Standing looked at Williams, who lowered his binoculars and nodded. ‘Affirmative,’ said Standing.

  ‘Affirmative,’ repeated Cox.

  ‘As soon as the target is inside, light the building up,’ said Walters. ‘The drone is moving into position. As soon as the laser’s on they’ll be firing.’

  ‘Roger that,’ said Cox. He looked down at Standing. ‘Ready when you are, Sarge.’

  Standing put his eye to the viewfinder on the right-hand side of the SOFLAM. It was pre-focused on the building and he saw the four bodyguards clasping their weapons as they hustled Ahmadi towards the door to the house, so close to the man that there was no chance of a sniper getting anything like a clean shot. But a Hellfire missile was a whole different ball game and all the bodyguards in the world wouldn’t change the outcome. The AGM-114 Hellfire missile got its name from the original purpose of the weapon – Helicopter Launched Fire And Forget Missile – which had been designed as a tank killer. The missile was a 100-pound precision weapon that could be launched from a variety of air, sea and ground platforms. But it was when it was used to target high-profile individuals – more often than not fired from a Predator or Reaper drone – that it came into its own. The Americans had used Hellfire-equipped drones to take out some of the world’s most wanted terrorists, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Islamic cleric who had led al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Moktar Ali Zubeyr, the leader of the al-Shabaab terrorist group.

  ‘I have another vehicle,’ said Williams. ‘Another pick-up truck.’ He grimaced. ‘Sarge, you’re going to want to look at this.’

  Standing used the SOFLAM viewfinder to check out what Williams was referring to. A second pick-up truck was heading towards the house, this one white with eight children sitting in the back. The girls were wearing black headscarves, the boys white skullcaps. They had small backpacks in their laps as the truck bounced and bucked along the trail. ‘You are fucking joking,’ said Standing. He squinted through the viewfinder and tracked back to the SUV. The four bodyguards stayed on the doorstep as Ahmadi went inside. They looked across at the approaching pick-up truck and, as one, pointed their guns towards it.

  ‘We have to fire now,’ said the captain. ‘The drone is reaching the limits of its fuel.’

  ‘Tell him there are kids outside,’ said Standing.

  As Cox relayed the message, Standing tracked back to the white pick-up truck. There was steam coming from under the bonnet and it had slowed to a crawl. As he watched, it jerked to a halt next to the SUV and the driver got out. It was a woman in a black burka. She walked around to the front of the pick-up truck and opened the bonnet. Clouds of steam billowed out and she stepped back, waving her arms. The bodyguards were all pointing their guns at her.

  ‘The captain says to ignore the kids and paint the building,’ said Cox.

  ‘Tell Captain Waters to go fuck himself,’ said Standing.

  The woman went over to remonstrate with the bodyguards, obviously asking them for help. The ones in didashahs moved towards her, their weapons hanging on slings as they waved their hands at her to go away. The other two bodyguards stood at the entrance to the house, cradling their Kalashnikovs.

  ‘He says he’s ordering you to turn on the laser,’ said Cox.

  ‘Give me the radio,’ snapped Standing, putting down the SOFLAM. Cox gave it to him, then picked up the binoculars and focused them on the vehicles in the distance. One of the girls was drinking from a plastic bottle. She wiped her mouth and handed it to the boy sitting next to her. He shook his head and passed the bottle to the girl on his left. He said something to the boys and they all laughed. Cox smiled to himself, remembering the days when girls had cooties and he had wanted nothing to do with them.

  ‘Look, there’s a truck filled with kids next to the target building,’ said Standing. ‘We have to wait for them to go.’

  ‘There isn’t time,’ said the captain.

  ‘The radiator’s overheated by the look of it.’

  ‘I don’t care. We’re on a tight time frame here. We need that laser, now.’

  ‘Captain, these kids are in the line of fire.’

  ‘Sergeant Standing, I am giving you a direct order. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand, boss. But if they fire now they’ll kill half a dozen kids.’

