All the King's Men (Alex King Book 20), page 1
All the King’s Men
A P Bateman
Copyright © 2024 by Anthony Bateman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Clair, Summer and Lewis
Also by A P Bateman
The Rob Stone Series:
1) The Ares Virus
2) The Town
3) The Island
4) Stone Cold
5) The Cartel
The Alex King Series:
1) The Contract Man
2) Lies and Retribution
3) Shadows of Good Friday
(a series prequel/standalone)
4) The Five
5) Reaper
6) Stormbound
7) Breakout
8) From the Shadows
9) Rogue
10) The Asset
11) Last Man Standing
12) Hunter Killer
13) The Congo Contract
(a series prequel/standalone)
14) Dead Man Walking
15) Sovereign Power
16) Kingmaker
(A series prequel/standalone)
17) Untouchable
18) The Enemy
19) Die Trying
20) All the King’s Men
21) The Eagle’s Talon
The DI Grant Series
1) Vice
2) Taken
Standalone Novels:
Never Go Back
The Most Dangerous Game
Short Stories:
The Perfect Murder?
Atonement (an Alex King thriller)
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Author’s Note
Chapter One
There were only a few jobs more stressful than that of air traffic controller, but Peter Wright wouldn’t know what any of them were, and he would likely not believe anyone who told him. He wouldn’t have cared, either because he enjoyed his work, enjoyed the stress in a pseudo masochistic way, and he liked the hours. Six shifts on, followed by four days off. His days were never longer than ten hours and he would never be required to start a shift until he had taken nine hours off from the previous shift. He enjoyed the night shifts the most because he liked coffee and generally suffered from insomnia and found that lying awake in bed through the night a lonely place since his divorce. At least when he slept through the day it could be on the sofa with the curtains drawn and the low hum of daytime tv in the background. He slept better that way as well. His shift started today at six am and he would be done by four. In late summer that gave him plenty of time to head deep into the Surrey countryside and blow off the cobwebs on his mountain bike, and still chill out in the garden with a beer and his record collection into the evening. Vinyl was back, and he had taken his records out of his parents’ attic and was reliving his youth now that Kate had the boys and had moved in with her new partner. He would have preferred not to be a forty-year-old with a receding hairline and stubborn stomach bulge on the dating scene, but needs must when you were on the shelf and he hadn’t had the practice that his wife had, because he hadn’t been the one to have the affair, but he had lost the kids and family home as a direct result of hers. Dating was not working out for him, perhaps it was the aura of desperation surrounding him, or perhaps his heart wasn’t really in it. But the records brought back some nostalgia and nostalgia was a comfortable and unthreatening place to live.
He had seven flights on his monitor, and he was handling landings for the next hour. He liked it when they stacked up and liked it when challenges arose.
“EmiratesEK537, this is Gatwick tower, fly heading zero-nine-zero, you have a clear path for runway two, two thousand metres, altitude four-thousand feet, verify.”
“EmiratesEK537, roger that, affirmative, runway two, zero-nine-zero…”
“Peter?”
Peter Wright pulled out the pad of his right headphone and looked at the man to his left. “What is it, Chris?” he asked, somewhat impatiently. He had a line-up of seven aircraft and the wind had been gusting all morning, which meant they could be using runway one at any moment and that would require some planes getting back up to altitude and start holding patterns that would cause delays close to an hour for flights six back in the line and beyond.
“British Airways flight BA0106 from DBX Dubai, no response to checks from ATC. Lining up on beacon prompts, looks like full auto-land has been initiated.”
Wright frowned. “Frequency changes?” he asked before taking a sip of coffee.
“Nothing works.”
“Comms failure, maybe?”
“That still doesn’t explain the activation of full auto-land.”
“No…” he swallowed; his throat instantly dry despite the coffee.
“Have you ever had a case of auto-land?” asked Chris tentatively.
Peter Wright shook his head. He’d been in the game for fourteen years and he’d experienced every scenario from crashes to hijackings, travel rage and mass strike action, and all had affected his working day, but he had never experienced, nor knew of a case of auto-land. “No, I haven’t. Okay, let’s get the next three down as quickly as we can, send four backwards onto a holding pattern and make way for BA0106 on runway two,” he said decisively. Gatwick had two runways and only one could operate at a time because of the wind direction. Airplanes generally took off and landed into the wind for maximum lift, there were a few exceptions, but jet airliners were not one of them. “And let’s get airport rescue and firefighting services dispatched.”
“External as well?”
Wright watched the dot on his screen, accompanied by its flight number steadily crossing the screen right to left in a text box. The aircraft was on a downward trajectory. It was in full descent. “Let’s see what’s what when she’s on the apron.”
