.

Laszlo heard Sambor’s hurried footsteps and stepped back into the corridor.

‘The guy we sent to sort out the radio – he’s dead.’

Again, Laszlo’s reaction was no more dramatic than it would have been if his brother had announced that a bulb had blown and needed replacing. He shrugged and pointed out into the darkness. ‘There is just one man out there. And the children will slow him down.’

He wasn’t too fussed if this man had contact with the world outside or not. ‘Come, brother – we have more important things to do.’

Laszlo started to head back up the train, then, almost as an afterthought, waved a hand in the direction of the woman. ‘Bring her.’

Sambor grabbed the bitch’s hair and pulled her to her feet, indifferent to the blood welling from her scalp and starting to dribble down her cheek.

62

GAVIN RAISED HIS
binoculars and stood in front of the hangar, taking in the lie of the land. He scanned the terminal, the rail tracks and the throng of hi-vis jackets that marked the inner police cordon around the tunnel entrance. He checked his mobile, still hoping that Tom was alive and capable of letting them know at some point what the fuck was happening.

Gavin had as much information as he needed on the tunnel’s layout, and was pretty sure he knew why they had no radio comms with the train. Laszlo had had no reason to cut them. Why would he, halfway through a conversation? And the design team had assured him the system was fire- and flood-proof . . .

He was suddenly aware of puzzled glances from the nearest of the guys in hi-vis vests, and realized they must have seen his shoulders shake, possibly even heard him laugh.

The design team reckoned they’d thought of everything. But they hadn’t met Tom Buckingham.

He gave them a grin and stepped into the building.

As the situation developed, Gavin’s boys would be free to roam the hangar, check out the latest content on the boards, ask questions and listen in to the radio traffic between Woolf and Laszlo, and from the call-signs on the ground. Every single
member of Blue team would need to know exactly what was happening, when, how and why.

Gavin gave the heli pilot the nod, and he did the sensible thing – got some tea brewing and talked squash with one of the signallers while they waited for the assault group to arrive.

Woolf sat at his rapidly constructed desk, headphones and boom mic already in place, mobile stuck under one of the cans to keep him linked with COBRA. As he listened to the committee going round in an endless series of circles, his bored expression told Gavin all he needed to know about progress in Whitehall.

Woolf had met Clements on a number of occasions under the SAD lighting and hadn’t liked him from the get-go. Woolf was a self-made man. He’d left school at sixteen to work in Coventry’s MG factory as a trainee upholsterer, but soon learned that he should have thought about university instead of following his parents, who both worked in the same plant. His trainee salary had gone to finance night school, and eventually a University of East Anglia BA in philosophy, politics, economics, Adnam’s bitter and one-night stands. It had come as a complete surprise when he was approached by the Security Service. They asked if he would keep an eye on a group of fellow students who were developing unhealthily romantic leanings towards Irish nationalism – which they feared might turn into support for the Provisional IRA. He had turned out to be so good at this task that MI5 had offered him a full-time job before graduation.

Clements trumpeted himself as a champion of social mobility, but only for public consumption. He’d congratulated Woolf on his first COBRA appearance, but privately believed that people like him were made for reasonably effective middle management, that the real power should be left in the hands of those who’d had the upbringing and education to know how to use it. Woolf had read his body language loud and clear within the first minute of that first meeting, which was why he was more than pleased to be in the holding area today, doing
the job he was paid to do, rather than pissing around in a Westminster bunker.

‘Right.’ The signaller tapped on Woolf’s can and motioned for him to lift it. ‘We’ll establish a universal power-line bus and set it to private protocols. You’re jacked into the train with either device. All channels are open to you and London.’

Woolf felt his brow furrow as he tried and failed to decipher the geek-speak. He was glad to see Gavin come back over to the briefing area. ‘How much longer till the rest of your crew get here?’

Gavin checked the wall screen that displayed the satellite tracking of each of the call-signs driving from Hereford: two clusters of vehicles, Blue just over the Dartford Bridge, and Red hitting the M4 at junction fifteen. ‘Another thirty minutes.’

‘Let’s hope we have some contact with the train – or Buckingham – by then.’ Woolf kept his volume low, but he couldn’t disguise his growing anxiety. ‘If there have been more casualties, London will send you in immediately. There’ll be no negotiation.’

Gavin shared his concern. That was the worst option: there would almost certainly be high casualties within the team, and the Yankees would be at the sharp end of it all. Emergency response, almost inevitably, tended to do pretty much what it said on the tin. All he could do right now was issue a set of orders based on what he knew – and that was precious little more than what the train looked like, how it worked and where it was located.

Gavin shook his head. ‘Well, if Laszlo does make contact you’d better get your finger out of your arse and persuade him to give himself up. For fuck’s sake, you lads are supposed to be able to sell sand to the Arabs, aren’t you? Get the fucker to come out of his hole and have a brew with us.’

Woolf sighed, replaced his mobile and headset, and listened again to the Whitehall debate.

The pilot returned with a steaming paper cup. Gavin nursed it as he worked out how the team would respond if they were
given control in less than forty-five minutes’ time. From time to time, he checked his mobile for a signal and that he hadn’t accidentally switched it to silent.

63

TOM’S HANDS WERE
clamped hard over the children’s mouths. The slightest sniff or whimper would betray them.

The two men sent to hunt them down had jumped off in different directions, but within a few paces had called out to each other and regrouped no more than five metres from where Tom, Rose and Daniel lay.

Tom heard a muttered exchange. If they got any closer, it would be decision time. Could he hope to be taken prisoner? Not a chance. He’d just killed two of their mates. He could roll out the other side of the train and try to make a run for it, but these guys were unlikely to shoot and miss. He didn’t want to leave the kids, and he didn’t want to leave Delphine . . .