Free Thunder by Anthony Bellaleigh Page A

that their helpers, in the UK, had been arrested. Examined the pictures of the devastation in front of Victoria Station. Wondered whether his brother had known, any better than he had, what Murat and Azat had meant when they’d said they were putting together a glorious strike at the heart of his country’s enemies. A strike that they’d said would really put Khandastan on the map for all time.
    Well, whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this.
    The young man’s shoulders shuddered, his head dropped, and a teardrop splashed off the table edge beneath him.
    ~~~~~
     
    Madrid, Spain
     
    Jack stood up, flexed his stiff legs, grabbed his pack from the chair beside him and stepped off the train.
    Passing swiftly, and inconspicuously, through the ticket barriers, he made his way out of the main entrance to Madrid’s Atocha Station, turned right and headed along the footpath. The grandiose façade of the Ministry of Agriculture building shone whitely in the hot sunshine. After a few hundred metres he stopped at an unoccupied phone box and made a call.
    “I’m here,” he said, leaning closely into the small booth.
    “Took your time, Tin,” came the response.
    It sounded like his bug-eyed boss speaking. Code-named Ace.
    ‘The albino must be in the field for the slime-ball to be answering the phones,’ Jack thought to himself. ‘I wonder where?’ He glanced up and down the street again. He couldn’t see anyone suspicious.
    “Whatever,” he said calmly into the phone. “And now?”
    “Hold your position. Check into a hotel. Somewhere quiet. Keep your cell on. We’ll call you. Change hotels every few days.”
    “Roger that.”
    Jack hung up, swung his pack onto his broad back, and wandered off in search of lodgings.
    ~~~~~
     
    Berlin
     
    Jeyhun was curled up, on the edge of restless sleep, when a series of angry squawks from the answering machine made him leap up in panic. For a second or two, he wildly brandished his pistol around the loft space until he worked out what was making the noise. Now, he stood in the pitch-blackness, fully clothed, with his sleeping bag round his ankles, as he listened to the machine’s automated message playing out.
    “Come on, Sergei,” Jeyhun whispered to himself.
    He could hear a clatter of background noise coming from the machine’s tiny speaker. It sounded like a bar. Then a series of tones played out as the caller keyed the remote access code.
    “You have one message,” announced the buff-coloured box. “Message one: ‘It’s me. They’re close. Watch your backs. I just had to put one down here. It’s messy. They may be tracking the cellphones – switch them all off. We change to Exit Plan Delta and meet me at Rendezvous Location B’ ... No more messages.”
    Jeyhun instinctively leaned toward the machine as he strained to listen. For a couple of seconds there was nothing but the continued buzz of unintelligible chatter then someone closer to the phone yelled, “Dos cervezas, por favo...” The line went dead.
    The call was from Spain. It was Azat, not Sergei. Jeyhun’s head dropped in disappointment and the machine plunged the room back into darkness.
    ~~~~~
     
    London
     
    “I think I’ve blown it,” she murmured sadly.
    The muscular man heaved himself onto his side to face her. “What do you mean, Shaz?” he asked, surprised and concerned at her sudden melancholy.
    “They’re going to get the little bastard off, because I clobbered him,” Sharinda replied.
    He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
    Manjeethra stroked her hand through the hairs on his chest and let her fingers run down into the softer fur near his groin. “We’ll see,” she muttered. “I feel really bad for the families.”
    “You shouldn’t. You did your job. You can’t hold yourself responsible. It’ll tear you apart.”
    “Says the voice of experience?” She stared deeply into his warm mahogany eyes and wondered what awful secrets they had witnessed over the