Hunted (13 page)

It was a type of grin Danny had seen before. Late at night. Outside bars. On the faces of junkies and street thieves. But on plenty of soldiers too. It was a primeval grin that had nothing to do with friendliness and everything to do with turf.

All of which Danny realized too late. He was already rounding the desk and closing in on the guard way too fast to be able to slam on the brakes.

The bald guy was waiting for him, and shifted his bulk sideways at the exact moment that Danny brought the baton swinging down.

Danny missed. The baton powered on through the block of air that the bald guy had vacated. Danny’s momentum hauled him down after it, sending him crashing to the floor.

He got lucky. Didn’t hit his head. Managed to take the worst of the impact on his shoulder. But as he crash-rolled and got to his feet, his luck ran out again.

The bald guy had already turned to face him. And had already thrown a punch. And timed it well. Danny never even saw it coming. It was only the fact that he wasn’t yet steady on his feet that saved him. As he staggered sideways, the blow glanced off the left side of his jaw with enough power for him to realize that, if it had connected with its full force, it would most likely have knocked him out.

Danny tasted blood. He lost his grip on the cop’s baton and watched helplessly as it spun skittering across the floor.

A shadow to Danny’s right. A vibration in the air. He
sidestepped
just in time to avoid getting caught out by a follow-up left uppercut from the bald guy, who, Danny now saw, was already closing in for the kill.

Trained
, Danny thought, crabbing sideways and backwards, keeping the hell out of the big guy’s impressive reach, while simultaneously trying not to get cornered or pinned against a wall.

‘Yeah, that’s right, mate,’ the big guy said in a deep, gravelly voice, almost as if he were reading Danny’s mind. ‘I used to box. Harrow Road All Stars Boxing Gym. You not heard of it?’ A gold tooth flashed as his upper lip curled back. ‘You’re going to remember it after today.’

Two paces, three. Keeping his guard well up, the bald guy shadowed Danny every step. Then he started circling round him, was clearly aiming on driving Danny back towards the bag
inspection
table, maybe hoping his fallen colleague might bushwhack him from behind.

He watched as Danny tore the shattered sunglasses from his face and let them fall to the floor, and then he grinned again.

‘You know what?’ the sucked in spit off his lower lip. ‘This job’s a piece of shit. Most boring thing I’ve ever done. I’ve been praying for some stupid yuppie fuck like you to flip out on me for over two years.’

Yuppie fuck?
So much for the designer suit giving Danny a veneer of respectability. Seemed like his choice of attire had instead become a red rag to a bull.

This guy wasn’t doing this because he knew who Danny really was. He was no hero, trying to do right by the store. He was doing this for
fun
.

He swayed gently as he came forwards. A tree in a breeze.
Well balanced
for such a big fucker
, Danny thought. He was three stone heavier than Danny … four inches taller … a different boxing class … And yet …

This is no ballet. It’s all about putting the other guy down.

That was what the Old Man had always told his new recruits at West Point. That was what he’d told Danny too, when he’d first started teaching him how to fight.

How to
fight
, not box. For
survival
, not fun.

Guard up now, in a classical stance, Danny feigned a left-right jab combination. Like he was willing to box this one out too.

And the bald guy bought it. Again he smiled.

That was when Danny kicked him hard in the balls.

The big guy stumbled. He gasped and wheezed and doubled right up.

Danny stepped in close then with his left foot, bringing his left arm tight across his torso, part counterbalance, part defence. He shot a hammer-fist straight towards the bald guy’s nose. But missed and split his lip wide open instead.

The big guy staggered again, his right arm pinwheeling uselessly now as he fought to regain his balance.

Along with the contorted look of pain on his face, Danny saw a flash of betrayal in his eyes.

That’s right,
Danny thought.
Fuck your Queensberry Rules, and fuck you.

He fired a left into the big guy’s throat, then dropped into a crouch, simultaneously seizing his opponent’s left heel and twisting hard counterclockwise. The bald guy spun clean round. He hit the floor flat on his front, a wheezing, twisted pile of flesh.

Danny snatched two power cables from the back of the printer and computer on the control desk, and used them to hog-tie the bald guy. Then he went after the other guard. He’d just spotted him crawling out from under the inspection table in an effort to haul himself away. The man froze when he heard the squeak of Danny’s trainers coming up from behind. He shrank up into a ball. Danny used two phone cables to strap his throat and ankles to the table.

Danny tried to collect his thoughts. He was still fizzing with adrenalin. Eight minutes since he’d first entered Harrods. Had he been fast enough? Or was he already totally screwed?

Only one way to find out. He collected up his broken sunglasses and the cop baton and stuffed them into his rucksack. He took the
bald guard’s reading glasses from where he’d spotted them on the control desk, next to a timer sheet with the name ‘Alan Offiniah’ at the top.