  ‘And if they don’t, AKA will kill God knows how many more. Get the laser on the building.’

  Standing cursed under his breath. ‘Yes, boss,’ he said. He gave the radio back to Cox.

  Williams lowered his binoculars and glanced at Standing but didn’t say anything. Cox and Parker were staring at him, waiting to see what he would do. ‘Fucking arsehole,’ said Standing. He picked up the SOFLAM and put his eye to the viewfinder, his finger reaching for the trigger.

  Six thousand miles away in Florida, the sensor operator twisted around in his seat. ‘Target acquired, sir. Are we green-lit?’

  ‘Damn right you are, son,’ said the man. He was fiddling with a chunky class ring as he stared at the main screen. Usually it showed the visual feed from the nose of the drone but the sensor operator had switched over to the feed from the camera that was searching for the pulsed laser light from the SOFLAM.

  One of the sandstone buildings was now glowing green on the screen. The laser light could be seen only by the sensors on the drone: nobody in the vicinity would notice anything untoward. ‘Let’s blow that bastard into the next world so he can find out for himself if there really are seventytwo sloe-eyed virgins waiting for him,’ said the man.

  ‘Roger that, sir,’ said the sensor operator. He turned back and put his hand on the joystick.

  The pilot had taken the drone out of its holding circle and put it into a slow descent, heading for the optimum operational height of thirty thousand feet. She counted off the descent in thousands of feet. On the main screen, the building remained bathed in the green light.

  The pilot called out thirty thousand feet. The drone was now just eight thousand yards from its target. At its speed of Mach 1.3, close to a thousand miles per hour, the missile would reach its target in about eighteen seconds.

  The sensor operator pressed the trigger. ‘Missile launched,’ he said, his voice a dull monotone.

  They all stared at the main screen, showing the target building getting closer and closer. The seconds ticked by but time had slowed to a crawl. The trajectory seemed to be perfectly smooth and the target building stayed fixed in the centre of the screen. Suddenly the green-lit building filled the screen, which went blank.

  ‘Target destroyed,’ said the sensor operator.

  The man sat back in his seat and pumped his right hand in the air. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Finally.’

  ‘Sir, I have a question,’ said the pilot, turning in her seat.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said the man.

  ‘You said sloe-eyed virgins. What does that mean? Like, virgins with lazy eyes?’

  The man chuckled softly. ‘That’s sloe with an e,’ he said. ‘A sloe is a dark-skinned plum-style fruit. So black-eyed virgins. The best sort, apparently.’ He stood up and patted the pilot on her shoulder. ‘Nice job,’ he said.

  ‘Sir, you want to look at this,’ said the sensor operator, pointing at the centre screen. ‘There’s something not right here.’ He had replaced the blank screen with the view from the drone, still some seven thousand metres from the burning building.

  ‘What’s the problem, son?’ asked the man.

  The sensor operator pointed at the burning building. The missile had ripped into it and blown it apart from the inside. None of the top floor remained and what was left of the ground floor was a little more than a pile of smouldering rubble. ‘That’s not the target,’ he said. He pointed several buildings to the left. The SUV and the two pick-up trucks were still there. ‘That’s the target,’ he said. ‘We hit the wrong building.’

  The man leaned forward, putting his hands on their high-backed seats as he stared at the screen. ‘How the fuck did that happen?’ he asked.

  ‘We hit the building that was lit, sir,’ said the pilot. ‘There’s no question of that. The missile went where it was supposed to go.’

  ‘But clearly that’s not the case,’ said the man. ‘The missile took out the house to the right of our target. So I ask you again, what happened? System failure?’

  The pilot shook her head as she studied the information on her screens. ‘The system’s fine.’

  ‘It has to be human error,’ said the systems operator. ‘Somebody fucked up.’

  Standing had to admit that the Hellfire was one hell of a weapon. It had streaked through the air, with a faint trail behind it, and slammed into the building with a flash of light, the sound of the explosion reaching them a second or two later. Chunks of masonry and wood erupted from the centre of the fiery explosion and rained down on the surrounding buildings.

