Oh, fuck, what was that?
Monk jerked suddenly, and let out an involuntary cry of surprise as Harrison glimpsed the flash of grey matted fur and long wormlike tail. Tiny claws scrabbled over his shoulders and down his back and disappeared to terrorise the rest of the SAS follow-on team.
Harrison shut his eyes. Bombs were one thing, rats were quite another. Monk was on the move again; Harrison wriggled on after him.
Meanwhile, four storeys above his head, the emergence of the Attack Barrow on the forecourt was causing continuing panic amongst the AID AN team. McGirl was on the landline.
He had to shout to be heard above the tumultuous roar of the helicopter outside. ‘What’s going on? Get that bloody robot out of here!’
The police negotiator was unmoved, his words silkily reassuring: ‘It’s purely routine. You’ve told us you’ve planted explosives on the door. The helicopter can’t land in the vicinity until they’ve been cleared.’
‘You lying bastard! You haven’t agreed at all!’ McGirl accused.
‘Of course, if you’re prepared to disarm the devices yourself…’ McGirl slammed down the handset. He was shaking with suppressed anger.
‘What is it?’ Clodagh demanded. The entire building appeared to be trembling in the downdraught of the helicopter’s rotors.
‘It’s a trick. They’re trying to break in at the south end.’
The sudden crack of a gunshot came from the window where Muldoon stood. ‘Hit it!’ he cried.
McGirl rushed to his side.
‘Sod!’ Muldoon said. ‘It’s still moving.’
Now the Attack Barrow was close in to the building, directly beneath them. It was impossible for Muldoon to fire from that angle without exposing himself to an army sniper round.
They heard the crack and fizzle of the cutting charge as it blasted a hole through the door. Then the mechanical wheeze was quite audible as the Attack Barrow edged forward like a curious animal, its TV camera nosing in for a closer look.
It had been assumed that the south end would be similarly rigged to the north end which Harrison had reported as being a horizontal Claymore device, a cut-off pressure gas cylinder, probably packed with nuts and bolts, It was, but where the north had been triggered with a light-sensitive cell, this one had been wired to an ultrasonic car alarm from an accessory shop.
Clodagh glanced at McGirl and shook her head.
The explosion rocked the entire building.
‘CHR-I–I-ST!’ Muldoon uttered as the remnants of the Attack Barrow blasted out across the forecourt, pieces of metal clanking discordantly onto the concrete.
There was a long moment of stunned relief, despite the continuing drone of the helicopter above their heads. Clodagh and McGirl joined Muldoon at the window with an exhilarating sense of triumph.
‘Well done, Clodie,’ McGirl said. ‘That’ll make them think.’
But it was a feeling of elation that was to be short-lived. The now familiar and irritating whir of mechanical defiance reached their ears again. Around the edge of the gate peered the Wheelbarrow that had taken out the culvert bomb, its disrupter recharged and looking for business.
In the outfall pipe, Harrison suddenly found his face next to Monk’s enormous rubber-soled boots. The sergeant major was standing in the vertical brickwork shaft, his arms outstretched in order to grip the steel manhole plate and push it aside. In the confined space the grating sound as it slid over the concrete was deafening.
Then Monk was scrambling for a foothold, drawing up his full sixteen-stone bodyweight on his immense and powerful biceps. His hand reached down, offering a wrist-to-wrist fisherman’s grip to pull Harrison out of the hole.
Breathless from the exertion, the SATO crouched, panting, until the next soldier was up, ready to repeat the process with those who followed. Looking around the deserted ground floor he could see the remnants of steel footings that had once bolted machinery to the floor, now covered in debris and accumulated rubbish from tramps, vandals and glue-sniffers over the years.
Monk indicated for the first man to wait, well clear, until the north-end stairwell had been cleared, then followed Harrison as he picked his way towards the inner door that opened onto the stairwell.
Harrison stopped there and, reaching out a hand, tapped the lens of the torch hooked to Monk’s chest. The SAS soldier nodded and switched it off.
An Allen cold lamp would be used now, a small book-shaped container of grey enamel with a handle on top and a diffused fluorescent tube in the leading edge.
He closed his hand around the door handle and pulled gently.
It was locked. Monk saw the problem. The SATO couldn’t use a small explosive charge because there was a light-sensitive bomb on the other side of the door. Monk delved into his pocket for his leather wallet of standard-issue lock-picking tools. Kneeling down in the light of Harrison’s Allen lamp, he inserted one of the steel prongs and began to manipulate the tumblers.
Anxiously Harrison counted the seconds, his mind returning yet again to his son, sitting somewhere above their heads. And again he tried to push the picture from his mind.
Then from the far end of the building, they heard the sound of the second Wheelbarrow as its mechanical arm began ripping away the loose wreckage of the door to gain access.
Monk nudged him. Their inner door was now unlocked and Harrison slipped through, reaffirming as he did the positioning of the light-sensitive slave switch on the stairwell wall. He played the Allen lamp down over the bricks. There it was facing him, the blocked mouth of the cylinder, a thin crust of cement holding the lethal concoction of ironmongery and explosive. A sort of enormous and crude Claymore-type affair. A blunderbuss of horrendous destructive power, half buried in removed bricks, aimed straight at his groin as he reached up, feeling in the dim light for the linking wire.
Nothing. Just red dust crumbling under his fingertips. He spread his palms, probed around. He was starting to sweat, the lenses fugging and the smell of rubber from the respirator overpowering.
That was when he felt the tension, something rubbing against his knees. He went to kick away whatever was snagged in the material. Something stopped him. He directed the Allen lamp down his body. Half expecting a piece of old bedspring — there was a rotted mattress dumped in one corner of the entrance — his heart skidded as the light picked out the gleaming monofilament thread.
Christ, tripwire.
Monk heard the expletive in his earpiece, came forward.
‘ What is it, Tom?’
‘By my knees, a wire.’
The sergeant major knelt, his face close to the transparent nylon thread, difficult to distinguish through the perspex goggles. As Harrison played the light, he traced it back to the source. One end of the wire had been wound around a small length of wooden dowel. It was held in position by a clothes peg, itself attached to a small power unit and a separate charge of Semtex which filled a hole where a brick had been at the bottom of the stairs. Had the dowel been pulled and the jaws of the peg closed, then the circuit would have been completed.
This second boobytrap device hadn’t been in place when Harrison had left the building earlier.
‘Ease back,’ Monk instructed. ‘Real slow.’
Harrison moved one foot. The wire slacked. Then he shifted his second leg.
Monk’s mouth was parched. ‘You’re clear.’
Harrison crossed to the secondary device and, almost angrily, snipped the wire and shoved the dowel securely home. That would do no harm now; it would have to be fully disarmed later.
He turned to the light slave cell, traced the wire and cut it in two places. The Claymore device itself would have to be left until later; any antihandling mechanism might have been fitted, maybe a simple pressure switch or trembler that would trigger if disturbed. The battery power source itself was hidden somewhere within the brickwork.