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  ‘Sure is. You’re working on it, of course?’

  ‘Dimitri!’

  ‘Yeah, sorry I doubted the guru!’ he laughed.

  ‘It’s bound to be a consequence of the attack. It’s almost certainly caused by the vast electrical systems of the Tower going haywire. It’s quite a common effect. Comms within the Tower are fine and the frequencies we use for links like this one are untouched too. It’s impairing visuals though.’

  ‘What about the Saser images I took and sent to you?’

  ‘Either that equipment is out of the range or the phe- nomenon has kicked in since you took those, ’cos the Saser certainly worked.’

  ‘Okay, Tom. Keep us posted. It’s a priority we get something from 202.’

  ‘Why? You think this guy can get the better of a crack SAS squad on his own?’

  ‘I hope not, Tom. But any advantage we can grab, I’ll grab it!’

  60

  From the flight deck of the Big Mac, Dimitri and Mark had a clear view of the roof. They had seen Azrael duck behind a steel bulkhead to one edge of the tower. Using infrared sensors they were able to project a hazy, ill-defined image of the man as he crouched low, his machine gun poised ready. They saw Azrael react as the choppers approached, raising his weapon to look through the sight.

  The first chopper, Eagle 1, swept in low.

  ‘Shooter is at coordinates 556 by 667,’ Mark said through the comms.

  ‘Roger, Big Mac.’

  A projectile shot away from the underside of the lead chopper. It landed a few feet from the bulkhead and shattered on impact, releasing a cloud of teargas. The terrorist darted away from his hiding place, firing at Eagle 1 as he went. He’d already pulled on a gas mask.

  Eagle 2 arrived at the edge of the roof and manoeuvred north, coming around the other side of Azrael’s position in a pincer movement. As the chopper hovered just a few metres above the roof, an SAS sniper on board opened fire. Bullets smashed about the structures on the roof, ricocheting around a vast metal vent.

  Azrael dashed to another hiding spot, a brick bunker about 3 metres square. A gunman on Eagle 1 let rip with a barrage of bullets. Azrael ran again, heading for the door down into 202.

  ‘Shit! He’s getting away!’ shouted the pilot on Eagle 1, the sound echoing around the flight deck of the Big Mac through the open comms link. ‘Eagle 2 . . . cut him off.’

  Eagle 2 shot to port with phenomenal speed and agility, skirting above the obstacles on the roof of the tower. Another stream of bullets spat out from the chopper, smashing into the concrete roof and slamming around the metal flues and vents.

  Eagle 1 roared over the side of the tower and made a tight turn before heading straight for Azrael as he sped across the roof, dodging bullets and peeling off a few of his own as he went. Eagle 2 dodged its partner by just a few centimetres and screeched away to the west as Azrael reached the door down into the building and disappeared from view.

  61

  Eagle 1 touched down a few seconds before Eagle 2. They were identical except for a single digit difference in the serial number on their sides. The assault team leader, J-Alpha, nodded to the others and jumped the half a metre to the surface of the roof. Spinning around, he scythed the air with his C8 STW assault rifle; he and his three men, J-Beta, J-Delta and J-Gamma, spread out. They were in full assault gear – gas masks, night-vision glasses and armed with assault rifles, Sig Sauer P226 pistols, ‘flash-bang’ stun grenades and Ka-Bar 1222 USMC fighting knives.

  J-Alpha took the lead and pulled up at the opening into the dark corridor. Peering in, he could see it drop away into the void between the roof and the top level of the Cloud Tower. The corridor was lit up by the helmet lights of the men as they crowded in behind their leader. With the aid of their night-vision glasses, they could make out almost as much detail as if the corridor were bathed in fresh daylight.

  The place had been badly smashed up. Towards the end of the corridor, water streamed along the floor and there was a constant tinking sound of falling masonry and powdered concrete. It took the assault group only a few seconds to reach the elevators at the end of the passageway. From there they took the stairs down, fanning out and covering each other in case the shooter had decided to make a stand there.