“This sort of thing doesn’t happen often, boss…”
He nodded. He wasn’t sure that it ever had. Partial auto-land had to be programmed by one of the pilots in case one or both were incapacitated. A full system auto-land meant that something bad had happened. Gatwick Airport was about to make the news. “Alright,” Wright said. “Call the airport manager and tell them what we’ve got.”
Chapter Two
There were two sentries on the bridge and another on the far riverbank. To his left the weir increased the flow of the water as if it had suddenly reached a conveyer belt, pulling the slow-moving flotsam and jetsam and swirling it into gentle spirals, ever faster until the leaves and twigs and weed and patches of oil seemed caught in a vortex in the middle of the river, before going over the edge of the weir cascading down to the frothy white water some twenty feet below. He could rule out crossing any closer to the weir. To his right, the water still moved slowly and looked deep. The sentry was pacing slowly up and down the bank, his eyes scanning left and right. Fifty paces one way, a slow and steady perusal of the opposite riverbank, before pacing fifty or so steps in the other direction. He neither looked in a sense of high-alert, and nor was he bored and lethargic. He was simply keeping a steady watch and would likely spot movement or hear a splash over the monotonic sound of crashing water further downstream.
Luger cursed the military boots that he wore without laces. He could ditch them now, but he would not get far without them on the other side of the river. The great coat was already soddened from last night’s rain, but if he fastened it and tied the cuffs, then he could get some air into it along with the boots and use it to float to the other side. He couldn’t hope to swim with the boots dragging him down, and he knew that he would need them if he was going to get away.
The sentries were met by a soldier driving an old Land Rover 110. They held a conflab, then one of the men waved and
“Cadet Luger!” one of the men shouted, but Luger could see that the man was not looking in his direction. “Cadet Luger!”
The other sentry cupped his hands and shouted, “End ex! End ex!”
That was the sentence that should have finally made him relax. Forty-eight hours in the Welsh and Herefordshire countryside trying to escape the soldiers of the Parachute Regiment, straight after the gruelling ‘Fan Dance’ – the twenty-four-kilometre footrace and navigation challenge over Pen Y Fan, the highest mountain in the Brecon Beacons. He had never known exhaustion like it. But even now, having tagged along with the Special Air Service selection phase for a week, he found himself in fear of being tricked. But even the Paras wouldn’t pull such a low trick, would they? He had been briefed that they looked forward to their role on SAS selection. Many of them would try out soon, after all, sixty percent of the SAS ranks were filled with ex-Paras. He had been roughed up by a few, as had the other recruits, and he couldn’t help feeling that they would resort to dirty tricks to catch him, but ‘end-ex’ was sacrosanct. It was as much a de-escalation of tensions as a health and safety point. There had to be trust that the exercise had ended.
“Cadet Luger, end-ex!” the soldier shouted, briefly looking his way. He turned towards the opposite riverbank and shouted again, “End-ex! You have a call from someone called Ramsay!”
Luger smarted. He had so wanted to prove himself, even though he would never complete the course – he was only here for fitness evaluation and experience – but he at least wanted to complete the three phases that he had been put forward in. He staggered out of the reeds and the soldiers waved him over when they caught sight of him.
He was greeted with a blanket and a bacon roll wrapped in tin foil that had long-since cooled. The driver poured him hot tea with milk and sugar from a flask as he dried himself with the towel and bit ravenously into his first food for forty-eight-hours. The sweet tea was sickening, and he never drank it normally, favouring strong, black coffee, but he was so cold that he did not care. The soldiers all regarded him warily. He was not one of them, and for a ‘civvy’ to be on SAS selection, much speculation had already been made in the mess.
He was driven in silence back to Stirling Lines and given ten minutes to shower and pack his things, then driven across the base to the helicopter landing pads where he was met by a familiar face, but one that filled him with dread.
“Oi, oi!” shouted Flymo.
“What have I done to deserve this?” Luger chided.
Flymo was a Londoner of Afro-Caribbean descent who had flown helicopters in the army air corps and later in 658 Squadron, which flew the SAS and SBS on their missions. He was one of the best pilots a soldier could wish for because he was brave, reckless, and thus far – lucky. His moniker came from the lawnmower brand that hovered on a cushion of air – and nothing or nobody could hover lower than Flymo. After getting mixed up with one of their missions, Flymo later came to work with MI5, and now with Neil Ramsay’s secretive department of special operations. There was no name for the department yet, and Ramsay hadn’t been looking to find one.
