got to her feet, feeling in her pocket for her phone.
Seventy-eight
22.09
ARLEY FELT HER personal mobile vibrate as she watched the black-clad men on the TV screen disappearing one by one into the archway leading to the back of the Stanhope. She pulled it out of her pocket and her heart immediately skipped a beat. It was Tina.
‘What’s happening?’ she demanded, concerned only for news.
Tina’s voice was full of exhaustion, and there was a distant quality to it. ‘I’ve got your kids. They’re safe.’
Arley wanted to faint with the sudden burst of euphoria she experienced at that moment, but there was no time for that. ‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘I’ll call you back in five minutes.’ She pocketed her mobile and grabbed one of the secure phones, speed-dialling through to the SAS control room.
An unfamiliar voice picked up, introducing himself as Captain Hunter, and Arley spoke rapidly. ‘This is DAC Arley Dale, Bronze Commander. Stop the attack now. I have reliable information that your men are walking into an ambush.’
‘It’s too late,’ said the other man. ‘They’re going in.’
‘They can’t. Get them back.’
‘I’m not going to do that. This is a military operation. You have no jurisdiction.’
‘Then let me speak to Major Standard. Please. This will only take seconds.’
‘He can’t speak to you. He’s controlling the assault.’
‘If he’s controlling the assault, then he has to speak to me. It’s a matter of life and death.’
The captain told her to hold on, and Arley was conscious of the expressions on the faces of her colleagues as they stood or sat watching her in shocked silence, but she was beyond caring now.
She could only pray that she wasn’t too late.
Seventy-nine
FROM HIS POSITION in the Meadow Room on the mezzanine floor, Fox saw them as they emerged one by one from the darkness under the arch, fanning out into the courtyard, their guns trained on the rear of the building as they checked the windows for any sign of ambush.
The enemy.
He slipped back out of sight, his AK-47 down by his side as he counted to twenty in his head, waiting for Bear to detonate the bomb. Willing him not to weaken.
Even though he’d braced himself for the impact, Fox jumped when the bomb exploded, the force of the blast shaking the windows. But his reactions were still lightning fast. Taking advantage of the seconds of chaos and disorientation that always follow an explosion, he looked out of the window and opened fire on fully automatic into the thick cloud of rapidly rising smoke.
As the glass exploded, he leaned further forward, strafing the courtyard with bullets, not sure who he was hitting through the smoke, before he was forced to leap back out of sight to avoid a burst of returning fire from somewhere near the courtyard entrance. More of the window glass shattered, spraying shards into the room, but Fox was already rolling away and pulling a grenade from his belt. He yanked out the pin, counted to three and lobbed it out of the window, hearing it explode just as it hit the ground. At the same time, amid the wild ringing in his ears, he heard Bear’s AK-47 open up from the ground floor – a single long burst followed by the angry crackle of returning fire and the whump of a stun grenade.
Fox didn’t know if Bear was going to get out in one piece or not, but he knew that he couldn’t hang around where he was any more. Bullets were flying into the room. The SAS might have been badly surprised and taken casualties, but they were still professional enough to react to the attack, and they’d be concentrating at least part of their fire on him.
It was essential for Fox to keep the momentum of the ambush going. If the SAS thought they’d snuffed out the initial resistance they’d keep coming, and Fox couldn’t afford to have that. They needed to be made to retreat.
Jumping to his feet, he reloaded his AK with the spare magazine and went into the next-door function room, pulling a second grenade from his belt. He strode over to the window and, keeping out of sight, unleashed a burst of gunfire into the glass, before pulling the pin and flinging the grenade out through the hole he’d created.
As it exploded, he let loose another burst of fire through the window, unable to resist taking a quick look at the carnage he’d caused as the smoke cleared.
He stiffened, confused. Unable to believe what he was seeing. Because what he was seeing was nothing. Other than a few small fires and the remnants of the smoke, the courtyard was empty. There were no bodies at all.
The ambush had failed.
Eighty
22.13
‘HOW ON EARTH did you know that was going to happen, Arley?’ asked Major Standard.
‘I had good information,’ said Arley into the phone. ‘The point is, did it work? Did you pull your men out in time? It sounded like there was quite a firefight over there.’ From their position in the mobile incident room two hundred yards away, they were unable to see what was happening, and the Worth Street camera wasn’t showing them much, but they’d all heard the explosions interspersed with the automatic gunfire easily enough.
‘Yes. Every man’s been accounted for. We had to return fire to cover the retreat, but I don’t know if we hit any of the terrorists or not. I need to speak to your source urgently. I want to know how he knew about our movements, and what he can tell us about the terrorists inside the building. Do you have a name and number for him?’
‘No,’ lied Arley, improvising as she went along. ‘He called from a callbox.’
‘Then who is he? And why did he call you?’
‘He’s an informant through an MI5 source. He was put on to me because I’m the police commander on the scene. I’ll try to get through to him right now.’
‘Do that. It’s urgent I speak to him. We can’t make another move on the building until we’ve got some idea what we’re up against.’
‘I’ve still got our negotiator trying to get hold of Wolf,’ said Arley. ‘He hasn’t been answering. What do you want our man to say if he does?’
‘Get him to tell Wolf it was a mistake and there was no attack. And get me that contact now, Arley. That’s an order.’
‘Yes sir,’ she said, hanging up and repeating Standard’s instruction to Riz Mohammed.
It was just in time, because barely twenty seconds later the phone in the hotel’s satellite kitchen, which had been ringing off the hook for close to ten minutes, was finally picked up, and Wolf was on the line. ‘Stop the attack now!’ he was shouting, his voice filled with a volatile mix of fear and anger as it reverberated round the room. ‘If you don’t, we will detonate the bomb in the ballroom and kill all the hostages. You have one minute to comply. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, I do,’ answered Riz, who seemed as shocked as anybody that Wolf had actually answered his call. ‘But
