Revenger

58

Carver and Alix had spent a little more than an hour together before he finally rose from the bed, showered and got dressed: clean underwear and T-shirt, but the same jeans, body warmer and suede jacket. He picked up his iPad and put it in a small leather satchel he’d used for carry-on baggage on the flight from DC. He was wearing his money-belt, too; this time he had no doubt that he would need it.

Alix was still in bed, watching him go about his business. Carver kissed her, walked across the room and then stopped at the door.

‘Wait for me,’ he said. ‘I will come back for you. I swear I will.’

He took the lift down to the ground floor. In the foyer two cleaners were deep in conversation with one another, talking in a foreign language Carver didn’t recognize. The girl behind the reception desk was reading a book and didn’t look up as he went past her and exited through the security barriers. He came out on to Knightsbridge and spent another five minutes standing in a cold, biting wind until a taxi came along.

‘St Thomas’ Hospital,’ he said.

‘It’s mental round there tonight,’ the cabbie said.

‘Well, get me as close as you can.’

Carver got in and took out his iPad. Looking ahead, he’d foreseen a number of occasions when the screen on his smartphone wouldn’t be good enough for what he had in mind, and this was one of them. The floor plans of St Thomas’ were all online, and there were also photographs of all the corridors and doorways for the benefit of wheelchair-users. From this Carver discovered that the intensive care unit was on the first floor and was accessed via powered, inward-opening double-doors precisely 1,470mm wide. ‘There is a buzzer to press to the left of the doors which when pressed will open automatically.’ Well, the syntax was pretty clumsy, but the meaning was clear enough. And there was more: ‘The automatic doors remain open long enough for a slow-moving person to walk through.’ Carver planned to be moving fast, but if he didn’t keep his wits about him, someone else would have time to get in after he did.

The taxi crossed Westminster Bridge and turned right at the roundabout on the far side. Carver put the iPad away as they pulled up opposite the drive that led to the hospital’s main entrance. ‘Sorry, mate, can’t get you any closer,’ said the cabbie. ‘Like I said, it’s mental down there.’

The whole area was jammed with police cars, emergency vehicles and media vans. Carver paid and walked through the chaos. Reporters, paramedics and nurses jostled against armed policemen. The normal A & E entrance was almost two hundred metres away on the far side of the complex, but there were so many victims needing admission that every possible way in was being called into action. And since most of those victims were already dead, A & E was hardly relevant anyway.

There were police guards at the door. Carver flashed an MOD identity card from his money-belt and was asked his business. ‘A bomb went off. A former Marine was killed. That makes it Ministry of Defence business.’

‘What part of the Ministry of Defence?’ the policeman asked.

‘A part I’m not prepared to discuss. Just let me through.’

The policeman looked uncertain. But before he could think of what to say or do next there was a shout of, ‘Get out the way!’ behind them, and a crash team appeared, racing towards the door with a patient who was still alive. The policeman stepped back to let them through and was then distracted by the arrival of two other people: a tall, broad-shouldered woman and a younger, black man. The policeman suddenly stood tall, and said, ‘Evening, ma’am,’ as the woman went by.

In the confusion Carver slipped into the entrance lobby, turned right and walked through what had been a mini shopping-mall, though the WH Smith, Marks & Spencer Simply Food and assorted coffee shop signs now stood above empty units. The corridor was filthy. The whole place felt like a third-world hospital in the midst of a civil war. He walked through a glazed lobby where a bitter draught blew between the holes in smashed panes, and into another one of the hospital’s towers. Two long corridors took him past a bank of lifts, surrounded by people waiting for the next ride up, to a door that opened on to a stairwell.

The walls were covered in graffiti, and the staircase was entirely deserted. The only sign of life was a small puddle of urine beside the landing wall. Half of it had evaporated, because the mark of the puddle’s original edge was clearly visible, and it had evidently been left to dry out undisturbed. Obviously the stairs were hardly ever used. That was useful to know.

Carver went up to the first floor and there, right in front of him, were the double-doors to the ICU.

Another police officer was standing in front of the doors. He was fully dressed in the combat gear of an armed surveillance unit: a Heckler and Koch G36 assault rifle in his hands; a Glock pistol holstered on his right thigh; Kevlar body armour; a balaclava covering his face; and a headset that held a headphone over his left ear and a mic by the side of his mouth. It was wired to an encrypted digital radio attached to the webbing by his left shoulder.

The cop was a big lad and he was armed to the teeth, but he was also carrying at least ten pounds of excess weight, so he wasn’t in prime condition. And judging by the way he reacted with a start as Carver came through the door from the stairs, he’d not exactly been on a heightened state of alert. It was a tendency Carver had noticed in the police at the airport, too. They assumed that if they showed everyone their guns nothing could possibly happen to them, and that made them careless. He’d walked within two or three feet of men with their backs turned to him. It had struck him that if he’d meant them harm, they’d have been dead before they’d even known they’d been attacked.

Carver showed this one the MOD pass and said, ‘I’m looking for a patient. A big man, bigger than you. He was brought in here earlier this evening suffering from serious gunshot wounds to his right shoulder. He must have had emergency surgery. The only name we have is Curtis. Is he in there?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you couldn’t read. My name’s Jenkins.’

‘Don’t get smart with me… sir,’ the policeman said. ‘Wait…’

The police officer put his left hand up to the radio unit and tilted his head to speak into his mic. Carver hit him very hard with the palm of his hand on the exposed side of his chin and then stepped forward, inside the barrel of the gun. He grabbed the balaclava and smashed the policeman’s head against the metal frame of the double-doors: three quick, brutal impacts. He felt the body go limp and let it fall to the ground. Carver picked up the G36 rifle and slung it over his shoulder. A metal carrying handle was attached to the policeman’s webbing to make it easier to drag his body to safety, should he be wounded. Carver grabbed it and pulled the unconscious body back through the door into the empty stairwell. He extracted the Glock from its holster and stuck it in the waistband of his trousers.

Carver had no intention of getting into a serious firefight, particularly not in the middle of a hospital, and so had no need of a semi-automatic assault rifle. But since he didn’t want anyone else using it either, he unslung the G36, removed the two small locking pins from the receiver unit, unclipped the grip and trigger mechanism, and threw the locking pins down the stairwell. The G36 was now useless. Time to make sure the cop was, too.

Carver took the man’s laces from his boots and used them to secure his hands behind his back. He removed the headset, twisted the balaclava so that it was back to front, completely covering his face, then replaced the headset to keep the balaclava in place. He took the belt from the cop’s trousers and draped it round his masked head, forcing his jaw open and placing the thick leather between his teeth. Then he pulled the belt as tight as it would go so that it acted as a gag. Finally he pulled off the cop’s boots and trousers and tied the trousers tight around his ankles, rendering him completely immobile.

Now he dragged the unconscious body to the edge of the downward stairs, pulled it out a little further and draped the policeman’s torso face down over the first few steps. His chin rested on a step, forcing his lower jaw to press hard against the leather gag. He was blind and dumb, his hands were tied behind him, and his feet couldn’t move. It was safe to say that he was no longer a threat.

Carver went back upstairs, pressed the buzzer by the doors and walked into the ICU. The first part of his mission had been accomplished. Now he just had to find Curtis.