Dark Horizon, page 13
Knox fixed him with a pitiless glare. ‘You’re not gonna do that. This operation is strictly radio-silent, you get me?’
He snorted. ‘I reckon a hijacking puts the mockers on that, don’t you?’
‘Step out,’ Knox went on, nodding toward the door. ‘And keep your mouth shut.’ And then, very deliberately, the American let his jacket fall open to reveal the butt of a pistol protruding from a hip holster.
Miles wasn’t a fool; the implication was crystal clear. ‘Right,’ he said, at length, opening the SUV’s door.
‘Smart choice,’ offered Knox, pulling the door closed as Miles stepped back out into the drizzle.
He stood there in the wet, forcing down the churn of worry building in his gut. A simple escort and hand-off had just become something far more complex, far more dangerous.
When the Brit in the hoodie was out of earshot, Knox cursed with enough force and blasphemy that his long-dead pastor father might have been compelled to rise from the grave and give him a beating.
Chester recoiled from the snarling tirade and, when it settled, he ventured a question of his own. ‘You’re not seriously going to drop the hammer on them?’
Knox pulled off his hat and ran a thick-fingered hand through his dark, close-cropped hair. ‘You just said it. Breeze knows how things work.’
‘The whole point of this was to secure the asset for interrogation, not blow him to bits!’ Chester shook his head. ‘Dead, he’s worthless!’
‘I am aware,’ Knox shot back, gripping the hat tightly. ‘Shit-fire! I fuckin’ warned her; I told Breeze this operation was half-assed and ready to fall apart, but she never damn well listens. She pushed this thing to go active against my advice, and now look at it . . .’
‘She wanted the asset for herself,’ said Chester. He glanced around, as if checking to see that no one was listening. ‘I mean, come on, you have to know about what people are saying back at Langley, right? Breeze has lost her edge. Breeze doesn’t bring in good intel product any more. There are people who want her hung out to dry. Is it any wonder she’s going at this so hard?’
‘Reasons don’t matter now,’ said Knox. ‘Now we gotta deal with the fallout.’ He replaced his hat and took a breath. ‘Get me a secured sat-com line to Operations and spin up our local tactical options for an armed intercept of the plane.’
Chester’s colour drained as the reality of what he was being told to do finally hit home. ‘I can tell you right now, friendly military aircraft in that area belong to NATO allied forces, not ours . . . Only non-American pilots and planes.’
‘That’s a negative.’ Knox made a throat-cutting gesture. ‘Too many people in the loop for a “shoot down”. We bring in outsiders, too many questions get asked. Bad enough the Brits are in on this; we don’t need more complications. Find me something we have full control over. And do it fast.’
The situation looked fishy from the moment the police car drew up to the barrier at Ridley Hill.
Harris rolled down the window, peering out at the dark and empty security hut. He glanced in Grace’s direction. ‘No one about? Have they knocked off for the night?’
‘It’s lit up over there,’ she said, indicating a cluster of hangars along the line of the runway. ‘Someone’s home.’ His colleague straightened her stab vest and exited the car, moving to the hut. Harris watched her look inside, then give a shrug.
There was a manual release for the barrier, and she pulled it, clearing the way for them to continue. Harris started rolling forward and Grace climbed back in.
‘Go on,’ she told him.
He got the car under the barrier before it dropped back down of its own accord, fingers drumming on the steering wheel with a nervous energy that wouldn’t dissipate. Harris had the distinct, unpleasant sense of something bad on the horizon; a gut feeling he couldn’t shake. It had been getting worse all night.
‘Teller Aviation,’ said Grace, reading off a sign by the pathway. ‘That’s where Price worked. Up there.’ She pointed at the hangars lined up along the slip road. Harris couldn’t see any aircraft but there were a couple of vehicles parked near the front of the lit-up buildings.
‘I’m not liking this,’ noted Harris. ‘Feels off to me.’
‘Cheer up,’ said Grace, in a decidedly unhappy voice. ‘We’re on overtime now, you knob. Lucky us.’
‘I should be on my way home by now,’ he retorted.
