The Chinaman (46 page)

‘Stand by,' said the Colonel's voice in Joker's earpiece. ‘We think we have a clear shot.' The two D11 marksmen were the only police representatives Joker had seen, and at first he'd assumed it was because the Colonel wanted to keep the operation low-key and not risk having the terrorists tipped off by too much woodentop activity. During the briefing, however, it became clear that there was another reason for the minimum police presence. The Colonel had stressed that they were not planning to take any prisoners. The operation was to be a hit and run, leaving no martyrs alive in mainland prisons as a focus for future terrorist actions, though the Colonel had stressed that one of the terrorists had to be interrogated to discover if there were any devices already planted that hadn't gone off yet. The Colonel suggested that The Bombmaker should be left alive, but that it was Joker's call. Obviously if she was armed she'd have to be taken out immediately.

‘They've just switched the lights on. There are three men in the lounge area,' said the Colonel in Joker's ear. ‘One sitting at the table, one on the couch, one standing in the hallway. There's still no sign of the girl.'

Another voice in Joker's ear, this time one of the men in the Range Rover, cut in. ‘She's coming. A taxi just pulled up in front of the building. It's her. She's going in.'

There was silence for a minute and then the Colonel's voice spoke again. ‘One of the men is opening the door. Yes, it's her. The two of them are going into one of the bedrooms. OK, stand down. We can't move while two of them are out of sight.'

Joker and Ginge went back into the flat to wait.

Fisher took MacDermott in his arms and held her. ‘Did it go OK?' he whispered.

‘It was horrible, horrible. I don't ever want to have to do anything like that again. He was all over me, Denis, like some sort of slobbering animal.'

He kissed her ear. ‘Come on, kid. It had to be done, you know that. And think of the prize. If what he told you is right, that plane is going to be the biggest coup we've ever had. And we get to take out some of our worst enemies. Anyway, it's not as if he was grotesque or anything. He was a good-looking guy.'

She pulled away and glared at him. ‘That's not the fucking point, Denis. I had to spend weeks around him, fending him off, toying with him, waiting for the opportunity to use him. I feel dirty, really dirty.'

Fisher held up his hands to calm her down. ‘OK, OK, I'm sorry. Don't take me the wrong way. We're all proud of you, really proud. And we know what you went through.'

‘Do you Denis? Do you really?' She shook her head and there were tears in her eyes. ‘I'm going to shower,' she said, pushing past him.

‘Stand by,' said the Colonel. ‘We see the girl, coming out of the bedroom. She's going into the bathroom. The man is out of the bedroom, too, he's walking towards the lounge. OK, we have all three men in view. We'll wait for the girl to come out. Get ready, Joker.'

Another voice broke in, this time one of the SAS men on foot. ‘There's somebody walking along Wapping High Street,' he said. ‘A man. Anyone else see him?'

‘We see him,' said the watcher in the Range Rover. ‘He's heading towards the block. No, it's OK, it's a delivery. He's carrying a box. He's a Chink, by the look of it. Yeah, I can see Chinese writing on the box. Somebody's ordered a Chinese take-away by the look of it. Nothing to worry about.'

‘It can't be for our targets, we saw them eating earlier on,' said the Colonel. ‘Keep an eye on him, just in case.'

‘He's outside the block,' said the man in the Range Rover. ‘He's going in.'

Nguyen hefted the box in his left hand and reached for the doorbells with his right. There were more than twenty individual buttons and he was about to press a few at random to see if anyone would let him in through the security door when he saw movement in the hallway and a second later the door pushed open and a middle-aged man carrying a small terrier went by him. Nguyen caught the door before it swung shut and slipped inside. At the end of the hallway was a lift with its doors open and to the left was a stairway. He headed up the stairs, carrying the box in both hands. He was after Flat 19 but had no way of knowing which floor it was on, so as he reached each landing he quietly eased open the door and checked the numbers of the flats. On the fourth floor he saw a door with 19 on it and he jerked back out of sight. He was almost there. It was almost over.

