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Barracks in about twenty minutes. I’ve been told to tell you that we have another four teams on standby if you need them.’
    ‘I think you can take it that they will be needed,’ said Kamran. ‘We have four incidents already and if there are four, there could just as easily be five. Or six. Or seven. If that happens we’re going to be running short of ARVs so we’ll need your men.’
    ‘I’ll arrange more choppers,’ said Murray.
    Kamran looked at Sergeant Lumley. ‘Do me a favour. Take the captain down to the SCO19 pod and introduce him to Inspector Windle. He can tell him where his men will be best deployed, then you can keep me in the loop.’
    ‘Will do,’ said Lumley.
    ‘And no offence, Alex, but no ski masks, please. We got quite a bit of flak last time we had plainclothes armed officers covering their faces. If they’re in uniform, masks are allowable, but otherwise let’s make do with dark glasses.’
    ‘Understood,’ said Murray. The sergeant took the SAS captain into the SOR and along to the SCO19 pod.
    Kamran went over to Waterman’s workstation. ‘Still four?’ she asked, without looking up from her screens.
    ‘Fingers crossed,’ said Kamran. ‘But I’ve got a feeling there’ll be more.’
    She sat back in her chair and looked up at him. ‘The thing I don’t get is why they aren’t better co-ordinated,’ she said. ‘With the Seven/Seven Tube bombers, they all went down at the same time. Why are these attacks spaced out?’
    ‘Good point,’ said Kamran. He frowned. ‘Can you pull up a map, then ID the locations and times they went active?’
    ‘No problem,’ said the MI5 officer. Her hands played across the keyboard and the screen on her left went to black, then was filled with a map of the city. One by one red circles marked the areas where the terrorists had struck. Brixton. Wandsworth. Fulham. Kensington. He stared at the screen. Two south of the river. Two north. All to the west of the city. Times began to appear under the dots. The Brixton siege had started at 10 a.m., on the dot. Wandsworth twenty minutes later.
    Waterman grinned. ‘Do you see what I see?’ she asked, as the final time popped up underneath the dot representing Kensington.
    Kamran checked the four times just to be sure. ‘They’re being dropped, one at a time. They started at Brixton, then drove to Wandsworth, then across the Thames to Fulham and headed east to Kensington. Okay, we need CCTV of the minutes prior to each siege starting. We’re looking for a common vehicle, something large. A van, a coach, a bus, something along those lines.’
    ‘I’m on it,’ said Waterman.
    Lumley returned from the special operations room and walked over to them. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
    ‘It looks as if they’re being dropped off,’ said Kamran.
    ‘So there are going to be more? This is just the start?’
    ‘I’m afraid that’s exactly what it looks like,’ said Kamran.
    One of the phones on Lumley’s desk rang and he answered it. ‘It’s the deputy commissioner, line two,’ he said.
    Kamran picked up his phone. ‘So there’s four now?’ said the senior officer.
    ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Kamran. ‘Kensington.’
    ‘How are things in the SOR?’
    ‘All good. A bit frantic, as you can imagine, but we’re staying on top of it.’
    ‘We’re going to have to hand over more of the operational decisions to you at GT Ops,’ said the deputy commissioner. ‘I know that generally the SOR takes more of a support role but things are moving too quickly so we need decisions taken centrally.’
    ‘I understand, sir.’
    ‘At the moment you’re the only one who can see the big picture, the wood for the trees, if you like.’
    ‘Understood, sir.’ Kamran wasn’t thrilled about being given operational command on a day when a lot of people could die. Generally the special operations room didn’t control incidents: it provided a support structure to Incident Command and helped manage the