‘POTUS has left the Music Room. Bamboo to move in nine minutes. On my mark. Three, two, one, mark.’
Joshua could not place the American accent in his ear. It was East Coast, but where? The failure irritated him more than it should. Joshua’s obsession with detail – with control, with ritual – was shared by millions across the globe. To most it was debilitating. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, capable of ruining lives. For Joshua it was something else. His was a career where attention to detail could be the difference between life and death. In that world, Joshua’s condition had helped create the perfect killer.
Joshua synchronised his watch on the speaker’s ‘mark’. He felt his synapses fire as he did so, fuelled by another surge of addictive adrenaline. The transmission had come from the Presidential Protective Division, bringing complete focus to Joshua’s mind. In exactly nine minutes the presidential motorcade would leave Buckingham Palace. It would then make its way along The Mall before arriving in Trafalgar Square in just under thirteen minutes’ time. As always, the Secret Service was running like clockwork.
And so was Joshua. The effects of adrenaline differ from person to person. In most it leads to fight-or-flight. In others – fewer – it leads to paralysing terror. And in fewer still it leads to a cold clarity of thought. Where time seems to slow. Where every action is considered. Calculated. Lethal. Most would call it sociopathic – or worse. Joshua called it professionalism.
It was that professionalism which now took hold. With one sweeping movement he scanned the rooftops for the seventh and final time. A number that had long given Joshua comfort. Seven reviews of his surroundings. Seven confirmations that the team was in place, that every one of the sharpshooters was where he or she should be. Between them the team covered Trafalgar Square from every angle. But none of their angles mattered. One single line of sight would count today.
It was already Joshua’s.
It was another perfectly planned detail from his employer. By now Joshua expected nothing less. The twenty-man team of marksmen and women had been cobbled together from a political tug of war. Half had come from the US Secret Services’ Counter Sniper Support Unit, which left a ten-man British contingent. Five from Protection Command. Five from Counter Terrorism Command. Or at least that had been the plan.
Joshua had replaced the senior CTC operative at the eleventh hour. He had not allowed himself to ask how this had been achieved. Sure, he was curious to know. And someday he might even find out. But for today it was enough that – somehow – he was a part of the very team assigned to stop him. In a decades-long career Joshua had found many ways to get close to his targets. None had been so steeped in irony.
He turned his scope back to the square. It had been thirty minutes since he had first looked down. The crowd inside the hoardings – the temporary barrier between invited guests and the massing public – had tripled in that time, to full capacity. Two thousand men, women and children. All patiently baking in the unseasonable October sun.
As far as Joshua was concerned there could have been ten thousand. Or just ten. He was interested in only one.
A small, wiry man, dressed in ageing tweed and sitting in an aisle seat twenty-three rows back from the stage. Exactly as Joshua’s instructions had predicted. The motorcade was still minutes away but Joshua’s target was in place. From this moment that target would not leave his line of fire.