Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,31

had to pinch himself to fully appreciate his extraordinarily good fortune.

In the military, he'd been going nowhere. He had a poor discipline record and an even worse reputation. He’d been on his way to being kicked out of the Marines and realising he had nowhere to go, convinced them to let him enlist in the United States Army and give him another shot. Even then, it was a small miracle he’d survived without a serious incident in the years before he mustered out. He eventually came to the obvious conclusion that military life wasn’t for him. Leaving the Army had been the best decision he'd ever made.

He headed towards his Mercedes, dark blue, less than six months old, fresh off the production line and parked on the street. He got a kick out of the envious looks other guys gave him when he parked at the golf club or at the Mall down the street. He unlocked the car, pulling open the door, and stepped inside, shutting it behind him.

Fastening his seatbelt, he put the key in the ignition and twisted it.

Given the advances in technology over the last decade, much like those the man had built his business on, the device rigged up underneath the Mercedes that morning would have been considered old-fashioned by those proficient with the finer points of car-bombing. Times had changed, such as when the six-shooter revolver suddenly found itself usurped by the 9mm pistol. The two bricks of C4 plastic explosive stuck underneath the Mercedes had been wired up to the car’s ignition system in the middle of the night, a man lying there in the shadows under the car, spending almost half an hour wiring the charge. Most modern car-bombs were magnetic, triggered by the opening of a door or whenever pressure was applied to a pedal. Others used tilt fuses, one side full of liquid mercury, the other side the wires of an open circuit to the detonator. Whenever the car moved a certain degree, the mercury swished down into the wiring and closed the circuit, detonating the bomb. But the man who had wired up the Mercedes to the bomb had been out of the game for over a decade. He could be forgiven for being a little old-fashioned. But whatever the argument, one thing was for sure

His way still worked.

There was a split-second delay as the receiver half a foot beneath the man in the driver seat picked up the detonation signal from the ignition current.

Then the bomb under the car exploded.

The Mercedes erupted into a huge fireball, the vehicle lifted twenty feet into the air from the force of the plastic explosives underneath, the fireball burning the trees nearby, the shockwave smashing the windows of nearby houses, everything inside the car vaporised in an instant. Down the street, the man who planted the C4 watched through the rear-view mirror of his own car. He’d been there for over four hours, watching and waiting for the man to step outside his front door, get inside the car and turn on the ignition.

As the flaming car landed with a thud, the shell continuing to burn, front doors of houses along the street started to open, curtains in windows flickering as neighbours peered out to see what the unexpected noise was. The man watching in the rear view mirror nodded with satisfaction, watching the Mercedes cook.

A confirmed kill.

The next moment, he fired the engine to his own car. He took off the handbrake, putting his foot down, and the car moved off quickly around the corner and out of sight, headed straight for Bradley International Airport and his 7:55 am flight to London Heathrow.

TEN

Back at the ARU's headquarters it had just gone midday, and Deakins and Second Team were already downstairs guarding both exits, each man armed with his MP5 and the Glock in a thigh holster as backup. Hard as the clean-up team down there had tried, they hadn’t managed to get rid of all the bloodstains by the reception desk, and the men stationed near the door found themselves glancing at them, Clark’s blood still visible over the desk and wall, the air stinking of disinfectant and smelling like a hospital.

Upstairs, Cobb had just returned from delivering a statement to the press and was sitting inside his office talking with Archer, Chalky, Porter and Fox as the forensics team continued to work away in the briefing room and as the tech team recovered in the operations area. As the five