‘To do what? Feed your cat and watch some Scandi drama on Netflix? We’re doing proper policing, aren’t we?’
‘Are we?’ Harris guided the car slowly toward the hangars. ‘More like we’re getting the jobs no one else wants.’
Grace clapped her hands together and answered with a sing-song lilt. ‘Welcome to the modern police service!’ She gave a dry chuckle. ‘How long have you been out of Hendon, and you’re only now figuring that out?’
‘Well, I don’t—’ He didn’t finish the thought. Without warning, two figures in black came out of the rainy shadows, stepping out in front of the police car. Harris stamped on the brakes and the vehicle lurched to a sudden stop, both he and Grace rocking forward against their seatbelts.
Harris thought he’d been mistaken by what he saw through the rain-dashed windscreen, but he was dead right. The men in black jackets were armed with short-frame MP5 submachine guns, similar to the type he’d seen used by the Metropolitan Police’s elite Special Firearms Command. But these guys didn’t look like the men from SCO19. They looked like soldiers.
‘Back up, back up!’ Grace shouted at him to put the car in reverse, but as his hand dropped the gearstick, Harris saw a third man reflected in the wing mirror. He too had a gun, aiming down it at the rear of the police car.
‘Hands!’ One of the gunmen, a Sikh guy with a tight-bound turban, roared the order at them. ‘Show me your hands!’
It was a surreal moment. The two police officers were accustomed to being the ones who did the shouting, and this abrupt and terrifying role-reversal left them with nowhere to go but to obey.
‘Get out,’ said the gunman. He moved closer, leading with his weapon. ‘Slowly. Driver first.’
‘Jake . . .’ Grace shot him a worried look.
‘Just do what they say, Isla,’ he told her, trying not to show fear. ‘We’ll be OK.’ Harris’s mind raced as he carefully opened the car door and climbed out into the drizzle.
Heavily armed SAS types at a dull little airstrip in the middle of Kent? On the surface that didn’t add up but, then again, he’d been on the edges of enough special operations during his career to know that stranger things happened.
‘We’re police officers,’ he announced.
The gunman standing behind him actually sniggered. ‘Yeah, the motor’s a dead giveaway.’
‘Quiet!’ The Sikh man admonished his colleague and came forward, looking Harris over. With his free hand, he pointed at the taser holstered on the policeman’s belt. ‘You reach for that, I will put you down. Clear?’
Harris caught sight of Grace as she followed him out into the rain. ‘Who the hell are you people?’
Grace’s question went unanswered and Harris saw the other gunman press a hand to an earpiece he wore, speaking quietly into it.
‘Why are you here?’ The Sikh glanced between them. ‘Someone call you?’
‘We’re conducting an investigation,’ said Harris. ‘Do you know how many laws you’re breaking right now?’
For the first time, the man’s expressionless manner dropped, and he showed a sneer. ‘Yeah, see, that’s not what’s going on here.’
The man with the earpiece nodded at a voice only he could hear. ‘Knox wants us to bring them up to the hangar,’ he told the others.
‘Now you’ll find out,’ said the Sikh, and he held out a hand to point the way.
With little other choice, they left the car and walked to the brightly lit aircraft hangar, Grace and Harris side by side and the three armed men arranged around them.
Inside, out of the rain, two gleaming executive jets stood under fluorescent lights, and a man with a rough-hewn beard and a baseball cap waited angrily for their arrival.
He gave the Sikh a severe look, gesturing at the two police officers. ‘What the hell is this? Didn’t you have someone at the gate?’ He had a gruff American accent that crunched his vowels and made everything he said sound like a threat.
‘You told us to watch the perimeter—’
‘Forget it.’ The American held out his hand to Harris and Grace. ‘You two, give me your IDs.’
Harris stood his ground, unwilling to turn his warrant card over to a stranger. ‘And you are?’
