Cyberstrike by James Barrington (best english books to read .txt) 📗

All around him floated scattered timbers that had, just a matter of a minute or two earlier, formed part of the hull of the cabin cruiser. In front of him the plastic-wrapped mass of improvised explosive charges was very clearly still in one piece, presumably being kept on the surface by the air trapped within it.

And as he looked around him in shocked desperation, he realised what must have happened. The crack he had heard could only have been the sound of the blasting cap firing. But because the ANFO hadn’t exploded, that meant the detonator must have been pulled out of the lump of Semtex plastic explosive when the cabin cruiser was torn apart. They had only had a single blasting cap, so there was no possible way that he could still initiate the explosion.

That in turn meant that their mission had failed. They – he and Khalid – had failed. And that was the bitterest pill of them all.

Even as this realisation dawned on him, the battered bow of the Targa smashed into what was left of the cockpit, flinging him bodily to one side as the police launch completed the job of demolition that it had started.

Hassan’s body was driven underwater by the impact and for a few seconds he could see nothing, visibility underwater in the Thames being very poor even at the best of times. Then he saw light, or rather a lightening of the darkness, and his survival instinct took over as he struggled towards the surface of the river.

Carter hauled the Targa around in a tight port turn and throttled back to survey the wreckage. In the midst of the shattered timbers he could see one figure face down, clearly either dead or unconscious, and if he was just unconscious he would be dead within a couple of minutes from drowning. As he looked, the second man broke the surface just a few yards away and began swimming desperately away from the wreckage.

Carter moved the wheel slightly and applied a little throttle to close with the two figures in the water.

‘Call Wapping and tell them we’ve neutralised the threat,’ he ordered, ‘and we’ll be picking up two suspects. Or maybe one suspect and a body. We’ll need some other boats out here as well sharpish to recover all this wreckage.’

‘Or we could just run both of them down,’ Fisher suggested. ‘Save the cost of the trial, all that kind of thing. Help the struggling British economy.’

‘I assume you’re joking,’ Carter said. ‘And in any case, this doesn’t look to me like it was an amateur effort, and that means Five will want to sit down with the survivor at Millbank or somewhere and find out what they can about whatever terrorist network they belong to. Right, stand by to grab the live one. Handcuff his wrists behind his back and see if you can get a second pair of cuffs around his ankles as well. But before you haul him on board make sure he’s not wearing a suicide vest. If he is, I might just decide to opt for the Bob Fisher solution for dealing with swimming terrorists.’

Two minutes later, the man trying to swim away from the wrecked cabin cruiser had been dragged on board the police launch, none too gently, and slammed face first onto the decking while he was secured. Once he’d been immobilised, Carter told his men to leave him right where he was, and that if he tried to get up they could use whatever force they thought was appropriate to make him lie down again, up to and including clubbing him senseless.

Carter had never been the most politically correct officer employed by the Maritime Policing Unit, and he was irritated by the damage caused to his boat.

Recovery of what Carter knew by then to be a dead man took a little longer, but finally Crichton managed to pull the body to the side of the police launch with a boathook and then he and Fisher hauled the limp corpse onto the deck.

‘Bloody hell,’ Crichton said as he saw the extensive damage to the man’s head for the first time.

‘No point in trying mouth-to-mouth on that,’ Fisher said, ‘because he hasn’t actually got one any more.’

‘I’ll get a body bag.’

The recovery of corpses from the River Thames was another one of the duties of the MPU, and not one that any officer looked forward to carrying out, ‘floaters’ being almost always badly disfigured thanks to the action of marine life and decomposition, and usually extremely smelly.

They’d just got the corpse zipped up when a small civilian vessel, somewhat like a half-size version of the Targa, hove to alongside them and the man at the wheel asked if they needed help.

‘We’ve got to head back to Wapping,’ Carter said, ‘but if you could give us a hand to haul whatever’s wrapped in that plastic sheeting onto our vessel we’d appreciate it.’ He pointed at the object he was describing.

‘If that’s a bloody great IED,’ Fisher said, ‘do you think it’s a good idea letting a couple of Thames boatmen fiddle about with it?’

‘If it was going to explode,’ Carter retorted, ‘it would have done when contestant number one pressed that switch. I watched him do it, and nothing happened, so whatever’s wrapped up in that sheeting must be pretty much inert. Go and give them a hand.’

Chapter 16

Secret Intelligence Service Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London

‘Panic over.’ The relief in the MPU duty officer’s voice was quite obvious through the loudspeaker. ‘The suspect boat has now been converted into firewood. Our patrol boat is a bit battered but it’s still afloat and our officers picked up one suspect and one dead body, both of Middle Eastern appearance but neither carrying any form of identification.’

‘Was it full of explosives?’ Dame Janet asked.

‘We’ll have to wait for forensics, but that’s the way it looks. Part of the aft section of the cabin cruiser is intact and afloat and according to