On the Rock Page 3

  Things went well as the team let the players pass. We followed them on Main Street and turned left, going the same way Alexander had come. They were all looking very happy as they chatted away and played at being tourists. This was good because we were heading towards the airport and the border crossing. The further north we moved the better: there was more open space and fewer people were about.

  Maybe the players were not going to stay on the Rock to set off the bomb. Maybe the plan was to detonate it from Spain at 11.20 a.m. when the soldiers and onlookers would be in the square.

  It didn’t matter what their plan was. I would take them well before that bomb exploded.

  Simmons was back on the radio: ‘Hello, all call signs, all call signs. Cancel, cancel, cancel! I do not have control! Cancel! Golf, acknowledge.’

  I made a much less formal reply: ‘What the hell’s going on? Tell me – what’s going on?’

  ‘Wait … wait …’ Simmons was tense. I had never heard that in him before. There were voices in the background and he had to shout for me and the team to hear him. ‘All stations, all stations, I need another ID. I need to be one hundred per cent sure. Golf, acknowledge.’

  The Prime Minister must have been flapping. No wonder they wanted the likes of us on this job. If it went wrong there would be hell to pay.

  ‘Roger that, Alpha,’ I said. ‘But I can confirm that we have Bravo One, Two and Three.’

  On board the ship, it sounded like a chimps’ tea party. Radio networks back to the UK would be full of chatter as the Prime Minister asked more questions. He wasn’t sure if he should hand over control once more.

  Simmons came back: ‘I need you to check again. I’ve sent someone to check the vehicle.’

  A bomb disposal guy was on the Royal Navy warship, ready to check out the device. He was on his way to do just that. Now the Prime Minister also wanted to know if there really was a device in the Focus. This was turning into a farce and all we could do was follow the bombers and wait.

  I got back on the radio. ‘Bravo One, Two and Three are leaving Main Street and heading towards the airport and border. Tell the bomb disposal guy to hurry up. Checking them again now.’

  Chapter Nine

  I was now on the other side of the road and wanted to get in line with them so that I could see their faces again.

  ‘Alpha, this is Golf. I confirm we have Bravo One, Two and Three. One hundred per cent. Over.’

  There was more chatter on the radio. Simmons was still tense. Telephones were ringing and people were milling about.

  ‘Roger that, Golf. I still do not have control. The car has the explosives on-board. The device is live. The bomb disposal expert is trying to disarm it but it will take time. Wait.’

  I cut in on the radio, without answering Simmons: ‘All call signs, let’s keep on top of them until someone somewhere makes a decision.’

  The three bombers were still chatting as Alexander handed out more mints. They continued to stroll along the street.

  Checking behind me, I saw Naz on the other side of the road, backing me up. His eyes were focused on the bombers. Kev and Slack Pat would be keeping out of their sight and moving up the side roads, trying to get ahead of them. That way we would have them boxed in. If they checked behind them, Naz and I would pull back and let the other two follow. Then we would get into the side streets and out of sight.

  But for now our targets were not worried about being followed. They chatted away as they headed towards the airport and border crossing.

  ‘Alpha, this is Golf. They are now on Churchill Avenue and still heading north. You need to get your finger out. I have to take them now.’

  Simmons knew the danger. We still had a live device and only we could stop the bombers detonating it.

  ‘Golf, you must wait, wait …’

  I could still hear noise in the background: lots of talking, more phones ringing, people shouting instructions.

  Then everything went quiet on the ship, apart from Simmons. He was still hoping for the same thing as I was. ‘Wait … wait …’

  I hoped it was the Prime Minister on the other radio.

  All I could hear now was my pulse pounding in my head. Then, at last, the voice of Simmons – very clear.

  ‘All call signs, this is Alpha. I have control. I have control. Golf, acknowledge.’

  I got back on the radio: ‘All call signs, all call signs, if they get as far as the runway, we’ll have them there. If not – on my word, on my word. Stand by.’

  The airport runway cut across the Rock. If you were walking or driving to the airport or to the border you had to cross the runway. It was the safest place to take the three because it was a wide-open space and there were few people about.

  But then the three bombers reached a junction just ahead of me.

  ‘Stop, stop, stop!’ I said. ‘That’s all three now at the crossroads. Charlie and Delta, come out onto the road. As soon as I see you, we will lift them. Remember, the device is live. They must not detonate it.’

  I didn’t know why they were stopping and didn’t care. Now had to be the time to take them – just in case they were about to split up.

  I waited in a doorway as the three players stood at the crossroads. Alexander was doing the talking while the other two nodded. They weren’t just chatting. Alexander was giving instructions. I checked behind me. Naz was letting a mother and a wheelchair pass him as he moved up the avenue to get level with me. As soon as Kev and Slack Pat had the other side of the junction covered we would move in.

  But then the three split up. Alexander left the other two and crossed the road, still walking towards the airport. The Keens turned right. They must be heading back towards the square.

  Chapter Ten

  I had to split the team. We had to take all three bombers at the same time so no one had the chance to detonate the device.

  ‘Charlie and Delta, let Bravo One pass you, then stay with him. When you’re ready to lift him, me and Echo will take the other two.’

