Around the room were distributed a dining table and chairs, a torn cord sofa, and two ragged armchairs - the cheap furnishings of an ordinary living room. Three men stood around the space in civilian clothes, two standing, one crouching. They didn’t move. Sponge dummies.
Stratton noticed ammunition casings in the gravel as he crunched through it, bullet holes in the furniture. He was surprised. MI16 had a killing house.
Jason glanced back at him. ‘When I got here it was a weapons-testing room. But I decided to make it more entertaining.’ They went into what appeared to be a storeroom containing rows of metal racks and shelving stacked with a variety of mechanical and electronic parts.
A muted alarm began to sound. Jason stopped in his tracks and looked up at the red light flashing above a door at the end of the room. ‘What the hell . . .’ he muttered. He pushed through the door into a dull concrete bunker where Binning stood in front of a control panel, holding a phone to his ear. Above the panel was a small monitor filled with Chaz’s irate face.
‘You were told that all weapons and communications devices were to be left on the helicopter,’ Binning said into the phone, sounding vexed. ‘And under no circumstances were any pyrotechnics to be brought into the complex.’ Binning looked at Jason and shook his head in frustration. ‘One of the bloody fools brought something in. The vault has locked down.’
‘We didn’t bring anything in!’ Chaz shouted in defence of himself and the others.
‘Did you clean your equipment after your last training session or operational task?’ Binning asked. ‘I’ll answer that for you. No. You didn’t. You were warned that the system picks up the slightest chemical residue. If it has anything to do with explosives it reacts. You were told.’
Jason looked around at Stratton with an irritated glare. ‘Don’t these people pay attention to detail, damn it!’
Stratton didn’t like his tone but let it go. The boffins were clearly under stress. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘The security scanning system in the airlock is like the one you went through in the elevator,’ Jason explained.
‘And I put my phone and watch in a drawer and continued on down.’
‘You weren’t carrying any form of explosives. Without the clearance codes access goes into lock-down.’
‘Then give them the code.’
‘We don’t provide them,’ Binning said. ‘London does.’
‘Then send them back up to clear their gear,’ Stratton suggested, looking between the two men.
Jason sighed heavily as he tried to calm himself. ‘We can’t.’
Binning explained. ‘An unauthorised pyrotechnic invokes a Priority One protocol. It’s classed as an SSB, a serious security breach. We can’t override the system response and send them back up to the helipad. And neither can they carry on down to us.’
‘Our security is automated,’ Jason expanded. ‘Designed for a complex without physical security. We have no armed guards. Therefore we have far more stringent precautions . . . Your men are locked in, and that’s that.’
Stratton was getting the picture. ‘For how long?’
‘The vault can’t be opened for twenty-four hours.’ Jason was not apologetic.
Stratton automatically ran through the obvious implications.
Jason got the impression from his expression that it was the fault of MI16. ‘This has never happened before.’
‘Can I speak to him?’ Stratton asked.
Binning flicked a switch on the panel. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Chaz? This is Stratton.’
‘Stratton, what the hell is going on? They said we’re stuck in here for twenty-four bleeding hours.’
‘That seems to be the story, mate.’
‘That’s madness. We’ve got to get on.’
‘I know. There doesn’t seem to be a solution,’ Stratton said, looking at Jason to be sure.
A buzzer went off on the panel. Binning touched a button. ‘Binning here.’
‘London’s just called.’ It was Rowena. ‘The crisis response centre received an airlock-shutdown alarm.’
‘Tell them it’s under control.’ Jason cut in. ‘Give them our duress code, let them know we’re fine. It was an error. The SBS lads brought something into the lock.’
‘What a surprise,’ Rowena said.
‘Have London send the unlock code,’ Jason ordered.
‘We didn’t bring anything into the bloody access!’ Chaz shouted.
Jason looked at Stratton as if he’d been through that already. ‘It will take twenty-four hours to get them out. Nothing can change that.’
‘That’s bloody ridiculous,’ Chaz’s voice boomed.
‘You have to understand what this system was designed for,’ Binning explained. ‘Think of it like a bank vault that someone has tried to rob . . . the Bank of England, for instance. There are billions of pounds’ worth of systems in here. But it’s not just their financial