Chapter 2
Wednesday, February 1st 07:45,
Empty office building, Stamford Street,
Central London.
Olsen and Deane stood firm and took cover as bullets ripped into two upturned tables. When they worked together, they were an effective partnership, and they were slowly wearing down the terrorist resistance.
Several of the remaining attackers broke away from the reception area and sprinted down the corridor towards the stairs, in an abandoned damp and murky office block in Stamford Street.
Deane, a man who regularly defied his four decades, had seen it all many times before. In one quick motion, he loaded a fresh cartridge into his choice of weapon, a British made Spitfire G1 silver pistol and looked back to his partner. ‘Hold this position, I can handle them from here!’ After what had happened in Paris Gardens, he couldn’t repress an urge to keep Olsen out of danger.
Olsen, in his late twenties and far more headstrong, saw his partner clear the table and give chase but he wasn’t about to miss out on the glory. He reloaded his Beretta and joined Deane as they both continued the gunfight down the corridor.
They made it to cover at the bottom of a silver steel staircase, Olsen knelt close to his mentor and waited for the next move. Behind him, a mixture of police Special Branch, MI5, MI6, and French agents spread out into the winding corridors to flush out any remaining threats.
Deane didn’t take his eyes off the men at the top of the stairs and was confident he could make the shot and storm the staircase to prevent their escape. How they were planning on leaving he didn’t know but one thing was certain, none of them would escape. He felt his partner’s presence behind him and told himself not to resist Olsen’s help, it was safer to have him by his side.
Patrice Marraud took up position on the other side of the staircase.
‘Take charge down here, Patrice. We’ll handle the upstairs.’
Maraud nodded and mobilized the other agents to sweep the remaining areas of the ground floor.
Deane looked back at Olsen. ‘Stay close to me and hopefully we can finish this without any further losses.’
Akira, on the ground floor and barricaded into a room, looked up as another attack came from above. His thoughts turned to his loyal followers who were sacrificing their lives to guarantee his escape. It couldn’t be helped, it was vital that he got away. The diversion would keep the attackers busy so he could leave with several USB memory sticks full of data that was vital to the cause. Transferring the data, which included contact details for some of his key financial partners, was too risky, and he didn’t trust anyone else to take the data out of the country. With Robert Baynes now dead, he had no means of encrypting the data either, so it had to be moved on physical media.
He covered his face with a black balaclava and took great care to open the nearby window. Escape was not going to be easy. It didn’t surprise him to see a man patrolling the side alley of the building. He would have felt uneasy if it had been deserted, as anyone from MI6 always followed protocol.
Akira leapt out of the window and dropped his considerable weight onto the man’s shoulders. There was some resistance but not enough to threaten him. Akira considered killing him but decided to let him live to tell the tale that someone had escaped. It was a risk, but the thought of leaving a clear message that the operation had not been a complete success appealed to him. Whenever Akira toyed with MI6, it made him feel even more powerful. Maybe then they will realise this was just a small battle. The war is on its way. He cleared the nearby fence and disappeared into the darkness.
Deane felt the blood on his left arm but told himself to ignore it and get the job done. He took cover behind a wooden beam and assessed the situation.
The odds were not in his favour.
Behind the adjacent beam, Olsen had made that same assessment but, as ever, was defiant in his belief he would succeed as another round blasted out of the chamber of his pistol.
At the sight of such a precarious scene ahead, all Deane could think about was his partner. They had been together for almost a decade, and he would gladly give his life to save Olsen’s. Every mission together had been a joy, despite the inevitable disagreements. The thought of losing Olsen, as he had lost other partners before, terrified him to his soul. He fired his pistol again and snapped himself back to the present. ‘Hold this position!’
Olsen watched his partner deliberately draw fire away from his position. Not for the first time, he felt he was being protected, which meant he missed out on what he did best.
Deane took down another two terrorists but four more lingered at the doorway and protected a fifth who had a mobile phone to his ear. Gunfire rained in and Deane stood behind a pillar for cover. As he did so, the fifth attacker ran to the fire escape staircase. Deane gritted his teeth in defiance and fired his weapon again.
