Red Notice (31 page)

Blue Seven made a lunge for the nylon-webbing grab-handle on the back of Vatu’s body armour and tried to pull him back. The call-signs in the middle of the carriage dived to the right and slammed their axes into the windows, pushed their way through the large frosted panes and spilled down onto the track. The rest of the call-signs joined them, covered with glass sequins, pistols pointing forwards as they ran towards their entry points.

Keenan sprinted along the tunnel, ignoring the carriages on his left, not caring if there was fire or movement coming from the human shields within. His job now was to get forward and take out the PKM position.

He heard a couple of double taps from one of the team’s Sigs. They must be taking incoming. He’d heard no shots. Laszlo’s crew must have suppressed weapons. He heard more glass smashing as the assault groups started to swarm into their target carriages. He stopped short of the engine as a long burst of heavy-calibre fire streamed towards him.

The first rounds ricocheted off the front of the train. Green tracer tumbled and bounced from about a hundred and fifty metres further down the tunnel. The whole area filled with the sound of gunfire and the screech of brass on steel.

Keenan hit the floor, trying to use the PKM’s muzzle-flash to get a sight picture onto the gunner.

92

TOM LIMPED FAST
along the side of the train, loaded with the PKM and as much link as he’d been able to hang around his neck. His leg was agony. ‘Bin it!’ he screamed. ‘
Jockey, fucking bin it!
’

A couple of hundred metres away, Jockey couldn’t hear a thing. He was up his ladder, with numbers two and three so close behind that their respirators impacted on the body armour of the man in front.

Number four, the axe man, punched a flash-bang through the freshly crazed glass. Jockey threw his weight against it and tried to push through. A blinding flash lit each end of the carriage, followed immediately by two deafening bangs.

The detonation of the metal-oxidant mix of magnesium and aluminium created the equivalent of 300,000 candlepower, momentarily activating all light-sensitive cells in the eye, making vision impossible for five seconds. The 160-decibel blast seriously fucked up the fluid in the eardrum. It shocked and stunned, and disrupted the balance function of anyone within range who wasn’t wearing protective gear.

To Jockey’s amazement, the Yankees didn’t budge. Almost immediately he saw why. They couldn’t. He tried punching and elbowing his way through from the top of his ladder, but
there were too many of them, and they were being forced up against the windows by their guards.

A flash-bang bounced off the impenetrable human wall and back down into the tunnel. The detonation kicked off and the Yankees screamed, unable to move and take cover. Two teenagers screamed to each other in French. Their arms reached out to Jockey, thrust from behind like lemmings at a cliff edge.

He checked left. The other team was having the same problem. Some had taken hits below him. Yankees tumbled out of the windows and onto the track. It was like a siege on a medieval castle, men swarming up ladders to scale the parapets. But instead of battlements and boiling oil, there were so many bodies it was never going to happen.

Jockey jumped down onto the concrete and hit his pressel. ‘All call-signs – bin it! Bin it! I say again, move back, move back,
move back
!’

Keenan heard him loud and clear, but he was going to stay until the team was on the move. Unable to see the gunner, he aimed just above the muzzle-flash and took a shot. The PKM stopped for about five seconds, then kicked off again. He sucked in big lungfuls of air to stop his body moving and affecting his aim. The noise and chaos around him was just moving wallpaper in his head as he took aim once more.

Jockey brought him back into the real world with a boot in the thigh. ‘Get moving, you mad Cornish hippie!’

Tom saw the team start to withdraw to the rear of the train. He swung the gun down and behind one of the wheels and stood with his hands up, not wanting to become a casualty. He waited for the first of the team to approach.

The man in black grabbed him before he recognized Tom’s face.

‘Mate,’ Bryce yelled, ‘where the fuck have you been hiding?’

Tom spun him against the train, shouting over the din of the flash-bangs covering their withdrawal. It echoed and
resonated tenfold when the pressure had nowhere to go but up and down the tunnel. ‘Jockey? Where’s Jockey?’

