The Ocean Dove

by Carlos Luxul

  Mubarak stepped back a pace, brushing Choukri’s side. ‘My God …’

  Swinging his glasses round, he focused on the spot where Mubarak’s startled eyes were now locked. East-facing windows in Canary Wharf were darkening as people clustered to them like flies, the horror unfolding in sequence along the river in a line downstream, the uproar of the fuel depot, the Dome, the Excel Centre and the airport as another fuel tank exploded.

  The Network’s planners had gamed the reaction, their Impact Assessment Team anticipating and preparing for all scenarios. The briefing had been clear, and Choukri clearly remembered it all. He knew precisely what would be happening in those office towers – knew it was no different from Baltimore to Baghdad, from Kiev to Kabul. Human reaction was always the same.

  The IAT’s analysis had run to three hundred pages of schematics, engineers’ reports, structural animations, psychological assessments, archive footage and witness and survivor statements. It covered both the technical and the human sides: the screams, the tears, the soiled underwear, the disbelief, the wide-eyed exclamations with the mouths remaining open.

  Competing urges would be racing through minds that were refusing to reason. Could it be an accident at the fuel depot that had spread downriver? But that old industrial works on the south bank was blazing too? It couldn’t be terrorists on a beautiful day, on this scale. And when it did happen, it was in another part of the world and they watched it on TV. They weren’t supposed to be part of it. They stood in their thousands transfixed at windows, staring, hands gripping colleagues at their sides, unable to believe they might be under attack.

  From his vantage point on the wings, Choukri saw the sequence unfolding in his mind’s eye. Thousands of hours of meticulous research and planning and interminable numbers tapped into spreadsheets were culminating in barely an hour’s chaos. He was infinitely more familiar with the city than a native, could picture every target, the objective of every single shell. He understood what was happening, what people would do and say and think, or be unable to think. He could see and feel it, even taste it – the bitterness of acrid smoke on his lips, the palls gusting on the breeze, drifting into and out of his line of sight, twisting to a wall of black on his right and a clear blue passage to Canary Wharf.

  He stared in awe at the shells hitting their targets, a split second between each explosion, raking the glittering edifices from top to bottom, descending from the twenty-fifth floor, the twentieth, fifteenth, tenth, fifth, with each salvo ending in ten shells at the base of each building where they would attack the engineering systems, lifts and sprinklers, blocking the ground-level emergency exits.

  It was four minutes after noon. Shells rained down on Canary Wharf, the line of towers along the waterfront belching smoke. Flames were leaping from gaping holes as masonry, steel, glass, desks and bodies cascaded to the ground. Floors and stairways were collapsing, lifts trapped mid-floor, the buildings losing power and water pressure, the sprinklers unable to cope.

  Devastation raged across Canada Square and Bank Street, Cabot Square and Churchill Place, in the offices of HSBC and Citigroup, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse, Bank of New York and Barclays. Security computers were sending automated alerts to the emergency services and the public’s calls were crashing the systems as fire crews, ambulances and police cars scrambled in every direction. Some people would be running for cover. Some would be filming on mobile phones. Many would be lying dead or injured. The shattered edifices of Canary Wharf stared forlornly down, flames licking, shattered glass and twisted steel, cladding ripped, hanging like torn flesh from their sides.

  The walkie-talkie at his belt squawked.

  ‘Come down,’ Faisel’s voice urged.

  At the command table, Choukri’s eyes were fixed on the firing sequence, the targets scrolling to the end – the end only of the list of Canary Wharf’s targets. He reached across Faisel and pressed pause, glancing around the hold.

  The chief was moving from gun to gun, running a hand over a barrel or carousel, checking hoses, monitoring gauges. The gun crews were looking anxiously in his direction. An eerie silence fell around them. Their ears had become accustomed to the cacophony of a thousand sirens and alarms, thunderous random cracks and deeper rumblings further away.

  ‘Okay?’ Choukri shouted across.

  The chief gave him a thumbs up.

