Ultimatum (32 page)

He slapped Jones’s face again. ‘Come on, wake up.’ He couldn’t let Jones die. He just couldn’t.

Jones’s eyes flickered open and he looked up at Bolt, his lips curling in what could have been a smile or a grimace. But at least he was conscious.

‘Who did this?’ Bolt asked. ‘Who shot you?’

Jones opened his mouth and let out a single word: ‘Fox.’

Bolt frowned. What was he talking about? ‘Did you say Fox?’

‘Cain shot me,’ whispered Jones, his words barely audible. ‘After Fox.’

‘What do you mean “after Fox”?’

Jones’s face, white and bloodless, twisted in an expression of pain. It was clear that speaking was a huge effort. His eyes began to close again.

Bolt slapped him again, and asked him to repeat what he was trying to say. Because it didn’t make any sense.

And then it hit him. Fox was en route to the safehouse. If Cain was ‘after Fox’, it meant he knew he was being moved, and was almost certainly going to try and break him out.

Bolt staggered to his feet, the sudden movement almost making him black out once again.

He had to warn Tina.

Seventy-one

21.29

THEY MOVED SWIFTLY
through the woods in total silence.

Cain could hear the sound of the convoy drawing closer, and was just able to see the first glow of the lead vehicle’s headlights as it came round the bend a few hundred yards further up. He nodded to Cecil, and the two men split up, taking up positions twenty yards apart on the light incline that ran down to the road, using the trees as cover. Cain put down the AK-47 assault rifle he was carrying and removed a Russian-made RK3 anti-tank grenade from beneath his jacket, slipping his forefinger through the firing pin as the convoy made its steady approach along the narrow winding road – sitting ducks heading straight into an ambush.

He felt the joy of violence building within him. This was it. His final battle. All the months of planning, all the killing that had taken place today, was about to culminate in this last bloody act – an act that would so humiliate the government, it was difficult to see how they could survive it. Cain felt nothing but contempt for the police officers guarding Fox. They were establishment lackeys doing the dirty work of the politicians, and they deserved everything that was coming to them. There would be no mercy. And there would be no regrets.

A thin smile spread across his face as he crouched low behind the tree, away from the glare of the approaching headlights, his finger tightening on the firing pin.

It was time.

Seventy-two

21.30

‘HOW COME YOU
always seem to get all the action?’ asked the cop sitting next to Tina in the back of the final car in the convoy. There was a mixture of irritation and admiration in his voice, and enough of a smile on his lips to suggest he was only riling her. ‘I reckon I’ve attended five hundred firearms incidents and you know how many times I’ve fired my gun?’

‘Let me guess,’ said Tina. ‘None.’

‘Exactly. See? It’s not fair. You just have to turn up somewhere and the shooting starts. It’s like you’re a magnet for it.’

‘I’m not usually the one doing the shooting, and things are a lot less fun if you’re unarmed.’ Which Tina had to admit wasn’t entirely true. Unarmed or not, she got a huge buzz from the action she’d been involved in, although it also took it out of her.

As the three-vehicle convoy made its way down the narrow country road leading to the safehouse where she was going to question Fox, she felt exhaustion beginning to overcome her. She’d almost been killed twice that day, had produced a month’s worth of adrenalin in a matter of hours, and only through sheer force of will had she fought off the shock that had enveloped her afterwards in both instances. But now all she could think of was her bed, and she hoped that Fox would give them the rest of the names they needed without further delay. The fact that he’d told her about Cecil Boorman was encouraging, but she doubted if they’d get the more important people so easily. Fox was the kind of amoral egotist who liked to draw things out.

The cop was still talking and Tina was doing her best to listen, but she wasn’t finding it easy. He was a nice enough guy – good-looking and friendly, which was usually a combination that worked for her – but she didn’t like talking about her exploits at the best of times, and especially not near the end of a long day. She looked out of the window at the gently sloping woodland on either side of the road – the trees bare and forbidding, their branches like swirling skeletal arms – and was suddenly aware of the phone ringing in her pocket.

It was Mike Bolt.