More members of the team streamed past as Bryce got on the net. Jockey was the last man back, making sure every casualty was picked up, and every flash-bang was used to keep the chaos going. When he appeared, Bryce threw out an arm and Tom gripped his sleeve, pulling him close. ‘There’s a device on the gas pipeline!’ He pointed upwards. ‘Up there, above the service tunnel. Laszlo has a grab bag – it has to be the initiation device, it’s the only thing he never lets go. I don’t know what the fuck he’s planning, but his brother keeps saying, “Kill the country.” So go, mate – go! Give Gav the message.’

Jockey ripped off his respirator. ‘You’ve got to come with us.’

Tom’s eyes locked on his. ‘No, I’m staying. Delphine’s still in there. End of.’

The rattle of machine-gun fire filled the air. Rounds drilled into the concrete further along the train.

Tom ducked and grabbed the PKM as Jockey and Bryce legged it towards the UK. Tom positioned the bipod to the right of the wheel. He needed every bit of protection on offer.

He lay down and cocked the weapon. The working parts were already to the rear, but old habits died hard. He had to ensure the gun was made ready. He started to fire: short, sharp, five-round bursts, making sure that every round hugged the side of the train en route to its twin.

93

BATTERED AND BLOODIED,
the Blue team regrouped and reorganized at the mouth of the service tunnel. The trauma team had their work cut out trying to stabilize the military casualties, who were still being brought in. Electric carts then ferried them back to the Transits for a covert exit to hospital through the massed ranks of media and rubbernecking onlookers.

Jockey stopped his sit-rep to Gavin mid-flow when he saw Ashton storm over, his face red with fury. ‘Blue One, wait out . . .’

‘What the fuck did you do in there?’

Jockey wasn’t in the mood for Ashton – or any other fucker – getting on his back right now. He took a pace towards him. ‘I’ll tell you what the fuck I did down there. We walked straight into a fucking ambush, and I tried to get everyone out alive. That cunt knew exactly when and where we were coming. And if it hadn’t been for Tom we’d all be fucking toast. Not just poor bloody Vatu, the whole fucking lot of us.’

‘Buckingham? He’s still alive?’

‘He was ten minutes ago. The gun was still firing – but he could have run out of ammo by now. And he won’t be leaving that train unless he’s taking Delphine with him.’

Ashton shrugged. ‘Which means they’re both coming out of there in a box.’

Jockey’s fists clenched this time. He stared at Ashton with absolute contempt. ‘You’d better order some more, then, because they’re not the only ones.’ He pointed across the tunnel to where the big Fijian’s body was being carried onto the back of one of the carts. Another three wounded soldiers were straggling alongside. ‘So, if you’ve finished, Boss, I’ve got a sit-rep to send.’

Keenan, his face flushed with anger, broke up the stand-off. ‘Boss, when are we going back in to settle things with those fuckers?’

‘Right now,’ Ashton said. ‘Get rehydrated, get bombed-up. I’m going to move up the Red team. Fuck sorting the hostages – the police will have to take care of that.’ Ashton jabbed a finger into the front plate of Jockey’s body armour. ‘You have fifteen minutes to brief them before you go back in. I want everyone up-front-and-bags-of-smoke. Make Laszlo history – now!’

Jockey knew the infantry saying. It meant simply: get all your men up front, no reserves; get the smoke down to cover them during the attack. No finesse, no sophisticated tactical manoeuvres: just get into the battle space and win the fight.

He kept his eyes fixed on the OC.

Ashton glared back. ‘Well, what the fuck are you waiting for? Get on with it!’

Jockey was tempted to give him a smack there and then, but jerked his head at Keenan instead, motioning him out of earshot. His eyes drilled into Ashton’s, but he managed to keep his voice as low and reasonable as a Jock with size issues could. ‘Boss, like I was trying to tell Gav when you charged in, Tom has seen a device on a gas pipeline somewhere up above here.’ He pointed to where the sky would have been. ‘If we go back in immediately, that fuck Laszlo might just kick the thing off. Then we’d all be in the shit. So right now I need to get the int back to the hangar, get COBRA to fuck about with it, then we’ll see. I trust Tom more than you, COBRA, even my own fucking
mother. We need to regroup and rethink how the fuck we’re going to stop that cunt.’

Jockey turned away and got on the net. ‘Alpha, this is Blue One . . .’

94

TOM’S PKM TOOK
a round into the front of its feed tray. The force of the impact punched him back. A split second later the round splintered, peppering the side of his face with brass and lead fragments. The combined momentum hurled his head against one of the solid steel wheels.

