— Habeeb Rehman, 20, student; born and raised in London
— Zunairah Jaffri, 18, student; born and raised in London
All five have visited Pakistan in the past eighteen months; the first three stick to Western clothes and attend a college in MK doing various foundation courses. The last two travel into MK from London separately on a Monday morning and return to the city on Friday afternoon. They too attend the college, wear traditional costume and appear to lodge with family members during the week.”
“Excellent; get these photos and details to Rusty and Brad, the squad leaders in London immediately. Are the surveillance team any further forward with the CCTV yet? We have five young terrorists to find gentlemen and one of them is a girl!”
Colin was no longer outside the consulting rooms of Dr. Ramanayake; he was on Oxford Street heading for Top Shop. He didn’t see Athena and her parents emerge from the building. The cardiologist had informed them that Mrs. Fox was in urgent need of a bypass operation. Tinkering with her diet and prescribing medicines was futile; two of her arteries were so bad that she could suffer an ischemic stroke at any time.
The family were stunned; but Athena’s father didn’t bat an eyelid. He just asked Dr. Ramanayake “How much?”
The consultant made a call and by just after midday an ambulance car arrived to take Mrs. Fox to a private hospital in the West End. Her husband accompanied her.
Athena agreed to go home to fetch her mother’s things for a stay in hospital; she also wanted to add a couple of personal touches of her own. She left the consulting rooms at around ten past twelve.
Colin spotted Rusty on the pavement outside Top Shop. He stuck out a mile. Anyone less likely to shop there Colin couldn’t imagine. As the two men greeted one another, Colin recognised two other familiar faces from Larcombe standing ten yards away. He nodded to them.
“Fill me in Rusty. What have we got mate?”
“Suicide bombers, it’s a group of three blokes at least. They’re going to hit the station at half past one.”
“What’s the plan?”
“A squad raided their place in Milton Keynes this morning, but they missed them. They’ve followed them down and should be here anytime now.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Five mate, giving us nine in all.”
“How are we going to take them down?”
“I reckon we can Taser them if we can catch them off guard; one man in front to ask for the time or directions and one behind to put them out of action. Then we use the cars we travelled up in to get them well away from these crowds. Erebus has sent the paramedics up as back up, so once we know where they are parked up we can deliver any of these lads that cause us extra trouble to them. They will remove them to Larcombe after this is over.”
“The pet cemetery could be busy!”
“Let’s get somewhere quiet for a minute. I need to give you some kit; I know you weren’t carrying when you came up for this babysitting job. Have they got a loo in this shop do you know?”
In two minutes Colin and Rusty were in the gents’ toilet on the basement floor. Rusty passed Colin a Taser and also handed him the PSS pistol.
“I brought this too mate. I know you liked it.”
“Thanks; it’s quiet, but if I have to use it we might have a job explaining to the transport police why we’re carrying a lad with a big hole in his head.”
When they got back out onto the street, the two guys from Rusty’s team joined them.
“The MK squad are here; three this side of the street and two outside Next directly opposite. Their leader is on this side; he wants to talk to you.”
Rusty wandered up the street; despite the civilian clothes it wasn’t too difficult for the two ex SAS men to work out who was who. They shook hands and started to work out their plan of attack. A minute later Rusty and Brad received a call from Larcombe.
It was Erebus.
“I’m sending you details of the five terrorists.”
Rusty didn’t react; there was a slight tensing of his jaw line, nothing more.
“There are three bombers; all three will be dressed in Western clothing and carrying backpacks. The other two, a man and a girl, are probably arriving at the station by tube. They will be in traditional clothes, possibly a thobe for him and an abaya for her; she will have her head covered with a niqab. One or other of these two will be detonating the bombs remotely using a mobile phone. Our best intelligence suggests that the three bombers will enter the station over the next hour or so and they will plan to reach one of the many busy intersections at one thirty. We believe that the other two may be positioned so that they can see their fellow cell members and call the numbers at the optimum time to cause the greatest loss of life.”
“Okay boss” said Rusty “do you have eyes on the three above ground?”
“Still waiting for news; unfortunately there are a lot of cameras to choose from.”
“I’ll pass the details of the three bombers to our teams and they can set about taking them out of the game.”
“Good hunting” said Erebus and ended the call.
Rusty and Brad revised their plans, now they had the new information. Brad split his team into two groups of two and briefed them of their roles; Rusty gave his two men their instructions too. It was agreed Rusty, Colin and Brad would comprise the team responsible for tackling the underground threat.
Athena had collected a bag with her mother’s things from home and was now setting off to hunt down those personal items she wanted to pick up, before heading into the West End to visit her Mum in hospital. She was walking to Sloane Square tube station for a District line train that after a brief changeover at Victoria would get her to Oxford Circus.
Rusty, Colin and Brad were preparing to go into the station. Brad checked with Team 1 who had been assigned to Irfan Baqri. No sighting.
He got the same report from Team 2 who had been looking out for Karim Rivzi. At the same time Rusty contacted Team 3. No sign of Arshad Usman.
Rusty’s mobile rang again. It was Larcombe.
“They’re on the move; we have them on CCTV; all three have just come out of Primark near Marble Arch. They’ll be with you in fifteen to twenty minutes.
Rusty rang the paramedics, who were sat in the ambulance in 24 7 Parking not much more than five minutes away. They were primed and ready to move at a second’s notice.
Irfan, Karim and Arshad had split up; Irfan had crossed over the street and the other two followed ten to fifteen yards behind. As they approached Oxford Circus itself Karim moved ahead of Arshad. They were well schooled in how to enter their kill zone with the minimum of attention. As far as any staff or transport police at the station would have been concerned, they were your typical student. They were casually dressed, not in any particular hurry to get where they were going and looked a little moody. No different to millions of teenagers the world over.
The ambulance containing the paramedics eased into position. There were two men in the front and two in the back. The busy streets of London are so used to seeing emergency vehicles that no one batted an eyelid; if there had been a young policeman patrolling the area he would have just walked on past. As it was there were no policemen in sight.
Team 1 struck first. Irfan saw the entrance to the station and steeled himself to walk towards his destiny with his head held high. A man appeared in front of him and Irfan almost collided with him.
“Watch where you’re going mate” said the ex SAS agent. Irfan tried to sidestep him but suddenly he felt something pressed against his neck from behind. The Taser delivered an electrical current that interfered with Irfan's neuromuscular system, temporarily incapacitating him; or to put it the way Rusty had described it when he had trained his men at Larcombe ‘they go down like a sack of shit; but they’re right as rain in no time.’