‘Where are you?’

She heard the stress and exhaustion in his voice and felt a stab of concern. ‘On the road down to the safehouse. We’re almost there.’

‘Turn round now. Get back on the main road.’

The shots erupted out of nowhere – a ferocious hail of automatic weapon fire that tore through the side of the car, shattering two of the windows. A bullet seemed to explode in Tina’s ear and blood splashed her face as the cop who’d been talking to her only a few seconds before tumbled sideways in his seat, already dead, blood pouring from an exit wound in the side of his head. At the same time the driver slumped forward, his hands dropping from the wheel, and the car veered to one side.

For a split second, Tina thought she’d been hit too, but she could feel no pain, nor the sudden, draining weakness that comes with a bullet wound. Mike had stopped talking and she realized with surprise that she was no longer holding the phone. It dawned on her that it had been shot out of her hand – probably by the bullet that had passed through the cop’s head.

Jesus! She’d dodged a bullet for the second time that day.

There was another burst of gunfire, and more glass shattered as a round whizzed past somewhere in front of Tina’s face before exiting through the passenger-side window. The shooting was coming from off to one side of them, and Tina thanked God she hadn’t been where the cop was sitting, otherwise she’d be dead by now.

She reacted fast, ducking down in the seat, using the cop’s body as a shield. Reaching out, she pulled his pistol – a Glock 17 – free from its holster. She could have gone for his MP5 but, having never fired one before, she decided to stick with what she knew. As another burst of gunfire hit the car, shattering more glass, Tina leaned over and yanked down the door handle before rolling out of the car and landing on her belly, keeping low, because it was still possible there was a shooter on this side of the car as well.

The surviving officer in the front passenger seat rolled out the same way, taking up a firing position behind the bonnet and cracking off a number of single shots into the gloom.

A loud explosion shook the ground and Tina saw a ball of flame rise up from the front of the convoy. It looked like it had been hit by some sort of IED and, as Tina watched, a firearms officer staggered into the road, his clothes on fire, before falling to the ground and rolling over and over in a bid to put the flames out.

The van carrying Fox had stopped a few yards in front of them, but there was no obvious movement inside, and aside from the officer on fire and the one crouching next to her, she could see no one else. The whole thing was happening so fast and dramatically it felt like stepping right into the heart of a nightmare.

Tina looked round quickly. There were no muzzle flashes coming from the woods on her side of the car, which made her think there weren’t that many attackers, although whoever they were, they clearly knew what they were doing.

The cop next to her was crouched down beneath the bonnet. He looked over as she crouched down next to him, leaning against the car and holding the Glock in both hands. He was older, in his forties, with the calm demeanour of a man who knew his job well. He asked if she was all right.

His voice was faint, thanks to the ringing in Tina’s ears. She nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘Stay where you are and leave this to me.’ He looked down at the Glock but made no comment. Now wasn’t the time to be worrying about whether she was allowed to use it or not. Slowly, he peered over the edge of the bonnet, scanning the trees for movement.

He squinted, frowning, then opened his mouth to say something.

But the next second there was a single burst of fire, and he fell back into a sitting position, a hole in his forehead above the right eye leaking a long line of blood that pooled on his top lip before running over his mouth and on to his neck. Then he toppled sideways and lay on the ground.

Dead. Just like that.

And suddenly Tina was on her own.

Seventy-three

21.31

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE
the element of surprise. It’s particularly effective against people who’ve never been shot at before, and who have no experience of a bullet’s ability to change things in an instant.

As soon as the initial burst of gunfire crackled across them, Fox hit the floor. He knew the first shots fired at the van would be aimed at the tyres to disable it, so there was no danger of him being hit. Even so, he was still the first one down, just in case his rescuers had a change of plan and decided to kill him. Fox was no fool. He knew he was a lot more use to the people he’d once worked for dead than alive, and it was going to take all his natural cunning to get out of here in one piece.

The second burst of fire hit a couple of seconds later, shattering the windows, but it didn’t hit any of the cops, who were on the floor as well, several of them directly on top of Fox, crushing him into the van’s cold floor.

