so expertly trained – would have extracted their MP5 assault rifles from the safe in the troop-carrier’s floor, and would now be disembarking from their vehicle in ‘stick’ fashion, as they’d rehearsed so many times – straight into that focused fusillade, the stream of red-hot .303 slugs cutting through them like a buzzsaw.
‘No … pleeease …’ screamed a shrill voice behind.
Though it required a heart-straining effort, Braithwaite managed to roll over and look the other way. His eyes alighted on Sergeant Mulligan, lying face-down, a wound like an axe-chop in the middle of his stiff blond crew-cut. But he also saw their assailants, for the first time up close: ski-masked, gloved, wearing dark combat clothing. They stood around on the road in no particular formation, talking idly, dressing their smouldering weapons down.
‘Tavor TAR-21 … Beretta MX4 …’ he mumbled, eyes flickering from one gun to the next. ‘Chang Feng … SR-2 Veresk … SIG-Sauer MPX … Mini-Uzi …’
No doubt it was the stock of one of these that had crashed against his cranium, and Mulligan’s too … but in Christ’s name, this was a devil’s brew of hardware! Where had the necessity arisen to pack such firepower?
Behind him, meanwhile, the heavy machine gun had ceased to discharge. One by one, the other, lesser arms also fell silent … so now he could hear additional voices. These too sounded relaxed, some were even chuckling. It was over, the fight was won – and they were enjoying the moment.
‘Pleeease …’ the frantic voice cried again.
Ahead, a small clutch of gunmen pushed and kicked the two Norfolk motorcyclists across the road. The motorbike cops hadn’t been armed to begin with, and had now been stripped of their helmets and hi-viz jackets; their faces were badly bloodied.
‘Into the ditch,’ said a casual voice.
The ambushers did as instructed, shoving the motorcyclists down into a muddy hollow running along the verge, where they were told to sit and keep their hands behind their heads. None of this made sense, Braithwaite tried to tell himself. This was ridiculous, insane …
One man in particular emerged from the ambushers’ ranks. He too wore gloves and dark khaki, while an assault rifle – an L85 – was suspended over his shoulder by a strap. But he was more noticeable than the others, because if he’d been wearing a woollen balaclava before, he had now removed it – which was never a good sign. He was somewhere in his late thirties, with smooth, clean-shaved features and a head of tousled sandy hair.
Braithwaite tried to swallow a spreading nausea as the man strode up to him and peered down, almost boyishly handsome and yet with an ugly right-angled scar on his left cheek. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. His accent was vaguely Scandinavian.
‘B … Braithwaite …’
‘You command here?’
Braithwaite tried to nod, but the pain in his head was turning feverish and the vision in his right eye blurring. He had a horrible suspicion his skull was fractured. ‘My … my sergeant,’ he stammered, indicating Mulligan’s body, though another of the ambushers was already kneeling beside it.
The kneeling man glanced up and shook his head with casual indifference.
‘Make sure,’ the Scandinavian said.
A pistol appeared – an Arcus 94, and three quick shots rang out, each one directed into the back of Mulligan’s already shattered skull.
‘What …’ Braithwaite tried to speak, but phlegm-filled vomit frothed from his mouth. ‘What the … the fuck do you think you’re … what the fuck …?’
‘Put him with the others.’ There was no anger in the Scandinavian’s voice, but it was firm. It brooked no resistance.
Braithwaite was taken by the elbow and yanked to his feet. He went dizzy, pain arcing down his spine, and had to be forcibly held upright while they patted him down. His Glock, the only weapon he was carrying, was confiscated and he was walked – though it was all he could do to stumble – across the road, and dumped down into the ditch alongside the motorcycle cops, both sitting hunched forward, hands behind their heads. There were others there as well: the two prison staff and the two medics from the ambulance. Perhaps unsurprisingly, but no less horribly, there was no one from either complement of men who’d been riding in the gunships.
Fleetingly it seemed as if the hostages were forgotten, some of their captors keeping half an eye on them, but the rest moving back and forth along the cavalcade, which was now a scene of unprecedented carnage, the police vehicles reduced virtually to wreckage. There was still fire and smoke, and a stench of burning flesh. The crew from the first gunship lay in shapeless bundles, rivers of blood crisscrossing the road on all sides of them. The ambushers stepped into and around this without any concern.
Braithwaite, who thought he’d been about to faint as they’d steered him towards the ditch, had now recovered his composure a little. He eyed the ambushers as closely as he could. For the most part they were nondescript even in their urban terror gear, the masks rendering them indistinguishable from one another. They seemed fit and organised, and something else was now clear – they were multinational. They openly conversed, and though it was all in English, he heard various accents – one was Cockney, another sounded Russian, another Australian; in another case, he detected a twang of the USA.
The thing was, they were so calm. The men they’d just mowed down were on-duty cops – at least some of them might have got radio messages out, and yet these guys were walking around as if they had all the time in the world. But then, maybe they did. The nearest place was still the prison, but that was ten miles away, and no help could be expected from there anyway. It was easily another twenty miles before the next area of conurbation, but what use was that? This prison transport had been kept well under wraps. The best they could hope for was a response by routine unarmed patrols – but how could they cope with a situation like this? With such overwhelming firepower?
A sudden clanking of gears drew his attention elsewhere. A monstrous vehicle, previously hidden in the darkness beyond the smashed Peugeot, rumbled to life, a battery of brilliant headlights glaring out from it. Slowly and noisily, a bulldozer came shuddering into view, its huge steel digging-blade canted downward. It briefly halted, but when orders were shouted by the Scandinavian, it altered direction and continued apace, connecting with the Peugeot, and with a clangour of grinding metal, shoving it sideways across the road. Braithwaite’s injured scalp tightened as he watched the massive mud-caked tracks pass over the body of the fair-haired girl, crushing her flat, pulped organs splurging outward.
When the wreck had been thrust across the ditch and into the marshy blackness on the other side, the dozer straightened up and halted on the verge, its engine chugging. A second vehicle emerged from the darkness behind it, this one reversing. It was an everyday high-sided van, but its sliding rear door was already open and inside Braithwaite glimpsed the sterile whiteness of an improvised medical chamber. It bypassed the prisoners and continued down the bullet-riddled ruins of the cavalcade, finally stopping next to the ambulance.
With great care, several of the ambushers lifted the prone shape of Peter Rochester, now on a wheeled gurney, neck-deep in woollen blankets, from the back of the ambulance, and placed him into the van. One of them climbed in after him, carrying his drip. With a clang, the sliding door was closed, and the prisoner’s new transport jerked away, accelerating up the road and vanishing into the night. About fifty yards ahead, on either side of the tarmac, other vehicles now throbbed to life, their headlight beams cross-cutting the dark in a shimmering lattice.
The ambushers sloped idly in that direction, guns at their shoulders, chatting. There was no triumphalism, no urgency – they’d got what they came for, and the job was done. The sandy-haired Scandinavian strode among them.
‘Are you … are you maniacs out of your minds?’ Braithwaite couldn’t resist shouting. ‘What the hell do you think you’ve done here? Do you really think you’ll get away with this?’
Almost casually, the Scandinavian diverted towards the ditch side,