A Devil Is Waiting - Jack Higgins [50]
The ambulance had moved again, for they had joined the double queue of vehicles entering the garage.
“The driver of that ambulance,” Sara told him.
Dillon said, “I noticed her, too. Pretty girl. What about her?”
The ambulance was being passed through. “It’s just that I seem to know her from somewhere.”
With the documents Doyle showed the security men, they were passed through themselves, and as they moved forward, it struck Sara like a thunderbolt.
“Oh, my God, I know where I’ve seen her before.”
Roper said, “What are you talking about, Sara?”
“That girl was at Speakers’ Corner with the men carrying Ali Selim. She was running alongside with a hand clutching his palanquin. She was all in black and wore a silk chador.”
Doyle braked to a halt involuntarily, and Dillon said, “God in heaven, girl, are you sure about this?”
“Of course she is,” Roper said. “Get after them, Tony. There’s no place for them to hide, not in that ambulance. If it’s a bomb job, there’s no time to lose, so be ready to go in hard.”
Asan and Jemal had no idea they were in trouble. The trip into London had been without incident, and their identities and the work documents relating to the delivery of oxygen cylinders to level three had been accepted without question. Level three itself seemed pretty parked up, so Asan cruised, glancing from side to side, and it was Jemal who was stressed and cursing softly.
“Calm yourself, Jemal, all will be well,” she said serenely, for she was on a complete high, never so certain. A moment later, at the far end, they came to a section of what obviously were work vehicles of one kind or another, and she pulled in on the end at a row and switched off. There was a wide gap to the next vehicle, a red Ford van.
“So it begins,” she said. “Just as my uncle said it would. We are here.”
Jemal was so nervous that he was close to coming apart at the seams. “And here we’ll stay one way or another unless we get out of here fast. I’ll go and set the timer.”
Which was in the paramedic’s bag in the back of the ambulance. He got out, went to open the rear door, and Dillon’s van arrived in a sudden rush as Doyle took it past in a burst of speed. Jemal pulled out the silenced Walther he had been provided with and fired twice, and the van turned in to the other side of the red Ford for protection.
Jemal opened the door on the passenger side of the ambulance, reached in, and pulled Asan across. There was a look of total astonishment on her face as she tumbled out, then struggled to her feet.
Roper’s voice boomed out. “It’s over. Throw any weapons into the open and then lie down.”
“I don’t know who they are, but he’s right,” Jemal said. “It’s finished.”
“Only if I say so.” Her left hand found the pillbox, and she pulled out the capsule it contained, put it in her mouth, then took out her own Walther. She stood, leaned across to the driver’s window, which she had left open, and fired several times across at the red Ford. It was a strange and eerie sensation, only the dull thuds of the silenced weapons as Dillon and Holley returned fire.
Jemal grabbed at her, turning her and slapping her face. “No more. It’s over.”
She pushed him away, turned, and fired wildly again at the van, her teeth crunching down on the capsule, the sickly sweet smell of cyanide apparent at once. He had no idea what it was, only that it was bad, and he pushed a fresh clip into his Walther.
“Damn you to hell,” he called, and emptied the gun into the van. It was Sara, crouched on the other side with Dillon and Holley, who took the practical approach.
She dropped down flat and saw Asan’s body at once, and the lower half of Jemal’s legs beside it. He was at that moment reloading. She took careful aim and shot him through the right kneecap. He cried out, lurched backward into a Mercedes limousine, and went down.
“That’s the man taken care of,” Sara said. “But I get a bad feeling about the girl.”
“Then we’d better go and see,” Holley told her.
Doyle had found a large police sign saying “Entry Prohibited,