The loud blast at the front of the convoy that Fox identified immediately as a grenade, followed by frightened shouts from the front of the van, seemed to galvanize the men in the back of the van into action. In a cacophony of yelling and shouting, they jumped up into firing positions and opened fire through the windows in all directions like cowboys trapped in a circled wagon – which was pretty much what they were.

‘Out! Out! Out!’ screamed one of the cops, reaching over and unlocking the rear doors. ‘We’re sitting ducks in here! That was a fucking grenade!’

No one needed asking twice, and they all started scrambling for the doors. This was all about survival now and, as the adrenalin pumped through the cops, they momentarily forgot about Fox. Which was a bad move.

Reaching up with his cuffed hands, which thanks to Tina Boyd were now in front of him, he grabbed the gun from the holster of the nearest cop – the big cockney one who’d dared Fox to give him an excuse to put a bullet in him – in a movement so quick that he had no time to react.

As the cop swung round, Fox leaned back against the van’s metal partition and, with a cold smile, shot him twice in the face, swinging the gun round immediately and taking a second cop in the side of the head. Realizing what was going on, the other two made for the exit as Fox kept firing at them, not caring who he hit, or where, banking on the fact that as they spilled out of the van they’d run straight into the line of fire of his rescuers. He got one cop in the leg, sending him sprawling into the car behind, which had come to a halt at a forty-five-degree angle, its driver dead behind the wheel. But the other cop proved a more difficult proposition. He swung round fast, unleashing a volley of MP5 fire into the van at exactly the same moment that Fox hit him in the chest with a nine-mill round.

Luckily the shot knocked the cop off balance, but he didn’t go down. He readied himself in the space of half a second and started firing again as Fox’s last bullet, now aimed at the guy’s head to avoid the body armour, missed him. Only then did a burst of automatic gunfire from somewhere out in the woods finally send the cop sprawling to the ground.

Scrambling to his feet, Fox grabbed the key to the handcuffs from the second dead cop and unlocked them with a remarkably steady hand.

He was free.

As the van’s rear doors flew open, Tina saw two armed officers come stumbling out amid a series of gunshots from inside. One of the officers grabbed his leg as he was hit, and fell against the bonnet of the car Tina had been travelling in before falling to the tarmac so that he was facing her, his face etched with pain as he tried to wriggle round the front of the car to safety. The other officer turned round so he was facing the van and managed to get off a few shots before he was hit by a stream of automatic gunfire from somewhere in the trees. He dropped his weapon and fell to the ground too, momentarily disappearing from view.

Tina braced herself. The good guys were dropping like flies, and soon she was going to be the only one left.

Seventy-four

21.31

MIKE BOLT HAD
a cold feeling of dread in his gut that momentarily stopped his nausea. He’d definitely heard shots before Tina’s phone went dead, and he had no idea whether she was alive or dead.

He called Commander Ingrams but his line was busy, forcing him to stagger back towards his car in the hunt for the police radio. He could hear the sound of a helicopter approaching, and as he looked up he saw an air ambulance coming in low over the horizon. His vision blurred again and he suddenly felt very faint. Grabbing the back of his car for support, he speed-dialled Ingrams’s number a second time, knowing he had to hold on until he’d talked to someone at Scotland Yard.

‘Mike, what the hell is it?’ demanded Ingrams, picking up this time. ‘I told you to go home.’

‘The convoy carrying Fox has been ambushed. I just heard shots down the phone.’

‘Are you sure?’ Bolt could hear the shock in Ingrams’s voice.

‘Hundred per cent. They’re near the safehouse. Get reinforcements there now.’

The noise from the air ambulance’s rotor blades drowned out the end of the call as it hovered directly above the car park.

Bolt pushed himself backwards, away from the car, dropping his phone in the process, waving up at the crew to try to attract their attention. A wave of pain, so intense that it made him cry out, surged through his head, culminating just behind his right eye. He lost his sight; he lost his balance; he lost every sense he had. All in that single, agonizing moment as he fell blindly into darkness.