  But they could see no sign of the man. The group pressed on along the second corridor and down the next flight of stairs, which was partially blocked by rubble and debris. J-Alpha ducked into the hole Steph and Chloe had punched out over an hour earlier. He took the last few metres very carefully, easing through and landing on the shattered marble floor of 202. He called the other three to follow him and covered them with his assault rifle as they slipped through the opening. They had no need to say much. They each had their assigned tasks and set off in four different directions, an open comms link between them.

  It was lighter here thanks to bright sunshine streaming in from the windows blown out around the triangular floor. But it was also wilder. A fierce wind blew through from the desert and the temperature had now dropped to below zero. But they had expected that. J-Alpha headed west, the south-facing wall of the building to his left. The shops were just shells. What hadn’t been smashed up by the missile strike and the exploding gas tank had been thrown around and shattered by the ferocity of the desert wind.

  J-Alpha ducked into the first shop, lifted the night-vision glasses to his forehead and peered around. The place looked like the evil alter-image of what it had been only a few hours ago. It had once been a store that sold candles, incense and aromatherapy products. Neat rows of bottles had stood on shelves occupying the entire expanse of one wall. Close to the windows out to the desert had been booths for aromatherapy sessions, comfortable beds, iPods playing soothing music and oil burners emitting relaxing fumes from hundred-dollar bottles of exotic fragrances.

  Now the wall of bottles looked like the set of a western after the gunslinger had rampaged the bar. Not a single container had survived intact. Across the room, the booths had been turned to firewood. The place stank of a complex blend of expensive oils that had fused to form an unsavoury, other-worldly perfume.

  J-Alpha heard a sound, nine o’clock. He span around and saw a cracked bottle tumble from a shelf and smash to the floor. He crouched low, brought his assault rifle to his eye and twisted as another sound came from the other side of the store. He caught a flash of black – a man running out onto the mall.

  ‘J-Beta,’ the assault group leader whispered into his comms. ‘Target out on mall, grid reference 619.’ He made his way carefully to the exit.

  He’d lost sight of the black figure. Crouching low in the doorway, J-Alpha swept his rifle around 180 degrees. He heard a weapon discharge off to his left and dived into the doorway of the neighbouring shop. He stared inside. A crackling fluorescent strip light dangled from the ceiling, swaying in the wind. J-Alpha strained to hear a footfall. A second burst of gunfire rang out.

  Pressing himself up hard against the wall just inside the store, the SAS team commander scanned the shop and saw two shapes on the floor. He knew immediately what they were, even if he couldn’t be sure who they were. He felt a stab of fury and then an adrenaline rush. Changing his frequency on his comms unit, he switched to Eagle 1. ‘I have two men down,’ he said.

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Dunno yet.’ He clicked off, changed frequency again and ran over to the prone shapes. He rolled them over with his foot. It was J-Delta and J-Gamma. Each of them had taken a bullet between the eyes. ‘This is J-Alpha. Respond,’ the commander called to Eagle 1 quietly into his comms.

  Nothing for a few moments. Then came a third crack of machine gun fire.

  J-Alpha ran for the mall, keeping low, his heart pumping so hard he could feel it thumping in his ribcage. Wreathed in sweat, he hadn’t felt such excitement since Afghanistan.

  He almost tripped over the third dead soldier, J-Beta. Now he was alone with the terrorist – and the bastard was good. He dropped at a sound, three o’clock. He felt a
slither of something jab into his thigh and winced. He couldn’t risk even glancing down. Shuffling forwards and ignoring the pain, he lifted his head a few centimetres. A salvo of bullets sliced the air close to his right ear.

  Keeping his head to the floor, he glanced around. A large pile of twisted metal and concrete lay a few metres ahead to his left. He scrambled to his feet, keeping low and spraying 15 45-millimetre shells per second around a 180-degree arc. He dived behind the pile of debris.

  ‘Three down, one to go,’ a voice came through his comms. Then a laugh.

  J-Alpha sighed heavily. ‘Eagle 1,’ he said into his comms. ‘Shooter has broken into our comms frequency.’

  ‘Status, J-Alpha?’

  ‘I have a third man down.’

