TWENTY EIGHT
An hour’s drive south of London, Hawkings Hall had been in Eleanor Cobb's family for almost seven hundred years. The property was stunning, surrounded by 200 acres of woodland and forestry, the main Hall itself built just at the end of the 14th Century. The building had been developed and added to over the years, and it had been passed down through the family from generation to generation. The Hall had twelve bedrooms, six bathrooms and three separate floors, but the pride of the house was a magnificent drawing room. With its large fireplace, antique furniture and beautiful mahogany walls hung with both family portraits and expensive paintings, the room was the centrepiece of the house, the jewel in the crown. The Hall had been featured in many magazines and newspapers over the years as one of the most famous of its type in the country, and given that Eleanor Cobb was an only child with no living male relatives, the entire property would one day be inherited by her and then on her death, passed on to her eldest son.
Upstairs, her husband had just finished putting his two boys to bed in two of the bedrooms. The boys were twelve and nine, and loved the times they were able to stay with their Grandparents at this house. On the way here their father had told them nothing of the seriousness of the situation, merely saying he had been granted an extra few days holiday and that he'd decided they should all go to stay at Granny and Grandpa's house whilst they were abroad.
But downstairs, out of sight of the two boys, Cobb's smile had faded.
He had methodically checked every possible entrance to the house to make sure they were all secure, ensuring every door and window was locked, a Glock 17 pistol from the ARU gun-cage gripped in his right hand. His wife had wanted to draw the curtains on all the windows but Cobb had refused. Not yet. If anyone was coming, he wanted to see who they were well in advance, friend or foe. It was a full moon tonight and the moon was low in the sky, which, despite some occasional cloud cover, was already lighting up the gardens and outer park of the estate like a giant silver floodlight. Given the Hall's position as the nucleus of the estate, Cobb wanted a head's up if anyone approached the house.
Having just checked in the long kitchen and one of the back doors, he walked down the main corridor and moved into the drawing room. He found his wife standing there quietly, looking out of one of the windows, her arms folded. He saw that rain had just started to fall gently outside, drops of water tapping against the glass, sounding like someone drumming their fingers on a table-top, each droplet clinging to the window then sliding down the pane. Cobb nodded wryly. It looked like their run of good weather was over. This was April in the UK, after all.
Making sure the safety catch on the Glock was on, he tucked it into the back of his waistband, and came up behind her, sliding his arms around her waist protectively, looking out into the darkening garden, still well lit by the moonlight despite the shower of rain. He glanced at a clock across the room.
It had just gone 9:31 pm.
'All done,' he said.
She nodded gently. The two of them stood still, in silence, watching the drops starting to rap against the pane.
'Everything OK?' he asked her.
She sighed, and he knew before she answered that everything wasn't.
'They're out there, somewhere, right now, looking for you,' she said, quietly.
'My men will find them,' he said. ‘They don’t know about this place.’
There was a pause. Behind her, he looked out across the lawns and into the trees beyond.
'When will it be over?' she asked.
'When we arrest them. We already have one of them at the station.'
'These men won't just roll over and let you put the cuffs on, Tim. You said one of them killed himself before you could take him. And another committed suicide after he failed.'
'Then they'll all die. That's how it will end.'
'But who’s going to stop them?'
A long silence followed. She was right. They had never dealt with men like this before, highly- trained killers. His men were taught to arrest and question, to preserve life whenever possible, not shoot to kill and ask questions later. Whatever happened, this was going to end with more people being killed.
Possibly him.
His wife went to speak again, but she stopped.
'What?' Cobb asked her, feeling her tense up in his arms. 'What is it?'
She turned to him and frowned.
'Listen.'
Cobb listened. All he heard was the pattering of the rain against the window.
But then, he heard a faint sound.
It was a thumping, or a whining, a mix of both, faint amongst the rainfall but definitely audible.
He listened closer, as the noise grew stronger.
It sounded like a helicopter.
Cobb looked at his wife, her eyes wide with fear.
'Get the boys,' he said.
A hundred yards above them, Fox flew the helicopter over the main Hall then started to bring it down on the south-side of the house, the opposite side from where the Panthers would surely arrive on the only road in and out of the estate. Beside him, Porter, Chalky and Archer had all finished adjusting their throat mics and tac gear on the journey, reloading their weapons, and the three officers waited anxiously for the helicopter to land, eager to get on the ground. The house was still, and there was no sign of any vehicles. It looked as if they had beaten the Panthers here. During the flight, Chalky had gone to work on the wound on Archer’s head with a first-aid kit that the helicopter carried. Given the unpredictable movement of the vessel and Chalky not being known for his medical skills, Archer now sported a bandage wrapped three times around his head in a haphazard fashion, the bleeding stopped by gauze but the wound still throbbing and painful.
The helicopter touched down on the wet grass and before Fox could switch off the engine his three team-mates were already out of the doors, ducking low and running across the green lawn towards the house through the rain. Fox switched off the equipment and grabbing his MP5 from the foot-well, he secured the door behind him and sprinted across the soaked grass after the others, the rotors of the helicopter slowly coming to a halt behind him.
At a window, Cobb had the Glock in his hands, but had relaxed as he saw the black Unit helicopter touch down, and moved down the corridor to let his men in. He unlocked the door, pulling it open, and the men ran inside, fully armed, Fox catching up and joining them. The rain was starting to fall harder now and the men's wet boots slapped on the stone floor as they ran into the old house.
