Siege

forward, calmly took aim, and shot the rugby player in the upper body, the force of the bullet knocking them all backwards.

‘Everyone stay down!’ she screamed. ‘Move and you die!’

No one moved except the rugby player, who let out a tortured gasp as if he’d been winded, and fell to his knees, clutching at his arm.

The terrorist leader threw Martin to the floor, then swung round and kicked the rugby player hard in the chest. ‘You want to die, uh? You want to die? You can fucking die!’ He grabbed him round his neck, dragging him to his feet. Still cursing him, he drove a path through the hostages before slamming him up against one of the restaurant tables in front of the uncovered window and forcing the gun into the base of his skull. The rugby player cried out, but Martin could see it was too late, much too late. The next second, there was another loud pop, and blood splattered against the window.

Immediately he stopped struggling and, as the leader let go of him and stepped aside, Martin could clearly see the wound in the back of his head. Slowly and silently, the dead man slipped from the table and fell to the floor.

‘That’s what happens when you try to escape!’ the leader shouted, turning on the rest of them, the barrel of his gun still smoking. ‘Do you understand?’ He was shaking with rage and spraying spittle as he talked, his grip too tight on the trigger – a stark contrast to the woman, who stood calmly alongside him. ‘He stays here as a warning to the rest of you.’

He looked down at Martin, who looked back steadily. For three seconds they stared at each other, and Martin could hear his heart beating in his chest. Then the leader turned away and he and the woman strode past the two guards and out of the room, leaving the rest of them in stunned silence.

Fifty-eight

21.00

CAT AND WOLF left the restaurant in silence, and travelled in the lift back down to the satellite kitchen adjacent to the ballroom. Cat noticed that Wolf was shaking, although whether it was due to excitement, anger or shock, she couldn’t tell.

The lift door opened and they walked back out into the kitchen. Wolf immediately went over and checked the laptop. ‘They still haven’t turned it back on, the bastards. I’ll phone the negotiator and let him know another will die.’

‘If they’re so desperate to speak to Prior, let them.’

‘We don’t want to give away his location.’

‘Then let me record a message from him and we’ll play it down the phone to the negotiator. That way they will realize he’s still alive but they won’t know where he is.’

Wolf looked surprised. It was clear to Cat that he hadn’t thought of this, which concerned her. Before tonight, she’d respected him, but she was far less sure now, and wondered whether his reputation as a strong soldier and leader had been inflated. He was too much in thrall to the mercenary, Fox, for her liking – a man she wouldn’t trust an inch herself.

‘That’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Do it now and I’ll tell the negotiator that we’ll let them hear from him soon, as long as they put the internet back on.’

With a nod of acknowledgement, Cat left the room. She was looking forward to seeing Michael Prior again. She’d extract a message from him, of course, but she’d also make him suffer a little as well, to ease the rage that was coursing through her heart at the thought that her brother’s killer was still alive and somewhere in the hotel.

Fox spotted her walking towards the ballroom door and beckoned her over. Although officially Cat was below him in rank for this operation, in practice they were equals. It was she whom Wolf had chosen to accompany him to the restaurant earlier, not Fox, something that she was sure rankled with the other man.

‘Did you kill someone up there?’ he whispered as she stopped in front of him.

She nodded, making no attempt to disguise her disdain for this mercenary.

‘And are we back online?’

‘Not yet. We’ll let you know when we are.’

They were silent for a few seconds as they appraised each other coldly, like two dogs sizing each other up, hunting for weaknesses. Cat sensed he wanted to say something else, but she didn’t give him the opportunity and instead turned her back on him.

When she was out in the silence of the corridor, her grip tightened on the gun. She kept it down by her side and out of sight, in case she ran into one of the guests, or, if she was really lucky, the man who’d killed her brother. Her frustration at not knowing how to find him in this maze of rooms was increasing the more time went on, and her rage meant she would take it out on whoever crossed her path. As far as she was concerned, all the people in this hotel were the enemy, and deserved whatever fate God chose to dish out to them. In two hours’ time, the Stanhope would go up in flames, and Cat would go up with it, dying a martyr’s death, taking as many of the enemy with her as possible.

It was a prospect that excited her.

Pausing outside the room where they were holding Prior, she imagined the terror he must be experiencing, bound up and alone inside. Slowly, she opened the door, bringing the gun up from her side so its suppressor would be the first thing he saw.

And then she saw him, and stopped.

Michael Prior sat dead in his chair. But it wasn’t so much that which grabbed Cat’s attention.

It was the fact that his left eye had been gouged out.

Fifty-nine

ARLEY FELT SICK. Events were now running completely out of her control, and the control of everyone else on the scene. Watching the hostage die onscreen had given her a terrible premonition of what might be happening right now to her children. She was dealing with people more ruthless than she’d ever come across before.

‘We don’t want anyone else dying, Wolf,’ Riz Mohammed was saying. ‘It will only hurt your cause.’

But Wolf was shouting down the phone. ‘Then turn the internet back on!’

‘I’ll do everything I can, I promise, but in the meantime, don’t hurt anyone else.’

‘You have five minutes. Five minutes, do you hear?’

‘And you’ll let us speak to Michael Prior?’

‘If you put the internet back on, yes.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. Give me ten minutes. Can you do that?’

‘OK. You have ten minutes. But after that, another hostage dies in full view of the world.’

The line went dead, and the incident room fell silent.

On the screen, Commissioner Phillips’ seat in his office was still empty, although Arley had heard from her immediate superior, AC Jacobs. He’d told her to stall the terrorists while Phillips talked to the Prime Minister about their next course of action. Jacobs had sounded shocked by what had happened with the hostage, as if he hadn’t expected the terrorists to carry out their threat. Everyone in the incident room had expected it, but maybe that was because they were right there at the scene, rather than over at Scotland Yard. And now that it had happened, Arley knew it meant the end of any possibility of a peaceful solution to the crisis.

Riz turned to Arley. ‘We’re going to have to give in and buy ourselves some time. He’s said we can speak to Prior so at least we’re making some kind of progress.’

‘I agree,’ said Arley. She took a deep breath, trying to hold things together.

‘For what it’s worth, you did the right thing earlier,’ said John Cheney. ‘With the hostage. There was nothing else you could have done.’