State Of Emergency: (Tom Buckingham Thriller 3) Read Free Page B

shit.
    The whites of his eyes were still bloodshot from the CS gas. He knew the drill, used the hotel hair-drier to evaporate the irritant, but it would be a few hours before they calmed down. There would be a lot of cameras around today and he didn’t want to stand out, but he also needed to be on maximum alert.
    From somewhere overhead came the deep pulsing thuds of a police Eurocopter, hovering nearby. He had been looking forward to a spell of much needed R&R, a break from the grind of the months under cover, but last night’s attack had nixed that. Fez Randall’s face flashed in front of him, his shocked eyes staring heavenwards, his mouth frozen open in disbelief. Not an aggrieved suicidal jihadi, but a former soldier, like him, a member of Invicta, like him, a blue-eyed Brit, like him. Yes, there might have been a choice. Tom could have given him a warning, a chance to disarm, but he’d nothing to go on: no tip-off, no intelligence, no prior ID, no knowledge of where the man in the mask had come from, or how he had got past the heavy security round the hotel. For all Tom had known at the time, he might have been wearing a vest full of explosive. That was why it had had to be a head job, to stop the attacker even thinking of detonating. And since homemade or low-grade military explosive was both unstable and volatile, a high-velocity round entering a vest could very well have detonated it. And even if there had been no vest, he was about to brass up a pair of innocent civilians who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    The one mistake Tom was still cursing himself for was lifting Randall’s mask in front of the couple. The woman he didn’t think would be a problem, but the mouthy boyfriend … He just had to hope that the Official Secrets Act would do its job and keep his gob shut.
    What troubled Tom far more, though, was whether Randall had had help. Was this a one-off or part of something more? And what had been his motive? Questions that couldn’t go unanswered. Meanwhile, a whole new chapter in the extraordinary political rise of Vernon Rolt was about to open, and who knew what that would lead to? His train of thought was hijacked by a rapid volley of thuds against the door.
    ‘Stop wanking and get out of my bathroom.’
    Tom opened the door to find Jez outside in a pair of unnecessarily ample boxers, absently clutching the contents. ‘You’re the one who’ll be abusing yourself for the rest of your life unless you get some decent underwear.’ Tom stepped out of the bathroom and into the narrow corridor.
    Jez raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Rough night?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Your man got in, then.’
    Tom nodded.
    Jez continued to gaze at him, evidently expecting more.
    Tom obliged: ‘A victory for common sense. He’ll do what needs to be done.’ He felt Jez’s pitying gaze. If he’d guessed that Tom was under cover in Rolt’s organization he’d had the decency not to mention it. Nonetheless Tom sensed that his parroting of the party line fell wide of the mark, an insult to their friendship. Not for the first time he wondered how much longer he could go on with this charade.
    Right on cue, a volley of sirens erupted from a fleet of emergency vehicles rushing up Piccadilly. Jez sighed. ‘Well, I suppose it can’t get any worse.’
    Don’t bank on it , thought Tom. But he didn’t say it. Instead he gave a half-hearted and decidedly noncommittal shrug, and caught a look of renewed curiosity on Jez’s face. ‘What?’
    ‘What happens to Rolt’s private army now?’
    Invicta was supposedly just a support network for ex-servicemen struggling to come to terms with life outside the forces, so it was a good question, all the more so after last night’s incident. But Jez couldn’t know that. Tom gave another shrug. ‘More of the same, I guess.’
    ‘And what will it mean for you?’
    ‘Dunno.’ A lame answer. But he really didn’t know.
    Jez opened his mouth to continue, then