  I moved out of the doorway and got to the crossroads at the same time as Naz did to see the Keens walking along hand in hand, with Julie nearest the road.

  Simmons wanted to know what was happening.

  Now wasn’t the time for me to tell him. It was time for Simmons to shut up. I needed to stick to the Keens, with Naz now close by, just waiting for Kev to get on his radio and tell me that he and Pat were ready. Anyway, it wasn’t Simmons who needed to know what was going on. He would never ask for information when the team were at their most dangerous point in a job. Maybe the Prime Minister was flapping again.

  ‘Wait out,’ I said

  I kept my eyes on the Keens as cars passed and families came out of shops with the Sunday papers under their arms, their kids eating ice cream. None of them knew what was about to happen between the nice American couple and the two men behind them. But they soon would.

  Just then, I heard a police siren in the distance, followed by gunfire.

  At the same instant Kev came on the radio: ‘Contact! Contact!’

  More shots.

  Naz and I looked at each other. What was going on?

  The Keens had also heard the siren and the shots. They turned back towards us. We were five metres away from each other and Julie’s eyes were as big as plates. She was searching frantically for the source of the noise.

  A woman came out of a shop just to our right and got between us. Naz shouted at her, ‘Down! Down!’ With his left hand, he pushed her to the side. She banged into the shop window and fell over, blood pouring from her head. At least she wouldn’t get up and become a target.

  She was screaming, which made all the people in the area start to scream.

  The Keens knew the game was up but they were not defeated yet. Both stood where they were, looked at each other and prepared to die together as their hands went towards their jacket pockets.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Naz flick back his jacket to reach into his holst
er. But I wasn’t really looking at him. I was looking at Julie’s hand moving to the right side of her jacket. She and Morgan weren’t morons. The moment they had heard the gunfire and seen us, they had known the score.

  Julie and I had eye-to-eye. She knew what I was going to do. She could have stopped going for her pocket. She could have put her hands up.

  My jacket was held together with Velcro so that I could pull it apart and draw my pistol.

  The process of drawing and using a weapon takes place in stages. The slower it felt, the faster I knew it would be. It took me less than a second.

  Stage one: With my left hand I grabbed a fistful of jacket and pulled it hard towards my chest. The Velcro ripped apart. I was sucking in my stomach and sticking out my chest to make the pistol grip easy to grab. You only get one chance.

  We still had eye contact. Julie was shouting but I couldn’t hear her.

  Stage two: I pushed my right hand onto the pistol grip – if I got this wrong I wouldn’t be able to aim correctly. My lower three fingers grasped it. My index finger was outside the trigger guard, parallel with the barrel – I didn’t want to pull the trigger early and kill myself. Julie was still shouting, her hair flying around her head as she flicked it from side to side. I was still focused on her head but could see that her hand was coming out of her jacket pocket. I didn’t know what was in her hand, but that didn’t matter. We had made our decisions.

  Stage three: I drew my weapon, taking the safety catch off with my thumb. Our eyes locked again as she stopped moving her head. Julie knew she had lost the race and stopped shouting. Her lips curled. She was going to die.

  As my pistol came out, I flicked it parallel with the ground. No time to extend my arms and get into a stable firing position.

  Stage four: my left hand was still pulling my jacket out of the way and the pistol was now by my belt buckle. There was no need to look at it. I knew where it was and what it was pointing at. I kept my eyes on Julie and hers never left mine. I pulled the trigger.

  The report seemed to bring everything back into real time. The first round hit her. I didn’t know where – I didn’t need to. As she hit the ground she rolled and I could no longer see her hands.

  I kept firing as I brought the weapon up into the correct aim and moved forwards, Naz was doing the same with Morgan. There is no such thing as overkill. If they could still move, they could detonate the bomb. If it took a whole magazine of bullets for me to be sure I’d stopped Julie setting off that car bomb, I would fire it. She was curled up in a ball, holding her stomach. I moved forwards and fired two aimed shots at her head. She was no longer a threat.

  We ran the last couple of steps to the bodies as people screamed, hid in doorways, lay in the road and ran everywhere.

  I grabbed Julie’s shoulder and pulled her over. As she turned, a mobile fell from her hand. I picked it up as Simmons shouted into my earpiece: ‘I need you to report to me. Over!’

  Naz had Morgan’s mobile in one hand. As he wiped the blood off his hands onto Morgan’s jeans, he pointed down an alleyway. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  We holstered our weapons and ran, turning corners into narrow alleyways, trying to avoid dustbins and mopeds until we were far enough from the screams.

  Gulping air, we ripped open the backs of the phones and took out the batteries as Simmons yelled into our earpieces.

  I spoke to him. ‘Alpha, this is Golf. Bravo Two and Bravo Three are dead. They were going for their mobiles to detonate.’

  Kev got onto his radio. He and Pat were in some other hiding place, doing the same as we were. ‘This is Charlie. Bravo One is dead. I have his mobile and the memory card. Bravo One thought the siren was for him. When we had eye contact he knew what was going to happen. He went for his mobile. The police – what happened with the siren?’

  We began to walk along the alleyways towards the docks.

