Gray Vengeance (6 page)

After checking the website and getting Ed Conran’s new contact details, he sent both cell members a text offering to meet for lunch in a pub the following day.

Both responded immediately, and he settled in for a night in front of the TV. The twenty-four hour news channel regurgitated the same stories over and over, the headline being the multi-
vehicle
pile-up on the M25 that had closed the northbound carriageway for over eight hours. Some commuters were being interviewed, and they bemoaned the fact that they’d missed a whole day of work after being stuck behind the carnage, though they were thankful that it hadn’t resulted in any deaths.

Roberts smiled.

You ain’t seen nothing yet.

WINTER

Chapter 9

12 December 2014

Ed Conran pulled into the field and killed the lights before parking the Land Rover next to the hedge. After a quick scan of the area, he climbed into the back and removed his rucksack from the hidden compartment underneath the seats before heading off into the darkness.

The grass was wet beneath his feet, and he almost slid onto his backside more than once as he descended towards the railway track. He easily navigated the small, wire fence that blocked his path, then scrambled down the embankment and onto the gravel lining the rails.

To his right, the tracks disappeared into darkness, while in the other direction the mouth of the tunnel beckoned. He pulled out a headband and secured it around his forehead, ensuring that the torches fastened to each side were facing forward.

A hundred yards later, he stopped to listen for any untoward sounds, then placed the bag on the ground. With the tracks illuminated by his torches, he began scraping the stones from
underneath
the closest rail until he hit soil, then brought out a trowel and began digging farther. Once he had a six-inch gap, he removed the shaped charge from the rucksack and placed it gently into the scrape. He then inserted the detonator and attached the trailing wires to a mobile phone, which was modified to run off an array of batteries. This arrangement allowed him to deploy it three days before detonation without the risk of the charge running down.

With the explosive in place, he moved over to the other side of the track and repeated the process, connecting the second charge to the same mobile to ensure both explosions happened
simultaneously
. He knew that hundreds of trains would pass over this point before he was ready to detonate, so he made sure the connections were tight and had no chance of coming undone.

Satisfied that the devices would withstand the repetitive
vibrations
, Conran carefully covered both packages with soil before replacing the stones on top, then stood back to check his handiwork.

Nothing looked out of place, and he was confident that it would escape anything but the closest scrutiny. His watch told him that it was almost three in the morning, and he yawned as he shut off the torches and took off the headband. The rucksack went over his shoulder, and he walked back to the mouth of the tunnel, scanning the area for signs of movement.

Nothing.

Ten minutes later, he was heading back to London, to the bedsit accommodation he was renting in Wembley. After a few hours of sleep, he would meet Roberts to get the next set of packages, and the following few nights would be much the same as the last:
late
-night excursions into the countryside to plant his devices, then a few hours’ sleep before repeating the process.

The day was finally drawing near, and all the hard work of the last nine months was about to pay off.

Chapter 10

13 December 2014

Erik Houtman adjusted the blue coveralls bearing the Chubb insignia and cursed Roberts for providing a uniform a size too small. It didn’t look too bad when he stood erect or walked, but when he crouched to perform his work, the gusset cut into his groin, all too often with painful consequences.

Armed with a convincing ID badge and clipboard, he walked through the hospital, stopping to inspect every fire extinguisher he came across. No-one paid him the slightest attention as he went about his business, though he was prepared in case a member of the estates department asked why he was there. His forged worksheet was as close to the real thing as there was, and a cursory glance would satisfy anyone.

Avoiding the more sensitive areas of the hospital, he wandered the corridors until he arrived at the surgical unit. A couple of patients were waiting outside the double doors to be processed, and he offered a young girl a smile as he passed her trolley.

The extinguishers were clipped to a wall at knee level and, as expected, one was the CO
2
variant. Houtman knelt next to it and pretended to check the maintenance label, then made a sound of displeasure as he marked a comment on his sheet before heading out of the building. He returned soon after, carrying a brand new replacement, and noted the date on the label before taking the old one back to his van.