  The woman in the black burka had been a hundred feet or so from the explosion but it had still knocked her off her feet. The four bodyguards fanned out into the street and stared at the cloud of black smoke rising into the air. People were coming out of the neighbouring houses to see what had happened. Standing focused on the door of Houman’s house. Ahmadi appeared. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses and he was carrying his jacket. The bodyguards surrounded him and bundled him towards the SUV. Two got into the SUV with him and it roared off down the track. The other two piled into the truck, which sped after the SUV. The two vehicles left clouds of dust behind them as they accelerated away.

  ‘Elvis has left the building,’ said Williams.

  The captain was on the radio, demanding to speak to Standing, who gestured at Cox. ‘Kill the radio, John,’ he said.

  Cox did so. ‘Well, that’ll put the cat among the pigeons, Sarge,’ he said.

  Standing stood up. ‘I didn’t join the SAS to kill kids,’ he said. He brushed the dust off the knees of his camo trousers. ‘Let’s get the hell out of Dodge,’ he said.

  The British Museum had been around a lot longer than MI5. It was founded in 1753, initially based on the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, a society doctor who had taken care of Queen Anne, George I and George II and became very rich doing it. The museum had grown to become one of the biggest and most prestigious in the world, with more than eight million exhibits. MI5 was created in October 1909 as the Secret Service Bureau, aimed at spying on the Imperial German government, and five years later was renamed the Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 5. MI5 officers had used the museum as a venue for clandestine meetings during the First World War and continued to do so in the present day. With six million visitors a year pouring into an area of more than 800,000 square feet, no one could possibly keep track of who came and went, and as the museum was a non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the government was able to co-opt any offices it wanted. The one favoured by Jeremy Willoughby-Brown was some distance away from the main area, accessed through a side door marked ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’.

  Shepherd paid off his black cab, then spent five minutes wandering around to reassure himself that he wasn’t being followed. Eventually, he headed to a black door with an intercom on the wall next to it. He pressed the button and smiled up at the CCTV camera covering the area. The lock buzzed and he pushed the door open. There was a carpeted corridor with utilitarian walls and he walked along it, knocking on the third door to the left. There was no answer so he knocked again, then turned the handle and pushed.

  Willoughby-Brown was sitting behind a large desk in a high-backed executive chair, his feet on a windowsill, talking into a mobile phone and smoking one of his favourite cigars. He waved at the two straight-backed chairs facing the desk as he listened to whoever was talking on the phone and Shepherd sat down. ‘Absolutely, sir, and thank you for letting me know.’ He flicked ash into the pot of a plastic plant. ‘Yes, sir, of course. Regnum Defende, that’s what we do.’ He ended the call and stared out of the open window as he blew smoke towards it.

  ‘Regnum Defende?’ repeated Shepherd.

  ‘The Service’s motto. “Defence of the Realm”. You didn’t study Latin?’

  ‘I know what it means,’ said Shepherd. ‘And Six has Semper Occultus, which always sounds like a Harry Potter spell to me.’

  Willoughby-Brown grinned. ‘Always secret,’ he said. ‘We always keep our mottoes simple. The Yanks do it differently. The CIA’s is “The Truth Shall Make You Free”, which I think is a bit Orwellian.’ He blew another tight plume of blue smoke at the window. ‘Personally, I always prefer Mossad’s motto, “By Way of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War”. That’s exactly what we do, when you get down to it.’

  ‘That’s a myth,’ said Shepherd.

  Willoughby-Brown twisted around to look at him. ‘What’s a myth?’

  ‘That was never Mossad’s motto. A lot of people think it is, but the real motto is “Where No Counsel Is The People Fall”, which is nowhere near as sexy.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Shepherd tapped the side of his head and Willoughby-Brown grinned. ‘Of course you’re sure, you and your perfect memory.’ He swung his feet off the windowsill and swivelled his chair around so that he was facing Shepherd. ‘So, job well done,’ he said. ‘If MI5 handed out commendations I’m sure you’d be getting one, but we don’t so you won’t.’ He stabbed out what was left of his cigar in a crystal ashtray, then stood up and closed the window behind him.

