Osama

TWENTY-ONE

0800 hours.

The motorbike was still lying where Joe had left it after returning to Eva, on its side by the Range Rover in the small car park opposite the church. The helmet, lying next to the vehicle, was soaked with dew. Joe’s muscles were burning as he hauled it up from its hiding place. His dirty clothes were drenched with sweat. Tightening the straps of the rucksack over his back, he pulled on the helmet, started the engine and screeched past the Range Rover into the road.

As Joe roared down the deserted lanes, the speedometer topped eighty even on sharp bends, which he hugged tightly. Hedgerows and fields were nothing but blurs in the corner of his eyes. There were still patches of early-morning mist compromising his visibility as he cut through them. All his attention was on the road ahead. The wind cut through him, sticking his sweat-soaked clothes to his clammy skin, and before long he was very cold. He knew he should stop and move around. He vaguely tried to remember when he had last eaten. All he could do, though, was drive, and drive as hard and as fast as the bike would go.

The jagged form of the Galil in his rucksack dug into his back. It was comforting. Although he knew that if he was pulled over, the presence of such a weapon would be enough to get him arrested, at least he had the tool he needed to deal with the police. Because his word wouldn’t be enough to ground so much as a paper dart. Disgraced and discredited, he was going to have to be rather more persuasive. And there weren’t many things more persuasive than an incendiary .308.

The miles disappeared. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. The small, winding roads grew wider and straighter. There was more traffic now. Time check: 0832. He pulled out to overtake a trundling Eddie Stobart lorry and immediately his eyes and ears were filled with the sound of another truck thundering towards him from the opposite direction, twenty metres and closing, its horn blaring. Joe yanked the bike back over to the left, just in time. The truck powered past him, the slipstream knocking him slightly off balance. He pulled out again. This time the road was clear. Opening the throttle, he overtook Eddie Stobart, passing under an overhead sign as he did so. Cardiff: seventy-five miles.

He did a quick calculation. A hundred and twenty-five miles to go. He hunkered down to reduce wind resistance and increase speed.

0900 hours.

It was cold in the house, but that wasn’t the only reason Eva shivered. The pain was getting worse. The wound in her side was too sore to touch, and though she wanted to take a look, the idea of removing Joe’s hastily applied dressing was more than she could bear. If only she could stop herself shaking as she sat on the edge of the bed, the handgun gripped tight in her fist. She didn’t know why she was still trembling. She and Conor were alone, weren’t they?

She looked at the door. It was open just a couple of inches. Fighting the pain, she eased herself up and moved towards it, stepping round the Arabic books that Joe had swept onto the floor.

She stopped suddenly.

The door was opening.

Shaking even more, Eva raised the gun. A cat miaowed, then appeared in the doorway. Eva dropped her hand in relief, hissed the cat away, then lurched to the door. She closed it and turned the key. It wouldn’t help much, but she felt safer.

With her back to the door, she surveyed the room. It was chaotic. Not so much a bedroom, she thought, as a storeroom.

Her eyes fell on Conor. He hadn’t moved since Joe had left. How long had it been? Half an hour? An hour? She limped back to the bed and perched by the boy’s small, motionless body.

She found herself grinding her teeth. Complex, conflicting thoughts troubled her. She realized she’d been avoiding looking at Conor. Joe’s little boy. Caitlin’s little boy. She realized, in a moment of honesty, that she was jealous. Eva had never thought of herself as the maternal type, but maybe that was just her way of protecting herself. Whatever the truth, the kid needed her help.

‘Conor?’ she whispered. ‘Conor, sweetheart, are you OK?’

No answer. She stroked his lower leg gently.

She winced suddenly as a stabbing pain seared out from her wound. She clenched her teeth again as she mastered it. Then, very gently, she pulled the coat to cover the boy properly. He was still hugging himself, and although he wasn’t moving, his eyes were wide open, staring without expression. Did he know where he was, or who he was with? Eva thought not. She could see Joe in him – something in the eyes – and she remembered him when he was Conor’s age. Quiet and serious, but stockier, less frail. But then he’d never had to go through what Conor had gone through. She stroked his calf again. He was so thin. There was barely any flesh on him. Had Ashkani given him anything to eat? She doubted it. Why would he, when he wanted to keep him compliant in the hours leading up to his death?

‘Are you hungry, sweetheart?’

No response.