  Choukri turned to the next set of targets. Downriver was the Thames Barrier and the electricity substation and, just beyond on the north bank, Tate & Lyle’s sugar works at Silvertown. Further along still were military barracks, the Royal Horse Artillery and the Princess of Wales’ Royal Regiment at Woolwich and the Purfleet container terminal.

  He held his hand out flat, staying Faisel who was poised over the keyboard, his finger hovering.

  ‘When you see me up there,’ he said, pointing to the wings, ‘keep it going. Keep the momentum. Then get straight back on the main programme.’

  He turned and ran along the hold to the door. The downriver group was important. They were targets in their own right, but they were also diversions. The more that was happening around them, the less they would stand out.

  Purfleet was too far away to see, obscured by the urban sprawl. Woolwich was only two miles away, close enough for him to make out the trails of smoke behind buildings in the foreground. The first shots had been aimed at the farther targets, the last to the nearer. In rapid succession, like sticks of bombs dropped from a plane, the shells came down on the sugar works, the Thames Barrier and the electricity plant.

  In the steel box of the hold, the only guides had been sound and the sky above the open hatch, at first clear and blue, then streaked with smoke, before choking in swirling blackness. Now the breeze was settling, the huge clouds from the fuel depot rising higher and drifting downriver. The south bank was clearing, the midstream too, the north bank shrouded as thirty image-guided shells smashed into the Thames Barrier’s central piers and the power and control towers on the banks.

  Choukri stood transfixed for a moment before turning back to the bridge. ‘Anything yet?’

  Tariq shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No mention of us at all?’

  ‘Just confused talk. The police, the fire guys, whatever.’

  ‘And nothing on TV or radio yet,’ the communications engineer said, glancing around his screens.

  ‘We’re six minutes in, and still nothing,’ Choukri said. ‘Won’t be long …’ He turned and looked out through the bridge windscreen. ‘They know all right. Over there, in Canada Square. There’s a newspaper, the Daily something. They know.’

  Behind him, the first news trickled in – ‘we’re getting reports of a fire in East London at a fuel depot by the river …’

  ~

  At 12.07 the guns turned west again. An infernal rain hit the City business district, image-guided for the landmarks, in degrees, minutes, and seconds for others. It swept down Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall, along Cornhill and Cannon Street, up Gracechurch Street and Bishopsgate, homing in on the institutions: Lloyd’s, the Stock Exchange, the Old Bailey, the Guildhall and the Bank of England.

  High up at windows in Tower 42, the Walkie Talkie, the Gherkin and the Leadenhall Building, the horror of Canary Wharf was repeated as steel and glass peeled away and crashed to the ground in biblical showers. The concourses thronged with people going to and from meetings, to lunch, to meet friends or just soaking up the sun on a bench. At street level they were still unaware, the pavements bustling, taxis pulling in for pickups, lines waiting for buses. When the first wave hit, they stopped in their tracks and looked up, moments before cascading debris cut them to shreds.

  Some stood traumatised, rooted to the spot. Others ran. Crowds surged into underground stations in an unequal meeting of tides, sweeping all before them, massing at barriers in a frenzy of ribs cracking like twigs and lungs compressing in the stifling heat, in the foetid stench of vomit and piss and shit.

  Along the river the bridges wer
e picked off in sequence: Tower, London, Southwark, Millennium, Blackfriars. Waves of shells fell on City Hall, the Globe Theatre, Guy’s Hospital and the Tate Modern. The newspaper offices, The Sun and The Times at London Bridge and The Financial Times at Southwark all received personalised press alerts. The Daily Mirror in Canary Wharf had already received theirs ahead of the competition. All the media were alerted, the commercial radio stations clustered in Leicester Square, the ITV centre by Waterloo, the BBC in Portland Place, CNN, Fox, Facebook, Twitter.

  Seventy-five shells clawed at the pristine skin of the Shard, glinting like a jewel in the sunlight, a deadly rain tumbling down to the crowded piazza as it shed its coat of jagged glass.

  The carnage advanced upstream. A train on Hungerford bridge slowed for Charing Cross station, shuddering and peeling sideways. Its front carriages toppled into the void, twisted and mangled in the water, the mid-section left dangling, the tail hanging on for dear life.

