Max buried his head in his hands once more, as if in distress. He put all thoughts of his father from his mind. There would be time enough to think about that when they got out of here.

Which they would.

Unobserved by T6, he spoke quietly over the comms.

‘What do you need us to do?’ he said.

16

T7

Hector continued to speak in a calm, insistent voice.

– First things first. The terrorists with guns taped to their hands. They’re not terrorists at all. They’re probably teachers. They’ve been dressed up in balaclavas and overalls and had the weapons fixed to them to make us think they’re terrorists. They’re decoys. It’s a common trick. The terrorists know that we might have snipers trained on them. By dressing up some of their hostages, they increase the chance that we shoot the teachers instead of them.

‘Nice,’ Max breathed.

– The Chinese girl you mentioned? It’s possible she’s displaying signs of Stockholm Syndrome. That’s when hostages start sympathising with, and even admiring, their captors. Be extremely wary of that girl, but watch out for the signs of Stockholm Syndrome in yourselves. It’s a very real thing. If you start feeling sympathy for any of these terrorists, remember: these people woke up this morning intending to kill children.

From now on, I will refer to the teachers as decoys and the real terrorists as targets. But our first priority is going to be neither the decoys nor the targets. It’s going to be the IEDs – the improvised explosive devices. Max, we agree with your analysis. We think the targets are waiting for our assault team to make a move. As soon as there is any sign of that, they’re going to detonate the IEDs and their suicide vests. It’s a way of increasing the collateral damage and gaining more publicity for their cause. It makes it look like the atrocity is our fault. We’re working on a strategy for taking out the targets individually, but first we need to disable the IEDs – because if they explode, nothing else matters. Max, the next voice you hear will be Angel’s. She’s a demolitions expert. She’ll talk you through it.

Max didn’t say anything. For the second time, the Chinese girl was looking straight across the hall at him. He couldn’t let her see him move his mouth. He let Angel do the talking.