Page 68 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

‘He’s scoping out his next target,’ Poe said. He leaned into the screen. ‘And from up there, he has a three-sixty field of fire. He’ll literally have thousands of targets to choose from.’

Mathers nodded. ‘Given he had a trail camera watching his range in Scotland, we haven’t been up there, but I’m not concerned. We’ve grilled the architects and the maintenance crews, and once he’s in the plant room, we can lock him up there.’

‘What if someone else goes in? Routine maintenance or something?’

‘We have experienced cops on the twenty-first floor and a standing instruction that the plant room isn’t to be accessed by anyone.

That way, no matter how he’s disguised himself, once the plant room is opened, we’ll know it’s him.

Once he’s inside, my guys lock the door behind him. He’ll be stuck up there.’

‘Like a rat in a trap.’

‘And the moment he opens the mesh hatch is the moment he gets his one and only warning. Drop his weapon or one of my snipers drops him.’

‘How will you get the warning to him?’ Poe asked. ‘He won’t hear you from the ground.’

‘As soon as he’s in the plant room, we’ll send up a loudspeaker drone. It’ll be waiting for him when he reaches the roof.’

Poe nodded. Loudspeaker drones had been trialled by Devon & Cornwall Police. They’d been found to be particularly useful in missing persons cases and in communicating with crowds at large-scale events.

‘Happy?’ Mathers asked.

‘As Prince Andrew at a sweet sixteen.’

‘Poe, are you happy ?’

‘I’m never happy, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘But I can’t see anything I’d have done differently.’ He paused a moment. ‘The question is, are you happy?’

‘I think I’ve thought of everything,’ she said, ‘which usually means I’ve missed something important.’

‘Well, like I said, I wouldn’t have done anything different.’ He paused a beat. ‘You know you’ll have to give the order? He won’t put his weapon down.’

‘That’s the prevailing view.’

‘And are you ready?’

Her eyes turned to steel. ‘You’d better believe it, Poe. He gets one warning. After that I put the fucker down.’

Poe didn’t doubt it. He said, ‘Good.’

But even as he said it, he knew something wasn’t right.

He didn’t know what, but it didn’t feel ‘good’.

He had said locking Ezekiel Puck in the Can of Ham’s plant room was akin to a rat trap.

There was only one way in and one way out.

And Ezekiel Puck was a planner. He was an ex-MI5 field agent.

So, why had he chosen the roof of a building with no escape route?

Why put himself at risk? Everything had been risk free so far.

The more he thought about it, his rat trap analogy was the only ‘good’ thing about this operation.

He left the operations room and rejoined Flynn on the roof.

‘Everything OK?’ she said.

He shrugged and said nothing. He was probably wrong.