An hour later, three explosive extinguishers had been planted in the hospital, his fourth target of the day. He was thankful that h
e had only
the A&E unit at the Royal Free Hospital still to do, then he could relax for the day and finally be free of the damned overalls.

Paul Roberts walked into the offices of NTS Couriers Limited and smiled at the twenty-something blonde behind the counter.

‘Hi. I understand you do international deliveries.’

The girl flashed white teeth in response and began typing on her keypad. She asked for his personal details before enquiring about the nature of the delivery.

‘I’m renovating a house in France, and want to have a toilet and sink delivered. I thought about having them flown over, or taken by ferry, but you just can’t trust people not to damage them. They’re custom made.’

If the girl thought tailor-made toilets were unusual, she didn’t show it. Instead, she maintained her professional demeanour an
d ask
ed for the pickup point and destination. Roberts gave her the address of a cottage just south of Bordeaux, something he’d found after a five-minute search on Google.

‘I’d like to deliver the items here and make sure they’re properly secured in your van,’ he said. ‘They cost over four thousand, and I don’t want them getting knocked about on the journey.’

‘No problem,’ the girl assured him.

‘I’d also like them to go via Eurostar,’ he added. ‘The Channel is rough at this time of year, and I don’t like the idea of them being tossed back and forth for an hour.’

‘We usually take them by ferry because it’s cheaper.’

‘I don’t mind paying extra for the Tunnel,’ Roberts said, receiving another smile in return.

The total bill came to just short of four hundred pounds, and Roberts extracted a bundle of notes, counting off the twenties. He arranged to drop the items off at seven on Monday morning.

‘There’s a Eurostar leaving at eight thirty, and I’d like my items to be on that if possible. My plumbers will be waiting at four in the afternoon to fit them.’

‘We don’t usually open so early,’ the girl said, ‘but I can see if the driver will make an exception.’

Roberts handed over another fifty pounds, and the early start was suddenly no longer a problem.

He thanked her for her help and returned to his van.

Monday would be December 15th, the day earmarked for
Britain’s
collapse.

Chapter 11

14 December 2014

Takasa had two electric fans pointing at him as he sat by his laptop, surveying the messages coming in. The open windows did little to cool the room, as the hot Nigerian night offered nothing more than an infrequent gentle breeze to make life more tolerable.

Three cells had yet to report their status, but as they had last-minute arrangements to make, he wasn’t panicking. The news
stations
hadn’t mentioned anything about foiled terrorist plots in the last couple of days, and as the hours ticked down, he thought it increasingly unlikely that anything could stop his plan.

He took a sip of his gin and tonic, conscious of the fact that devout Muslims didn’t imbibe alcohol. But then, he’d been an atheist since he was old enough to make that decision, and playing the role of leader of a Muslim group didn’t make him a servant of Islam.

He sat back on the sofa, a smile creeping over his face as he pictured the reaction once he unleashed hell. Within hours, the country would come to a standstill.

There would be deaths, of course, but that was necessary and unavoidable. He’d long ago reconciled himself to the fact that blood would be on his hands, but with each act of aggression he’d planned, the value of life decreased, until they were nothing more than theoretical numbers. Perhaps a hundred thousand would never see Christmas but, then again, people died every day.

His laptop screen showed another incoming message:

97 ready

Good. His cell in Newcastle had completed its preparations; that left only Manchester and Coventry to report in.

He picked up his gin and stepped out onto the balcony, where the sun was painting the sky a fiery orange as it sank below the horizon. An apt omen, he thought, taking another sip of his drink.

He glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost time to place his bets. Britain was going to become a war zone in short order, and the damage he was about to cause would devastate some of the larger companies on the stock market. Their stock prices would tumble as investors bailed, which they surely would once the financial liabilities became apparent. The National Grid, for example, would have to spend close to a billion undoing his work, almost a whole year’s profits. As the share price tumbled, he would reap the rewards.