  Simmons explained, ‘It was just a normal 999 call, nothing to do with us. The expert is still disarming the device. We stopped the attack. Well done. But now they are dead we have lost a way of finding out more about their group. The other members will probably go to ground now. We won’t find them.’

  I got on the radio. ‘This is Golf. I have an idea.’

  Naz and I came out of an alleyway into a street. People were rushing about and more police sirens filled the air. Blending in with the real people once more, we headed towards the Royal Navy warship.

  Naz stopped. ‘Listen … Can you hear that?’

  I could just about hear the band playing as they marched up Main Street with the new guard.

  Chapter Eleven

  East London: 8 April 2016, 7.29 p.m.

  I sat with Naz over egg and chips in a café. The news was being shown on the world’s biggest flat-screen TV high above the till. It had been over a month and still there appeared to be nothing to report but the shootings on the Rock. They weren’t even discussing the bomb that had been disarmed.

  Naz started to make a chip sandwich with the two slices of bread and butter that had come with the heart attack on a plate. ‘You know what? If any more armchair experts tell us what happened and why, I might start believing them!’

  I nodded and covered my chips with tomato sauce as we listened to another one telling the world what had happened as if they had been there. But none of them knew what they were talking about. The truth was far simpler.

  The Keens had made their suicide video by the car, and Alexander had taken the memory card from the camera. They had then started to walk back towards the border crossing. The three had parted at the junction. Julie and Morgan were going back to the square to be part of the crowd during the Changing of the Guard. It was just as I had thought. They had wanted to detonate the car bomb when it would cause the most damage, the most deaths. Both of them had mobiles in their jacket pockets with just one number on speed-dial. It belonged to the mobile phone attached to the bomb.

  Maybe they had planned to scream their loyalty to New Islamic Jihad before blowing themselves up. Maybe they hoped a surviving camera or mobile would capture their message. Who knows? Who cares? All that mattered was that they never got the chance.

  As for Alexander, he hadn’t planned to blow himself up. He was heading back to the border with the memory card that held the Keens’ video. By the time the bomb went off, he would have walked across the border into Spain. He would have used his mobile to dial up the bomb at the end of the Changing of the Guard in case the Keens had bottled it.

  All he would have had to do then was post the video online after the bomb had gone off and the shit would have hit the fan. He would have got a flight back to the UK, and gone back to work in the City. Then he would have started looking for others to blow themselves up.

  But when he had seen Slack Pat and Kev, as the police siren kicked off, he had had no choice but to go for his mobile and try to detonate, just as the Keens had.

  Naz and I could only smile as another reporter interviewed the Keens’ next-door neighbour. She couldn’t understand what the couple had done. After all they were white, American and God-fearing. Perhaps the devil had taken their souls. She’d have a priest come to her house in case the devil had jumped over the fence to take her soul too.

  In the London studio, a human-rights lawyer was saying that the level of violence used against the terrorists had been far too high.

  Naz was worked up now. ‘How can you overshoot a terrorist?’

  The lawyer was going to sue whoever was responsible for the killings. Just as soon as he had discovered who had carried them out.

  Naz was finishing off his last egg by dipping his chip sandwich into the yolk as I pointed my fork at the screen. ‘That’s the trouble with twenty-four-hour news,’ I said. ‘They just have to fill the air with junk.’

  Naz nodded as he wiped egg off his chin. Then he looked out of the large window to the street. He checked his watch and took a gulp of tea. ‘Mate, it’s nearly time,’ he said. ‘If you’re late
Simmons won’t be happy. After all, it was your idea.’

  I finished off my chips, ramming the last few into my mouth to chew on the way. We went out into the street to join the others heading towards the mosque. The last of the day’s five prayers was about to start and we didn’t want to miss it.

  Naz had been taking me to his mosque because I wanted to learn more about Islam. Who better to teach me than a Muslim?

  The call to prayer sounded out across the rooftops as we walked through the wrought-iron gates of what had been an old warehouse, past men and women in their queues for the mosque’s washrooms. Little kids ran in and out of the legs of middle-aged men in business suits. Teenagers stood around chatting to grannies. Naz and I mingled with the crowd, smiling at everyone as they waited to clean themselves in preparation for prayer.

  Quite a few guys were already on mats outside the mosque. They were getting their prayers in early. Maybe they had to be back at work or babysitting.

  I stayed with Naz as we dumped our shoes on the shelves at the entrance. The routine was always the same: hands, mouth, nose, face, forearms, wet hands over head to the back of the neck, then ears. Once you had done your feet, you were ready to roll. Naz had brought a pair of flip-flops with him so he didn’t have to put his socks back on.

  Non-Muslims are welcome in mosques. They don’t like you trying to take part if you’re not one of the faithful, but you can stand at the back and watch – it’s no big deal. Word had spread in this mosque that I was thinking of converting, and I was made very welcome.

  From where I was standing at the entrance to the washroom, I had a clear view of the road and could see a man in a dark grey suit outside the iron gates.

  Naz had finished cleaning himself and was hopping over to me, trying to get his other flip-flop onto his foot. He, too, had seen the man outside the gate. ‘Mate, that has got to be him.’