Simon Kernick - Ultimatum

‘What do you think?’ said Tina. She had the key in her hand. Armed cops were standing behind her, their weapons at the ready.

Bolt knew the people they were dealing with had access to explosives and sophisticated bomb-making resources. They’d set a booby-trapped bomb for the security forces earlier in the day. If he made the wrong call, whoever opened the door would be killed instantly.

A strange thought occurred to him then. Would it really be so bad if he died? It would all be over in an instant. One big bang and that would be it: the end of everything. The worry, the pressure, and, if he was honest, the unrelenting loneliness of his life. It was almost ten years since his wife Mikaela had died in a car crash. He’d been the one driving the car, and he still had her photo by his bed. Jesus, he missed her, just as much as if it had happened yesterday, and in that moment he knew that whatever happened, he’d be haunted by her ghost for the rest of his life.

He turned to Tina. ‘Let’s make sure we clear the area, then I’ll open it.’

Tina frowned. ‘Are you sure? I don’t want you dying on me, Mike Bolt.’ It was as if she’d read his mind.

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice behind them, and Bolt turned round to see the man whose head they’d just seen emerge from the open lock-up. He was in his sixties, and wearing overalls, and he was looking with a mixture of concern and interest at the armed cops. ‘Are you interested in that garage?’ He motioned towards number five.

‘Yes,’ said Bolt, showing his warrant card.

‘It’s just, someone was in there about ten minutes ago. A man I haven’t seen before. He was getting something out, I think. I saw him load a holdall into his boot.’

‘Can you describe him?’

The man thought about it for a moment. ‘I didn’t get much of a look at him, I’m afraid. He was quite a big bloke, though, and he was driving a big black four-wheel-drive. I think it might have been a Shogun.’

Taking the key from Tina, Bolt told everyone to move well back. He was pretty certain that the man wouldn’t have had time to booby-trap the place, but even so, he still held his breath as he unlocked the door.

The door opened and he stepped inside and switched on the light, feeling a palpable sense of relief.

A large wooden crate, just like the one Jones had described, was on the floor in the middle of the room. The lid was off and, as Bolt approached it, he knew it was going to be empty.

And it was.

They were too late. The missile was in circulation and, with less than an hour to go before the terrorists’ ultimatum, they had no idea where it was, who had it, or what its target was going to be.

19.12

Voorhess had seriously considered killing the old man who’d seen him earlier at the lock-up garages.

He’d almost done it too, when the man had given him a shock by poking his head out of the garage slightly further up, just as he’d been putting the Stinger in the back of his Shogun. It wouldn’t have been difficult. There was no one else around, and there was no way the old man would have been expecting it. Voorhess might have been a big man but he had the kind of friendly face and open, natural smile that set people immediately at ease. He was also obsessive about no one seeing his face when he was on a job. It was the sole reason he’d insisted on collecting the missile from a quiet, neutral location. So that the client never saw him. The irony of then being spotted by someone else was not lost on him.

Even so, he’d made the snap decision to leave the old man alive on the basis that it was highly unlikely he’d ever connect him to the day’s terrorist attacks. Instead, he’d given the man a friendly wave and a grin, keeping his body language as natural as possible, before getting in the driver’s seat and pulling out of there.

Now, as he reversed the Shogun into Mr Butt’s ground-floor garage, careful not to run over his girlfriend’s body, Voorhess was pleased that he’d spared the old man. He didn’t like unnecessary killing, especially when it was at such close quarters, as it had been with Mr Butt’s girlfriend earlier. The old man had looked a cheerful fellow, and it amused Voorhess to think that he would never know quite how close he’d come to death.

But for Mr Butt himself, it was unfortunately going to be a different story.

19.15

‘Get in there,’ grunted the screw, manhandling Fox into the cell.

‘They tried to kill me again,’ said Fox, as the screw went to shut the cell door. ‘You saw them. I’m not safe in this place.’

‘You’re a lot safer than we are right now,’ replied the screw. He was one of the young ones, an ex-squaddie who’d told Fox when they’d first met a couple of months earlier that he was a disgrace to the armed forces and his regiment. The screw looked scared and confused now, though. This was clearly his first riot. He gave Fox another shove and slammed the door shut.

The decor was better in here, thought Fox, as the key turned in the lock. They’d had a refurbishment on this wing recently, and the walls had been painted a soothing cream. The bed was new too, but he didn’t sit on it, even though he was tired from his recent exertions.

The whole prison was in lockdown now, with Fox’s wing completely sealed off with the prisoners inside. It was, he thought, amazing how easy it had been for the inmates to seize control. Hopelessly outnumbered, the screws had been thrown into panic, and in their haste to ensure the disturbance didn’t spread to the other wings they’d neglected to search him properly. Which was a mistake on their parts.

Fox took the mobile phone from his pocket. He’d bought it from another inmate two days previously. There were always plenty of mobiles inside prisons, smuggled in during visits when physical contact was permissible, or by the guards themselves who sold them on for profit. Fox had always considered the British penal system far too liberal, but it was certainly working in his favour now.

He sent a text to a number he’d memorized. It was only three words long, and it said simply: SWITCH IT ON. When he’d got confirmation that it had sent, he deleted the message and turned off the phone, removing the sim card and flushing it down the toilet, before shoving the handset under the mattress on the bed.

He leaned back against the wall. Now it was just a matter of waiting.

19.28

‘They’re clearing all the airspace above Greater London,’ said Bolt, coming off the radio to Scotland Yard. ‘Apparently it’s a huge inconvenience.’

Tina lit a cigarette and took a much-needed drag as she walked over to where he was standing at the entrance to the lock-ups. ‘It’s a lot better than having a plane shot down.’

‘The problem is, we’ve only got the word of one informant that this missile even exists, and the transport system’s in enough of a mess as it is after what happened earlier.’

‘We know that the guy who collected the weapon came here at around seven o’clock, and that he was driving a black four-wheel-drive, probably a Shogun,’ said Tina, who’d just been talking to the old man who’d seen him. ‘If we can get some footage from any CCTV cameras around here, we can get the registration and track the suspect that way.’

‘I’ve just been on to Control to get them to check all the available footage. Did the witness get any of the number plate?’

Tina shook her head. ‘Nothing. He said the guy wasn’t acting suspiciously so there was no reason for him to check it. We’re lucky he can almost certainly ID the model.’