Although he had offered DSA’s council fifty
million
towards the venture, he’d kept back two million for this very moment. He would sell a vast amount of shares in NG and several other companies certain to be affected, and once the dust had settled, he would honour his investment and complete the transaction by buying the shares back at a much lower price.

He decided to sell half a million shares at 800p, knowing that once the attacks started, they would be closer to 400p, earning him a tidy profit. He called his broker in Switzerland and gave him a list of transactions with instructions to execute them as soon as the stock exchange opened the following morning.

In the next day or two, he would have more than enough to spirit himself away to a new safe haven and a comfortable
retirement
, which was no more than he deserved. He’d spent his
master’s
money as requested, and soon the results of his work would be on every television screen around the world.

The cash would be a nice return for a few months of planning, but the real satisfaction would come in the next few days.

Chapter 12

15 December 2014

Andrew Harvey was the first into the meeting room, determined not to incur Sarah Thompson’s wrath once more.

Since she’d arrived to take over his position as section lead five months earlier, he’d managed to rub her up the wrong way on more than one occasion, and Ellis had been clear in her warning that one more time would see him permanently demoted, at the very least.

Get with the programme, or kiss your career goodbye.

Harvey had no problem following orders, but when they came from someone who’d clearly been deskbound for their entire career, it rankled. Thompson had flounced into the office in July and given her ‘I’m in charge now, so let’s start doing things properly’ speech, which had got more than a few backs up. Her subsequent ideas showed that she had no field experience, sending MI5’s finest off on pointless errands that ultimately proved fruitless. Any attempts to challenge her orders invariably ended with a trip to Ellis’s offic
e t
o explain one’s actions, and while it was frustrating, Harvey told himself that it was a temporary arrangement.

At least, he hoped so.

Having followed Thompson’s instructions since summer, they were no closer now to finding Farrar than they had been ten months earlier, and Harvey had taken to working later and later in order to try to generate different leads that could put a swift end to her presence.

The trouble was, every time he came up with something, Sarah Thompson was there to shoot him down in flames. He’d found a source that claimed there was a sighting of Farrar in Algeria at the start of the year, but when asked for resources to follow it up, she’d denied his request.

‘Algeria is a category two extradition territory,’ she’d said. ‘Farrar won’t be hiding there.’

Harvey had agreed that it was unlikely he’d settled there, but couldn’t he have been spotted there while in transit? When he asked if he could take a couple of people and see if Farrar’s onward destination could be ascertained, Thompson had dismissed the idea as a waste of time, not to mention resources.

Today, his nemesis entered the room a few minutes after everyone had gathered, as was her style, and immediately focused on Harvey. It was her normal tactic, and he guessed it was designed to break his spirit before the meeting actually began. She stared at him with her olive eyes, the hint of a smile curling her ruby lips.

Harvey had to admit that Thompson was a stunner. She stood six feet in her high heels, and a lot of that was perfectly shaped leg. He’d caught himself watching her walk away a couple of times, and chided himself for it. In another time and place, he could easily have fallen for her, but this was work, and she was the most officious taskmaster he’d ever known.

‘What have we got from South America?’ she asked.

Harvey didn’t even need to consult his notes. ‘Nothing. No sightings, no transactions, nothing. Maybe we should send in a couple of resources to check things out.’

‘Andrew, your answer to everything seems to be to send in some people to see what we can dig up. Need I remind you that we can’t just take people off other cases simply because you can’t make headway with the information at hand? Our assets are already out combing the world for Farrar. There’s no-one left.’

‘You’re the one who asked me to check out the region,’
Harvey
said, ‘and as you know, Interpol covers just abo
ut ev
ery South American and Caribbean country, with a couple of exceptions. Martinique is one, and it also happens to be a non-extradition country. If he’s hiding down there, we need eyes on the ground.’

