Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

– «»-«»-«»Martin tapped the technician on the shoulder. The man took his face away from the eyepiece. 'Can I have a look?' asked Martin. 'That's my wife over there.'

The technician stood to the side so that Martin could look through the binoculars. It was like looking at a negative film. The background was dark and he could make out vague dark green shapes. Desks. Chairs. Pillars. And four light green figures that flickered as they moved. 'What am I looking at?' he asked.

'Thermal images,' said the man. He was in his forties with a small moustache and thinning brown hair. 'It picks up heat. Body heat, electrical heat, any heat sources.'

Martin put his eyes back to the binoculars. 'So I'm looking right through the blinds? I'm looking right into the building?'

'That's right. These things can look through brick walls.'

Martin could see four figures. There was no way of telling which was male and which was female, no way of knowing which was his wife. One of the figures appeared to be sitting on the floor. Another was pointing at the seated figure. Was one of them Andy?

Anna Wallace came into the room, holding three cardboard tubes. 'I've got the floor plans,' she said to Patsy. 'All of them.'

She removed a plastic cap from one end of one of the tubes and shook out half a dozen architect's plans. 'This is the ninth,' she said, pulling out one of the drawings and laying it on the desk.

Captain Payne walked over and joined Patsy and Anna. He scratched his chin as he scrutinised the plan of the office. 'What do you think?' asked Patsy.

Payne tapped the area of the lift lobby, then ran his finger along to the reception area. 'This is a problem,' he said. 'Access here is through the main doors, but there's this left turn here to the reception. Then another turn to the open-plan area, which is where the tangos and the bomb are. It's going to take at least four seconds to take out the door and get into the main area. That's way too long.' He ran his finger across the plans to the windows on the far side of the building. 'We're going to have to go in through the windows. Here. And here.' He frowned and made a clicking noise with his tongue. 'The blinds are going to be a problem.'

'Why?' asked Patsy.

'We can't just go through the windows because our guys will get tangled up in the blinds. We're going to have blow them in. Shaped charges. And with a four-thousand-pound amfo bomb in there, that's going to be a tad… interesting.'

'We have visuals from Team A!' shouted one of the technicians. There was a bank of eight monitors on the table. On two of them were thermal views similar to the one that Martin had seen through the binoculars.

Captain Payne tapped out a number on his mobile phone. 'Yeah, Crosbie? We have four tangos. Repeat, four tangos.'

Martin looked at Denham and frowned. 'Tangos?' he mouthed.

'Targets,' whispered Denham. 'Tango means target.'

The picture on one of the monitors began to swing from side to side. Martin could make out more desks, a mound of something in the middle of the office area, but no more green, glowing figures.

'So far we have only four,' Payne said into his phone. 'Call me when you're in position.'

Payne clipped his phone to the belt of his jeans, then took off his leather jacket and hung it over the back of one of the chairs. He was wearing a black nylon shoulder holster; in it was a large handgun.

'Team B's on-line,' said another technician. Two more monitors flickered into life. Martin could see the same four green figures, but from a different view.

'What are we going to do about sound?' Payne asked Patsy.

'We've got laser mikes up on the roof,' she said. 'Shouldn't be long.'

'Do you want our team to try through the ceiling?' asked Payne. 'We could push fibre optics through.'

Patsy shook her head. 'Let's see how we get on with the lasers.'

Payne nodded and went over to the thermal image binoculars. One set was being connected up to a monitor.

Patsy peered at the monitors on the table. She pointed at a dark green mound in the centre of the office. Hetherington took his pince-nez spectacles out of the top pocket of his pin-striped suit and perched them on the end of his nose. 'That's it,' she said. 'A four-thousand-pound fertiliser bomb. Enough to blow the whole building to kingdom come.'

– «»-«»-«»Captain Paul Crosbie dumped his kit-bag on the desk and surveyed the huge trading floor. All around him were hundreds of computers, their flickering screens full of financial information. Telephones were ringing out, but apart from Crosbie and his men, the floor was deserted.

'Right, get geared up,' he shouted. 'Full O group in five.' He picked up a phone and tapped out a number. 'Stew? Yeah, it's Crosbie. We're in. I'll have Chuckit call you for the thermal imaging feed.' Crosbie read out the telephone number of the phone he was using and hung up.

'Chuckit!'

Brian 'Chuckit' Wilson, a tall, thin Scotsman with a shock of red hair, was opening up a laptop computer. 'Yes, boss?'

'Call Stuart Payne and arrange the feed for the thermal images.' He gave Chuckit a piece of paper with Payne's number on it.

Crosbie surveyed the troop. Including Chuckit there were fifteen men, but Chuckit would be tied up with the communication links. Normal operating procedure was for the troop to operate in four four-man teams, but on this occasion Crosbie had already decided to split the men into two groups.

The troopers were emptying out their holdalls and kit-bags and laying their equipment out on the floor. Black Nomex fire-retardant suits, GPV 25 body armour, National Plastics AC100 composite helmets, black flame-retardant gloves, respirators, ankle-high boots and abseiling harnesses. One of the troopers, a burly Cornishman called Coop, was unpacking lengths of wood from a bag and leaning them against a desk.

Weapons were being assembled with practised ease and laid out next to piles of ammunition. Heckler amp; Koch MP5 submachine-guns, Remington 870 pump-action grenades, Browning Hi-Power pistols and Haley and Weller E180 stun grenades. It was enough fire-power to fight, and win, a small war.

– «»-«»-«»The man grabbed Andy by the shirt collar and dragged her across the floor. 'Set the timer, Andrea,' he shouted. 'Finish the bomb or I'll blow your knee-cap off.'

He kicked her in the side and she grunted. She used the table leg to pull herself up and stared down at the open briefcase. The silver detonators lay on the Semtex, and around them the cluster of different-coloured wires. The timer was glowing, the digits all reading zero. Next to the timer were the batteries that she'd used to power the timer, and the four batteries she'd connected to the detonators.

'Do it,' said the man. He aimed the silenced gun at her left knee.

Andy sat down. She brushed her hair away from her eyes, then picked up an elastic band and used it to tie her hair back into a ponytail. One by one, she pushed the detonators into the Semtex.

She checked all the connections, then looked up at the man with the gun. She sniffed and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. 'How long?' she asked. 'What do you want me to set it for?'

'One hour,' said the man. 'Sixty minutes.'

– «»-«»-«»The receptionist looked up from a glossy magazine as Gordon Harris and Lisa Davies pushed open the double glass doors. 'Can I help you?' she asked in a nasal South London whine. She brushed a lock of dyed blond hair away from her eyes with a scarlet-varnished nail. 'Who's in charge?' asked Harris.

'You mean the office manager?' asked the receptionist, deep creases cleaving across her forehead as if Harris had set her an especially difficult mathematical problem to solve.

'Managing director. Whoever the top guy is.'

'She's a woman, actually,' said the receptionist. 'Miss Daley.'