Hunter Killer Read online

  He didn’t hear the noise, like thunder, that echoed in the vaults of Paddington station, and which was audible in the West End, and Shepherd’s Bush, and at the top of Primose Hill, and anywhere else within a two-mile radius.

  He didn’t hear the shattering of the train windows, or the metallic drilling of shrapnel peppering its chassis.

  Or the sound of Coach G crunching in on itself from the violent shock wave, turning into a hot, twisted coffin that crushed everybody inside.

  Or the buckling of a second train that was pulling into the opposite platform at the moment of the explosion.

  He didn’t hear the strange, ghostly silence that lasted for only a few seconds.

  Or the screams that followed.

  Some were screams of pain. Some were screams of horror. The horror that only someone who has witnessed such atrocities can know. The horror of men and women forced to look upon those parts of the human body that nobody should ever see. The horror of mothers cradling their dead children.

  And Alfie, of course, didn’t see these atrocities. He didn’t see the body parts, grotesquely separated and mutilated, that flew to the concourse, and as high as the roof, and up the stairs at the far end of one platform that led to the tube station. He didn’t see the blood that coagulated with hot dust and sprayed like thick paint over concrete and iron and mangled human bodies. He didn’t see the corpses, some of them a full hundred metres away, that had been killed by shock waves if not by debris. He didn’t see the faces, their skin burned away to reveal damaged networks of capillaries. Or the shower of dead birds that rained down from their roosting places in the ceiling and spattered as they hit solid ground. Or the rain that leaked in from the devastated ceiling, creating pools of watery, pink-red blood all over the platforms.

  Alfie saw none of this. At the moment of the explosion, he had been waiting patiently for his friends, who had promised him such a lovely weekend away, and whom he had trusted implicitly, just as he trusted anybody who showed him the slightest kindness. Like good friends should, he had been clutching their suitcases, quite unaware that each one contained twenty-five kilos of military-grade explosive, and plastic bags filled to bursting with hard, anodised five-inch nails.

  And as he was at the very centre of the explosion, he had of course been the first to die.

  Part One

  Hammerstone

  One

  South London. Monday. 23.00hrs

  ‘What the fuck do they think we are?’ Spud Glover muttered. ‘Twenty-four-hour locksmiths?’

  Danny Black grunted, then looked left and right up Horseferry Mews. The name made this little side street – a hundred metres end to end and lined with railway arches – sound a lot posher than it actually was. Some of the arches were cavernous, full of litter, plastered with fat, colourful graffiti, and stinking of piss. Others had been turned into lock-ups and mechanics’ workshops. Danny and Spud were standing alongside the central arch. The frontage was painted grey, with a red roll-top grate for vehicles to get in and out, and a steel door to one side. Both locked. The adjacent arches were empty, with no frontage. Over the sound of the hammering rain, Danny could hear larger drops echoing as they fell from the top of the arch on the right to the concrete floor. Between the two arches was a corroded metal downpipe reaching all the way to the ground from the railway above. The torrential rain was too much for it. Water sluiced down its sides, and belched up from the grate at its mouth.

  Danny was as soaked as the drainpipe, and pissed off. Ordinarily, theirs was a life of aircraft carriers, forward operating bases and active missions behind enemy lines. But this? This was donkey work. He and Spud had been entrusted with nothing else since they got back from Syria six months previously.

  Their two Regiment mates, Ripley and Barker, were at either end of the street. Danny could just make out the glowing end of Ripley’s cigarette as his mate leaned against the ten-foot-high wall, topped with razor wire, that faced the railway arches. If you saw Ripley round Hereford, he’d probably be wearing a leather biker’s jacket. Motorbikes were his obsession. He owned, what, six or seven of them? But his biker’s jacket would be no good for tonight. It couldn’t conceal a rifle. Neither Ripley nor Barker showed any sign of the HK416s secreted under their Barbours and attached to their shoulders by means of a short length of bungee rope. But they only needed to open up their coats and extend their right arms to be as heavily armed as anyone in London – and in the wake of the Paddington bomb that was saying something.

