Free The Eagle's Covenant by Michael Parker

of years after the Waco siege.” Hoffman stifled another yawn. Jansch continued. “FBI thought he’d perished in the Waco fire.”
    “He probably wasn’t even there,” Hoffman mumbled. Most democratic police forces held the rather cynical view that the Waco siege had been handled badly by the FBI. Hoffman had concluded that too. “They were never too sure of who was in that farm building or how many perished. Still,” he observed brightly, “it gives us a name. Anything else?”
    Jansch tapped the file. “We’re fairly sure of the weapons they used, but it’s not a lot of use unless we can find the guns. We do know, however, what kind of device was used to blow up the third car.” He turned the pages of the file and ran his finger along a paragraph. “It was a limpet stun bomb.”
    Hoffman had never heard of such a device. “I’ve never heard of them,” he said.
    Jansch closed the file. “It’s a relatively new device. We got the information from the army. Made by an armaments company in the Czech Republic. The name’s in there,” he added, pointing to the file. “Can’t pronounce it though. The device is clamped to the side of the vehicle by a powerful magnet. It has an inner, spring loaded steel ring which activates the bomb. A shaped charge blows a neat hole in the body of the car followed later, milliseconds I am told, by a stun grenade which explodes about one metre after release. It’s a device favoured by specialist forces when dealing with terrorist hijackings.”
    “So why were the occupants all shot to death?” Hoffman asked him. “It seems a trifle unnecessary if they have all been incapacitated.”
    “Well, I spoke to an officer in G9.” This was the Grenzschutzgruppe 9, Germany’s crack anti-terrorist unit. “Apparently it’s the way they do things. Take no chances, you see. You have to make sure the terrorists are dead. Incidentally, the device would only be used, normally, when storming an aeroplane. Or a bus, perhaps. So long as it’s a thin skinned vehicle. Quite effective I’m told.”
    Hoffman considered the implication of what Jansch had just said. It was quite important.
    “So the person who used it could quite possibly be a former member of one of the Special Forces?”
    Jansch conceded it might be so. “It’s a possibility,” he agreed, “but only a possibility; it takes no special skill to use one.”
    Hoffman considered the ludicrous situation of advanced technology, as was the case of the stun grenade, having to be applied by the use of old fashioned bravado. Whoever whacked that grenade on the car had to be quick and confident. And ruthless too.
    “You’d better get on to Meckenheim. Fill them in on the details. They might have a name or two they can give us.”
    Meckenheim was a village just south of Bonn. It housed the top, anti-terrorist clearing house in Europe where over 1000 officers waged a covert war against militant extremism. All the top security services had a permanent liaison officer there, and all forms of terrorist threats, from whatever source of political and religious persuasion, were filtered through the complex and sophisticated data banks housed in the building.
    “I’ve already done that, sir.”
    “Good man,” Hoffman said, and meant it. Jansch was often one step ahead of the game “Now, what about satellite photos? Did we get any?”
    Jansch shook his head. “Nothing.”
    Hofmann’s head bobbed up and down: another cul-de-sac. But it was a policeman’s lot to wander up plenty of those. He yawned again and had Jansch trying not to copy him even though was just as tired as Hoffman.
    “OK Uwe, here’s a little pearl for you. See what you make of it.” There was nothing to make of it really, but he wanted the seed planted in Jansch’s subconscious.
    “I have a feeling that Joanna Schiller knows the identity of one of the kidnappers. But she doesn’t know it. Not yet anyway.”
    It brought Jansch up like a jack in the box.