‘He had a key.’
So they had key cards to the rooms. Masters probably. It showed a level of planning that was worrying.
Scope got up and took the pistol from the man in the waiter’s uniform. It was a Glock 17. He ejected the magazine and checked the number of bullets. Three. He gave the guy a quick pat down but he wasn’t carrying any spare ammo, and the 7.62 ? 39mm bullets his friend was using in the AK wouldn’t be any use. He took both their key cards and went back to where the woman was lying.
Her eyes were closing as Scope picked her up in his arms as gently as he could. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.
‘Abby.’
‘We’re going to get help, Abby. I want you to stay with us, OK?’
‘OK,’ she groaned in response.
‘And what’s your name, son?’
‘Ethan,’ said the boy.
‘I want you to follow me and your mum, Ethan, and try to make as little noise as possible. Like you’re trying to sneak up on someone. You think you can do that?’
The boy nodded. ‘But what about Grandpa? I don’t want to leave him here.’
‘We’ve got to for the moment, but the police’ll be coming back in for him very soon.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘I promise. Now don’t say another word, OK?’
‘OK.’
Conscious of the fact that if they were ambushed he wouldn’t have a chance of fighting back, Scope carried Abby out of the room, Ethan following. It was completely silent in the corridor as he made his way over to the emergency staircase, trying not to think too much about what he was doing. That had always been his credo in the military. Never think too much. If you do, you’re likely to get scared. And when you’re scared, you’re ineffective.
He took a brief look through the door’s frosted glass, saw nothing on the other side, and led Ethan into the stairwell.
They’d just started down when Scope heard someone hurrying down the stairs a few floors above them. It might just have been a frightened guest, but there was also a good chance it was another of the gunmen, especially as the pace of the steps suggested confidence rather than panic.
Gesturing for Ethan to follow, he hurried down the steps to the second floor, opened the exit door and turned right down the corridor, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the emergency staircase.
As soon as they’d turned the corner, Scope stopped outside the nearest room and carefully placed Abby on the floor, propping her up against the wall, while he fished in his pocket for one of the hotel key cards. Her face was contorted in pain but at least she was staying quiet.
He inserted the key card, and while Ethan held the door open, Scope lifted his mother up again and took her inside.
The room was empty, and in the semi-darkness Scope saw that the bed hadn’t been slept in. As he placed Abby on it, he noticed that the blood from her wound had seeped through the towel.
Clearly now in shock, she asked him where they were.
‘In one of the other rooms. We should be safe here for now.’
‘But we need to get outside.’
‘I know. But right now, it’s too dangerous.’
He moved away from the bed, switched on the lights, and pushed a chair across the door, positioning it so that the back was just beneath the handle, then got another towel from the bathroom to replace the first. As he wrapped the towel round Abby’s leg, applying gentle pressure on the wound, and placed a cushion under her leg to elevate it, he noticed her staring up at him.
‘Who are you?’ she asked him. ‘The way you dealt with those men back there …’
Scope returned her stare. ‘I’m the man who’s keeping you alive,’ he answered.
Thirty
17.50
A COLD WIND blew over Park Lane and, with impeccable timing, an icy drizzle began to fall as DAC Arley Dale stood at the police rendezvous point – a marked Land Rover Freelander 2 from Traffic parked in the middle of the road twenty yards west of the hotel. Two mobile incident rooms were en route from different locations but both were stuck in traffic. With her was Chief Inspector Chris Matthews of Paddington Green Station, who’d been coordinating the initial response to the crisis.
Matthews was bald and underweight and looked like he ran marathons every day. He had the kind of severe face that scares criminals, children, and probably a lot of other people too, but Arley had the feeling that if you pressed the right buttons you’d see a much softer side. He was highly competent too, and right then, that was by far the most important thing.
‘I’ve got the inner cordon in place all round the hotel,’ Matthews explained, ‘but I’m short of CO19 officers.’
‘They’ll be here soon. We’ve got them coming from all over. But I also want a central and an outer cordon set up, so we can get civilians and camera crews as far back as possible. Ideally, I don’t want any of them within a four-hundred-metre radius of the hotel, not when there are gunmen inside.’
‘I haven’t got the manpower at the moment, ma’am. All my spare resources are carrying out an evacuation of the surrounding buildings.’
Arley nodded, squinting against the drizzle, as she looked around. More officers were arriving all the time, some of them milling around, not quite sure what they were meant to be doing. This was always a problem in a fast-moving incident like this one. Everyone knew what had to be done: secure the area, move the public away, and establish control. Organizing it, however, when the whole of central London was gridlocked was a different story altogether, and though Matthews was trying hard, he was up against it.
‘Evening all,’ came a voice behind them. ‘DCI John Cheney, Counter Terrorism Command.’
Arley and Matthews both turned round and were confronted with a tall, good-looking man in his mid forties with broad shoulders and a full head of natural blond hair that had been flattened by the rain. He was dressed in a suit and long raincoat, and looked every inch a copper, even down to the sardonic, knowing smile.
‘I’ve been sent here to give what assistance I can,’ said Cheney, as he and Matthews shook hands. ‘My speciality’s foreign terror groups.’
He turned to Arley and she gave him a thin smile. ‘Hello, John.’
‘You two know each other?’ asked Matthews.
‘From a long time back,’ said Arley, shaking hands formally.
And it had been a long time. Getting close to twenty years. She’d still been a uniformed constable and he’d been a handsome young DC at the same station. Arley was engaged to someone else at the time, but even so, for a few short weeks she and John Cheney had embarked on a passionate affair that had lasted right up until the point she found out that he was sleeping with at least two other women. At the time, Arley had been truly gutted. She’d been infatuated, prepared to break off her engagement to be with Cheney, but, having had her fingers burned, she’d turned her back on him, and in the years since they’d seen each other only a handful of times at official functions.
Seeing him now, she felt nothing. It had all been too long ago. Getting straight down to business, Arley gave him a brief rundown of events so far.
‘Have we had any claims of responsibility?’ he asked in the familiar gravelly voice she’d always been sure he put on.
‘We think they may be from an organization called the Pan-Arab Army of God. Have you come across them before?’
