The Angry Sea

19.

THE FOUR MEN left the Lucky Lady, beach bags over shoulders or in hands.

Walked onto the road leading from the marina to the beach, laughing and joking.

People passing the other way – lucky people, as it turned out – didn’t give them a second’s thought.

The four walked to the top of the beach, where they linked up with Mr Manchester United, who was standing on the other side of a parked car, a pistol jammed down the front of his cut-off shorts.

One of the men – a tall, slender individual in a faded Hooters New York City T-shirt – looked about himself casually, and then said something.

Hooters was carrying two bags, and now he handed one of them to Man U.

Then – with final nods and smiles – they split into two groups.

Three of them stayed where they were, to act as a cut-off team – their job was to intercept any police officers who might try to get to the beach, and to cut down holidaymakers fleeing the main assault.

Which was to be carried out by Man U and a short, stocky man called Khaled.

The two of them now hopped over the low stone wall which separated the road from the heavy, dry sand, and slogged forwards.

When they reached the pre-arranged point, Man U looked at his accomplice and raised his eyebrows.

Ready?

Khaled nodded.

Both men reached into the bags at their feet and took out their loaded Krinkov AKs, locking the stocks in place.

Ten metres to their left, a middle-aged woman in a blue bathing suit and a floppy straw hat saw them do it and froze, hand to her mouth, unable even to scream.

Back at the top of the beach, Hooters NYC and the other two casually picked up their own weapons and slipped off the safety catches.

Twenty feet away from them stood a group of ten or twelve Spaniards in their late teens or early twenties, who were arguing, in a good-natured way, about where to go for lunch.

Hooters bent down and retrieved a hand grenade and pulled the pin.

Whispering a final prayer, he lobbed it into the middle of the group and ducked back below the stone wall as he did so.

The safety lever flew off and armed the weapon as it landed at the feet of a young man, looking for all the world like a ball thrown by a child.

Reflexively, he bent to pick it up, ready to send it back to its owner.

But it was surprisingly heavy.

‘What’s that?’ said one of his friends.

‘Mierda!’ said the man. ‘I think it’s…’

The grenade detonated, killing him and one other man instantly, and wounding every other person in that group.

It was the signal for the shooting to begin.

The panic was instantaneous and total.

Some dived to the ground.

Others stood and stared at the gunmen, their minds temporarily unable to make their legs move.

Still others ran – only to find that they were running towards the other shooters.

The fat German man was one of the first to die, along with his snotty-nosed son – whom he had scooped up into his arms. His wife went down, too, though their five-year-old daughter survived.

The two pretty young Spanish girls whom Carr had been eyeing up – one of them was shot through the temple, and killed outright, the other through the arm and thigh.

She would bleed to death before help arrived.

The cut-off team were making hay with those who were trying to get off the beach.

Men, women, children.

Flip-flops and shorts and bikinis.

Screaming, shouting.

All the time, the remorseless crack-crack of the weapons.

The first police response came within seconds – a marked Guardia Civil Nissan Patrol had by chance been driving down towards the beach.

Three officers – two men and a woman – debussed, drew their pistols, and started moving towards the sand.

They were immediately spotted and engaged by three men some twenty-five metres to their left.

The female officer advanced gamely towards the three, and managed – with one lucky shot – to take out a tall man in a Hooters New York City T-shirt, before a skinny kid in an Adidas vest put her down with three AK rounds in the neck and shoulder.

The two male cops skidded to a halt. One slipped over in his panic, but in a flash he was up and turning and running, and following his partner, who was already five yards ahead of him, head down, weaving.

Dealing with drunken tourists and shoplifters was one thing: this was quite something else.

They were neither physically nor mentally prepared for it.

20.

A FEW MINUTES’ walk along from the beach, John and George Carr were standing outside a bar, halfway down their first pints of San Miguel.

The place was as tacky as it got and it stank of stale cooking oil.

The street was busy with holidaymakers and loud with thumping bass from a nearby sound system, and the heat was still oppressive despite the overhead parasol.

