‘I told you, boss. They got off somewhere in mainland Europe, or else they switched to another container. Some kind of trick.’ Javed picked up his phone and shone it round. ‘You know we could work in here. It’s not much smaller than our office.’
Holm wasn’t listening. He’d fucked up. Latif was home free. Somewhere in the UK. Before long he’d begin to prepare for the next attack. People would die and it was all Holm’s fault. Stephen Holm, no longer a name that would be associated with the capture of Taher, but rather one that would go down in the training manuals under the heading of how not to do it.
‘A trick. Right.’ Holm tapped the side of the container. ‘Damn.’
He bit his lip. Something didn’t make sense. If this was a clever ploy then what exactly was the container doing here empty? It could simply have been left at the SeaPak depot at Felixstowe or even outside the warehouse with the other containers. Why bring it inside?
‘Take a couple of pictures,’ Holm said, backing out to allow Javed more space. He moved past the crates and clambered down from the container. A glow now came from the door they’d come through and there was the noise of a vehicle heading their way. He walked across the warehouse, careful to avoid smashing his ankle again, and approached the door. He edged closer and peered out.
The ceremony had only lasted fifteen minutes. There had been a speech from the stage, a folding and exchanging of flags, and the cutting of a ribbon which had been stretched across the aircraft’s cargo doors. As soon as it was over the dignitaries disappeared onto the air base, presumably to a reception of some kind. A group of soldiers dismantled the stage and rolled up the red carpet. The forklifts began to load the pallets onto the plane, an air maintenance crew appeared and a fuel bowser was brought alongside. Loading and preparing the aircraft seemed to take forever, but eventually the last pallet was hoisted up and disappeared inside the cargo hold.
By then dusk had fallen and the plane stood in darkness, only the lights from its cockpit bright against the flat grey of the airfield.
‘That’s that, then,’ Itchy said. ‘Whatever’s going on here is totally legit. Your mother might not have liked the fact the Hopes were selling arms to the Saudis, but there’s nothing illegal about it.’
He began to rise from the undergrowth, convinced their surveillance operation was over.
‘We wait,’ Silva said. ‘For the plane to take off.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Silvi, how do we even know it’s going to leave tonight?’
‘The cockpit light is still on. If the crew were going to go to stay over they’d have shut the plane down.’ Silva turned to Itchy. ‘Look, we might as well see this through. When the plane’s gone we can scarper. Tomorrow I’ll meet up with Sean in Cambridge and try to find out what this is all about.’
Itchy sighed and lowered himself down.
Half an hour later it was fully dark. Lights on the runway stretched into the distance while over on the base arc lamps lit up the roads and buildings. The plane was but a shadow.
‘There,’ Silva said. A couple of ground crew had appeared. They were walking beneath the plane, making a visual inspection. Chocks were removed from the wheels.
‘They’re off,’ Itchy said.
‘Not with the side cargo door still open they’re not.’
Just aft of the flight deck a whole section of the fuselage had been hinged up so the crates of equipment could be loaded. Earlier a high-reach forklift had raised the crates to the door; they’d been manoeuvred inside and slid into the depths of the plane one after another. Now there seemed to be a last-minute alteration to the cargo manifest because the forklift was back. It approached the aircraft and picked up a pallet from inside. Down the pallet came and the forklift wheeled round and headed for the industrial estate which bordered the airfield. There was somebody down there waving a torch near where a set of gates stood open. The forklift crossed a taxiway and went through the gates and into a large warehouse. Within a few seconds it was back out again without the pallet. The figure with the torch swung the gates closed and the forklift drove back towards the main airport buildings.
‘Bloody hell,’ Itchy said.
‘Yes, bloody hell.’
Silva could feel her heart beating fast. All the build-up, the ceremony, the preparation of the aircraft, the loading of the cargo, the long wait, had taken several hours. In less than a couple of minutes the forklift had pulled a pallet of weapons from the plane, deposited it in the warehouse, and whizzed off. If anyone was watching then they’d either been paid off or been given an excuse as to why a single pallet had to be unloaded. Perhaps it was too heavy, perhaps it was the wrong pallet, perhaps the cargo was damaged and was too dangerous to transit.
Now the jet was preparing to leave. The cargo hatch was shut and the engines started and throttled up. The aircraft taxied round, paused for a minute at the end of the runway, and then was accelerating away and lifting off, the lights on the wingtips flashing as it roared into the distance.
‘Glass the warehouse.’ Itchy motioned at Silva’s binoculars. ‘Fifty metres to the left at the intersection of the fence and the cornfield.’
Silva raised the binoculars. That part of the airfield was unlit but there was enough ambient light so she could trace the line of the fence until it reached the field.
‘Do you see them?’
She did. Two figures hunched down in a hedgerow watching the proceedings just as Silva and Itchy were. She zoomed the binos. A solitary lamp at the corner of the fence cast a pale glow illuminating
