Lockdown Read online

  Lockdown

  SEAN BLACK

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Chapter Eighty-three

  Chapter Eighty-four

  Chapter Eighty-five

  Chapter Eighty-six

  Chapter Eighty-seven

  Chapter Eighty-eight

  Chapter Eighty-nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-one

  Chapter Ninety-two

  Chapter Ninety-three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409084211

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61–63rr Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA A Random House Group Company www.rbooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Sean Black 2009

  Sean Black has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBNs 9780593063378 (cased) 9780593063385 (tpb)

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  Typeset in 11/16pt Times New Roman by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  For Jim and Lorna, whose faith never wavered, and

  in memory of my grandfather, George Robertson, who

  sacrificed so much for his country at such a young age.

  Sean Black grew up in Scotland, studied film in New York and has written the screenplays for many of Britain’s best-known TV dramas.

  While writing Lockdown, he undertook a gruelling 24-day close protection course encompassing two weeks in an army camp in Wales, followed by a week of firearms training in the Czech Republic. While researching his next thriller, he recently spent time at Pelican Bay Supermax prison, which is home to some of America’s most violent inmates.

  Lockdown, the first in a major series featuring Ryan Lock, is his first novel.

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Prologue

  Nobody guards the dead. Once that occurred to Cody, the plan had come together in no time. Drive to the cemetery, dig her up, sling the coffin into the back of the truck, and disappear into the night. Easy. Apart from one tiny hitch.

  ‘Man, this ground is like concrete.’

  Cody glanced over at his companion, the moonlight splitting his face in two. ‘Quit bitching.’

  Usually he liked to work alone. But moving a body was a twoman job. No way round it.

  ‘I ain’t bitching. I’m making an observation.’

  ‘Well, observations ain’t gonna get this done.’

  ‘Neither’s digging. We’re gonna need dynamite to get this old witch out of the ground.’

  Don was right. They’d picked the worst time of the year. November on the Eastern Seaboard. A bitter winter with the wind coming off a slate grey Atlantic. Freezing the living, as well as the dead.

  Spring would have been better. The nights would still have been long, but the ground would have been softer. Thing was, though, they didn’t have a choice. Not as far as Cody was concerned.

  The way he saw it, the clock was ticking. Every day lives were being lost. Hundreds, maybe even thousands. No one really knew for sure. And these deaths weren’t peaceful. Not like the one this woman had experienced: slipping gradually away, the fiery edge of pain dulled by drugs, her loved ones around her to say goodbye.

  No, these deaths w
ere torturous and lonely. A final spit in the face to cap a miserable existence.

  The anger he felt thinking about it rose up in him. He punched down hard on the lip of the blade with the heel of his right boot, and finally found some purchase. Frosted grass gave way to frozen top soil. He stamped down again. The blade dug in another inch. His breath clouded in the freezing night air as he sucked in oxygen and repeated the process.

  A full hour later, Don was the first to hit something solid that wasn’t earth. The two men were exhausted, but the clatter of metal meeting wood spurred them on.

  Thirty minutes after that they were loading the remains into the back of the truck. Cody made a show of dusting off his gloves as Don pulled down the rear door of the box truck they’d jacked a few hours earlier from a quiet street in Queens.

  Don opened the cab door and started to climb in. Halfway up, he stopped and turned back to Cody. ‘Well, we did it,’ he said.

  Cody smirked. ‘Are you for real, brother? That was the easy part.’

  One

  Ryan Lock peered through the floor-to-ceiling windows which fronted the reception area of the Meditech building. Outside, freezing rain was sweeping down Sixth Avenue in sheets, jamming the dozen or so animal rights protestors into a tight knot on the sidewalk opposite.

  ‘Who the hell stages a demonstration on Christmas Eve?’ the receptionist asked.

  ‘You mean apart from turkeys?’ Lock said, hunching his jacket up around his shoulders, pushing through the revolving doors and stepping out into the near-Arctic weather.

  Three months as head of security for America’s largest pharmaceutical and biotechnology company had left Lock with little patience for the animal rights people, no matter how earnest their cause.

