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mobile phone, which he held up for everyone to see.
    ‘We all know about the decoy bomb in the Westfield Shopping Centre car park that Dragon delivered. The man who presses the call button on this phone will detonate it. I understand that we’ll be able to hear the explosion in here, as we’re only a mile away.’ He paused for a moment, watching them carefully through hooded eyes. ‘So, my friends, who wants to make the call?’
    Dragon spoke up. ‘I drove the van, I’ll do it.’ He put out a hand.
    He looked like he’d do it too, thought Fox. So did Tiger, the psychotic Dane, who was standing there with an expression of utter boredom on his face. He’d have done it as casually as blowing his own nose. Leopard wore an impassive expression. He’d do it too, if he had to.
    Bear, though, was sweating.
    Wolf noticed it too, Fox could tell.
    Bear lowered his eyes, like a kid who doesn’t know the answer to a question. He was trying not to draw attention to himself, but it didn’t work. Bear was a big man with a ruined face. He was always going to stand out.
    Wolf lobbed the phone over to him. ‘You do it.’
    Bear caught it instinctively in one gloved hand, looked at it, then looked at Fox, the expression in his eyes demanding ‘you owe me, help me out here’.
    But Fox couldn’t. There would be no favouritism on his part.
    The warehouse was utterly silent.
    Bear took a deep, very loud breath, his finger hovering over the call button.
    Fox’s voice cut across the room. ‘We said no hesitation.’
    He and Bear stared at each other as if locked in a silent battle of wills.
    Fox began counting the seconds in his head. One. Two. He saw Wolf slip a pistol from his waistband and hold it down by his side. Bear was unarmed. All of them were except him and Wolf.
    Three.
    Wolf’s gloved finger tensed on the trigger.
    Four.
    Bear pressed the call button in one swift decisive movement.
    The silence in the room was absolute.
    And then they heard it. A dull but unmistakeable thud coming from the south.
    Fox straightened up and took a deep breath. There was no going back now. The operation had begun.

Eight
    16.05
    THE MAN CALLED Scope heard it in the cramped flat he’d been renting for the past month. A faint but distinctive boom. It was a sound that would always remind him of heat and death. He ignored it. After all, he was in the middle of a big, sprawling city where the unnatural noises of constant human activity were always coming at him from one direction or the other. He guessed it was probably just a crane dropping its load on one of the many building sites that dotted this surprisingly drab part of west London. It was all a far cry from the peace and tranquillity of home – a place he hadn’t seen in far too long.
    Thankfully, he was almost done here. One last job and then he would be gone.
    He finished dressing and looked at himself in the mirror. The face that stared back at him was lined and gaunt, with hollow cheekbones and skin that was dark and weather-beaten from the sun. He’d been handsome once, or so he’d been told by more than one woman who wasn’t his mother. But no longer. He’d lost a lot of weight this past year. Now he bore the haunted look of a man who’d seen and done far too much and there was a hardness in his flint-grey eyes that was impossible to disguise.
    Still, he was going to have to try.
    He produced a pair of horn-rimmed glasses from the breast pocket of his cheap black suit – the type a mid-ranking hotel manager would wear – and put them on, adopting a polite, almost obsequious expression. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ he said, addressing the mirror with a respectful, customer-oriented smile. ‘May I have a word? It’s about a small discrepancy on your latest bill.’
    Not perfect, but it would have to do.
    Turning away, he picked up the tools he was going to need from the pockmarked coffee table, all small and easily concealable, and secreted them about his person. Finally, he