Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,29
them still looking at the damaged glass. From the outside, it looked as if someone had shot it repeatedly with a paintball gun filled with white balls, the white spots surrounded by spider-webs of broken glass from the shockwave of each bullet from the Kalashnikovs. Cobb reached over and touched one of them, feeling the sharp edges of the glass on his fingertip.
‘What the hell was this all about?'’ he muttered.
It took the lone surviving gunman about an hour to make it across town to the command post. He was no longer dressed in black. He and his partner had arrived outside the police station wearing civilian trousers and sweaters underneath their black combat fatigues for when the job was done. But once he was out of sight down a side alley and a sufficient distance from the police station, he’d pulled off his outfit and thrown it away with the balaclava he'd already removed. He'd been forced to leave his Kalashnikov at the scene. No way could he run through London with that in his hands. But he’d pulled the Beretta from its holster and tucked it into his belt under his sweater, and had then made his way across the city back to the safe-house.
It was located on the eighth floor of a newly built office building. Rentals on each floor weren't due to start for another couple of weeks, so the ten storey building was completely empty and a perfect position for an anonymous command post. The man ducked in through the lobby and took the stairs rather than the lift, running up them two at a time. When he arrived on the eighth floor, he moved across the corridor and pushed open the door to a large room, a long, wide office, panting hard from the exertion.
The room was dark, almost pitch black, all the curtains drawn, and in the darkness he saw the large figure of his leader, sitting alone. In front of him there were two televisions, one tuned to CNN and the other to BBC World. The BBC screen was already showing footage from the ruined police station. The big man by the screens turned and looked at the newcomer, his face and body dark, just the whites of his eyes visible in the darkness.
There was a pause.
‘You're alone,’ he said, in a foreign language.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where is Crow?’ he asked quietly.
‘They shot him, sir,’ the man said. ‘We failed. The man had bulletproof-glass as his office walls. We tried but we couldn’t get to him.’
Silence. The leader of the group sat silently, staring at him. The surviving gunman tried to return his gaze, but failed as his leader looked straight into his eyes, his hulking figure silhouetted from the glare of the televisions behind him.
‘Then why are you still standing there. You know what to do.’
The gunman looked at him, then swallowed and nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
With that he saluted, and turned and walked back out of the room.
The leader didn't see the salute. He had already turned his attention back to the televisions and the list.
Across the city at Grosvenor Square, the wailing sirens at the US Embassy had been silenced, and word had spread that the threat was just a false alarm. People were already moving back into the building, the HAZMAT team packing up their equipment and climbing back into their white vans, departing one after the other. The crowds of Agency workers were relieved, none more so than the unfortunate male analyst who had opened the package. They all headed back inside, returning to their desks and the work that had been so suddenly interrupted.
False alarms like this happened from time to time. Most were actually organised by someone from the Agency and used as an audit to test emergency protocols. On this occasion the building had emptied in a matter of minutes, so those in charge of the evacuation procedures were relieved, mostly because it had been a false alarm but also because of the speed at which the building had been cleared. They wouldn't suffer any reprimands for slow reaction times or disorganisation. The staff were well drilled.
Back in the Square, the protestors were still in place, undeterred, and their protests started to gather volume again. But one person who wasn’t relaxing was the CIA Operations Officer who had known Charlie Adams. He was feeling quite the opposite in fact.
Once the doors to the Embassy were reopened, he walked swiftly back to his office, moving as quickly as