‘Try the local banks, see if they’ve—’

‘Not co-operating,’ Harvey interrupted.

‘Then speak to the law enforcement—’

‘They said they’ve got better things to do.’

Thompson slammed her clipboard onto the desk, exasperated.

‘Do you think that, one day, you could come to one of these meetings with some good news? All I ever hear is can’t, won
’t, didn’t.’

Harvey knew that protesting would only earn him another visit to Ellis’s office, so he promised to push harder with the locals and left it at that.

Thompson turned to Hamad Farsi. ‘What have you got for me?’

‘We have word that Takasa is due in Kano, despite rumours that he rarely ventures out of his hideaway in Chad. Apparently, DSA have something big lined up. They—’

‘DSA are a thing of the past,’ Thompson cut in. ‘I told you to forget about them and focus on finding James Farrar. Why are you still working it?’

She turned to face Harvey, and the penny dropped. ‘Don’t tell me: you asked him to follow it up.’

Hamad shook his head. ‘No, I heard it from the Africa desk and thought it might be useful.’

‘Well, I’m telling you it’s not. DSA are a motley
collection
of unconnected criminals using the name to lend credence to their actions. They’ve never ventured beyond northern Nigeria, and they never will. Their biggest claim to fame is torching a Catholic school, for God’s sake. For the last time, forget about them and focus on the main mission.’

Farsi nodded, contrite.

Thompson asked the two other operatives for progress reports, and while they too had nothing new to offer in Asia and the Middle East, Harvey thought she seemed to accept their answers with a lot more grace than when he’d come up empty.

The meeting broke up, and Harvey followed Farsi back to t
heir desks.

‘I think she’s got the hots for you,’ Farsi said.

Harvey looked towards the meeting room, just in time to see Thompson leaving, her long, blonde hair swaying with every step. Despite the animosity between them, he couldn’t help but watch the way her hips moved as she strode to her office with her cell phone to her ear. He had to admit that there was something about her that intrigued him, even if it wasn’t her sparkling
personality
.

‘If she has, she’s got a funny way of showing it,’ he said.

He unlocked his computer and began searching for holiday homes in Martinique, in the hope that someone matching Farrar’s description had rented one in the last year.

It was a long shot, but it would keep Thompson happy for a few hours. He was looking at the second page of results when Sarah Thompson suddenly appeared next to him.

‘I’ve just spoken to the home secretary. You can have two
people
for Martinique, but only for a week. If they find nothing, we pull them back.’

She walked away before Harvey could even register surprise at her concession.

‘Told you,’ Farsi said with a smirk.

Paul Roberts was cruising at sixty-five on the M25,
heading
west towards the junction with the M23 that led to
Gatwick
Airport. As he passed the turnoff, he hit the button on his
trigger
and let a three-second burst hit the traffic in the oncoming lanes. Almost immediately, the cars he’d hit ground to a halt as their electrics failed and engine-management software shut down. There was no warning for the cars behind, and they powered into the stationary vehicles at speeds in excess of
seventy
.

As he released the button, he realised that his actions would leave many people dead. Children would go to bed without
mothers
or fathers, and parents would wait all evening for offspring who would never return home. A year ago, such thoughts might have consumed him, but all he felt was the heady thrill of wielding t
he powe
r of life and death.

Roberts checked his wing mirror as the first explosion took place, followed by others as the concertina effect added more and more vehicles to the carnage. The flames were receding as he sped away from the scene, but his work wasn’t done.

A mile up the road, he hit the trigger again, just as he saw two articulated lorries powering up the motorway. His burst stopped the vehicles in front of the trucks, and the juggernauts ploughed through the saloons and hatchbacks like they were made of paper. By the time they managed to pull to a stop, twenty vehicles were destroyed, and yet another fire had broken out.