Eva chewed on her lower lip. ‘I’m going to go downstairs, find you something to eat.’

Silence.

Descending the stairs, clutching the banister so hard that her knuckles went white, was among the most painful things she’d ever done and by the time she reached the ground floor she was gasping in agony. Even though it was fully light outside, it was gloomy in this shabby hallway, and just as gloomy in the kitchen. All the cupboard doors were open – Eva vaguely remembered that Joe had come downstairs to fetch water – but there was no food. Just mouldy bread and tins of Whiskas, and they hadn’t been reduced to that yet.

A noise at the front door. She stopped dead.

Her pulse thudded in her ears. But there was no other sound. She crept out of the kitchen, doing all she could to ignore the stabbing pains in her side, holding her breath, clutching the gun.

The hallway was undisturbed, the door shut. She took another few paces.

There were letters lying on the doormat. They hadn’t been there before. With a surge of hope, she struggled to the door, fumbled desperately with the latch and opened it. A red mail van was pulling back onto the road – thirty metres away.

Help.

Eva stumbled outside and waved her hands in the air. She tried to shout, but lacked the strength for more than a feeble croak.

‘Don’t go…’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t…’

But moments later the van was gone. All was silent, and they were alone again.

It was everything she could do to stop despair from overcoming her. She wanted to hammer her fists against the cold stone walls of the house. Think of Conor, she told herself. He needs you. She stepped back inside, closed the door and hobbled up the stairs again.

The boy hadn’t moved. She had to do something for him. She couldn’t just sit here, getting weaker and weaker and worrying about whether Joe had managed to raise the alarm. The wild look in his eyes as he left had lingered with her. She pushed from her mind the idea that he wasn’t in control.

Joe had said this was Ashkani’s safe house. Surely he would have food here – something the boy could eat. She stared helplessly at the boxes on the floor. There were so many of them. Where to start?

The largest boxes were the two to the right of the wardrobe. They were sealed with so much packing tape that it took her two or three minutes just to open the first one. It was only half full with toiletries: shaving gel, razors, toothbrushes, everything Ashkani might need to take care of himself. The second box was filled with a bewildering array of medicines, most of them with long names Eva did not recognize. She emptied both of them onto the floor, hoping to find something to eat hidden among the bottles and boxes. There was nothing. She spotted a box of codeine and swallowed a couple of tablets. She didn’t know if it would do any good for the splintering pain in her side, but it couldn’t harm her.

Which box to try next?

It was a smaller one that caught her eye. The bizarre thought came to her that it looked like the box in her attic that was full of baubles for the Christmas tree she decorated every year. She limped over to it, knelt on the floor and started picking at the packing tape with her broken nails. As she tore off the tape, the top layer of cardboard came with it.

When she saw what was inside, she held her breath.

The box was brimful of ammunition. Eva had received very little firearms training, but she recognized the magazines full of rounds and the neat little packs of plastic explosive. There were wires and battery packs and even four small canisters that looked like grenades. Sitting on top of all this equipment, however, was something that perplexed her.

It was a small tray, about eight inches by four, wrapped in a cardboard sleeve that was emblazoned with the British Airways logo. Eva picked it up. It was heavier than she expected for an airline meal, but that was what it must be – food. She noticed that, despite not being chilled, it had no smell. Eva stared at it, barely daring to slide the tray out of its paper sleeve. What would Ashkani be doing with an airline meal in a remote safe house?

Her mouth was dry, her limbs heavy. She removed the sleeve. The food tray had a foil lid, crimped around the edges, though it was clear that even if the tray had once been factory sealed, someone had opened it. She pulled the foil off.

She almost dropped it with shock.

The tray was divided into compartments: one for the main meal, one for dessert, another for cheese. None of them contained food. The two larger compartments had been filled with a substance resembling bright orange plasticine. Each had a small metal probe attached to a red wire that snaked into the third compartment, where two AA batteries were nestled in a battery pack.

Eva swallowed hard, then laid the tray gently back on top of the ammunition.

She stared at it.

Then she looked up at Conor, who was still lying on his side.

She heard Joe’s voice: ‘Maybe the fucking pilots are involved… or the baggage handlers…’

Or the catering staff.

‘If some fucker wants to blow themselves up…’

Unless you know how they’re going to do it. And suddenly, Eva realized, she did.

0915 hours.

