Simon Kernick - Ultimatum

‘Does this mean I’m going to be needed late tonight, Mike? If I am, I need to let the old man know so he can get back from work and sort out the kids.’

‘Yeah, you are. Sorry about that.’

He felt for Nikki. Unlike him, she had a family life to juggle. But right now that wasn’t his top priority.

Suddenly Jones was. What the hell was he doing?

17.50

The Stinger is an extremely accurate shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile. It has one major battlefield purpose: to bring down enemy aircraft. They’re sought after by terrorist groups because of their ability to take down passenger jets if they’re fired by a trained operative.

I swallowed. This was big.

‘What the hell are you going to use it for?’ I asked Cain.

‘It’s going to be used for a targeted attack. There may be civilian casualties, but they’re not the primary purpose of the attack. That’s all I can tell you.’

That was when I knew that Cain was responsible for the bomb attacks earlier that day. All over the news they’d been talking about the third attack that the terrorists had scheduled for later that night. This was no coincidence.

I stared at both Cecil and Cain in turn. ‘Are you telling me you two were behind the attacks this morning?’

They exchanged glances, and I wondered if I’d gone too far.

‘Am I a part of this organization or not? Because if I am, I need to know what’s going on.’

‘Yeah, of course you are,’ Cain said eventually. ‘And everything will become clear soon enough. But right now, we need to get out of here. Grab your stuff.’

I walked over to where Dav had chucked my mobile, trying hard to ignore the dead bodies strewn round the room. I had a real dilemma now. If I let on to Bolt about the Stinger, then eventually I was going to have to give up the details of what had happened here, and the fact that I’d killed someone. Bolt had promised to do all he could to protect me, and I knew he’d do his best. But in the end he didn’t have the power to grant me immunity from prosecution for murder. At the same time, though, I couldn’t just stand back and allow a Stinger missile to go into circulation. The point was, you didn’t buy one of those things unless you were planning some sort of terrorist spectacular, and if I let matters take their course, I’d be responsible for hundreds of deaths, and there was no way I’d be able to live with that.

As I bent down to pick up my mobile, I glanced over my shoulder and, seeing that the other two were still in the back room, I pulled the two GPS units from my wallet and slipped them into my back pocket. I had no idea if Bolt had switched them on remotely or not. If he had, I was already in trouble, because he could use them to trace me here. But I’d worry about that later. Right now, I had to make sure that I didn’t lose the missile.

I looked down at the mobile and cursed. The screen was cracked and it wouldn’t turn on. So I couldn’t even warn Bolt about what was happening.

‘What are you doing?’ snapped Cain as he came back into the room carrying one end of the crate.

‘He broke my mobile.’ I held it up for him to see.

‘Never mind that. Get moving, and get the boot open.’

I walked out of the double doors and into the crisp evening air. There was no sound of approaching sirens. It was as if the bloody events here had never even happened. I could hear the distant sounds of traffic and commuter trains and, as I looked up to the sky, I saw the red lights of aircraft coming in from the Channel towards London and the final approach into Heathrow. The earlier clouds had blown away and it was a clear night. You could even make out a few stars amid the light pollution. Perfect for a missile operator to target a plane and shoot it out of the sky above the city so that, as it broke up, it could rain down debris on the streets and houses below. And the thought that kept rattling through my head was that it could be my street. It could be my wife and child torn apart by jagged, smoking lumps of steel.

I slipped one of the GPS units out of my back pocket and pulled open the hatchback boot as the other two manoeuvred the crate round so that it could slide inside. Stepping out of the way, I put a hand on the crate to help steer it on its way, affixing the unit to its underside as I did so, keeping my expression as neutral as possible even though my heart was hammering away in my chest, knowing that if it fell off, I’d be dead.

But it didn’t. The other two finished pushing the crate inside, and a minute later we were driving through the scrapyard entrance.

I’d survived. But I had a terrible feeling that this could change at any time.

18.05

‘Are you sure you should be going out tonight?’

Gina Burnham-Jones’s babysitter and neighbour, Sue, was a big maternal woman in her late sixties who’d decided to take Gina under her wing after Jones had left, and who worried about her constantly.

Gina smiled. ‘Of course I’m sure. You can’t let people like that dictate your life.’ She avoided using the word ‘terrorist’ so as not to worry Maddie, who was currently playing with her Sylvanians on the lounge floor.

‘What are you sure about, Mummy?’ she asked, looking up from her game.

‘Nothing that concerns you, young lady,’ said Gina with a wink.

‘Ears like a hawk, that one,’ whispered Sue.

The doorbell rang. That would be Matt. Gina got up from the sofa, conscious of the fact that there was no frisson of excitement like there had been with Jones in the early days.

‘Who’s at the door, Mummy?’

‘A friend of mine. We’re going out.’

Maddie jumped up from her game and wrapped her arms round Gina’s waist. ‘You’re coming back, aren’t you?’

Gina felt a surge of guilt. Maddie missed her dad badly, and the experience of him leaving had made her insecure. ‘Of course I’m coming back, darling,’ she said, kissing her daughter on the forehead and exchanging glances with Sue, who was pulling an irritatingly sympathetic face.

She wondered how Maddie was going to react when she met Matt, and knew it wasn’t going to be instant happy families. Jesus, why did life have to be so complicated?

Gently extricating herself from Maddie’s arms, Gina said her goodbyes and went to the door, checking herself in the mirror en route and feeling pretty satisfied with her reflection.

Matt took a step back when he saw her, a look of admiration in his eyes. ‘Wow, Gina, you look beautiful.’

‘You look pretty good yourself,’ she said, and he did. He was wearing a neatly pressed dark suit and three-quarter-length Crombie coat which, coupled with his well-groomed silver hair and strong bearing, gave him an air of comforting sophistication. His aftershave was strong but smelled good.

‘So, are you going to finally tell me where we’re going?’ she asked as he put an arm round her waist and led her to his car.

‘Well, we’re going into the centre of town, I can tell you that much. But the final destination remains a surprise.’

Gina felt a twinge of irritation. She liked a surprise as much as the next person but the whole cloak-and-dagger aspect of this evening seemed a bit much.

‘I don’t mean to be a pain,’ he said with a rueful smile, reading her thoughts. ‘But when you do find out, you’ll be pleased that it was a surprise.’ He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘I promise.’

‘OK,’ she said, intrigued once again. ‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.’

The funny thing was that Matt wasn’t the type for surprises. A police officer with twenty-nine years’ service, he was a typically logical and pragmatic detective who, by his own admission, had no imagination whatsoever. He tried to be romantic — he was clearly trying to be romantic now — but he could never quite pull it off.