Dark Winter

45

His bodyweight smothered me. I kicked out, tried to head-butt him, the SD pinned between us.

Jeaned legs jumped over us – an Indian woman. She grabbed a couple of bottles and ran for the door.

That was the last thing I saw. The mouthpiece of my respirator was wrenched back over my eyes, and my hand torn off the pistol grip. I could smell cigarettes on his breath as he twisted the muzzle towards me.

I bucked and kicked.

The weapon fired. No one was hit. Shit, he had the trigger.

Screams echoed down the corridor.

I felt the barrel of the SD coming round, raking across my chest. My eyes were still covered. I tried to flick the respirator off by rubbing it against whoever was holding me down, as I bucked and kicked to keep the muzzle away from me.

From above came a three-round burst and the weight on top of me squirmed and let out a scream. I pushed and kicked myself away, ripping the respirator off my head. Suzy was standing over him as he crawled towards the bottles, a mush of blood and bone where his right foot used to be.

Suzy got astride him, and gave him another three rounds into the skull. Blood exploded over the lino.

She picked up a bloodstained battery-powered camping lantern from the floor and went back through the escape door to check on the runner. I grabbed my weapon. Fuck the respirator, it was too late now. If there was any of this shit in the air those antibiotics had better get working.

She reappeared carrying two bottles, which she placed carefully alongside the others. ‘There’s three down and clear.’

Her chest heaved, hungry for air through her canister, as she looked me up and down with the lantern. ‘You OK?’

I looked around at the haze of cigarette and cordite smoke. ‘Yeah, think so. Fuck that, I thought, you know . . .’ I took a second to recover before lifting my boot to show her what had attached itself to the sole, then tapped her canister. ‘If we hadn’t had these fucking things on, we could just have followed our noses all the way from the kebab shop.’

It wasn’t that funny but she started to laugh anyway and we couldn’t stop as we inspected the bottles. Blood was pooled around their bases, but all twelve looked intact, their foil seals undisturbed. I felt much more than relieved as I freely breathed in the cordite and tobacco. It made sense that they wouldn’t have opened the bottles and risked contaminating themselves until the last minute before they attacked. If the attack was delayed a couple of days, they would be too ill to carry it out. Three large, identical nylon sports bags with shoulder straps were alongside them, and four sets of new clothes and shoes. There were Underground maps and Zone One carnet books sitting on top of all four piles, but only three had cell phones.

I went down on one knee to investigate the bags. Each contained what looked like a fat steel bottle of compressed air, about two feet long. There was also a hard plastic cylinder, maybe two feet by one, connected to a tube that was fed through the fabric and concealed in the mesh pocket where you’d normally put your trainers.

Suzy picked up the bottles one by one and wiped the blood off them with one of the shirts. I picked up an Underground map. I could see at least twelve mainline station signs in Zone One. Four were ringed in pencil, including King’s Cross. All were served by Underground lines. I threw it over to Suzy and picked up another; that, too, was marked, this time with stations further to the west including Paddington and Victoria.

About the only thing I’d learnt at school was that the tube’s ventilation system worked like a piston: the trains pushed air in front of them as they went. It was why the tunnels were only just big enough, and there was a rush of air every time a train arrived at a platform. If you were in the DW business, there was no better way of spreading the good news.

Suzy let the map fall to the floor and picked up the nearest book of tickets. Three or four had already been used. ‘They’d done their recces, then. Bastards.’ She went back to cleaning the bottles as I took a look around. In days gone by the room had probably been an office storage area, about fifteen metres square, no windows. NBC boots had left a trail of blood and shit across the lino. Sheets of plasterboard and old grey metal filing cabinets littered the area. Four brand new sleeping-bags had been unrolled in one corner. Rubbish, both old and new, was strewn all over the place.

Empty aerosol cans littered the floor, and the walls were sprayed red with a series of messages in Malay, Arabic and Chinese, punctuated from time to time with vivid red-painted handprints. There was even a Kiblat pointing east.