  Spud and Danny were less heavily armed. Their jeans and North Face jackets covered the Sigs holstered at their waist. Spud wore night-vision goggles propped up on his forehead. No body armour for either of them, though. They’d discussed it back in Hereford, and agreed that it wasn’t necessary. This was Lewisham, not Lagos. Nobody expected a job like this to go noisy, and there wasn’t a single self-respecting member of the Regiment who actively chose to strap on plate hangers if they didn’t have to.

  ‘I said, who do they think we are?’ Spud repeated. ‘Twenty-four . . .’

  ‘They’re just a bunch of geeks,’ Danny interrupted. ‘Open the frickin’ door and we can get out of here.’

  Between Danny and Ripley, about thirty-five metres from Danny’s own position, was an old grey Bedford van with a dent on the nearside wing. It was parked up on the other side of the road opposite the arches. All lights off, nobody behind the wheel. But in the back, hidden from view, was a police tech unit. As soon as Spud had broken into the lock-up and given them the all-clear, the tech unit would swarm in and take detailed photos of everything inside. Then they’d go away and make a replica of something – a lamp, an old oil can, whatever they could find – doctored with surveillance equipment. Which meant it was odds on they’d all be doing this again in a couple of nights’ time, when the police could replace the chosen object with their specially altered one.

  ‘I don’t care if they’ve got Stephen fucking Hawking hiding back there,’ Spud said. ‘I’m missing a piss-up at Karen Macshane’s place thanks to a bunch of plods scared of their own shadows.’

  ‘Shame,’ Danny said distractedly.

  Spud turned to look at him. ‘Shame?’ he asked. ‘Shame? She sent me a selfie the other day. With her tits out! She’s gagging for it . . .’

  Danny looked meaningfully at the implement in Spud’s right hand – a snap gun, about the size of an old-fashioned kids’ potato gun, with a narrow, pointed blade protruding. Fit a tension wrench in the lock, then insert the snap gun and squeeze the handle – one of those should get a lock like this open in about thirty seconds, if you knew how to use it, which Spud did. ‘You going to get started, mate? Get this done quickly, you’ll be back in time to give Karen Macshane a night to remember.’

  Spud gave him a dark look, but turned his attention back to the lock.

  There was a voice in Danny’s covert earpiece – one of the armed police guys keeping a 200-metre cordon. ‘We’ve got a blue Passat heading towards the north end of Horseferry Mews. Two drivers, one male, one female.’

  Ripley’s voice: ‘Roger that.’

  And five seconds later, the glare of headlamps shining through rain as the vehicle passed the end of the street, then disappeared.

  Danny looked back at Spud. The lock should have been open by now, but the snap gun was still inside it, and Spud was swearing under his breath. Danny raised an eyebrow. Spud scowled back. ‘It’s fucking wet, okay?’

  Danny smiled. ‘You’d have got it open by now if it had hair on it,’ he said.

  Spud grinned. ‘True that,’ he said. No false modesty there. Spud Glover was short, squat and broad-shouldered, with a face like a young Phil Collins. But he still pulled more regularly than anyone Danny had ever met. He started pumping the snap gun again. Ten seconds later, the lock clicked. Spud removed the snap gun, handed it to Danny, and pulled down his NV goggles.

  Danny pressed a button on the radio fixed to his belt and spoke into the mike fitted to his collar
. ‘We’re in,’ he said.

  ‘Roger that.’ The same voice that had announced the arrival of the Passat. ‘Red Mini Cooper heading south.’

  Danny looked at Spud and nodded. Spud drew his Sig, opened the door just enough to step inside, and entered the lock-up.

  For thirty seconds there was no sound except the hammering of rain on to the cobblestones and the drip-dripping inside the empty arches. Danny kept alert, looking up and down the street, acutely aware of Barker and Ripley’s positions and of the old Bedford holding the tech team. Those lads were nervous. Fired up, too. There had been reports of suspicious activity in this lock-up over the past few days, and in the wake of the Paddington bomb, Danny could tell the techies were getting a hard-on at the thought of uncovering something – anything – that might give the security services a lead. And more power to them, Danny couldn’t help feeling. Whoever had orchestrated that strike was a sick bastard and deserved everything that was coming to him.

