Simon Kernick - Ultimatum

She jumped back in the car, slamming the door shut. ‘Drive! We need to catch the bastard!’

For a moment, Bolt didn’t say anything. He looked utterly shell-shocked. Tina had never seen him like this before.

She grabbed his arm and physically shook him, fully prepared to kick him out of the car and drive herself. ‘Mike, drive, for Christ’s sake! We can still find the shooter!’

‘All right! All right!’ he shouted back, snapping out of his trance. ‘But for once, do not do anything stupid, understand?’

‘Just fucking go!’

Giving her a glare of intense anger, he yanked the car into gear and accelerated down the street.

19.47

Voorhess knew he had to move fast.

After putting his balaclava back on, he strode down into the living room and crouched down beside Azim Butt, who was literally shaking with fear in his seat. The reason for his distress was that he’d seen the heavy black explosives vest he was wearing, which Voorhess had fitted to him earlier while he’d been unconscious from the dose of diazepam. Although the actual explosives themselves weren’t visible, as they were sewn into the lining, both the vest’s weight and the exposed wires running between the pockets made it obvious to even the most naive of civilians what it was.

‘I’m going to untie you now, Mr Butt,’ Voorhess explained as he removed his gag, ‘but I must warn you: the jacket you’re wearing contains explosives, and it’s connected to a pressure pad beneath your seat. If you try to remove the jacket or leave the seat, you’ll set off the bomb and blow yourself to pieces.’ As he spoke, he untied each of Mr Butt’s ankles in turn. ‘What I want you to do is remain exactly where you are until help arrives. It won’t be long, I can promise you that.’

‘Please don’t kill me. Please.’

Voorhess started on the left wrist. ‘No one’s going to kill you if you do as you’re told. When help arrives, they’ll come through your front door. When you hear them, you call out and tell them that you’re wired to a bomb. They’ll send in the experts and deal with the device.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I just want to slow them down, Mr Butt,’ Voorhess told him, putting on his most reassuring voice as he released the final bond. ‘And remember, don’t tell them anything about me that could be of use. I don’t want to have to kill your young son in Cobham.’

Mr Butt’s eyes widened. After everything else he’d been through, this was clearly the biggest shock of all.

‘Yes,’ said Voorhess calmly, ‘I know about him. Now give a poor description and he’s safe. A good one and he dies. Understand?’

Mr Butt nodded frantically. ‘Yes, yes. I understand.’

Beneath the balaclava, Voorhess smiled. ‘Good.’

He stood up and left the room, moving quickly. He’d fitted an electronic sensor to the front door of Mr Butt’s house earlier: as soon as the door opened, the sensor would activate, automatically sending a text message to Voorhess’s phone. This would be his cue to set off the bomb.

Afterwards, the conclusion would be that Mr Butt himself had been the man who’d fired the missile, and had then lain in wait to ambush the police when they arrived, trying to take as many of them with him as possible. Given the power of the bomb, there wouldn’t be enough left of Mr Butt to uncover any evidence of his incarceration; and, anyway, Voorhess had been very careful not to leave marks on him. A background check would show no obvious links between Mr Butt and Islamic fundamentalism, but the physical proof of his involvement would be more than enough.

It was, thought Voorhess, a near-perfect plan, which was just the way he liked it.

19.49

‘Slow down!’ Tina yelled as they drove on to the residential road of modern townhouses where a thinning pall of smoke still hung over the rooftops. ‘It was fired from down here somewhere.’

The road was too narrow for on-street parking, and all the houses had attached garages, and car ports, but there was no sign of a black Shogun anywhere as they drew level with the properties directly beneath the smoke. But now that it was drifting on the breeze, it was impossible to pinpoint the exact place from where the missile had been fired.

Tina opened her window, looking for some kind of reference point. The sirens were coming from everywhere now, their sound almost deafening, and the car’s radio was alive with rapid-fire chatter as officers converged on the area from all sides. No one, it seemed, could believe what had just happened. She was still in shock herself. They both were, although thankfully Bolt had calmed down.

‘It had to have been fired from one of this group of three or four houses here,’ she said, pointing out of the window, her heart still pumping hard from the tension.

Bolt gave their location to Control and stopped the car as the door to one of the suspect houses opened. A middle-aged woman in a tracksuit stepped outside, looking round with a puzzled expression on her face. Her gaze then fell on the battered Ford Focus that Bolt was driving, and she gave him a suspicious glare.

Bolt opened the window and flashed his warrant. ‘Police,’ he hissed, not wanting to alert any suspects. ‘Get back inside.’

The woman pulled a face and shook her head as if she didn’t believe him.

‘Leave her to me,’ said Tina, getting out of the car.

But she was only halfway across the road when she heard an automatic garage door opening to her left. ‘Get inside!’ she urged the woman. Bolt was gesturing at her to get back in the car but Tina was already walking towards the house next door, wanting to get a look at the car coming out of the garage.

Suddenly she was blinded by headlights as a black Shogun drove out.

Tina’s next move was utterly instinctive. She sprinted over and went for the front door handle.

There was a single shadowy figure in the driver’s seat. He gave her a brief half-second glance, and their eyes met.

Tina grabbed the handle and the Shogun accelerated on to the road, taking her with it. She tried to yank the door open but the damn thing was locked. She saw Bolt drive towards the Shogun, trying to cut it off, and then she let go, hitting the tarmac with a painful thud and rolling over and over.

Looking up, she just had time to see the Shogun slam into the Ford Focus side-on, shunting it round ninety degrees in a crunch of metal, before it reversed back just as suddenly, forcing her to scrabble out of the way on her hands and knees. Tina thought he was trying to kill her, but he wasn’t. He was just getting some extra purchase so he could drive into the back of the Focus and force it off the road. Once again he slammed against it, and as Tina got to her feet, the Shogun made a hard right and sped down to the end of the road. Hopelessly, pointlessly, Tina chased after it, ignoring the pain that seemed to come from every part of her body, as the Shogun made another right at the junction and disappeared in an angry screech of tyres.

Behind her she saw two marked patrol cars drive on to the road, sirens blaring. Turning round, she ran towards them, holding up her warrant card, yelling at the cops in the lead car to continue the chase. And then, as they manoeuvred around the battered Focus and accelerated away after the Shogun, she ran over to where Bolt still sat in the driver’s seat, looking dazed.

‘Mike, are you OK?’ she asked. They may have been on the verge of a real row a few minutes earlier, but the fact was she cared about him far more than she liked to admit.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he grunted, just managing to open the crumpled driver’s-side door and get out.