The morning was cold, but dry at least. No sign of any sunlight yet, the area outside the prison lit up only by the sporadic street lighting and the orange glow that encircled London like a forcefield.
Angel kept her head down, the cap pulled low so her face was shielded from the CCTV cameras. She knew exactly where each one was positioned and hadn’t moved from this exact spot – where she knew she’d remain most concealed – in the twenty minutes since she’d arrived.
The number of reporters and photographers had steadily grown in that time. As Angel stood with the backpack over her shoulders and the camera in her hand, she was just one of them as far as everyone else was concerned. She counted twenty-four people in total now. Not a complete circus, although she expected perhaps more would be present outside Woolwich Crown Court to welcome Karaman there – not that he’d make it…
Despite the huge furor that had blanketed the UK’s press over the last few days, after news that Ismail Karaman had finally been captured and brought back to the UK to face historic terror charges, Angel knew the world was a different place now. In the early part of the twenty-first century, especially immediately after 9/11, the war on terror in the Middle East had been all-consuming for the West, and Ismail Karaman had made his name as one of the main instigators of a swathe of attacks against the US and the UK in the years that followed. Back then Karaman had been vilified by nearly everyone, called out for his heinous crimes by all who mattered. Yet even as Angel had scoured social media that morning, she’d seen post after post not just from nutjobs but from sometimes prominent left-wing journalists who now called into question the narrative. Claiming Karaman was misunderstood. That his actions years ago were not those of a terrorist but of a rebel, striving for justice for an oppressed people. That the US government in particular was the real aggressor and the responsible party for the deaths of the terror attacks. And those views weren’t confined to Karaman’s actions, but to other prominent terrorists too, Bin Laden among them.
It made Angel hate Karaman even more. From what she could see, many of the followers of such rhetoric were the younger generation. People who hadn’t been born or were only tiny children at the time of 9/11. She had been young then too. She’d signed up for the army still a teenager and had been heavily involved in the still waging conflicts in the Middle East in the many years that followed. Most of the younger generation had grown up in a safe haven for the very reason that people like Angel had put their lives on the line to prevent such atrocities as 9/11 from reoccurring.
Now people were calling for this man, this monster, to be freed and returned to his homeland. Claiming that the powers that had brought him back to the UK were the evil ones, circumventing laws like political bulldozers in the process of extraditing him to face what they claimed couldn’t possibly be a fair trial.
Angel let go of the camera. She’d been crunching it under her grip, channeling her distaste and anger that way. An ache shot down from her shoulder and into her arm – pain from the fight with Mason a few days ago. But it dissipated, or she at least blocked it out as she looked across the group of people and to Mason on the other side. He gave her a look. A look that said… She didn’t know what.
A murmur spread across the gaggle of people. Angel heard noise from beyond the huge metal gates. Four police officers came out of a side entrance, bright yellow hi-vis jackets on, G36C Heckler and Koch carbines in their grips. Two stood on either side of the gates as sentries, their faces hard and their stances purposeful.
They’d expected the armed officers. They’d deal with it. Angel glanced over at Mason again, but he was paying her no attention now.
That was fine. It meant he was ready, that there were no problems.
The gates rolled open, the flashing blue from behind them becoming more and more engulfing the wider the opening became. Two police motorbikes crawled out first. An armored van next. Then the prisoner transport van. Another two motorbikes at the rear.
Cameras clicked and flashed. Everyone in the group jostled for position knowing that within seconds the motorcade would be gone.
Angel heard a rumbling noise from further afield. No one else paid attention initially, too busy focusing on the vehicles in front. But she braced herself because she knew.
As the gates slowly rolled closed, the motorbikes at the front looked like they were about to take off to lead the vehicles – with Karaman on board – away, but then one of the officers put his foot down onto the tarmac and looked to his left. To where H in his van was steaming toward them. Then the crowd finally realized too. People started murmuring, questioning, then pushing and shoving. Finally shouting when they realized that the speeding van was headed straight for them.
Angel pulled the balaclava over her head. Mason had done the same. No one had noticed at all. She took hold of the camera. Unscrewed the large lens…
She looked over at Mason and he nodded.
She didn’t even see him draw the weapon, he was so fast. The next moment the barrel of his AK-47 pointed in the air and he let rip.
The booming gunfire had the desired effect. Within a couple of beats, the group of civilians were in pure panic. Some dove for the ground. Others ran in all directions, into each other even, shoving others to the ground.
