‘Vehicle One!’ someone shouted. ‘Clear!’ Followed almost immediately by ‘Vehicle Two! Clear!’

Luke moved forward, just behind a phalanx of CTSFOs, all armed to the teeth. They formed a cordon around the two vehicles as a man in protective gear came towards them, his boots crunching on the broken glass. Luke could see a neat hole in the windscreen where the first gas grenade must have penetrated the glass, then knocked out everyone inside. It must have been the same for the next vehicle. He could hear sirens behind them now, drawing closer from Euston Way. It was about to get very busy here so he’d need to work fast.

‘They’re all out cold,’ announced one of the officers in protective gear after removing his respirator and wiping the sweat off his face. ‘But you can’t go in there yet. There’ll still be traces of Lomatin. We’ll bring them out to you.’

‘The canisters,’ Luke called. ‘Have you secured the canisters?’

The officer gave him a sceptical look. Luke realized he was the only one not dressed in grey. He probably thinks I’m from the media, for God’s sake. But the policeman answered him anyway. ‘We’ve secured all the canisters onboard, yes. Porton Down are sending a team to pick them up. When this lot come round we’ll make sure we’ve accounted for every single one of them.’ He turned away and began addressing the other CTSFOs.

For a long moment Luke stood there, immobile, taking in the significance of this. It was over. They had stopped WaffenKrieg90 in their tracks. Prevented a man-made biological weapon from being released on the British public. Two weeks of intense, frenetic work and extreme danger across four countries, all leading up to this moment. And yet what did he feel? Exhaustion, yes – he was ready to sleep for a week. But there was something else, a sense of a job not over. Luke couldn’t relax until he’d made sure they’d really caught these people, that no one had slipped through the cracks. He needed to look into the faces of Niamh, Klaus and, yes, Hugo Squires to know that it was over.

They brought out the occupants one by one, laying them like corpses on the pavement even though they were just unconscious. A long-barrelled hunting rifle was also being brought out, carefully handled by officers with forensic gloves. Two officers stood over prone figures on the pavement, fingers on the trigger guards of their SIG Sauers. Further down York Way the police were putting up barriers, throwing up a cordon, and beyond that Luke was pretty sure he could see a satvan with antennae on top. The media were arriving. That meant cameras and long lenses, and the last thing he wanted was to find himself on breakfast news.