  Passengers on the Millennium Wheel, London’s eye on the city, had booked their tickets and waited patiently in the queue, determined that nothing was going to spoil their day in the sunshine. A minute after noon, those at the top experienced a bird’s-eye view of the fuel depot. At first it had been pure spectacle, shocking but curiously thrilling, before it turned to morbid fear three minutes later when the blazing skyline seemed to advance towards them.

  At nine minutes past noon they were screaming and on their knees. A spoke lashed out from the hub. The wheel lurched but carried on turning. Another shell hit the base of a support leg and the other leg bent in a struggle against unequal weight, the metal creaking and groaning, beginning to topple.

  Pier decking flew into the air as the base of the wheel smashed down, crushing and submerging a tourist boat tied alongside. A hundred metres out in the river the top of the wheel sent a bow wave of water crashing over the embankment, knocking down fleeing people like skittles.

  The shelling continued its demonic march westward, up Fleet Street and Holborn, St Paul’s and the Strand, through Lincoln’s Inn and the Royal Courts of Justice. It spread north, along Oxford Street, up to the stations, King’s Cross, St Pancras and Euston, to Lord’s cricket ground, where England had just taken four Sri Lankan wickets for eighty-nine and were looking forward to lunch.

  Salvo after salvo crashed into Oxford Street every thirty metres, into Selfridge’s and Topshop and H&M. Trays of watches and rings littered the street outside a jeweller’s, a bus on its side, a burning taxi in a shop window, the dead and the dying strewn on the pavements. In the frenzied scramble a foot punted a severed head into the road. No one knew or cared if it had belonged on a shop mannequin or a woman’s neck.

  The tide swept through Covent Garden, where crowds had thronged around musicians, jugglers and people-statues, an out-of-tune busker and three graduate cellists from the London Academy. On it strode, in the teeming streets of Soho, into Leicester Square, along Shaftesbury Avenue to Piccadilly, fanning out to St James’s and the Mall.

  Outside the American Embassy, protesters dropped megaphones and police abandoned surveillance cameras, for once finding common cause. The gilded eagle on the roof soared into the air, the entire building shaking, the bombardment pounding down.

  On it swept, down Park Lane, south to Buckingham Palace, south to Westminster and Parliament, where a full house was in debate and anxious to complete a bill before the summer recess.

  A thousand shells a minute rained down on specific and random targets, the utilities and telecoms, residential and leisure areas, institutions, museums and petrol stations, houses, shops and offices. Fire took hold, sweeping from building to building, the security systems failing, the water pressure dropping, the roads blocked by collapsed buildings, splintered trees, mangled cars and buses, and it was still only 12.12.

  ~

  ‘We did good,’ Max Paulsson said, licking cappuccino froth from his lips and scrolling through his emails. ‘Here’s the message,’ he said, handing his phone across.

  ‘Hi Max. I hope this finds you well. Come down to Moritz on Monday to see the ship loading. Meet me there and I’ll buy you and Aaron lunch! Best regards, Joe.’

  Aaron Epstein was sitting at the meeting room table in Red Oak’s Berkeley Square offices, adding up some figures in a sheaf of documents. With the last stage payment received on their account a few days ago, the two of them had arrived in London yesterday for the regular monthly management meeting.

  ‘Storm?’ Epstein said, cocking his head to one side as handed the phone back.

  Max went across to the windows. They faced west, into clear blue sky.

  ‘Weird,’ he said. ‘I hear it but I don’t see it. Sounds real close, like thunder.’

  He shrugged his shoulders and looked away as most of a tree outside their offices came through the glass.

  Thirty-one

  ‘I knew Suffolk would be a winner.’ Dan smiled, one hand on the steering wheel, the other giving Julie’s knee a squeeze.

  He checked the mirror. Phoebe was sleeping peacefully on the back seat. She’d walked on the sand, paddled in the sea, dozed under an apple tree and eaten her first ice cream. It had been the sweetest week of her life.