The world went blurry as he slipped the glasses on. He perched them on the end of his nose. Then he grabbed a bottle of Coke off the desk, along with what was left of the bald guy’s sandwich.

He drained the Coke and ate as he hurried up the steps to the swing doors at the top. He could have drunk another ten bottles. Could have done a lot of things, in fact. Like volunteered to be shipwrecked. Or joined a monastery. Or slept in a hammock for a month.

Anything not to be here.

He looked back over his shoulder at the bald guy before he went out through the door. He was glaring up with a look of absolute defiance on his face. Like he’d been cheated. Like all he needed was one more shot and this time the title would be his.

No doubt about it, Danny thought. On a different day, under different circumstances, he’d definitely have given Alan Offiniah a job.

Two steps out on to the pavement and Danny saw he was completely surrounded.

A roadblock facing Harrods had been set up across Hans Crescent less than five metres to his left. Two unmarked cop cars, blue lights flashing, parked at crazy angles alongside a line of abandoned civilian cars. A long-wheelbase Ford white riot van had been ploughed up on to the pavement.

Upwards of fifteen police were manning the makeshift barricade. Three of them were armed and had taken up sniper positions.

To Danny’s right, another wave of police was coming in. More hardcore. CO19. A squad of them on foot. Bustling between abandoned civilian vehicles. Running awkwardly like a bunch of Fat Camp escapees. Fully geared up. Bulletproof vests. H&K
single-shot
carbines at the ready.

Danny got a flashback memory to a piece of flickering First World War archive footage he’d watched in a military history lecture, showing a platoon of doomed British youth charging the German trenches, only to be mown down by machine-gun fire.

But no one was going to stop these guys today. And they weren’t gunning for Germans. They were all looking to waste whoever they
thought had shot all those civilians outside the Ritz. They were all looking to waste
him
.

‘You.’

Danny spun. The word had come at him as more of a scream than a shout. The burly cop running at him from the direction of the roadblock was wearing a riot helmet. Visored. One arm was outstretched, pointing at Danny. The other gripped a Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol.

Two other cops – one of them armed with an MP5 – had seen what their colleague was doing. Others were turning to face Danny, distracted by the first cop’s shout.

Even if Danny managed to take the first cop out, he’d never get away. The man with the MP5 would take him down.

This is it.

He knew it then. Accepted it, strangely. He felt the last of his energy running off him like water as he stood there in his own personal no-man’s-land. His whole body sagged.

He thought about Sally in that moment. He thought, as he so often had in the long hours and days and months that had followed her death, that she wasn’t really dead at all. That she was waiting for him somewhere. Somewhere normal. On that stone bridge in Central Park, where they’d used to meet at lunchtimes when they’d first begun dating. Or in their one-bed apartment in Queens that summer they’d moved in together, where she’d put down her paintbrush on the windowsill and pressed his hand to her denim dungarees, so he could feel his daughter Alexandra kicking for the very first time.

‘Move!’ the cop running at him shouted.

Move?

The sun burned down. Sweat trickled from Danny’s brow. The cop grabbed him by the collar of his suit jacket. He jerked him aside, out of the way of the oncoming police. He gripped the back of Danny’s neck.

‘That way.’ The cop was pointing Danny in the opposite direction from the roadblock. ‘Go. Get the hell out of here. Now.’

Then before Danny had hardly had a chance to accept what was
happening to him – let alone thank his lucky stars – the cop was running back towards the roadblock.

They think I’m just another civilian.

The change of clothes … it had been enough to fool the cop. Witnesses, police, you name it, most people only cared about the big details of the way other people looked. It was a fact Danny thanked God for then.

He saw another cop frantically waving at him from beside a flashing squad car parked across the next road junction.

He remembered what the Kid had said. About the civilians leaving the Ritz being kettled in Berkeley Square. Quarantined until they could be interrogated. Was that what was happening here? Because Danny couldn’t afford to get caught up in that. Not with the potential DNA match still waiting to be picked up by forensics at the Ritz.

No time to think about it now … No choice but to go with the flow … Not with all these cops watching.

Danny ran to the waiting cop. He noticed the street sign as he did. Pavilion Road. The name struck a chord. Another thing the Kid had said. Down south that way was where the Kid was waiting.

The cop didn’t give Danny a second glance as he reached her. She was too busy looking past him at the roadblock and the sliver of Harrods façade beyond that. She grabbed him, pulled him past her, passing him on to another cop, who unceremoniously shoved him further west.

So they still think that I – that the guy in the red tracksuit – they still think I’m inside Harrods … Which means they’re not trying to quarantine me anywhere now … They’re just clearing the area of civilians … setting themselves up for a siege …

The cops spat Danny out through a wall of riot shields into a short street jammed with stationary vehicles and panicking civilians.

‘That way. Keep moving,’ the last cop who’d manhandled Danny yelled.

Keep moving – how?