I looked over at the Chinaman who’d jumped me, now sprawled face down on the floor. The holes in his head weren’t leaking any more, but his jet-black hair was matted and glistened in the lantern light. He was no older than thirty, and dressed in jeans, new multicoloured Nikes and a dark blue jumper.

We needed to get going. ‘Fuck checking upstairs – they’d have been down here by now. Let’s get the bottles and fuck off. Throw me a sleeping-bag, will you?’

She tossed me one from the corner, the sort that could unzip all the way round so it turned into a blanket, and set about pulling the plastic cylinders out of the sports bags. I moved back to the stash of bottles and placed the first carefully in the bottom of the sleeping-bag, gave it a couple of protective turns, then put in the next and gave it two more.

‘Everything else will stay here,’ I pointed over at the clothes, ‘including the cells. If the Yes Man sees them moving without knowing we have them, he’ll take action, thinking we’ve fucked up. Besides, he’ll already have every number these phones have called. We’re just here for DW.’

Suzy frowned. ‘Including King’s Lynn, we’ve got four down, four sets of kit, but only three bags?’

‘We’ll have a quick look after packing. I want to get out ASAP and get this shit handed over.’

Three bottles later, Suzy took the roll from me and placed it in the first sports bag. It wasn’t long before the two others were full. We couldn’t find a fourth bag, so headed downstairs. The wind and rain were still going for it, big-time. I could see the Metropolitan Police sign lit up outside the station, through the window on the landing. ‘That’s all we need.’

We moved swiftly across and started down the stairs. Suzy was still on a high. ‘Fuck ’em, we’ll just box around it back to the car.’

We slipped back into the kebab shop, ripped off the NBC kit, rolled it up and threw it into the ready bags. The sweat had cooled on the back of my neck by the time I pulled out the jams in 297. We didn’t bother unloading the weapons. I could hear Suzy breathing rapidly through her nose, trying to calm herself.

With all the kit stowed and the Browning back in my sweat-soaked jeans, I shouldered my ready bag, and one of the bags of DW, and carried another in my hand.

Suzy still had her rubber gloves on and was using her fleece to wipe the prints off the lock and key. I wasn’t going to rush her. Finally she stood up and smiled. ‘What’s keeping you? Let’s go.’ The padlock and key went into her fleece pocket, then she pulled her cuffs over the rubber gloves to disguise them. ‘I don’t know about you,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got an urgent appointment with Mr Nicorette.’

I used the Maglite to locate the steel fixings wedged in the door, pulled them out and threw them into the bag. Then all torchlight was extinguished, ready to exit.

Suzy was behind me with her two bags. While I listened, she leant forward, ready to pull the door back. There was nothing out there but the wind and the rain. I nodded and she opened up. Light poured into the hallway and the first thing I heard was rain bouncing off the pavement.

I waited as the wind attacked my sweat: there was no rush. We wanted to get out quickly, but also do it correctly. I listened for footsteps, heard nothing. I looked out. Two people were hunched under a collapsing umbrella, walking away from us, no one else in sight. That was it, time to go. I stepped out into the rain with two bags over my shoulder, the other in my hand, my eyes fixed on the police station. The wind was cold as it attacked my wet clothes, which were getting even wetter.

I heard the door close behind me and the shaft click back into the hasp. ‘All done.’ We turned left, away from the station towards King’s Cross Bridge and the stern of the ship. Suzy put the key away in her fleece just as sirens started in the distance and two police officers, a man and a woman in bright yellow fluorescent jackets, appeared from round the bend of Gray’s Inn Road. Luck was with us: they were on the other side of the road and bent over, protecting themselves from the driving rain. They weren’t bothered at the sight of us and our bags, or even Suzy dumping the key down a drain. There were plenty of people like that around here, normally trying to find a doorway to sleep in.