H’s van blasted onto the scene and swiped right into one of the police motorbikes sending the driver flying. Tires screeched as he slammed the brakes but the van didn’t stop in time before it smacked into a traffic bollard. Exactly where he’d intended to be because with the gates almost closed again, the motorcade was now blocked in. They had at least thirty seconds before the gates opened again to give the transporter the chance to retreat. Hopefully more. Easily enough to immobilize Karaman’s van.
Angel charged forward, hunched down, tossed the lens – the explosive – under the transport van. She raced around to the back and pulled the sticky bomb from her backpack and slammed it onto the locked door.
She turned and darted away, heading for H’s van for cover.
Boom.
The first explosive detonated, and as she skidded to a stop and turned. The transport van was in midair, fire billowing from underneath. It had only just crashed back down when the second bomb exploded and Angel ducked and covered herself as the blast wave and grit and small shrapnel burst toward her.
A momentary lull followed. Literally a moment, because as she was still recovering her senses H jumped out of his van and let rip with his AK-47.
‘Go get him!’ he shouted out to Angel.
She raced for the mangled van…
* * *
Ryker knew something was wrong when he heard the engine in the near distance, the vehicle approaching from the far side of the emerging motorcade and at speed. Winter had gone, leaving Ryker standing outside, by the entrance still, his belongings in his pocket as he decided whether to walk into the city or call for a taxi. And then, he needed to decide what he’d even do when he got to the city. Find a hotel? Get the first plane out of the country? That was clearly what Winter wanted.
Those thoughts still rumbling, Ryker looked from the transporter that he knew Karaman was in and over to the fast-approaching van. The photographers and reporters hadn’t noticed, too busy trying to get a glimpse of Karaman as though doing so would be some mega scoop.
Ryker looked from the van to the policemen on foot, to the motorcade, back to the van.
No. That thing wasn’t stopping.
And Ryker was still debating what it meant, what he’d do, when booming gunfire burst through the air. Not the police, as he at first thought, but a shooter, dark clothes, head covered with a balaclava. People raced about like headless chickens. The four armed officers on foot… They hunkered down, likely trying to hurriedly work out a plan of action that wouldn’t involve shooting through a group of scared pedestrians.
The onrushing van sped past and Ryker winced as it only narrowly missed pulverizing one of the officers on the bikes before it smashed into a traffic bollard.
Then Ryker saw them. Another balaclava-clad attacker. But this one looked to be a woman. She raced for Karaman’s transporter, chucked something underneath…
Not something. He knew what it was.
Ryker raced forward and ducked down and held an arm to his face at the first explosion. He had to drop flat to the floor for the second, the force of which would have smacked him off his feet otherwise.
He jumped back up. Smoke, fire, chaos all around. A second shooter jumped out of the now smashed-up van. He let rip with an AK-47. But… Blanks. They were firing blanks. Otherwise, there would have been bloodied bodies lining the tarmac already.
Ryker spotted the woman who’d laid the two bombs. She rushed for the back of the transporter. Ryker raced that way too. Shots from the police officers were ringing out now – and it was live fire from them. Blood burst out of the leg of a photographer who was hit in the crossfire and he collapsed to the ground screaming. The shooter from the van pulled a pistol. Two quick shots at the policeman. Two hits. But the shots were muffled. Not from a silencer. There was no explosive. She was firing darts.
The woman dragged Karaman from the transporter. Ryker was about to dive forward and tackle her until a bullet whizzed by his ear and he ducked and the next moment a figure bundled into him from behind, knocking him to the ground.
A big bulky figure wearing hi-vis.
The police officer barked at him as they wrestled. Tried to cuff him. Perhaps he even recognized him from the prison and thought the attack was down to him.
‘I’m not one of them!’ Ryker roared.
The officer took no notice so Ryker had little choice. He took hold of the guy’s wrist, turned it inside out, and bounced to his feet and thumped his heel down onto the man’s knee. Ryker twisted further on his arm, pulling the officer onto his back, his hand up above him, bones pushed to bursting.
‘I’m not one of them,’ Ryker said again a moment before a dart whizzed into the officer’s stomach. Ryker wrestled the policeman’s gun free and raced for cover on the other side of the transporter. He quickly glanced around. More police officers were swarming now from inside the prison, but not many were armed. Several were on the floor already, not moving.
Ryker spotted one of the attackers, edging away, along the road, as he fired his rifle indiscriminately toward the crowds. Blanks again, he was sure.
The others?
There. Two of them. Running across the grass, toward the trees. A road lay the other side, a hundred yards away. One of them was the woman, her frame much slighter. She was pulling Karaman who couldn’t take the weight on one of his legs. Her accomplice provided covering fire.
Ryker set off after them. He checked the weapon he was holding as he moved. A carbine. A good weapon. Compact, light. Accurate at distance. He lifted it, not breaking stride. Heard shouts behind him. He didn’t turn, didn’t pay the shouts any attention until bullets pinged into the ground by him.