  ‘Okay, lads.’ Spud’s voice over the comms. ‘I’ll give you the good news first. No infrared sensors, no pressure pads – as far as surveillance devices go, the joint looks clean. Now the bad news – there’s fuck-all for you to photograph. There’s a pallet of some kind against the far wall but you’ll never make a replica. I’m going to check it out, but if this is a bomb-making stash, you can butter my arse and call me a biscuit.’

  A second voice over the radio. ‘Black cab heading north.’

  Danny frowned. It was typical – you get dragged all the way from Hereford to London and the whole op’s a dud. He wiped some rain off his forehead with his sleeve, and started walking towards the tech unit’s van. They’d still want to see the inside of the lock-up for themselves, and they’d need Danny accompanying them. But the job was a washout in more ways than one.

  He had only walked ten metres when he stopped. Spud’s voice had burst over the radio. ‘Well, fuck me sideways . . .’

  ‘What is it?’ Danny demanded, suddenly tense.

  ‘That crate I mentioned? As high as my knee in packets of powder. I’m guessing it’s not Persil.’

  Almost immediately, Danny heard the second voice again. ‘Another black cab, heading south.’

  He froze, then looked up and down the street.

  Black cabs?

  What the hell were two black cabs doing headed for a line of deserted lock-ups and empty railway arches where there were no fares to drop off or pick up?

  The penny dropped. It wasn’t just the security services who used black cabs to get around London unobserved.

  He ran back to the lock-up Spud was investigating and called in through the crack in the door. ‘Mate, you sure you haven’t triggered any surveillance devices?’

  ‘Clean as a whistle,’ Spud’s voice called back, echoing slightly from inside the lock-up. ‘We’re going to be out of here quicker than you can . . .’

  ‘Spud,’ Danny interrupted. ‘Tell me you checked the door seals when you entered.’

  Silence.

  And then Spud muttered, almost under his breath: ‘Shit.’

  Danny didn’t hesitate. He pulled a pencil-thin Maglite from inside his jacket pocket and strode into the lock-up. He directed the fierce white beam at the crack where the door was hinged. He saw it instantly: a silver strip – tin foil, maybe – reflecting the light of the torch, with a fine wire leading from the foil up towards the dark ceiling of the lock-up.

  ‘You can forget about Karen Macshane,’ Danny said, his voice unnaturally calm. ‘Whoever owns that stash is on their way.’ He loosened his Sig from its holster and cocked it, then activated his radio. ‘Barker, Ripley, we’re about to have company. Two black cabs. Expect them to be armed. Everyone else, stay out of it. Repeat, stay . . .’

  Before he had even finished, he heard the screeching of tyres.

  ‘Spud!’ he shouted. But Spud was just a couple of metres away, running towards him from the back of the lock-up, NV goggles raised, Sig cocked. They pressed their backs against the wall, nodded at each other, then swung round into the cobbled street.

  The rain was as bad as ever. It badly hindered Danny’s visibility. From his position by the door he looked north, while Spud covered the southerly direction. He could only just make out the shaky outline of a black cab, its headlamps dazzlingly bright through the rain. Distance: 50 metres. He searched for Ripley. No sign of him, but that was probably because the mixture of headlamps and rain was blinding him. Danny swung his head to one side, forcing himself to use his peripheral vision, more effective in the dark. Now he could just make out Ripley’s silhouette. He had moved in front of the Bedford van – Danny’s end of it – which put him 35 metres from Danny’s position, out of sight of the black cab. Now he was opening his Barbour jacket. Raising his HK416.

  From the corner of his vision, Danny saw a second cab pull up at the south end of Horseferry Mews, 50 metres in the opposite direction. The Regiment guys and the police tech unit were blocked off at either end. Danny saw figures emerging from the first cab to the north.

  Four guys. Drug dealers, he figured, aware that someone had just uncovered their stash. From Spud’s description, that stash would be worth millions. These fuckers would be armed. No question.

  The cabs headlamps shone across the 50 metres of open ground towards him. They were compromising his visibility. He needed to blow them out. In any case, maybe a couple of shots would put the shits up them. If Danny and his mates could get them on the ground and disarm them, the police could take them in. A good night’s work all round.

