Nick Oldham - Backlash

Before Henry reached the motorway, he pulled into the side of the road and picked up his mobile phone, thinking, ‘Sod the paper work.’ He knocked a number into it. It was answered quickly.

‘Kate? It’s me, Henry. .’

Boston, six months later

Another rooftop, this time in Boston, looking down towards a gay bar, his next target. The bomber sat on his favourite fishing stool, remote control in hand, waiting for the most appropriate moment to blow the shit out of the bastards.

He felt good. He had done his bit for society by providing tools of terror for right-wing groups across Europe, and now he was back on home ground, about to take up the mantle again in his home country. Maybe next year he would do another tour of Europe.

He checked his watch. Through his binoculars he watched the sickening activity spilling out of the bar onto the sidewalk. The perverts in their tight white vests, leather trousers, their bulging muscles and ridiculous moustaches. Did they not know how obscene they were to decent, right-minded folks? Disgusting.

He picked up the remote control. Time to kill.

Then he felt something cold, hard and round being pushed into his neck. The muzzle of a pistol. The bomber swallowed, his thumb hovered over the red button. A voice whispered in his ear.

‘My name is Karl Donaldson and I am an FBI agent, just like yourself. You have a choice. Place the remote down slowly and live; press the button and you die — make me even think you’re gonna press the button and you die. Which d’you fancy?’

Over the past six painstaking months, while heading the investigation to bring him to justice, Karl Donaldson had got to know this man intimately. He knew what drove him, what motivated him, what his beliefs were and what he would die for. The only thing he had not known about him was his identity, but now he even knew that. He also knew that the bomber would feel he had no choice. He would believe he had to carry on destroying people to the end.

The thumb twitched.

Karl Donaldson did not have a choice either.