John Carr was not impressed. He shook his head and took another deep, frothy swallow of lager – at least that was cold – as a group of fat, drunken Brits swayed towards them.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ he said as they turned for the entrance to the bar.

One of them – a big guy with a skinhead, a Millwall FC tattoo and a beer belly – clipped Carr as he passed.

‘Hey, watch yourself, pal,’ said Carr.

‘Or what?’ said the guy, stopping and staring at the Scotsman.

But when he saw the glint in Carr’s eyes, his tune changed.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he said, before slinking away inside the bar.

Carr watched him go, shaking his head in disgust.

‘Jesus,’ he said, under his breath. ‘You come here to get away from dickheads like that.’

‘Chill out,’ said George, grinning and holding up his beer. ‘You’re on holiday, for fuck’s sake. You need to get on it. Five or six of these and everything’ll look a lot better.’

‘Aye,’ said Carr, lifting his own pint. ‘Well, you’d better enjoy it because you’ll no be drinking once you’re in training.’

‘True,’ said George. He rolled his eyes. ‘Of course, Selection was much harder in your day.’

Carr chuckled. ‘I actually pity you, son,’ he said. ‘You havnae got a clue what you’re gonnae…’

But then he paused, glass in hand, and cocked his head.

Somewhere to their rear, a bang and then a rapid series of shorter, sharper reports.

‘What the fuck’s that?’ said George, his mind unable for a moment to assimilate the sounds of war with this environment.

But John Carr was already on the balls of his feet, his neck hair on end, pint glass thrown and gone, lager splashed on the dusty cobbles.

The detonation from the grenade was unmistakable, as was the crack and thump of the small arms.

‘That’s AK, George,’ he said. ‘A lot of fucking AK.’

AK, and screaming.

The hundred billion neurons in John Carr’s brain were pulsating with one almost overwhelming electrical impulse: Get down there, and get Alice.

But after taking two steps, he stopped.

Even when judged alongside other special forces soldiers, Carr had stood out for his singular ability to stay calm and to think clearly under extreme pressure.

He’d been in some very sticky spots indeed, but in the middle of the biggest firefights, often hundreds of klicks behind enemy lines, outnumbered, overrun, fighting for his very life, his pulse rate had barely ticked up from its customary 60bpm.

And he had never panicked.

It was just logical.

Panicking got you killed.

So he didn’t panic.

Not thinking got you killed, too.

So, although he was being tested now as never before, he stopped, and he stood, and he thought.

He could hear several weapons firing, perhaps as many as half a dozen.

People were already running past him, babbling, crying, freaking out.

Some of them wounded.

One guy holding his guts in, stumbling and dragging his bare feet, supported by two of his mates, his mouth slack, minutes from bleeding out.

Carr knew that he couldn’t just sprint onto the sand, because that would get him killed, and if he was killed he couldn’t help Alice.

But he needed to get eyes-on in order to formulate a plan.

To his left, George was staring at him, his own eyes wide with shock.

He’d joined the Parachute Regiment just after the Afghan draw-down.

He was fit and strong, and no doubt he was brave and well-trained, too.

But he was not tested, not hardened and tempered by battle.

And you never know how you’ll react in a contact until it happens.

For an instant, Carr saw him not as the young man he was, but as the child he’d been.

He was on the verge of telling his son to run and hide, to stay safe, when – as if reading his old man’s mind – George spoke.

‘Wherever you’re going,’ he said, ‘I’m coming with you.’

In that moment, Carr saw a soldier in front of him.

He knew he stood a better chance with some help.

‘Okay, son,’ he said. ‘But you listen to everything I say, understand? No rushing off. You stick by me.’

George nodded.

Then two police officers came into view, running, heads down, terrified, away from the shooting.

Father looked at son.

‘Those two,’ he said. ‘If they’re not going to use their weapons, we will.’

21.

THEY STOOD IN THE street, against the flow of fleeing holidaymakers, and clotheslined the two cops as they sprinted by.