Olsen saw his partner attack and took his chance in between the gunfire, determined not to miss out. He helped disarm the remaining terrorists, and barely heard an order from Deane to stay where he was, as he saw him run towards the emergency fire escape staircase. Olsen wanted to go after him but saw movement out of the corner of his vision and turned back, to make sure there was no threat.
One of the attackers tried to move his right hand towards a rifle that was just inches away on the floor. He heard Olsen step closer but even in the midst of defeat, he still felt he could somehow gain the advantage.
Olsen saw it immediately and slammed one of his size eleven shoes down on the man’s throat. The barrel of his gun loomed over the head of the fallen attacker. Olsen’s trigger finger quivered. The powerful pistol almost begged to be fired as dark whispers circled in his mind.
Seconds passed, and the pistol started to shake in his right hand.
Olsen blinked several times and started to come out of the darkness. He kicked the rifle away and spoke in a tone full of contempt. ‘Just be lucky you’re still alive…’
A large rumble of thunder made him look towards the fire escape staircase. Torrential rain poured down as dark clouds encased the night sky. To his right, he saw more agents emerge from the staircase. Olsen made his decision and ran out onto the slippery metal staircase that led to the roof.
Deane felt his left foot give way as rain continued to fall in a deafening downpour. Despite the threatening clouds that surrounded him, his steely blue eyes wouldn’t budge from the target who had stepped onto the next level of the staircase. That left just one flight of stairs to reach the roof. With one desperate move, Deane lunged and grabbed hold of the man’s right foot.
Both men fell back onto the staircase and grappled with each other.
Deane smashed his right fist into the man’s face.
The terrorist swung out a large knife from inside his shirt and stepped closer.
Deane thought of the knife fight that had resulted in the scar on his right temple and tried to avoid the attacks. The metal staircase was soaked with water though, and Deane struggled to move his feet. There was no time to reach for his gun inside his blue jacket. One attack came within inches of his belly, and he was forced back towards the edge. Still the knife came, perilously close to his face. He felt his balance give way. As he fell backwards, he reached out with his left hand and grasped the wet rail. His arm and shoulder cried out in pain as they took his body weight.
Olsen froze in position, two levels below and squinted upwards in the dim light to see Deane hanging over the edge of the staircase. As he raised his weapon, he fired off several rounds and saw the target run amidst all the sparks.
The terrorist left the staircase and ran onto the roof in the direction of a fire exit on the other side. Before he could make any headway, he was grabbed by Deane and struggled to break free.
Deane was a calculated fighter and knew where and how to attack. He slowly forced the knife out of the target’s hand and gave several jabs to both temples before he smashed his right fist into his face and broke the man’s nose.
The terrorist tried to fight back but instead sustained several blows that pushed him further and further towards the edge of the roof.
Deane recognised that one push would rid the world of another threat. Memories of other government agents past and present that would have taken the easy option bubbled away in his mind. For Deane though, there was never a moment of uncertainty. As he pulled his prize back from the brink, he looked into the terrorist’s eyes and wondered how many innocents had already died by his hand.
Olsen stepped from the metal staircase and holstered his gun. ‘That was pretty close.’ No reply came, but he was used to it, he’d never met anyone as obsessed with his work as Deane. ‘I’ve updated Operations Command.’
Deane saw the puzzled look on his partner’s face but chose not to address it. As the rain fell once again, he dragged his prize back towards shelter but froze when he dropped to his knees.
The terrorist began to chant in Arabic. His eyes were transfixed on the side alley of the building that could just be made out from their position, some forty or fifty feet up. Tears ran down his face accompanied by sudden laughter.
Olsen struggled to make out some of the words but translated ‘new world’ and ‘fall of the West’. Repeatedly, he told him to quiet down until Olsen’s fragile temper broke and he smashed the back of his pistol over the man’s head. Grateful for the silence, he glanced back to his partner. ‘Did you catch all that?’ He turned around, but there was no sign of Deane, just an angry sky and wave after wave of rain.
