robbery this morning. He did everything asked of him. So I don’t understand why he’d betray us.’
‘Because he weakened, Cecil. Most men do. They take the easy option. We haven’t.’
‘Aye, and what good’s it done us?’
Cain glared at him. ‘Don’t give me that. You know why we’re doing this. And think of the money you’re going to make when we break out Fox.’
Cecil quietened a moment at the thought of the reward on offer. Like most of the people Cain had ever met, he was greedy.
‘And you reckon Fox has definitely got the money to pay us?’ he asked eventually.
Course he hasn’t, thought Cain. And if he did have it, he wouldn’t pay us anyway. But he didn’t say that. ‘I know for a fact that Fox has got two million dollars stashed away in various foreign bank accounts. We’re going to hold him until he pays us half of it. Us, Cecil. Me and you.’
In truth, Cain had already been paid by the man he reported directly to, Garth Crossman, to silence Fox once and for all. Cecil wasn’t going to make it out either. Like Fox, he knew too much. Tonight, Cain and Crossman were going to make a clean break from their previous strategy of launching violent terrorist attacks. The attacks had served their purpose. They’d wreaked havoc, harmed community relations, and made the government look weak. Now it was time for Crossman to go political.
Cecil stared at the screen. ‘OK. Targets have now turned right on to an unmarked road. The road leads down to a farm about half a mile north of us. It’s the only building on that road.’
Cain felt his adrenalin kicking in. ‘It’s the safehouse.’
‘OK, take the next right turn,’ said Cecil. ‘If we move fast enough we might be able to cut them off before they get there.’
Seventy
21.25
Bolt stumbled when he eventually got out of the car, and had to grab hold of the door for support. His headache had been getting worse, and every few minutes he was being hit by dizzy spells where his vision would blur and darken, each time for slightly longer. He took a couple of deep breaths, still waiting for this latest one to pass. He was going to have to get himself to a hospital soon, but he owed it to Jones to at least try and see if he was OK.
He blinked a couple of times as his vision returned to normal, immediately spotting Jones’s old black Renault Megane parked in the corner. It was too cold a night to be out walking, which meant he was probably here. Bolt felt a smidgen of satisfaction that his hunch had paid off, and turned towards the house, stopping suddenly as he spotted the ground-floor window hanging open, only partially visible behind one of the cars.
Jones had a ground-floor flat. It was unlikely to be a coincidence.
Bolt walked towards the window, his pace slow and unsteady, but as he passed a parked BMW he saw a body lying on the ground.
Even in the darkness, he could see it was a white male in his thirties dressed in a suit, and he felt a guilty relief that it wasn’t Jones. The man was on his side, one arm outstretched towards a briefcase a few feet away. His shirt was heavily bloodstained, as was the car itself, and he had a large hole in the centre of his forehead, where he’d been shot at close range. It was also clear he was dead.
The sight didn’t make Bolt feel sick. He’d seen too many murder victims for that, but it did make him feel terribly sad. Here was someone who’d come home from a hard day at work and whose life had been ripped from him in what must have been a terrifying last few seconds. It reminded him far too much of his own mortality.
The moan was almost inaudible, but Bolt turned round immediately, causing his vision to blur again. As it cleared, he saw a second body poking a little way out of a thick leylandii bush that bordered the property, partially obscured by a parked car.
It was Jones.
Even as he reached him, Bolt could see he was in a bad way. He was only visible from the chest up, his face buried in the gravel, and he wasn’t moving. The blood was everywhere, drenching his clothes and spreading across the gravel beside him.
Crouching down, Bolt turned him over as gently as he could, and looked down at his pale bloodstained face.
Jones tried to focus but couldn’t seem to manage it, and his eyes flickered as he began to lose consciousness.
‘You’re going to be all right, Jones,’ Bolt told him, aware that his own voice sounded weak. ‘I promise. I’m going to get help right now.’ He fumbled in his pocket for his phone. ‘Stay with me, Jones. Come on, stay with me.’
Jones’s eyes closed as Bolt dialled 999, and Bolt slapped his face to make him stay awake, the effort making him nauseous.
‘I need an air ambulance right away,’ he said when his call was answered, and gave the address.
The operator said he couldn’t guarantee an air ambulance, that resources were severely stretched.
‘My name is Detective Inspector Mike Bolt of Counter Terrorism Command. This man’s a victim of today’s attack. And he’s the only person who can identify the terrorists. If he dies, you’re responsible.’
‘Are you all right, sir? You don’t sound well.’
Bolt took a deep breath, feeling like he was going to faint. ‘I’m fine. Just get here.’
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