'What the hell’s going on?' Cobb asked, as Fox shut and locked the door behind him quickly. 'You're meant to be back at the station.'
‘They’re coming for you, sir,’ Porter said. ‘They know you’re here.’
‘What?’ Cobb said.
‘We need to secure the house.’
Cobb looked at them for a moment as realisation dawned, then nodded.
‘This way.’
He led the trio into the Drawing Room to their left. Cobb’s wife was standing waiting there with the two sleepy boys, looking worried.
‘What’s happening, Dad?’ the eldest boy asked, seeing the tension on his father’s face.
‘Is there a cellar?’ Fox asked. 'We need to get you all out of sight.'
‘Yes,' Cobb's wife said. 'But the-'
Before she could finish the sentence, all the lights went off.
The house was plunged into darkness, the only light from the moon shining in through the open windows.
Both Chalky and Fox swore simultaneously, their MP5s in their hands.
‘It’s OK,’ Cobb’s wife said. ‘The power has been cutting in and out recently. Old houses. Nothing to be worried about.’
'No,' Chalky said. ‘They’re here.’
He was right.
The Black Panthers were already in the house.
Rather than use the main drive and alert whoever was inside that they were coming, Spider and Bird had turned left once inside the gate and parked a hundred yards from the house in the woods, hiding the vehicles amongst the trees. The team had collected their kit and moved on to their target in the gathering darkness, the same routine they had carried out so many times in the past. None of them spoke, but all of them felt that same thrill that they had all those years ago, the squad out in the field again, hunting an enemy. They had stalked their way around the left side of the estate in the shadows, using the shrubbery as cover. Second in the line behind Bird, who was on point, Wulf saw that the curtains to the Hall had been left open and some lights were on. In the moonlight, he could make out fresh tyre tracks on the driveway outside, slowly being washed away by the rain.
Cobb was here.
Under normal circumstances, the team would have liked to have infiltrated from above, through a roof light, but given how wet and slippery the walls were, scaling was impossible. They would have to go in from the ground. Start one side and sweep their way along.
The lock on the west door was old and big and easily picked by Bug, but as he worked on it, they had heard a helicopter approaching. Taking cover in the shadows, they had seen the chopper arrive and fly over the house, ARU printed on the side. Looking up at the vessel in the rain, Wulf silently cursed the fact he didn’t have an RPG. He could have taken the chopper out there and then. But it seemed some of these policemen couldn’t keep away.
They hadn't learnt their lesson from the police station.
Once Bug got the door open and the men moved inside the house, after a brief search Bird had located the big fuse-box in the cellar. He pulled the main switch and the entire Hall plunged into darkness. On cue, the men pulled down the visors of their night-vision goggles, their view of the house now tinged with green but clear as crystal through the lenses. They had also discarded the big and brash AK-47s for quieter weapons. Each man had a silenced MP5 SD3, the same weapon as the police officers, only with an integrated suppressor on the end of each to hide muzzle flash effectively and make the weapon ideal for night-time operations. Although relatively heavy, weighing in at seven pounds alone without ammunition, the silenced sub-machine guns each held a 30-round magazine full of polished 9mm Parabellum bullets, two more clips on each man’s fatigues. The weapons guy down at the Docklands had outdone himself. Considering the weapons were illegal in the UK after a Firearms act banning all sub-machine guns, six of the MP5 SD3s with sufficient ammunition for four thousand pounds had been a very good deal. Given each man's training and experience, in the darkness the Panthers were damn good.
But with the night-vision goggles and such high-quality weapons, they were close to invincible.
Bird climbed the stairs from the cellar to join the others, pulling the door shut gently behind him. Wulf turned to his men, motioning a sequence of silent orders with his hands. They acknowledged and separated, the three of them moving off in separate directions into the dark and silent Hall, their faces smeared with dark camo paint, dressed in black, brutal silenced sub-machine guns in their shoulders.
Alone, Wulf stood still for a moment, his eyes closed, tuning his senses, listening. Then he began to creep along the lower corridor, his dark boots printing mud on the floor. He felt his heart-rate rise with anticipation. Cobb was here somewhere. The last one of the group who had haunted his dreams every night for fifteen years in that prison. The last of the group whose intended death had given him a reason to stay alive. The men who had murdered his family, who had taken everything he had ever loved from him. Ten of them were now gone. And with this last execution, revenge and justice would be complete. He could die fulfilled and at peace.
Wulf moved through an open door silently and entered a long and quiet kitchen, the MP5 SD3 locked into his shoulder, a huge dark figure, an apparition, something out of a nightmare. Pots and pans hung from hooks along a long steel sink and table, gleaming silver in the fading moonlight from the windows and reflecting a distortion of the large black figure. He figured Cobb would be armed and his family may be here with him, but that would only sweeten the deal. Wulf would take his family just as he took his. An eye for an eye. A family for a family. Blood for blood. He felt his anticipation and excitement rise, but took a deep breath, gently loosening his grip on his silenced MP5.
The Hall was silent.
But it wasn't empty.
Cobb was here somewhere.
Wulf had been waiting fifteen years for this night.
With the MP5 SD3 as steady as a rock in his shoulder and his vision as clear as day through the goggles, the Albanian Special Forces commander moved off into the dark house, hunting his prey.