Ethan Justice: Origins (Ethan Justice #1) (31 page)

“Hey!” Smith protested, several shirt buttons flying loose as he attempted to pull back.

“You’re scruffy anorak man,” Fisher said in sudden realisation, blinking and twitching as he snarled into Smith’s face.

Smith snarled back, “You’re psychopath killer man and no bloody fashion icon yourself.”

Wilson was impressed. The kid had come a long way in a few days, and he could see why Johnson and Savannah were so enamoured with him. The agent rose from the bench and turned to face the other three, letting his coat fall open to display Fisher’s gun.

“Enough of the chit chat. I’ll do the talking. Fisher, when did you last talk to your sister?”

Fisher’s eyes still burned holes into Smith. Wilson gave him a hard kick in the shin with his steel toecaps. Fisher’s attention was returned.

“Did Sasha ring you during the night?”

“What? No, I spoke with her this morning in Varush ... Smith’s office.”

“Did she pass on a message to you?”

“No,” Fisher said, his jaws clenching and the muscles in his neck tensing. “We just argued.”

The man was fragile. It was obvious to Wilson that his sister never had any intention of passing on his message giving Fisher the coded gun location.

“I wasn’t expecting you in Twickenham this morning. Seems you and your sister have a few issues. Is it true what Smith said about Whitehall?”

“I’ve other things to do first.” There was madness in Fisher’s lopsided smile.

“What things?”

Fisher’s face drooped, and his smile evaporated. His hands reached for his head as he doubled over. His body started to shake. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“I’m going to kill the social workers responsible for making me like my father,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m a monster like my father. I’m going to kill the people that made me like this, and then I’m going to end my own life.”

Wilson looked down at Fisher who now sobbed openly, tears dripping onto the floor between his feet. He caught Smith and Savannah sharing a moment of understanding. It would be one of their last. Only Savannah was going to leave the station alive.

“Pull yourself together, Soldier,” boomed Wilson, attempting to reach the soldier inside the broken shell of a man. “Have you forgotten your training?”

Somewhere deep down in the man’s core was a battle-hardened warrior who fought the good fight and sought the right cause. Wilson needed to bring that person out.

“Stop snivelling like a little girl, and pull yourself together. You are not your father!” Wilson shouted, slapping the side of Fisher’s face with enough power to rock the man’s head to one side. “Can you hear me, Soldier?”

Savannah and Smith looked at each other again. Wilson sensed the strong bond they had formed. It was a bond that would soon be broken for eternity. He caught her glancing up at him, and he smiled back apologetically. She didn’t understand because she didn’t realise he was saving her from a huge mistake. Time would heal everything. He was sure of it. The sobs continued from Fisher, and Wilson repeated the blow to the side of his head even harder than before.

“Can you hear me, Soldier?”

Fisher didn’t look up, but his sobs petered out, and he said, “I hear you, sir.”

“Good, Soldier,” Wilson said, nodding to Savannah. His control over a man who had caused her fear would make Savannah feel protected by him. This was good.

“Savannah, you can go now. Find a taxi and get out of here.”

Savannah’s brow furrowed in an expression of pure befuddlement. Wilson half expected her to look behind the bench and across the station before turning back, and say, ‘who me?’. What was wrong with her? Surely she wanted to be away from this madness, to be protected, safe? He pushed her for an answer with his eyes.

“I’m staying, thanks,” she said, reaching to her left and taking hold of Smith’s hand. Smith accepted the hand like the uncaring bastard that he was.

“Don’t you understand, Savannah? I’m trying to get you away from this. I’m not like Johnson who risked your life to capture Fisher or this loser who dragged you into all of this in the first place.”

Savannah looked at Smith as she spoke, her eyes almost caressing the useless excuse for a human.

“He’s been trying get me out of this from the start.” She turned her head back to Wilson. “I’m staying.”

It was hopeless to argue with her. She was strong, and he admired that in her. If he antagonised her, it would only make her resist more. If she stayed a while longer, he could prove he was protecting her from the likes of Fisher and Smith, and she would remember him with affection. Perhaps even weep at his death?