  ‘The intel was spot on with regard to the names,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s a pity your source didn’t know about the guy with the other storage unit.’

  ‘He can’t know everything,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘But it worked out well in the end. Luckily we had Five’s top man on the case.’ He dropped back into his chair. ‘No point in assigning our top man to a case unless we have all our ducks in a row.’

  ‘So I’m Five’s top man, am I? Good to know.’

  ‘One of them, certainly.’ He smiled. ‘Come on now, no false modesty. You put together a damn fine operation there. Fourteen jihadists in custody and eight dead. A huge amount of weapons and explosives taken off the streets and a message sent to the Great British Public that the Security Service has everything under control. All’s well that ends well.’

  ‘Except we’re still at a terrorism threat level of severe, last time I looked,’ said Shepherd. The threat level had been set at severe since August 2014 in response to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Severe meant that the authorities regarded a terrorist attack as highly likely. There was only one level above severe: critical – which meant an attack was expected imminently.

  ‘It’s all about perception rather than reality,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘Even with a threat level of severe, you’re much more likely to win the lottery or be struck by lightning than you are to be killed by a terrorist. But when we’re seen to be doing our job, people feel safer.’

  ‘And we lost David Loftus,’ said Shepherd. ‘He was a good guy.’

  ‘I didn’t know him. But, yes, a sad loss.’

  ‘What exactly happened, do we know?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘The terrorists had disabled the camera covering the area around their storage unit. We think it was done late last night, so we’re checking all the footage to see if we can catch whoever did it. He must have been rumbled as he did his walk-by and they decided their best bet was to kill him.’

  ‘Do you think they knew he was with Five?’

  ‘I’d say almost certainly not. He was wearing company overalls with company ID. If they’d known he was Five, I’m guessing they would have aborted, or kicked off sooner. The fact that they continued to board the tour buses suggests they thought they were in the clear. Was he married?’

  ‘Twice, but divorced twice, too. No kids.’

  ‘That’s something, I suppose.’

  ‘How is that something?’ said Shepherd. ‘Single men with no kids are expendable?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I suppose I was just making sympathetic noises.’

  ‘You don’t have to fake sympathy for my sake,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You sound a tad tetchy,’ said Willoughby-Brown.

  ‘And I’ve warned you before about psychoanalysing me,’ said Shepherd. ‘Yes, I shot three people yesterday, but they deserved it and I’d happily do it again. Me being tetchy is not a sign of PTSD or guilt or anything like that.’

  Willoughby-Brown held up his hands. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that for one second,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry my attempt to express my sympathy for the death of a valued employee backfired. We’re going to need to look at what happened to see if—’

  ‘Lessons can be learned?’ Shepherd finished for him. ‘I guess with hindsight we should have kept him in radio contact. That left him vulnerable. Also we were blindsided – literally – on the CCTV front.’

  ‘We had no reason to suspect that they had more than one unit in the facility,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘When we did the work on the unit we knew about, we ran a check on the clients and there were no red flags.’ He sighed. ‘Still, there’ll be an inquiry. We’ll see what turns up.’

  Shepherd wasn’t sure what the inquiry would uncover, but he was sure of one thing: if mistakes had been made and fingers of blame were pointed, they most certainly would not be levelled in the direction of Jeremy Willoughby-Brown. ‘It would have been nice if your source had told us they were planning to use firearms,’ he said. ‘We thought we were dealing with explosives, and the stuff they had was still inert. We’d have structured things differently if we’d known they were using guns.’

  ‘My source is a bit like Father Christmas,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘He knows who’s naughty and he knows who’s nice. But he doesn’t know the details of what they’re planning.’

  ‘He’s not part of a jihadist group, then?’

 

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