Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,88

noses in the night.

Soon after, he and his team were arrested by Serbian police. The chief of security at the Ataturk airport had been tipped off about the smuggling, and had contacted the Serbian police who had ambushed the doctor at the house and Wulf and his men at one of their roadside trades. They had walked right into the trap, and an entire division of armed police sprung on them, taking them completely unawares. The game was up.

They were taken back to Belgrade, imprisoned and put on trial and charged for war-crimes. Ethnic cleansing, kidnap, murder, and organ harvesting. Once the KLA heard about it, they officially expelled them, turning their backs and forgetting all the hard work the Panthers had done for the Army in the war. The Serbian government were similarly outraged by the conspiracy, and were desperate to keep the harvesting a secret from the rest of the world, so the entire squad were sent away for life to Ferri, the darkest, most remote prison in the country, a place that wasn't on any map and that virtually no one knew about. A man didn’t go to Ferri to serve time for his crimes. He went there to die.

Back in the car speeding through London, the thought of the far away prison made him shudder and Wulf brought his attention back to the present, looking out of the window at the road and the area around them. He and three of his men were on their way in two stolen 4x4s to the airport to pick up Flea, who would have just landed from Dulles, Washington DC. Once they had him, they would make a stop at the hospice on the way back, kill Fletcher, then head to the safe-house and see what Worm had got out of the prisoners before executing them both.

Spider was behind the wheel beside Wulf in the lead car, driving fast, just as he had out on the plains all those years ago. They pulled around a roundabout and moved up the ramp towards the Arrivals lane of Heathrow Terminal Five, golden streetlights breaking up the shadows either side of the road. As they pulled around the corner at the top of the ramp, Wulf saw Flea standing there outside the Arrivals hall, waiting, a token bag over his shoulder. Spider drove forward and the vehicle pulled to a momentary halt. Flea walked over and pulled open the door, climbing into the back. The moment he shut the door, Spider put his foot down and the vehicle sped off back into the night.

TWENTY SIX

Back at the ARU’s base, the tech team were working away frantically, running through the security cameras. They had found the stolen white van on the monitors and were now tracing its path sequentially across the city. Behind them Chalky, Fox and Porter were standing, all three of them anxious, watching the minutes tick away and desperate to get some clues. Downstairs Second Team were still recovering and doing their best to re-establish some form of protection on the doors, but the entire team was still shaken, bullet-holes and bloodstains covering the lower level of the headquarters, a recently-arrived medical team taking Jackson’s body and zipping him up in a body bag.

'C'mon,' Chalky said, looking at the screens. 'We don't have time. Give us something!'

They continued, tapping away frantically, speeding up the tapes.

Suddenly, the guy on the far right made a breakthrough, a blond man called Rhys.

'There!' he said, tapping his screen. 'See.'

Chalky and his team-mates rushed over, looking closer at the screen. Rhys was right. The van had stopped outside a ten-storey office building.

'Zoom in,' he said, and Rhys turned, pulling up a white rectangle and pulling it over the van, then tapping a few buttons. The shot enhanced. Up close, they saw the soldiers pull open the back of the van and pull out two limp bodies.

Archer and Nikki.

And they watched as they dragged them into the building and out of sight.

‘Bingo,’ Fox said.

'Are they dead?' one of the tech team asked.

'No. Not yet,' Chalky said. He ran his finger along the screen, at the GPS co-ordinates. 'Where is that?'

'It's down as a new office building, finished recently. It’s fifteen minutes north from here.'

'Send us the directions,' Chalky said, turning and running for the stairs, Fox and Porter close behind. Moments later they were already outside, climbing into Jackson's old car, and firing the engine, they pulled out of the lot with a screech and zoomed