The police were shooting at him!
He darted to the side, turned, and fired off, deliberately missing the chasing figures but causing the two police officers to cower back at least. He ran for the trees. Ryker heard an engine again. But it was not the same van as before. The revs were more high-pitched. He looked to see a car speeding from the other side of the prison, from where he’d seen the shooter heading moments before. The vehicle was gunning toward his friends.
Ryker lifted his weapon again to the threesome ahead of him. He fired a single shot to gauge his aim. The bullet smacked into the ground a few inches from Karaman’s trailing leg. Ryker slowed a little to take a more accurate aim.
Bang.
He hit the woman in the ankle.
Bang.
He hit her accomplice in the back of the thigh.
He would have gone for center mass, but he was sure they’d both be wearing Kevlar and he wanted them down.
The woman stumbled and went to the floor. The man collapsed forward, rolling along the grass.
The car…
Was heading right for Ryker now.
He sank down to his knee, and let rip. Bullets pinged into the metalwork, into the windscreen. Hard to tell in the dark but he must have hit the driver…
Definitely hit, because just as Ryker was about to dive out of the way, the car suddenly swung right as though the driver had involuntarily tugged on the wheel. It careened over the grass, jolting over a hump before it smashed into a tree.
A police motorbike raced toward Ryker from the prison. He fired one more shot. Missed. But the rider pulled on his handlebars and the bike skidded and the rider toppled and bounced along the ground.
The officer would be fine. Most likely.
Ryker went to move but again had to cower, this time behind a tree, as more bullets came his way from the police. He sent covering fire back toward them, spun back the other way…
Where’d the other two attackers gone? Where was Karaman? Ryker couldn’t see them at all.
He made a dash toward the smashed car. He looked through the broken driver’s window.
‘Damn it!’
He noted the empty but bloodied seat, the passenger door wide open.
He looked up to see the man hobbling away toward a parked van on the road ahead. The other two were even closer to it, only a few yards from the door.
The woman, still dragging Karaman, looked behind. Spotted her friend. He beckoned her. She shouted out in warning as Ryker lifted his weapon and fired.
Four shots. Leg first, then torso and the man twisted as he fell and at least one of the bullets sank into his side. Under his Kevlar? Maybe, because he didn’t move as he lay on the ground.
Ryker renewed his focus on the woman. Pushed on. Her other friend was nearly at the van but she was lagging behind with the extra weight of pulling Karaman with her.
‘Stop!’ Ryker shouted out, but, if anything, his instruction caused her to find extra strength and move faster. Ryker took aim once more and pulled the trigger but received nothing but an empty click in return this time.
He was out. He had no more magazines. He tossed the weapon and sprinted and the woman only realized he was on her at the last second and yelled in panic – was she yelling at Ryker or her friend? Ryker wasn’t sure. But she let go of Karaman and turned and ducked and…
Ryker ran straight through her. He took her around the thighs and lifted her off the ground and thumped her down onto the soggy ground.
She tried to hit him, to claw at him as Ryker wrestled for control of her arms to pin her down. He managed it for a mere couple of seconds, ripped off her balaclava.
Ryker stared down at her face. A momentary pause in the chaos before he heard the engine revs and looked up to see the van’s brake lights flick off before it shot away.
‘Looks like you’re on your own.’
But she wasn’t finished fighting. She writhed and bucked and hauled up a knee which dug into the small of Ryker’s back. She twisted her shoulder and pulled one of her arms free and flailed at him. She hit him in the face and then in the kidney as Ryker fought for control once more.
Then a gunshot from the side. The police. Ryker hunkered instinctively, defensively, and the woman took her opportunity. Her free hand grasped at her side and Ryker only saw the pistol at the last moment as she pushed the barrel up toward his chest.
He grabbed her wrist and twisted off her to create a moving target and as they tumbled he fought to take the weapon. She fired and Ryker sucked in air at the jabbing impact…
Not a bullet. If it’d been a bullet, right there by his heart, he’d have been dead in seconds. But the shock was enough to give the woman the advantage, and with the dart sticking out of his chest, she wrestled free from Ryker’s grip and rushed for the road.
Ryker went to stand. Noise all around him. Police officers closing in. He glanced at the ground where moments ago the shooter from the car had laid. Gone now too.
Ryker tried to speak but couldn’t. Tried to move forward but he fell down onto one knee.
Feet thudded around him. Warnings were shouted. Hands in the air. Ryker couldn’t even if he tried.
He face-planted the floor and seconds later was out cold.