The pistol dug deeper and Murad pushed him along. As they moved around an arguing couple, de Payns turned his right shoulder and swivelled on the balls of his feet, swinging the edge of his left hand into the nerve below Murad’s right ear. A shot went off behind de Payns as he twisted away from the pistol, and de Payns stamped down hard with a kick and connected with Murad’s instep, eliciting a scream. He grabbed Murad’s 9mm pistol in a wrist lock and tore the ligaments and bone in one fast action as he took it out of the terrorist’s grip. The scream was piercing and de Payns now had the man’s black SIG in his hand, but a bearded man in his thirties tried to grab him and knocked him slightly off balance. De Payns instinctively struck the bearded man in the throat and without thinking drove the lanyard loop of the weapon into his face. As Beardy sagged to his knees, the crowds screamed in panic and de Payns realised the bearded man wasn’t in the game—he was just a good Samaritan who’d picked on the wrong person.

Seeing his mistake, he spun to confront Murad, but the terrorist was already over the turnstiles and running, his white hoodie visible above the crowds on the platform-side concourse. De Payns ran and leaped the turnstile but as he got over it, the transit police arrived and drew on him.

‘Drop it,’ said the young female officer, not knowing whether to look at de Payns or the bearded man who lay crying where de Payns had left him. De Payns had the SIG in his hand, and he thought about crashing through and pursuing Murad. But as he gasped for breath, another transit cop came at him from his left, driving a baton lengthwise into his rib cage.

Gasping in pain, he dropped the SIG and the cops moved in, guns aimed and handcuffs ready.

‘Got him,’ said the young female officer, her knee in the small of his back as she tightened the cuffs.

‘The white hoodie …’ started de Payns, but he ran out of breath. There was something wrong with his ribs.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER

SIXTY-SEVEN

The man-hunt for Nasim ul-Huq went on for two days, the city and its approaches were awash with police, intelligence and military people trying to trap and capture the man they called Murad. The media referred to the terrorist as the Man Who Turned Off the Water, while the intelligence and military world knew him as the Man Who Tried to Kill Paris.

The newspapers had a field day writing about the son of wealthy Pakistani professionals who earned an engineering degree but went into the ISI and then left to become a contractor, setting up Sayef Albar, an al-Qaeda affiliate with a central ideology of making money for Murad.