Ultimatum by Simon Kernick Read Free Book Online

government acquiesces to their demands – which are the usual stuff, promising to pull out of all Muslim lands – by eight o’clock tonight or there’ll be a much bigger attack.’
    ‘It all sounds very similar to the Stanhope siege.’
    Bolt nodded. ‘It does.’
    The Stanhope siege had been a short but brutal terrorist incident just over a year earlier. It had involved a team of white mercenaries, allied with Arab gunmen, who’d set off two bombs in London before taking over the Stanhope Hotel and holding hundreds of guests hostage. When the whole thing had ended six hours later, more than seventy people were dead, and the psyche of the nation had been left badly scarred. Almost all the terrorists had died – one of them at the hands of Tina herself, who’d killed him in self-defence while rescuing the kidnapped children of one of the senior officers involved (an act for which she’d narrowly escaped charges) – but, since that night, there’d been no further arrests, nor any clear sign of who was responsible. Theories had abounded. Some claimed the terrorists were working for al-Qaeda; others for an unnamed Arab government, or the Iranians; and some claimed the real organizers were even closer to home and members of a domestic neo-Nazi organization seeking to foment discontent. But the problem was that only two of those involved had survived. One, a member of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command called John Cheney, who’d been the terrorists’ inside man, had been found hanged in his cell a few weeks afterwards. And the other, a former soldier called William Garrett, who’d gone by the codename Fox, and who was now in prison awaiting trial, had kept his mouth resolutely shut.
    Until now, it seemed.
    Tina frowned. ‘So Fox has suddenly decided that he wants to cooperate?’
    ‘Apparently he saw footage of the explosion this morning and told the governor he knew who was behind it, but wouldn’t give any further details.’
    ‘The suspect I chased this morning was south Asian. Probably Pakistani. Definitely not a white mercenary, and not the kind of guy likely to be working as an Arab government agent.’
    ‘So it might be nothing to do with Fox or any of his friends. But initial reports are saying the explosives used were PETN, the same as those used at the Stanhope, and that the bomb looked sophisticated. The thing is, there just aren’t that many terrorists with access to that kind of weaponry, particularly homegrown Islamic extremists.’ Bolt paused. ‘There’s something else as well. There was an attempt on Fox’s life three days ago.’
    ‘I didn’t hear anything about that.’
    ‘It’s being kept under wraps. Cheney died before he could stand trial. If they lose Fox as well, it’s going to make the government, and this country, look like a bunch of incompetents. He was attacked by another prisoner armed with a homemade blade. He got a slash across the head and defensive cuts on his hands and arms, and ended up with a lot of stitches. But he managed to fight his attacker off and put him in hospital as well.’
    ‘Do we know why he was attacked?’
    ‘The other prisoner’s not talking. He’s Category A and violent, so it could be any number of reasons, but the timing, just days before a new bombing campaign, is the kind of coincidence that sets alarm bells ringing.’
    Bolt absent-mindedly stroked the biggest and deepest of the three small scars that dotted his right cheek – the result of a car crash many years earlier. Because of his big build and closely cropped hair, they helped to lend him a thuggish appearance that was only partly offset by his incredibly blue eyes, and looking at him now, Tina remembered how attractive she’d once found him.
    ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Fox is a tough bastard, but the word is the attack’s shaken him up, so what he has to say could be useful. It might also be nothing, of course, and if he’s after immunity from prosecution, then he’s