Cry Darkness

Prologue

They waited until the moon had passed behind a cloud. Then, cloaked by darkness, they made their approach, running hard across the lawn until they reached the protection of the building itself. Pressing their bodies against its walls, they moved stealthily sideways, almost crab-like, towards their chosen point of entry.

Breaking in was not a problem to them. They were experts in the art. Even the most sophisticated of security systems presented little difficulty. They had the knowledge, they had the equipment, and they had already studied the target.

It took only a few minutes to gain entry to the building, and a couple of minutes more to reach the designated room within.

Once there, the younger man removed the black rucksack he was carrying on his back and passed it to his older companion, who took from it what appeared to be a quite unremarkable piece of office equipment. A cardboard box file, mottled grey in colour.

The older man flipped up the lid of the box file, and focused the narrow beam of his pencil torch on its contents. Inside lay a cylindrical object, apparently constructed primarily of metal, but more innocent looking and perhaps smaller than might be expected of a weapon with a quite terrifying capacity for destruction. It was a pipe bomb, an explosive device used primarily by terrorist organizations worldwide, all the components of which are legal and easily obtained. On detonation a shock wave passing through the device causes every particle to break down simultaneously, and a major explosion is therefore completed in just a few millionths of a second.

The man studied the pipe bomb for a moment before flicking down a switch at one end of it, thus completing its lethal circuit.

He then carefully closed the lid of the box file, and placed his torch on a convenient shelf so that its beam focused on a nearby filing cabinet, the bottom drawer of which had already been opened by his younger colleague, who had also removed most of the contents of the drawer.

Even more carefully, he carried the grey box file across the room, using both hands, and lowered it into the cabinet drawer, pushing it to the very back. Then he replaced the various other files and papers, which had previously been removed, and shut the drawer. Slowly and silently.

It was unlikely that anyone would even notice the file before the explosive device it contained had fulfilled its dreadful purpose, activated at exactly the optimum time by mobile telephone. But if they did, the chances were that the grey file, so ordinary, and so like several others used in the filing system into which it had been integrated, would not give any particular cause for alarm.

The two men exchanged a fleeting smile of satisfaction at a job well done before making their way, quickly and quietly, out of the building, using the same route by which they had entered. They took pride in completing any task that they undertook with total efficiency.

And as they slipped outside, waiting again, on a night of changeable weather conditions, for the moon to pass behind a cloud, before heading for the cover of the tall trees conveniently grouped at the far side of the lawn, neither of the men gave a thought to the havoc they were about to wreak.

The horror of death by explosion, or indeed almost any other means, was nothing new nor even mildly disturbing to them. They had no qualms at all about deliberately setting out to kill and destroy.

The device they had planted was capable of reducing most of the building in which they had left it to a pile of rubble, and blowing to pieces anyone who might be inside at the time. This did not concern them one jot.

They considered themselves to be professionals. They believed that their cause was the only right and proper one, and that any means, however foul, would be ultimately justified by the end that they sought.