Siege

Nineteen

THE PLAN CALLED for the utmost speed when taking control of the building.

Already things had got out of hand with the assault on the kitchen. Fox had told the men to fire some warning shots to encourage the staff to comply, but the inside man, Panther, had gone crazy, shooting dead at least three people and panicking the others, several of whom had tried to escape. The result had been more people shot down by other members of the team. The Dane, Tiger, had been pretty liberal with the bullets as well, the sadistic bastard. Fox knew it was time to restore discipline, otherwise they’d provoke an early assault from the security forces, which would mess up everything.

As Wolf took hold of the hotel manager, an attractive blonde in a smart trouser suit, and began barking out orders, Fox grabbed Panther by the collar of his waiter’s uniform. He thrust his face in close to the other man. ‘No more unauthorized shooting, or you die too. Understand?’

Panther’s eyes blazed with anger, but Fox was undaunted. The little shit could glare all he wanted. He might be Wolf’s fellow countryman, but he still had to know who was boss.

‘Understand?’

Panther nodded, and Fox motioned for him and the ex-marine Leopard to follow as he ran through the door that led into the lobby, holding his AK-47 out in front of him. He’d set his stopwatch the second the first shot had been fired, and as he came out into the hotel’s immense lobby it read sixty-two seconds.

The kitchen was supposedly soundproofed, but as Fox moved into the lobby the first guests were already hurrying towards the main doors, while the door staff, decked out in their ridiculous tasselled uniforms and peaked caps, had come inside to see what the commotion was. As soon as they saw Fox in his balaclava with the AK and the other two coming in behind him they started bolting for the exits.

‘Everyone on the floor!’ Fox yelled. ‘Now!’

Almost all of them obeyed, but one guy, a businessman in a suit, who’d almost made it to the doors, clearly decided to take the risk and keep going. There was no way Fox could let him go. It would be a show of weakness, and he was too pumped up for that anyway. He’d always found something exhilarating about shooting people – it was the hunter in him – and it was the reason he’d joined the army. He was no indiscriminate killer, he always needed a reason; but give him one and he never hesitated. Flipping the AK to his shoulder, he took aim and, as the man’s hand reached out to push open the glass door, he fired a single burst of automatic weapon fire into his back. The force drove the target into the door with an angry thud. There was the sound of breaking glass, and a second later he collapsed.

Fox looked round the room. ‘Anyone else try anything, they die too.’

No one did. They lay still, faces squashed into the expensive-looking burgundy carpet. There’d be no further resistance here.

Fox motioned for Panther to stand guard over their new hostages, hoping he wouldn’t decide to start shooting them, and took Leopard through the adjacent corridor and into the main bar and restaurant area, where there was now outright panic. People were running around looking desperately for a way out. Unfortunately for them, although there was a bank of windows looking on to Park Lane and Hyde Park beyond, their only obvious means of exit was through the main lobby of the hotel. It was one of the reasons they’d picked the Stanhope as a target. It was easy to corral their prey.

At this time of the afternoon there were also exactly the right numbers. Fox estimated that there were about fifty people in all in the restaurant and bar, a manageable mix of afternoon teas, business drinks and the first of the after-work crowd. An hour later and there’d have been too many; an hour earlier, too few. Like everything else about the op, they’d planned the timing of the assault carefully. Publicity-wise, five p.m. GMT was perfect. Their audience would be eating breakfast in LA, getting ready for lunch in New York, heading home from work in Europe, and sitting down to dinner all across the Arab world. Even in Pakistan, India and beyond people would be up and tuning in to what was happening on a billion television sets.

Soon the whole world would know about them. It was an intoxicating thought.

Once again, Fox yelled at everyone to get down on the floor, putting a burst of fire into the ceiling to encourage them.

There were a few screams, and everyone hit the deck. They really had little choice.

When they were done, Fox walked into the room and began his prepared speech, delivered in a non-specific eastern European accent he’d been working on for the past few months. He spoke loudly, but with a deliberate calmness. ‘Please do not be alarmed. You’ve been taken hostage by the Pan-Arab Army of God. As long as you cooperate, no harm will come to you, and you will be released when our demands are met.’

‘What are your demands?’ came a male voice from somewhere in the middle of the restaurant.