Roberts continued down the road, creating another four
accidents
before the overhead signs ordered all traffic in the
opposite
lanes to a halt.

He wouldn’t be causing any more crashes on the motorway that day, but every now and then he hit the trigger in three-second bursts, immobilising the already-stationary cars and adding to the nightmare. It would take days to clear that stretch of the motorway, and he knew Houtman and Conran would be doing the same thing on the northern sections of the London Orbital.

He arrived at the turnoff for Heathrow and pulled onto the hard shoulder, turning his hazard lights on. The exact spot had been chosen weeks earlier, and he climbed into the back to look through the letterbox-sized glass panel built into the side of the van. It gave him a view to the west, where the aircraft heading for the airport would make their final approach. Just over a kilometre away, parked in a street next to a couple of bungalows, another van waited for his command.

Roberts picked up a remote control device and turned it on. The built-in screen showed darkness, but when he pressed the first button, a panel on the van’s roof opened to give him a view of the clouds. He hit another button, arming the heat-seeking surface-to-air missile that was pointing to the sky, and waited until the
fish-ey
e lens first indicated the presence of the latest arrival.

A two-tone siren filled the small space as the indicator showed the missile had a lock on the plane, and Roberts let it loose. Through his van’s glass panel, he could make out the oncoming aircraft, and a streak of smoke rising from the ground quickly converged on the right wing. As soon as the hit was confirmed, Roberts climbed back into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine.

From the side window of his van, he saw the British Airways Boeing 747 yaw to the right as flames danced from the damaged engines, and he wondered whether the pilot could keep it together long enough to make the runway; the purpose of the exercise wasn’t to claim lives, but to reduce the airport’s capabilities.

He lost sight of the plane through the side window, but his side mirrors showed the aircraft limping over the motorway, the belly beginning to show as the plane rolled to the left, and he knew he’d achieved his aim, or as close to it as he could have hoped for.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that hundreds of people were currently screaming as the ground rushed towards them, but he didn’t have time to reflect on the damage he’d done. There was still a lot to do before he could afford himself tha
t luxury.

He continued along the M25, and at the next exit he followed the M4 towards the centre of London. Once he hit the capital, he pulled into a side street and removed the plastic licence plates that covered the real ones. He would need the van over the coming days, and no doubt the security services would use CCTV cover
age t
o determine what had happened. Once the vehicle was pictured at the scenes of the crashes, the security services would put two and two together. Somewhere in Middlesex, an unwitting
Transit
van owner was in for a big shock when they ran the fake plates.

With the vehicle’s identity changed, he drove to a café and ordered a couple of bacon sandwiches to go, before parking up in a nearby supermarket car park. To the passersby, he was just another workman taking a late breakfast while surfing the internet, but Roberts wasn’t interested in anything other than the GPS
signal
he was getting, and the list of phone numbers in his contacts log. The dot on the screen told him that the toilet and sink were already aboard the Eurostar train, and would reach the Channel Tunnel within ten minutes.

That left time to make a few important phone calls.

One by one, he selected each number, waiting for the response to go to voicemail before ending the call and deleting the entry.

Each time he hit the Connect button, another device took out a significant piece of infrastructure: a giant metal pylon carrying power lines into the capital; smaller wooden poles feeding electricity to towns in the suburbs; a water distribution pipe; cable TV junction boxes—the list went on and on.

After twenty minutes, his initial targets had been destroyed or seriously damaged, and that left only the train. He checked the location and saw that it was nearing the halfway mark, its lowest point beneath the English Channel. He closed down the GPS app and returned to the phone menu, where the entry ‘Chunnel’ sat at the top of the queue.

Roberts called the number, and after a few seconds was told that the number was unavailable. He switched back to the GPS app, and saw that the signal was no longer being fed from the Tunnel.

With that phase of the operation over, he opened his email client and accessed a mail draft with video attachment that he’d created the day before. After sending it, he started the engine and pointed the van towards Westminster.