The blueprints of the building he had seen back at HQ ran through his mind like a computer until he found what he was looking for, the nearest possible exit to the alleyway the terrorist had been looking at. At the sight of a door, well hidden, he stopped in his tracks and studied the brickwork. It was new. The room was not on the blueprints. ‘Did you check in here?’ he shouted at a nearby team leader who immediately looked uncertain.
The door hinges cried out under the strain as Deane smashed his way into the ground floor room. Other agents were behind him, awaiting a first look at the room that had been carefully concealed but the veteran agent wanted to inspect every corner for himself, uninterrupted.
It was around ten feet long by eight feet wide, with no electricity and barren stony walls with damp in the corners. At the far end, a medium sized window was blowing open in the wind.
Someone had escaped, just like the terrorist had said. He rushed to the window and looked down. There, in the alleyway, was an MI6 agent slumped against the wall. For an instant he feared another death had occurred on his watch. Within seconds Deane climbed out and dropped down into the alleyway. On closer inspection he saw that not only had the young agent been spared, but it had been done for a reason. Someone was sending him a message. He caught sight of the investigation team leader who had also jumped down into the alley and spoke in a quiet tone. Deane felt embarrassed that his operation had suddenly become so flawed. ‘Dust for prints and look for DNA in that room. Report back to me at once.’ One question remained. Was it a loyal follower or someone more important?
Hours later in a cramped office at MI6 headquarters in London, Deane, Olsen and Marraud sat together with the Deputy Chief of MI6, Kevin Ramsey.
‘There can be no doubt, then? Someone escaped?’ Ramsey was a towering six feet six inches tall, and an imposing figure. He turned from the window and studied the faces ahead of him for their reactions. His dark skin showed the sweat on his forehead as he wondered about the implications.
Deane spoke first. He sounded annoyed, and he felt it. His ego struggled with the fact that the operation had ended on such a low. ‘There is no doubt about it. I’ve spoken at length with the agent who was patrolling the alleyway. He was jumped on and remembers nothing. Someone escaped from that building.’
‘Do we have any leads?’ Ramsey asked quickly.
Deane placed a file on the table. ‘Months ago, Patrice and I identified fourteen men operating within that cell and we’ve tracked their movements ever since. We’ve now identified the dead and those we captured. We have all fourteen.’
Ramsey glanced at the file. ‘All of them?’
‘All of them.’ Deane waited for that fact to sink in.
‘Then the one that got away was someone we weren’t aware of, on any level?’
‘That’s right.’ As if he sensed the next question, Deane continued. ‘It would either be another brainwashed follower who joined them recently, either from abroad or possibly from the local community, or…’ Everyone in the room hung on his every word. ‘Someone else of great importance to this particular cell.’ Deane’s tone was one of dread as he spoke the words.
Ramsey needed more than assumptions. ‘I suggest we keep speculation to a minimum. We need to—’
Deane’s voice overpowered that of his superior as he made his point. ‘The room used for the escape was not on the blueprints of the building. It was concealed from view and during the raid the terrorists drew us away from the room. None of them have admitted that anyone escaped, which suggests whoever it was had their loyalty. I highly doubt they would do that for anyone.’ He looked at Olsen. ‘I’m wondering whether it was the man we chased from London Bridge station.’
‘What are you basing that on?’ asked Ramsey.
‘I trust my instincts.’
Ramsey was in no mood to debate the point with no evidence to hand. ‘I’ll talk to the Chief of MI6 about this at my next opportunity.’ Ramsey waited for silence and then handed separate sheets of paper to the two MI6 agents. ‘Here, I have your new orders. Deane, you’re to be assigned to Oman in the Middle East and await further instructions. Olsen, you’ll be based here at HQ for the time being to conclude Operation Concealment. Good day to you, gentlemen.’
Deane stayed in his chair in a state of shock. Had he just heard Olsen was to remain in London alone? He tried to focus on the problem at hand. ‘And the one who escaped?’ Before he could finish his question, Ramsey had already shut the connecting door. Disbelief bubbled away inside of him as he wondered why the agency wasn’t addressing the threat. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone of great importance had escaped and had done so with considerable ease. What was yet to come?