First Response (9 page)

‘Sami’s my middle name. That’s what everyone calls me.’

‘Yeah? Well, I’m Jamie. Jamie Clarke. Is everyone all right in there, Sami?’

‘Of course they’re not all right. They’re all scared shitless. Now you need to get the fuck away from here before we all die.’

‘I just want to talk to you, Sami. That’s all.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ said Malik. ‘You need to get the ISIS Six released and then everyone can go home.’

‘How are you for food? Water? I suppose everyone in there is thirsty.’

‘We’re fine.’

‘I’m thirsty,’ said Zoe. ‘They can give us water, can’t they?’

‘See? The lady wants a drink. Why don’t I send you in some water, Sami? Maybe some soft drinks. If you wanted pizza we could get you some.’

‘I don’t want anything!’ Malik shouted.

Clarke held up his hands. ‘Okay, okay. I just wanted to make sure everyone was comfortable, that’s all.’

‘I need to go to the toilet!’ shouted Zoe.

‘I can get a portable loo sent in,’ said Clarke.

‘You need to get the hell away from here,’ said Malik. ‘I’m not to talk to anybody.’

‘Why not? You need to talk to us, Sami, so that we can understand what it is you want.’

‘You know what they want. They want the six ISIS prisoners released. Do that and we can all go home.’

‘Who’s “they”, Sami? Who do you mean?’

‘Stop using my name!’ shouted Malik. ‘You don’t know me. You’re doing it to show that you’re my friend but you’re not my friend. Same with the beard. They sent you because you’ve got a beard, right? Same as me. So I’ll empathise.’

‘I’ve had this beard for years, Sami. I had bad acne when I was a kid, and it helps hide the scars.’

Malik saw movement behind the policeman and he stepped to the side. On the far side of the mall, two armed police were crouched by a bench, pointing their guns at him. ‘You need to get them away from here!’ shouted Malik.

‘They’re just here to make sure that no one gets hurt,’ said Clarke.

‘They’re pointing their fucking guns at me!’ yelled Malik. ‘Get them away from here. Everybody needs to stay the hell away!’

‘Sami, keep calm. No one’s going to hurt you.’

‘Yes, they are! If you don’t do exactly what they want, we’re all going to die! Now get those prisoners released! Just do it!’

Clarke started to back away, his hands still up. ‘I’m going to be along the way a bit, Sami. If you want to talk, just call out and I’ll come back.’

‘I don’t want to fucking talk to you or anybody!’ shouted Malik. ‘Keep your distance or everybody dies.’

Clarke turned and walked away and Malik pulled Zoe back into the shop. ‘That bloody idiot is going to get us all killed!’ he hissed.

‘Another one’s just come in,’ said Lumley, standing up. ‘A bus in Tavistock Square.’

‘Please don’t tell me it’s a number thirty,’ said Kamran.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Lumley.

Kamran groaned. There had been four suicide bombs in London on the morning of 7 July 2005. Three had been on Tube trains. The fourth, the final one, was detonated on the top deck of a number thirty double-decker bus in Tavistock Square, close to the headquarters of the British Medical Association, killing thirteen people and injuring dozens more. ‘This can’t be a coincidence,’ said Kamran. ‘Not when it happens on the tenth anniversary of Seven/Seven. On the same bloody bus. Bastards, bastards, bastards.’ He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then patted Lumley on the shoulder. ‘Liaise with SCO19, Bomb Squad, Fire and Ambulance. And let’s get the helicopter overhead. Where is it now?’

‘Marble Arch.’

‘Move it to Tavistock Square. As soon as you know who the Silver Commander is there, let me know.’

‘Will do,’ said Lumley, picking up his phone.

Waterman stood up and came across. ‘That’s a bit of a game-changer, isn’t it? A bus. Tavistock Square.’

‘Like I said, it can’t be a coincidence. But why aren’t we seeing them on the Tube? And Seven/Seven was never about hostages, it was about mass killings.’

‘This lot are different,’ said Waterman. ‘This is ISIS and they’ve always been good at PR. They know that by replaying the Seven/Seven bus they’ll get more coverage. People will talk about it, exactly as we’re doing now.’

Kamran sighed. ‘It’s obviously been well planned,’ he said. ‘Was there nothing to suggest that anything like this was coming?’

