David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (17 page)

       
Melissa picked up her
phone and was half way through giving Jones his instructions when we reached a
roundabout. It came sooner than I’d expected, because it was the last point on
the route the MI5 agent had reported. He’d called in a right turn. Melissa was
driving much faster now, and she had to hit the brakes hard as we came to our
exit.
Because the road was blocked.
By a car, slewed
sideways across the carriageway.
A silver Vauxhall.
The driver’s side was completely caved in. Both windows were smashed, and two
male figures lay slumped in the front seats.

       
Melissa swerved and came
to a stop behind the remains of the car. She glanced back at the agents. Then
looked forward, along the road. It was completely empty. There was no sign of
the vehicle that had caused the accident. And no sign of the white Mercedes
van.

Chapter Thirteen

There are times when improvisation is your only option. There are times
where you have to just cross your fingers and ride your luck. But nine times
out of ten - as my father used to say - you can’t beat having the right tools
for the job. And in this case, Melissa and her people had the right tools.
A GPS transponder concealed in the truck carrying the
caesium
, and a helicopter to track its signal.

       
We drove for three more
miles, then left the car next to a wrecked phone box and covered another
hundred yards on foot. It was dark. None of the streetlights were working, and
we had to move slowly to avoid tripping on the cracked and cratered road
surface. The weather wasn’t extreme enough in that part of Croydon to account
for the damage, so I put it down to abuse from the trucks that used to serve
the abandoned freight depots we passed on both sides.

       
The eight agents who’d
been following the decoy truck were waiting for us, weapons drawn, bodies
tense, pressed up close to the eight foot wall at the far end of the street. No
sound reached us from the other side, but we knew we were in the right place.
The MI5 technicians had supplied the co-ordinates they’d derived from the van’s
transponder signal, and the helicopter pilot circling high overhead had
visually confirmed it was still there. The four occupants were still with it,
but there was no sign of anyone else in the surrounding buildings. That meant
there was a good chance we’d found them before they’d rendezvoused with their
contacts. Now we just had to find a way into the compound without giving them
the chance to raise an alarm.
And without damaging the
caesium
containers.

Melissa told four of the agents to prepare their Kevlar blankets for
spreading over the glass shards embedded on top of the wall. Then she
dispatched the other four to the far side of the compound, to mop up anyone who
tried to escape. “
Squirters
,” she called them.

       
It took the first agent
three minutes to report he was in position. The next two confirmed within
another thirty seconds. That just left one more to call in, and Melissa was
starting to get a little jumpy when the helicopter pilot cut across him.

       
“Hold, hold, hold,” the
pilot said, on the radio. “Movement.”

       
Everyone froze.

       
“Two suspects,” he said.
“Breaking away from the van. Heading for the rear wall. No, ignore that.
For the main building.
They’re going inside. I’m switching
to
heat-sensing
. OK. They’re still moving.
Slower now, though.
Looks like they’re starting a room by
room search of the place.”

       
“Where
are
the other two?” Melissa said.

       
“No change,” he said.
“Holding position at the van.”

       
“OK,” she said. “Change
of plan. This is what we’re going to do.”

       
The agents huddled for a
moment while Melissa ran through her new instructions, then one pair moved away
towards the heavy double gate set into the wall forty feet away. They looked
back, checking their colleagues were ready,
then
one
of them banged twice on the wood.

       
“Movement,” the pilot
said. “One suspect. Leaving the van. Approaching the gate.”

       
“The two in the
building?” Melissa said.

       
“No change,” he said.
“Looks like they’re continuing to search. OK, the first suspect’s reaching the
gate... now.”

       
“Who is it?” a man’s
voice said from inside the compound.

       
“
Who
do you think?” the agent who’d knocked said. “Open the gate.”

       
“Where have you been?
You’re late.”

       
“Took longer to get
here. It’s all kicked off at the hospital, apparently. Had to make sure we
weren’t followed. Now let’s get this over with. Open the gate, or I’m out of
here and you’ll be the one holding the baby when the police turn up.”

       
I heard a rustling sound
as the stiff Kevlar blankets were eased into place, behind me. There was a
pause, followed by an angry squeak as the gate was jerked back a couple of
inches. Then the nearest agent raised a square, yellow and grey handgun and
fired through the gap.

       
“Suspect one down,” the
pilot said, and I turned just in time to see the other pair of agents disappear
over the wall.

       
“Suspect two down,” he
said, a second later. “Compound clear.”

       
 
Melissa and I hurried to the gate, and I saw a
man lying in our path on the far side, twitching slightly, still attached by
the neck to the agent’s gun with a pair of transparent wires. Melissa glanced
at him,
then
hurried towards the van where the other
pair of agents was waiting. They were standing over another man’s body. This
guy was wearing similar overalls, but he was completely inert. It looked like
they’d taken care of him the old-fashioned way.

       
“Have you looked
inside?” Melissa said.

       
One of the agents
nodded.

       
“And?” she said.