‘Let me handle this?’ Another man emerged from behind one of the jets before the American could respond. A skinny bloke in a hoodie, with a London drawl, he could have been the cousin of the shoplifter Grace had rugby-tackled in a supermarket car park earlier that evening. But his manner wasn’t that of a street criminal, it was all business. He produced an identity wallet of his own and Grace released an audible groan when she saw it. ‘I’m with the Security Services,’ he explained. ‘You’ve walked right into the middle of something you shouldn’t have. Can I see your warrant cards, please?’
Most people wouldn’t have known what an authentic SIS identity card looked like, but Grace did. She’d had the misfortune of crossing paths with the spook brigade back when she was pushing papers at the case progression unit and, following her nod, Harris reluctantly provided his own ID for show.
‘They’re just regular coppers,’ said the hoodie guy after examining their cards. He waved off the gunmen, who backed away, their weapons disappearing back under their jackets.
Despite the situation, Harris chafed at the man’s dismissive description of them. ‘Is the owner of this place around? Because he’s got a lot of explaining to do, believe me.’
‘We sent Mr Teller home. He agreed to let us handle things tonight,’ said the American, with an implied threat buried in the statement.
‘What things?’ said Harris.
The American ignored the question. ‘What do you want?’
‘We’re looking for information about a man named John Price,’ Grace cut in. ‘Know him?’ The moment she said the name, the chill air of the hangar turned even colder.
‘The other pilot?’ The American asked the question and the man in the hoodie nodded.
‘Teller said he didn’t turn up for work,’ said the SIS agent.
‘I regret to inform you that’s because he’s dead. Car crash, a couple of hours ago, a few miles from here.’ Matter of fact, Harris let that drop, and he took a tiny bit of pleasure in momentarily wrong-footing these people. They clearly had no idea of what had happened to the pilot.
But then the American strode up to him and looked Harris square in the eye. ‘All right, officer. Let me tell you what’s going to happen next.’ Every word he spoke was like a nail being driven into wood. ‘My people are going to have someone very senior call your chief and tell him to roll over like a good little doggie. And then you and your partner here will tell us every fuckin’ detail you know about John Price.’
THIRTEEN
Finally, the moment came when the man with the greying hair left Alex alone with his son, moving out of earshot to stand in the corridor.
Alex listened to be sure that the man was talking to his companion and then he leaned closer to his son, lowering his voice to a hushed whisper. ‘You all right?’
‘Yeah.’ George’s plaintive reply told the lie of that. The boy sat rigidly on the living room’s sofa next to his father, staring at the bay window that looked out toward the street. He had his hands folded in his lap, knuckles white where they gripped each other tightly, so as not to tremble.
The house was full of shadows, with all but a couple of table lamps switched off, throwing the place into gloom. Their home always had a welcoming glow to it after sunset, but the presence of the invaders had ripped that away. The familiar and friendly turned grim and forbidding.
‘It’s all right to be scared,’ Alex told his son. ‘But don’t let them see it, right?’
‘Right.’ George nodded, sparing his father a glance. ‘I won’t.’ The boy stiffened, putting on the bravest face he could manage.
Alex’s heart caught in his chest. He wanted to pull George into a hug, but he hesitated. The man with the gun would see any sudden movement, and Alex had the horrible sense that their captors would take any gesture like that and turn it against them.
‘Dad, what do they want?’ George looked up at him. ‘Are they here because of Kate?’
‘I don’t know.’ But he did. There was no other explanation. These men had broken into the house and taken them hostage because they needed to lean on Kate, and Alex and George were the leverage.
He felt sick with dread, trying to guess what they were forcing her to do. Alex was angry and afraid in equal measure, but he knew he had to keep his racing emotions in check, not just for his son, but for Kate as well. His mind screamed at him to do something, but the vivid image of that long silver pistol dominated everything. He couldn’t let them hurt his boy.
If the two of them were going to get out of this in once piece, Alex needed to think, not react.
He looked across the room at the end table where the house’s landline phone had sat. The device lay in pieces on the carpet, the cable ripped out of the wall by the gunman’s grimacing friend. The other man had taken Alex’s cell phone, forcing him to unlock it at gunpoint, and he hadn’t seen it since.
We can’t expect help to come to us, he thought. We’ll have to go and get it.