The wind on the Second Severn Crossing buffeted Joe. But he neither reduced his speed, nor looked left or right at the mist-shrouded expanse of the estuary around him. If the police stopped him, it would be a fucking disaster. But if he slowed down it would be disastrous too. He had no choice but to push on at full throttle.

The moment he’d cleared the estuary, he turned off the M4 and headed south. Time check: 0926. Thirty-four minutes to go. His fuel level was low. Fuck! There was no time stop. He screamed past an Asda van and was rewarded with a deafening klaxon and, he saw in his side mirror, a wanker sign from the driver.

A sign overhead: Bristol International Airport, ten miles.

At his current speed that would take between seven and eight minutes.

He looked up. A helicopter had appeared in the sky. He knew its shape: an Agusta A109, the aircraft on constant standby at Hereford. Joe estimated that it was two miles ahead. Was it the Regiment? Some other agency?

Could he have been spotted?

He pushed away the thought and sped on.

Eva switched on her phone. She didn’t really expect to get a signal, but she moved closer to the window, holding the handset up against the pane, hoping she might just pick up one in this remote place.

Nothing.

‘Conor,’ she whispered, doing everything she could to keep her panic under control. ‘Conor, you have to listen to me.’ She gently shook his shoulder. He just stared into space. Then he blinked, but nothing more.

‘I have to leave you here, sweetheart… you’ll be OK. Just… just wait for me to come back. I’ll be quick, I promise…’

If he understood what she was telling him, he gave no sign of it. Eva rearranged the coat over him once more – she didn’t know what else to do. She limped towards the door, gave a final look over her shoulder, then closed it behind her and struggled down the stairs and outside.

It was cold. She should have put on the old woman’s coat but she didn’t dare return for it. She stared at the screen of her phone. Ten past nine: fifty minutes to find a signal and somehow raise the alarm. She’d barely struggled twenty metres, past the boundary fence and onto the road, before the piercing agony of her wound made tears streak down her cheeks. She fixed her eyes on the phone, muttering prayers under her breath that the service bars would spring into view.

She couldn’t think about the pain. All she could think about was the little tray packed with explosive, her mind full of images of metal trolleys being pushed down the aisles of airplanes in flight, and of hunks of metal plummeting from the sky. She limped and winced, and occasionally groaned. But she kept on walking, as fast as she could.

0430 hours EST.

The departures lounge at Tampa International Airport was not busy. At this time of the morning there were only two kinds of passengers: professionals, whose jobs dictated they should book themselves onto the ‘red-eyes’ in order to make their meetings in distant parts of the country, and those whose circumstances dictated that they take advantage of the cheaper fares of these early-morning flights.

For these passengers there were only a handful of distractions. A single coffee shop was open, and it was here that some forty bleary-eyed travellers had congregated, trying to perk themselves up with shots of espresso. Opposite, a clothes store selling gaudy swimming shorts and tropical shirts already had Katy Perry booming from its ceiling despite the early hour. It was brightly lit and staffed by a young woman with three nose piercings, but was otherwise empty. The neighbouring drugstore was quieter, and only fractionally busier. A middle-aged businessman was buying toothpaste and roll-on deodorant. Behind him, a short, rather dumpy young woman with Middle Eastern looks carried a wire basket containing mouthwash, sanitary pads and two bottles of shampoo.

She paid for her items using cash, stowed them in her plain brown shoulder bag, then stepped out onto the concourse and looked up at the departures board. Her eyes scanned down the list of flights until she found hers. Flight number: AA346. Destination: New York JFK. Time: 0500. Gate: 24. Status: boarding in twenty-five minutes.

There was a line of ten plastic yellow chairs in the middle of the concourse facing the coffee shop. She took a seat here and placed her shoulder bag next to her, waiting patiently for her flight to be called. Her eyes caught those of an older man sitting at the edge of the coffee shop’s seating area. He had a bottle of mineral water in front of him, but he wasn’t drinking it. He broke their gaze as soon as it connected. Ten seconds later a voice came over the Tannoy: ‘This is an announcement for all passengers travelling to New York JFK on flight number AA346. The gate for this flight has changed owing to a technical difficulty. Please now proceed to Gate 3, where your flight will shortly be boarding. All passengers for flight AA346 to New York, please proceed now to Gate 3, where your flight will shortly be boarding.’

The woman looked up at the departure board. Sure enough, the gate number had changed. She glanced over at the man who had just dragged his gaze from her. He too was staring at the board.

She stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder. The man picked up the briefcase at his feet and went to join the crowd of people that were starting to cross the concourse, following the signs for Gate 3.

0930 hours.

Terminal 5 at Heathrow was a great deal busier than Tampa International. It was later here, and the passengers were swarming – scanning their passports at the self-service check-in desks, greeting and saying farewell to loved ones. The air rang with echoing announcements – security warnings and final calls. ‘Passengers for flight BA729 for Dublin are requested to make their way to Gate 12, where boarding will shortly commence.’

The 186 people who, having heard the announcement, started to filter out of the shops and restaurants and seating areas in the direction of Gate 12, made no impression on the thousands of other passengers milling around, waiting for their own flights. Why would they? They were not out of the ordinary. Just normal men, women and children. Preparing to take an uneventful flight.

Unaware anything might be wrong.

0935 hours.

Joe skirted south along the western edge of Bristol International Airport. Somehow he needed to gain access to the airfield.

He was off the main road now, speeding along a deserted lane. Every 100 metres or so there was a little cluster of red-brick houses, long since left empty because they were so close to the airport. Beyond the houses he saw glimpses of overgrown gardens and tumbledown sheds. Then fifty metres of wasteland. And then the wire fence, easily five metres high and topped with razor wire, that marked the airport’s boundary.

Unscalable. But not impenetrable.

Joe stopped by one of the empty houses. The front garden was a jungle and the windows were boarded up. There was, however, a cracked tarmac driveway leading to the back of the house. He dismounted and let the bike fall. He was clearly alongside the runway now, because he could see and hear an EasyJet flight rising in a straight line into the air, about 200 metres to his east. The roar of its engine thundered across the sky. A hundred metres beyond it he could see the Agusta circling. To have a chopper in the airspace around a commercial runway was unusual. That it appeared to have followed a route similar to his own was suspicious. They were looking for someone.

He ran five metres along the cracked tarmac and into the back garden, crashing through metre-high grass and thistles to a dilapidated shed at the end. The door came off in his hands as he pulled. Inside it was filled with cobwebs and old paint pots. There was a mouldering deckchair and three dusty demijohns. Then Joe spotted a pair of rusty secateurs. He grabbed them and scaled the wooden fence at the end of the garden, before sprinting across the wasteland between the house and the airfield’s boundary.

The EasyJet plane that he had seen taking off was a speck in the distance to the south. By the time, half a minute later, that Joe had reached the fence, a second aircraft, with a logo he didn’t recognize, had taken its place. Not that he was paying much attention to it. The secateurs in his right hand were stiff and blunt and it was with difficulty that he cut through the reinforced wire of the airfield’s perimeter fence. He’d made twelve incisions before he had created a hole large enough to stuff through the bag containing the sniper rifle, and then himself. The jagged wire cut through his clothes and into his arms.

Time check: 0939. The Agusta was still hovering 300 metres away on the far side of the airport.

As far as he could see in front of him, there was a open expanse of airfield. If the guys in the Agusta had eyes out for him, there was nowhere he could hide from them. He had two or three minutes before they spotted him. If that.

He had to focus on just one thing. A diversion. Big enough to put the shits up every air-traffic controller from Bristol to Bangalore. And he had less than twenty minutes to do it.

0440 hours EST.

The waiting area for Gate 3 at Tampa International’s departures lounge was filling up. Two smiling air hostesses stood at the entrance, inserting the boarding cards of each of the passengers and checking that their features matched the image that appeared on the screen in front of them, before ushering them through with a cheery ‘Good morning’. The grunts they received in return were, in general, not friendly. The passengers for flight AA346 were tired from rising early, and not pleased with the long walk to this gate in an isolated part of the airport. It didn’t stop the two hostesses from sounding chirpy.

When a plain-looking young man wearing a University of Miami sweatshirt and carrying a bright orange shoulder bag handed over his card, there was nothing to give the two young ladies any indication that he was not a student. But then an FBI air marshal who was scanning the assembled passengers for suspicious-looking personnel noticed the way he was avoiding eye contact with his five colleagues who had already passed through.

A bland voice from the Tannoy: ‘This is the final call for flight AA346 to New York. Will any remaining passengers please proceed directly to Gate 3, where your aircraft is ready to board.’