“Got to double time it, too.” Flymo led the way to a AgustaWestland 109 in glossy, navy blue. Ramsay had precured many things, and this was undoubtedly his department’s most valued asset.
“Great…” Luger replied, but he was not enthused.
It took a little over an hour to make the one-hundred-and forty-eight-mile straight line journey and all was well until Flymo banked hard and flew far too low for the approach, but he rode the nose high, the rear rotors just inches from the ground and the craft pausing like a striking cobra, before lowering and touching down gently on its wheels.
“Bloody hell!” Luger protested, but it fell on deaf ears as Flymo chuckled in delight. He shifted in his seat and stared at him. “What do you do in between flying us about? Do you just fly off someplace quiet and do loop-the-loops all day?” he asked, his tone purely one of sarcasm.
“Hah! If you only knew!” Flymo chuckled. “Anyways, I’ll see you later,” he said over the intercom, keeping the engines at revs and the rotors spinning. “Don’t forget to duck… I don’t want to have to wash the rotors again…”
Luger took off the headset and hung it on the grab handle as he got out, carrying his leather travel bag with him. His muscles ached after the past seventy-two hours, and he still felt chilled to the bone. He jogged away from the helicopter to the waiting black Jaguar saloon. Jim Kernow was behind the wheel. A tough Cornishman in his mid-fifties he had retired from the Metropolitan Police and now worked as Ramsay’s driver and minder. He nodded a greeting at the young man, but nothing more.
“Jim’s seen it, and it’s bad,” said Ramsay as Luger got into the back seat beside him. Jim caught Luger’s eye in the rear-view mirror, and his expression confirmed as much. “The police haven’t had access yet,” he said. “But we can only hold them off for so long.” He passed Luger a device around the size of a smartphone that had a USB jack protruding. Luger noticed that the USB jack could fold and swing between standard and micro-USB. “I want you to get everything off the main computer,” he said. “And I want the black box as well.”
“Can I take that away?” he asked. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for it.”
“The Air Accidents Investigation Branch, or AAIB have a representative waiting at the plane. They come under the Department of Transport, and the Prime Minister has given us access to the black box for twenty-four hours, and the AAIB representative will work with us for that time.” Luger nodded as they drew near to the 787 Dreamliner. The aircraft was vast and the ring of emergency vehicles surrounding it looked tiny by comparison. Jim Kernow stopped beside a group of people in high-vis vests and jackets, all holding clipboards. A woman stepped forwards as Jim and Luger opened their doors. “There she is,” Ramsay told him. “Lillia Bailey. And don’t be pulled in by those looks. She may well look like she should be on the cover of Vogue, but she’s one of the county’s leading aircraft crash investigators.”
Luger nodded. “Well, the aircraft appears to be in one piece, so…”
“Just go onboard, assess the crime scene, and download what you can from the computer. Ms Bailey will show you where this can be done.”
Luger nodded. He got out, closed the door, and walked briskly to the woman heading towards him. He had always viewed Ramsay as an asexual person, far more at home with his work and puzzles, although he knew the man to be married with two children. But however he had viewed him, the man knew a good-looking woman when he saw one, because Lillia Bailey was on another level. Flawless. Luger tried his hardest not to stare at her as she greeted him somewhat solemnly.
“Jack Luger,” he said.
“Lillia Bailey, senior investigating officer,” she replied, offering her hand. Luger reciprocated a little too firmly, and she looked uncomfortable. He cursed inwardly, embarrassed that she might have looked at it as toxic masculinity. Thankfully, she moved on quickly by saying, “You’re with MI5, I understand?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see some ID?”
“No,” he replied. “My department doesn’t really go in for that sort of thing.”
“Oh,” she said, quite taken aback.
“Shall we?” he asked, heading for the aircraft.
She followed and at the base of steps she said, “I haven’t seen it, yet.”
Luger frowned. “Who has?”
“The ground crew, then the transport police, and then your boss’s associate.” Lillia paused. “This is unprecedented. The aircraft landed via the full auto-land procedure…”
“That’s a hundred percent automated?” he asked. “They can do that?”
“Yes. But it’s not something ever initiated unless one of the pilots is incapable of flying. The process being that auto-land will do the bulk of the work with the remaining pilot making tiny corrections on approach. Full auto-land is similar but initiates when contact with the controls has been lost. The tiny corrections can’t be made if both pilots are incapacitated, but it’s worked in practice, and as far as I can discover, has never been successfully fully automated until now.” She paused as they reached the steps. “Anyway, when the aircraft landed and was still uncontactable by radio, ground crew opened her up, called it in and that’s when every emergency response vehicle in London turned up…”