  A fresh gust of wind stung his face. He pulled up the collar of his jacket and scanned the protestors. Front and centre was Gray Stokes, the protestors’ de facto leader. In his early fifties, with a vegan’s bony frame, Stokes stood with his customary smug expression, a loudhailer in one hand, his other hand resting on the handle of a wheelchair.

  In the chair sat Stokes’ daughter Janice, a pretty brunette in her mid-twenties, her left leg rendered useless by a rare form of progressive, terminal multiple sclerosis. The placard she held in two red-gloved hands had four words etched on it in thick black capital letters: NOT IN MY NAME.

  Lock watched as Stokes raised his loudhailer and began to harangue the half-dozen uniformed cops who were there to ensure good order. Closest to Stokes, one of the city’s finest, a portly sergeant by the name of Caffrey, made a show of eating a Big Mac, punctuating each bite with stage-whisper yum-yum noises.

  Lock registered Stokes’ reaction with interest.

  ‘Hey, pig, you ever wonder what goes into those things?’ Stokes yelled at Caffrey. ‘Maybe the ALF left some of Grandma in with the rest of the meat back at Mickey D’s.’

  Anyone who had picked up a copy of the New York Post or flicked on to a news channel during the past six weeks would have gotten the reference. The manager of a Times Square fast food joint had found the disinterred body of seventy-two-year-old Eleanor Van Straten, matriarch of the Meditech corporation, on the sidewalk outside his establishment.

  The link between Mrs Van Straten’s unscheduled appearance so soon after her funeral and the animal rights movement had been a no-brainer. The next day Lock had been invited to head up the Van Stratens’ close protection team.

  Lock watched Caffrey slipping the last of his burger back into its Styrofoam container and turned his attention back to Stokes.

  ‘So how come, if God didn’t want us to eat cows, he made them out of meat?’ Caffrey taunted.

  The comeback prompted a few snickers from the other cops, and Stokes to step out from behind the barrier and off the sidewalk.

  ‘That’s right, buddy, you keep coming,’ Caffrey yelled. ‘You can cool your heels in Rikers for a few hours. Plenty of animals there for you to hang with.’

  Lock watched as Stokes eye-balled Caffrey, calculating his next move. The protestors saw arrest as a badge of honour. Lock saw it as a good way to get the company on the news for all the wrong reasons. Speed-walking towards the barrier, Lock’s right hand dropped to the Sig 9mm tucked into his holster. The gesture didn’t go unnoticed by the protestors. Meekly, Stokes stepped back behind the barrier.

  Lock checked his watch again. Zero eight fifty. If he was running to schedule, Nicholas Van Straten, Eleanor’s widower, and the company’s new CEO, would be here shortly. Lock’s hand went up to his collar and he pressed down the talk button of his radio. ‘All mobile units from Lock.’

  Lock’s earpiece crackled with static, then cleared.

  A moment later, the voice of Lock’s second-in-command, Ty Johnson, came back, calm and in control. ‘Go ahead, Ryan.’

  ‘You got an ETA for me?’

  ‘Be with you in about two. What kind of reception we got?’

  ‘Usual sidewalk static.’

  ‘Principal wants to come in the front.’

  ‘I’ll make sure we’re clear.’

  Lock crossed back to Caffrey, who’d by this time beat a diplomatic retreat to his cruiser. He tapped on the glass and took a moment to enjoy Caffrey’s irritated expression as he cracked the window and the cold air rushed in.

  ‘We’re bringing him in the front.’

  Caffrey rolled his eyes. ‘Ain’t it bad enough that I have half a dozen officers tied down here every freakin’ morning?’

  ‘Half a billion bucks and a direct line to the mayor, not to mention the US Constitution, says he can walk in the main entrance of his own office if he so desires,’ Lock said, turning on his heel before Caffrey had a chance to respond.

  Caffrey shrugged a big deal to Lock’s back and rolled the window back up as four blocks away three blacked-out GMC Yukons fitted with B-7 grade armour and run-flats muscled their way through the morning gridlock, heavy with menace.

  Two

  Inside the lead Yukon, Ty Johnson checked his weapon, then the position of the other two vehicles in the side mirror. All good.