Five minutes later a middle-aged man with a grey beard and wearing an airport uniform approached the hostesses. ‘All passengers accounted for?’ he asked them.

They nodded, and when the man took hold of the microphone that they themselves would normally use to address the passengers, the two hostesses exchanged a glance. This was unusual. But they were practised at looking unflustered, and their faces registered no surprise when he spoke. ‘Excuse me, folks, if I could have your attention. As you know, we’ve encountered a few technical difficulties with our gate system. We’ve arranged for some buses to take you directly from your gate to the aircraft. If I could ask all passengers sitting in rows A to G to make their way to the first bus, we’ll have you all boarded and in the air in no time at all.’

He released the button on the microphone and turned to the hostesses. ‘Emergency code Alpha Twelve,’ he breathed. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

The two young women looked startled. One of them glanced over her shoulder. Standing in the stark white corridor twenty metres distant from the gate, she saw two broad-shouldered men. They were wearing holiday gear and carrying shoulder bags. But they didn’t approach the gate. They didn’t move at all. They stood there, human barriers, waiting for anyone who felt the sudden need to run from the gate.

0940 hours.

Eva fell.

She cried out as her phone dropped to the ground, and although she barely felt the strength to stand up, her hand shot out to check it wasn’t damaged. The screen was still intact. But there was still no signal.

Mustering all her energy, she got to her feet again. The bandage around her waist was soaked with blood – the wound was suppurating again. She put it from her mind. The road was heading uphill to a rise thirty metres away. Her teeth grinding, her jaw set, she limped on.

0945 hours.

Joe ran north, keeping close to the perimeter fence. Airport security was always tight, but whether anyone had eyes on the right place at the right time was impossible to predict. Joe just had to keep to his plan, and that meant following the runway up towards the taxiing area, and from there in the direction of the terminal building.

A hundred metres passed. Two hundred. The Agusta was still circling in the sky above the far side of the runway, about a half klick from his position. He counted three aircraft queuing for the runway and a fourth accelerating down it. He could see the terminal now, a quarter klick to the north-east. He stopped and crouched down low in a patch of long grass, before removing the telescopic sight from the bag and using it to scan the intervening ground. There were a number of vehicles: passenger buses, forklifts for the luggage and small trucks that refuelled the aircraft, their sides emblazoned with green BP logos. Three of the fuel trucks were parked in a line, 100 metres to the east and adjacent to a steel hut. Two men, dressed in blue overalls and with ID tags clipped to their chests, were standing and talking between the hut and the fuel vehicles. One of them had a cigarette behind his ear, unlit while he was in the vicinity of the aviation fuel. Panning south he saw two airport security vans 300 metres away on the other side of the airport; as he moved the sight upwards, he got a closer look at the Agusta. There were no distinguishing marks to indicate whom it contained.

Joe stowed the sight away, making calculations that were second nature to him. How quickly could he get to the steel hut, and could he do it without being seen? Twenty seconds max, he reckoned. As for remaining unseen? No chance. The two men by the fuel trucks were looking in his direction, and it wasn’t like he had time to wait for them to wander off for a slash.

Stealth wasn’t an option. The only tools available to him were speed, and when he got there, brute force.

He felt for the handgun he’d taken from the drug dealer what seemed like days ago but was only the previous afternoon, then pushed himself to his feet and started to run.

Joe ate up the first fifty metres in less than ten seconds, and as he reached that halfway point he thought he might be getting away with it. The two airport workers were just staring at him stupidly, their feet glued to the ground.

But with forty metres to go, the two men had turned and were going into the hut. They had definitely seen him. Joe forced himself to move even faster. After another ten seconds he had burst through the door of the hut, weapon in hand. The place stank greasily of aviation fuel. One of the men had a telephone to his ear, the other was just standing in the middle of the hut, frozen with fear.

‘Get on the fucking floor!’ Joe roared, aiming his pistol first at one man, then the other. ‘On the fucking floor, now!’

Both men dropped to the ground.

There was no time to restrain them. Joe had to put them out of action, and fast. He turned the gun round to hold it by its barrel, then slammed the grip down on the back of each man’s head, knocking them out cold.

