The section leader shook his head slightly, and Cole could see the subtle relaxation of the other men’s trigger fingers. For long moments, nobody moved, and nobody talked. Cole pressed the gun harder into the short man’s temple as he saw the small black holes at the end of the multiple barrels all pointing unwaveringly at him. The other occupants of the room just held the floor for dear life, not even risking a glance upwards. The huge lounge was eerily quiet.
The section leader at last made his move, and placed his weapon down on the ground in front of him, standing with his hands held out placatingly in front of him. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘Just let him go.’ He turned to his men. ‘Hold your fire,’ he ordered them. ‘Okay. We’ll get you out of here.’
‘Do it now!’ Cole shouted, trying to ignore the man’s attempts to relax the situation; Cole wanted everyone to remain tense, keyed up.
‘Please, just calm down,’ the section leader said calmly. His words were designed to be soothing, to lower Cole’s guard; but his actions betrayed him. A brief flicker of the man’s eyes upwards told Cole everything he needed to know, and suddenly time seemed to slow for Cole. It was a sensation he had experienced before in such adrenaline-charged situations, where the mind seemed to subconsciously grasp the severe danger of the circumstances, and automatically changed the way the brain interpreted its signals and perceived time. What happened next occurred very slowly for Cole, but was over in mere seconds.
Cole’s head first of all snapped to the right and up, in the direction of the section leader’s quick glance. His gun hand was moving too, as he already knew what would be there; his prior survey of the room had provided the clue. His trigger finger depressed just fractions of a second later, the bullet finding its target just instants after that. The sniper that had entered quietly through the mezzanine level door and positioned himself over the library balcony, to the right and slightly behind Cole, was rocked back by the impact. The body fell backwards into the doorway, jamming the door open, whilst the rifle fell from the man’s hands onto the carpeted floor of the landing.
The heads of all the men in the security team turned to look at the descending rifle, mesmerized for precious instants, and Cole took the opportunity to act. Pushing the short man away from him into the centre of the room, Cole took two quick shots towards the men as he raced for the staircase just fifteen feet away to his right. Both rounds hit their targets, and the two snipers on each side of the room were both hit.
As Cole sprinted for the relative safety of the stairs, the six remaining men regained their senses and opened fire. Mercifully, the confusion caused them to forget to lead their target, and the bullets instead tore through the air behind Cole, allowing him to reach the stairs unscathed. As he carried on up the stairs, the rounds from the assault rifles chased him, obliterating the carved wooden banisters just inches behind him.
The men started to rush towards the stairs themselves just moments later, but Cole was already at the top. Instants later, he had dragged the dead sniper through the doorway, the heavy door slamming shut behind him. The section leader, the first up the stairs, heard two more shots from the other side of the door, then there was silence. He reached for the door handle and tried to open it, but found it locked. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed, before clicking the microphone on his collar. ‘Open the doors! Now!’
39
Cole looked at the three dead bodies on the floor of the corridor in which he now found himself. There was the sniper, and two others that he had found when he had dived through the doorway. Luckily, Cole had managed to take advantage of their surprise and get two rounds off before they could react.
He then looked to his left, and confirmed with satisfaction what he thought he had seen through the doorway when he had glanced towards it earlier — a window. But something more than that; a way out.
40
The section leader waited impatiently at the door as his order was transmitted to the electronic security centre, buried deep within the bowels of the building. Simon Edwards was a Sergeant with Army Special Forces, although he had been seconded to a special section specifically recruited for the protection of the London safe house. As he counted down the seconds until the door swung open, the only thought going through his head was that he had failed. It was his section’s job to make the safe house physically safe, and this crazy bastard had already killed several of Edwards’s own men.
When the door opened, he would have to catch this guy, whoever he was. That was another thing that grated. Normally he would be given details of every visitor to the house, no matter how important they were. He hadn’t even been given a name for this guy — orders from the top. But, Edwards promised himself, names are for tombstones; he was going to kill the man personally.
Finally, Edwards heard the click of the locks come open. He organised his men with quick hand signals, then kicked open the big, heavy door, submachine gun tucked tight into his shoulder as he entered the first floor corridor.
At first, he didn’t even notice the three dead bodies. His attention was instead captivated by the hallway window; or, rather, the lack of it.
He understood instantly how Cole had done it. The glass had been armoured, naturally, and was rated as strong enough to withstand even the high-powered rounds of a sniper rifle. But not, Edwards could now see quite plainly, five carefully placed such high-powered rounds, fired at point blank range.
The veteran Green Beret sergeant looked down and saw Hendriks’s discarded H&K SH rifle, lying in a pool of blood that still oozed out of a pulsating wound in the man’s neck. Another one gone, Edwards thought to himself. Damn. Brannigan and Fitch too, he now noticed, and although two of his men hurried to administer first aid, Edwards knew it was too late. They were already dead. Son of a bitch.
Edwards ran to the window as his men continued checked the bodies. Leaning out of the shattered window, he peered into the rear yard, the muzzle of his weapon tracking the same line as his vision. Nothing, he thought with wonder. There wasn’t a trace, not even a mark in the fresh snow.
The thought suddenly struck him that maybe the man had gone through one of the other doors in the hallway. He was about to come back in and get an interior search organised when a noise from above stopped him. Not much of a sound — a faint whump, followed by a few shards of falling ice — but he knew instantly what it meant. In the blink of an eye, he snapped his gun upwards and depressed the trigger.
41
Two floors up, Cole barely managed to get his last foot over the edge of the slippery, tiled roof before it erupted in a sudden explosion of gunfire from below.
Damn. He’d hoped to be quick enough that they wouldn’t see him, and therefore would suspect that he was still somewhere in the building, having used the shattered window as a diversion. Meanwhile, his plan was to make his way across the rooftop to a point further down the street, then to come down on the other side.
The drainpipe and ledges he’d used to climb up the side of the building had unfortunately proved to be that little bit too icy, however, and with bare hands and leather soles, the ascent had taken longer than anticipated. Now the building’s security team would put men on both sides of the building and send others up to the roof; they’d probably cordon off the entire street before long.