  Ty gave the signal for his driver to move over into the left-hand median and occupy a lane of oncoming traffic, which was momentarily stopped at a light. Blocking the junction allowed the other two SUVs to move up seamlessly on the inside, so Ty’s vehicle was now at the rear and he could have a clear view when the passengers got out.

  Ty popped his head out the window and glanced behind. About half a block back, which in this traffic equated to a good twenty seconds, an up-armoured, fire engine red Hummer rolled along.

  Inside the Hummer was the CA, or counter-attack team, led by Vic Brand, a former colonel in the US Marines. Ty knew that Lock had resisted their appointment. Normally a CA team was the preserve of the military in ultra-high threat environments, and Lock had felt it was overkill. However, Stafford Van Straten, heir apparent to the family empire and perpetual thorn in Lock’s side, had confused a stint in the Reserve Officer Training Corps when he was at Dartmouth with actual security expertise, and insisted on recruiting them, somehow convincing his father they’d be a useful addition to his security detail.

  Lock had no time for Stafford; neither did Ty. And they had even less time for Brand, a man who delighted in regaling the younger men in the CA team with his exploits in Iraq, many of which, Lock had told Ty, were fictitious. Ty, having checked with a few of his former Marine buddies, wasn’t so sure.

  The close protection world was full of guys like Brand, serial fantasists who confused talking the talk with walking the walk. To Ty, a good bodyguard was like Lock, the archetypal grey man who blended into the background, emerging only when a threat arose.

  The way Ty saw it, Brand blended like Marilyn Manson at a Jonas Brothers gig.

  Lock watched as the protestors on the street were cleared fifty feet further back by the cops. If one of them made a rush, Lock would have Nicholas Van Straten in the boardroom with his decaf latte and a copy of the Wall Street Journal bef
ore they made it to the front door.

  The front passenger door of the rear vehicle opened first. Lock looked on as Ty made his way round to open the front passenger side of the middle Yukon for the designated bodyguard. As the rest of the personal escort section deployed, spreading out so that they had eyes on a full three hundred and sixty degrees, the clamour from the activists rose in volume.

  ‘Murderer!’

  ‘Hey, Van Straten, how many animals you plan on killing today?’

  The bodyguard, a lean six foot two Mid-westerner by the name of Croft, opened Nicholas Van Straten’s door, and he stepped out. For a man who got death threats the way most people received junk mail, he looked remarkably composed. His four-man personal escort section had already made a closed box formation around him, ready to move him into the building. But Van Straten clearly had other ideas.

  Taking a right turn behind the Yukon, he began to walk towards the source of the obscenities emanating from across the way. Lock could feel a surge of adrenalin starting to build as Van Straten embarked on this unscheduled walkabout.

  ‘Where the hell’s Stafford?’ Nicholas Van Straten asked one of his aides, who appeared to be having difficulty keeping pace as his boss made a beeline for the protestors.

  ‘I’ve no idea, sir.’

  ‘He was supposed to be here,’ Van Straten said, with an air of disappointment that didn’t stretch as far as surprise. Evidently, he was used to his son letting him down.

  Lock watched as Van Straten confronted Stokes at the barrier. Anxiously, he keyed his mike. ‘Where the hell’s he going?’

  A second passed before Ty’s response came back. ‘To meet his public?’

  The four-man PES stayed tight around Van Straten. Croft glanced over at Lock as if to say, ‘What the hell do I do now?’

  Lock could only offer a shrug in return. This didn’t feature anywhere in the playbook, and he didn’t like it.

  ‘Sir, if you wouldn’t mind . . .’ Croft’s request trailed off.

  ‘If I wouldn’t mind what?’

  Van Straten seemed to be enjoying the panic emanating from the men around him.

  A few yards back the red Hummer was drawing up. Lock could see one of Brand’s men in the front seat raising a gun, an M-16, by way of deterrent. Sighing, Lock keyed his radio again, waiting a beat to make sure that the start of his transmission wouldn’t be cut. ‘Brand from Lock. Tell that moron sitting in front of you to put the showstopper away. In case he hadn’t noticed, we’re in Midtown, not Mosul. If I see it again, he’s gonna find it doing double duty as a butt plug.’