‘Lo siento, señor,’ said Carr. ‘But I need your pistol.’

The man just stared up at him and said nothing.

It was a look that Carr had seen many times before – notably in Bosnia, when the line was broken around Goražde and the men of the BIH were scrambling for the safety of the town, with only one thought in their minds: Please let me survive another day, and I’ll worry about tomorrow… tomorrow.

Carr stood up. Next to him stood George, pistol in hand, an unconscious policeman at his feet, his jaw broken.

Carr looked at the weapon.

Heckler & Koch USP.

Made himself take another moment.

No point charging onto the sand with an empty pistol, either.

Dropped the mag out.

Pushed on the top round.

It moved downward only slightly, indicating that the magazine was full.

Hadn’t even been fired.

Carr replaced the magazine, pulled the topslide back slightly, to double-check that a round was in the breech, and tapped the slide forward to rehouse the round.

Ready to go.

He looked at George, who had copied him.

‘Used one of these before?’ he said.

‘No, we’re on the Glock 17.’

‘Same principle. Safety’s here. How many rounds have you got?’

‘Full clip.’

‘Take the spare mags, too. Fifteen rounds of nine millimetre in each one. Make sure you count your shots. And get as close as you can.’

George nodded.

Flinched at the rate of fire coming from the beach.

Looked down at the peashooter in his hand.

Hesitated.

‘Now, son,’ said Carr, clapping his boy on the shoulder, and flashing him a savage grin. ‘Come with me, and I’ll show you where the Iron Crosses grow.’

In spite of himself, George grinned, and felt his fear melting away at his father’s certainty. And then John Carr was off and running towards the sound of the shooting, against the thinning tide of people, past dozens of white, multi-million dollar yachts bobbing at anchor, seagulls whirling overhead, oblivious, as though this was a day like any other.

In a matter of moments, the two men had reached the low wall in front of the sands.

They crouched behind it.

‘Safety off,’ said Carr.

‘Safety off.’

They peered over.

Beyond was a scene of almost unimaginable carnage.

Dozens of people lay dead or dying on the beach.

Two pairs of killers.

One pair, thirty metres away to their left.

Slowly edging backwards on to the sand, covering approach routes from the town.

As the Carrs watched, one of them leaned over a teenaged boy who was trying to crawl away.

Shot him in the head.

The second pair, forty metres to their right.

Levelling their weapons at four people.

Four of the Brits from earlier, Carr realised.

Not far from where he and Alice had been sitting.

But none of them was Alice.

And now, with a three-round burst into the chest, one of them killed the only male of the group.

The other grabbed the middle girl – the tall blonde in the shocking pink bikini – by the scruff of her neck, and started half-dragging, half-pulling her off the beach.

His mate got behind the other women and pushed them after him.

Shouting, Yallah imshi! Yallah imshi!

Hurry the fuck up!

Carr looked at George. ‘Can you see Alice and Chloe?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Please God,’ breathed Carr.

He was not a religious man, and he didn’t see the inside of a church from one funeral to the next, but plenty of men find time to say a quick prayer when the rounds start flying.

Every man says a prayer when they’re flying around his baby girl.

‘What do we do?’ said George.

Carr thought for a second or two.

His lengthy secondment to the Det in Northern Ireland had left him an outstanding pistol shot, that being the primary weapon of the surveillance operator, but if he engaged the further pair to his right at this range… The best shot in the world would be just as likely to kill the three women.

Whereas the closer pair, to the left, were actually edging his way.

Plus which, they were focused on the streets, not on what was behind them.

No-brainer.

‘Those two first,’ he said. ‘Then we get after the others.’ He turned to his son, and winked. ‘Hold your fire until they get as close as possible, and if it all goes to shit I’ll see you in Valhalla.’

‘Bollocks to that,’ said George. ‘One of these days it’s got to be your round, and I’m not missing that for anything.’

22.

THE TWO MEN were within fifteen metres when they began to turn around.

‘Now,’ said John Carr.

