Hunter Killer Read Free

platforms.
    Alfie saw none of this. At the moment of the explosion, he had been waiting patiently for his friends, who had promised him such a lovely weekend away, and whom he had trusted implicitly, just as he trusted anybody who showed him the slightest kindness. Like good friends should, he had been clutching their suitcases, quite unaware that each one contained twenty-five kilos of military-grade explosive, and plastic bags filled to bursting with hard, anodised five-inch nails.
    And as he was at the very centre of the explosion, he had of course been the first to die.

Part One
    Hammerstone

One
     
    South London. Monday. 23.00hrs
    ‘What the fuck do they think we are?’ Spud Glover muttered. ‘Twenty-four-hour locksmiths?’
    Danny Black grunted, then looked left and right up Horseferry Mews. The name made this little side street – a hundred metres end to end and lined with railway arches – sound a lot posher than it actually was. Some of the arches were cavernous, full of litter, plastered with fat, colourful graffiti, and stinking of piss. Others had been turned into lock-ups and mechanics’ workshops. Danny and Spud were standing alongside the central arch. The frontage was painted grey, with a red roll-top grate for vehicles to get in and out, and a steel door to one side. Both locked. The adjacent arches were empty, with no frontage. Over the sound of the hammering rain, Danny could hear larger drops echoing as they fell from the top of the arch on the right to the concrete floor. Between the two arches was a corroded metal downpipe reaching all the way to the ground from the railway above. The torrential rain was too much for it. Water sluiced down its sides, and belched up from the grate at its mouth.
    Danny was as soaked as the drainpipe, and pissed off. Ordinarily, theirs was a life of aircraft carriers, forward operating bases and active missions behind enemy lines. But this? This was donkey work. He and Spud had been entrusted with nothing else since they got back from Syria six months previously.
    Their two Regiment mates, Ripley and Barker, were at either end of the street. Danny could just make out the glowing end of Ripley’s cigarette as his mate leaned against the ten-foot-high wall, topped with razor wire, that faced the railway arches. If you saw Ripley round Hereford, he’d probably be wearing a leather biker’s jacket. Motorbikes were his obsession. He owned, what, six or seven of them? But his biker’s jacket would be no good for tonight. It couldn’t conceal a rifle. Neither Ripley nor Barker showed any sign of the HK416s secreted under their Barbours and attached to their shoulders by means of a short length of bungee rope. But they only needed to open up their coats and extend their right arms to be as heavily armed as anyone in London – and in the wake of the Paddington bomb that was saying something.
    Spud and Danny were less heavily armed. Their jeans and North Face jackets covered the Sigs holstered at their waist. Spud wore night-vision goggles propped up on his forehead. No body armour for either of them, though. They’d discussed it back in Hereford, and agreed that it wasn’t necessary. This was Lewisham, not Lagos. Nobody expected a job like this to go noisy, and there wasn’t a single self-respecting member of the Regiment who actively chose to strap on plate hangers if they didn’t have to.
    ‘I said, who do they think we are ?’ Spud repeated. ‘Twenty-four . . .’
    ‘They’re just a bunch of geeks,’ Danny interrupted. ‘Open the frickin’ door and we can get out of here.’
    Between Danny and Ripley, about thirty-five metres from Danny’s own position, was an old grey Bedford van with a dent on the nearside wing. It was parked up on the other side of the road opposite the arches. All lights off, nobody behind the wheel. But in the back, hidden from view, was a police tech unit. As soon as Spud had broken into the lock-up and given them the all-clear,