Simon Kernick - Ultimatum

‘Just fucking do it.’

‘I’ll kill you for this. You’re a dead man, you understand?’

‘You’ve got three seconds to comply or you’ll be the dead man.’ I lifted the barrel of the MP5 slightly so it was pointed right between his eyes, my aim absolutely steady.

The key is to establish control, but LeShawn was still delaying. Behind him, faces were appearing in the windows of the council block, attracted by the noise of gunfire. Any second now the cops would be called, and there could be an ARV right round the corner. We had to move.

I started counting. ‘One! Two!’ My finger tightened on the trigger, and I pushed the stock back into my shoulder, preparing to fire.

Which was when LeShawn caved. Reluctantly he brought his hand out of his pocket and threw a Glock pistol on to the grass in front of him.

‘Throw the holdall over to me. Now.’

He hesitated, and at the same time Cecil came over, pushing the X5 driver in front of him using the barrel of his MP5, before kicking his legs from under him. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he demanded, pointing his weapon at LeShawn. ‘Do as he tells you or you’re dead.’

Slowly, LeShawn heaved it off his shoulder and threw it over.

I grabbed it, slung it over my own shoulder, impressed by its weight, and took a step back.

‘You,’ I said to LeShawn’s wingman, the third member of the crew. ‘Bring out your gun.’

‘I ain’t got one,’ said the guy, taking his hands out of his pockets. They were empty, and now he looked scared.

I told him to put his hands on his head and, while Cecil picked up LeShawn’s gun from the grass, I gave the guy a quick search, keeping the barrel of my MP5 pressed against the base of his skull. He was holding a knife but that was all, which is the great thing about Britain’s gun laws. The baddies can’t get hold of decent weaponry very easily any more, which gives men like us an advantage.

I pocketed the knife and told the guy to keep his hands on his head, which he did without arguing. It wasn’t his money and he wasn’t prepared to die in order to protect it, which seemed to me to be the sensible option. I’d have done the same thing. Most sane people would. But then with these guys it’s all about respect, and having a rep on the street, and being made to go down on your knees in a public place and give up your stash and your weapons is an insult of the most heinous kind.

Which was why, in the end, I suppose the whole thing was always going to go tits up.

It happened when I was crouched down behind LeShawn, gun pressed against the back of his head. I was about to give him a brief once-over just to check he didn’t have another gun somewhere, while Cecil covered me from the front. By this point the whole thing, from the moment I’d jumped out of the moving car, had lasted no more than forty-five, fifty seconds tops, and was running pretty smoothly. We were ten seconds away from making our getaway when Cecil cursed and looked towards the council block behind me. I heard shouts too, and turned round.

A lanky white guy with wild hair, wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms and nothing else, had appeared out of the building’s main entrance and was running towards us, waving a carving knife and clearly off his nut on crack.

Cecil opened fire over the guy’s head, the noise deafening, and the guy had the good sense to hit the deck, dropping the knife in the process. But I’d let my guard down, and suddenly LeShawn swung round, grabbed the barrel of the gun, and tried to yank it out of my hands. I fell forward, resisting pulling the trigger, and fell over him, landing in the grass, twisting round so I could still keep a grip on the gun.

LeShawn fell on top of me, shoving the barrel to one side, one beefy hand going round my throat and squeezing with such power that it cut off my air supply instantly. I tried to kick out, but I didn’t have the room to do any damage. LeShawn roared, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth as he used his free hand to slam the MP5 down into the ground, twisting my arms in the process. He lunged at me, trying to take a bite out of my face, but I managed to free up a hand and smack him hard on the underside of his chin, making him bite his tongue.

He roared with frustration and lunged at me again, which was the moment the left side of his face suddenly disappeared in a welter of red, and I was splattered in warm blood. His grip on my throat weakened as his whole body slumped. He let out a loud grunt, and I had to put up a hand to stop him falling on me.

I kicked him off me and jumped to my feet, wiping the blood from my eyes as I made sure the holdall was still on my back.

‘Come on, move it!’ yelled Cecil, retreating rapidly.

The other two members of the crew were lying on their fronts, still alive but clearly not wanting to get involved, while the wild-haired guy was back on his feet and dancing round with the knife, but still sensible enough not to get too close.

Cecil glared at me as we ran for the car. ‘What the fuck were you doing?’

I didn’t answer as I chucked the holdall in the back of the car while he ran round the front and jumped in the driver’s side.

And then, just when things couldn’t get any worse, they did.

A marked patrol car pulled into the road behind us. There were no lights or sirens, so it wasn’t responding to an emergency call. It had arrived on the scene purely by accident and was driving in our direction. I looked at them, and they looked at me, slowing up at the same time as they took in the sight of a man in a police cap with a submachine gun and a face covered in blood.

The terrible thing was, I recognized them. PCs John Nolan and Gloria Owana. I’d met them both when we’d worked out of the same station. Even so, I didn’t know them well, and I was pretty damn sure they wouldn’t recognize me in the state I was in.

But they still presented a threat, and it was time I showed Cecil what I could do. As their car stopped, I opened fire, swinging the gun in a steady arc as I blew out the tyres, feeling that intense satisfaction that only pulling a trigger can bring, watching as both ducked out of sight. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the wild-haired guy charging me and I swung the gun round, ready to pop him if I had to, but he took a flying dive and landed face down on the pavement with an angry thud, the knife clattering on to the tarmac.

Then, as Cecil gunned the engine, I turned and jumped in the car, and he pulled away in a screech of tyres.

The whole thing had been a disaster. A man was dead; cops had been shot at; half the Met would probably be on our tail in the next five minutes. But in the end we still had the money.

Although if I’d known what it was going to be used for, I’d have flung it out the window there and then.

09.19

‘Have you got any idea why William Garrett might want to talk to you?’ asked Mike Bolt, leaning forward in his seat and fixing Tina with a cool, formal stare that belied the friendship they’d once had. They were in his office in a large Georgian townhouse just off Green Park, facing each other for the first time in almost two years.

Tina shrugged. ‘I’ve got no idea. It’s not as if I’ve ever had any contact with him. All I am these days is lowly CID.’

‘Although you still manage to get yourself right in the thick of things. It’s a pity we lost that suspect.’

‘You’re the second person today who’s told me that, Mike. It wasn’t my fault.’

‘I know, but we’ve now had confirmation that the explosion earlier was a powerful rucksack bomb, delivered by the suspect you were chasing. We’ve already had a very plausible claim of responsibility from an unknown outfit calling themselves Islamic Command, and they’ve given us an ultimatum. Either the government acquiesces to their demands — which are the usual stuff, promising to pull out of all Muslim lands — by eight o’clock tonight or there’ll be a much bigger attack.’