‘Get ready, Joker. The girl is coming out of the bathroom. She's wearing a bathrobe, a white bathrobe, and she's heading for the lounge. This could be it. Where's the guy with the dog?'

‘He's well away,' said the watcher in the Range Rover.

‘No sign of the delivery man?'

‘Still inside.'

‘OK. She's sitting down on the left in the armchair by the television. Hang on, the man at the table appears to have a gun, an automatic, but he's not holding it. It's on the table.'

The four soldiers looked to their right at a large drawing of the flat below. The Colonel had copied it from the diagram on the blackboard, including details of where the furniture was. It was pretty much a copy of the flat they were in, though smaller. Joker used the barrel of his gun to indicate where the four terrorists would be. Ginge nodded.

‘I'll take the man at the table, and the guy on the couch,' said Joker. ‘The one in the hallway is yours. Don't forget, we try to take the girl alive. We've got some questions for her.'

‘We think we have a clear shot at the man in the hallway. Stand by,' said the Colonel.

‘Mine is the couch, yours is the table,' corrected Joker.

‘Right ho,' said Ginge.

‘Move out on to the balcony,' said the Colonel.

Joker felt the adrenalin surge as he prepared for action. He and Ginge stood side by side waiting for the word. They both cocked the actions of their MP5s, slotting home live rounds into the chamber. They both had their safeties off and their fingers on the trigger guards so that there was no way the guns could go off accidentally when they jumped. There were live rounds in the chambers of their holstered Brownings but they'd kept the safeties on. They were wearing assault waistcoats loaded with stun grenades over black overalls. They had both chosen to wear light body armour and had discarded the high velocity body armour with its tough ceramic plates that they'd brought with them, partly because there was no sign of anything bigger than a handgun in the flat below and because they didn't want to be burdened down with too much weight when they jumped.

‘Prepare to jump,' said the Colonel. The two SAS men eased themselves over the blue-painted metal railings, facing forward and holding on with one hand. The drop was about twelve feet which was easy enough, but they had to twist through ninety degrees to the right as they jumped so balance would be a problem. Joker would be able to land by the side of the white plastic table and chairs but Ginge would drop behind them so he wouldn't be able to move inside as quickly, he'd have to go round. Bunny and Jacko moved up behind them to stand on the balcony.

Nguyen placed the box on the floor and squatted next to it. He took out the cartons of food, long since gone cold, and stacked them against the wall. At the bottom of the box, in pieces, was a replica of a Kalashnikov AK-47. He'd arrived at the shop minutes before it was due to close, out of breath because he'd run down the Strand, and paid in cash. It was realistic down to the last detail, a perfect copy of the Russian-designed 7.62-millimetre automatic rifle that he'd used in the jungles of Vietnam. He assembled it with an efficiency born of familiarity, screwing home the wooden stock and slotting in the magazine. The weight felt slightly wrong but it looked real enough, and the men he was up against were professionals, they would assume that anyone who moved against them would be using the real thing. He'd have preferred to have used the Browning but he'd left that behind in the forest, and besides, there was no way he could have got any weapons at all through the airport security. Anyway, there was a certain irony in using the AK-47, which is why he'd chosen it over the rest of the range of replica guns the shop had in stock. That and the fact that it was the gun he felt most comfortable with. So long as he kept moving, so long as he didn't give them time to think, they wouldn't realise that it was a replica, they wouldn't notice that the barrel was solid metal and that the gun could never in a million years be used to fire bullets. They'd be off-guard, defensive, and scared, and he'd be able to use their confusion to take their own weapons from them. They'd be sure to have guns, and once he'd taken them from them he'd have no further need of a replica. And if he was wrong, if there were no guns in the flat, then he'd use the knives he'd also bought at the shop.

Nguyen no longer gave any thought to his own future, to what would happen if he should succeed. He didn't care any more. He'd given up any hope of justice being done, all he wanted now was revenge. He wanted nothing less than the death of the four bombers and he had no interest in what lay beyond that. His life was over.

When the weapon was ready he put the cartons back in the box and stood up. He slid the rifle inside his coat, barrel down, and held it in place with his right arm and then picked up the box with his left. It felt awkward, but it wouldn't be for long.