Joe straightened up. He could hear the tinny, urgent sound of a man’s voice from the telephone handset. He ignored it as he slipped his bag from his shoulder and took out the components of the sniper rifle. He fitted these together, each section clunking solidly into its neighbour until, fifteen seconds later, the weapon was ready to use. He pulled out the ammunition and loaded up, then looked once more around the hut. A steel cabinet standing against one wall, lockable but open, contained six keys hanging on hooks. Joe grabbed them all. The rest of the hut was a jumble of tools, jerrycans, greasy rags – everything needed to keep the fuel trucks on the road. Stashed in one corner were five handheld air-traffic-control beacons, each a couple of feet in length. Joe grabbed one and, beacon in one hand, sniper rifle in the other, ran back outside.

He knew he had less than a minute – the alarm had been raised by a phone call – and although the Agusta was still circling, it would be heading in his direction any moment. Joe sprinted towards one of the fuel trucks. A dial on the back indicated that it was three quarters full. He ran round to the cab, laid his rifle on the tarmac and jumped up into the driver’s seat, pulling the keys from his pocket one by one and trying them in the ignition. The engine started on his fifth attempt. Joe pressed his foot on the brake, then knocked the automatic gearbox into drive.

The sound of sirens reached him. He blocked them from his mind as, foot still awkwardly pressed on the brake, he manoeuvred himself into a position half in, half out of the cab, clutching the beacon and preparing to jam it against the accelerator.

A hundred metres away, a plane was turning onto the runway, and the Agusta was suddenly changing course.

Heading in his direction.

He pressed the beacon against the accelerator and released the break. The truck slid forward. With a sharp jab, he forced the opposite end of the beacon against the front of the driver’s seat and let go.

The truck continued to move.

Joe jumped out.

As he ran back to the sniper rifle, the air was filled with a riot of noise: the sirens were getting louder, the engines of the aircraft were rising in pitch as it prepared for take-off, the rush of the Agusta’s rotors was getting nearer. Joe flung himself on the ground, grabbed the rifle and took up the firing position.

The fuel truck was accelerating towards the plane that had stopped at the end of the runway in advance of take-off. It was twenty metres away – then thirty – heading at right angles towards the runway. Joe was right in the zone. There was no longer any panic or fear. Just a ruthless, clear-headed determination. He had to turn this truck into a moving fireball. It was his only chance of seeding panic in the international air-traffic control network. His only chance of keeping flights on the ground.

He fired a single shot into the truck’s massive fuel tank. He didn’t expect an explosion at first, even with this HEI round. Aviation fuel was not as flammable as regular petrol, and even that was difficult to explode without a bit of help. Unless he got oxygen into the tank, the plan was fucked.

The Agusta was directly over the moving truck. He heard a strident voice coming from a loudspeaker. ‘Stand away from your weapon! Stand away from your weapon!’

The truck had swerved. It was heading towards the aircraft standing at the end of the runway. Joe fired a second round. He saw it impacting, but there was no explosion.

The Agusta was touching down, just fifteen metres to his right. He had one more chance. One more shot.

He fired.

An immense explosion was followed by a massive fireball of orange flame and black smoke. The blast knocked the fuel truck onto its side and boomed out over all the other noises. The ground shook. The heat radiated towards Joe’s face – a harsh burning that he felt singe his hair and skin. Immediately he rolled away from the rifle, flinging his hands up to his head. The noise all around was deafening – from the Agusta’s rotors, the burning truck, the sirens on two airport security vehicles as they roared up and came to a halt just metres from where he was lying.

In seconds he was surrounded. Five flak-jacketed armed police with MP5s dug into their shoulders, the barrels pointing directly at Joe, each of them screaming instructions at him: ‘Don’t move! Keep your hands on your head!’ Two more officers arrived. They rolled Joe onto his belly and jerked his hands behind his back. He felt cold metal against his wrists as they cuffed him.

He started to shout. ‘Listen to me! You’ve got to listen to me! Ground all flights!’

But the only response was rough hands pulling him to his feet. ‘We know who you are! Get into the fucking chopper now…’

‘Listen to me! Listen!’

But nobody listened. They just shoved him, stumbling, through the downdraft of the helicopter and into its body. The MP5 barrels didn’t deviate. The shouting didn’t stop.

‘There’s going to be an attack! I know which planes! I know which fucking planes!’

‘Shut him up!’ roared a voice.

Joe felt a boot in his stomach knock the wind from his lungs. He tried to shout again, to tell them, but it was no good. Now he couldn’t even speak.

The chopper was already lifting off.

He’d failed.

It was five minutes to ten.