‘The threat level has been severe for some time, but that’s more a reflection on the number of jihadists in the country rather than a specific threat.’

‘You’d have thought there’d be something. This number of targets, so many people involved, you’d have thought someone would have talked.’

‘Attacks on shopping malls and public places, yes, they’re always being discussed. But individual attacks like this across the city, co-ordinated and planned? No, no one knew this was coming.’

Kamran walked out into the main room and headed for the SCO19 pod. The desks were laid out so that eight people could work facing each other. Inspector Windle was on his feet, talking animatedly into his headset. ‘I know resources are running thin but we need at least two ARVs in Tavistock Square now.’ He took off his headset. ‘This just gets worse, doesn’t it?’

‘How are you fixed for vehicles?’

‘We’re not. All I can do now is move assets around.’

‘Where’s Captain Murray?’

‘He’s a smoker. Haven’t you noticed he pops out every half-hour or so?’

‘How many of his men do you have?’

‘Eight so far. They’re two apiece at the first four locations. That’s in addition to the six we already had embedded with ARV units. There’s another Chinook on the way from Hereford with eight more.’

‘And how are they getting on with your people?’

‘Good as gold, so far. Our guys do a lot of training with the SAS and while there’s a fair bit of healthy competition there’s mutual respect too.’ He put his hand up to his headset. ‘Sorry. I’ve another call coming in.’ He turned his back on Kamran to take it. The main screen was showing Sky News. They had managed to get their own helicopter above Tavistock Square and were transmitting an overhead view of the bus.

Kamran walked to the pods on the far side of the special operations room where the Ambulance and Fire services were based. The officer liaising with the Fire Brigade was a familiar face – a twenty-year veteran called Danny King – but Kamran hadn’t met the London Ambulance representatives before and took the time to introduce himself to the two men and one woman sitting there. ‘How do we stand?’ he asked.

‘We’ve got ambulances and paramedics at each location and they’ve all made contact with the respective Silver Commanders,’ said the senior Ambulance official. His name was Alfie Robins and he was a balding man in his fifties, who appeared to be making copious notes on a clipboard. ‘We also have A & E departments at all hospitals in the vicinity on standby,’ he said.

Kamran nodded his approval and looked over at King, who wasn’t as gung-ho but, then, pessimism seemed to be his regular frame of mind. ‘We’re stretched,’ King said glumly.

‘Do you have an appliance at each location?’

King pulled a face. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘We’re really stretched in the West End so what we’ve done is paired up the locations and sited the appliances midway. We have one between Brixton and Wandsworth, another between Fulham and Kensington. Then we have individual appliances at Marble Arch and Marylebone. And we’re en route to Tavistock Square.’

‘What’s the story with the Southside centre?’

‘Actually, Southside is the least of our problems,’ said King. ‘It’s now been evacuated and they have a state-of-the-art fire-control system in place. Worst possible scenario and the bomb detonates, the immediate damage will be confined to the shop area and the sprinklers will come on automatically. We’ve had a look at the building plans and there’s no danger of damage to the floors above or below. If the blast spreads sideways, the sprinklers will kick in. Also there’s no gas in the building, so other than the initial blast, damage will be minimal. The church in Brixton is also not much of a fire risk. There isn’t much flammable inside and no gas on the premises. The bus is a bugger but it’s outside and the square is in the process of being evacuated. If you recall the bus that exploded there in 2005, there was very little collateral damage. Everyone remembers the bus with the top blown off. Catastrophic damage, but confined to the vehicle.’

King picked up a bottle of water and took a swig. ‘That’s the good news. Or, at least, the less bad news. The really bad news is that the four other locations are absolute bastards. They’re all part of terraces and all have gas plumbed in. The childcare centre has apartments above it, as does the coffee shop in Marble Arch. There are shops around the post office in Fulham and the pub in Marylebone, all full of flammable stuff and with gas mains. An explosion in any of those four could set off a devastating chain reaction.’

‘So we need as many appliances as we can get on standby,’ said Kamran.

‘I hear you, and we’re doing what we can, but we’ve suffered cuts as deep as you guys have. And we still have to maintain our regular coverage. Two or three events like this and we wouldn’t have a problem. But seven?’ He grimaced.