       
“They’re all there,” he said.
“Four canisters, battened down, safe and sound.”

       
Melissa let out a long,
slow, sigh of relief, but I have a less trusting nature. I felt compelled to
look for myself. The rear cargo doors were standing open, and
the space inside was dominated by eight pairs of metal arms
.
They were bolted to the floor via
heavy duty
rubber
shock-absorbers, twelve inches from the van’s reinforced sides, and each pair
met in the
centre
, three feet above the
armoured
floor. The jaws at the top of the four outer sets
were empty, but the others were clamped around shiny metal canisters. They
looked identical to the ones I’d seen being wheeled through the hospital
garden, except for the
coloured
discs that had been
attached to the seam where the lids met the bodies. They were radiation indicators.
And all four were green.

       
“It looks good,” Melissa
said, stepping across to join me. “We’ll get the new hazmat team to check them,
though. To make sure they’re the real deal. In the meantime, we just have to
flush the other two out of that building. Then we can see about scooping up
their contacts, like you suggested.”

       
Melissa asked me to keep
an eye on the two prisoners. It didn’t seem like too hard a job. Neither had
regained consciousness, and both had been dragged into the space between the
wall and the van and were lying on their backs, secured at the wrists and
ankles with
flexicuffs
. She checked that the four
agents were still in place on the far side of the compound. Then she approached
the building, a pair of agents fanned out on either side of her, and signaled
for the helicopter to descend to a level where its rotor blades were clearly
audible.

       
“Armed police,” the
pilot said, his voice amplified through the speakers on the outside of his
aircraft. “The building is surrounded. Throw your weapons through the main
door, and come out with your hands in the air. You have thirty seconds.”

       
Melissa kept her Sig
trained on the door. The other agents covered the windows on either side,
methodically scanning the six windows on each of the three floors.

       
No one showed
themselves
.

       
“I repeat,” the pilot
said. “Armed police. We have you surrounded. This is your last chance to
surrender. Leave the building immediately. If we have to come in after you, we
will shoot on sight.”

       
Five more seconds crept
past in silence,
then
I saw the agents stiffen. I
heard footsteps. They were coming from the main doorway to the building. There
were two sets. They hesitated,
then
stopped
altogether. An object flew through the air and crashed on the ground. A
handgun.
It was followed by a second one
. Then the
footsteps started again, and two men shuffled reluctantly into the courtyard,
one in front of the other.

       
“Good,” Melissa said,
taking a step towards them. “Now, get on the ground. Face down.
Hands behind your heads.
Do it now.”

       
Neither man moved.

       
“Face down, on the
ground,” Melissa said, raising her Sig and lining it up on the closer man’s
forehead. “You can do it while you’re still breathing.
Or
while you’re not.
Either way works for me.”

       
“Wait,” he said, taking
a half step forward. “Please.”

       
“Stop,” Melissa said.
“Get on the ground.”

       
“I will,” he said. “I
will. We surrender. We’re unarmed. But please, listen to me first. There’s
something you need to know.
About what we took from the
hospital.
It’s urgent. I swear. We’re in danger. All of us.”

       
“Why?”

       
“Those big flasks?” he
said, inching a little closer to Melissa. “They’re not stable. They’ve been
sabotaged.”

       
“How?” she said. “When?
By whom?”

       
“Before we left the
room, in the hospital. The driver did it. He’s the technician.”

       
“What did he do?”

       
“Attached some device.”

       
“What kind of device?”

       
“It’s on a timer. The
people who are supposed to meet us have a key to deactivate it.
A radio thing.
But if they don’t do it by...”

       
The guy raised his left
arm as if to check his watch, and when it was at chest height he sprang
forward, reaching for Melissa’s throat. I expected her to shoot him on the spot
but instead she swatted away his outstretched arms and drove the heel of her
left hand into his jaw, knocking him flat on his back.

       
“How about you?” she
said to the second man. “Have you got any urgent information for me, too?”

       
The guy shook his head
and got down on his knees. He paused,
then
pivoted as if
to lie down. But instead of hitting the ground, he used the momentum he’d
created to close the gap with Melissa, regain his feet, coil one arm around her
neck, wrap the other around her waist, and spin her round to shield him from
the other agents’ Sigs.

       
“Give me your gun,” the
guy said to Melissa.

       
She dropped the weapon
and kicked it away.

       
The
guy tightened his grip around Melissa’s neck and reached into his overall
pocket with his other hand. He withdrew it a moment later and stretched his arm
straight out to the side. His fingers were clenched around a narrow, white tube
and his thumb was pressed hard against the top end.

       
“That was stupid,” he
said. “You’ve forced me to do this. Now all our lives are on the line, not just
yours. Tell your people to drop their pistols.”

       
Melissa didn’t respond.

       
I looked down at the two
guys tied up next to the van. They were both still completely inert, so I
tucked my Beretta into the back of my jeans, reached through the door, and
picked up one of the handguns the agents had recovered when they’d entered the
compound.