The next thing he saw was a shitload of boots tap-dancing all around the track. Three of Laszlo’s sidekicks yelled at him, and motioned for him to get out. They wanted to see his hands. Tom had ended up lying on his back, starfish-style. He felt his boots being grabbed and hauled out into the open.

As he emerged, they gave him a couple of kicks for good measure, and gestured for him to get to his feet. He heaved himself up, hands in the air. He stared straight ahead, no scowl of defiance, no eye contact. His training had taken over. There was no way he’d show them that he was scared in a situation like this; he just stood there, took a deep breath, closed his eyes and let them get on with it.

One of his new best mates jabbed him with a machine-gun and signalled for him to get down on his knees. Tom did exactly what he was told. When he looked up, the kick to his jaw knocked him backwards against the train. Blotches of intense white light filled his head. He opened his
eyes. Through the starbursts, he saw the world closing in.

He took another boot to the side of his head. He wasn’t going to come up from that one in a hurry, even if he’d wanted to. His brain felt like it had been shaken loose and everything was spinning.

Even though he was winded, Tom’s instinct for self-preservation programmed his body to roll itself over. Face down on the concrete, he curled into a tight ball. He knew he had to accept what came his way; there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He tasted blood in his mouth. One half of his mind was telling him to close his eyes and take a deep breath, and maybe it would all go away. But at the back of the other lurked a small but insistent voice that said,
Let’s wait and see, maybe they won’t, there’s always a chance . . .

It was trampoline time. They leaped in the air and landed on his back and legs. He felt each impact, but no longer the pain that went with it. His system was pumping too much adrenalin. He wasn’t blacking out – Tom had never been totally out of it from a blow of any kind – but he was sinking into a world of mush. He tightened his stomach, clenched his teeth, tensed his body as much as he could, and hoped they weren’t going to start to give him a really serious filling in.

The whole performance couldn’t have lasted for more than a minute or two, but it was long enough. When they backed off, he kept himself in a tight ball, but trying now to slide his arms underneath his body. His mind was numb. The kicks to his head had been punctuated by well-aimed toecaps to the kidneys.

When they finally wrenched him into a standing position, he fell down almost immediately onto his hands and knees, coughing up blood.

He felt them search his clothes – and find his mobile, passport and wallet – then push his face down into the concrete. His hands were pulled behind his back and zip-tied. He tried to raise his head so he could breathe, but someone seemed to be standing on it. He gasped and inhaled blood. He felt as if he
was going to suffocate. Every sound was magnified, distorted, then diminished. He heard distant voices debate whether or not to kill him. And, for an agonizing second or two, he thought it would be quite nice if they did.

95

TOM WAS DUMPED
on the buffet-car floor, the side of his face thumping hard onto its unyielding surface. A couple of small shards of broken glass pierced his cheek. His hands were still zip-tied behind him, but he’d have been incapable of breaking the fall even if they’d been free. He lay in a pool of liquid and it trickled into his open mouth. The alcohol burned his cuts.

Tom could hear Laszlo barking out orders nearby.

‘Be quick!’

But he couldn’t really work out where he was, let alone try and turn what was left of his head to look for the speaker.

‘Brother, I want this train fully operational in ten minutes. You need to organize the equipment. I will meet you at the engine.’

Another kick helped him get his bearings.

He opened one eye to see Laszlo squatting beside him. He felt the South Ossetian grip his wrists, then slice through the zip-ties. With the speed and elegance of a magician, Laszlo liberated his Omega.

As he stood up once more, Laszlo dropped his own broken wristwatch next to Tom’s head and left the buffet car.

96

HER HANDS AND
thighs still duct-taped together after she’d been cut loose from the shelving pillars, Delphine was now being dragged towards the engine by a fighter. The deafening explosions, machine-gun fire and men in black trying to force their way onto the train might have stopped, but the cries, sobs and prayers of the hostages had not.

The floor was strewn with broken glass. So were many of the hostages. The reek of cordite hung in the air, mingling with the haze of smoke from the devices that had made her ears ring. One was still smouldering – it had ignited the fabric and foam innards of a chair. The stink of burning plastic was acrid and frightening.