  He was too exposed here in front of the lock-up. He quickly ran to the cavernous open arch to the left and sensed Spud moving to the one on the right. He stepped three metres in, where he would be shadowed inside the arch but would have full view of the cab, which was now between 40 and 45 metres away. He crouched down in the firing position, raised his Sig, aimed carefully and fired two shots in quick succession. The suppressed weapon made two dull knocks, camouflaged by the noise of the rain. Result. The newcomers would be unable to work out his exact location.

  The headlamps shattered and went dark.

  From the arch on the other side of the lock-up, he heard two more shots. Spud had used his Sig to do exactly the same thing to disable the headlamps of the cab to the south.

  Danny could see the sillhouettes of the four guys to the north. They had opened the doors of their cab and were standing behind them, two on either side, for protection.

  ‘Get on the ground!’ he shouted aggressively above the rain. ‘Hands on the back of your heads! NOW!’ He sounded fierce, but his breathing was shallow. His pulse slow. He was calm.

  One of the newcomers shouted something in a language Danny didn’t recognise.

  Then, suddenly, there was a sharp burst of gunfire: the rough bark of an AK-47 switched to automatic, and maybe a couple of shots from a MAC-10. He heard the distinctive sound of rounds drilling against metal.

  Shit.

  Rounds had punctured the side of the Bedford van where the tech unit were hiding out. There were perhaps eight entry holes in a neat horizontal line just a couple of inches from the roof. Narrow beams of interior light streamed out from each of the holes. It would be clear to anyone with half a brain that the back of the van was occupied.

  Danny made radio contact: ‘Tech unit, are you hit?’

  A horrible silence. Then a panicked, breathless voice over Danny’s earpiece. ‘No. . .’ it whispered. ‘No . . . we’re okay . . . Oh my God, what are we . . .’

  ‘Crouch on the floor of the van, as low as you can, now! Spud, options?’

  ‘They know the tech unit are there,’ said Spud firmly. ‘They’re armed and they’ve fired on us. I say we give it to them.’

  Danny gave it a fraction of a second’s thought. Spud was right. There were five guys in that tech unit and their lives were in danger.

  ‘I’ve got eyes on four guys to the north,’ Danny said. ‘Spud, what have you got?’

  ‘Three gu
ys to the south.’

  ‘Barker, Ripley, have they seen you?’

  ‘Negative,’ from both men.

  Suddenly a voice shouted from the direction of the cab to the north. In English this time, but accented. ‘Put the guns down, or we fire on your friends in the van!’

  Silence. Movement by the cab. Three figures stepped forward. A fourth remained behind the open passenger door. He had a rifle, and it was trained on the Bedford van.

  Danny raised his Sig. He aimed it, his hand perfectly steady, on the head of the guy behind the passenger door. The other three stepped forward. They had that swagger common to every amateur carrying a gun. Like their weapons could protect them from anything. But they couldn’t see Ripley, crouching in front of the Bedford van.

  The figures were five metres from the cab now, ten from the Bedford van. They walked abreast, though one of them, broader than the others, was perhaps a couple of paces ahead. He let loose a random burst of automatic fire, but it was just a warning shot: the rounds sparked against the cobbles.

  ‘Show yourselves!’ the leader shouted.

  No response from the Regiment.

  The men swaggered forward again.

  They were alongside the tech unit’s vehicle now. Danny still had his Sig aimed at the shooter behind the cab, ready to fire.

  ‘What’s happening with your guys, Spud?’ Danny breathed into the radio.

  ‘Still behind their vehicle. We can’t get a shot.’

  The three figures were still moving forward. They were alongside the Bedford van. The beams of light from the bullet holes dotted their faces and bodies. Danny could tell from the bulky frames that they were wearing body armour.

  A terrified voice in his earpiece. The tech unit. ‘What’s happening?’

  Danny didn’t answer. He just kept all his attention on the shooter behind the cab. It would be a difficult shot. Fifty metres through the dark and the rain. He had to keep sharp.

  The three men had passed the Bedford. They were five metres beyond Ripley, who had silently turned and had his weapon pointing at the back of their heads. Danny double-checked that his own weapon was properly on target, before issuing the instruction.