“Okay, but just stay close to me, okay?”

She looked back at him, but there was no answer clear in her big eyes, just uncertainty, which would do for now. Wilson lifted Fisher’s head up by his chin and knelt down so that their faces were inches apart.

“Are you ready to do whatever it takes, Soldier?”

Fisher’s eyes were still uncertain and distant, but the soldier at the very centre of his being was surfacing. “Yes, sir,” he said. There was little conviction but the hardest part was already over.

Wilson reached under the bench where he had been sitting only minutes before and tugged free the briefcase containing the weapon. Smith gasped and Savannah’s mouth opened. She was impressed, Wilson was sure of it. Placing the heavy briefcase flat on the bench between Fisher and Savannah, Wilson popped open the two catches and lifted the top of the case.

A chrome-plated tube gleamed in the glass-filtered light from the overcast sky. There was no slide or hammer, like a normal semi-automatic gun, just a sixteen inch long, fat, cylindrical barrel with a two inch square box underneath, two thirds of the way along, from which the trigger and its circular guard protruded. The grip of the gun, which housed the nuclear material, was in a separate sunken enclosure away from the main body of the gun and had two small dials one directly above the other. The top white dial read ‘beam’ and the red one below read ‘level’ in small black letters.

All eyes were fixed on the briefcase. Wilson pulled out the two separate pieces and snapped them together, making the weapon appear more like a regular handgun, only bigger. Power hummed through his hand and arm. He turned to Smith.

“Stay there, Smith. If you move one inch, I’ll take your head off. And no talking.” Wilson grabbed Fisher by the arm and dragged him out of earshot. Smith was powerless to do anything, but if he knew his plan, he would be more likely to risk his own life to save others. He wasn’t too bright, but he was brave and that could mean trouble. He watched Smith and Savannah out of the corner of his eye while he spoke with Fisher.

“What do you know about the gun?”

Fisher looked at Wilson blankly, and his eyes began to mist.

“I said, what do you know about this gun, Soldier?”

“Not much, sir,” barked Fisher. “Once Bradshaw suspected I may be requiring its long distance explosive capabilities he clammed up, sir.”

“Did you know that the gun you were coveting was unlikely to fire a nuclear explosion?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, thanks to me, you now have one that will. So what was your plan?”

“Like Smith said, I was going to take down Whitehall. I know the wife of a soldier who died in Afghanistan, and she’s keener than me to get payback. She works at Millbank Tower about a mile away and was going to get me up on the roof. I thought I’d get a good shot from there. I know there’s a meeting tomorrow morning about the future of the SAS and that the bean counters who stole my job will be at the MoD offices.”

No wonder this guy never made it past private,
thought Wilson. He might be good on the ground, but a planner or leader, he wasn’t.

“Are you crazy, man?” he said, although it was perhaps not the best question under the circumstances. “I’m guessing you’d be aiming for the cabinet office or the Old Admiralty Building where the Ministry of Defence are based, but I doubt you’d have line of sight as far as the MoD building. How were you planning to hit your target?”

“From what Bradshaw told me, I wouldn’t need to be that close to do the damage I’m looking for. All I need to do is set the beam on full width and the level to full and there’ll be no one left standing in a half mile radius.”

“Well he was lying. You might have made a few holes in the walls, but you’d have been picked off by a sniper in minutes. Did he say anything about the range?”

“Apparently it will reduce in power after two miles but fly straight for almost four.”

“On full beam and power?”

“He didn’t say.”

Wilson looked around the station. He was certain that he had time on his side, but he knew that Johnson would fight to his last breath to secure the guns without harm befalling a single person. It was time to brief Fisher on the new plan. His heart raced with excitement as he spoke. God was on his side.

“Listen to me, Soldier. There’s been a change of plan,” he started, sending puffs of white condensation into the air as his breathing quickened to match his heart’s oxygen requirements. “You’ll get to make your statement in support of the SAS and take your own life. If you do this, I promise to kill the social workers responsible for what happened to you and your sister.”

Fisher gazed up at Wilson, his mouth opening and closing, but no words were formed. He was fully compliant now. Wilson was sure of it.

