London Bridges - James Patterson [50]
One of the other detectives asked, “Do we have an idea who it is inside the house, sir? Have we sussed out anything at all?”
“The house is rented. It belongs to a property developer. Pakistani, if that means anything. We don’t know who the tenants are yet. The house is a few hundred yards from the runways at Heathrow. Need I say more?”
I looked over at Lodge, who had his arms wrapped tightly around his chest. “Very nasty stuff,” he said. “Understatement of the year, right, Alex?”
“I’ve had that feeling for a while. Ever since I first encountered the Wolf. He enjoys hurting people.”
“You have no idea who he is, Alex? What makes him this way?”
“He seems to change his identity on a regular basis. He . . . or she? We got close a couple of times. Maybe we’ll get lucky now.”
“It better happen soon.”
We arrived at our destination in Feltham a few minutes later. Lodge and I met up with SO19, British Specialist Operations, who would execute the raid. Police surveillance had video monitors set up inside several nearby buildings. Tape was being shot from half a dozen different cameras.
“Like watching a movie. Nothing we can do to influence the action,” Lodge said after we’d studied the videos for a few minutes. What an impossible mess. We weren’t supposed to be there. We’d been warned against it. But how could we go away?
Lodge had a list of all the flights scheduled into Heathrow that morning. In the next hour or so, more than thirty flights would be arriving. The next few were from Eindhoven, three from Edinburgh, two from Aberdeen, then a British Airways flight from New York. Serious discussions were being held about halting all flights into both Heathrow and Gatwick, but no decision had yet been made. The jet from New York was due in nineteen minutes.
One of the police pointed.
“There’s someone on the roof! There! There he is!”
Two monitors showed the rooftop from opposite angles. A man in dark clothing had appeared. Then a second man, this one carrying a small surface-to-air missile launcher, came out of a hatchway.
“Fucking hell,” somebody hissed. Tempers were running very high now. Mine, too.
“Reroute all the flights now! We have no choice,” Lodge barked. “Do our snipers have these two bastards covered?”
Word came back that SO19 had the rooftop covered. Meanwhile, we watched the two men get into position. There could be little doubt now that they were there to bring down a plane. And we were watching the frightening scene, without being able to stop it.
“Arseholes!” Lodge swore at the monitors. “Not going to be anything for you bastards to shoot at. How do you like that?”
“They look Middle Eastern to me,” said one of the other detectives. “They certainly don’t look Russian!”
“We don’t have the go-ahead to shoot,” a man wearing headphones announced. “We’re still on hold.”
“What the bloody hell is going on?” Lodge complained in a high-pitched voice. “We have to take them out. Come on!”
Suddenly there were gunshots! We could hear them on the video. The man with the launcher on his shoulder went down. He didn’t get up, didn’t move at all. Then the second suspect was hit. Two clean head shots.
“What the hell?” someone shouted in the van where we were watching. Then everyone was cursing and yelling.
“Who gave the order to shoot? What’s going on here?” screamed Lodge.
Word finally came back, but nobody could believe it. Our snipers hadn’t made the hit. Somebody else had shot the two men on the roof.
Madness.
It was total madness.
Chapter 66
EVERYTHING WAS A WILD RIDE like nothing anyone could imagine, like nothing anyone ever had imagined. The latest deadline was hours away and nobody in the rank and file knew what was happening. Maybe the prime minister knew something? The president? The chancellor of Germany?
Every