Both Carrs stood up and levelled their weapons.

The terrorists stopped in the sand, mouths open, startled eyes, and started to raise their AKs.

They never stood a chance.

Cumulatively, John Carr had spent months of his life double-tapping targets in various ranges and shooting galleries in Hereford and elsewhere around the world, and he’d done it for real enough times, too.

At the peak of his skills, he’d have got off four aimed shots in under a second, easy.

He was a little rusty, so it took him just over a second – though they were still fired so quickly that it was hard to distinguish between each round.

Tap-tap.

Tap-tap.

The Grim Reaper reached out from the muzzle of Carr’s pistol and took both of the jihadis away to hell, a fifth shot – from George – extinguishing the last vestiges of movement in the twitching fingers of one of them.

Carr looked at his son, eyebrows raised.

George looked back at him, sheepishly. ‘Fucked if I’m going back to Battalion and telling them bastards that you did all the shooting,’ he said.

‘I’ll give you that one,’ said Carr. ‘Now grab that AK, and let’s get going.’

He reached down and pulled the Krinkov from the nearest dead man’s grasp, turning at the same moment to engage the remaining shooters.

But they were now out of sight at the bottom end of the beach.

George Carr had picked up the other carbine, and frisked his guy for spare magazines, and now he hopped onto the low wall and looked in the direction of the marina.

‘No sign,’ he said, and hopped off onto the Calle Ribera on the other side.

He started walking down the line of the wall towards the sea, AK at the ready.

John Carr followed him, keeping good spacing, turning often to cover their rear, finger over the trigger, the weapon in synch with his eyes.

Ready to engage instantly.

‘Anything?’ he said, after fifteen metres.

‘No.’

And then they heard the sound of powerful marine engines – twin 7,400hp Codag gas turbines, to be precise – and a white yacht powered out of the marina.

Both men watched the boat go.

It was really shifting.

Carr raised his AK, but it was already out into the open sea and heading due south.

23.

‘WAS THAT THEM?’ said Carr.

‘Fuck knows,’ said George.

They continued down the line of the wall until Calle Ribera turned right and they were into the marina.

‘Go firm,’ said Carr.

They both took a knee and listened and looked, covering their arcs as they did so.

Nothing.

At least, nothing but the sound of shouting and groaning from the beach behind them, and a distant wail of sirens.

Carr looked at his watch.

Three minutes since they’d clicked off the pistol safeties.

‘Must have been them,’ said Carr. ‘Let’s find your sister and Chloe.’

He jogged in the direction of the patch of sand that Alice had been occupying.

Jogged past the corpses of young children, elderly people, girls in bikinis, young men in dayglo shorts.

Past a man on his back staring sightlessly at the sky, a John Grisham novel still in his hand, the yellow sand dark with red blood.

Another slumped over a cool box, shot in the act of getting himself another beer.

‘Fucking hell,’ he whispered to himself.

He reached the spot.

Their towels were there, but there was no sign of either of the girls.

A wave of something like panic swept over him – a fear he didn’t recognise, because he’d never experienced it before.

And then a police vehicle drove onto the beach, and Carr thought he’d better drop the AK and put his hands up.

‘George,’ he shouted, over his shoulder. ‘Game over, son. Let them see you’re unarmed.’

24.

IT HAD BEEN a quiet day at the Vauxhall HQ of the Secret Intelligence Service.

Although the threat level across Europe had been high for some years now, there was nothing to suggest any imminent attack, and the duty officer on the Spain desk had spent the morning wading through intelligence related to a revival of Basque separatism in the north.

All that changed with a call from a GCHQ liaison officer, with intercepts of frantic communications between Spanish police and special forces on the Costa del Sol.

The duty officer’s blood ran cold, and her hands actually shook for a moment or two.

Then she picked up her phone and called her boss, Director of Operations Justin Nicholls, third-in-command of MI6 and widely tipped to be a future leader of the service.

Within the hour, the world knew that terrorists had launched a massive and deadly attack on two towns on Spain’s Mediterranean coast.