  He edged towards the left side of the pile of wreckage that was his only shield and looked out. A burst of machine-gun fire split the air and he pulled back – fast. The shooter was crouching behind a fallen statue about 10 metres away, two o’clock.

  J-Alpha pulled the pin from a ‘flash-bang’ stun grenade and tossed it over the barricade in the direction of the gunman. He heard it land and go off. A clatter of gunfire echoed around the mall, a clear message the grenade had done precisely nothing.

  A clanking sound. J-Alpha span around and saw an M61 grenade bounce on the marble floor. He dived towards it. Masonry shattered a centimetre above his head as the shooter let off a dozen rounds. J-Alpha snatched the grenade and tossed it back towards the shooter. It exploded mid-air, sending a shockwave across the mall and a bang so loud J-Alpha felt an eardrum burst.

  He whirled around, groaning, partially deafened and confused. A shape reared up in front of him, a face covered in a black balaclava. The barrel of an L85 light machine gun honed into view so close the muzzle was out of focus. With incredibly fast reflexes, J-Alpha scrambled for the Sig Sauer P226 pistol he had earlier slipped under his belt. He yanked it free, pulled it up and unleashed a full clip into the black shape.

  For a second, J-Alpha lost all artifice. In that moment, he was Graham Hawthorn, married to Jill, father to Luke, aged three-and-half. He was a son to Howard and Fiona Hawthorn, and his fiefdom was a three-bed semi in Slough. He felt sick and lonely, and he prayed.

  A heavy object came down on his head. He fell back, it tumbled onto his chest and slipped to one side. Warm liquid spattered across his face. All he could see was red. Involuntarily, he wiped the blood from his eyes and saw the dead body of the shooter, the left side of the man’s face torn apart by the Sig Sauer bullets.

  A few steps back stood a terrifying machine, a framework of grey, the spaces between the metal supports of its infrastructure filled with some weird-looking perspex. He could just make out the shape of a person inside the machine as a servo arm whirred and lifted the corpse of the terrorist a metre into the air before lowering it carefully to one side.

  62

  J-Alpha pulled himself up and stared in astonishment at the Cage.

  ‘The way to the roof is clear. Will you be okay with the body?’ Chloe asked, her voice coming through a set of speakers on the front of the Cage.

  J-Alpha merely saluted and Chloe turned, heading for the emergency stairs, leaving the SAS man to drag Azrael’s body back up to the roof.

  The door onto the stairs was still there but it hung limp from where Steph had melted the lock and kicked it in. If anything, the fire raging in the stairwell was now even hotter and fiercer than it had been an hour earlier. It presented only a modest stumbling block for Chloe in the Cage.

  She pushed through the opening and onto the concrete platform that led to a short flight of stairs. The walls were black with soot and dripping with an unsavoury-looking oily substance. Chloe leapt half a dozen steps to the next platform, turned a corner and descended the second flight down to Floor 201. She didn’t hang around there. The level had been scanned earlier and she knew there were no life signs. She took the next turn, started to descend to the mezzanine and approached the final flight of stairs to 200. The entire staircase was covered with rubble, floor to ceiling.

  ‘No wonder survivors couldn’t get beyond 199,’ she said to herself. ‘The other emergency exit must be blocked too, and this mess must go on past the door and down the next flight of stairs.’

  Adjusting the controls, Chloe manoeuvred the Cage and started to clear a path through the wreckage, lifting huge chunks of concrete and placing them behind her to one side of the stairs, leaving an escape path back up. Half the roof had caved in, bringing with it steel beams, insulation, metal pipes, plastic sheets, a complete menagerie of twisted and smashed-up bits of infrastructure.

  Even using the full might of the Cage, the going was tough, the wreckage was densely packed and many times as Chloe clasped a chunk of rubble with one of the arms of the machine, it simply crumbled into a pile of small pieces that had to be scooped away. Water poured down the stairs from a burst sprinkler on the floor above and turned the powdered detritus to a sticky paste. It felt like wading through soft cheese and it took Chloe 10 minutes working at full stretch to clear a path to the emergency door leading from the stairwell onto Floor 200. She scanned her console, probing the barrier with her sensors, trying to find the easiest route through the chaos between here and 199.