Alex took a long breath and put himself in the same mental space he always went to on a call-out; in that last instant before he climbed out of the fire engine’s cab to storm into some burning building.
He cleared his mind of everything but the problem right in front of him. The flames blocking the path inside. The thugs blocking the way to safety. They were the same thing, just different kinds of hazards.
He spoke into George’s ear. ‘You remember what we practised to do, if the smoke alarm goes off in the house? If there’s a fire?’
The boy nodded. ‘I remember. Get out. Stay out. Call 9-9-9.’
An occupational hazard of being a firefighter was a tendency to over-prepare for that event in one’s home, but Alex had made sure to impress upon his son the importance of having an escape plan. ‘This is like that,’ he said, and he nodded in the direction of the two men. ‘Those men, they’re the flames, right? They catch hold of us, we get burned. You understand?’
‘So we can’t run out the front,’ said George, catching on. ‘We have to go a different way. Out the back.’
‘Yeah.’ The garden behind the house ended in a fence, and beyond it an unkempt common turned into scrub and woodland. It would be pitch dark and, if they could make it, on the far side of the woods there was a main road where there might be traffic, people and hopefully safety.
‘Can’t we go next door?’ George hissed the question.
‘The flames will follow us,’ said Alex, after a moment. ‘We can’t let them spread to someone else’s house, can we?’
He thought about their neighbours on either side – the Singhs, with their newborn girl who’d only just started sleeping through the night, and Judy and Thomas, the young couple with a friendly beagle named Chips. The idea of bringing these callous, violent men to their doors made his gut twist.
His eyes wide with fear, George pointed his finger in the direction of the kitchen and the door that led out into the rear garden.
Alex nodded slowly to make sure his son understood. ‘When you hear me shout out “fire”, you run, right? You run for the woods and you don’t look back.’
‘I’m not g-going on my own.’ George blinked back tears, wiping his hand under his nose.
‘I’ll be right behind you,’ began Alex, but he choked off the rest of the sentence when he realised the man with the greying hair was standing in the doorway, watching them intently.
‘What are you whispering about?’ He folded his arms over his chest, eyeing the pair of them.
‘My boy’s hungry,’ Alex said coldly. ‘We haven’t had our dinner, have we?’
The grey-haired man studied Alex for a moment, then touched his own face in the same place where he had struck Alex. ‘How is the wound?’
Alex had been able to staunch the bleeding with a wad of kitchen paper and a sticky plaster, but the pain was still there and his cheek felt thick and swollen. ‘I’ll live,’ he said.
‘Only if you behave,’ came the reply.
George’s small hands tightened into fists. ‘Why don’t you j-just go away?’ His voice crackled with emotion as the boy poured all the defiance he could muster into his words. ‘We don’t have anything you want – leave us alone!’
The youngster’s outburst drew a chuckle from the thuggish man out in the hallway, but a stern look from his colleague ended that quickly.
‘George does not realise what is going on.’ The man with the grey hair pulled a face, looking away toward Alex. ‘Mr Walker, what you and your son have or want is irrelevant. All that matters is what Katherine Hood wants.’ He moved his hands, revealing the long silver handgun once more. ‘If she wants you to live, you will. If she does not care to do as she is told, you will not.’
‘Katie, c’mon! Be reasonable.’ Breeze banged her fist on the secure door once again, one-two-three in a fast staccato. ‘Talk to me. Tell me why you’re doing this.’
Ray watched the American lean her head on the door, attempting to listen through the armoured layers. ‘Anything?’
‘I hear her moving around . . .’ Breeze said quietly, lowering her voice. ‘Shit. I can’t tell.’
‘Did you find anything useful in the emergency kit?’ Finn stood in the vestibule, arms folded across his chest, throwing the question at the co-pilot.
‘This, maybe?’ Ray offered him a short, thick plastic rod coloured in the same international orange as the kit bag. ‘It’s a marker flare. Not the kind that shoots off . . .’ He made an arcing motion with one hand. ‘It just burns. But the tip is white phosphorus; it burns incredibly hot. If you put it up against the metal door hinges, it might, I don’t know, melt them?’
