'And if Will Jackson needs any back-up whatsoever — men, equipment. I'm sure he's well prepared, but the offer's there.'
Pankhurst rolled his eyes. 'You know what these SAS boys are like,' he said. 'They'd rather accept help from St Trinian's than Delta Force. Question of pride, I think.'
Priestley looked confused. 'St Trinian's?' he asked. 'Who are they?'
Pankhurst smiled tiredly. 'Never mind, Don,' he said. 'Never mind.'
Will looked up at the imposing building in front of him. About twenty miles south of London, nestled in the chalky North Downs of Surrey, two miles from the quaint market town of Dorking, Maple Hall was a large, deserted country house. Will had specified to Pankhurst on the flight back from Poland exactly what it was he wanted. Ideally, it should be somewhere Ahmed knew, because that would bolster his confidence, make it more likely he would try and spring Latifa. It needed to be somewhere fairly large, so that their Afghan terrorist would feel he had options when it came to devising an approach route. But there also needed to be space around the building, so that the SAS team could keep up a high level of surveillance. When Faisal Ahmed approached, they wanted to know about it.
From his satellite phone on board the plane, Pankhurst had come up trumps. Maple Hall was just right.
The spook who had driven Will and Kennedy there from Brize Norton had told him something about its history. During the Second World War it had been a regional centre of operations. After the war, it had become a barracks of sorts, a place for soldiers and special forces on training exercises in this part of the world. For the last fifteen years, however, it had been pretty much out of service, one of a number of MOD buildings that were kept on simply so that the Government had somewhere private and out of the way, should they ever need it. Ahmed had been debriefed here on his arrival in the UK. He wasn't the kind of guy anyone wanted strolling straight into Thames House, after all.
It was a grand building, imposingly square with a high, pitched roof. If a child were to draw a picture of a house, it would end up being a similar shape to Maple Hall. The high walls were a faded, crumbling yellow and each side of the house had four large, tall windows. The main door had once been painted red, but the paint was now peeling off; however, the window frames seemed sound. A straight road led up to the house, with neatly trimmed lawns. You'd be able to see anyone approaching from that direction; not that you would approach from there, if you wanted to do it surreptitiously.
Country roads ran along the west and south sides of the house; the remaining sides, as well as the areas beyond the roads, were densely forested and ran uphill to the east. Along the east side — the back of the house — there was a high fence, beyond which was a footpath that led uphill into the forest and the North Downs beyond. The two SAS men — Drew had been sent back to Credenhill with a shopping list for the armourer — walked around the house and recced the surroundings.
'When he finds out where we are,' Will said, almost to himself, as they walked round the house, 'he'll come at us from the woods.'
'How do you know it'll be just him?' Kennedy asked.
'Everything we know about him points to him being a loner. He'll be by himself.'
Kennedy shrugged. If you say so, he seemed to say. 'He'll definitely avoid the road,' he added. 'He'll know it's too easy for us to set up surveillance and he's not to know Five have decided not to give us any support.'
'They've got their reasons,' Will told him.
'I bet they fucking have,' Kennedy replied.
Will stonewalled him. He knew that Pankhurst's decision not to set up a cordon around the house was the right one. If MI5 had a mole feeding intel to Ahmed, that would be a sure-fire way of ensuring he knew their every move. Kennedy and Drew wouldn't see it like that, however.
Kennedy looked up at the walls of the house. 'We can set up motion-sensor alarms to cover the area surrounding the house. That way we'll know as soon as he makes his approach.'
Will looked up and narrowed his eyes. 'He'll be expecting that,' he said, distractedly. 'Means he'll come at us hard and fast. If you were him, how would you enter?'
Kennedy thought for a moment. 'Depends where I thought you were located,' he said. 'On the ground floor, then through the window of whichever room you're in. Tear gas, stun grenades, the works. NV if it's after dark.' He grinned. 'Three to one's not my kind of odds — I wouldn't want to come at you unless I had some pretty heavy weaponry.'
Will nodded. 'And if we were upstairs?'
Again Kennedy thought. 'Avoid the main entrance, obviously. You'd have the advantage of height and could take me out immediately. I guess I'd try to scale up to the roof then swing in through the window again.' He looked sharply at Will. 'But that takes time and with the motion sensors we'll be ready for him.'
Again Will nodded his head, more slowly this time. They started walking to the main door of the house. 'There's no way we can fool our target into thinking that this is anything other than a set-up. If he's as good as I'm told he is, he'll know where we are and how many of us there are. He'll know we're waiting for him.' He chewed absentmindedly on his lower lip. 'We can cover all his possible entry points and try and second-guess him as much as we can, but the one thing we need to prepare for is the one thing we can't predict.'
'What's that?'
Will sniffed. 'Well, I don't know… The unexpected, I guess. Ahmed's only chance of success is catching us unawares. We need to make sure he doesn't do that.'
They walked up into the house and continued the recce. Inside it was in reasonable repair, but it had the atmosphere of a place that had been deserted for a long time. There was a stale smell and the high-ceilinged rooms echoed in the way only places that have not been lived in for many years ever do. There were items of furniture here and there, but Will had the impression that they had been left only because nobody had bothered to take them away, not because they were intended to add anything to the general comfort of the house.
There was a large hallway at the end of which was a sweeping flight of stairs. To the right, off the hallway, was a large kitchen with a big open fireplace and a tiny electric stove — decades old — precariously connected to the house's ancient wiring. In the corner was a door which opened on to a flight of steps leading down into the basement. Will and Kennedy examined it, but the floor of the basement was knee-deep in water, so it was no place for them to camp out.
On the other side of the hallway, opposite the kitchen, was a huge room that went the entire length of the house. There were two massive windows looking out, but aside from an old sofa and a table that had seen better days, there was nothing in there.
The stairs led up to the first floor, which was divided into four rooms, each with large windows on the outside walls. A hallway divided them down the middle. They unanimously decided that the room on the north-eastern corner would be the most advantageous position for them to set up, as they would be able to maintain surveillance on the forested areas to the north and east. Offering a vast expanse of cover, these were the directions, they decided, from where Ahmed was most likely to come at them. The room was also opposite the bathroom — surprisingly small for the size of the house — which meant they didn't have to move far.
By the time they had made their decision, Drew had arrived with a van full of equipment. They talked him through their plans and he nodded with approval. Only when they had finished did he speak. 'If I were him I'd try to disable us using gas — CS, something non-lethal if his sister is in the same room.'
'You brought gas masks?'Will asked.