  ‘Shit …’ Dan said. ‘Look at that.’

  The traffic on the M11 was backing up ahead, just as they were enjoying an easy journey in the sunshine. They had left the cottage intending to be home at lunchtime, do a supermarket run in the afternoon and have a relaxing weekend before Dan reported back to work on Monday. The DJ had just played ‘Summer Breeze’ and reminded everyone to get the barbecue things sorted out.

  Smoke had been faintly visible on the horizon for the last couple of miles, and a minute earlier the signal on the radio had disappeared. There hadn’t seemed to be any reason why he should connect the two. Fields can catch fire in summer and radio signals can weaken in hot weather. He’d dismissed both as inconsequential.

  The motorway had climbed steadily for the last mile before levelling out on a plateau. It looked down over the eastern fringes of London, a familiar waypoint, of fundamental change, one moment an idyll of farmland and wheat, transformed at the crest of a rise into the shimmering towers of the city, spread out in the distance like an architect’s model.

  Dan stamped on the brakes. Julie stretched a hand instinctively towards the dashboard as the car jolted. The traffic ahead had stopped. Car doors were hanging open. People were in the road and on the hard shoulder. The scene was impossible to take in at a glance – where to look first, where next. They were seven or eight miles from Canary Wharf and a dozen from the City, but it was all too easy to identify. Smoke and dust were rising in a biblical pall, a dark backdrop for the vivid flames licking from individual buildings and entire districts.

  Dan veered across to the hard shoulder. Julie twisted round anxiously to the back seat, one hand on his leg, her fingernails digging in.

  He yanked his seatbelt free and leant across, gripping her arm.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Stay here. You’re safe here.’

  She nodded her head distractedly before he jumped out and ran to the boot, tossing a pram and a deckchair out and tearing at a bag for his binoculars.

  There was a signal on his phone, three bars. LaSalle’s card was in his wallet. The number went straight to voicemail. He pressed send again, and again. This time it answered.

  ‘It’s Dan Brooks. I’m on the M11. I can see all across London. What’s going on?’

  ‘I think we’re under attack.’

  ‘What kind of attack, car bombs, what?’

  ‘From above. We’ve been hit. Six is hit. I can see them from the window.’

  ‘What does it sound like. What can you hear?’

  ‘It’s like a—’

  The line cut. Dan checked the screen and pressed redial. Nothing. No voicemail, not even a pre-recorded message about network coverage, just a blank.

  He opened Julie’s door and leant in, looking into her eyes. ‘It’s some
sort of attack. I don’t know. I lost the line. We’re okay here. It’s okay.’

  Her eyes were flicking between his own and the scene ahead. It was the same all around with people circling between cars, looking away, looking back, staring in vain hope that something was playing tricks with their imagination. The traffic on the northbound carriageway had backed up and stopped. Engines were switched off. A disturbing silence was falling.

  He squeezed Julie’s shoulders. ‘Stay here. Give me a moment.’

  His binoculars were powerful, too powerful for what he was being forced to witness. Chains of fire, dust and smoke were advancing uniformly across the city. He looked on, horrified, fighting to suppress emotion and summon a detached logic, the calculation of numbers, timing, distance, line and route, rate of fire.

  LaSalle had said they were under attack. It appeared to be coming from the east, spreading west. A pattern was emerging. The radius was difficult to estimate but he plucked at ten miles and swept his glasses east. The Dome he recognised, and the towers of Canary Wharf.

  Guns, range ten miles, rapid fire, coming perhaps from the river. Can it really be true? It seemed too fantastic. Bofors guns, four of them, on a ship, a ship like the Ocean Dove?

  There was a background hum in the air. It had been there since they arrived. His subconscious had dismissed it as superficial, the drone of a combine harvester or a farmer topping a meadow. But now it had changed tone, attracting his attention. He looked across the fields where a line of pylons stretched into the distance. Rising up from them was a helicopter, a power-line surveyor. It had broken its rhythm and pulled up to take a look at a safe distance from the wires, hovering, with the windscreen pointing in his direction.