“Are you with me, Soldier?”

“Yes, sir. You can rely on me.”

Wilson held out the nuclear gun. “Take this and position yourself just inside the main entrance. Keep it hidden at all times, and wait for ten minutes from ...” Wilson looked at his watch, “... now.”

Fisher checked his watch. “Yes, sir. And then what, sir?”

“Then set both dials to full, point the gun at the ground and pull the trigger. You’ll be a hero to your cause and show those bureaucrats what you’re made of.”

*

I walk to the main entrance. My head hurts. Wilson is incredibly strong and hits like a truck. He thinks I’m compliant, a good little soldier. The gun hums beneath my jacket. I hold all the power, but Wilson is keeping his pug-ugly mug in my direction. The gun is unstable and not usable for escape purposes. Could Wilson have Sasha killed? I can’t take any chances. Wilson must die before I make my escape. I must bide my time and wait until he is distracted.

I take my place at the entrance. The world is oblivious to the danger beneath my jacket. I slide my hand inside and turn both dials to low. The odds should be against an explosion at this level. I consider testing the gun on a few passers-by. Wilson is still looking. My face is twitching. Why can’t I stop blinking? I am not myself. I need a cigarette.

*

Johnson pulled the BMW up outside Justice Investigations and scanned the surroundings for obvious signs of unusual activity. He had left the police cars far enough behind to give him space to breathe. Thankfully, the electronics inside Smith’s watch were more sensitive than human ears. Ten minutes, his partner had said, until the mother of all explosions took place. This wouldn’t be confined to local or even national headlines. This would be a disaster worthy of global attention. This was the UK’s 9/11. In a population as dense as Twickenham’s, the death toll could reach thousands.

He checked his watch. There was still a distance of two to three hundred yards between the briefcase and Smith, which contradicted the conversation he’d been listening to in the car. He inserted an earpiece and switched his watch’s sound output to the mobile device.

“Keep your distance from Smith, Savannah, he’s poison,” Wilson said, before Johnson’s earpiece went disturbingly quiet.

“C’mon,” muttered Johnson. “Speak to me, dammit.”

It was clear to the Earthguard agent that Wilson was as mentally unstable, if not more so, than Fisher. He realised that he should have called it in when he first had his doubts, but there was no time now. This mess was his to clean up.

Resisting the strong pull of both common sense and protocol, Johnson headed in the direction of the gun’s signal, knowing that it might be the biggest mistake he could make. The agent had never been one for hunches, but he had a nagging feeling that the second watch signal, that should have been with the gun, supplied a vital clue to how he needed to handle the situation. Information was everything and distinctly lacking as he ran towards the block of flats behind the station, the direction from which his watch told him the source of the second signal emanated.

With one hand he pressed all of the buttons to request entry while his other hand felt around the door to ascertain its strength. Three kicks at most, he reckoned. A long buzz sounded, and he watched the signal metre on his watch as he climbed the stairs three at a time, a perk of the long legs he had been blessed with. The stairwell was shabby and in need of some decoration, but the condition was generally good with working lights and zero graffiti.

At the fourth floor of the six possible, he found his source. He lightly tapped the tarnished lion’s head brass knocker. He wanted someone to be in, someone who could shed some light on his partner’s actions. Wilson had gone off the rails fast, and it had all started after the visit to the SAS headquarters. Major Harris had tipped him over the edge, probably without even realising it, but what had he said to the best agent Johnson had ever worked with?

Johnson took a step back and raised his right leg just as he heard the sound of a rattling security chain. He lowered his leg and smoothed back his hair. Violence may well not be the answer here, and it didn’t hurt to appear friendly and well presented.

The door opened the length of the security chain and a young woman’s face peered back at Johnson. A mop of bright red hair sat atop a pale and bony face, and two sunken, world-weary, bloodshot eyes regarded Johnson with contempt. A golden stud sat between her chin and bottom lip, and he noticed the matching tongue piercing the moment she opened her mouth. Her right cheek looked sore, or perhaps she’d just been resting on it a while.

“I’m not buying what you’re selling mate, so jog along.”