By then, Nicholls was just starting an emergency meeting of the MI6 senior management team, chaired by ‘C’ – the Chief of the SIS.

‘What do we know?’ said C, his voice brusque.

‘Estimates are fifty dead on the ship, and thirty or more on the beach,’ said Nicholls. ‘Will go higher, I’m afraid. It looks very much as though Puerto Banús was the main target. They hit Málaga first, and then went onto the beach when the first responders were out of the way.’

‘Why? What were they looking for at Marbella?’

‘That’s not yet clear.’

‘How did we not know about this?’ said C.

‘We can’t know about everything,’ said Nicholls.

‘A complex, two-pronged attack, on this bloody scale, and we had no idea? They must have been planning it for months.’

‘We’re already going back through everything remotely linked to the Costa for the last two years, just in case it was there and we missed it. But at this stage, no, we had no idea.’

‘The Spanish?’

Spain’s CNI, the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, was not quite at the level of its counterparts in British or American intelligence, but it had improved dramatically since the Madrid train outrage of 2004, and was more than willing to share information and co-operate in the global fight against terrorism.

‘I can only assume that they were as much in the dark as we were.’

‘This isn’t going to go down well at No. 10, Justin,’ said C, shaking his head.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘You know the PM,’ said C. ‘I’ll leave you to brief her.’

Justin Nicholls and the Rt Hon Penelope Morgan MP had dated each other for a couple of years in their student days, and had stayed close ever since.

Nicholls nodded.

On the wall to his right was a bank of screens – some showing news channels, others live feeds from Spanish intelligence cameras. One delivered the confidential feed, the updated intelligence picture available to the SIS.

A status update for the MS Windsor Castle said that the incident at Málaga was now over, with four attackers confirmed killed. At Marbella, two attackers had been shot dead on the Puerto Banús beach, and two other men had just been taken into custody.

And then a new line appeared on the feed.

Spanish police helicopter chasing high speed boat across Med towards Moroccan coast. SPS Juan Carlos I also launching marines. Royal Moroccan Navy alerted.

‘That’s them,’ said Nicholls.

25.

THE BOAT CARRYING Argun ‘Dark Eyes’ Shishani, the man in the Manchester United shirt, and the shooter called Khaled, and their three female hostages, had had a big head start.

In all the confusion, it was well over forty kilometres from the Spanish coast by the time the Grupo Especial de Operaciones Eurocopter EC120 Colibri lifted off in pursuit.

But the two pilots put the aircraft nose down and flew flat out, the single Turbomeca engine straining to throw out its 504 shaft-horsepower, and they had the speeding Lucky Lady in sight on their on-board camera well inside twenty minutes, and in visual contact not long afterward.

Two kilometres out, the two GEO snipers aboard leaned out of the helicopter on harnesses and trained the scopes of their AMP DSR-1 .338 rifles on the streamlined yacht.

The officer on the left hand side, an oficial de policía, had the clearest view.

‘I can see two armed men on the rear deck,’ he shouted, into his collar microphone. ‘Three women are standing in front of them, hands on their heads.’

‘Roger that,’ said his colleague, a subinspector. ‘I’ll take the right, you take the left.’ Half a minute later, and a kilometre closer, he said, ‘Do you have a shot?’

He already knew the answer.

Both men were highly skilled, and their rifles, chambered for the Lapua Magnum cartridge, were effective out to 1,500 metres.

In theory.

At this distance, in a speeding helicopter caught in the up and down thermals of the Mediterranean, with the targets contained on a small rear deck, under an overhanging roof, on a boat crashing through waves, with civilians in the foreground…

‘No way.’

The second sniper leaned forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. ‘We need to get a lot closer,’ he shouted. ‘We can’t take any kind of shot at this range.’

The pilot nodded and pressed on.

Six hundred metres out, one of the men on the deck lifted his AK47 and started shooting.

It was nothing more than a gesture – an AK is useless at that range – but it made the pilot think again.