‘Who said that?’ demanded Fox, taking a couple of steps forward.

A balding businessman reluctantly put up an arm.

‘Get up.’

Slowly the businessman got to his feet, palms outstretched in the universal gesture of non-confrontation. He was overweight with a florid expression and an air of self-importance. ‘It’s just I may be able to help. I’m a—’

Fox shot him in the chest with a three-round burst. He knew that the cardinal rule of hostage-taking was to establish total control over your hostages, and that meant eliminating any challenges to your authority quickly and ruthlessly.

Screams and terrified gasps immediately filled the room but Fox ignored them and kept on talking. ‘As I was saying, you will all be released when our demands to the British government are met. In the meantime, you are to do exactly what you are told. Any failure to comply, or any attempt to escape, will result in the same punishment I’ve just meted out to Mr Loudmouth here. Do you all understand?’

There was a low and not particularly enthusiastic murmur of agreement.

‘On my command you are all to get to your feet and form two orderly lines. It doesn’t matter which line you’re in, so don’t waste time choosing. You’ll then follow me out of the room, and in silence please. My colleague here will be bringing up the rear. We’re going to go upstairs to the next floor. Anyone trying to stay behind will be shot on sight. If you want to live, you’re going to have to do as we say.’

The threat of violent death is a highly effective method of concentrating the mind, and within seconds the hostages had got themselves into two long, roughly even lines that snaked across the restaurant floor, including several people who’d come out from where they’d been hiding behind the bar.

Fox motioned to Leopard to go to the end of the lines and bring up the rear. They’d trained for this on many occasions and everyone knew exactly what to do. He gestured for the two people at the front of the lines to follow him, then backed slowly out of the room, keeping his gun trained steadily on them.

Wolf and the others were already in the lobby and in the process of taking the remainder of the hostages, including the traumatized kitchen staff, up the marble staircase that led to the next floor and the hotel’s ballroom.

As Fox backed up the staircase with the two lines of hostages following, he saw a handful of people standing a few yards beyond the main glass doors. Most of them were talking into their mobiles, or staring at the shattered glass with the smear of blood across it and the body of the man he’d shot a few minutes earlier, who was still lying just inside the entrance to the hotel. A few of the sick bastards were even using their phones to film the scene. It seemed to Fox that everyone was a voyeur these days, preferring either to film or watch events rather than help shape them. It was one of the key differences between them and him.

He knew it wouldn’t be long before the first police arrived on the scene. Fortunately, they were unlikely to be armed, since less than seven per cent of officers in the Met were authorized to carry guns, and even if one of the mobile armed response vehicles did turn up, they were trained to act with extreme caution and wouldn’t attempt to penetrate the building at this stage.

Still, the ground floor was going to need securing quickly.

The ballroom was the perfect location for holding the hostages. It was a cavernous place with no windows or natural light, and like the main restaurant and bar area, there was only one way in or out, making escape impossible and severely limiting the scope of an assault by the security services to free them. Once again, it was why they’d chosen the Stanhope – and proof, thought Fox, of the effectiveness of good surveillance.

The hostages themselves were largely calm and quiet as they were shepherded over to the far end of the room and made to sit down. There were about eighty altogether, and all adults, which made things a little easier. After the earlier shootings, no one was asking any questions or trying to engage in amateur negotiation. A couple of the kitchen staff had minor injuries, but none were seriously wounded. All the seriously wounded were still in the kitchen, and they were going to have to be finished off since there were neither the resources nor, to be frank, the desire to do anything to save them.

When everyone was sitting down and four of the men had formed a guard around them, Wolf approached the group, still holding the blonde hotel manager by the collar of her jacket. He forced her to her knees in front of him and stood legs apart, chest puffed out, looking every inch the man in charge, as he delivered his own speech to the assembled hostages, which was pretty much a rehash of Fox’s but with an added harangue about the crimes of the West, and the UK in particular, against the Muslim world. He finished by ordering everyone to turn off their mobile phones and put them on the floor where they could be seen.

There was a flurry of activity as the hostages complied, after which they sat staring intently at the floor as Wolf moved his AK in a lazy arc from one hostage to another.

The first part of the operation was complete. The hotel was under their control and the hostages subdued.

Fox looked at his watch. The time was 16.55.