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special forces troops both here and in the United States. Further analysis and liaison with our friends in the CIA have confirmed that these particular guns came from a batch that went missing en route from the States to Afghanistan, while they were going through a supplydepot in Peshawar, Pakistan. The word on the ground at the time was that they’d probably bring someone a nice profit in the weapons bazaars up north. It turns out the word was wrong. The terrorists also had the use of Soviet-era RPG-7 missiles of unknown origin, and at least one Stinger missile, ditto.’ His voice turned apologetic at the disturbing list of intelligence failures, but this wasn’t his first high-level meeting and his eyes met the minister’s accusing gaze without flinching. ‘As you’ll know, Stingers are not commonly available on the arms market, and that may give us our best route into the terrorist supply chain. From the surveillance film recovered from the downed helicopter we know that there were twelve attackers, physically fit, weapons trained, with faces masked to conceal their identity, as you would expect. The ammunition was generally delivered in clinical three-round bursts, which is very professional and, in its own way, quite surprising. Our Islamic brethren have a tendency to get excited and blow the hell out of everything in sight.’ He saw his boss’s icy glance at this detour into subjectivity and returned swiftly to his brief. ‘The perpetrators escaped on twelve off-road trail bikes and we can track their movement across the fields, but once they reached the road they appear to have split up and rendezvoused with other getaway vehicles – again, type and origin unknown, but they must have been large enough to accommodate bikes and riders.’ He paused and took a sip from the bone-china cup in front of him, his face wrinkling withdistaste when he realized the tea was stone cold. ‘We believe we have discovered the remains of five of the bikes at sites across the Midlands and southern England, all burned out and with any serial numbers filed or etched off with acid. It’s possible we can restore the numbers, but the likelihood is that the bikes were stolen to order. Still, if we can track down the previous owners it might provide us with a concrete avenue of inquiry. Finally, we come to the lorry that caused the traffic jam. It was definitely stolen, two weeks prior to the attack, from an overnight truck stop outside Leicester. The owner/driver was sleeping in the motel and didn’t know anything about the theft until he woke in the morning. By the time it was driven on the day of the attack, the number plates had been changed and it had been given an expert paint job. That means it must have been kept in a garage or a warehouse for up to fourteen days. The police have several teams across the Midlands and the south attempting to locate that warehouse, but I’m sure you can imagine the scale of the task. We’re also pretty certain the terrorists must have made at least one dry run, so we’re studying film from traffic cameras along the route. Again, that will take time. More than a million people use the M25 every day, so it’s like looking for a needle in a field of haystacks.’
    ‘Gerald.’ The Director General nodded to a second aide. ‘You’re our special ops expert.’
    ‘My instinct is that these people are home grown.’ Gerald’s pale eyes roamed the table, daring anyone tochallenge his opinion. His long fingers worked at a pencil with an intensity that made his junior colleague wonder that it didn’t break. Nick had joined Five straight from university and, if he was being honest, the former SAS officer sometimes intimidated him. ‘An operation of this complexity and scale and carried out with such precision would require months of preparation and training. They knew the terrain, how the traffic would be affected by an accident of a certain type, and the reaction time to the second of the