MacDermott ran a towel through her red hair. The shower had helped, she was more relaxed now and the hot water had made her feel a little cleaner, on the outside anyway. She jumped as the doorbell buzzed. Fisher frowned. It wasn't the bell at the entrance to the main security door, it was the doorbell, which meant that whoever was ringing was already inside the building, outside the flat. He motioned to McCormick to pick up the gun as he moved towards the door. McCormick took the automatic in his hand, clicked off the safety and held it under the table.

Fisher walked down the hallway on tiptoe. He put his eye to the security viewer and a distorted Oriental face looked back, grinning. Fisher saw the man press the doorbell again and it buzzed. The man was holding a box with what looked to be cartons of Chinese food.

‘What do you want?' Fisher shouted through the door.

‘You order Chinese food?' said the man.

‘No, you must have the wrong flat,' Fisher shouted back.

‘I not hear you,' the man said.

‘Wrong flat,' Fisher repeated, his eye still pressed to the peep-hole.

He could see the Oriental shake his head and step back, looking confused. ‘I not hear you,' he said.

Fisher reached for the lock and turned it. ‘It's OK,' he called to the others. ‘Some guy trying to deliver a Chinese take-away. He's got the wrong flat, that's all.' He unlocked the door and turned the handle, stepping to the side as he did. In the lounge, McCormick relaxed and took his finger off the trigger of his gun. O'Reilly grinned and patted his chest with the flat of his hand.

MacDermott began drying her hair again and then suddenly stopped, her heart pounding as realisation hit her like a kick in the chest. She gasped for breath, her mind whirling as if she was falling from a great height, full of images of Woody's Chinaman, the man on the trail of the IRA, knowing that he was the man outside the door but unable to form the words that she could shout as a warning. All she could think to yell was ‘No! No! No!' and her screams echoed around the flat, startling them all. McCormick flinched and began to get out of his chair as Nguyen kicked the door open, sending Fisher sprawling across the hallway.

Nguyen threw down his box and grabbed for the Kalashnikov, swinging the barrel up at waist level. He stepped into the hallway and kicked Fisher, knocking him away from the door, keeping him off balance so he wouldn't be able to get a good look at the gun. Over Fisher's shoulder he saw a man at a table, pushing himself to his feet and pointing a handgun towards him. ‘Drop the gun!' shouted Nguyen, aiming his useless replica at the man's chest and stepping forward. The man looked confused and began to lower the weapon.

‘We have another target in the flat,' said the Colonel's voice in Joker's ear, calmly and controlled. ‘I repeat, there are now five in the flat. Three in the lounge, two in the hall.' There was a pause, and then he spoke again. ‘One of the targets in the hallway has an assault rifle. OK, Joker, we have a clear shot at the men in the hall. We'll take them both out from here. Jump on my command.' Another pause, enough for three heartbeats. ‘Go!' said the Colonel. ‘Go, go, go!'

Joker and Ginge dropped together, and a fraction of a second after they let go of the rail they heard the double crack of two high velocity rounds splitting the air.

To Joker it seemed that time slowed right down as they pushed themselves out and twisted in the air, knees slightly bent to absorb the shock. They hit the ground together and slipped their fingers over the triggers of their MP5s. It took a fraction of a second for Joker's brain to register the scene in the room. There were three of them, two men and a girl, and they all had their backs to the window. The man on the couch was halfway up, the woman was holding a towel over her mouth. The man at the table had a gun in his hand. All were looking at the hallway where a blond-haired man was slumped against the wall, his hand clutched to his blood-smeared chest, obviously just seconds from death. Another man, an Oriental, stood in the hallway with what looked like a Kalashnikov in his hands and blood pouring from a wound in his shoulder. The man's mouth was opening and closing and he had a look of amazement on his face. He saw Joker, saw the MP5 and then looked down at his own gun as if seeing it for the first time. Joker fired instinctively and put three bullets into the man, two in the chest and one in the head, sending him slamming backwards.