  A few metres down the next stairwell leading to the mezzanine above 199, things started to get a little easier. A large metal tank lay across the stairs where it had crashed down from the ceiling. The steps were covered with oil. She lifted the tank and placed it to one side of the mezzanine. Back on the final flight of stairs down to 199, the steps were strewn with smaller chunks of debris. She made short work of this and was soon through.

  Chloe turned slightly in her seat, looked down at the control panel and then out through the front glass panel. In the corner of her eye she glimpsed a strange shape as it slid out of view. Spinning the Cage around, she brought it to an abrupt halt. Another flicker of movement. She jerked in her seat just as a dark shape reared up at the glass. It was the head of massive python, mouth agape, eyes furious and bewildered.

  She was so stunned she almost lost control. Instinctively, she fell back in her seat, shielding her face. Getting a grip, she lowered her hands and leaned forwards to peer into the face of the terrified creature. It swung away and fell out of sight beneath the Cage before reappearing. Its underbelly, a wonder of intricate patterns, slithered over the glass front panel. The entire snake, at least 7 metres of it, disappeared into the rubble piled up behind the Cage.

  ‘Wow!’ Chloe exclaimed, taking several deep breaths. She strode down the last few steps and onto the platform. The door onto 199 swung into view. An old man was sitting with his back to the door, his head slumped forwards. Chloe could just make out his lined and crinkled face, his bald head catching the light, his fez on the floor half a metre away. Next to that stood a wicker basket, once home to his snake.

  63

  Base One, Tintara

  ‘So, Syb. What we got?’

  ‘A man who has covered his tracks extremely well,’ the computer replied.

  Tom laughed. ‘Yes but Syb, you love a challenge, don’t you?’

  ‘The man on the roof uses the alias Azrael, the Anglicised adaptation of the Arabic word Azra’eil, which translates as –’

  ‘Angel of Death,’ Tom said quietly and stared at the holoscreen above his keyboard. He was now lying on his bed, head rested against a pile of pillows, the holographic image hanging in the air in front of him. It showed a picture of the man they had seen on the roof, a shot taken clandestinely by British Intelligence a year before when Azrael had been working in Beirut.

  ‘That’s correct. His real name is Marcus Hewson. British, ex-SAS. Saw action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Decorated, reached rank of Captain, then in 2004 he was moved to a desk job, training recruits at the British Army base in Aldershot.’

  Tom stared at the image of an upright figure in army uniform. ‘What went wrong?’ he said.

  ‘Wife and daughter were killed
in a city centre outrage in 2006.’

  Archive reports popped up on the screen. A headline declared: ‘Eight Innocents Killed in Seconds’. It went on to describe how an escaped psychiatric patient, Norman Gardiner, had slaughtered eight shoppers in the town of Bracknell. Two of the victims had been Emily and Charlotte Hewson. Following this on the screen came Hewson’s decommissioning documents and then a surprise: a death certificate, Marcus Hewson’s.

  ‘It’s not completely clear how it was done,’ Sybil said. ‘A body was never found, but after the statutory seven years, a death certificate was filed. MI6 and the CIA are both aware of Azrael’s existence. It is possible they may also know of the man’s background. He has been implicated in a number of assassinations and terrorist attacks during the past eight years, including the murder of the Australian Foreign Minister, Craig Holland, a year ago and the bomb blast at Westbahnhof, the central railway station in Vienna.’

  ‘Thanks, Syb. At least there’s something to work on there.’

  ‘There’s more, Tom.’

  ‘Oh good!’

  ‘The name Azrael created a cascade response in my quantum processor.’

  ‘Sounds painful.’

  ‘Azrael is an epithet with obvious theological meaning. We have encountered this before.’

  ‘No!’ Tom exclaimed, realising the implications. ‘You. Are. Joking!’

  ‘I’m not programmed for original comedic repartee.’

  Tom was staring at the holoscreen without really taking it in. ‘The Four Horsemen!’ he said slowly. ‘Any tangible links, Syb?’

  ‘I scoured the entire database covering the operation at the Californian Conference Center last year. There was no reference to anyone or anything named Azrael.’