As Kamran headed back to the Gold Command suite he saw Murray returning, a transceiver pressed against his ear. Kamran waved him over and the SAS captain finished his call and headed towards him. ‘There’s another one, in Tavistock Square. A bus.’

‘Same as Seven/Seven,’ said Murray. ‘That can’t be a coincidence.’

‘Marty says you have eight more troopers on the way.’

The captain looked at his watch, a rugged Breitling with several dials. ‘ETA fifteen minutes.’

‘What else can you offer us in the way of manpower? I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.’

‘There’s a major training exercise going on in the Brecon Beacons so we’ve got a chopper going out to pick up another eight. But they’ll have to be taken to Hereford to re-equip so it’ll be a couple of hours before they’re on the ground.’

‘Just keep them coming,’ said Kamran. ‘I suspect that before this is over we’ll need every man you can send us.’

Ismail Hussain peered through the window. The street was deserted except for two police cars about fifty yards to the left and another two to the right. Beyond them were an ambulance and a paramedics’ vehicle. He sensed movement across the street and scanned the first-floor windows. He stiffened when he saw that one was open and something was sticking out of it. The barrel of a rifle. He took a step back and bumped into the woman who was handcuffed to him. ‘Get back! Get back! They’ve got guns,’ he said.

She was in her late twenties and he hadn’t realised how pretty she was until after he’d slapped the handcuff on her wrist. He hadn’t even looked at her face: she’d been the last in the queue so was the obvious target. She hadn’t screamed, she hadn’t shown any fear, just turned to him, held up her right arm and asked him what he was playing at. Even when he had ripped open his coat and revealed the suicide vest she hadn’t seemed scared. If anything, she appeared distant, as if her mind was elsewhere. As the hours had passed he’d come to realise that she wasn’t scared in the least. But she wasn’t calm either. There was a tenseness about her, like a coiled spring that was set to burst free at any moment. Her hair was dark brown, an almost chocolaty colour, greasy as if she hadn’t washed it for a few days. Her eyes were dark green but the whites had reddened as if she’d been crying and there was a sickly pallor to her skin. She was wearing a sheepskin jacket a couple of sizes too big for her over a man’s shirt, faded blue jeans that were ripped at the knee and brown Ugg boots.

‘They won’t shoot you,’ she said, as she moved over to the counter with him.

‘How do you know?’ barked Hussain.

‘You’re wearing a suicide vest,’ she said. ‘They can’t shoot you. Don’t you watch TV?’

‘They might shoot me in the head,’ said Hussain. He checked that where he was standing wasn’t overlooked by the marksman.

‘Not through a window,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows that. And you’ve locked the door so they can’t get in. Anyway, they’ll send a negotiator. They always do.’

A telephone began to ring. It was on the other side of the counter, behind the screens, where three post-office workers were sitting. Two were Asian and one was black. Like the dozen customers who were now sitting on the floor by the back wall, they were busy on their smartphones. The black guy looked over his shoulder at the ringing phone.

‘Don’t answer it!’ shouted Hussain.

‘It’ll be the negotiator,’ said the pretty woman. ‘You have to talk to them.’

‘How do you know who it is?’ asked Hussain.

‘That’s what they do. They call you and ask you what you want. Then they negotiate.’

‘They know what we want,’ said Hussain. He waved at the hostages by the wall. ‘That’s why I told them to use their phones. They can tell everyone what we want.’ He waved his trigger above his head. ‘Don’t forget to put hashtag ISIS6 on every message.’

‘They’ll still want to talk to you,’ said the woman.

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ said Hussain. ‘They release the prisoners or everyone dies.’ The phone stopped ringing. ‘See? They don’t need to talk.’

‘They’ll call back,’ she said.

He stared at her for several seconds and she met his gaze unflinchingly. ‘Why aren’t you scared?’ he asked eventually.

She frowned but continued to look into his eyes. ‘What makes you think I’m not?’

‘You don’t look scared.’

‘Well, I am. I’m terrified. But screaming and crying aren’t going to do me any good, are they?’

‘I suppose not.’

She smiled thinly. ‘You suppose not? Don’t you know? You’re the one running the show.’

‘I wish that were true,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘But trust me, I want this to be over as much as you do.’

‘So take off the handcuffs and go outside. Then it’ll be over.’

‘They have to release the prisoners.’

‘You really think they’ll do that?’