Because something was wrong. Bodies were pressed up against gridlocked cars. Hundreds of people had been jammed into this
short stretch of street, siphoned off from inside and around Harrods. But the crowd wasn’t moving. None of them could get out.

They were starting to shove each other, to panic. News of the massacre outside the Ritz had clearly filtered through. These civilians’ terrified faces all told the same story. Their recurring group nightmare, the one they’d collectively been having since 9/11 and 7/7 … they’d woken up bang in the middle of it now. There’d been a terrorist attack right here in central London. And not just on some diplomat. Civilians like themselves had been indiscriminately slaughtered. One of the masked gunmen was now on the loose.

And all these people were convinced that if they didn’t get the hell away from here now, they’d be the next ones to die.

Danny wanted to call the Kid. To find out what the bigger picture was. How many central London streets had been kettled like this? What was going on back at the Ritz? But he couldn’t use his phone. Not if the networks were meant to be down. Not if he couldn’t even hear himself think.

It was over an hour since the attack outside the Ritz had taken place. But it was less than fifteen minutes since the cops had opened up on Danny in Harrods. He remembered the poor woman who’d got hit and wondered how many others had too.

Jean Charles de Menezes.

The name leapt up like a flame in Danny’s fevered mind. He’d attended a conference on urban policing a year ago in Geneva. De Menezes had been given as a perfect example of what cops shouldn’t do.

Menezes had been a young, unarmed twenty-seven-year-old Brazilian electrician whom the cops here had wrongly mistaken for a terrorist. He’d been shot in the head seven times at Stock well tube station on the London Underground in 2005 by members of CO19, the same Metropolitan Police specialist firearms unit Danny suspected he was being hunted by now.

The London cops had tried to wriggle out of any blame. Meaning those bodies back in Harrods would probably be attributed to the masked gunman too.

Forcing his way forward through the crowd, Danny now saw why the civilians weren’t all just running away as fast as they could. Another roadblock was hemming them in. Some
miscommunication
between the police. At the end of the street was a row of dark blue unmarked pursuit cars with blacked-out windows. A solitary marked squad car. Ten or twelve uniformed police had formed another riot line. One of them was shouting through a megaphone at the crowd to stay calm.

Danny scrummaged his way forward, cracked someone hard in the ribs with his elbow and hauled his way past. He worked his way up steadily along the side of the street.

All the shops he passed were rammed with people taking cover. A fight had broken out in one doorway, with two guys dressed in suits refusing to let an old woman in.

People were clutching desperately, furiously at their phones, like kids with broken toys, clearly cursing the fact that the networks had now either been deliberately taken down – as the Kid had predicted – or were jammed from too much traffic.

Danny was panicking too. This street was one bottleneck he couldn’t afford to get stuck in. The moment the police spoke to those two trussed-up security guards, they’d run the time codes on whatever CCTV cameras were outside.

They’d see which way Danny had gone. The clothes he’d changed into, too. Any ideas he had of making that dream getaway, they’d be history after that.

A screech of rubber. A warning clatter of batons on shields rose above the angry noise of the crowd. The first of those unmarked pursuit cars leapt backwards, wheeled right and out of sight. The others followed. Leaving only the white squad car and the now hopelessly isolated and exposed line of police.

In Danny’s mind’s eye, it was like one of those plastic tile puzzles he used to get in his stocking from Santa Claus as a kid. All you had to do was clear the right part of the puzzle and you could suddenly move everything else.

He wasn’t the only one who’d spotted the opportunity. The whole crowd surged forward as one.

It was like the removal of a dam from a pool of water. People rushed out of the street and Danny let himself get swept along. In under a minute he was past the abandoned white cop car. Out on to Sloane Street.

More sirens to the left. The crowd veered right and started to break up. The sense of panic and fear dropped too. These people weren’t potential victims any more. You could see it on their faces. They were survivors. They were the ones who’d got away.

With each step forward, the crowd felt less like a scene from a disaster movie and more like a sports crowd leaving a stadium.

Another hundred metres and the collective rhythm of the people had become almost normal. They’d started to talk again, not shout. Danny even heard somebody laugh.

He nearly snatched out his phone and called the Kid. To tell him he was OK. To work out where the hell they should meet. But equally he knew that he couldn’t exactly start chattering into a phone.

And besides, there was someone he wanted to talk to first.
Crane
…

The first opportunity Danny got, he cut off Sloane Street and into Cadogan Place.

He spotted the moped chained to a railing outside a boutique hotel. He could only see one CCTV camera nearby, and that was turned away from him, monitoring the entrance to a bank.

Danny popped the bike’s panelling and got it started. The owner had been kind enough to secure a helmet in its equally easily opened pannier. And had left a full fuel tank.

Half a mile and thirteen turns later, heading due south along Passmore Street at a steady twenty-five miles an hour, Danny finally got what he’d been wishing for since he’d first gazed down on that burning black limousine outside the Ritz.

He was just another blurred face in the crowd.